Hello my Xanga pals!  Sorry it's been so long since I've sent you an update.  Recovery is boring for the most part so I really didn't feel like I had too much to say....I napped today, took 2 pain pills and made it to the bathroom 3 times...Whoopee!!  Surely that's not entertaining!!  HA!

The best part so far of recovering is:

• The homemade meals delivered by an amazing crew of ladies!  Yummy!
• Seeing my step-Mum Dia and having her here for a week.  What a blessing!
• Staying up on all the latest TV shows, daily Soaps, Rachel Ray, BBC, TLC and HGTV shows -- they're the BEST!  Although they too get old!
• My comfy couch!  Thank God we got one with a chaise!! I've lived here FAR TOO LONG!
• My laptop and internet!  Without Xanga, Facebook and other blogs I would be extremely bored.  I'm living my life vicariously through yours!  So go do something incredibly exciting, take pictures and BLOG about it, will ya!
• Webkinz...you get the stuffed animal (kinda like beanie babies) with a sealed code.  The code allows you to adopt the animal online and create a virtual world for it.  You play games for Kinzcash, their idea of $$ and buy things for it.  Oh it's great fun and I probably need an intervention!!  Thanks to my good friend Kathy I'm addicted...she's the one that introduced me to it!
• And the BESTEST part of recovering from surgery... Yep, the motorized carts while shopping at places like HyVee and Walmart!  (I don't think our Target has these or I would have been there a 100 times!!)  My driving record is superb much to my good friend CoffeeBoss' dismay!  She was secretly hoping I'd knock over a display and drag it a ways!  Geewhiz!  She was more than ready to bust a gut when the act did occur.  So Sorry Charlie!  (It would have been funny...but it would have hurt my belly too much to laugh that hard!)  I will say that if you're trucking along in one of these things and UNDER the age of 60, you almost need a shirt stating your cause! People gave me some of the weirdest looks...I must look way too healthy to drive one of those things!

So I'm healing pretty good...I have days where I feel good and want to do more and then days where I pay for feeling good and doing too much.  My pain is nothing compared to what it was.  I've learned to NOT sleep in my bed at night.  I sleep too deeply and am too restless...I wake up 4-5 times a night twinging in pain cuz I moved without "thinking"...who thinks in their sleep anyway???  Again, thank God for comfy couch!!  I'm now cleared to drive...but try to limit it to one item errands or drive-thru type trips (bank and lunch, etc.).  I played Bunko last night which was great fun...but lots of up-down, in & out of chairs.  I slept really good last night and am more tired today...but it was well worth the fatigue!

PRAYER REQUEST

There's a little guy who is near and dear to my heart who is needing some intense prayers sent up for him.  Meet Craig, a very bright, bubbly, cute as a button little guy!  He's 6 yrs old and so smart he SKIPPED Kindergarten! 

He has a disorder called breath holding syndrome which causes him a great deal of respiratory difficulties.  His mother, Roxane, called me yesterday morning as they were on their way to take Craig to Children's Mercy's ER as he was very sick and went into a spell that took longer than usual to get him out of.  He was admitted and then at 11:30 pm last night, Roxane called again to tell me that he was being moved to the PICU. 

At this point it looks like Craig has some time of pneumonia and is currently on 10 liters of blow-by oxygen (masks that partly covers the face and blows by his mouth & nose) to keep his oxygen stats where they need to be.  His body is having a hard time expelling the CO2 out of his body...which is very dangerous!  Something similar occurred 4-5 years ago where Craig was at CMH for 1-2 months and really regressed on his developmental skills (we had to reteach him to crawl, walk and talk, etc.). We are praying they caught this early enough so this doesn't reoccur!!!

Rick, Roxane & Craig have no family locally, so Word of Life IS they're family.  I have been apart of this little guys life for about 5 years, so thus I'm like a 2nd mom to the little guy!  They would appreciate you adding him to your prayer list and any other prayer list. 

Craig's case is very challenging as he's not your textbook case for his condition...he's creating his own textbook for the doctors to study!  It's also kind of challenging for his parents right now as they are dealing with a whole new team of doctors who haven't worked directly with Craig, however, due to his rareness most have at least heard of him.  So prayers are also needed for the medical team to have wisdom and insight on what is going on with the little guy!

Thanks so much for the extra prayers!  I and his parents appreciate you taking the extra moment for such a special little guy!

God bless!