After many considerations and being back and forth on their visit, we got a phone call the day before they left that it was official and they had the doctors blessing - Grammy and Papa were coming to Florida to meet their first Great Grand Daughter! For the first few days we really were bums. I think this was good for Papa as well as all of us as we are still adjusting to parenthood and having a sick baby and mommy throws a curve on things and days fly by before we even seem to get out of the house! We did get out a few times to drive around the area, a few short walks and some eating out when Grammy and Papa spoiled us. Eating out is a bit of a challenge but after she eats in the car in the parking lot - with her tummy full and wrapped up in moms wrap she seems to make it through dinners/lunches without too much fuss. A few times while at Olive Garden Grady got up and took her outside to walk with her as she got fussy and the whole restaurant seemed to comment on how she was a daddys girl! Our last meal out with them before we dropped them off in Orlando was the most fussy but still I think everyone enjoyed their meal and I know Grammy enjoyed her last few minutes that she got of Zoie time when she was able to be alone with her outside as they talked to the birds and whatever else they were talking about together! Grammy and Papa both got a lot of Zoie time, although Grammy is the baby vulture as Papa puts it

Papa thought the trip was too boring, you know staying at home being bums so he decided to liven things up a bit. About mid-week he wasn’t feeling good so we took him to the ER to get his blood pressure checked. Of course they couldn’t stop at that and he was in there for about 6+ hours of having blood work done, cat scans, and all kinds of things checked. Turned out he was fine and just a bit dehydrated. However about that time he started getting these painful stomach pains every so often. They wouldn’t last long but they seemed to be very painful when they came. We wrote them off as ‘part of the healing process’. However after waking up at 2am with Papa shivering and with a fever - we rushed him to the ER again and they found he had abscesses in his stomach. Papa got to spend the remainder of his trip as well as a few extra days more than planned in the hospital on antibiotics, with more tests and lots of communicating and decision making between doctors at the hospital here and with his doctors back in California. The conclusion came down to they could give him oral antibiotics that will buy him a few weeks to get home, maybe have Thanksgiving before he has to go back to Stanford for possible surgery to get these removed. Though they didn’t like spending their vacation in the hospital it is a good thing that these little buggers acted up as they need to get them taken care of before he can start Chemo and they were planning on starting as soon as they got back home. Zoie had fun hanging out in the hospital a few times with Papa, visiting where she was born. When she wasn’t enjoying it as much I got a little nervous they were going to kick us out as a screaming baby is probably not what the other patients on the floor wanted to hear. But they were nice about it… they did hurry his discharge papers up when it was check out time and Zoie was unhappy!

Meanwhile, while Papa is in the hospital here, dad was in the hospital in Cedar. The night before we took Papa in mom took dad in at 2am when he was throwing up and in so much pain (same symptoms as last time he had to go in for open heart surgery); and what do we know it has been just about 1.5 years since then, which is how long it was before the previous surgery as well. After some tests they found out that dad has another aneurysm in his aorta. We go the phone call that we had to make the decision again as the family that he had to have another emergency open heart surgery and our bags where packed, plane tickets bought and we were on our way home with little Zoie for yet another surgery. As we were on our way we got the phone call the Dr Woodbury had decided that the surgery was too risky and that they were going to control the aneurysm with meds. Dad stayed for about a week in the hospital as they ran tests and got his BP under control then sent him home the same day Papa came home (that was a great day!). As for dad… who really knows. At this point he needs to strictly be on his meds; however the doctors dont really know what is causing the strong pains and his nausea so he gets to go back to life and just see what happens next.

Even with all the drama it was so great to spend time with Grammy and Papa. It is not too often that we get them to ourselves and we sure enjoyed having them around and I think they enjoyed their great grand daughter a bit too.

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 21st, 2009 at 8:29 pm and is filed under Adventures. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.