This year, 2016, has passed like a withering flower. Here today, withered tomorrow, and gone the next. And again, we continue to learn to live, adjusting to new aspects of Living A New Lifestyle. A particular highlight has been the birth of our first great-grandchild, Kelsey Marie. A new title: Great-grandparents. I wish it could affect me much more than it does--she lives a good distance away, and we see her only once or possibly twice a year. But there you have it: great-grandparents. An honor, a privilege. And Papa and I are seeing her for the first time, and loving on her.
And, now she is 5, almost 6 months old. We get to see her over the Thanksgiving celebration holidays. I am so thankful for the modern technology of Facebook, and keeping up and seeing her grow.
It is interesting, thisNew Retirement Life. I shall continue to refer to this as our "New Life of Retirement" because it changes every day. It's different every day. Every day is new. I continue with my quilting, knitting, crocheting, crafts, and...can't leave out reading. One of my best achievements this year is the finished quilt I made for my son's birthday gift. The story behind this is that after I had given our granddaughter a quilt for college graduation, and later one to our daughter-in-law, he commented "So where's mine?!" So...I made one for him as a birthday gift, with a coordinated throw pillow cover to go with it. An unknown person once said and I quote "We are creative because we are made in the image of our Creator."
We've had some interesting and challenging aspects of health to deal with these last couple of weeks. My husband had total right hip replacement. The surgery was great, but there was a complication with a severe negative reaction to the anesthesia. This was a setback in planning for physical therapy. He was then admitted to a physical therapy rehabilitation facility for a week of in-facility PT, which then continued at home. Just as he finished that aspect of PT, we went to the hospital by ambulance as he was having pain and severe vomiting. Tests showed gallbladder stone in the bile duct. Another MRI a few days later showed that the stone had evidently passed, so Richard was discharged. Instructions included that if there was anything at all that reoccurred, he was to go directly to a hospital further away but with personnel who could deal with this. Yes. it happened again, and we went to the hospital. I drove over 70 miles to get there while he retched, continuously during the drive. He was admitted, and scheduled for an endoscopic procedure which would include the removal of stones. Surgeons were ready to perform the gallbladder removal the following day. Everyone was surprised by the outcome. The gallbladder was fine and happy. No stones in the bile duct (although in the gallbladder, but not causing any trouble). The stones the surgeon removed were in the pancreatic duct. Scar tissue had attached to the pancreas, and that's where the stones are. Richard has chronic pancreatitis and will learn to live with it for the rest of his life. We will be speaking to a pancreatic surgeon and specialist in a few weeks.
I am not sure what we are going to do about continuing with physical therapy. Anyway, on the lighter side, I wrote a little fun story because very few people had ever even heard of a "pancreatic stone", and perhaps I will include it soon as a separate post.
So, yes, we continue to learn living our new lifestyle. The exceptional, extraordinary and the unexpected, the happy and the sad, the good and the bad. It changes every day. It is new every day. And I am so thankful because God is in every new day.
It is of great comfort, it is a source of incredible peace and confidence that we know our Heavenly Father. We know He is in control of whatever touches our lives. He is the Source of our comfort and peace and confidence. Because of all that Jesus Christ did, and that we believe in Him and apply His death and resurrection to our lives, God has made us His children. He is our Father. He cares. He loves. He given us courage and He gives us His power to overcome whatever comes. "Without Him" we really can do nothing...can't even handle what life throws at us. But with HIM, we can do this thing called "life".
