BabsZ

Sue, I know you are right. I am really tired of this reaction. Wouldnt it be better for me to hold it together for a day then fall apart, instead of holding it together for couple of weeks then do this. I am worthless like this. But you are right. I Love You Sue. Hang in there your self. You are the one that shows us how to hang there for the long term. I have looked up to you for these years and I pray for you. :-)

This event happened Jan 14 2013 Ed has really been stressing about getting the building finished. Seems impossible to get an electrician out to get it done. Eddie is talking non stop about it. He Is explaining to me every detail of how it should be done. Sigh… This morning OEC is supposed to come out to put in a new box for it. The weather is really cold and I am putting on a nice pot of stew but am out of a couple of items I need for it. Eddie said he was going to take a shower so I asked If he wants me to wait until he is finished. He said no its not necessary, so I started getting ready to go. I went to our bedroom to tell him I was leaving and found him laying on the bed. I asked whats going on here. He said he is really dizzy and so I laid down by him and he tried to sit up but was weaving all over the place so I told him to just lay still for a bit. Then he became very quiet…and his face turned deep red. I realize he is not breathing so I yelled at him (Are you ok? Breathe Eddie Breathe) nothing, so I knew I had to do something, I gave him about 3 breaths then called 911. They are on the way but he is still not breathing. He seemed to be almost snoring but I have been with a few people at the last breath and I know what the death breath sounds like and this is how he sounded to me. so I gave him a few more breaths then ran to the front door to unlock and open it for the emergency crew then ran back to him and gave him a few more breaths. A couple of times he was gurgling some and I hoped I was not forcing fluid into his lungs but the thought came to me that the important thing was to get air in his lungs and anything else could be taken care of at the hospital. I kept this up until they arrived. I heard them open the door and yell, Hello? Emergency Responders! I called to them and they had no problem finding us in the bedroom. I quickly told them what had happened and First thing they said was lets get him onto a hard surface, then they lifted him from the bed to the floor. I was pulled aside by a first responder to give them space to work. I had things to do anyway like get his medical list which was in his wallet over the head board. That would have to wait, but I knew I couldn’t so I went to the computer to print out a new copy. The first responder stayed with me and said this is good because it gives me something to do. After I got it printed and in his hands we moved some furniture out of the way to get the gurney in and out of the house, then I grabbed a few things I knew I would need at the hospital. Cell phone, blue tooth and chargers for them. Computer shoes socks and a coat. Then I started closing the blinds, The first responder guy asked how he could help me. I ask him if he could make sure my 15 year old deaf and blind cocker spaniel got out to go potty before we leave. And he did. I continued gathering a few things like house keys my RX meds. I never did get back to the bedroom to get Eds wallet but it was ok because I had printed out the med list. Locked the front door and asked if I could ride in the ambulance with him. The driver said I could but would have to stay really cool and calm. I told him I would be fine, I have had experience like this before and I am good in a crisis. It turned out to be good I was there, they had some questions for me such as, what kind of abdominal surgery he had had and when. And other questions about his medical history. We would not be going to the heart hospital. He was too critical for the distance. We were headed for Norman HealthPlex. Then the driver was diverted to another hospital. He called the dispatcher back and explained the situation with this patient and how he needed to be sent to a hospital with cardio facilities. They agreed and we were on our way to the HealthPlex. I quickly called my daughters cell phone and told her that her dad had stoped breathing and are in an ambulance on our way to the Norman Health Plex. She is on her way to. From the back of the ambulance I hear, “he is breathing” then “he is trying to talk to us a little bit” That was really good news to me. I opened my I phone and called my church then opened face book. Typed in this simple message…friends. We need prayer . Ed is in cardio arrest. On our way to hospital in ambulance. Its always best to have a good prayer cover and I have a lot of praying friends. A friend in our neighborhood lives at the entrance to the addition heard the sirens and immediately went to prayer for Eddie. She had heard about the health issues he has and always does pray when an ambulance goes by but this time, she just knew to pray for him. Praise the Lord. Miracle after Miracle. We arrived at the hospital. While they were working on Eddie my daughter called to say she was on her way and her husband was at the hospital. He found me shortly after that. He has some medical knowledge and realy helps to have him there. She arrived soon after. I was told they had to Shock Eddie four times and do compressions in the ambulance. But he is alive. He is having short term memory problems. He keeps asking the same few questions over and over. Where are we. How did we get here. Did the ambulance go code 3 with lights and sirens? You mean I missed that? And there is the other question. Is this real or is it a dream? About every 5 minutes the questions started again. By that evening he was only asking them about every half hour. After about 3 hours in the ER he was transferred to Cardiac ICU. Everything has been uneventful, Thank the Good Lord! He has had a lot of pain from the CPR but Xray showed no broken ribs. That’s a very good thing. Wednesday evening he graduated out of ICU to a regular hospital room. Today, Thursday, he is scheduled to have surgery to install the pacemaker/De Fibulator device. So we wont go through this again. If he has another episode, the device will keep it from getting that serious. Ed says God just isn’t finished with him yet. He has 5 grand children to make sure they are raised right. We love them all so much. Today is Feb 1. We have been home a week. He is doing well. Has to wear a strap to remind him not to raise that arm. It could pull the leads out of his heart. not good. Now that the big stuff is over, its my turn. Im a mess. Im so good in an emergency, and i get so focused. Then I crash. And it is hitting me. Im doing a little better now. I am remembering most peoples names now. two days ago i spent the day trying to remember my cousins name. even when i came up with the name, It did not seem like her name. I heard someone at church call out a name of a person going by, It sounded like a name i should know, so i asked the lady next to me, she laughed and said, that is your Pastor. well... need to give myself a break. I had a doctor visit today and she told me to give myself some time. This is all my reaction to what happened. There are more things than this going on but i will spare you my insanity. Hope its over soon.

My prayers are with those in the path of this awful storm. Hope you and your are safe.

It has taken me quite a while to find where to post. Things have changed around here, a lot. :-) im sure its all good as soon as i find my way around. We finally got the building built in the back. Its going to be a place to store our RV, and will be a work shop and who knows what else. Its the one thing Eddie wanted when we were house shopping that this place did not have. Well, it does now. The only thing lacking is for the electrition to get here and wire it. I find we are meeting a lot of new people in this little town. Its good to make new friends. Really nice folks. Lucky us. We are telling our story about Eddies heart attack and stroke quite a lot. This brings back up an idea we have played with a lot. Thats writing a book. Anyone who reads my blogs knows I am not such a great writer but I am just putting down what happened to us. If I can figure out how to label and save it here, I may post it here as I write it. Personally I am doing pretty good. Still having a bit of trouble with depression. Although I really believe it is my depression medication. Also i am battling some bronchitis. Sure will be glad when i get over this. I used to have it almost all the time, but I found something that really helps with sinus drainage and the problems it brings. Natural Vinegar with the mother. The brand name on the one I use is Brags. The mother i mentioned is a web looking sediment in the bottle. I take about a tablespoon full with about that much raw honey in a glass of water. Once a day is plenty if im not having any symptoms but if i have drainage or actual bronchitis, I take it several times a day. It really helps. This is the first time I have had the drainage and bronchitis in over 2 years. :-)

Sue, my friend. I am just gonna make one comment. or two. I Love You! You are gonna be ok. Love BabsZ

Yes, we lived through the move. That was about 10 months ago. We are comfortable here now. Yes I still have a few boxes of stuff sitting in a closet, waiting to be going through. Apparently there is nothing there I have really miss. LOL Life is different here, living in a small town than it was in the city. My area had become so crowded and high paced. Whew, I dont even like to drive back into that area now. Did I mention that I Love it out here? Today we went to an all day "enrich Your Life, Senior Conference. I made some new friends and learned a lot. Not to mention all the encouragement and new ways of looking at things. We had a key not speaker, talking on Healthy Aging. he was really good. I had a chance to talk with him today and I had a question I needed an answer to. I have been struggleing with some things and even wondering if I am strugleing with Altimers or something so I asked him. I first told him about some of the events that has happened to me the past few years.. About being a caregiver to my mother as she declined with dementia and other isues, about loosing 5 lose family members in just a few weeks 6 years ago, followed by my niece being diagnoised with cancer, followed by my husband having the heart attack and stroke... Then this man stoped me. He said you have had quite a lot happen to you. he first said to me, ill bet you are having memory problems especially with names and numbers. I said yes. He said you probally have some real sleep problems. Yes... then he asked me if I have had shingles. To which I said thankfully no, but I have had the injection to protect me. He said thats a good thing because you are a prime target for them. He visited with me for quite a while about my other interests and activities. He stressed to me how important it is for me to get out on my own and get involved with things without My husband. I have heard all this before. And i agree. Its not like he is not able to be alone. He has had quite a wonderful recovery from the stroke. Im just saying, how good it was to have someone really understand whats going on inside a caregiver. And to be encouraged to get out and live. And to be assured I am not suffering from dementia or altimers just because I cant keep names and numbers and other information accessable in my brain. :-)

Thanx so much Rachel. I like that. Im going to adopt that one permantly.

I have been told by many people to start my packing immediately. So i have. There are places in my house that I stoped going to because of the laundry baskets full of clutter. These are the things I have put off for too long. I have not been able to do it. I cant stand to even look in to them. It has just been too hard. But here is the deal, I refuse to move anything like this into my new home. I can not just toss them in the trash because there are important items there mixed in with the junk that needs to be trashed. Am I the only one who does things like this? I dont think so. With the help of my sweet DIL we sat and went through them. It was much easier with someone that facing it all alone. I now have my sewing room all packed and labeled. The guest room has been cleared out to make space to store boxes until the moving pod is delivered. I have packed a very large part of my kitchen. Keeping only things we will use until we move. The garage is another story. I need to get out there and dig into some of those clutter boxes and make a clean place to stash filled boxes. Our weather has been just too hot to stay our there for any time at all. But our weather man said today is the last HOT day for awhile. Its also the offical end of summer but we do know how those indian summer days of fall can be. But im on my way to getting things packed and ready to move. The problem I am having is, packing noises are really bothering Eddie. Some days its worse than others. I know i am going to get all kinds of suggestions to send him off somewhere. but he dosnt go anywhere without me. :-( we just havnt gotten that going yet, and im not sure we ever will. My chain of thought has stoped right here. I do have a lot to get done. And im doing my best. I even have some friends that have offered to come help me. We need a nice man friend to come take him out for coffee or somewhere for like half a day. I will play with that idea and see what happens. Maybe my son would do that. But our son is having some back problems and cant do much himself. We will see what developes on this. I have to fight against guilt feelings. Cause he acts as if I do things to cause him these problems. He has never said it, but thats how I feel. Ya know, I really stoped living for quite a while. Now i am getting up and doing what needs to be done. We are making a big change that I believe will help both of us. Its going to be a lot of work on me. But thats ok. I just want to get it done and make it as painless on both of us as I can. Im doing my very best to keep the packing going in an organized manor so when we get in the new home things will be somewhat orderly. And not just a bunch of junk thrown together to get it moved. Thats enough for now. Its easier to just do it than to put it all in words. I thought this would calm me, but typing it out is actually stressing me. IM gonna go pack another box. as quietly as I can.

For may years we have dreamed of moving to a different house. not necessarily larger but one that more fit us. We have lived here for 38 years. WOW. Moved in as newley weds after being married for approximately two years. We had 2 children and raised them. All the while telling them our dream of living on an acre or two or so. Five wonderful grand children have been born and brought to our house, and they keep coming, which is wonderful :-). We have worn out several realtors who say we are hopeless. They think they find us the perfect home and its never THE PLACE OF OR DREAMS. Well guess what? Yes! We finally found it. Our daughter has been looking for us and even she has given up several times. But this time was different. We had just looked at a house across the street from her. It was no where near anything we would ever want. And I had never given any thought to living that close to them. On the way home, Eddie said he was tried of looking. ( like he has a million times) so we were going to give it a rest and not pressue it so much for a while. The very next day our daughter called us and was very insistant that we come see this house. The owner had just put out a for sale by owner sign, she knew the floor plan and was sure this was the one. reluctantly we took a look at it the next day. To our great surprise, It was so close to meeting all our dreams, we decided this is it. It happens to be larger than what we thought we wanted, but we have already decided what to do with the 4th bed room. I will tell u about that later. When we told the owner that this is THE HOUSE we have been looking for, she was really amazed. The first people that looked at it is buying it. Lets see, it is a house with a floor plan we really like, My sewing room will be larger and has a walk in closet :-D. It has a formal office with glass doors. The walls in this office are painted red. Hummmm we decided we can work with that. It will Be Eddies Military Display room. with our computer and file cabinet in it. Make mental note... buy two nice wooden file cabinets and stash the metal ones in the garage. We can hang the military quilt in there, that HE and I worked so hard on... it has a huge master bath room with two sinks, a large shower and a beautiful garden tub. some people call it a hot tub. Im gonna love that. There is a HUGE walk in master closet, a very nice kitchen. nice means large but not too large. But the living room is a big room. Should accommodate all of our family comfortably. It sets on one acre and has some very nice trees. Did i mention yet about my neighbor? I don't think so. We are right next door to our daughter. Much closer than we thought we would be, but we can work with this. And as time goes by, if we need extra help due to health issues as we age, It will be good to be in that location. Thats my big news. I had to share with everyone. I will cover some other issues in the next entry. this one is getting long.

I had been invited several times to a friends house to work on photo albums. After visiting with another friend, who was also invited, we decided to go. This friend host these work shop evenings 2 friday evenings a month. She has this amazing room set up. Large work tables in the center of the room with directional lights and fans. She has about everything anyone could need or want to do this craft. I do have a lot of stuff for this as well. Seems only yesterday, but truthfully it has been several years since I have worked on getting pictures in the albums. This was very good for me in several ways. For one thing, I was out by my self, with friends and doing something fun. A hobby of mine that had been put on a shelf (or under a table, in a closet and in the garage) for way too long. We talked, laughed, and actually accomplished something. It was so refreshing for me. I accomplished a lot without having to feel guilty cause my craft room is such a mess. I think I will go again next time she has this :-)

Yesterday, our daughter hosted a wonderful family gathering at her home. We started early at our home. Eddie fired up our smoker. He loves doing that,and I am so happy he can do it. He smoked 3 racks of pork ribs. MmmmMMmmMMmm they were very meaty and juicy and flavorful. Around 5ish we were at her home. We are looking at a home in her area, about 30 miles from our current house. So we took my sister, our son and his wife to look at a house we are considering. Then stopped at a firework stand. Its legal to fire them off in her town. I havnt bought fireworks in a very long time. When we returned to her home, we had a very nice BBQ dinner together. Then outside to the firework fun. When I was a kid, we would buy the little black cat fire crackers, untangle them so we can shoot of the individual ones. We would have fun with those all day long, sometimes several days. There are so many things you can do with them. But now, the fuse is so much shorter than it used to be. No more lighting and throwing. I showed my 10 yr old grandson how to light them, and move back. Then other things like, putting it under a cup and blowing it up high.. well, 3 or 4 inches high. It was amazing how quickly he caught on to all the many things he could do with them. For him, dark came far too early. LOL Between the 3 familys, we had quite a firework show. It was really good for all of us to be together and enjoy each other like this. Yes the weather was hot, it has been really hot here since mid june. But we were inside until things cooled off some. After dark we really enjoyed. She lives kind of in the country, at least away from the city lights. It was so good to look up and actually see the stars. We just sit and visited after the fireworks were gone. The kids ran around the yard with flashlights. They were supposed to be picking up the spent fireworks, but they were just enjoying eachother and the flashlights. We arrived back home after midnight. Yes, we were really tired. But we have today to rest up. It was a Great time with family.

My precious friend , Sue has been on my case about my inactivity here at strokeboard. She's right. I really should hang out here more. I didnt realize how long it has been since i have checked in. Not a lot has changed. Not really. Eddie has become very focused on a few important things. He had discovered how disorganized I am with the bills. But I am getting them done. Sometimes a late payment, but not usually. You would think after this long that I could of gotten my house in order by now. NOT! I guess im just a slob. I cant even get in my sewing room. I d like to pay someone to come in and just do it, put things away , in an orderly manor. Put stuff that i dont need in a big box or two, ok, maybe 3. and let me go through it. Wouldnt be right not to look, someone may toss out my grandmothers old pinking shears or something of personal value. But the thing is, when I try to do it, old projects start talking to me. Until i get the room cleaned up and back in order, there is not way to be productive. I would just make it a bigger mess. I did not intend to go there when i started typing. But guess I just needed to get that out. I did go through a little bit of it today. I need to blog about me for a bit. oh that above??? not really me, thats just the mess. But I have been under depression for awhile myself. back around Janurary, i visited with a psychologist again. I was really having some serious problems with my memory. I was having trouble recalling names of my friends and some of my family. wow, that scared me. My Psychologist just bluntly told me, the only problem I was having was I have stoped living my life. She asked me how long it had been since I went some place without Eddie. Just for my own fun? I couldnt even remember. So she gave me a calendar to start keeping track of what i do, and she wanted to see several outings alone, for something I want to do. I did go do a few things. but lost the calendar before my next appointment. Im working on it, but I am better. I have sat around this winter and gotten fat and lazy. Not good. I did find a nice diversion from reality, right here at home. I am now addicted to playing an online face book game. Kingdomes of Camelot. Wonder how many of u know what that one is, or even play it. But i am on it way too much. I know i am. Its also a social thing. I have friends there, who think highly of me. :-D thats nice onece in a while. this is long enough for this time. I will continue later...