Looking back over this blog, I realize this online journal is now mostly about daughter Juliet, not "Arts and Crafts". And it has been almost a week since it was updated. (Thank you, Sharon, for your text last evening asking about Julie and prompting me to write an update.) Here is what has happened since last Tuesday:
Julie was taken by ambulance from Denver on Wednesday, a five hour trek over the Continental Divide, which resulted in more trauma to her pressure wounds. She was placed back at the manor, sans IV medications, all being replaced by oral meds. Good news: she was transferred from the hospital back to her "manor home." I returned a few days earlier back to GJ.
Since arriving back in Grand Junction, she has been kept on bed rest and on a special mattress and bed at the manor that shifts her body weight to try to help her heal the back thigh area. We have read half a book aloud since then: Virginia's Diary. And Gene reads his book to her. We play Word Chums.
Today she was angry, mad, and frustrated at being kept in bed. She broke her iPad Saturday (it fell off the bed), so I got it replaced and found some little cord attachers that will keep her phone, her Fire, and her iPad all hooked up and disentangled from one another. Maybe. And I bought a one year guarantee so that if she breaks it again, the warranty will cover it. Bad news was that I got a glass cut from the screen; just glad it was not Julie that received the sliver in her hand.
And we have had several talks about hospice being brought in to help her. These were not easy sessions, but realistic at this time. For now, the APH (atrial pulmonary hypertension) is being managed, but APH is a progressive heart disease under the umbrella of COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease), a diagnosis that results in eventual death. The good news is that the lasix are keeping fluid from building up around her lungs, and she is breathing easier. We will not discuss the bad news.
And I finished the Promenade Shawl. Never will I knit that again as those garter stitches never seemed to end. But eventually, finished...
Yesterday, I said I would be knitting. And yes, I did just that.
Almost finished with the Promenade Shawl.
And the (3rd, count it) Piper's Journey Shawl is well on its way to completion. That pretty pink yarn is from Ginny, who dyed it with pokeberries! I am joining in with her YarnAlong.
All this knitting is happening because Julie is still in Denver in the hospital.
The news last night, set to the background of Julie crying over the cell, was that the manor is reluctant to take her back as her "home" because she is on an IV. But the IV is only temporary, we hope, and she should be on oral medications shortly. Does this mean Julie will need to find another nursing home placement? Will another nursing home here in the home town take her on, or will there be further reluctance because of her complications? (She does require lots of assistance in turning in bed, electronic lifting into her motorized wheelchair, bathing, help with her two ostomy care bags, daily wound care, etc.) Need I go into further detail?
So instead of biting my nails, I have turned to reading (again, PomPom, I am into the Tuesday readings with help from the Paraclete) and knitting, and even getting a haircut yesterday and planning on coffee with friends this morning.
And Julie stews in Denver at hospital. Pray hard, friends, for answers to her placement here in Grand Junction.
On Saturday, it was such a privilege to meet PomPom, whom I have followed on her blog for at least five years. We have participated in Christmas swaps, and exchanged comments on our blogs over many past posts. She is a delightful, warm, sweet, loving person who has prayed me through many a trial (as has Sandra and many another, thank you very much).
Here is a picture of the two of us taken by PomPom on Saturday:
"That is God's call to us--simply to be people who are content to live close to Him and to renew the kind of life in which the closeness is felt and experienced." ~ Thomas Merton ~ (as read on Sandra's blog)
It was so kind of her to give me a fixed hour prayer book, The Paraclete Psalter. I am reading today Psalm 24. Thank you again, PomPom...prayers for your husband as he is in Taiwan this week.
Yesterday, I returned back from University Hospital in Aurora, leaving Julie for more medical care. Over the weekend, she was bombarded with lasix (diuretics) and today is to have a follow-up echo-cardiogram to determine what levels of medications would be in her best interests to hold pulmonary hypertension (PAH) at bay. She might return this afternoon to Grand Junction by ambulance, or she might not. The roads were to become icy by last evening, and Glenwood Canyon will be closed tomorrow during the daylight hours for repair from a previous rock slide. It is unlikely that Julie will have to be air ambulanced back to Mesa Manor here in Grand Junction. But she might have to be in hospital until Wednesday when the roads are open and passable. It appears we are back living in the wild west when wagon trains could not make it over the pass, which is almost the way it is over the Continental Divide in present day.
That reminds me of the book A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains, a good read about a single woman in the mid 1800's, Elizabeth Bird. Amazon says:
"A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains" is one of the many accounts of Isabella L. Bird's amazing travels and adventures. At the age of twenty-two in 1854 Isabella left a comfortable life in England for a life of adventurous travel. "A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains" is the account of six months of those travels in 1873 through the rugged terrain of the Colorado Rockies. Based upon her letters to her sister this account relates the many hardships of the great western frontier in the pioneer days as well as the awesome beauty of nature she found in the western territories.
But I digress. Now the day lies ahead. It is rainy and dark, a good day to finish up that Promenade shawl. And wait to hear more news from University Hospital on its 254 acre campus, a city within a city.
