Some July Catch-Up (Not Tomato Sauce)

As you all may know, my dad is in the hospital. Last Friday he underwent quadruple bypass surgery. It has been a hard few weeks for my dad and my mom and I only wish I could be around to help, but all I could do was try to keep my mom and dad cheerful with a few phone calls (roughly 2 calls a day). I called my dad the morning before his surgery and I haven’t spoken to him since, because he still hasn’t woken up. I’m sure most of you reading this have already contacted my mom and gotten the details, but for those of you who haven’t. . . my dad went under Friday afternoon and when he was supposed to be waking up, he started to thrash around (maybe from back pain) and they had to sedate him. They were also giving him morphine. It is now Thursday (early morning) and has still not 100% come out of it, but with the new nurses there who know how to handle the situation, they have reduced the sedatives to nil and have cut back on the pain medicine. Once the nurses started doing that, I guess he was squeezing my Uncle Dick’s hand and his eyes opened and closed, but then his legs started kicking and they had to mildly sedate him. Yesterday at 4PM my mom said that my dad was able to open his eyes and respond to her requests to a number of questions. He did this by blinking his eyes. He is on a respirator and with the tubes in his throat he is having a really hard time talking. Mom thinks that this is a really good sign and I have to agree. My dad had a CAT scan last night and my mom stayed with him for as long as she could to try to get some confirmation on the stability his situation.

Today I am hoping to hear some even better news that he’s still making progress waking up. Maybe some of it was that his body was demanding lots of sleep because he hadn’t had a good nights sleep in over a week. The nurses kept waking him up every 45 minutes to run tests and check his blood and all that. But there’s all sorts of nasty hospital drama to relay, but the bottom line is the hospital was pretty questionably hygienic (and yet it’s the No. 1 Hospital in Milwaukee) and my dad got a flesh-eating bacterial virus in his nose from the nose tubes. Unbelievable. So I think that was okay. I’m also of the opinion that the weekend ICU nurses were just doping him up because they didn’t know how to or didn’t want to deal with it and left my dad heavily sedated until the weekly nurses came in. Either way, whoever was taking care of my dad this weekend was not doing a good job, in my opinion. And I guess my mom has been so upset by the lack of response she’s gotten from my dad’s doctor (she hasn’t talked to the doctor once in almost the two weeks my dad has been in the hospital) and the issues of cleanliness (she could have gotten the bacterial infection as well because no one warned her) that she went and talked to the hospital Administrators. Maybe something good will come out of that. Speaking of doctors, I was also told yesterday that several specialists have been called in to handle my dad’s case and the nurse advised my mom not to let them get away without talking to her. So here’s hoping those guys don’t ignore my mom like his other doctor.

Besides the trouble with waking up, everything with my dad is good. His heart is good. His leg (where they took the veins from) is good and so are his kidneys and lungs. He had a severe fever the other day and they’re taking cultures and things, but they think it was just mild brain swelling and when I talked to my mom yesterday when she saw him, she said that his fever was gone and he looked a bit better. After all this stress, there’s the long and scary process of his recovery time. Apparently he’ll suffer from severe boughts of depression and amnesia. I only wish this wasn’t happening at this time of year, I’d be home in a heartbeat to help take care of them. But hopefully everyone will understand their position and help take care of them, and not provide more stress via hordes of company staying at their house.

As for me while I sit here worrying about how helpless I am when it comes to the whole dad situation, I’m just doing some school stuff. I was incredibly distracted this week from all tasks that didn’t revolve around calling my parents and staring aimlessly at episodes of American Dad on my laptop. Ray did manage to get me out of the house when he agreed to take me to the Hard Rock Café here in Edinburgh last week.

It was sooooo awesome! They had all sorts of guitars (Pete Townshend, Hendrix, Garcia, “J” from White Zombie, and Gidget Gein from Marilyn Manson just to name a few) and they had the banned John Lennon and Yoko Ono record that my parents own where they’re naked on the front and back of the cover! That was soooo awesome. Then they had a bunch of AC/DC and Elvis Stuff and some James Brown stuff. It was fun and I got my pins and shot glass for my collection. WOOHOO!!!

We also finally bought a mixer and food processor, even though the food processor doesn’t actually process the vegetables the way that I want them, so I think I might be a little disappointed. We’ll see. It might be good for some of my other cooking experiments that I have in mind. The mixer is a blessing and really helped me when making those delicious Devil’s Delight cupcakes. I got some mini-muffin pans and some normal cupcake pans. I’m hoping to get a few smaller items yet, but overall I think my kitchen is actually pretty well equipped and what I don’t have, I can do make-shift style. Whatever gets the stuff made, I suppose. So yeah, all those recipes are being made in a 2.5x4 foot kitchen with only two cupboards, a mini-fridge, microwave, gas hob and oven and a sink. I have 2.5 feet of counter space to work with. I’ve done quite a few juggling acts in that kitchen, but my food has turned out great! That’s why I opened up my recipe blog so that I could share all the magic I’ve been making.

I am still pluggin’ away at all the school stuff. It is going well, but I’m not going to go into detail. (It’d be boring anyways.) Ray’s work is going really well. He’s really, really happy at his job. He likes the people, the setting, the relatively independent style of the job, and the pay is pretty decent for what we need over here. And the health care here was really great! Well, at least the optometrist was. Ray just topped in to get his glasses fixed and he got a free eye test and they fixed his glasses for free, because he has a UK address and it’s part of the National Health Care! If I went in, I’d get all the same for free! So when I do get to the doctor, I won’t have to pay anything, supposedly. I’m still a bit dubious, but that’s ok. Ray said it was just like how Michael Moore portrayed it in Sicko. Might want to check that movie out, Ray says.

Other than that, I think all of our other big events I’ve already notified everyone of in the other entries. We had dinner at Ray’s boss’s house and we have all sorts of fun stuff planned for August. Tonight I am going over to a friend’s house and me, her and her old roommate are going to make perogies and make girly gossip where none of the three of us have to think about our PhDs. Haha! It’ll be fun and I’ll write about that later. Mal has labeled it a “Perogie Party”! and I even decided to make a dessert for Mal, since her birthday is next week. Hopefully she can eat it (she’s a Veg).

I also need to quick apologize for the lack of London or Highland trip entries. I do have them in the works and they were started. I just… I just have to finish them. I know you’ll be excited when you finally do get to see them. They’re just really really really long with lots and lots of pictures. It’s a huge project to get those done. But I can do it and I have tons of notes from my trips, so I wouldn’t forget the important stuff. So hold tight and if not. . .you may be the unfortunate participant in a “Mac and Monkey Present. . . A Slide Show of Travels Accompanied by Detailed Stories”!

I hope everyone is doing really well and having a great summer. It’s a bit chilly here, but we’ve had some really nice days. And the kitten is still frequenting the flat. I woke up to her sleeping on the couch today and she’s really becoming more and more comfortable. She really does just want some companionship. Which is good because that’s what we have to offer. The funny thing is, we were offering her a can of tuna or chicken occasionally. Then we started to give her this meaty soft cat food. Now that she is essentially living here she’s been completely downgraded to hard food. Funny!

Hugs and kisses all around.

Love,

Sarah KB (and Ray)