Saturday, July 11, 2015

We’re in Santa Clara, California

 

July 12, 2015                                                                                                                           Lorraine’s report

Hello from Santa Clara.  It is so nice to be almost done with alllll the therapy and stuff I have been going through…It has been a longgg haul for me.  Thank you Lord for all you have done for me, I am so thankful for all your of your great and wondrous thoughts and deeds that you have given me.  Thank you Lord for it all.  I am so grateful for it.

Thursday was a good day for me even though I had to say good bye to one of my therapists.  What a nice gal.  She sure put me through a bunch of stuff, but I came through with flying colors, and I am better for it.  Thank you Kim!!  You know, this was the 2nd/3rd time I have gone through some of this “therapy”  stuff.  Hope it doesn’t happen again.  If I do, well, this gal was sure good to help me.  

Some of the writing is still hard for me but I am getting it again.  I just have to slow down and at times retype it.  As I have said, I just need to just slow down and rethink it again. 

I have tried to remember some of the things that happened when I had my “time out”, when I had the stroke.  It was pretty awful!!!  It took me a few hours/week to remember and try to piece some of it together.  And  I can’t remember parts of the stroke; it was pretty traumatic for me.

So now I hope we can move on and get on with our lives.  We saw one of new doctor’s last week (the surgeon) and he said we need to get back to our lives.  It was so good to hear that Doctor say that to me.  I just can’t tell you how much that means to me;  I’m getting another chance to go forward.  Thank you all for all you have done for me.  I can’t tell you what that means to me. Thank you!

Until next time…Hugs to all, 

Lorraine

 

7/12/15                                                                                                                                      Chuck’s report

I checked our calendar and counted the number of doctor and therapist appointments Lorraine has had since we came here after her stroke on March 22.  I couldn’t count the ones when she was in the hospital after her stroke or when she was having her procedures done.  So in April, May, June and July, she has been to a doctor 19 times and worked with a therapist 37 times.  I figure in just 101 days she has had 57 visits, more than one ever other day and none of these visits were on a weekend.  In the beginning, she had three different therapists seeing her twice a week but for the last two months its just been the speech therapist. 

But I must say, everything seems to be falling place as well as we had hoped now.  Lorraine saw her GP doctor this week and once again got good news/results from her.  She said she didn’t have any problems with us traveling but does want to see Lorraine in 4 – 6 months.

She also had a visit with her speech therapist and she also says Lorraine is progressing very well and suggests she stop therapy and see what happens.  She also had no problem with us getting back to a traveling lifestyle and told us if we though Lorraine needed more therapy that most hospitals could help us find someone. 

Lorraine has one more doctor visit, she see’s her neurologist for a follow-up on Thursday, its been three months since she’s seen him.  At that time he was recommending that we plan on staying in this area for up to two years because of her medical issues.  But in that three months a lot has happened so we are planning on him also giving her the green light to resume a more normal life. 

We’ve discussed our traveling lifestyle and won’t plan on going/staying in remote, more out of the way, areas as much.  We will try to stay closer to cities that have good medical facilities in case we need one.  But that probably will not limit us too much, when I look back at our travels we haven’t been out of touch for more than a week at a time very often.  So based on that, I think we won’t have to change much, maybe a little more advance planning, stay out of West Texas and maybe not drive to Alaska through BC and the Yukon. 

But I will say, every time we’ve had a medical issue on the road, we’ve always been very satisfied with the medical people we’ve found with one exception, a doctor in the hospital in Bullhead City who was very hard to work with.   After we fired that doctor, the replacement guy and the care Lorraine got at that hospital was very good. 

Susy is also recovering nicely and she sees her surgeon for a follow-up on Monday the 20th.  We are planning on her getting the ok to resume with her life too, mostly being able to drive as she is doing just fine except for that.  She will probably get a different neck brace to wear whenever she is in a car, something a little smaller that will allow her to turn her head. 

If Susy does get released to drive on Monday we are thinking we will leave here on Tuesday or Wednesday and head North to Washington.  We will probably take a week to get back home, we don’t have to hurry.  But we are both getting “hitch itch” after being here this long.  Lorraine said this is the longest we’ve been in one spot since we’ve been on the road except for the time I took a part time job back home in 2010. 

I got a text message message from an app on my phone, Gas Buddy, letting me know the price of gas would be increasing in California this week due to lower storage inventory.  Today on the news I heard prices went up $0.40 to $1.00 a gallon in Southern California over the past two days.  It’s only gone up about $0.15/gal here but this is just in time for us to resume travels, go figure.  I don’t know if the prices will be going up elsewhere but what starts in California usually goes throughout the rest of the US quickly.   

The weather has been a bit cooler this week, highs only getting to the high 70s, low 80s.  Even around Sacramento the highs have only been in the lower 90s the last couple of days, not bad for this time of the year.  I doubt if these lower temps well still be around when we travel through there in 10 days but one could hope. 

I checked and once again there aren’t any pictures to add this week.  Instead I guess I’ll just close up and get this posted. 

Thanks   Chuck

515

No comments: