It's hard to believe that the holiday season is already upon us! I've been busy this week baking cookies and frosting cookies for our Thanksgiving and Franksgiving holidays with our families. A labor of love! We are getting ready to hit the road for our holiday travels after my husband gets done working.
First of all, I'd like to shout out a very belated birthday wish to my blog! My first post was on November 15, 2010 - so I've been blogging for over a year now. I think it's been very therapeutic for me and I'm thankful that it's given me a way to share updates/feelings and receive lots of prayers/support throughout the past whirlwind of a year. Crazy to think that we're almost to the 4 year mark in our baby quest! Just wanted to give an update on my husband's follow-up appointment. He was scheduled for Nov 8th - but he ended up rescheduling for the following week due to his dad's open heat surgery. The appointment with Dr. Lowe went well. The results of his sperm analysis (3 months after the August surgery) showed that his overall sperm count went up - which is exactly what we wanted to see. Although his sperm count before was fine, having more can only help us in our mission. Dr. Lowe is going to have my hubby come back in March and see what another sperm analysis shows then. For the next 3 months, he recommended that we just keep trying the old-fashioned way. After that if nothing happens, then he thought maybe we should give IUI (artificial insemination) another try. (We tried two rounds of IUI in early 2010.) So we're just going to give it some more time and see what happens. The holidays will keep us busy - so we can just figure out what we want to do in 2012. Yesterday as I was driving home, I did call and leave a message with a local acupuncturist. We're going to at least go talk to her and see what types of fertility treatments she could offer. We figure it can't hurt, right? Besides, after all of the shots for in-vitro - those little acupuncture needles don't scare me one bit. ;) Hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving with your family and friends. We will do the same and continue to be grateful for what we do have in our lives! Gobble, gobble!!
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Last Sunday night seems so long ago - hard to believe that it's only been a week since my last post. I apologize for leaving you all hanging - but I have good news to report on my father-in-law. :)
Surgery Update: My father-in-law's scope on Monday morning went well and they cleared him for surgery. They moved him down to the surgery wing around 11am and then we were able to visit him in the pre-op before they took him back at 1pm. They said surgery would take 3-5 hours and that they won't wake him up until 4 hours after the surgery ends. So Monday was a long day for all of us that were at the hospital waiting for the good news. We played UNO, took walks around the hospital, checked out the gift shops, watched TV, and just hung out. I served as the family's unofficial spokesperson by providing updates to family/friends via email. Around 5:30pm we were relieved to hear that the surgery had went well and that they were waiting to stitch him back up. The doctor came down to talk to us around 6:30pm and said that Bill's surgery went very well. They were able to fix the 4 clogged arteries and his heart is pumping much stronger now than it was before. We learned that he actually had 2 arteries clogged at 100% and 2 clogged at 70%. After heart surgery, they move everyone to a cardiac intensive care unit. They don't like to wake somebody up right after heart surgery, so we stopped by to see him in the ICU even though we knew he wouldn't be awake yet or remember it. We were prepared for him to be really pale and not look right - but he just looked like he was sleeping. My mother-in-law couldn't believe how good his color looked already. I know we were all quite nervous that day - so it was quite a relief that everything went as well as planned. We got back to my in-law's house that night around 9 o'clock and we all felt like it was midnight! No news was good news that night as my mother-in-law didn't get any calls from the nurses that night. ;) On Tuesday, visiting hours started at 9:30AM and we took turns visiting with him (2 at a time) throughout the morning. He was alert and very chatty - telling us about what he remembers right up until the surgery and how nice the nurses were and how he can't believe how clogged his arteries were. He said he wasn't in any pain, so the pain meds seemed to be working. Even though he still had some tubes draining his chest at that point - he seemed to be doing just fine! We visited with him until "quiet time" started at 1:30pm - then we headed home (after a quick stop to meet Elizabeth Geiger - such a cutie). He was moved to a private room on Wednesday and went home on Saturday. He will have to go and do physical therapy a couple times a week to slowly build up his stamina, but he seems to be doing great. We are all very thankful that his recovery is going so well and the doctor said that he thinks they just put 20 years back on his life. Thanks to everyone for your support and prayers - they worked!! Weekend in Charlotte: We were home on Tuesday & Wednesday night and then flew down to Charlotte on Thursday night for a long weekend. With my father-in-law's surgery, my sister-in-law and her husband had driven up from Charlotte to be with us all the previous weekend. So we were with them Saturday through Tuesday and then again on Thursday through Sunday. Lots of quality time! :) As I've mentioned before, they are expecting their first baby ("the boy") in January 2012. Some friends were throwing a baby shower for her - so we decided to come down to help celebrate and visit with them and the Charlotte gang. It was so nice to see everybody and catch up at the shower. My sister-in-law's baby bump looks so cute on her. I was lucky enough to feel the baby kicking in her belly - such an amazing thing! Lots of our friends down there also have little ones so it was fun to interact with the kiddos (Lyla, Rilyn, and Hunter) and meet little Miss Josclyn. We always have such a good time when we visit - our life in Charlotte was a great chapter of our life that we will never forget and we are lucky to still be able to keep in touch with everyone down there and visit from time to time. The next time we go to Charlotte, we will have another nephew to love! :) Appointment on Tuesday: Last week my hubby was supposed to have his follow-up appointment with Dr. Lowe on Tuesday. As you may have guessed, due to the whole surgery - we had to postpone it since we weren't in-town last Tuesday morning. So as of now, he's going back this Tuesday to talk to Dr. Lowe. We will see what he has to say! Unfortunately, as you may have guessed from the title of this blog entry - my father-in-law's test results on Friday were not good. :( We were hoping that if anything, they would put in a few stints and he'd be done with it. But they found 3 arteries that are 100% clogged and another artery that is partially clogged. They will need to do bypasses for each of those 4 arteries - quadruple bypass surgery. Although it is not the news we wanted to hear, we are all very thankful that this was caught before anything worse happened to him. The doctors also said that his heart is definitely working at a lower pace - trying to conserve itself with all of the blockage. It is strong enough to handle the surgery though, which is good. He was on blood-thinning medicine, so they had to get him off of that before they could do any surgery. They also do a lot of other tests to make sure the rest of the body is well enough to handle such a surgery. There were some black shadows on his chest x-ray that the doctors were slightly concerned about. But after a cat-scan today, they confirmed that it is nothing to be worried about and something they will just monitor down the road. His iron levels are also pretty low - so they started him on iron medication. And he has had a history of ulcers, so they wanted to check to make sure there are no ulcers right now. After open heart surgery, any extra bleeding is not good and the blood thinning medicines they put you on after surgery could trigger the ulcers to bleed even more.
Tomorrow morning they are going to do a scope down his esophagus at 9am to check for any ulcers. It is a 10 minute procedure and they will be able to tell us right away whether there are any ulcers or not. If he is cleared for open heart surgery, they have his surgery scheduled for 3 o'clock tomorrow afternoon. If there are ulcers present, then they will have to treat the ulcers first and postpone the surgery for a couple weeks. We went to see him in the hospital yesterday and spent some more time with him today. After talking to the doctors today, we are confident that they are taking the necessary precautions to ensure that the surgery is done safely. We are hoping that there are no ulcers and that they can do the open heart surgery tomorrow afternoon. Please keep my father-in-law and our family in your prayers!! In closing, I'd like to shout out a belated happy 35th birthday to my Sissy! And to tell my angel, Casey, that I miss you everyday and can only imagine where you would be if you hadn't been taken away from us 14 years ago today. Happy Friday! Just wanted to ask for a few prayer requests from my blog following friends and family....
Good Evening! I bet you may be surprised to see another post from me this week. ;) We are just hanging out in the basement watching our alma mater (THE Ohio University in Athens, Ohio) battle against Temple. Just wanted to share this article on yahoo that caught my eye today - it's called "10 Things Not to Say to Your Childfree Friends." :) The article was Elphie-approved in case you were wondering. Here are my thoughts about the 10 things they mention in the article:
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