Category Archives: Personal

Hard Lesson Learned

I am a very disorganized fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants kind of person. I am constantly fighting this side of my nature. Today I learned a hard lesson. I went in to school to try to get some work done and as soon as I walked in I realized something was not right. Someone broke in and took some of the nicer equipment from the lab.

I just this year gave in and ordered a large flat screen monitor for myself. I hate to spend budget money on something that only benefits me but a good part of many of my days is spent staring at spreadsheets and I was having a lot of headaches. My computer, monitor, and mouse were gone. Also gone was the data projector, an older digital camera, an older but larger computer that the lab had just inherited, plus a couple of older laptops. I haven’t gone through my desk yet and may not even remember some smaller items. The laptop cart door was pried open and so were my desk drawers.

It seems like whoever did this didn’t have anything out for me personally. All my pictures and some wooden things I had painted and had sitting on my computer were all just set aside. Nothing was actually torn up except what was needed to gain access. I am thankful for that.

What hurts is that money that could have been used to upgrade out-of-date equipment will now have to go towards replacing what was stolen. My dreams for this lab are for the benefit of all our students and staff. I wish for cutting edge technology that will help our students get ready for the outside world, allow them to express their creativity, and furnish tools that instructors can use to enhance lessons. I am so sad that this happened. In the big picture it may not seem like much but in my little picture, my second home was broken into and things entrusted to my care to help others use were taken with no thought of how others might be affected.

If this stuff were to show up on my front porch in the middle of the night I would not look any further and I would know that the person or persons who took it realized that in the long run they were hurting every student at the school and felt bad about it. I know it isn’t realistic to hope for that but I will pray about it.

In the meantime I am slowly realizing that now I have lost many of my email addresses and documents I have saved that pertained to the lab and other aspects of my job. I also lost four years worth of stuff that I can’t begin to remember never mind replace. I will probably keep anything important on a laptop that goes with me from now on and I may ask Santa for an external hard drive that I could back up everything to and store somewhere safe. I also have learned that I should password protect anything and everything. I will clean out files on a more regular basis so I can remember what I have, and I will not let this make me not trust people.

All The News

They really need to make this guy a regular columnist:

What about Isreal?

To the Editor:

We went to war to make Iraq a democracy, but we ignore Israels lack of democracy. Israel has no Constitution or Bill of Rights. There is no private real estate in Israel. You may only lease land from the government. Gentiles are banned from burial in Jewish cemeteries and there are no jury trials. Christian missionaries are banned from Israel and it is a crime to try to convent a Jew. Jews are forbidden to marry Gentiles in Israel. It was odd of God to choose the Jews.

Roy Bunch

I know a couple of Christian missionaries living in Israel which makes this even more amusing. My only question would be is the headline from Roy or the paper? “It was odd of God to choose the Jews”? I wonder if Roy has discussed this with Him….

Update on Dale

We are home and he is definitely better. We have some issues to deal with and he still has a long hard road ahead as far as recovery but I think for the most part we are headed in the right direction. We are very tired and just trying to take baby steps and be grateful for every move forward. We are also immeasurably grateful to every single person who has come to our aid in so many ways. I don’t know if I will ever be able to express how blessed we feel. Prayers, emotional support, and love have come to us from all directions as well as physical help from food and money to canes and walkers, rides for my kids and people calling to check on them when we have had to stay at the hospital. God is amazing. We even found and gave support to other patients and their family members we met in the hospital. When I start giving in to the anger and despair at what has happened to Dale I try to remember those things and they pull me through. We continue to believe that God has a plan and we know that He will reveal things to us along the way if we pay attention and continue to have faith in his providing grace.

Here we go again

We are on our way to Baylor again in the morning. There is still an abscess and hopefully they will just put in a drain again. I am praying he doesn’t have to have abdominal surgery. There are some other issues that we need to address while we are there this time and as much as I hate being there I will try to make Dale stay til he is really ready to come home. I think we came home too soon the last time.

I am taking a laptop with me this time and will spend some time playing with linux. So far I am very impressed. I know that there is a lot to the nuts and bolts of installing linux to begin with that I have no clue about. Once it is installed though it is wonderful! I have been able to surf the net, check email, install applications, create a few spreadsheets in OpenOffice, and listen to my music on it. I intend to spend some time learning a little more about the gnu graphics app gimp and maybe playing with Scribus a little while we are in the hospital. I don’t have wireless yet but I can get on the internet in the health sciences library at Baylor and I will have my jump drive with me. I also saved some webpages to it today so I could read them later. It pops up and tells you when there is an update and goes about it’s business without bothering you a bit. I plan to write some posts for my blog and then upload them later. It recognized my jump drive immediately and my mouse as well. So far – big thumbs up!

Smacked Upside the Head

It has been an incredibly long day and we are back home from the hospital temporarily. I have already cooked tomorrow’s supper and I’m going to get in a quick post before I become unconsious. I was reading one of my favorite blogs tonight and the post was about sharing creative thinking as opposed to hoarding it. As I read it I felt like I had been smacked upside the head. In everything – staff development at work, the medical community, our city council, even my personal life – change doesn’t come about because of something we do – it comes from a change in thinking. We are so busy “doing” these days that we are not paying attention. We are each stuck in our little narrow path and while the corporate world may want to hoard ideas and information, I think the majority of us just don’t take time to HAVE ideas much less share them. This isn’t a new lesson for me – a friend used to have a saying that went “I can’t always change my situation, but I can always change my attitude towards my situation.” We don’t have to think most of the time to get through our job, our day, our lives. It’s a gift we should give ourselves as frequently as possible. For myself, I know that most of the mistakes I make in my life are from spur of the moment, emotionally driven actions – no thought involved there. I know I drove home from Dallas today on autopilot – nearly a hundred miles of non-thinking. If you were on the highway coming from Dallas this afternoon, that realization should give you pause. I’ll think about that tomorrow.

Again

We are headed back to Baylor in the morning and we don’t even want to think about it so just know that we will pull it together and do what we have to do but other than that it just sucks.  The vacuum cleaner lives by the way – if you read my last post you know I was premeditating murder.  I got it fixed – I rock.

Another Day, Another Project

Last night was Dale’s first night back on dialysis at the center and right now he is so weak that dialysis just kicks his butt.  He had a low grade temp and his blood pressure was high so we were up til midnight just checking his temp and praying we were not headed back to Baylor.  He feels better this morning but we will watch his temp closely.  We are hoping that it is just dialysis having this effect and that it will get better if we can get him built up some.  We need a little break here.

I have to go continue a fight with my vacuum cleaner that I started yesterday.  I tried to run the vacuum and it wouldn’t pick up.  I checked the bag and it was full so I changed it.  It still wouldn’t pick up so I figured it must be the belt.  I couldn’t find the manual at first and I of course being the person I am, googled it and put in my model number trying to find instructions and evidently Hoover considers my model too old to bother with.  I found two buttons with coin slot type ridges on them that said closed or easy access.  I turned them but still couldn’t figure it out. While trying to look underneath the thing while sitting on the floor I managed to drop the heaviest part directly on my knee.  It hurt so bad I couldn’t cry or cuss – I just laid there a minute and wished I had just thrown the thing over the fence before it attacked me. I finally found the manual and it had the cutest little picture of how to pop the front off to get to the belt.  After pushing, huffing and puffing and jerking I finally managed to get the thing off and sure enough there was the broken belt.  I wrote the part number down and headed off to Wally World to get a new belt.  I  bought several and of course six other things I thought I desperately needed (not) including a handy battery powered screw driver for my next project (hanging rope lights on our back patio) and headed back home proud and confident that I could star in my own version of Tool Time.  I replaced the belt and scornfully told my son to stop trying to be “the Man” and let me do it myself.  I managed to get the belt on the demon-possessed machine, replaced the cover, closed the little buttons, plugged it in and prepared to do battle with dirt.  A smell like burning rubber, no suction, and difficulty pushing it across the carpet and a few choice words later and there I am taking it apart again.  The second belt broke too!  I stood the thing in the corner and glared at it for awhile and by that time I needed to start supper.  I decided our relationship was in such a state that we needed a little time and space so I decided to wait til today to attack it again.  Dale suggested I open it up and turn it on without the belt to make sure the shaft is turning.  If it isn’t then it’s the motor and in all good conscience I can terminate the Hoover with prejudice.  By this afternoon I will have a clean carpet or I will be guilty of “Hoovercide”!

We are home. We hope to stay home this time but I’m still taking it one day at a time. It was wonderful to sleep in my own bed, take a shower in my own bathroom, and cook food that Dale can have on a renal diet that actually has some taste and that he likes. Things I hated were Dale being in pain and having to go through so much physically, being alternately hopeful and terrified, leaving my kids here on their own, sleeping on a pull-out chair, having no privacy, having sleep constantly interrupted, missing work and the seniors graduation, being afraid that no matter what I did – it wouldn’t be enough. Things I am so very thankful for are Dale while still being very weak physically is now more like his old self and feeling more positive, for my kids being able to keep things together and finish school without us here, for meeting folks that were often in much worse condition than we were and finding that we could all pray for each other and hold each other up, for doctors and nurses that cared, for finding that I can drive in Dallas, for Robert at Hicks who scotch-taped my air conditioner together to keep it working for a little longer, for the prayers and concern and calls and emails from all the people who love us and who we dearly love, for Jack at the dialysis center who paid attention and realized that Dale had something else going on and needed to get back to the hospital, for all the people at the dialysis center who called us in Dallas to check on us and who gathered around to welcome Dale back tonight and probably much much more. I’m still running on adrenaline and I think I will probably crash and burn this weekend. I’m planning on a long Saturday afternoon nap with the kids here to look after their dad and maybe a long soak in the tub.

The Saga Continues

They are now telling us we will be here through Monday. I counted up yesterday and as far as I can tell we will have had 25 days total in hospital, 7 procedures, 4 antibiotics, 5 CT scans, 5 trips to dialysis and I have no idea how many docs. I can find my way to Target and back and my list of hints if you are ever at Baylor is as follows:

Laundry can be done on the 12th floor of the Wadley Building – carry quarters for detergent and softener sheets – the machines are free

Computers are available in the Health Science Library but no one tells you this – you have to ask. Just go to the Truett Lobby and go down the hall towards the chapel. Turn left just before you get there and go through the double glass doors. Go to the end of the hall and turn right and you are there. They tell me the reason they don’t have a program with laptops for patients is because they haven’t figured out the wireless thing yet. (maybe you should hire yourself out for a huge consultation fee Tony!)

Parking is insanely expensive, but for five dollars you can purchase a package of five parking passes. This means a dollar each time no matter how long you are parked there and ordinarily it would cost you $3.50 a day.

Go to Target if you need personal items like excedrin or toothpaste – the pharmacy here is outrageous. You can get on Washington and go straight to it and come back on the same street which is wonderful since so much of the streets here are one way and you can go in circles for awhile seeing Baylor but not being able to get to it!

If you know someone is going to be here and the family members will be around a lot, a gift certificate from Starbucks might be a nice thing since there is one located next to the Truett cafe. They also have loadable cards in the gift shop for the Atrium Cafe and probably Truett as well.

The gift shop has prepaid phone cards and for ten bucks you can get 250 minutes. Cell phone service is iffy in some parts of the hospital and my little trac phone is worthless but the phone card has been very helpful.

That is my list of things to remember if I ever know ahead of time that someone is going to be coming here. I think it would be a great thing if Baylor had a little welcome packet available for people that had this info in it but at this point all I care about is coming HOME.

Yesterday my daughter said she cleaned out the refridgerator while my somn was gone to debate practice. Eveidently she did a great job because he had to do the dishes when he got home because she was at bible study and he was not to happy about it. I bet when we get a new dishwasher they will pay close attention to instructions on the operation and care of it. They have never been without a dishwasher before and this has been a learning experience. They both seem to managing the laundry thing okay as well and I plan to let that continue when we get home. I am planning on working and I think their laundry can be something they can continue to handle. Maybe some of this experience will end up being a good thing as far as their ability to cope on their own. My usual way of handling everything is to yell and complain and then do it myself. That has come to an end. I am letting go of some control!

We are ready to come home – sit on the back porch with the ceiling fan on and a glass of tea, turn on the sprinkler and watch the grass grow!

Still Hanging In

Well for those of you that know me we are back at Baylor.  We have been here since Friday morning of last week and are really hoping to come home this Friday.  Dale had a huge abscess in his abdomen and according to the docs they removed a liter of “impressive” fluid from him.  Evidently impressive is not a word you want the docs to use when they are talking about your body but we are having another abcess drained today and maybe that will help us turn the corner.  This has been the least fun experience of my life so I can’t imagine what is has been like for him having to actually go through all this stuff.  He has improved enough that I borrow a wheel chair and take him down to the garden here.  It’s funny but everytime I feel whiny we meet people who have so much more on their plates than we do. I met a lady yesterday who has a nineteen year old diabetic daughter.  She had a kidney and pancreas transplant and because of complications they have been here for 11 months!  We are blessed that we will not have to be here much longer and that we have friends supporting and praying for us (as well as keeping an eye on our kids!)  More later and hopefully posted from home very soon!

Passing the Test

The preliminary result for the blood culture they did on Dale shows nothing growing. This is a very good sign so we are hopeful. He is at dialysis tonight and he will feel better after that. It’s amazing how small your world becomes and what you get used to very quickly. It’s also amazing how you find joy in tiny everyday things that used to go completely un-noticed. We have spent more time alone in the last few weeks than we have in years and we have realized how lucky we are. We have each other, two great kids, and wonderful friends. We also have decent health insurance which a lot of folks do not have and I wonder how they manage and if the quality of care suffers. I know it must for the most part. I know that we have a lot of folks praying for us and I feel in my heart that prayer has made the difference. Time to go to the center and pick Dale up so more later.

Whispered Hope?

Well if I try to assess things objectively, Dale is complaining more today so that means he is better I think. He still can’t eat as much as he should but in the last two days he has gotten bathed and his hair washed and while those things pretty well knocked him out it was a very short time ago that he didn’t even care. He is still running temp and maybe we will get news about that tomorrow. He is up a little more and likes to go for a ride just to get out of the house. He is asking questions about the time frame of the last few weeks – he lost at least a whole week and that has to be pretty unsettling. His vision is quirky but that can happen when you aren’t getting good dialysis so we will ask the doc about it if it continues. He still gets hiccups and loses his breath and that causes pain but it seems to be happening a little less frequently and with a little less severity. I’m afraid to be hopeful so pretend this blog is written in a “whisper”

Still Here

Well friends are bringing supper every night next week. I broke down and admitted that I just can’t do it all. I can cook for Dale and right now I’m pushing protein shakes at him, but the kids are being neglected and I just can’t seem to get it all done. Today they are helping me get the house cleaned up and that will help my frame of mind. I worry about them. The line between parent and child gets blurred around here pretty often right now. My emotions are all over the place and they are spending some time petting me. I’m tired and I know it isn’t that I’m tired physically – I’m tired from worry and I’m trying to get a few things done today just to keep my mind from working overtime while we wait for the results of the blood culture. I helped him bathe this morning and maybe this afternoon after some food and hefty napping we can tackle his hair. We sat on the back porch for a little while with the sprinkler going and it was relaxing for both of us. We talked about what to do next if this infection is not a problem. He had talked about going back on peritoneal dialysis but had some apprehension about the possibility of peritonitis happening again. From what I am reading there is a higher chance of that exact thing and there is scarring that occurs with the infection so it is possible he would not get as good a dialysis if it would work at all. We will probably end up with him getting a fistula in his arm and getting hemodialysis til he can get a transplant. This means some lifestyle and diet changes for awhile but you have to be infection free for so many months before you can be a candidate for transplant and I’m not sure his body could handle going through this a second time. Break time over – time to get back to work. The bookshelves have about an inch of dust on them and I hear them calling me…

Has Anybody Seen My Mind?

If so please give it a a hug, a snack, and clean jammies and return it to me – I need it. Dale has had hiccups off and on (mostly on) since 4:30 this morning and my washing machine drain is being cantankerous. Sometimes it doesn’t want to work and when that happens I remove the drain hose from it’s little compartment in the wall behind it and insert a funnel and pour in some super drain de-clogger. I set a timer and wait fifteen minutes, pour some warm water in to flush it out and voila! Theoretically a nice clean working drain. I went through that process today. While I was waiting for the timer to go off I thought I would have breakfast (at 10:30 in the morning) and two phone calls later I was pouring the water in and thought I’d go ahead a start the laundry and then maybe I could go finish my breakfast. I started the washer and went to add water to a cup of bleach to pour in and when I walked back in there was water on the floor. did you know that when the drain hose isn’t in the drain pipe that water runs out as fast as it runs in? Duh. Luckily I had another load of dirty clothes sitting there waiting so I stopped the washer, mopped up, re-inserted the drain hose and went back to eating breakfast. I finished at about 11:30 – just in time to start fixing lunch. I’ll fix Dale something healthy but I’m thinking Bailey’s soup for me…

No More Plans

I should know better than to make plans. This day didn’t go anything like I planned but what else is new. Dale started running fever and I called the doc in Dallas and we ended up at the dialysis center with them running a blood culture and loading another antibiotic into him. They will dose him again tomorrow and the prayer this time is that he doesn’t have an infection in the permacath. That would NOT be a good thing. We won’t know the results of the culture for two days but they are giving the antibiotic just in case rather than wait. I’m just going to think it into being no big deal, the antibiotics will take care of it and that’s that.

Life Goes On

Tomorrow is a wonderful word. For a short while there I wasn’t sure I thought so but I am willing to take a chance on jinxing things and saying maybe it’s going to be okay. I have to run some errands tomorrow and I am going to make a promise to myself that I will spend a little time working on xhtml and css. I haven’t been able to concentrate on anything for more than a few moments at a time but I think I’m starting to slow down a bit. Dialysis went pretty well tonight except that Dale had a fever and even though he was wrapped up from head to toe in a blanket he was shivering when I went to pick him up. I had just finished mowing the rest of the lawn with the kids but we drove home with the heater on. I thought my hair was going to catch fire before we got home but he warmed up and after supper, antibiotics and tylenol I think he may sleep better tonight.

I am a fixer. If there is a problem I want to figure it out, and then do what is needed to fix it. When I can’t fix it – I don’t do well. This is a part of my personality that carries through into every part of my life. As I get older I run into more and more things that I can’t fix and I don’t mauch care for that. The only thing I know to do is to take a little time each day and see if I can “zone out” with something that takes every bit of my mind and temporarily shut down the stress. Maybe if I find some little problems that I CAN fix, I can keep the unfixable ones from making me too nuts. That and a latte with a little Baileys’ thrown in…

One Day, One Step, One Bite, at a time

My attention span is so short – “how short is it?” you ask. Taking care of Dale is pretty demanding right now and in between keeping him fed and comfortable and trying to take back my house which was pretty much run by two teenagers for two weeks is proving a daunting task. I start to do something and Dale calls and I forget what I was doing before that and start something else and yesterday evening my son walked up to me and asked what was for supper and I had to grab the kitchen counter and stare out the window while I collected myself so I wouldn’t take his head off. I had been trying to start supper for 4 hours and at that point as long as Dale got fed I really didn’t care if anyone else ate. By 7 P.M. I was trying to finish the dishes (the dishwasher croaked while I was at Baylor with Dale), trying to fold the last load of clothes for the day, putting up food, getting Dale a snack and then while Dale napped I mowed about half the back yard. At 9 P.M. I asked Jessica to sit with her dad while I took a shower which by the way is a great place to cry your eyes out without anyone knowing. At 11:30 Dale had his pain pill and I fell into bed, read half a page of my book and that’s the last thing I remember til this morning and now it’s time to start all over again. Dale felt a little better this morning and every tiny bit of progress is reason to celebrate. Yesterday was rough on him because we had to go to the dialysis center where he had to sign all the forms and answer all the questions to get started on hemodialysis again. He was in pain by the time we got through and it is such a depressing place and he feels like he is starting over from where he was two years ago. He really isn’t because we can still do transplant once he gets clear of infection and built back up, but right now while he feels so bad physically it seems that way to him. He is worried about bills and work and everything and keeping him motivated and hopeful is as important right now as the physical stuff. My mantra these days is just get through this day – for him and for myself. Last night Dale said I was an angel.  I told him I would remind him of that when he was well and got irritated with me about something.  I’m saving brownie points for the future when I plan to have my nervous breakdown.

Back from Hell

“According to Dante, the road to moral redemption can be reached only after confronting evil in the world and in one’s self.” There are nine circles of hell and I feel as though we have been on a tour of at least seven in the past thirteen days. To watch someone you love be in pain and be completely helpless is at least one level of hell. To be afraid that person may never come back to you as the person they have always been is another – to think they might die is well , about as far down as you can go. I’ve heard that God brings us trials to teach us things and if this was a lesson I hope I am learning it and that He will give me a rest because I feel like my heart is like dandilion fluff – one good breeze and the pieces would scatter forever. I have felt God holding me up and it is only through Him that I was able to do every single thing I knew to make this okay. I know that god guided the docs and nurses – even the ones who were wrong and sometime I will understand it but for now I am just tired and so very thankful that we are home and that Dale is recovering. He is so weak and still has some pain but we have come through hell and I can’t believe that God would have brought us this far if He didn’t have a plan for our future. I have to trust and rely on that. For now I am going to just sleep in my own bed and pray that Dale is able to sleep through the night. For all the prayers and caring that came our way – there are no words. I felt each and every prayer and it held me together when I needed it and pulled me through multiple melt-downs. Goodnight friends, and thank you God.