Tough Times

My little blog has been quiet lately, I know. This is because on May 20, my dad fell in their backyard and hit his head on the cement. Hard. He already had a brain tumor and was scheduled to have it removed on the 23rd. The fall escalated his troubles and started him and all of us on a journey we never expected to take. My sister Kathy (above, with Brad) had arrived in Long Beach and was to spend a couple of days with us before going with me to our parents' house in time to help out the week of the surgery. Needless to say, Dad's fall shortened our time here and we headed down to the hospital.

Dad spent three days in ICU and then had the surgery as planned to both remove the tumor and also the blood clot that formed after the fall. His life, and ours, haven't been the same since. Here we are in the waiting room after we got the good news that the surgery was a "success."

My two sisters and my mom in the waiting room.

For the sake of Dad's privacy I don't want to go into the details of his condition or post any pictures of him, but suffice it to say that almost three weeks later he's still in the hospital. My parents' next-door neighbor Patti is the one who found my dad in the backyard after he fell. She's had us over for dinner about once a week ever since, which is a welcome break from the routine of a quiet dinner at home after the hourlong drive home from the hospital. She's such a good friend and neighbor for my parents.

This is my parents' dog Simba. Dad loves him so much and early on when he was more verbal he would regularly have us show Simba's picture to his nurses and doctors.

I couldn't decide whether and when I should start to write about this in my blog. But Dad is one of my blogs biggest readers and I thought he wouldn't want it to wither away. So I decided I'd give this post a try and talk about the ways that we're sticking together to help Mom, Dad, and each other. Mary came out the second week. She was a rock and helped in so many ways, including comforting my dad and making my mom (and the rest of us) laugh.

And she walked Simba in the mornings.

If I think of it logically it's hard to believe we've been silly during this time, but I think that's how we've kept our sanity. Like the day they released my dad to rehab, only to have him return to the hospital not 15 hours later and spend a full day in the emergency room (until 11:30 p.m.). My sister Kelle and Mary (and Mom and I) got punchy on that long long day, as you can kind of see. (I mean, who does partner squats in the hospital?!)

Mom gets punchy too. If this photo could talk, it'd say, "pretzels, baby."

We always make fun of the creepy dolls our mom has in their guest room. One night Kelle and I took this photo and we were laughing so hard there were tears in our eyes.

Last weekend John and Troy were here so Brad brought Allie down to the hospital and we took turns sitting outside with her. It sounds corny but having the chance to sit with her outside was good therapy.

Sunday was John's birthday and the celebration was small but the gratefulness for having them with us and for being together was huge. Peter and Jessa are arriving at the end of the month.

Troy got to meet Simba and she's now a fan. Simba's gotten lots of love from lots of people since Dad went into the hospital. I don't have photos of everyone who's been out because most of my pictures include Dad and like I said, I don't feel it's right to post those. But I'm going to try to keep posting about everything that's happening around him, because life does go on and like I said earlier, I don't think Dad would want this blog to go away. But if my posts are less frequent, you'll know why. (Also, my mom isn't ready to talk about this on social media so please don't post anything publicly to any of about this. Thanks for understanding.)