Conclusion: Fluke!

That is my term. The doctor just said there is no sign of any damage to anything and no follow up to be doing at this time. Last night was an extreme version of some tingling/pin prick sensations that Andy has felt for years - at least the initial pain sensation he had last night. The doctor and Andy have talked about these before and concluded it is a benign result of some of the unusual formations in his heart possibly related to the electrical functioning of the heart and that little hair like structure I referred to in my earlier post. And, all indications are things are functioning normal right now. This conclusion is not as satisfactory as it should be. By that I mean it sure seemed like a big deal while it was happening, so to have no significant follow up seems strange. But, I am so grateful that there was no damage to his heart, no damage to any other part of him, and currently no sign that there was ever a problem. So, it should be the most satisfactory conclusion possible, right? I think it is just going to take a bit of time to feel less . . . well, I guess less concerned. Andy and I have talked about it a bit, and as we continue to process what has happened and the information we have we may do some out of town follow up just to be extra sure. But for today, crisis is over, and we are thankful that God has protected us through this event. As Andy said, a mysterious non-event is so much better than a heart attack of any sort! There are a lot of electrical issues in hearts. And, yes, there is a difference between the plumbing kind of cardiologist and the electrician kind of cardiologist. Here in town we only have the plumbing kind - they are the most common. When we saw the electrician in the past she gave us a lot of information and was very good at educating us about so many things. But she felt that with the uniqueness of Andy's heart it was impossible to know what the future implications were of the electrical abnormalities going on in there - hey, she was honest. We may decide to go back and chat with her again. I suspect that the issue that happened last night is more her area of expertise than the plumber here in town. Thank you to all of you who expressed your concern and your willingness to pray for us. We are doing very well, all things considered. Except for the conclusion that he wants to wait a week or so before running again, Andy is comfortable doing all his normal activities. I'm working on not getting too over protective of him and balancing that with not minimizing what happened to the point of being unsupportive. J has asked a lot of questions and expressed his fears well, and currently appears very comfortable and I think feels pretty safe right now. There was a cute conversation this morning that went something like this:

"Papa, what did you feel?"

Andy started to describe the stinging/shock feeling and J said:

"No Papa! I meant were you afraid to die."

"Yes, I was afraid a little, but I trust Jesus to do what is best and provide for you and Momma if I'm gone."

"But Papa, I don't want Jesus to kill you."

I chuckled at that. J is going to be just fine if he continues to express himself so clearly! Blessings everyone! We are feeling very blessed right now!

Issue of the Heart

A little excitement around here last night! To say the least. Time is limited, so I'll just get right to it.

Andy was doing the dishes after dinner, and suddenly cried out in pain. I thought it was his hip, which does that to him from time to time if he twists just the right way. But it was a pain in his chest - left sided, sudden on-set, like a jolt of electricity. We debated for a short while. He admitted that he hasn't been feeling perfect relative to his heart, and we determined to go to the ER (first we called his cardiologist, but the answering machine just refers you to 911 instead of giving you an option to talk with a doctor. Oh well!)

When we stepped outside it was blowing like crazy, and the blowing snow almost kept us from being able to see more than 3-4 feet in front of us. Andy was calm, even got out of the car and opened the gate for us as we were leaving the property.

But things went down hill from there. Within a quarter of a mile of the house he was telling J and I how much he loved us and that he would be okay one way or another because he would be with Jesus and he knew we would be fine and able to take care of ourselves. He was experiencing shortness of breath, pressure, a sense of confinement/claustrophobia and he was pretty scared. That had both J and I really scared and crying at that point. Crying does not help with the driving.

We drove about 1.5 miles to the local gas station/mini mart and called 911 (no cell reception in our area). Then we waited what seemed like a really long long time.

All tolled, from the time we called 911 to the time we arrived in the ambulance at the hospital - 1.25 hours. The roads were terrible! And the fact is we don't live in a place all that easy to get medical help. The volunteer fire department guys were on scene in about 15 minutes (the fire house is about .25 miles from the gas station, but they all had to get there from their homes, and remember, the roads were terrible!) I'm not complaining about the service, they guys were wonderful, but it was a bit of a wake up call to realize just how isolated we are, even though most days it seems we live "just outside of town."

So, at the ER they determined no heart attack. We went home late with instructions to contact the cardiologist this morning. That doesn't surprise me. Andy's not really a candidate for a heart attack. But, his heart is not normal. Never has been. He has about 5 congenital defects in that heart of his - leaking valves, enlarged aortic stem, and little pieces of filament floating around near valves. He's always functioned normally with all of that going on. Runs marathons when his hip isn't bothering him. Runs almost daily even when the hip is bothering him.

But yesterday he went from asymptomatic to symptomatic. That, frankly, is a huge change!

The little filament is the thing that scares me. Several years ago we talked to the cardiologist about that being a potential conductor of electricity, which makes Andy more vulnerable to a sudden heart stoppage if it conducts electricity in just the right (or wrong) way. Nothing we can control, not a risk that is super high, but more of a risk than those of us who don't have that little string thingy in our hearts.

I suspect that little string conducted some electricity last night, just fortunately for us, not a lethal amount.

God was at work last night. At our church we call these things "God sightings." Here are a couple of them:

At the gas station the daughter of close friends appeared - she drove J to the hospital so I could ride in the ambulance. She called her parents, who came to get J and take him home last night when it was clear there was not immediate crisis but we were going to be there very late. She would not normally be there, but she needed gas, and then decided she had far enough to drive that she wanted to use the restroom. That is how I saw her, as I was in the foyer, answering questions from the volunteer fire guy out of the wind. J knows this family and is comfortable with them. Has spent the night with them in the past so Andy and I could have a date night. J loves them!

One of the volunteer fire men is a friend of ours and a Christian, so the praying spread from just me and J very quickly!

The wind stopped blowing just as the ambulance was ready to leave the gas station - although the roads remained icy, the visibility was much improved!

And most of all, Andy lived. He really thought he would not.

There are other things, but not enough time to go into all of them here. Just be assured, we know the hand of God was there on us!

Please pray for Andy! Frankly, I don't want to lose him. I know he is taking this very seriously because I didn't have to fight to convince him not to go for a run this morning. He already had determined on his own to wait for approval from the cardiologist on that!

Pray for me to be calm and not hover over him and be fearful that he will just suddenly drop dead. I suspect that this is going to be a situation where the doctors will have to admit they don't know what happened, and we will just have to incorporate it into our experiences and move on. Emotionally, that will be a challenge, but we aren't likely to withdraw from life, so we need to do it.

I'm off to go get J, and to try to have a normal productive day, and hopefully to drive Andy to a follow up appointment with the cardiologist.

Finally some pages

I actually did these pages about 10 days ago, but finding a time to photograph them outside has been hard. I did them while working at Keepsakes By Design the last weekend I was there. I did another page, which is on display at the store, and five tags (also on display at the store) so I can't share those.

Anyway, here they are. I love the letters and snow flakes on this one - they are chipboard, run through a cuddle bug embossing plate, painted white, inked with distress ink and then heat embossed with embossing tinsel. Totally fun!

This one is a lift of a layout I saw on 2 Peas a while back and really liked. Pretty straight forward I guess!

Yesterday was really productive - I got three bankers boxes of documents filed. Today, I get to enter a years worth of transactions into the quick books, and that might take part of tomorrow. Then, I will be all ready to do taxes, which is amazing since usually I do it the end of February. But with the bar exam I need everything ready so that it is just an hour or two imputing numbers into the accountant's form. Taxes are due to him just two days after the bar exam, so I'm in desperate need of being prepared.

I also began listening to bar exam related lectures on CD while I was filing yesterday. Just getting my brain reminded of the vocabulary and the organization that is going to be needed. I thought I might cry, but I didn't. Sometimes I was hopeful that indeed I can do this, and sometimes I thought "Geeze, why do we have to know all this minutia?" But, I've started.

Now, if I can get the quickbooks updated and complete the circle journal I have for group three at Studio Calico, I will have a successful week. On the CJ, I just need to print photos and write the journaling, so it is really close. But it is also really late. Ugh! I feel bad. But in my defense, it came to me late, it's been the holidays, and I will get it done about a month after I received it. Keeping up with new ones during bar study is going to be a challenge, but perhaps it will be a good break once in awhile!

Parenting Trials!

Was a bit of an emotional parenting day.

Over the past three weeks J has taken an interest in Yu-Gi-Oh. I think he finally figured out that on Saturday morning the CW has cartoons, and he started watching it. I was somewhat unaware of this, but when he wanted cards and spent his allowance on them I got a bit curious.

Then last week we agreed that I would watch both Yu-Gi-Oh and Chaotic, a related show, with him this week to see what is was all about. My radar was already up about negative spiritual content, the fact that the show seemed to be nothing more than a vehicle to sell the cards, and several other issues. Watching the shows I was not impressed, to say the least. Andy and I jumped on the Internet to see what we could get as background stories on these shows, and came away with the conclusion that we would not be having these shows in our home. I am sorry if you are reading this and don't understand what our objections were, let me just say, knowing our child, our Christian beliefs, and what we want for our home, we just determined this was not going to be part of our future.

That is when the emotional melt down occurred from J. He was devastated that we put the ky-bosh on these shows.

The sobbing was loud and lengthy, followed by inappropriate mouthy comments, door slamming, and time alone by J - both imposed by us as he was sent to his room, and imposed by himself later when he determined he just wanted to be by himself for awhile outside.

It took about an hour for him to settle down, but by the time we left to go sledding (see previous post), he was perfectly fine.

I have to admit that his extreme reaction was an affirmation that we were making a correct decision, although I think he was planning his behavior having the opposite impact. He has never behaved quite like this before. I'm not blaming the show for his behavior, but the fact that it was already so in control of his thinking that he had an extreme reaction sort of established for us that our concerns about him not being able to keep the show in perspective were accurate.

I also must say that seeing him so upset breaks my heart, even though Andy and I are as convinced as ever that we made the right decision. Having a broken heart is just part of parenting I guess. I just wanted to wrap my arms around him and tell him how much I loved him and try to explain how this was a decision made in love. But he was all prickly there for a bit, and the best thing was to let him be with himself a bit. I thank God that Andy and I were on the same page about this issue because we were able to support each other when our knees got a little weak watching J sob.

As J approaches 9 years old I expect we may have more little battles over cultural issues. I so wish we could protect him from exposure to all evil things, but I know we can't. So we have no choice but to teach him to discern, filter, and prioritize for himself.

I think there will be lots of time on our knees praying on these issues over the next five or ten years. Got any knee pads?

More Sledding!

Happy Birthday to Daniel (my brother)! We got the privilege of spending the mid-day with him and his family, and at his request, we returned to the sledding hill for more fun. It was really great! Lots of photos. We also got to see a bald eagle while we were there, and then J and I saw one behind our property in the evening. I love to see them, and although it is not that uncommon here, I just get so excited every time. Lots of fun had by all!

While I was away. . .

. . . from blogging I did do some things worth sharing.

Probably most exciting was that I actually scrapbooked. I was working at the LSS and it was slow, so I had time to do a couple of pages. But, I have not had an opportunity to photograph them because it has been either below zero or snowing most every day, and I photograph my projects outside. So, that will have to wait until (hopefully) tomorrow.

Another thing I did was a photo shoot with four wonderful children. It was a bit of a last minute thing (taking their pics on Monday the 22nd to have them edited and delivered on disc to dad by Wednesday the 24th at noon). But, it was a special circumstance. Their mom was diagnosed with Breast Cancer this past fall. She has just one more round of chemo scheduled, but as it would all of us, I think the stress of this challenge has taken a toll. I saw them at a church event and just blurted out to their dad that I would love to take the kids photo as a gift they could give the mom for Christmas. Nothing like putting a little pressure on myself.

The weather then turned bitterly cold, so we could not schedule it until a day when the children wouldn't be crying from the frost bite.

That old tractor Andy bought a few years ago has come in handy for me lately. It certainly makes little boys happy.

We were fortunate and had a visit with the horses next door while the kids were here - not portrait type photos, but certainly fun to have! And it broke up the session with the kids so that we had happier kids all the way around. Then, to add to it, I decided to try doing natural lighting in the barn of all places. But I was pretty happy with the results!

In general, I was pretty happy with what we got in photographs. It was cold, it was snowing, and it was hurried. And some of those kids are pretty young. Still, I think the photos are appropriate for their dad to give to their mom.

Some of you may know this family, but even for those of you who don't, prayers are needed anytime this family or any other faces a challenge like Breast Cancer. It is a time of vulnerability and yet a time to create unity in the battle. They have handled it with grace and faith that will have a huge impact regardless of how the story ends.

My first ever video upload. Sledding with my brother!

He had so much fun that tomorrow we are going sledding again to celebrate his birthday - he'll be 29!

May get into this video think if I'm not careful!