The Worst of Times

Thanks, so many of you for e-mailing me to see if I were sick or something because I didn't blog last week. I'm afraid you were so right. It was a pretty hectic time, I must say. We had to go to Villa Park for a funeral on Saturday the 7th. Two weeks earlier we heard that my daughter's father in law had stage 4 cancer and it was too late to do anything. This is a man who was a very vigorous 81 years old. Van had never smoked in his whole life and was always healthy and hard working. He hadn't been feeling quite right for a few days so decided to go to the doctor. You can about imagine how we all felt when he got this diagnosis and in two weeks he was dead. Our granddaughter, Kristin and her family had planned to come and see him on the weekend so that they could see him before he died and they barely got there for the funeral. He was a pilot for United Airlines and my thinking is that he must had gotten it from second hand smoke in the cockpit before they had the no smoking laws.

Anyway, that was a crazy weekend. We went to Nikki's on Tuesday morning to see Kristin and family as they were leaving that night and we wanted to see them one more time before they left. We didn't get home until it was almost time to go to bed, so just didn't have time to post that night. The next morning I woke up with a horrible sore throat. I figured it might last a couple of days, so didn't go to the doctor until Friday, when I found out it was a bad bacterial bronchitis. He put me on Cipro and I still have to take it for five more days. I hope I get to feeling better pretty soon because I am so weak I can't even walk across the room without getting exhausted and really short of breath. I have a terrible cough and my ribs and stomach are so sore from it. Oh well, I am sure I will live and I just don't want to talk anymore about my being sick, except to say that I was just beginning to feel pretty well too when that hit. I hope it doesn't take me as long to get better as it has my friend who is still coughing and weak after six weeks!!

Easter was really a lonely day. I hated to miss church as I always look forward to our Easter Sunday services. Of course, I heard they were lovely, and I missed hearing Dick's group sing, which didn't thrill me either. Plus, I was alone until late in the afternoon as there were so many things for Dick to take care of after our meetings. We go from 11:00a.m. until 2:00p.m. and he had to leave around 8:00a.m. He did come home between Sacrament and Priesthood Meeting to see how I was, which helped, but still, it didn't seem like Easter to me.

I also went to see my orthopedist yesterday. I wasn't about to cancel an appointment that I had made four weeks ago, because he has been so very busy, it was the soonest he could see me. I could have gone to his PA, but I really wanted to see HIM. He confirmed my own diagnosis about my left shoulder problem. It WAS my rotater cuff. He gave me a shot of cortisone right into the middle of it and it was pretty unpleasant, I must say. It was really bad yesterday and I had to put ice packs on it for 20 minutes out of every two hours all during the rest of the day.

When I went to the doctor with my bronchitis, he told me that if I weren't feeling much better by Monday, that he wanted me to get a chest Xray and had given me the lab orders. So we also went to another building to get that. We left our house at 9:00 in the morning and didn't get home until a little after noon, so it was a very long morning for me. My shoulder really does feel quite a bit better today though and I just hope that shot lasts for a long time.

In just six days, on April 23, I will be 85 years old!! I should be feeling somewhat better by then, I hope, but don't think we will do anything special to celebrate. I had such a wonderful birthday on my 80th. All my kids came for the big party that Sue planned for me. It would have been fun to have had them come again, but everyone is way too busy this year. It's okay, I am going to do my best to ignore it. At least by the next day, I will be able to have something more interesting to post about. I think it might even be the day I usually post about one of my grandkids. That would be a fun thing to do. I can't remember whether I do that every third or fourth week of the month, but since I haven't done that yet, I'd better do it for sure because had it been today, I certainly would not have been prepared. That takes Dick to help me with the pictures. Even Dick can't figure out why the spacing goes crazy when we post the pictures. It looks perfect on the blog as we are doing it, but when it posts, the spacing between the pictures is way too much. I used to have Sue go into my blog and fix it, but I'm getting so I don't like asking her to do it, so Dick still tries to work it and sometimes he can get it pretty well, but it is never perfect. Go figure. Dick is pretty darned good on the computer but he has never posted a blog before and certainly has no intention of ever doing it, but he does read Sue's every day and so many times he will make a copy of it and take it into his Bishopric Meetings with him to share and everyone loves to read them. What's not to love about her blogs. They are all so interesting and different too. She can be funny, serious or whatever and they are all good. I wish I had half her talent.

Well, to tell you the truth, I'm about worn out, so it's back to my chair for me. Next week will be better, I promise. Love you all,

Darlene

Special note to Rune from Norway and Linda from Scotland: You really should read my daughter Sue's blog, just once and I think you will be hooked. Go to grannysuesnews.blogspot.com and look at some of her older entries too!