Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Tom is doing well!

Ok so a quick note to let all know that the patient is doing well. He is up walking, getting bored with being at home, and "tired of talking about food."

Mamaw has been a lifesaver with all her help with house work, kitchen detail and food preparations!! She left today to go back home and we will miss her greatly!!

I was talking to a friend and telling her how much I appreciated my neighbors and all their help during this stressful time. They have really been invaluable with bringing food, mowing the lawn, checking in on the patient, helping make wedding decorations for the upcoming wedding, sending cards, and all their gifts, good thoughts and prayers!! I still can't believe their generosity. The fact that they hired a cleaning crew to clean the house before we came home was amazing! That brought the discussion around to how nice it would be to actually have cleaning crews on a regular basis. My friend said she would really like a housekeeper that came daily, picked up the house and cooked, as opposed to a weekly or monthy clean crew...I told her it was REALLY nice to have a housekeeper!! Mamaw was doing all that around here and was my housekeeper.
It will now be a different story here as I will become the main cook.... I know, I heard all those sighs, and "poor Tom's". If you know me at all, you know I would much rather be out digging ditches or cleaning toilets as opposed to being in the kitchen!!!
I can't believe it has been almost 4 weeks now. The old boy is anxious to get back to work and may be able to go back sometime in the next week or two . The big hold up to return to work is really the healing of his sternum. He has had little to no pain in the last couple of days and will be glad when he can do more without worry of the sternum.
He really misses being able to hold baby Teddy. He still can't lift him for a couple of months yet. Anyway, we have had the pleasure of keeping Teddy more while his mom and dad are out and about and he is growing up soo fast!!


He is pretty smart too because when the patient had to do his breathing machine, otherwise known as "Mr. Pain", Teddy remembered us cheering and clapping to encourage grandpa in the hospital. (It was a real battle sometimes to get the patient to do his breathing treatment because that was about the only time he had significant pain.)

When Tom started doing his treatment at home, Teddy immediately stopped what he was doing and turned to watch grandpa breathe. He started clapping as soon as he realized what he was doing...it was very cute!


I was thinking the other day how far we have gone since those first couple of days of worry and stress. It is funny, in an ironic way, how one of the surgeons was describing what was going on with Tom's heart by comparing it to plumbing and pipes. I wanted to tell him that we had PLENTY of recent experience with plumbing and pipes!!
That is a whole other "plumbing story" that began with the OBB ( Owens Backyard Bash). It was definitately a problem when the downstairs toilet "backed up and overflowed" in the middle of the OBB with probably 130 people partying in the backyard, 6 kegs of beer and NO working toilet!!

We managed to make it through that little problem and thought replacing the old toilets would prevent further problems. Little did we know that we would be without a middle toilet for a week, since there was difficulty getting a toilet to fit under the "banjo" lipped counter. After many attempts at installing the appropriate toilets, we finally thought we were home free with three working new toilets. Little did we know that things were just beginning!
About a month after the OBB, I was taking a shower and had just put my creme rinse on my hair when Tom ran up and shouted "Turn off the water the downstairs toilet is overflowing!" Well, there I was standing in the shower, naked , wet, with creme rinse all over my hair thinking, "Now what do I do?" I came down stairs in old clothes and creme rinse and Tom took me outside and used the hose to rinse my hair. (That would have been a real picture opportunity but sorry no picture was taken of that!!)

After the hair crisis was averted, we then had to deal with the backup/overflow mess. Just our luck that this happened on Labor day. Does anyone care to hazard a guess about after hours/holiday plumber rates?! My first thought was, "do you think we could make it another day without water?" Funny, that was also my sister's first comment that "I would probably have waited a day without water". We are our dad's girls!!
The plumber came out, sort of unplugged the pipe but said "this is not guaranteed work because there is still a problem." Through many phone calls back and forth to the city water dept, the plumber coming again to run a camera through the pipes , and the city trying to decide whose problem it really was: ours or theirs. The city finally decided it was on their side (THANK YOU GOD!) It was like worker bees out front! They had the utility people mark where the utilities were, closed our road, brought in dump trucks, backhoes, and service vehicles like you wouldn't believe. They worked from early morning until 10 PM fixing the pipe.




They had to dig down 8 feet to get to the clean out valve that was buried ( lot of good it did down there- thank you pulte homes). They couldn't believe what they finally found. Our lateral line pipe that connects to the main sewer line in the middle of the street had NEVER been connected!! There was 3 feet of pipe missing!!

Here is the missing pipe picture:

Here is the fixed 3 foot section of piping:
We have lived here 20 years and fortunately not had a problem, so to speak. We think that the pipe that was not connected was laying on gravel and rock and it was all working like a French drain. Go figure. The city workers actually were laughing and in awe about the situation. They were not real happy about how long it took them to find and correct the problem, though. Anyway, after a month of plumbing problems, paying for new toilets ( that were not really needed in the first place), paying for plumbers on holidays, having fixed plumbing is: PRICELESS!! That is what we say about Tom having "new plumbing" in his heart!!

We are all thankful that Tom is progressing as fast as he has and doing well! Now it is on to the wedding preparations and celebration.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think everyone forgot to check your blog because they forgot you had one! Nice to see you getting back into the swing of things... there are plenty of bloggable events coming up, so I hope to see them coming...

P.s. I hear the patient is very excited about being able to get outta the house for a change. That's wonderful news!

Neva said...

Yep...forgot there was a blog over here!!! Love the plumbing analogy...you do remember that there is no "A" in definitely, right????I believe there is a blog about that somewhere........

Jeff said...

We thought you forgot how to use the computer! Yay internet!