Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! We spent our Thanksgiving evening with B&P and Terry, Karla, Katie and Nathan at our house. We ate the traditional Thanksgiving meal of turkey and potatoes with lots and lots of side dishes. The Miller family in Iowa always has graham cracker fluff that Tony's Aunt Margaret makes. She sent me her recipe and I gave it a try. I think it turned out pretty good. There wasn't any left and Katie even asked me for the recipe. : ) Karla said she is quite the baker in the kitchen already. We browsed through the store ads over and over but I just couldn't quite find a reason to have to get up early in the morning and fight any crowds. I tried to find something I needed to go shopping for but... just didn't feel the need again this year. Phase 10 was the card game of choice this year. My competitive daughter has been on crutches for 6 weeks and she was bound and determined to win that game, which she did. I was actually kind of relieved for her to get to compete and win at something! : ) Coffee, pumpkin or chocolate pie rounded out our evening. A good time was had by all.

I'm so thankful for my family and friends! All day my mind kept returning to where we were 1 year ago. We still miss Michelle so much but that excruciating heart ache is much less. Madison and I laughed during the card game and said we wished Aunt Michelle was here to help us razz Beppe about her crazy card playing skills. We feel the smiles this year that last year we just tried to put on and I'm really, really, really thankful for that. So thankful to put a very difficult year behind us and looking forward to the year ahead.

Great Beppe / Martha Vanderwerf: 9/18/1911 - 11/4/2010

Tony's 99 year old sweet Beppe passed away November 4th, just 3 days prior to the one-year anniversary of Michelle's passing. What a year for the Miller family! Great Beppe or "Kansas Beppe" as she was also referred to, was a wealth of history all wrapped up behind her sweet Dutch accent. I remember her telling me how much my sister and I look alike, "like 2 drops of water, just like 2 drops of water!" We tried to see Great Beppe as often as we could, which was usually once a year. We were faithful at the Vanderwerf Reunions at Lake Doniphan in Excelsior Springs, MO. We were in North Newton, KS over Spring Break this past year and so we went to see her and her new surroundings, having moved into the nursing home a few months earlier. When it was time to go, she gave me a big hug, a kiss on my cheek and said, "Leah, you are such a blessing to this family, such a wonderful blessing!" A few weeks ago, she fell and broke her hip and passed away 2 days later. The Vanderwerfs don't say "good-bye" ... they say, "see ya later."

See ya later Beppe. Hug Michelle and her two precious baby girls for us, and Don Jr. too.

365 Days Ago

365 days ago we watched, from somewhere outside ourselves, a nightmare unfold before our very eyes. I've replayed the 2:30am phone call over and over in my mind this past year: the trip to the ER, the nausea while trying to grasp the news that Michelle and her baby had left us on earth, remembering the exact words spoken to me. For the longest time every time I laid down to sleep at night, my mind would go there, back to the ER, back to the funeral home, back to the extreme sadness written on my family's faces (especially my children's) and the sound it made in their voices. I still fight those memories at times, especially at night. Even now there are nights I awake to look at the clock and thank the Lord that I made it past 2:30am for another night and thank Him that my loved ones on earth are safe. We walked through that next week without being able to focus. It was like everything was a blur. We couldn't think straight. Decision making became very difficult. The days ran together and even now, looking back, I have no idea how the clock ticked by the first week, what we did most of the time, how we spent large chunks of time, it is gone from my memory. I do know that over and over again we asked ourselves questions. "Why us?" and the answer I heard each time was, "Why not you?"

We've accomplished many milestones over this past year. Milestones that didn't include my funny friend and sister-in-law. We missed her every.single.day. I can't tell you how many times my thoughts started to form to the phone call that I impromptu planned, or the text my mind started to send her about something funny that happened. Even more so, we missed her on the holidays that we checked off our list almost right away. We checked off birthdays: Archie's, Michelle's and Jade's birthdays. Mother's Day brought on new meaning as I recalled the promise I made to Michelle to try and fill her mothering role if needed, even though we both knew "it" would never happen. Summer camp came and went for Madison without the traditional care package from Aunt Michelle filled with candy nor the 3 letters in one day, making her sing to get them. Jade's first day of kindergarten was prefaced by, "I wish Mommy was here to see me go to school." Even on Madison's October birthday I found myself ready to say, "It's strange that Aunt Michelle hasn't called you yet," and quickly thanked the Lord that I caught myself before the words fell out of my mouth. It some ways 365 days feels like 3.65 days. In other ways it feels like it's been 3650 days. Grief. It means so many things that it deserves to be the only word in a sentence and works as the beginning, middle and ending. Sorry English teachers. Grief.

This week we've spent extra time reflecting on our year. I've fought my emotions off and on all week. Tony's 99 year old grandmother passed away on Wednesday of this week. Our belief is that she and Michelle have been reunited together in heaven, and that gives us comfort. My mind is much more clear this November. I can more easily redirect my painful thoughts and more readily turn them around to other things. The following are a few things I'm redirecting my thoughts to and I'm choosing to linger on these things...

• From the moment I made my first phone call on that night, my friends were immediately at my side, beginning way before dawn on that day, taking over and taking control of the immediate situation. Thinking more clearly when I certainly could not. Later that morning, one friend asked what she could do for me. I had a huge caffeine headache that Saturday morning and asked her just to bring me a Diet Pepsi. She blessed me and brought me a whole case of Diet Pepsi instead. Our friends and family dropped everything for us time and time again. These gifts of time and listening ears were the greatest gifts we received. They truly were and they still truly are.
• We were blessed by prayers from others on our behalf. Some prayed with us in person and some even by email. Hundreds of people told us they were praying for us and we felt blessed that they brought our names before our God. Countless Bible verses gave us hope time and time again to face another day.
• We spent all of our time that first week at Don & Isy's house, being comforted by many friends and family that were quickly arriving. In the evening when we went home, we were blessed to find that our neighbors had raked all of our leaves to try and ease our burden. Family came from Kansas and Iowa and family blessed us by taking Jade and entertaining her with swimming for an afternoon. She wanted everyone to "stop talking about my mom" and this gave her the perfect way to escape the adults for several hours.
• Flowers, plants, Willow Tree Angels, picture frames, books, blankets, Kleenex : ) and FOOD began arriving from friends and family who wished to bless us by appealing to our senses with pleasant things to look at, feel, smell and taste, in attempt to comfort our hearts.
• We arrived home from our local and Iowa services to find our grocery list fulfilled, our linens all washed and replaced, Cocoa had been taken to/from the kennel without us giving it a thought and the reassurances that "drive-by's" were made to our homes while we were gone.
• The support at work... the incredible support that my colleagues gave to me. I can only describe those first first few weeks back to work as literally excruciating, to listen to chronic pain patients tell me about their physical pain when I was suffering so.much. emotional pain of which they knew not. I cannot tell you how many times and how close I was to drawing blood from biting the inside of my lip hard enough to hold it together in front of these. There were lots of hugs and listening ears and even some anger shared by these friends at work. They were one step away from the situation which really helped me see things from another perspective. One day I prayed all day for God to just show me a glimpse of His face, just a peek, believing that some of the brightness and joy would surely wear off of me for I felt none in my heart. It was that day that a colleague spoke a few very simple words of love to me in attempt to relieve my emotional pain away, blessing me by being my answer to prayer that day although she knew nothing of my request.
• Phone calls and door knocks. Just this week I received a phone call from a friend who said, "I'm calling to see what I can do for you." Barely 24 hours later, my door bell rang and I opened the door to a different friend who asked this question, "I'm just stopping by to see what I can do for you." You ladies made me melt. The one standing in front of me had to see it too. : ) Do you know what a blessing you were to me this week?

I could go on and on and on. I really could. Yes, it's been the most painful year of our lives BUT it has also been the most BLESSED year of our lives. How do those words fit together in the same sentence? Isn't that an oxy-moron? Pain and blessed aren't words that go together. I'm still trying to fit my mind around all of these facts from the last year. Grief. I've found the best way to answer all of the questions about our future was with this analogy... I describe that I feel like I'm standing with my nose right next to a picture of our future... so close that I can't see it, I can't make out what it looks like at all. Each month I've moved my head a little farther away from the photo. I can make out the people in the picture but I can't quite tell what they are all doing. That's where we are at today. We can see you there, in the picture with us, and for that we are truly grateful. We like you there. : ) I choose to look forward to moving a little farther away from the picture, looking at how life unfolds from here and believing the whole picture will gradually fall into focus. I'm excited to watch how God's perfect plan will unfold for my life. Even though I don't know what the picture is right now, I know that my faith, family and friends are already in it. May the Lord bless you all as richly as He has blessed me. I love you.

Our 11 year old pilot

Well, may be not an official "pilot" but he did get to help fly a plane tonight. : )
Quinn is in the 4H Aerospace Club and through out the year the members work on collecting "points" towards air time with their 4H leader, Dan Steiner. Tonight was the night he got to reap the reward of his labor.

He was so excited to fly. He talked the entire way to the airport. And any of you who know Quinn, know that this is entirely possible to talk for 20minutes with barely taking a breath.



A few instructions from Mr. Steiner.


I love that our Goshen Airport just let us walk out next to the plane and take pictures, watch them taxi down the run way and watch them take off.


There they go! We called Nate and he ran outside to wave to them as they flew over our neighborhood. Nate was excited to see them but Quinn couldn't find him while being up so high.

Quinn LOVED his flight. He talked and talked and talked about it. It was "possibly the best moment of my life! I'm going to tell my kids about this some day. Me... an 11 year old boy got to fly a plane at 140mph! How many other kids my age can say that?! It was better than going to Disney!"

WOW... if we would have known it was going to be this great... we could have saved a whole lot of money on some pretty fun vacations, in exchange for some air time at the Goshen Airport!

Home again, home again, jiggity jig...

Isy got to go home today!

Post Op Day 6: Light Weight!

They gave Isy a sleeping pill (Ambien) last night and apparently she spent part of the night thinking she was in a Mormon Hospital with all Mormon workers (how she could tell this, I don't know). There were lots of bugs flying around her room too. She thought she should be able to get out of bed by herself (which they don't want her to do) so they had an nursing aide sit with her to keep her in bed. She doesn't remember a thing about it, but this is what the staff has told her has happened. Apparently she is a LIGHT WEIGHT when it comes to taking meds! LOL! Boy oh boy, has she ever had a "fun" hospitalization this time around! : )

She is recovering well from the heart surgery stand-point. Her incision is healing nicely and isn't painful. She said that her broken ankle was more painful than this open heart surgery (EXCEPT for the chest tubes!). They are still working on her lungs/breathing/wheezing part of things and are adjusting some of her medications around. They think they will discharge her on Wednesday if they can find a happy place with the breathing. She walked pretty far in the hallway today and she thinks that she can tell a difference already between her pre-op and post-op breathing. She doesn't get as out of breath with conversation any more. It's not perfect, but it's better. It still needs to improve to impact her quality of life. She still tires out fairly quickly but I think that's to be expected. She looked good tonight and less tired than yesterday. She will have to go thru the Cardiac Rehab program after discharge so that should help her endurance as well.

Let's hope and pray she has a better night tonight. I can guarantee they aren't going to be giving her any sleepers tonight. On the other hand... it sounds like she once again was pretty entertaining... I guess it depends on how bored the night shift is.
Just kidding!

Post-Op Day 5: Doing Fine

Isy is doing fine. She took some Ultram (tramadol) this morning for pain and she is tolerating it much better. It did seem to make her sleepy but is much better than the Percocet from Friday. She went all of last night without her oxygen but this afternoon she felt really tired and worn out so they put it back on. I'm really hopeful that she will go home tomorrow, or Tuesday at the latest.

That's really all. Nothing much to report on tonight. I like it calm like this. : )

Post Op Day 4: What a difference!

What a difference 24 hours can make! The Percocet has finally left her system and she is back to her old self again. They got the breathing/wheezing/shortness of breath under control, the pain is under control, she has walked in the hall several times, is much more steady on her feet, and is generally LOTS better than yesterday. She even feels up to having some visitors today. She moved rooms last night, to Room 6109 (just a logistics thing with a lower census on the nsg unit). Madison and I enjoyed some stories from yesterday's "shenanigans" and the 3 of us laughed and laughed. Tony and Quinn will go and check in on her later today.

Happy to report on only good things from Elkhart today...
Enjoy the rest of your Saturday!

Post Op Day 3: Two steps forward, one step backward

That's the nature of recovering from surgery, or any major illness isn't it? Today was a "different" day for Isy. They took her last chest tube out this morning. They gave her Percocet at 10:20am and when I left this evening at 7:30, she was still feeling the side effects of it. It made her quite "loopy" for lack of any better, short/concise descriptors. LOL. She did provide me with hours of entertainment, but let's just leave it as she won't be getting Percocet anymore. She also experienced some oversedation as well from it... falling asleep while you are eating lunch and still falling asleep while eating supper, isn't a good way to spend the day. What happens when you are too sleepy from pain meds? You don't breathe as deep as you should, which has resulted in LOTS of wheezing and respiratory compromise. Her lungs really are just as sick tonight or actually are probably sicker than her heart (since her heart just had an overhaul and is totally refurbished). Those poor little lungs of hers....

She is in good spirits, we laughed quite a bit today, but she probably won't remember much of our day. She would start to tell me a story and then drift off to sleep. When I nudged her to continue she would forget what the ending of her story was and say, "you can just make up your own ending to that, I don't know where I was going with it." hahaha. Her blood sugar was running on the low end this evening so that didn't make her feel good for awhile. We got that all figured out. They have done a chest x-ray and drew some blood tonight to make sure that lung is remaining inflated, without the chest tube, and the blood work which will show whether or not she is oxygenating around all of that wheezing ... whether she has enough oxygen in her blood, or if lack of oxygen is causing her to also be sleepy. Thankfully these came back fine. They are pushing some strong anti-inflammatories for her lungs (Solu-Medrol) so hopefully that will help.

That's pretty much how the whole day was today... room 6114 was a little bit _____ (fill in the blank, it was all of your ideas) today. LOL

The Graduate

Isy graduated out of ICU and went up to PCU today! This is the ICU step-down unit for less critical patients so this is a step in the right direction! Isy has had a very good day today. More resting/healing going on today rather than the poking/proding/difficulty breathing type of day that she had yesterday. She still has some wheezing and shortness of breath but that seems to be improving today too. She has walked in the hall a few times. Her color is much better. Amazing what a unit of blood can do for you! It was fun to walk into her room tonight and see that her nurse, Lois, was one of the nurses I worked with over 10 years ago when I worked at EGH. That was fun to reconnect.

Also, imagine my surprise when we arrived today and were admiring her flowers and found some beautiful yellow mums for me! Thank you Vander Werf Tantes and Great Beppe (Tony's aunts and g'ma)! That was awfully sweet of you all! I brought them home and they are sitting on my front porch. They are gorgeous! What a fun trip to the hospital this evening! : )

Here is a quick cell phone snap shot of Isy and me. You would laugh if you knew how many times I made Quinn and Tony retake this picture, trying to get it clear. It was our PCU photo shoot. We both were feeling like models. Not.

And here is a picture of Beppe and Quinn that I got to be perfect on the first shot! (a little jab to Tony and Quinn).

There's not much to talk about tonight. There was lots of healing going on today and we hope for a very similar day tomorrow.

Good night hugs and kisses from Goshen!

Post-Op Day 2 Begins

The report from the night nurse (Chris) says that Isy had a much better night last night. He had her the first night too and he can see a big difference. Her hemoglobin was quite low after the surgery's blood loss (8.3, we like it no lower than 11) so she received a unit of packed cells last night. (Thank you to the blood donor!) Chris said this has really helped to perk her up. She already has walked in the hall and walked twice as far as she did last night. Her pain is under much better control. The chest tube will hopefully come out tomorrow morning. He said that it's very common, expected, that their sleep cycles are completely messed up for 2-3 weeks after being on the heart/lung machine during surgery. "It's like their brains have been reset and it takes awhile to figure out the days/nights again." So, that will be a work in progress.

That's the news from Elkhart this morning. I have a very busy day ahead of me at work which means the day will surely go fast. I hope you all have productive days as well and that you will use your gifts to serve Him today.

Love you all,
Leah

The reputation holds true...

Post-Op Day 1 really is a tough day! We are home from the hospital for the rest of the evening and I was able to get a lot more information. This morning they removed the 3 chest tubes from her lungs. These tubes were helping to re-inflate the left lung, because they actually deflate it during surgery, and also it drains blood away from the healing area so that it doesn't pool in the lungs. Chest tubes are very, very uncomfortable because each tube rests between a pair of ribs. The chest x-ray must not have been too pretty because they had to add one chest tube to a different area, just outside the left lung and it immediately drained 300cc, or well over 1 cup of blood that had pooled there. (Sorry if this is too graphic, just skip to the bottom). They aren't fun to have inserted either, but they gave her meds so hopefully she won't recall much of it. At 11am they started working on inserting the PICC line (see note from earlier today). The patient has to lay flat for this procedure which usually takes 45minutes. Laying flat made it really, really hard to breathe. Unfortunately they had trouble with this procedure and it took a good 2 hours. It's in, but it wasn't easy. We'll probably be hearing about how uncomfortable this laying flat process was for quite a long time!
You can imagine that after all of this commotion, she was beat. She didn't sleep well last night but was able to sleep a little bit this afternoon out of pure exhaustion. Finally around 4pm she was able to walk a short distance in the hall. Twelve hours later than they wanted, but they had kept her so busy for hours on end today so I can understand why it took so long to get on her feet.

She is really very exhausted and conversation wears her out. She wasn't allowed visitors today and it's best if any of you locals wanted to visit, to call ahead and check and see if Don is there and ask if visitors are allowed that day. It may be a few days before she feels up to having any company. Of course she doesn't want anyone's feelings hurt and blah,blah,blah. : ) I was able to snap this picture in between her breathing treatment, breathing exercises and whatever they had planned next for her.

Madison doesn't "do" hospitals very well but she did very well tonight. I had one eye on her the whole time though, and so did Beppe! LOL. Madison pointed to the chest tube's red colored drainage and asked me, "what's that?" I said, "well... what do you think it is?" She very carefully replied, with great wishfulness in her voice, "Kooooool-aid?" hahaha. Even Beppe had to laugh at that wishfulness on Madison's part.

Well, I hope you all have a restful rest of your evening. Thanks for reading.

Not much new

I called to check on Isy a little bit ago. The nurse was tied up and couldn't talk to me but the message from her through the secretary said that she is stable and they are putting in an additonal IV (PICC) line. I'm not sure if this means they were able to take a line out from somewhere else (like from her neck) or not. A PICC (peripherally inserted central line) is an IV that usually is inserted into the arm and the tip of the IV catheter sits way up in one of the main arteries coming from the heart. They are very common and she had one this last summer. It's a little bit of a process to go through at the bedside. I guess Don has been waiting for 2 hours to try and get back to see her today but hasn't been allowed back yet. They are keeping her busy. She has not gotten that walk in yet. I'm not sure if they've tried again or what happened on that. I need to be there! The info is much better than when it comes down the grapevine! Sorry about that. If I hear anything else before we go up after work, I will let you all know.

Greetings

Here you go... before I leave for work I thought I would post this picture real quick. This is a much more fun way to be greeted today as you check in on Isy and see that I'm not able to be posting as much. This picture of Isy and Madison was taken 9/25 at the baked potato bar fund raiser at the MCC Relief Sale. Madison loves to rub it in that she is (much) taller than her Beppe. Enjoy your day!

Post-Op Day 1 Begins

I called to check on Isy and see how her night went. Her nurse said that she had a "pretty good" night. She's still quite short of breath and wasn't able to walk at 4am because of it. They are going to work on getting the 3 chest tubes out this morning and hopefully that will make her more comfortable. "She's a tough lady, she's trying hard. She is just off to a little bit of a slow start, and that's OK. Overall she is doing OK." I remember from my post-surgical days that post-op day 1 (today) is usually a harder day than the actual day of surgery. They will keep her busy with the coughing, deep breathing etc... and hope to accomplish the first walk some time this morning.

I will call and check in with them over my lunch break today so look for a post in the early afternoon. Have a good day everyone and thanks for checking in us! : )

Up in the chair

Isy has been up in the chair for most of this evening and said that she was much more comfortable sitting up. Her breathing is much, much better... still short of breath but not nearly as much. Her breaths are rapid and shallow enough that she is at risk for hyperventilating. They can tell this is happening by her blood gas levels. They are working at correcting that with focused deep breathing, coughing and working on her incentive spirometry and it seems to be getting a little better. Pain is under control. The 3 chest tubes are still what is bothering her the most. She tried to talk and hold a conversation but it was wearing her out quite a bit so she really won't be up to having visitors for several days. The plan is to keep her up in the chair during the night. She is much more comfortable this way, they can tip her feet up if she wants. The real "fun" part is that they require their patients to get up and walk at 4am, before the doctors come in to make their rounds. Doesn't that sound fun at 4am? I told Tony, patients are not in the hospital to rest... they are there to recover and rehab! LOL The resting part can come later at home.

It was a good day. It feels great to have it behind us. We feel so very thankful that the aortic stenosis was diagnosed and that there is a way to treat it and make her quality of life better. We are physically tired tonight, it was a long day, but really it was a good day for us. We didn't feel overwhelming anxiety or that the situation was out of control. We can certainly tell that people have been praying for us today. We sincerely thank you for your gift of intercession on our behalf.

We have been back at home for a few hours this evening and are regrouping and getting ready for the rest of the week. Tony and I are planning on going back to work tomorrow morning so the updates won't be coming as often. We'll just go with the mantra that no news is good news.

We love you guys. Thanks again for walking beside us. Good-night.

The tube is out.

They took the ventilator off about a 1/2 hour ago so she's breathing on her own. She has loud sounding crackles with each breath and feels very short of breath. She's quite uncomfortable with her breathing. They have her sitting up at about a 70 degree angle to try and make the breathing easier for her. The plan is to have her sit in a chair within the hour. She wants to get up and lean forward to make it easier to breathe, just needs to take one step at a time and balance the blood pressure and other vitals with each position change. She's on oxygen and getting a breathing treatment to try and clear her lungs some more. They will "need to work aggressively" (their words) at getting the lungs clear as much as possible tonight. We all know that she already has compromised lungs so we are sure this is a top priority. She says her pain is under control now so that's great. The surgeon has been back in to see her this late afternoon as well and tells us she's doing well, things are going smoothly. Nurse John is a 1:1 with her so he doesn't leave her room, providing a watchful eye over her.

Check it out... we made the news(letter) today! : )

Our first impressions...

We were able to get in and see Isy a short time ago. She's on the vent but opens her eyes for a few seconds while talking to her. Of course she wants that tube out. We told her she had to wake up a little more before they can take it out and she immediately opened her eyes as wide as she could get them and stared right at her nurse, not us. It made us laugh! She's too sleepy to keep them open for long, but she definitely understands what needs to happen. She is mouthing the word "ouch" around her tube. They have given her a lot of pain medicine and they need her more alert to get the tube out before they will start remedicating again for pain. She has 3 chest tubes and I'm sure those are very uncomfortable in addition to her incision.

It seems she has a very caring and professional nurse working with her. His name is John and Tony already told me that he would vote him as #1 out of all of the nurses taking care of her this last summer. It is immediately obvious that he has the gift of mercy and we are counting it as a blessing that he is at her bedside right now.

It's very weird... we saw the day shift staff arrive to work as they walked past us in the waiting room early this morning and now many of the same ones have their purses over their shoulders and are leaving their work days behind, now walking in the opposite direction. I wonder if their days went fast for them?

Until next time...

Surgery is Over

Surgery ended around noon. It took awhile for the doc to come talk to us but he just left (so I haven't been witholding info from you on purpose!). Overall the surgery went well. He did have to replace a portion of her aortic vessel as it was "rock hard" (in his words) when he attempted to clamp it as a routine part of the surgery. This portion of the aortic artery needed to be replaced first. They cooled her body down to 54degrees F (yes!) for this portion of the surgery so he could stop the heart/lung machine completely, so the blood stopped circulating. He replaced the damaged section with a graft and then moved on to replace the valve with a bovine/cow valve. He believes it was the radiation that damaged that small section of her aorta because the section above and just a little below it, were healthy and it was in a unique enough of a segment, that radiation is most likely to blame. I hope that all makes sense. Because they had to cool her body so much, there are normal clotting properties in her blood that are damaged (as expected) and so she was given some blood products in the OR already. She will be "out" several hours longer now because of the need to cool and now return her body temp to normal etc... They hope she can get off of the vent sometime this evening.

OK, that's all I know for now. It's about 1pm. We are going to find some lunch. When we come back, we should be able to sneak in to see her for a few minutes.

The recovery from surgery is ever as important as the surgery itself so please continue to pray that all goes well.
Thanks!
Leah