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We had a busy hectic day on Wednesday getting Dear home from the hospital. He is very happy to be home. We have lots of new things to learn and it is tiring for him and for me. If my blog is quiet you will know why.

We are so very grateful and thankful for all the concern, prayers and encouragement we have received. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts.

We came home to snow on the ground at our Country Bungalow and to a freshly plowed path to our front door. Our neighbor did that for us. So thoughtful and sweet!

Thank you to our family Veteran, Andrew. We love you and are grateful for your service to our country. We especially thank you for loving our daughter.

Until my next post take care of each other, love one another.

Praizing the Lord…

…as our dear Pop would say. That’s not a typo. Dear had a successful surgery.

It was a very long day. We have to wait until 9am to be able to visit in the hospital…not a minute earlier. Katie and I got to Dear’s room at a little after 9am. He didn’t have any food or drink from midnight on so he was getting a bit dry in the mouth. We were expecting the surgical bed for his transfer to surgery at noon but it didn’t arrive until 1:15. So much in this setting is hurry up and wait. This timing worked out well because although Dan and Jamie left their home in Colville with plenty of time to make it to the hospital to see Dear before he was carted away to surgery there was a fatal crash on Hiway 395 with two Life Flight Helicopters landing on the highway to transport critical patients to the hospital we were at. Dan and Jamie had to detour off the highway which added several minutes to their journey. They made it before the transfer and we were all relieved.

In the Pre-Op room with all the preliminary things to do and a time where we got to meet the surgeon, the Anesthesiologist and the whole surgical team. The Surgeon and Anesthesiologist both took time to explain everything that would go on in surgery and we were confident with the care Dear would receive.

All set and ready to go. We prayed together before we headed to the surgical ward. Dear let the surgeon know that we and many others had prayed for him, too. He gave us a big smile.

Here’s my waiting room team. Jamie is such a gem who thinks of everything and brought some great snacks for us all. While waiting I was called 3 separate times. Once to tell me that Dear was asleep and they were ready to go with the surgery. Then they called to let us know that the surgery was successful and the surgeon was finishing with the final stitching. This was at 5:15 and it would be at least a half hour in recovery. The Surgeon then came to the Waiting Room and let us know in person that the surgery went well and showed us what he had removed from the Carotid Artery. At this point Dear would be transferred from Recovery to ICU and the visiting window was closing fast at 6pm. The recovery nurse gave us a call and asked us where we were and that we could meet her in the hall on her way to ICU so we could get a glimpse of Dear and give him his eye glasses. It was good to see him Post op before we had to leave the hospital. We will be back in the hospital on Wednesday at 9am sharp to see him in a non-loopy state.

We are so very grateful to all of you who have prayed and encouraged us during this first phase of Dear’s treatment and recovery. Prayer has been powerful. Your encouraging words are like balm to our hearts and minds. Thank you so much!

Time will tell if he gets to be released on Wednesday.

Surgery Today

I took some photos of Dear in the hospital to text to our kids and our family and friends. This first one is of him in ICU at Sacred Heart Hospital in Spokane on Saturday night. Our son Dan and I were with him for as long as they let us stay in ICU before we left him in good hands and headed to our hotel to check in.

In this one (Sunday November 6th) he is still in ICU waiting for a room on the Vascular floor of the hospital. Our daughter Katie and her hubby Andrew arrived on Sunday morning flying into Spokane. They were going to drive over on Saturday as soon as they got the word that Dear had a stroke but both passes between us and them were closed due to snow accumulations and hazardous conditions. Auntie Lana used her airline miles to fly them over early Sunday morning. Thank you to my generous sister for doing that.

The hospital only allows 2 people to visit at a time so we alternated our visits so Dan, Katie, Andrew and I could spend time with him.

Jamie drove to Spokane on Sunday with our grands to pick up Dan and head back home before the snow that was predicted started to fall. It was good to be able to see them and give them hugs. Jamie is amazing and brought some snacks and homemade cookies and banana bread for us all to enjoy.

Late Sunday Dear was finally moved to the vascular floor and Katie and I were with him when he was moved to his new room. When visiting hours were over Andrew picked Katie and me up and we had a relaxing dinner at a local restaurant before we settled in for the night.

While we slept Sunday night into Monday snow fell. I took the photo above out our hotel room window. Andrew needed to fly home on Monday morning for some work responsibilities. He tried booking an UBER to the airport but then they canceled so I drove him to the airport. Happy we have our snow tires on and the car does well in snowy conditions. Katie and I were proud of ourselves for putting our big girl pants on and driving in the slippery conditions. When we got back to our hotel we parked the car and decided to walk to the hospital. That walk was under 5 minutes. We walked like a penguin through the ice and snow.

Dear was very happy to be out of ICU. Doesn’t he look better already?

Katie and I spent all day on Monday with Dear. We had lunch at the hospitals cafeteria. Dear had a quiet day and was able to take a shower. The photo above is of him quite pleased after that shower!

Our son Josh and Laura had landed in Cancun when Dear had his stroke. We have been communicating back and forth with them with all the information we receive.

Visiting hours are strictly enforced and are between 9am and 6:45 PM in rooms other than ICU. Katie and I will head over at 9am today and spend some time with Dear before they start prepping him for surgery. Dan and Jamie are driving back down here today to spend some time with him before surgery, too. Jamie’s mom is watching the grands while Dan and Jamie travel to the hospital.

Thank you so much to all of you for your encouraging comments and for the prayers you offer up on our behalf. We feel those prayers and are thankful for the peace that God is giving us as we head into this new chapter in our lives. There are hurdles ahead for us and changes that we hadn’t anticipated but we move forward with the God of the Universe who gives us the strength to carry on.

I Can See Clearly Now…

…the floaters are gone.

Well not as clearly as I will be seeing once my eye isn’t dialated anymore. Things are slightly blurry but no black feathery objects are floating across my eye.

My particular issue was Asteroid Hyalosis: Asteroid hyalosis (AH) is a degenerative eye condition marked by a buildup of calcium and lipids, or fats, in the fluid between your eye’s retina and lens, called the vitreous humor.

The surgery went well and my follow-up was good. I go back next Monday to get another follow-up. This week I’m suppose to rest and not do anything strenuous. I shouldn’t bend over, pick up heavy objects and do anything that will jostle me like riding my lawnmower. I need to wear my eye patch at night so I don’t do anything to my eye in my sleep. Dr. G. told Dear to wash the dishes this week. Dear will also be on eye drop duty.

When my grands come to visit tomorrow I’ve been forewarned that Addy will be saying, “but why”, a lot. I’ll let her climb into my lap instead of lifting her.

My eyes will be in rest mode for the rest of the week, so I won’t be coming around to read blogs.

Thank you very much from the bottom of my heart for anyone who prayed for me. I was pretty calm for the whole time even before they gave me some happy sedation. I was conscious through out the whole procedure and declared afterward that it was way better then having dental work done. Our stay in a nearby hotel with valet parking and full service within the hotel worked out well for meals and being close to the eye clinic for my followup this morning.

We are back at home now and heating up to 99 for today and tomorrow before we have a little cooling off. We have smoke filled skies because of the brush fire that has grown to over 10,500 acres on the Colville Reservation that is west and south of us. The smoke from this fire is impacting air quality over a large area of eastern Washington.

Staying inside and relaxing sounds like very good medicine.

 

Eye Has Not Seen…

1 Corinthians 2:9 (NKJV)

9 But as it is written:

“Eye has not seen, nor ear heard,
Nor have entered into the heart of man
The things which God has prepared for those who love Him.”

It’s time for me to forewarn that ellen b. will be away from the computer and all reading material for a time. On Monday I am scheduled for Vitrectomy Surgery in Spokane. My right eye has enough floaters to form my own galaxy. They affect my vision in my right eye. The surgery will involve removing the vitreous (the clear jelly like substance that fills the middle of the eye). They will replace it with saline (a saltwater solution). I’ll be under Dear’s care who will have to instill 3 different eye drop medications in my eye at different intervals for days. I don’t really know how long it will be before I feel like typing or reading so when you don’t see anything on my blog you will know why. I hope some of you will pray for me when God reminds you by His Spirit. Thank you in advance!

This is the latest devotional book that I am reading along with my daily Bible passages.

It’s proving to be a book I copy quotes from into my journal. Piper shares this quote from C.S. Lewis and then I’ll share a subsequent paragraph from Piper.

In the middle of the last century the British writer C.S. Lewis got it shockingly right:

A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic–on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg–or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill him as a demon; or you can fall at His fee and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. (Mere Christianity)

Then Piper goes on to say:

In other words, Jesus will not be domesticated. But people still try. There seems to be something about this man for everybody. So we pick and choose in a way that shows he is on our side. All over the world, having Jesus on your side is a good thing. But not the original, undomesticated, unadjusted Jesus. Just the revised Jesus who fits our religion or political platform or lifestyle.

These quotes are just from the preface. I’ll be jotting down many more thoughts to ponder as I continue to slowly read through this one.

Happy Monday to you all. Hope to have Dear add an update on this post on Wednesday to let you know how things are going.

Saturday, Bath Day

It’s fun to see our birdbath in use from time to time. Sitting in our family room I have a clear view of the birdbath through the sliding glass doors that open to our back acreage. I keep a camera handy with a long lens on it to capture moments like these.

In for a dip and then it was all in.

All washed up and ready for church tomorrow morning.

If I recall correctly, growing up we only had baths once a week on Saturday evening so we were all nice and clean for Sunday church. Every morning we’d have to wash our faces but baths were once a week. Things changed when we hit junior high and high school. When we had kids of our own it was normal to have a bath a day instead of once a week. I wonder sometimes if our little ones are too clean and not able to fight off common infections as when we were little. I remember having the diseases like measles and chicken pox but I don’t remember having lots of colds or the flu and we were never on antibiotics. I do remember having pink eye. I also had some mystery ailment (kidney infection?) that landed me in the hospital when I was in first grade and I was in recovery at home for a long enough time that I had a teacher come to our home for studies. The reason I think it might have been a kidney infection is because I had to drink a lot of water and I wasn’t allowed to have salt. My parents probably didn’t really understand what was wrong with me because they were never really able to tell me when I asked them about my mystery ailment. On the subject of communicable diseases I recall standing in a very long line with my family at the local junior high for polio vaccinations when I was elementary age. We also got smallpox vaccinations in elementary school. That smallpox vaccination was pretty primitive and left an interesting scar. Since we are on this subject of communicable, thankfully I only remember having lice once, in elementary school. Oye! My mother worked very hard to eradicate them. When I was an elementary school teacher there was an outbreak of lice and it made me squirm.

Hope you have a nice last Saturday in June! Happy Canada Day weekend to our friends to the North.

 

Restraint…

Doesn’t this look good? If you’ve followed my blog for any length of time you know I love pretty things on a plate and pretty plates, too. This dessert could be just fine shared with 3 other people. In my studies in Home Economics during a nutrition course I read that there is no such thing as a fattening food. Hear me out on this. It’s the sum of all the food you eat in a day or week or month that can put weight on you or help you to lose weight. One item isn’t going to make or break you, unless of course you are allergic to nuts or shellfish and just one of those could kill you. There’s the whole other subject of what’s healthy but a lot of times what’s healthy for me might not be healthy for you. So why am I waxing on here? I am in a period of restraint in my life until I see a number a lot less than I have on the pesky little flat thing that lives on the floor of my bathroom and is the bearer of bad news. Eventually it could deliver some good news. This will be the last you hear of my restraint until I have that good news down the road…

Hope you all have a wonderful weekend.

Walking Again

Oh the Places you will go, Oh the Wonders you will see…

I made the horrible timely mistake of stepping on the scale last Tuesday morning. Right then and there I decided it was time to get serious about walking everyday again. I’ve gotten a little more fluffy and soft then I want to be. So I headed out to see what I could see…

 

The Burke Gilman Trail which spills into the Sammamish River Trail is a great place to walk/ride/run in the Seattle Area. My two walking buddies and I walked this trail every Saturday morning for several years before I moved to California. When I’m back in town we still get together to walk it. The two of them walk it when I’m away. It’s so lush and green in the Spring and Summer! This last Saturday we walked our typical 15,000 steps! On Wednesday of last week after the “stepping on the scale” incident I walked part of the trail starting at Bothell Landing and I clocked 7282 steps. These photos are from that day.

 

LOOK! I even found the MAGIC PORTAL to get to Hogwarts from the Pacific Northwest!

 

On Thursday for my motivation to walk I headed to Juanita Bay in Kirkland, Washington. There’s a wonderful park next to the bay with boardwalks that go out into the marshes and wetlands.

 

I saw this young Blue Heron.

 

Lots of Woodland Ducks. It was so exciting when I looked straight down from a spot on the boardwalk and saw this mama duck with her ducklings just below me.

 

Then I spotted these turtles!

 

This beautiful Dragonfly stayed around long enough for me to zoom in and get a shot.

 

When Dear gets here I think we’ll have to do this walk again together.

 

You can see why it was easy to get in 8694 steps checking out the wonder of this spot. The beauty that the Lord has created for us to enjoy and praise Him for is all around us. I hope to always have eyes that see it and a tongue that gives Him praise for it.

On Friday I went to Bellevue and I already posted about that day and those steps! So for my first 5 days back with renewed inspiration to walk my average steps were 9286. My Saturday walks with the girls really pushes up my average.

I hope to keep walking this week. Have a wonderful week and remember your Creator, the God who made all things beautiful for us to enjoy…

Photobucket is holding all my photos from 2007-2015 hostage on their site and have replaced my photos with black and grey boxes of ugliness. I’m slowly deleting those boxes from my blog and trying to update so many posts, very frustrating.

My Sweet Niece and Me and Vitiligo

 

I love this photo of my sweet little niece with her Aunty ellen b. Look at her great eyebrows. After we left Dallas she cut two bottom teeth within the week. She’s just 3-1/2 months old. Before we left for Dallas I had my first ever trip to the dermatologist because my face was discoloring. I thought I was getting brown spots. At my visit the dermatologist discovered that I’m not getting brown spots but instead I’m losing the pigment in my skin, a condition called Vitiligo. It’s the same condition that Michael Jackson has. I’m not wearing any cover-up in the photo above so you can see my loss of pigment especially next to my dear niece’s perfect baby skin. So from now on if I post any photos of myself out walking you’ll see me with my Dallas souvenir on…

 

Here I am last Saturday at Emma Wood State Beach with my new UPF50+ hat with a 3″ rim. The areas of my skin that are losing pigment are very sensitive to the sun so I need to add extra protection. A sunblock with helioplex broad spectrum uva-uvb and avobenzone 3% are highly recommended for protection. I’m using a Neutrogena product that has both of these ingredients in it. The only downside to this condition for me besides my vanity, is the fact that I don’t wear hats well and then the added condition of bad dented hair from the hat after my walks!

Between my back issues and my face issues I was happy to have memorized ~ 2 Corinthians 4:16-18 ~”Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”

Have a wonderful day y’all and keep on walking. I’ve had a good week of walking and I’ll be posting my average steps every Monday from now on.

Photobucket is holding all my photos from 2007-2015 hostage and they have blacked them all out. I’m slowly working at restoring my posts without their help. Such a tiresome bother!

April Flowers

Praise God from whom all blessings flow, I woke up this morning and my spasms are gone. All I have now is a stiff, weak back that I will carefully and slowly exercise back. Taking a step at a time. Thank you so much for all your prayers for me. Your phone calls and your emails were an encouragement, too. Have a wonderful day!

Psalm 30:2 “O Lord my God, I called to you for help and you have healed me.”

 

April is a rainbow month,
Of sudden springtime showers.
Bright with golden daffodils
and lots of pretty flowers.