Plugging Back in to Normalcy

we didn't shift for long, but we shifted nevertheless.

from husband/wife to patient/caregiver. and it's not really obvious at the time that it is happening, but i find it very obvious now that we are working on returning to normal. and i'm very happy for the shift back no question about that….but there is an adjustment. i think this whole incident is seen as an anomaly and not a perpetual cause for concern with the doctors. which is good. but we are still on edge a bit.

so while chris rests, watches movies and generally bums around, i'm doing laundry, working on a graphic design project (yeah, me as a graphic designer…it's ok, you can laugh…..) and paying bills. all good normal things to do.

tomorrow he plans to do some work and i plan to blog about the roadtrip weekend that tori and i had. by friday we should have all the normalcy back in place.

24 Hours

24 hours ago Chris and I were getting ready for bed.

24 hours ago his heart started to beat way too fast and very irregularly.

23 hours ago we were in the ER and Chris had been given a bolus of medicine, an EKG, a cardiac monitor, an IV, blood drawn, a chest x-ray and oxygen and was diagnosed with atrial fib.

21 hours ago chris was admitted to the telemetry floor of the hospital where his heart rate could be monitored constantly by the nursing staff. he was confined to his bed as standing up sent his heart rate into orbit.

19 hours ago i got home from the hospital and sent emails to the family, close friends and chris’ boss to let them know what was happening and then i went to bed for a couple hours.

16.5 hours ago i woke up and typed more emails and posted on my message board to my dear friends. meanwhile chris was meeting with his internist followed by his new cardiologist. meds were increased.

13.5 hours ago i was back at the hospital with chris and he was still struggling with atrial fib and a racing heart (albeit slower than when we arrived in the ER)

13 hours ago chris got a 2D echo and we spent an hour with pastor matt. he prayed with us.

10 hours ago he was eating lunch and chris h. stopped by from church to pray with us. we were finally starting to see some more downward movement in both the heart rate and the blood pressure. but the atrial fib was still an issue.

8 hours ago i left chris to get some sleep and ran home to eat a sandwich, make arrangements for the kids to get to their various activities and ironed a scout shirt.

6 hours ago i picked up the girls at school and took them to see their Daddy. when we walked in the room he excitedly told us that he had FINALLY converted to a normal sinus rhythm and they would not need to sedate him and shock his heart back into a normal rhythm. thank God.

4 hours ago chris had dinner, got rid of his IV medicine and finally felt pretty good (as long as you ignored the total exhaustion of going 12 rounds with a boxer and not getting hit)

3 hours ago i returned to the hospital after dropping connor at scouts and picking up a mint cookies and cream shake from steak n’ shake for the patient.

2 hours ago chris was moved out of his teeny tiny double corner room (with his 93 year old roommate who’s been married to his wife for 65 years…they were so cute) and was put into a private room that was much less claustrophobic.

1 hour ago i left the hospital to pick up tori from rehearsal and connor from scouts while chris fell asleep watching a lousy football game.

right now chris is unfortunately getting 2 more belly shots (they burn rather badly) but hopefully that will be his last needle of his stay.

tomorrow morning he will see his docs and be discharged and i will bring him home. thank God.

who says that time flies?

Undefeated! Sold! Little Orphan Tori!

Whew.

It’s been a very emotionally exhausting (but good) weekend.

I think i need a weekend to recover from the weekend.

So, up first was connor’s championship football game v. kaneland on saturday morning. it was a glorious day for football. crisp fall day with sunshine and a light breeze. oh, and mud. because the sunshine was new and the fields had not had time to dry out. boy howdy was there mud. i took over 180 photos at this game. figured it was my last shot to do so and who knows if they will ever be undefeated again ya know? so here’s a quick run down sans editing…there’s no time to get those all edited right now.

i thought it was a bit chilly for “kick butt” short shorts but they were loud cheerleaders!

the first half was NOT bulldog football. we couldn’t get anything going on the offense and if it weren’t for TWO goal line stands…kaneland would have won this battle. connor’s easy to spot at this game…he wore red socks.

i call this “cleats in mud…a still life”

i think this was a reverse play of some sort. and yes, i messed with camera settings and accidentally bumped camera settings due to the stress of the game so not all of these are clear shots. but it’s a nice block by connor…

at halftime it was 6-0 kaneland. but the bulldogs were back in the 3rd marching down the field and tying the score. i moved into the end zone for a few shots. he really wasn’t the only one on the field, but he’s on the left side (weak) and there wasn’t always someone lined up directly in front of him. typically they were to his left.

a better overall shot as we were driving for yet another score.

we almost didn’t pull this victory out. they were driving with less than 2 minutes to go and had a TD pass called back because the QB was over the line of scrimmage and the last play of the game was a pass that was batted down on the goal line.

bad pieced together team photo because i don’t have a wide angle lens and there were 50 people taking pictures of this crew. connor is right above the word “crew” in 2nd row (and he’s crouching down so the other guys can be seen…he’s not that short)

whew…totally blew out this photo but that is the school plaque.

57 & 58

steve & connor

offensive left guard & offensive left tackle

they are also in scouts & wrestling together (and he’s going on philmont with chris and connor too)

holy cow does he need a haircut!

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

ok, at the game, we got a phone call from a prospective buyer of our truck who had been out to see it the day before. he called as soon as i got home (and chris walked out the door to pick up connor from the bus…WITHOUT his phone) and i made the call that we’d make the deal. it was a bit less than what i wanted and a bit more than chris’ bottom line so i guess that’s ok. but then i was filled with anxiety about the cashier’s check. by the time they got here, all banks were closed but we copied everything, took down his driver’s license and they were such a nice family i think it’ll be ok. oh, and we got half the money in cash! crazy. never seen that much cash before.

so we had to say goodbye to our most favorite vehicle ever….

chris is actually in mourning. he’s been bummed since it was driven out of our garage.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

today was a very early morning for tori and i as she had to play handbells at the 8am service at church.  it was her debut in the bell choir and she did a great job. she said she missed notes at the 8 o’clock but by the 9 o’clock she was hitting a lot more notes.

at church we learned that tori’s friend lauren (7th grade) had gotten a part in the play. so tori rushed home to the answering machine to see if she had gotten a call. alas, no.

meanwhile, helen came over and she and tori got ready to attend the CropWalk which is an annual walk around the river to help raise money to feed hungry people. we were just about to walk out the door when the phone rang…..it was the director of annie jr! she asked tori if she would like to be an orphan and tori quickly accepted. so i’m not sure how much walking tori did at the CropWalk. I think she was floating most of the way. we will have a mandatory meeting a week from monday where we should learn more about what is going to happen and then eventually tori will be assigned a particular orphan (at this point she just is “one of them”) and we’ll then know if she will have any speaking lines/solos or if she will be an ensemble orphan. heh. is that an oxymoron? ensemble orphan? a group of onlies? yeah, i’m tired.

like i said….emotionally exhausting weekend….but all good.

Job Offer Imminent….or Not

so i sent an email to our family last weds. with the title…. "job offer imminent" because chris had talked to a possible employer and he was totally excited to bring chris on board. he told us we'd have an offer by the end of the day.

or not.

anyway, the offer is coming. and it should be a pretty good one (of course right now, just about any offer is a good one….there's not much out there in chris' industry) so we're trying to be patient. trying to stay positive. trying to be calm when the collection calls start up at 8am in the morning and only stop when we explain that we are working with their loss mitigation department blah blah blah.

but i must admit it is a bit trying.

so fingers crossed that this little adventure of ours ends this week. they seem to want to send chris to a conference that starts march 22nd, so they probably should hurry up but what do i know?

Updates

i need to post about the disney trip but things have been harried around here as you can imagine. so here's the no-photos-down-and-dirty-update for now.

chris is still unemployed but there is movement and conversation and possibilities. they just aren't going to materialize as fast as we'd hoped. but they will materialize. of that i'm sure.

zo got a clean bill of health on her ecko (or is it echo?) and we are glad to be finished with cardiologists for awhile. especially since we won't have any insurance in 7 days.

connor got new contacts and is now officially blind as a bat. i don't understand the numbers on his prescription but when i asked the doctor, she said, "um, he can't see the E on the chart."  ok then…we may have to look into hard contacts to help slow the degradation, but not this time around.

tori and connor started river rats swim team stroke clinic last weekend. it was the only extra curricular i agreed to let them keep for now. for connor this is old hat as he was on the swim team last summer (not that you would know, i never blogged about getting up at 5:55am every morning all summer long so he could swim for 2 hours and the trips to po-dunk pools on the border of wisconsin and the bleached out swim suits and the sharpie markers and the fun) but for tori, this is such a step. a year ago she was in private lessons because if she'd fallen in a pool, she would've panicked and drowned. now she's swimming LAPS and wants to be a rat…..momma bear is so proud that she's conquered her fears and excelled. i HAD to let her do this stroke clinic….it just was never an option not to. the confidence is awesome.

unemployment is set to begin next week and we are working to get all our financial ducks in a row so that we can float for a few months as the checks will not cover anywhere near what we'd need them to on a monthly basis. so that means pushing back bills to have less to cover every month. hoping to only have to do this money dance for a few weeks.

still have to figure out insurance. cobra is out of the question as it is outrageous but the state of IL has guaranteed health care (i might have to thank blago for that…..dang it) and i haven't made that phone call yet.

my dad's retiring in EIGHT days!!! it is about time if you ask me…he's more than earned his retirement and i couldn't be more proud of him and his career. he kiddingly told me that at his retirement dinner, "everyone told me that i was great…but you already knew that." yeah dad….i've always known that. the pride just swells up and leaks right out of my eyes….gah!

wouldn't it be cool if chris got a job offer next friday when my dad said goodbye to the wooster clinic for the last time? i'd like the stars to align like that……

there is quite a push-pull going on in my brain nowadays. i have complete and intense confidence that our situation will not stay like this for long so i go about my mostly normal routine. yes, i cut things out, yes, i'm clipping more coupons and making more casseroles but in a way i'm digging my heels in about this and refusing to "let the turkeys get me down".  i'm clinging to as much normalcy as i can.

and then there's the part of me that is not buying new razors because it's not a necessity. um, really, are we going to go broke if i buy a razor? it's an odd push-pull. truly.

while i was at disney (promise to post about that soon) my laptop was backed up and then a complete delete/reinstall of windows was performed. it took a week but my good friend bill returned it to me better than it was, but still not working well. so after 3 hours on a chat and on the phone with india yesterday, i have to do ANOTHER delete/reinstall (this time with a slow format…whatever that means) to see if that fixes my latest problem. i have the money for a new computer already but unfortunately, that money is now back up grocery money. so yet another dance i have to do….i'd like to think i'm tech savvy but the reality is far from that.

finally, thank you all for your thoughts, prayers, NO WAYS! (there is something comforting when people are mad, appalled and shocked for you) and offers to help. we have been humbled to tears by the generosity of spirit that has come our way. last night at choir a friend came up and flat out offered us money. he was dead serious and wanted chris to know that if we were in a bind, we needed to come to him. this was completely out of the blue and amazing. we are truly blessed and even in the midst of this mess we are reminded of that daily.

Blindsided

the previous post had been written in my head for 4 days. so i had to type that one up before i could post this one. they just couldn't be in the same post. the other one was a pretty upbeat post and this one is not.

chris lost his job yesterday.

to say we were caught totally off guard is an understatement. we knew something was up but never expected his boss to walk into his off ice yesterday morning unannounced and drop that bomb. chris wasn't the only one either.  he brought in a decent amount of business at the end of 2008. but the salvage business has not been immune to the downward spiral of the economy. plus, he was expensive. so we understand but that doesn't make it any easier.

this was not exactly how we planned to start out the new year but you have to play the cards you've been dealt so now we shake our heads, mourn the loss and then dust ourselves off and move forward.

the whole day was very surreal. in between chris calling to break the bad news, i was on my way to the cardiologist with zoe for a check up. it was long overdue (read 2 years) but my pediatrician could still hear her tiny heart murmur and wanted me to have it checked out. so we headed to the doctor and zo really liked it there because they don't have any needles in there office. no shots was all she needed to hear. after an ekg and discussions with the doctor, we decided that her heart murmur had changed and was probably "innocent". so dr. bryk-serva told me to schedule an echo (heart ultrasound) so we could put the issue to rest. sounded great but since i was reeling with the fact that we might not have insurance today….i told her our dilemma. so she called the hospital and got us in yesterday afternoon so that we'd make it in under the wire if need be. that way there wouldn't be any pre-existing condition crap to contend with either.

so after the appt and lunch at panera (zo loves their grilled cheese) we headed over to the hospital where zo got to lay down, watch dumbo and have warm gel rubbed on her chest for a half hour. then they gave her cookies. she really didn't mind all this cardio stuff. i anticipate that everything will be fine but it did make for an interesting mess of a day.

once zo was back at school, we signed up for unemployment (on the advice of  a friend since it takes 2 weeks to be processed) and i canceled my pilates session and tried to figure out what else we could cut out of the budget.  and then we need a new phone since we have to give that back. and we have been spoiled with free gas for his car which we won't be able to get anymore so there's that expense as well. it's a lot to take in.

by 9pm we decided to just throw in a movie and forget about it all for awhile.

today chris is meeting with business contacts and calling people to let them know. he has been in this industry for a long time and knows a lot of people. i am confident that we won't be treading water for long. my fervent hope is that this turns out to be the best thing that's ever happened to him professionally. think we may drink some champagne tonight and pretend that it is…….we need to manifest our happiness right now because it is not coming quite as easily as we'd like.

peace.

15, er I mean 16 years

    about 3 months ago chris and i started planning our 15th wedding anniversary trip. i told him i just wanted to go to downtown chicago. we live an hour away and never "do the town". so he promptly pulled out his marriott points and got us a room at the recently remodeled blackstone hotel. he then started searching for a great restaurant and i worked on wicked tickets.

fast forward to the 2nd week of march. shortly after connor’s 12th birthday. i’m driving with the kids to church and all of a sudden it dawns on me that connor was born a month before our 4th wedding anniversary. seeing as he just turned 12, that meant we were celebrating our 16th. not our 15th.

classic.

the kids thought it was hysterical and when i told chris he laughed and said, "you’re right". we are dorks.

so this past weekend we celebrated our SIXTEENTH anniversary and had a great time. we got downtown around 5pm on friday and had some wine and cheese in the room before heading to midtown kitchen & cafe for a drink and some sandwiches. it was the perfect quick meal before the show.

Wicked was so good. we had been told it was fantastic. and we were not disappointed. wow. what a production. i’d love to go see it again with the kids. it is probably too loud for zoe, but c & t would eat it up being the little thespians that they are.

saturday started off with room service breakfast. i figured we could splurge because the room was free. i love room service breakfast and hotel rooms with robes in the closets….ahh. after breakfast, we walked down michigan ave. to the art institute. we have never been and we were quite sure the kids would be bored, so decided it was the perfect time to check it out. there was a lot of construction and closed galleries but we were able to see many of the impressionists before that exhibit closes and moves to dallas next month while they remodel the whole wing.

we headed back to the hotel when our legs got tired, hit starbucks (there is one on every corner in downtown chicago i swear) and then relaxed for a bit before our big dinner. we went to a restaurant called "MK" for dinner. chris picked it out of the list of 5 star restaurants in chicago and he nailed it. wow. what a meal. for our own memories, i’m going to list the menu cause it really was amazing.

Chris:

octopus baby octopus grilled over hardwood charcoal, snap peas, braised baby leeks, romesco
bison hardwood charcoal grilled bison ribeye,
crushed nichols farm new potato, bloomsdale spinach, hen of the woods
mushrooms, cabernet saucecake & shake layers of buttermilk chocolate cake, milk
chocolate mousse, bittersweet chocolate pave, chocolate meringue
buttercream and a vanilla malted milkshake

Wendy:
butter lettuce boston bibb lettuce, green and white asparagus, torn herbs, capriole farms goat cheese, lemon vinaigrette
tuna peppercorn crusted yellowfin tuna seared rare,
spinach, shiitake mushrooms, garlic whipped potato, red wine syrup
pineapple almond scented upside down cake, roasted pineapple carpaccio, sorbet, pineapple butterscotch
we also had Groth Cabernet and chris had a glass of Cabernet Grappa after dinner (yuk!)

and for the record, the octopus looked just like an octopus but it was sooo good. i can’t believe i’m saying that! but it was charcoal grilled and tender and with the romesco….just amazing. i wish i had taken my camera just to get a picture of it but that would’ve intruded on the evening too much. at the end of the night, they gave us a $25 gift certificate for our next visit as an anniversary gift. we thought that was a nice touch.

ok, off to bed. tomorrow i’ll post the photos of the weekend from the art museum and millennium park.

Digi page catch-up

A few recent pages that i’ve done using the fun stuff at DesignerDigitals. the first 3 are all photos from disney. the tori page was a photo taken in ohio over new year’s and then the my 3 sons is pretty self explanatory i think. more on geronimo later…..

did this one just for fun….wanted to play with the big heart/text path. don’t think i’ve shown this one to chris yet either…LOL

Helllloooooooooooooooo nurse!*

this little number is coming home to live in our garage this afternoon and my husband is beside himself with glee!

yes, i said glee. seriously. i left him grinning from ear to ear at the
dealership where he has a 90 minute tutoring session to learn how to
work all the bells and whistles.

and if you know my husband at all, you know it’s all about the wheels. we paid extra for these babies.

not the best pics but they pull the car into a deliver showroom that is small and i didn’t have the best angles to shoot from. plus i had to get zo to school. but we wanted a few pics before he drives it home in the slush leftover from the 6" of snow we got last night/this morning. because it’s not going to look this good again for awhile. now he needs to hurry up and start his new job so we can pay for this bad boy.

eta: it’s here!

*said in my best Yakko voice….or was it Wakko??

A week in the life

Monday: Chris accepts a new position and resigns from his current job. He gives 3 weeks notice so he can wrap up some scheduled appointments and then take some time to write up what he’s been working on, etc.

Tuesday: The CEO of the current company calls to tell Chris that Friday (Nov. 30) will be his last day instead and that he’s flying into town on Weds. We assume that means he’s taking the car, computer, etc. but he doesn’t tell us.
Chris leaves 1 hour after this call for 3 days of appointments in Wisconsin.

Wednesday: Chris meets a deer on a dark Wisconsin highway. The deer was fine, Chris was scared to death but ok and the car came out with a butt dent in the back drivers side door. but the cops laughed at him when he called to report it. he was the 8th deer hit in 4 hours. so he drove to the hotel and called it a  night.

Thursday: Chris and the CEO drive back to Chicago and yes, we are losing the car and computer tomorrow. so there’s a lot of cleaning out, transferring of files, printing information, etc.

Friday: Chris packs up his whole office (yes, he still had the boxes for the printer, etc.) and meets with the CEO for a few hours. He is dropped off at the house and we are officially a 1 suv family. chris makes an appointment for us to test drive one of these on Monday morning because our weekend is nuts.

Saturday: the beginning of nuts. we have robotics (connor), church poinsettia sale (chris is in charge), dress rehearsal for the children’s christmas play (tori), a basketball game (connor) and 2 christmas parties (chris and wen). We get up to take connor to robotics at 8:30am and the 1 and only suv has a major flat. and the jack in a durango isn’t big enough to actually get the wheel off the ground. nice. we call AAA and borrow a neighbor’s car to get connor to the middle school. Jami comes to get chris and tori to take them to church and as i type this, it’s been 90 minutes and AAA is still not here. i have called for a new tire and hope to have that changed out before noon when i have to pick up tori. the bball game is about 30 minutes away, so i don’t want to drive on the spare (full size or not its not as big a tire as what is on the truck) to get to naperville.

oh, and should i mention the winter storm that is heading our way and should hit tonight while we are at the 2 parties? nah, i don’t think i should mention it either……