A Mother's Journal ~ Remarkable January

It was a remarkable month filled with unremarkable days. I thought I would do A Mother's Journal this morning.

On my mind ~ This has been a stressful month. Tim's surgeries although successful were also very stressful. Our daughter Katie's life is in absolute turmoil from our point of view. We hardly know what city she will be in next and with what man she will be relying on. It is so far from the way we raised her to be!  She is back in our area at the moment but not interested in the stabilizing ideas we come up with.  Lastly, our daughter Rebekah is very stressed out by audition season for summer dance intensives. She is also almost panicked about a dance competition that is coming up in which she feels extremely unprepared.  It is a ballet competition in which she will be doing one contemporary solo, one group piece and one  solo ballet variation. Her stress is affecting the entire family. It is stressful, to say the least, right now. 

Outside my window ~ We have about an inch of snow on the ground and it is bitter cold with a wind chill of minus five. We have had two other snowfalls this month that were  deep enough that they didn't melt away in hours. This one inch snowfall won't melt quickly because the temperature is so low.

What I am working on ~ On the homefront, I am working on keeping the home moving as smoothly as possible, trying to stay ahead of meals and keep everyone healthy. I am also working on lots of travel plans. We are traveling almost every weekend through March for summer intensive auditions, a dance competition, a dance festival and post-operation appointments for Tim. 

Where we are going ~ This month was filled with travel. We spent ten days in Duke University Hospital, which is almost four hours away from home. We also started to travel for an audition, but the in-person portion was cancelled while we were on the road. We had to turn around and return home, so Rebekah could do the audition on Zoom. Next week, we are traveling to Atlanta for the dance competition. 

What we are watching ~ Our family movie this week was The Dig. It was on Netflix and we really enjoyed it. Elijah even gave it a good review, and he is our family's harshest critic. Rebekah and I are also re-watching Call The Midwife for stress relief. The males in the house don't understand how watching childbirth is stress relieving, but we enjoy the mother-daughter time. Dear husband and I are watching The Hardy Boys on Hulu. 

What I am reading ~ I started the month off with reading A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles. I really enjoyed this book and hope to read some others by this author. I am currently reading Five Children and It by Nesbit. This was a book I had wanted to read to my children because they love this author, but we just never got to it. I decided I needed something light and fun. This is a perfect fit. 

What I am grateful for ~ Although this has been a stressful month, I am pleased with the results. Tim is safe and sound. His recovery is going well and he has returned to his six hour a week job. He has managed all of his pain with Tylenol and didn't need any of the stronger pain killers that were prescribed. 

This week, Elijah told me that he really likes his job and work friends. I am so glad that he is fully settled into his job at Target. His benefits started this month, too. Target gives benefits to part-time employees after six months! I am impressed. 

Rebekah passed her first audition with flying colors and received an acceptance letter. She was given the opportunity to take classes between two and seven weeks at their academy.  She will most likely be signing up to do two weeks with that ballet school in the middle of our state. She also was accepted to a one week professional training contemporary dance program at UNCSA which was a deferment from last year, because she did their ballet program which overlapped this program.  Both of these opportunities will be her first times living away from home. She is trying to piece together about six weeks of dance intensives/workshops in different schools and dance companies to maximize her overall experience. 

My favorite photo this week ~ 

Blessings, Dawn

Timothy Update

The device in the side of Tim's neck is an external temporary pacemaker.

After 10 long days and three surgeries, Tim is home. We had an excellent experience at Duke. The nurses and staff were just wonderful. Considering how short staffed they were, we still received the most caring and professional support. There were many days when the goal was just to keep Tim healthy and wait until the lead extraction surgery could be planned and scheduled. David or I stayed with Tim 24 hours a day in the hospital for the entire stay.

Dear Husband came and relieved me for two days so I could go home and tend the home fires. It is an 8 hour round trip between Duke hospital and home, so I only left the hospital once. They two of them had lots of fun together watching horror films on the science fiction channel. 

Tim was a model patient and he was always polite and cooperative with the nurses. Even when he was coming out of anesthesia, his manners shined through. He had the nurses completely charmed. If only there would have been an ice cream machine on the unit, he would have been spoiled by those nurses. However, it was a cardiac unit and all the food was rather healthy. The nurses were also shocked that he ordered broccoli (his favorite vegetable) with almost every meal and actually ate it.

The final surgery was one of the most complicated of Tim's life. The doctor listed off a rather long list of concerns, but he also stated that they had lots of planning time and his team was hand picked. They took every precaution and had a host of backup plans. One of those plans was to have two teams in the operating room for his final surgery. Team A did the laser extraction and placement of the new leads. Team B (a vascular cardiac team) was scrubbed in and on standby in the operating room in case there were complications and they needed to do open heart surgery. As Dr. Hegland (Team A surgeon) said, "Hopefully, we will keep Team B standing around being bored". Fortunately, Team B did end up just standing around in the operating room. The surgery took almost 6 hours (two hours more than expected), but that was simply because they had to go very slowly and use multiple tools to extract the deteriorating leads. They also had to go in from multiple sites so he has a new host of battle scars. We are so grateful and blessed that everything went so well. They never could get his heart to show successful beats over 30 beats per minute (under the pacemaker), so he is once again fully pacemaker dependent. He has spent much of his life in this condition, but in recent years had a higher heart rate so that he wouldn't be in critical condition if his pacemaker failed. Unfortunately, that is not currently the case. They do not know if his heart will recover over time and start having more successful beats as it did after past surgeries. It could be years before he has heart function improvement. It is amazing and awe inspiring what they can do these days.

We even were released in time to beat a huge snow storm home. This is what our back yard looked like just hours after we arrived home and it kept snowing for about 7 more hours. 

Blessings, Dawn

When Life Takes a Crazy Turn

Timothy went in for a new pacemaker this week. Unfortunately, the surgery did not go as expected and he needed to be admitted.  Long story short - While he was in surgery, the doctors discovered that his leads were failing.  Thankfully,  they discovered this before something tragic happened. Unfortunately,  this is a very complicated issue.  Since his leads have been in him for 23 years,  they are well embedded into his heart. This means he needs a laser extraction, a hybrid operating room,  a full cardiac team and a particular surgeon. Luckily,  we are at Duke and they have all those things and people,  but getting them all scheduled is a huge feat.  It looks like he is going to have to sit and wait here in the hospital until Friday the 14th for surgery.  Meanwhile,  he has an external temporary pacemaker attached to his neck.  

We are getting our hospital routine down. He can't leave the unit and my movements are very restricted because of COVID. We must do everything to keep Tim safe so that surgery can go through. COVID is exploding in the hospital, and they are becoming understaffed and lacking beds. It is a big ordeal.

Thank you for your prayers!

Blessings,  Dawn

Goals for 2022

 Last year I made 21 goals for 2021. It was a good exercise to help keep me motivated during a difficult year. I did pretty well too. I completed  thirteen of the goals, made progress on three goals and didn't touch five of the goals. I decided to try this exercise again. 

This time I have 22 goals. I treat goals as reminders of things I would like to do, but not laws. If I don't get to them all, that is totally fine. 

1. Read 12 Books ~ I accomplished 18 books last year. WooHoo! 
2. Get a Physical with bloodwork ~ I haven't had an in person physical since Covid. I feel just fine, but I need to get back to taking care of my medical care. 
3. Loose six pounds ~ I lost about 16 pounds before Covid using Trim Healthy Mama. It was great and I met my goal. I have snacked way to much in the last two years and regained six of those pounds. So, I want to shave 6 pounds off and just maintain the weight I had accomplished before.
4. Start Volunteering ~ I have a few places I am considering. I really would like to have an out of the home purpose.
5. Do 52 Acts of Kindness ~ I am really looking forward to this goal. 
6. Touch my toes ~ I have never been a flexible person. I don't think I have been able to touch my toes since I was a teenager. Time to work on that one.
7. Learn to make soft sandwich bread ~ I have accomplished rustic and crusty breads. Now it is time to learn how to make soft breads. 
8. Go on monthly dates with husband ~ We really dropped this one in the last two years. Do you see a theme here. It is time to get back into our routines before Covid (while still staying as safe as possible).
9. Walk 800 miles ~ I walked about 550 miles in 2021. Hopefully, I can make my goal this year.
10. Have a 50th birthday party ~ Yes, I turn 50 this year. I am thinking of a few different themes. It may be family only or with some friends. We will see were the year goes.
11. Have a Game Party ~ I really want to have a fun game night and play the Victorian cobweb game and Saran wrap ball game. I sure I will think of a few others. Hopefully, this party will be with people from outside our home. Dreams...
12. Reduce 365 items from our home ~ We reduced 378 items last year. We follow the one thing in one thing out rule all the time, so this is an addition 365 items removed from our home. 
13. Paint the laundry room ~ This is a rollover from last year. Maybe I will get to it this year.
14. Have new lighting installed in the library ~ My mother gave us a new overhead light fixture for our anniversary. I do hope to get it installed in the next month or two.
15. Update the rec room ~ I would like to make improvements to the rec room. We would like to install an electric fireplace, make the walls uniform (there are five different textures or types of walls in our rec room) and replace two interior doors. I have multiple options. Not all of them will happen.
16. Visit a new to us State Park ~ We discovered such a wonderful new to us state park last year. I look forward to seeing what we will find this year.
17. Visit a new to us National Park  or site ~We have two in mind. We will see if we see one of them or something else.
18. Take a long weekend trip with family ~ The kids are growing up fast and have very busy lives. It is hard to work out family trips, but we will keep working on it.
19. See a new to us City ~ I am pretty sure at least three of us are making a trip to Louisville, Kentucky in a few weeks. There is actually a fair amount of travel in some of our immediate futures.
20. Visit a new state ~ Can you tell I love to explore and see new things. 
21. Go on a train ride ~ Now I am just throwing out dreams ~ even the unlikely ones.
22. Visit New York City at Christmas time ~ A person can dream.

Remember that goals are things to motivate us, not enslave us. I know I won't accomplish all of these goals and that is just fine.

Blessings, Dawn