Dear Loved Ones,

Happy 906 Day, my fellow Yoopers, and to everyone else who doesn't know the reference, hope you'll settle for a Happy Wednesday. I know I will, if Mumma gets her surgery slot today. Yeah, another surgery, but hold that thought?

I am a big, fat liar on social media because I told everyone I needed a self-care break these last few days (well, not lying about the self-care - I'll always need that). But the real reason was actually a nice surprise: My sister-in-law Addie was able to arrange her schedule over the holiday weekend to come visit the cheerleader who needed cheering up. She also drove six hours one way to bring me another special gift: my dad. It was wonderful to spend time with family on this Week 3 of apparently trying to obtain Minnesota residency.

I'm so grateful Dad got to spend time with Mumma over the last two and a half days. I think it really perked her up to see that he came all this way, when it's usually agony for him to sit in a car just for a couple of hours. It would have most certainly been impossible for him to make the drive on his own. 

So I guess I should be fair about giving him a hard time about his packing selections when this was such a last-minute opportunity. He had called me and decided he was going to try to get out here only an hour before Addie would be passing through Escanaba. When you ask a 78-year-old man to pack for a couple of days, what I was not expecting when I opened his huge suitcase was a single change of clothes in a small pile at the bottom. I was pleasantly surprised to see that he'd remembered his phone charger, but I smacked my forehead when I asked him if he'd packed a toothbrush or his meds, neither of which I saw when we unpacked. And the bonus that he didn't realize he'd taken with him? A small handful of dried corn, which apparently an industrious mouse had packed away inside the suitcase he was storing in the shed. Thank heavens the mouse decided not to make the trip as well.

So rather than update you all on social media, I decided to hoard my family and hold them close over the last couple of days. I said goodbye to them yesterday, and the short and bittersweet visit was a blessing to me and hopefully not too much of a pain for my dad's arthritis nor for Addie's sanity of having Dad in the car six hours each way. 

She did tell me a funny story to cheer me up yesterday, about the drive home. Apparently they'd stopped at McDonald's so Dad could grab some chicken nuggets, but he kept missing and ended up wearing most of the barbecue dipping sauce instead of eating it. He didn't really notice until he got out of the car, looked down at his clothes, and muttered something like, "Holy wah! It looks like I've been shot." 

At least Dad's figured out how to use the washer and dryer in our absence.

This morning's update was...good? Bad? Uneventful? Honestly, after so many days, half the time my brain is on autopilot, where I might be jubilant in the morning and a crying hot mess in the evening. Sometimes it's in reverse, or sometimes I just get a flash of what my life used to be like before St. Mary's Hospital. You know your brain is really messed up when you miss your husband leaving the kitchen cupboard doors open or miss scooping kitty litter. 

The good news today is that Mumma had a breathing tube inserted again yesterday, and that they were able to do a bronchial procedure to suck out lots of the gunk in her airway so that she had a decent, sedated rest last night. The bad news is that they had to insert a breathing tube for the 4th time since this gig started, and that they had to suck out lots of gunk in her airway because the bacterial culture came back positive and she's officially got pneumonia. The good news is that her heart looks pretty great after surgery. The bad news is that her right lung is still filled with blood, and it's not draining out as they'd hoped. The good news is that the thoracic surgeons have her scheduled for VATS, or video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery, to do something called decortication, to get the blood and other gunk out of her lung so that she can use it to start breathing with it again. The bad news is that this has been requested since yesterday, but there hasn't been an open OR slot with the right thoracic surgeon specialists to do the surgery. 

So today I'm going to visualize all of this as Mumma being Sleeping Beauty while they wait for the thoracic peeps to come rescue her. If you want to send over prayers or direct some healing our way, I'd ask that not only do you send some love to Mumma, but also to all of the folks in the OR today who have scheduled or unscheduled thoracic surgery, that everyone's procedure goes even better than planned, and that everyone has their best possible healing outcome. Pray that the surgeons and other doctors, nurses, and support staff - who have so generously given their time and talents to not only making Mumma better, but to also healing hundreds and thousands of others - that they experience grace, peace, and gratitude for the very important, but often underappreciated, work of delivering us health so that we can live our best lives. 

If you happen to bump into a health care worker today, please give them a huge hug of gratitude from me. They are the lifeblood of our society, and their loved ones should be proud of the sacrifices they make to keep us happy and well. 

So be happy, be well, and be grateful.

Kris G