Here we are, on the road: We’re in Santa Clara, California

6/14/15 Chuck’s report

Not much to write about this week, just wanted to get an update on both Susy and Lorraine’s recovery. Short version, both are doing fine. More on both later.

This week has been sort of a quiet week, we didn’t attempt many things, kept pretty close to home. We did make it to one speech therapy session for Lorraine, the second session was canceled due to the therapist calling in sick. First time In awhile that she’s only had one session in a given week.

We made a couple of trips to the store, to the mall once and made a short stop at the swap meet to get some fruits and vegetables. Susy and Lorraine were both able to do the walking portion pretty well although Susy did take a nap afterwards, she was tired. Susy isn’t supposed to lift anything over 5# so I was along to carry the bags.

Thursday we went to Katie’s school for her last day of school. Her teacher had a deal set up in the classroom with a slide show of all the kids and their activities throughout the year. I didn’t know they had gone on so many field trips this year. The kids were sure excited but I was amazed how well they settled down when asked. They were all proud to be 5th graders next year.

Saturday morning there were a couple of classic cars parked in the street in front of us and more kept showing up every once in awhile. Lorraine and I walked out to see them, there was about 15 or so. One of the owners told us they had a car show and BBQ here at the Elks and they were just waiting to get inside and parked.

Susy found there was a Relay for Life Cancer Walk in Sunnyvale, just a few miles North of us, and Lorraine wanted to attend. This is a major fund raising event for the American Cancer Society and has been going on for 25 years now. She has made one of these every year since her bout with cancer back in 2000, 15 year cancer free!!

We drove to the middle school where the event was happening and shortly Susy, Katie and Mark came by too. This was a small event, we’ve been to some fairly large ones over the years. Lorraine met a few other survivors and some of the volunteers too. One of them mentioned to her about another Rely Cancer Walk held later in the afternoon, this one back near Susy’s house and Lorraine wanted to try to attend this one too.

Lorraine walked the first lap, the survivors’ lap, as always but this time they asked the caregivers to walk the other way and meet them halfway. Then they could walk together. It was getting pretty warm so after the first lap, we checked out a few of the tents, Susy bought a couple of items then we headed to our cars. Mark and Katie were heading for one of Katie’s friends house and we headed to our place.

There were lots more classic cars out front so we decided to once again walk out and see them. By now there must have been 50 or so cars, some were really nice and others were work in progress type. They were getting registered and driving into the back lot when we left, nice. Don’t know why but I didn’t bring the camera either time, shoot.

After our walk, we picked up Misty then drove over to Susy’s where we filled up on water, dropped off the dog and headed to the second Cancer Walk of the day. This one was pretty small also but they said most of the towns around here are starting their own Walks so there are more but most are smaller. I imagine they will grow as the years pass. Unfortunately, until a cure is found, there will be more lives touched by cancer.

Once again, Lorraine walked the first lap with about 10 other survivors. By now it was getting HOT so we didn’t stay too long after that, needed to get someplace and cool off.

We thought about going to a movie but when we got there, the show we wanted to see was already sold out. So we just headed back to Susy’s house for the rest of the afternoon. We had a nice time and a good steak BBQ dinner too.

Susy got out of the hospital last Sunday about noon and we came back to our place where she stayed with us for a few days and nights. She is getting along very well although I think she may be pushing herself a bit. She has a neck brace and says it gets hot therefore she likes to take it off as often as she can. But she does wear it whenever she is in the car and when walking, just has it off around the house and such.

She has pretty well weaned herself off the pain pills although she does take one at night, helps her get to sleep. Like I said, she is able to walk with no problem other than her sight is a bit limited due to her neck brace keeping her from seeing her feet. She was using a cane for support while walking for the first 5 or 6 days but says she doesn’t need it anymore.

Her incision site looks good, the doctor did a good job of following a natural crease on her neck so when it heals it will not be very noticeable. Some of the stiches were left a bit long and she wanted them trimmed back but otherwise it looks good and seems to be healing nicely.

She has spent the last three nights at her place but someone is always there with her just in case. I don’t want her to be alone for any length of time yet, just in case she were to fall or something. She may have to spend a few nights at our place again but that’s better than being by herself and having an issue when she’s by herself.

Lorraine is still showing signs of more recovery in her speech. She did see her family doctor this week and everything was OK. She did suggest that Lorraine see a Cardiologist as a precaution so we’ve set that appointment up with him for Tuesday.

We also called the doctor at Stanford to see about the results from the heart monitor she wore for two weeks. They called back later and said they would send the complete results to her doctors but the short version was they didn’t find any problems. One of the main things they wanted to check was to see if she had A Fib or an unusual heartbeat. Folks who have A Fib are at a much higher risk of stroke and we wanted to make sure that wasn’t an issue with Lorraine.

This sort of re-enforces what her neurologist told us last time, that his best guess was the aneurysms were the cause of both of her strokes. We may never know for sure but it’s nice to have the A Fib issue and both aneurysms repaired and not worry about either of them causing another stroke. Would really be nice if she never has another one!!!

Just for info, Lorraine is scheduled to have her last aneurysm repaired on the 29th of this month. I’ll send out a notice before that as a reminder to put her in your prayers and thoughts for that procedure. And of course, any time you want to pray for us and our family, we’ll take it!!

The weather is once again warming up. The forecast was for a heat advisory in the area earlier in the week but we only had 1 1/2 days of high temps, low 90s, before it clouded up and started raining on Tuesday. This was a fairly good storm, I heard the area got more rain from this unusual timed storm than in the normally rainy month of January. But the area still needs lots more rain to fill the reservoirs, they are pretty low and the whole state is on heavy water restrictions.

Friday and Saturday the temps once again climbed into the upper 80s, low 90s with no sign of clouds. The hills are mostly brown now, not much sign of green up there.

We are planning on staying here until after Lorraine has been given a clean bill of health after her next procedure. I don’t know the exact follow up plans after that but will certainly be here as needed afterwards. Although we are both ready to go someplace, we’ll stay around here as long as necessary.

I know there are some pictures in the camera so I’ll go through them and add some.

Katie and her best friend on the last day of school.