It's a little late for an August update

August was quite a busy month for us. First we went down to San Antonio for a four day boot camp for IT service providers. There was so much wonderful information that John and I both were able to take away from it, although I didn't get to attend as many sessions as I would have liked. When we got back home, John was super pumped to start working on his company all over again. However, there has been a bump in the road.

John went into the hospital on the 17th for chest pain and it turns out he has pancreatitis (inflammation of the pancreas). The next morning his kidneys failed, so he has been on dialysis. The following morning he had some heart damage (although this damage was minimal and his heart is working great). He was in the hospital for a week before anything else happened. His blood pressure dropped so low and he wasn't able to breathe, so he was intubated (put him on a ventilator). That same day, they discovered a bleed in his spleen and fixed it, through some procedure that I can't remember the name of. He was on the ventilator for about 10 days when they decided that they would try to wean him off the ventilator. He did not do so well the first day, but the nurse suspected that it was due to him still being extremely sedated. The next day he was in dialysis in the morning... and the following day his heart rate started vageling down (which where the heart rate goes down due to the vagel nerve being compressed due to pushing or coughing or gagging or pressure or ... any number of other things. This has been going on for over a week where his heart rate will go down to scarily low rates. It even stopped early Monday morning for 30 seconds and as they were about to give him atropine (to restart it), his heart started on his own. The cardiologist says his heart looks great and they don't know why he is having the reaction that he is. Ultimately, they have decided to keep him extremely sedated and an occasional paralytic to help prevent him from being able to do whatever it is that is causing the vagel reaction. So far that seems to help. Yesterday, the radiologist did a procedure to input a drain into his pancreas to hopefully help him turn the corner, and start getting better without surgery (cause of the instability, no surgeon wants to operate on him now anyway due to the high mortality rate). We're praying that things start to get better.

Lil John misses his dad a lot and asks about him everyday. A lot of the conversation goes like this...
LJ: "wheres daddy"
me: "Daddy's at the hospital"
LJ: "Daddy don't feel good"
me: "no, daddy doesn't feel good. he's very sick"
LJ: "very sick"
me: "yes very sick, but the drs are taking care of him so he will get better"
LJ: "Daddy with drs at hospital"
me: "yes, daddy's at the hospital with the drs"
LJ: "mommy go see daddy"
me: "yes mommy went to see daddy" or "yes mommy is going to go see daddy"
LJ: "John see daddy TOO!"
me: "no, you can't go see daddy right now"
LJ: "daddy sick"
me: "yes, daddy's sick"

It breaks my heart everytime to tell him he can't go see his dad, but I know that is what's best right now. Lil John has started acting up a lil more than usual because of his stress, I suppose and I try to just be understanding right now. He still helps a lot with Haylee and tries to take care of her on his own. Haylee is finally warming up to other people, thank goodness. She'll be a year old on Tuesday, so I'll post another blog around then with pictures.

I am now job hunting and doing everything I can to try and keep all the bills including rent paid... which isn't easy at the moment. John was self-employed and our only income which means that with him in the hospital we have no income coming in at all. Luckily, we have been blessed with people from church to help with babysitting (when my grandpa needs a break) and family and friends that have helped out financially (which is the only reason we are still in this apt). I know there are a lot of people that would make room for us to stay with them, but I want to try and keep the kids' lives as normal as possible... so here I am trying to make ends meet. Hopefully, I'll have a job by the end of the month... but who knows what God has in store for us next

And on top of everything that has gone on here at home, my grandpa Joy (my dad's mom) passed away about a week and a half ago. The thought makes me sad, cause I wasn't able to take the kids out to meet her, but I just don't have the energy with everything else going on to really mourn her passing. As a matter of fact, I'm not even sure that I have mentioned it to anyone here.

Please keep my family in your prayers. We have a lot going on right now and don't know where the next step will lead. We're in need of comfort, guidance, health, and strength. If you made it through this long post, you deserve a cookie and are a very good friend. Thank you for giving me a place to vent and share everything that has gone on.