It's Raining . . .

. . . which means it must be time for the West Texas Fair & Rodeo.

Yesterday I helped check in the entries for the Scrapbooking Category at the Fair. It was fun to see the different scrapbooks and hear the stories behind the albums; special anniversaries, beautiful vacation locations, family albums and photos of beautiful kids to name just a few. There were only 29 albums entered this year, down from last year. In visiting with some of the other workers their entries were down also. It was raining all day which probably didn't help and maybe the economy had something to do with it.

There have been some improvements in Roger chest wound. Wound Care has decided to let the top layer of skin close even though the inside is not 100% closed. The doctor will check Roger again in 10 days to see how he is doing and hopefully he will make a decision about releasing Roger to return to work. It will soon be 10 months since Roger's bypass surgery and I had no idea that Roger would have all these complications. Thank you for all the thoughts and prayers along the way and praise be to God for healing Roger.

More Updates

Well, it has now been 9 months since Roger's surgery and he is still going to Wound Care as his chest incision/wound has not closed! Of course he is still on antibiotics and will be for a little while longer. Thank goodness for Disability Insurance as Roger is now on Unpaid Leave of Absence from his job. There have been ups and downs throughout all this but things are slowly looking up. Granted there are not very many things he can do with a 10 pound lifting restriction!

August 1st was our 35th Wedding Anniversary. We went out for dinner and went to see a movie a few days later. It was nice to spend time with my dear sweet husband.

Updates

To make a long story short - Roger spent 7 1/2 weeks in the hospital, had one more surgery to close up his chest and has been receiving Wound Care on his chest incision since December. This has been unbelieveable because we had no idea how serious this could be. The funny thing as we were driving to the hospital the morning of his Heart Cath he kept saying "I have a bad feeling about this." I told him it would be okay and not to worry, what could go wrong. Well, I guess I've had to eat my words more than once! We spent Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and New Year's Day in the hospital but thankfully Roger got out before his birthday in January. Roger is doing better but still has a long way to go before he is back to his old self.

Long Time Away

Well, a lot has happened in the past few months. It started with a Stress Test, which then became a visit to a cardiologist, who strongly recommended a Heart Cath asap. So 6 days later Roger was in the hospital being told he needed bypass surgery, which was scheduled for the next day. The bypass surgery went well until about 5 days post-op when Roger started having problems which quickly became serious complications. The surgeon called in Dr. Headstream, an Internal Medicine doctor. Dr. Headstream quickly realized that some of the medicines were having bad inter-reactions and some of the medicines were causing other complications. It soon became apparent that Roger had an infection which quickly developed and became very serious. On Wednesday before Thanksgiving things took a turn for the worst. Roger's heart went crazy, beating much to fast and not in rhythm. Late that afternoon Roger had an "episode" which escalated into a "Code Blue" call. Lots of medical staff came rushing into his room, bringing the crash cart and I'm not sure what all was done because I had to wait out in the hall. They ended up wheeling him back to ICU doing CPR as they went down the hall. Roger went back to surgery Wednesday night and they found a massive infection in his chest cavity and around the sternum. They tried shocking his heart back into rhythm twice during surgery but it didn't convert and the meds weren't working either.

To be continued . . .