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Showing posts from July, 2025

Bedside manners

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I wrote this when Heather was in hospital (right before her surgery) but decided to post it today. Sometimes, when life feels overwhelming, the best thing you can do is laugh at the situations—and people—that make it more difficult. Heather was waiting for surgery when a member of the surgical team stopped by to explain what to expect. You know, the usual: "We’re going to perform this procedure, and with anesthesia, there’s always a chance for complications…” But this guy didn’t hold back—he laid it all out. Fortunately, Heather was too out of it to understand, so I had the pleasure of experiencing this conversation solo. Scenario 1:  The ideal outcome—exploratory laparoscopic surgery to insert cameras and examine the digestive tract for about an hour, possibly identifying and fixing a minor issue. We were all hoping for this one. Scenario 2:  A large incision might be needed, with no clear idea of how long the surgery would take. It wasn’t my favorite scenario, but it seemed ...

July 4th, 2025 - Update and a stroll down memory lane

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Heather continues to heal.  It has been almost a month since she became ill.  Seriously, where did the month of June go this year!  This really has been quite a long year for Heather and Kevin) It started on July 4th 2024, when Kevin slipped and fractured his ankle/leg/foot.  OUCH OUCH OUCH.  He had surgery to insert plates and pins and eventually rolled around on his knee scooter for his 4-5 month recovery.   In September, Heather broke her clavicle which required surgery to set the bones with hardware (it broke in a very difficult place).  In February 2025 she had another surgery to remove the clavicle hardware that was starting to interfere with range of motion and growing into healthy bone (they knew the 2nd surgery was required).  A month later, she had a hernia repair.  This was probably due to weaker stomach muscles from her surgeries as an infant and, in December, a case of walking pneumonia that caused a lot of coughing.  So whe...