Hang on! It's a wild ride!

If there's one thing I've learned these past 20 days, it's don't have any expectations, especially if you've prayed about something. If you've asked God to handle something, let Him.

Another thing is this: learn to be flexible cause things are not always going to turn out like they (meaning doctors) say they will.

We arrived at Piedmont Hospital in downtown Atlanta on Friday morning, April 10th at 5:45 a.m. and it is now Wednesday, April 29th at 8:00 a.m. And we're still here.

Anyway, we had to be out the door by 4:45 a.m. on the day of surgery. That meant that our alarm was going off at 3:45 a.m. Had we been able to get in bed at a decent hour, this wouldn't have been so bad, but the day before the surgery Mister was called back up here to have more blood drawn as one of his tests came back a little higher than what it should've been. There was the real possibility that we may have to reschedule the surgery. That was not something we wanted to think about after all the weeks of mentally preparing ourselves for what lay ahead. Thankfully things came back within the normal range and things were going to procede as planned. Anyway, since we spent a good part of the day in Atlanta, this put us way behind getting things done at home, thus we go in the bed lots later than I wanted to.

Of course, this didn't bother Mister much seeing as how he would be knocked out for most of the day Friday. I, however, was very concerned about my lack of sleep, especially considering I would already be feeling like an exposed nerve for all the world to rub the wrong way. Or the 16 or so friends and family members who congregated in the ICU red waiting area with me throughout the day. Bertha Mae thought it was something akin to a big family reunion, but without all the fried chicken and pecan pie. I had to let her know real quick like that she needed to settle down and behave before I knocked her block off. And, push come to shove, I would have too. Thankfully we were both able to behave ourselves very well that day, despite our fatigue and concern over Mister. And so did all of our concerned family and friends.

(One plus though was that if things had gotten ugly, we were at the hospital, right around the corner from the emergency room.)

For all of my concerns about Mister's actual surgery and the long day that loomed before me, I am happy to report that all went well. The procedure itself began about 9:30, and by 1:30 in the afternoon, we were visiting him for the first time in ICU red. Even though he was still under anesthesia and he had no clue we were there, I was so glad to see him. Which made it incredibly difficult to leave him back there and not be able to come back again for two hours. Time past quickly though and before long he was awake. Not that he remembers any of us coming back there, though this is common in open heart surgery patients. Unfortunately, this would not be the only time that he would be having memory issues. More on that later.

Once everyone was assured that Mister was doing well, it was time for everybody to head back home. While it was somewhat of a relief for me to finally have some quiet time to think about everything, it also meant that I was on my own in a huge hospital.

To be continued.

Julia

Help! Rescue us!

Help! Being held captive by the nursing staff. Please send clean underwear, reading material, and some good food! Somebody grab my Wellbutrin from the bathroom cabinet. Will meet you by the elevator. Codeword: get.us.outta.here. Will be wearing flowered pajama bottoms and a white t-shirt. Mister will be pushing a pole and wearing a hosptial gown (don't worry, it's tied up in the back).

Over and out.

Julia

Huge prayer request with some specific needs

Dear friends and family,

Our family is in a position of great need at the moment: Mister is scheduled to have heart surgery on Friday, April 10th. He was born with a condition called mitral valve prolapse. It is supposed to be a fairly benign condition wherein the valve does not close all the way. However, my husband is one of the few that has trouble. Basically the problem is that he has severe regurgitation with his, meaning that blood backs up into the chamber. It has been going on for some time and has caused the chamber to become enlarged. We found out back in December that he really needs to have something done about it, but it took a while for tests and getting everything set up.

While I covet your prayers for a successful surgery, I do have some very specific things that I would like for you to pray, if you don’t mind.

1. We will not know if he requires a valve repair or replacement until the doctor actually does a TEE the day of the surgery! That means I will be sitting in the waiting area and will have no clue what’s going on unless they decide to come out and tell me. We are praying for a repair as that is really the best route! If he has a valve replacement, it will mean being on a blood thinner for the rest of his life. This would also require that he have the more invasive surgery.

2. I would also ask that you pray for a minimally invasive surgery to be able to be performed. In this instance, they would not have to break his sternum nor would they have to make that huge cut down the front of his chest. There is a procedure wherein they are able to make small incisions on each side of his chest and use some sort of robotics to do the repair.

3. Pray for God to give wisdom to the surgeons.

4. Please pray that there will be no complications during the surgery. Specifically, I am concerned about blood clots, stroke, heart attack, infection, etc. Also pray for NO side effects from having to be on the heart-lung machine. There are some issues that can occur because of having to be on that machine and I am praying for there to be none.

5. Please pray for his heart cath on Monday, April 6 @ 9:45 a.m. They want to check for blockages, which will be fixed during the surgery. We are praying for NO blockages! This will complicate the surgery some and I am hoping that it can be kept as simple as possible.

6. Please pray for my peace of mind during the long hours in the waiting room. I am really not looking forward to that part! Having to sit there for such a long period of time and not know what’s going on will be very trying. My husband is my comforter (aside from the Lord, of course) and I will be lost without him there by my side.

7. Pray for our daughter to be able to get home from college at some point during this time. She will be preparing for final exams and such as she gets out of school May 9th, but she would really like to come home.

8. I don’t know what it will be like for some weeks after Mister's surgery as far as just the general daily stuff that life is made of. And our boys graduate on May 30th with the homeschool group. I feel like I will have to be solely responsible for A LOT during those couple months after his surgery. He will not be able to drive for six weeks or so after his surgery so I am adding one more to my chauffeuring detail; pray for God to work in that as well as I now have a job working 19 hours a week for the Extension office with the local 4-H program. They are very flexible about my schedule, but I imagine my husband will have a lot of appointments for several weeks following his surgery. Pray that God will give me the strength I need during this time when my support system (my husband) is going to be out of commission.

9. On a side note, our son takes his firefighter one test at the end of April. Pray that God will allow him to pass this test as he has been studying very hard. He is hoping to get on with the fire department soon. Our other son would like a job working in the jail after he turns 18. I am not thrilled about it, but it is what he wants. Pray for God to open that door if it’s His will.

God has worked in this situation so much already, even BEFORE we even knew about Randall having to have surgery. For instance, I do NOT, repeat NOT NOT NOT drive on the surface streets of downtown Atlanta by myself. But back in December, a full month before we went for his cardiac MRI at Piedmont, I had an appointment with an endocrinologist at Piedmont Hospital that I ended up having to drive to BY MYSELF! I had been putting off making that appointment for MONTHS, but I finally broke down and scheduled a date for early December. Normally I would’ve chosen someone around here, but there just wasn’t anyone around. Anyway, since I had to drive to downtown Atlanta AND get off the interstate to get to the office, I dreaded that like I don’t know what. But PTL I made it there and home with no problems. Now for the amazing part: my husband’s cardiac surgeon is in the SAME complex!! Is that not God? I knew right where we were going the first time we had an appointment with the surgeon. Good thing because I will be driving there on my own a lot in the near future. I am thankful God showed me I can do the hard things. And survive them!

Thank you so very much for remembering us during this very trying time. I am anxious to have this behind us, but I am not looking forward to having to actually live through it! I thought that I would be relieved to have the surgeries set, but the closer the time gets . . . well, I am sure you know what I mean. I just don’t know what to think. Though I do know that our faith will be strengthened during this time. God will be with us withersoever we go (Joshua 1:9).

Here is some information for you if you have any questions or want to know more: http://www.sjm.com/procedures/procedure.aspx?name=Mitral+Valve+Repair&section=Overview.

Thanks again.

Julia

Stay Tuned!

Believe it or not (and I hope you do believe it), I will return in all of my glory (ahem) very shortly with some new posts. Just give me a few hours to empty the brain of its contents. See, I am having lots of trouble remembering things right now and I'm certain it is because I haven't put my thoughts out there for y'all to read in a while. Gotta do a little spring cleaning up there to make more room for more things to think about . . . and write about.

See you shortly!

Julia

Sleepless. But not in Seattle.

It's 6:24 a.m. on Sunday morning. I fell asleep on the courch watching a movie with Mister Bloomin' Life and awoke at 4:30 a.m. Stumbling off to the bedroom, pillow in hand, I brushed my teeth and fell onto my glorious cool, clean sheets. Normally when this happens I fall back to sleep peacefully in my own bed. But this time I did not, could not sleep. I tossed. I turned. I got frustrated. Finally, I just got up. I just hate this. Today (Sunday) is not going to be a good day if I don't get some sleep. The living room is tidy now, as is the kitchen. I took a shower and washed my hair. I feel like something is bothering me, but I'm not sure what it is. I feel like . . . I don't know. My soul is disturbed.

So much is going on right now:

• I'm fostering four little kittens that a mama cat left in my garage. They were quite sick but a rescue organization in town is helping out with meds and such.
• Another kitten from a different litter/mama showed up; he hasn't been to be treated yet and is sleeping in a cage on the front porch. He can't be near the other kitties because they may still be contagious. This little guy seems to be pretty healthy. We'll see.
• Something ate me up, y'all! I found four lone star seed ticks on me Thursday and Friday, but it looks as if some fleas or something just tore the rest of my torso up. I'm miserably itchy and uncomfortable. Benadryl makes me too drowsy, so I bought some spray-on itch stuff at Wally World Saturday night. We'll see how that works.
• Little Miss heads off to college in a month.
• Time to get ready for the new school year.
• I've got some health issues going on, and the doctor has no clue what the problem is. My lips have been swollen for several weeks now; this causes them to become very dry and my skin cracks in the corners.
• I think I'm just going crazy.

Well, time to go dry my hair. Am feeling a little drowsy, but I know that we'll be leaving for church in three hours. Hope preacher has something good to say this morning!

Talk soon.

J.L.

Food for thought in these tough times.

Life. Is. Hard. Period. Though the truth of the matter is that life doesn't have to be hopeless. But, according to this article about America's Unhappy Birthday, many Americans are allowing high gas and food prices, the war, and other circumstances dictate how satisfied they are with life.

All I got to say on the matter is this: Breathe, People! Yes, things are hard . . . challenging . . . hard . . . right now, but our country has been through far worse than this! What about the war fought on the very soil of our great country that won us the FREEDOMS we enjoy today? Or the war fought less than 100 years later between the UNITED States (or UN-united at the time)? Starvation, hatred, uncertainty, and death that left women widowed and children fatherless also brought a greater FAITH and resourcefullness that we have lost in our present society. One of my favorite parts of that article was the elderly woman who talked about the time during World War II and how foods, clothing, and so many other things were rationed out to citizens. How did they make it? They ADJUSTED, either doing without or making do. And I loved the part where the guy talked about how our identity should not . . . does not . . . come from what we own but from who we are. What we need to adjust is our way of thinking about our stuff! We also need to remember Who takes care of us and Who's in charge of everything.

Right now we are preparing to leave for youth camp so I don't really have a lot of time for a lengthy diatribe. But what I do want to share with you are two chapters from the book of Psalms in the Bible. It's funny what God does for us sometimes. After reading the article referenced above, I opened my Bible this morning to read while eating breakfast. What I randomly opened up to (sometimes I'm daring like that . . . just open and read) gave me strength and encouragement in the hard times we are facing now.

You can take your own Bible and read the passages, or you can just click the links below to take you to the chapters. Either way, I want to ask you to read these chapters over and over again in the coming weeks. Saturate your heart, soul, and mind with the words there.

Psalm 25

Psalm 27

Just a little note about my absence lately. I really have been just enjoying doing things this summer that I do not generally get to do during the school year. Even though I've got plenty that I could blog about, I've also got lots to do around here while we're on summer break. I'm just in a very relaxed-come-what-may way of life right now. I'm breathing before I take a deep breath later this summer when school starts back!! I'll be holding that breath until next May. I'll be a lovely shade of blue by then! LOL . . . Anyway, I'll eventually get back into blogging regularly, maybe with a few funny stories thrown in.

Love you all and thanks for reading!

J.L.

Psalm 25:15 Mine eyes are ever toward the LORD

Mom in the bathtub . . .

Do you remember when I wrote this:

Um, and maybe my oldest daughter who never allows me to see her unless she's fully dressed, but when she needs to talk, always chooses to do so when I've decided to relax in the tub. I finally put up a curtain, albeit a lace one, so that I could have some privacy. She sits in my bathroom floor to talk about life's problems.

The classic scenario in our house is me in the bathroom and one of the kids coming in and asking, "Hey, mom. What're you doing, mom? Are you in the bathroom? Okay. Well . . . blah, blah, blah." And me replying with something like, "Do you mind?" It seems that nothing deters a kid who wants to talk to mom, regardless of her current activity.

Well, you have to read this comic from today! It's so hilarious and fits along perfectly with my life!

http://www.fborfw.com/strip_fix/archives/003226.php

J.L.