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! :)

LOVE STORY (Taylor Swift) meets VIVA LA VIDA (Coldplay) - Piano Cello - by Jon Schmidt

I just saw this on my sister-in-law's blog and loved it so now it's on my blog too!

Hailey

Hailey turned 5 a week ago, so I thought I'd better get up a slide show before I turn around and she's 10! Sometimes I can't believe how fast time passes, and although I really am happy to see her grow up, it is still a little sad to know she will never be like she is now again! I hope you had a happy birthday Hailey and I hope you know we love you!

A New Heart!

We got the call late yesterday that there was a possible heart for Harry, it was his if it was in good condition. They finally took him around midnight (I think) to go in for surgery and at 3:45 (I think) they came out and said they were attaching the new heart. At 7:40 this morning they came out and told my Mom that the new heart was in and beating on its own! They were still finishing up, but so far so good! He has done such a great job so far. He recovered from his BiVAD surgery and was back on the list in 19 days, most people take months. He was on the transplant list for a grand total of 10 days, 5 days before the BiVAD and 5 days after. I realize that we hve been very blessed in this and am so grateful for the donor to have made it possible for Harry to keep on going, and am amazed at the doctors and what they are able to do...especially in the middle of the nught! Harry would definately not be around anymore if transplants weren't possible and if the donor had not made the decision to be a donor. We have a lot to be grateful for. Thanks for all of the prayers and support! These pictures were all taken yesterday after we got the news about the possible heart.

Anyone who knows Harry very well knows he doesn't love cameras and doesn't especially like to smile for them. When we got there he looked happier than I have seen him in quite a while. He even suffered through my photo session while he made faces and crazy smiles!

My mom isn't going to love that she has her lovely cold sore in these pictures, but she looks great anyway!

I can't remember the reason Harry was "getting after" my Mom...obviously sopmething was funny and I thought the picture was pretty funny itself!

I think Harry was sticking his tongue out as a protest to all of the pictures and demand for "serious" smiles! You gotta love him!

The grand Houston Finally...I mean...Finale!

Finally we get to the part the girls...and the parents I guess...were looking mmost forward to. We had great seats for the rodeo and concert thanks to Aunt Gail. The arena was HUGE so even with great seats, we weren't that close to the stage. Since we watched the end of the rodeo, we got to watch them assemble the stage for the concert, and we got to watch the band warm up a bit. Scott left to go get food because the Kaylin was STARVING, but he got back just as the concert was about to start and nobody was hungry anymore! The girls all had a great time. There was dancing and cheering and some people who kept holding a big sign up in front of us every time the stage faced us (it was rotating through the entire show) so we could only see Taylor really well on the big screen. She did an awesome job and kept us entertained, even though Lindsey got a little feisty becasue it was WAY past her bedtime and Hailey BARELY made it through the last song before falling asleep! The last picture in the slide show is the girls with Aunt Gail and 2 of her kids Karen and Lee, and, of course, the dogs. The girls LOVED the concert, but I'm not sure that they didn't love the dogs and our family just as much! So, thanks Aunt Gail and everyone else for the great time!

Houston Part 4? I lost track!

On our last day in Houston we went to the aquarium and saw all kinds of fish, sharks, and white tigers. (Doesn't everyone expect to see white tigers at an aquarium?) We also rode some rides...Lindsey was so brave and rode the drop ride (yeah, I forgot what it's really called) and she loved it! We rode on the ferris wheel and took a ride on a little train. After that we hurried over to the Houston Rodeo. It was lots of fun. we started off with the appropriate carnival snacks of fried twinkies, fried oreos, fried cookie dough (my personal fav), ice cream and sodas. After not being able to actually eat all of that crap...thank goodness!!!...we did a little Taylor Swift Karaoke to prep us for the big concert that night, visited the kids section of the rodeo booths and saw a lot of animals. It was tons of fun.

A Bit of Good News!

Harry got moved out of ICU yesterday! He seems to be making good progress in his recovery and the docs are very impresses with his pain tolerance and say he is recovering much quicker than most patients. They think he might be able to go back on the transplant list in a couple of weeks! I found a few more old pics of Harry...of course with the kids all around him! These pics are from Christmas '03, so you can see what he used to look like a few years back!

This is Harry with one of Layla's girls...I'm going to guess Riley since her fingers are in her mouth.

This is Mattie and one of the twins...I'm not even going to attempt guessing this time! Lindsey says it is Grandpa with Olivia and Luke....I guess she sees the family resemblance between siblings!

This is a very typical scene with Grandpa Harry. The kids just gravitate towards him, which he loves! This is Caitlin or Riley on Grandpa, Olivia is the other baby, and sorry Sophie, you got cut in half on this picture!