Another update on Dad, from Dad...

Yes, it's been forever since we heard about my dad. It's hard to believe that this time last year, he was told that he needed to have a fairly routine arterial bypass surgery performed on his left leg. They didn't feel that it was an emergency situion, though, so they scheduled it for July 2. Then, 4 weeks and 5 surgeries after the original surgery, on August 1st, he ended up with an amputated left leg. It is not how I would suggest spending quality time with your family, but it did bring us all closer together than ever. And now we get reports like this from time to time from my Dad:

Mark Young's Sporatic Condition Report - 16 May, 2008

Good evening one and all. Time has been passing quickly and it has been a while since my last report. Of course time flies when you are having fun and I suppose that I have been having about as much fun as I could be at this time. My progress seems to be growing upon its self and just about the time I feel real happy about doing something for the first time or maybe better, some other new and improved something comes along.

I have been working a full 8 hour day for some time now, but in the past three weeks, I have been going out and performing actual hands on work. The first four hours of the day are spent at the hospital repairing locks, changing lock cores and preparing my in-house lock shop. The afternoon is spent back at the home office desk monitoring the phones and making distribution runs – it is a loooonnng hallway. I also spend some time in the lock shop making new lock cores and cutting keys. So far I have been able to create what I hope to be all the worksheets I will need while changing all the cores (about 1500) in the hospital.

Another project we are running in parallel to the core changes is a survey of the condition of the doors. There are over 2700 doors in the building and most of them are over 20 years old and have been used heavily all that time. The hardware is just about shot and many of the doors are a bit beat up. The facility manager wants to have a program of refurbishing the door system and wants to know just how big his problem is. It is big.

The past three days have pretty much been go in to work, hit the floor running (well, sort of) and not sit down until lunch time some four hours later. Today my watch had stopped and it was well after lunch time before I decided to sit down for a few minutes.

Last night I removed the face of the truck’s dashboard and pulled out the radio. A new one was installed three weeks ago but the front speakers have quit working and I was hoping it was just a loose connection. It still might be a loose connection, but not the ones I could get to. Wiggling around in the floorboard was not nearly as easily as it used to be, but it can be done. Of course wiggling around in the floorboard is something that becoming less easy well before now.

A couple of days ago, during a rare dry day, I got the weed whacker out and ran it around the yard. It took a while, take one step – plant the feet – whack a weed – take a step – etc – etc – etc…. I was a happy tired when I got done.

Last weekend we went down to the Tick Farm and while Barb mowed the grass, I puttered around with the trailer and the digging out of roots that were unearthed last fall when we had the yard landscaped. I spent the day walking around on the less than flat gravel driveway and up on the steep of the hill side, most of it without the cane.

This is a lot of natter about things other than my physical condition, but I am excited about finally doing something constructive.

Oh, by the way, most of the walking and standing I have been doing for the last week or so has been without the use of my cane. It is still around, but I do have a problem of remembering where I left it last. When I pull my work cart around the building, I am using it a bit as a cane I suppose, but not leaning on it as much as just having it there if I need it. I do know that I can move faster without the cane than with it.

I have had to go to the leg store and have some adjustments done to the leg. My stump continues to shrink and the socket needs to be shimmed when it gets to be too loose. The tech says we can do this a couple more times and then they will look into making a new one. In a perfect world, there would be no shims in the long term usage leg. Other than that, the leg continues to perform as advertised.

It is not a stretch to say that I am tired in the evening and more than ready to remove the leg when I stop, but for the most part I am satisfied with what I have been able to accomplish during the day. I really do not know what sort of maximum performance I can expect to achieve with my leg, but I do know that my progress has been rapid lately. Let’s just hope it keeps on keepin’ on.

Barb has been doing well. She goes to work each day knowing that it is one day closer to her impending retirement. Preparing the house for sale has kept her, Melissa and myself busy, but the progress is slow. We still have two rooms to paint and a lot of work in the garage to do before we think it ready to put on the market.

As always, I Sincerely thank you for your continued interest and support.

Mark

Yayyyyy Dad! The hospital that he talks about doing the maintenance in is the same one that his surgeries were done in last year. His boss would visit him *every* day, and make sure that whatever Dad neede or wanted (within reason...), he had. If you're going to be stuck in the hospital for a few weeks, make friends with the facilities manager first. :o)

Neat way to raise money...

Clay Lubbers is combining two of his loves - the school that he teaches for, and motorcycling. He teaches for a Christian school in Michigan, which is privately funded. It looks to be a small school that really tries to teach children the fundamentals of public school while laying a good foundation in the Bible, too.

Clay is going to be doing an endurance ride later this summer, and has decided to make it into a Ride-A-Thon. He's set up a webpage at http://www.claysrideathon.org that give details about the project, and to accept pledges and donations, which go directly to the school. Very neat.

Take a gander and make a pledge if you're so inclined.

I am sooo out of shape...

We've started working on the little cinder block house behind ours, getting it ready for Jack's daughter and her family to move into. It belongs to Jack's parents, and they let family members live in it for the cost of their utilities, so long as they take care of it and keep it maintained. They've been taken advantage of with that deal - some of the previous tenants really trashed it, and the very last tennant, Jack's neice and her family, had to move out a huge dumpster full of junk before they could move in. They lived in it for a little over a year. In that time, they were able to save up enough money and get their credit lined up enough to buy a really nice place in the country. I think Jessica's plan is to live in it while she builds her house on the land that Jack gave her as a wedding gift.

It needs a lot of work. The house is cut into a hill, and the dirt was never filled back in, so it has a pretty serious moisture problem. We started cleaning out the trench around the back of the house today, and I'm pretty sure we pulled the leaves of 10,000 trees for the last 5 falls out of there. All them were wet, and smelled like dirt. Gee, I wonder why we have a moisture problem?

The plan is to reseal the block, install some drainage tiles for the gutters to drain into, and fill in the trench. Before we can do that, though, we have to clean out the trench and dig through the dirt that has collected there to put the drianage tile next to the foundation.

After fighting with leaves, armed with a pitchfork, for a couple of hours today, I am soooo sore. But, on the plus side, I burned a bunch of calories that I normally wouldn't have! :o)

It may be awhile yet before the house is ready to move into, but it's exciting to start getting something done with it. For inside work, we have cleaning, painting, new floors in the kitchen and maybe the living room. Jessica wants to paint the panelling in the living room, but it is a very pretty panelling, old school stuff that you just don't anymore. I hope a good cleaning with Murphy's Oil Soap will brighten it up for her. The floor tiles are kind of dingy, and the ceiling is, too, so maybe doing something to brighten those up would help, too. The ceiling tiles are actually styrofoam. There are places in the ceiling where people have melted the tiles with lighters. I see a new ceiling in our future...

OK, Labels have Arrived...

I've decided to add labels to my posts. It'll make it a lot easier for me to find my own blasted recipes, 'cause chances are that I've not saved them *anywhere* else. I've gone through and labeled some of the old ones, but haven't made it through all of them just yet.

It's official - my parents are retiring this fall. Mom is eligible in September, Dad can follow her in October. They're getting their house ready to sell and will put it on the market sometime in the next few months.

If it sells as fast as their previous house did, they're going to be living in their travel trailer with their cat and little dog for awhile before they can move to their retirement land. Of course, if they sell their house quickly, that will be that much sooner they can begin building the house on the retirement land that they want to build.

The house I lived in when I was going to high school was in the same little town. 20 years ago, Mom decided to put it on the market for an outrageously high price, just to test the waters, so to speak. The stinkin' thing sold in a week - somebody came along and made them an offer they couldn't refuse. We had 30 days to find another house (the one they're in now), buy it, and move. Dad has added a *lot* of woodwork to the place - built in book cases, parquet flooring, hardwood flooring, shelves, all kinds of beautiful woodwork. It can only help, right? :o)