April 2013. Changes

The month of April has brought me some serious set backs to my health.  Early on April 4, I felt very different and knew I needed to get to the hospital.  Without going into a lot of the details, I was in the hospital for ten days. The diagnosis came back that my left lung  had hemorrhaged along with having a series of blood clots. Medication to treat the blood clots are not compatible with the hemorrhaging. There is some uncertainty how this episode will play out.  At the end of April, I am now on continuous supply of oxygen, I get around in a wheel chair and am now living in an adult care facility.  I am not in any pain but I am very weak and have lost a lot of my independence. 

For those of you who are working through health issues and are following this blog, keep pushing forward. In a previous posting I mentioned the need for hope and how it can be used to steer the outcome of our struggles. A quotation from Edward Kennedy's book, "True Compass" says, "...but I do believe in hope.  And I believe approaching adversity with a positive attitude at least gives you a chance for success.  Approaching it with a defeatists attitude predestines it: defeat."  The hope I maintain has not erased the reality of the disease I struggle with.  There are many parts of this fight that have been hard.  Yet I believe hope has kept me going much longer and shaped  my outcome in a much more favorable way.  If you look at the time I have been given since my heart transplant, through April 2013, I have enjoyed 43 months of time with family, tracing my family roots, reading wonderful books and learning how to paint.  The basketball games of the grandkids, the visits with my family, the visits from friends have all been enjoyable. Being able to be part of the discussion with my nine year old grandson on the details of photosynthesis and to watch his vocabulary in science grow has made me proud of him. To watch another grandson who is eight, complete a math problem using negative numbers for the first time helps me see these kids at an early age are on the right path. So I continue to hope and approach each day with a positive attitude. There is not a lot more the doctors are telling me can be done about the Amyloid. We have stopped the chemo. Tomorrow I will be visited by the people I love. They will put a smile on my face. We will reflect on the past. And I will tell them I love them.  With all of this, I consider myself fortunate. 

Now if I could figure out how to improve my painting....  Here is a still life of some wild flowers some of the neighborhood boys picked for me. Spring brings out some of the most beautiful colors in central Washington.