On the Mend

Grandpa is doing a lot better. I spoke to him on the phone both yesterday and today. He's in good spirits and is on the mend. He's been up for a walk, and has been watching the news. His visitors keep him busy ;)

Long weekend for Grandpa

While Anna and I were in Morris, Grandpa stayed in the hospital. After we left on Thursday, he began bleeding again. Nothing serious at the time, just that he wasn't well enough to leave yet. He has some more transfusions. By Friday the Doctors were talking about surgery some more, but again, only if needed. Grandma had stopped bleeding again so things were again looking better. By Saturday things were still roller coastering with good and waiting to leave (silly homogloblens), so the doctors decided to o some scope work to look around. First they looked around his intestines and they all looked ok, so they went back in to look around the stomach, everything looked good there too. Their conclusion was that it had to be his diberticulitis. Come Sunday, his rollercoastering has meant he had had 11 transfusions. You can only have someone have 12 transfusions before the body begin to seriously reject the new blood. It was decided that on Sunday he'd go in for surgery. The surgery was slated to begin about 9am but that slowly crept back to about 10:45 or so. It was going to be a 3 hour surgery. While they were in fixing this problem they also decided to do some other things as well. He has had a hernia for 20+ years and his colostomy was difficult to maintain where it was. They decided to move and update is stoma, remove his fiscula, and remove his hernia (which was likely the cause the problems anyway).
Anna and I headed back to Eau Claire and got back about 4:30pm or so. We had thought we'd be back a couple hours after his surgery so that he'd be in the recovery room. We were surprised to find that he was still in surgery! Coincidently there was a major storm heading to Eau Claire as well. He finished surgery around 5pm or so. He was moved to a recovery room but because of the storm, and the hospital moving everyone from the rooms (avoiding windows), we didn;t get to see him in his room until about 8:30pm.
He was in alot of pain but was coherent. It was a long and tough 6 hour surgery. I'm 28 and 6 hours of surgery would be brutal for me, he's 80!
Late Sunday night/Monday morning, about 4am, he was moved from his regular room to critical care for closer monitoring. He's been making progress to recovery. He's coughing better and has been keaning up more (up to 25 degrees). The doctor stopped in and they're working to get him sitting up today or tomorrow.
He's still got a tremendous amount of pain and is fighting low blood pressure but is doing well. He's in good spirits, and is looking forward to his trip to Alaska with my cousin Johnny (who is graduating this weekend). He had one of the nurses talked into going too, until he told her she'd have to drain the sewer ;)

Welcome to Morris

Anna and I made it to Morris Mn, thanks to out new Garmin 260W GPS! It was a test drive of the GPS before our big honeymoon trip! We were the first to arrive in Morris (Anna's Sister, brother in law, children as well as her parents were also going as well, they had a 8-9 hour drive from Marinette).
Dave and Becky live on campus at UM-Morris. Its a town of about 2000. Their apartment was quite nice. They have a full kitchen, living room, and 2x bedrooms.
More about the trip later!

Get better Grandpa

Last Wednesday morning, about 1am, Grandpa decided he should drive himself to the hospital. He was having some bleeding issues and he finally had enough and wasn't feeling well. When he got to the hospital, they gave him a bit of a scare by asking if he had a power of attorney. He made a couple of calls and my Mom Sue and my Aunt Deb were at the hospital faster than you could say Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!
I finally received a phone call about 7:30am Wednesday. Shortly there after I decided to head over to Eau Claire. (Anna and I had been planning to head over to Morris, MN Thursday to see her Brother Dave and Wife Becky.)
I made it to Eau Claire about Noon. Grandpa was on the fourth floor. He was in good spirits, laughing and joking. He had a couple of blood transfusions and his bleeding had stopped. Anna took part of the day off and came to Eau Claire early Wednesday evening. By Wednesday night the thought was that'd he be getting out sometime Thursday. There was talk of surgery but only if needed. He was all good to go but he needed to have his hemoglobin go up some more. Grandpa likes to pronounce it hemo-glob-en. :)
Upon Grandpa's recommendation, Anna and I stayed at the Antler Motel. Its a great, clean, cheap place to stay in Eau Claire if you're ever in town.
Thursday morning, the prognosis was still good. Anna and I left for Morris, Mn.

Put up that wall!

Along the Front and Left side of the house we have some red lava rock for landscaping. The front of the house has always had a retaining wall to separate the yard from the landscaping. The left side of the house though just had a plastic separator. The separator hasn't been doing a good job! (The lawn mower can attest to that!). We decided to finish the wall and have it wrap around the left side of the house.

We ran to Menards and purchased over a ton of blocks. They guy at Menards thought it was funny for me to ask how much the blocks weighed. I told him I had a car and ding, he understood. 2000lbs = 2 trips with the trailer.

Funny story. Anna and I were loading the trailer. Anna wanted to have me put the blocks on the trailer (she didn't want to be responsible if they broke) so that meant she was getting the blocks from the pile and carrying to me on the trailer. A lady walked up and gave me a scowl. Here I am 'making' Anna do the hard work. I mean it's obvious I, the Man, should be doing that! And on top of it, poor Anna, the lady thought Anna was a cancer patient and gave her a big hug. Turns out I wasn;t 100% bad... The lady said "Well at least he's on his knees!"

We dug up the grass where we wanted the wall. Flattened it all out. We put some pea gravel down and started laying the blocks. Oh the description sounds so easy! Well a full day plus later, we have a new wall! We're proud of the work we did. Go team!

Garden Planter

We've been wanting to start a garden but haven't figured out where. One day while we were shopping at Menards we came up with the idea of building our own raised garden bed. We looked at lumber sizes to get some ideas. The next day I asked around for ideas on how to build it. I heard tons of great ideas. Slowly I settled on an idea. Last Sunday my buddy Adam and I drove out to Menards to get supplies. Did we have a detailed plan? No. Did that stop us? Heck no. Once we got there we made some quick sketches, picked some lumber(easier said than done), and headed home.

Once we got the goods back home, we started to get to work. I'll spare you the construction details but the dimensions are roughly 8ft x 2ft. Tonight it got finished up by adding the outer lip and putting in the inner liner. You can see Anna demonstrating its size. As Adam says, I'd be a great coffin maker for NBA players. ;)

Its going to be an awesome garden! Can't wait for the deliciousness!

New blogging tool!

Hey, I just found out about a new blogging tool! It's called Windows Live Writer. I know, its from Microsoft. Believe it or not its just amazing, and FREE! It supports blogger quite well. You have more configuration than you do on blogger itself (WYSIWYG type stuff). I highly recommend trying it!