Have you missed me?

Do to reasons unknown even to myself, it was necessary for me to take a short...ish vacation from the blogging world. It was pointed out to me however, that I left many of you wondering about the progress of my Step-Dad after the heart transplant. For this purpose have I returned to the blogging world with the added hope of catching all 3 readers up on not only my Step-Dad, but on all of the other wonderful events that have happened since I last posted. So please stay tuned for future posts as they will include pictures and short...ish captions about swimming, camping, family, friends and my lovely young women. Stay tuned, because you never know when you might appear in one of the posts!!!

I have tried to take pictures of Harry throughout this whole ordeal, much to his dismay. He told everyone at the hospital that I wouldn't put my camera away and "pretended" to not like it, but he did eventually start to actually smile for me and let me take pictures of him with other people, so it must not have been that bad!

So here is the long awaited update on Harry. His transplant surgery took a little longer than they had hoped due to some extra bleeding. He woke up quickly and things looked great. He has had a slow recovery, mostly becasue the right side of his new heart has not seemed to kick in and pump as hard as it should. They did routine biopsies of the heart to check for rejection (no signs of rejection!!!) and during one of these procedures, they nicked his heart and caused some internal bleeding. He was on blood thinners and so this was kind of a problem and they almost had to so emergency surgery to stop the bleeding. Luckily they were able to get it under control and they only had to do a minor procedure to clean out the old blood that had dried inside. This whole thing slowed down his recovery as well. A few days before they sent him home to my sister Stephanie's house (the first time), his truck was STOLEN out of the Mayo Clinic parking lot. Apparantly someone thought it would be the perfect smuggling truck to take to Mexico. It was found in the desert somewhere and the insurance company totaled it out. What fun, huh? So my poor Mom is trying to take caare of Harry, deal with the insurance company and the rental car company...and her rental car even breaks down on her a couple of times. Harry was out of the hospital for only a few days and whne he went in for one of his check ups, they decided that since he had gained 20 pounds, they were going to readmit him. The day after they readmitted him, he got very sick with an infection and it took him a while to get over that too. He is finally back at Stephanie's house and doing pretty well. They have found out that the right side of his heart has some damage to it now...I don't know if it is due to bad luck, which they have definately had, or if something happened during one of the "routine" procedures that caused the damage. So for now, Harry still has heart failure, but it is manageable. He may have to go back in and out of the hospital to help get rid of water weight every now and then for a while, but once he is stronger and has mostly recovered from the transplant, he will have to go in for one more procedure where they can correct the problem and THEN he can fully recover and get life back to normal! We have appreciated everyone's prayers and support throughout this whole thing. It is comforting to know there are so many people pulling for Harry, even if they don;t know him! Thanks!

Disclaimer: I may not be 100% accurate in all of my details...a lot has happened! If there are any of you out there who want to add to or correct anything I have written, please do! :)