We’ve Moved!!

After nearly 7 weeks at Paula and Tom’s place in Glendale, we moved on Saturday to our next project site near Phoenix’s Sky Harbor airport.  For the next three weeks, we will be working at UMOM New Day Centers (see http://www.umom.org/ ).  This is the largest shelter for homeless families in this area.  We have come here for meetings in the past but have not worked here yet.

Since the eye problems prevented us for working at the camp in Indiana, this will be our first project in quite some time.  It is also the first time in awhile that we will be working with other new-to-us couples.  Our family of Nomads friends keeps getting larger all the time.  By late afternoon all 6 rigs were parked and we had brief hellos as we got settled.  We will all go to church services, have lunch together, and begin to get to know one another soon. 

The weekend prior to Thanksgiving was spent putting up outside lights at Paula’s.  She “recruited” us to help.  It took us two days!  Here is Bob doing surgery on a broken Santa.

Last weekend was Thanksgiving and our niece, Tomie, was home for the long weekend.  There were 7 of us at Paula’s for the holiday, and enough food for the whole neighborhood.  Some of Tom’s kids and grandkids stopped for a visit later in the day.   

Glendale has a festival in the original downtown area at this time of year which they call “Glendale Glitters”.  Many decorative lights are hung throughout a park near city hall and the park is filled with food and craft tents.  Many dance schools perform there as well, including one that one of Tom’s granddaughters is part of.  One of the activities was an area set up to play in the snow for $2.  Food for thought you Minnesotans!

  

A Week of Ups and Downs

We know that a number of our regular blog readers are involved with medical aid in some respect or another (EMT, First Responders, etc).  For you, what’s your response to a green wristband like this:

Bob has been wearing one for over a month and last week we learned, at an Urgent Care and at a hospital ER, that a lot of medical people were not familiar with this warning.  At the Opthomologist appointment earlier this week we learned that it is intended to warn against air transport, like helicopters and airplanes, and also to restrict some anesthesiology procedures.

The eye exam went well.  The recuperation is very slow, but everything is about on schedule.  The gas bubble in Bob’s eye is slowly getting smaller; to the point now where he is comfortable driving (giving Paige a break).  The bubble sits high in the eyeball, which is low in his line of sight.  Now that it is less than half, he can see distance and TV pretty well, but newspapers and books have to be held high.  He will remain restricted from flying until the bubble is all gone, so we are not planning a return to Minnesota for the holidays.  Maybe in January or February, instead.

Also last week, there was a horrible traffic accident about 2 blocks from here.  Two single-occupant vehicles met nearly head-on.  One driver died at the hospital later, and the other (who is Paula and Tom’s estimator and office manager) was taken into custody and charged with manslaughter due to a high blood alcohol level.  He has been in jail since then and went for arraignment today.  So many lives were changed by one stupid decision!

On a lighter note, Thanksgiving is coming soon and we got busy making the family’s recipe for lefse – about 10 lb of potatoes yielded enough to last through New Year’s. 

 

We’ll spend Thanksgiving here at the Shaw Compound with Uncle Phil and Elsie.  Tomie will also be home from LA.  We’ll miss the Minnesota family but enjoy being here with Paula and gang.

On Tuesday nights one of our favorite restaurants, Valle Luna, has a special for seniors.  It’s very busy but we like to go then.  Here’s the Shaw Compound folks having dinner there last week.

Never Boring Around Here

We have been taking turns: after Paula was released from one hospital, Bob went into another.  Part of Thursday’s leftover salmon lunch picked the worst possible place to get “stuck” after swallowing – right where his esophagus was weakened after surgery many years ago.  Situations like this have happened once in awhile, but they usually pass within a couple of minutes.  This time, it only got worse.  The Urgent Care we visited didn’t have the equipment to help; they sent us to a local hospital.  We got there early in the evening, and they wanted to wait until Friday morning when the full staff were available for an endoscopy.   Bob was admitted to the Observation Unit.  Not a pleasant way to spend a night. The endoscopy was done early in the morning and we were home by 11 a.m. with Bob feeling much better. 

Meanwhile, Paula was feeling well enough to get some work done at the office, and to go out to the theater with some friends on Friday night, but that might have been a little too much too soon.  She is hurting again on Saturday. 

Bob’s eye is continuing to improve.  He still cannot see totally out of the left eye but sight is almost 50% now.  Due to his hospital visit, we missed the eye doctor checkup on Friday morning.  We now have to wait until the 16^th to see the eye doc again for a status check. 

Haven’t heard much about Paige?  She is functioning as the chief nurse, chauffeur, and cook around here.  Thankfully, her health is good currently! 

Not many opportunities to do much around here recently.  However, the weather has improved immensely!  This weekend is sunny and in the 80’s.  Perfect!

 

Just in Time for Halloween

In our last posting, we mentioned Paula’s surgery.  That was completed a couple of days ago, and her doctors have said that all went well.  She was moved out of ICU to a private room yesterday and guess what she did today:

                                                    Yes! It is shopping time already!

She is almost ready to go back onto solid foods, and everyone is hoping she will be able to keep it down for a change.  Her release day may be Sunday but that’s not a sure thing yet. 

Elsewhere at the Shaw Convalescent Compound, Bob’s eye is continuing to slowly heal.  After the first procedure in Michigan, he had a bubble of nitrogen in his left eye.  It was not so big that he couldn’t share driving with Paige.  After the second procedure, he’s had a much larger bubble there.  It has been so large that he hasn’t been willing to drive, although the doctor says he is legal to  (what a scary thought).  The eye is filling with its normal fluid and the bubble is slowly shrinking.  Lately the edge of the bubble is coming into view, and the effect of one good/one bad eye is quite irritating.  With Halloween coming tomorrow, we decided it was time for Bob’s Pirate Look:

                                                                 Is this scary, or what?

A the rate things are going, he is hoping to be able to see with both eyes at his next checkup late next week, and maybe even help Paige with the driving chores.

The weather here has been beastly hot since we arrived – until today.  The high was only 80 or so – just lovely!  Love it!!  Sounds like the forecast is for highs in the 70’s.           

We had a date night on Wednesday night.  Paula loaned Bob the book “The Martian” and he really enjoyed it.  Tomie worked on the premier of the move with Matt Damon so Paula and Tomie had already gone to the move.  We went to the movie and both enjoyed it a lot.  Bob said it was true to the book although some additional tense moments were left out of the move to save time.  We then went to Panda Express right outside the movie theater and had dinner outside.  Great evening!

The Latest

Bob’s invasive second eye procedure was done 9 days ago, and we’ve just come back from his second inspection.  Everything is going along like the doctors expected, which means     s  l o  w     improvement.  Our next appointment is in two weeks for another exam.  We are done with one of the eye drops, and usage of the second is cut in half.  The biggest news is “No More Special Positioning” (keeping the face parallel to the floor 50% of the day), except for not sleeping on my back.  This means I can now get out and do errands, etc., without having to think about making up position time.  I am even legal to drive, but won’t because I am not yet comfortable with the level of impairment.

So, what else is new?  Well, the 100-degree temps are over and done with.  We had 3 to 4 days of quite heavy rain, and even some hail,

 but that is also now done.  Nothing but 80-degree days and 60-degree nights; just great.

Tom has been working in his garage to get a car ready for his daughter Megan to drive in a demolition derby at the AZ State Fair this weekend.  It’s been a lot of work for Tom and Megan but they’ve enjoyed it.  Sure hope she enjoys it and doesn’t get hurt!

Tomie was here for the past weekend, but has now returned to the LA area.  We enjoyed spending time with her and hearing about her job at 20^th Century Fox.  Paige had a birthday dinner at a new-to-us sushi place which we all enjoyed!

We have nothing special planned for the next few weeks but Paula does.  She’s having surgery on Tuesday to remove a growth on her liver.  We’ll be helping out around here to keep things going while she’s recuperating.  It’s the Shaw Convalescent Home here!

Eye Status

Our Michigan optometrist provided a referral to another clinic in Peoria AZ, not far from where we are parked at Paula’s.  We got to meet this eye surgeon on Tuesday morning.  He inspected the eye and scheduled surgery for Wednesday afternoon.  It turned out to be late afternoon before we were released. 

Thursday afternoon another Dr at the same clinic inspected the eye and advised us that everything was going well.  Now all that is left is a couple of weeks of recuperation.

So, what is recuperation like?  The Michigan procedure patched a couple of tears in the retina and replaced some fluid with a Nitrogen gas bubble.  The latest procedure was more invasive.  It touched up one repair, found a new area, and replaced more fluid with a larger gas bubble.

Now the metallic cup goes back on for nighttime protection, but comes off during the day.  There are 2 different drops that need to be administered 4 times a day for a week.  At night I have to block up the forehead and chest, but keep the nose and face straight down at all times.  During the day, I have to keep the nose and face down half of the time, like 30 minutes of every hour, but get to straighten up once in awhile.  This will continue for at least a week, maybe more.  My next appointment will be Friday of next week.

While waiting to leave for surgery on Wednesday, Bob noticed some ants in our bathroom.  Within 15 minutes there were ants everywhere.  They even bit Paige’s feet!!  How can so many ants come at once??  We had to take a quick run to a hardware store for Taro.  I was afraid of what we’d find when we returned!!  We set up Taro in many locations and the ants swarmed to some of them.  Bob inspected outside the motorhome and found that the ants seemed to be coming up along the electrical cord.  He sprayed all the tires, jacks, and the electrical cord.  We were gone for about 5 hours.  When we got back from surgery, we found that the Taro and spraying had mostly done away with the ants.  There were a few strays that looked confused but they went away soon.  Phew!!  I’ve never seen such a huge infestation before!

It has been too hot here to do anything more than laying around in air-conditioning and helping Paula a bit.  The past two days have had high temps near 100.  Clouds today should hold the temps to 98 or so, before more seasonable 80’s come for next week.

Tomie, our niece, is coming today for the weekend.  It will be good to see her! 

In Phoenix

We did it: 1900 miles from Kalamazoo to Phoenix in 4-1/2 days. 
We have plenty of time to rest up and get to tomorrow morning’s eye appointment.  Whatever the process will be for the eye, there will be lots of time for recuperation.

Our long drive was mostly uneventful.  We mentioned stopping at a Mission Distribution Center on our first night (in Illinois); the second night was another freebee at a casino in Tulsa; our third night was another free night at a winery in Texas where a wedding was scheduled.  The party was indoors and over by midnight.  After everyone left, we were along on the prairie. 

We had to unlock the gate in order to leave the next morning.  Last night we actually tried to rent a campsite in New Mexico, but the only place in the area was totally booked.  Many people were coming in to find there was no space, and a traffic jam occurred as about 8 of us had to make a U-turn and leave through a narrow driveway as others were pulling in.  Our alternative was to boondock at Walmart, after taking our 13 ft tall rig under a bridge marked 13’-2” (holding our breath).  This morning it appeared there were at least 12 rigs who spent the night with us at Walmart.  So, we spent 4 nights on the road and didn’t spend any money on camping!  Good deal – but we spent a big chunk on diesel fuel!!

We arrived at Paula and Tom’s place early this afternoon and got parked for an extended stay.  It’s darn hot here!!  Almost 100 and it’s going to stay that warm for a few days.