Thank y'all so much....................
Thank y'all so much....................
Oh, thank you guys so much. I am truly humbled, especially since I have been MIA for a while. As some of you already know, a very dear friend of the family (Katie’s pawpaw – one of her beloved caregivers for the last six years) had been struggling with lung cancer. He was diagnosed in July and it had already metastasized to the brain. Kent suffered many complications and, despite chemo and radiation and putting up a good fight, he died two weeks ago.

This has left me drained, both physically and emotionally, as you can imagine. Kent was such a good, kind-hearted, very devout Christian, and we have a huge void in our lives. There wasn’t one time, except for our first surgery (he didn’t know us then is the only reason why), that we didn’t get home from Katie’s surgeries in Michigan that the yard wasn’t filled with yard signs and balloons and welcome home banters. He will be dearly missed. Anyway, I was trying to keep up Kent’s carepage and have practically ignored Katie’s and just about everything else internet-wise.
She is fine, though. We did get a bit of a reality jolt about the malrotation of the gut in November, but I’m just not ready to put that into print just yet. Then it becomes all too real, and, sometimes, living in the Land of Denial is okay. If you wallow in reality too much, you
will go nuts!
Other than that, Katie is still a little toot. When she is not screaming “Trip has ruined my life for the hundredth time!” she is busy trying to weasel us out of our money. She still has occasional “garage sales” and the Z store set up in the kitchen where I was recently forced to buy
her pair of black patent leather shoes, which I had already bought the first time as I recall……………..arguing that they were not my size got me nowhere.........sigh! But now she takes things you
really want – like the remote control to the TV. After you have spent ten minutes looking for it, Katie arrives "to save the day!" She has the remote control on a Marvin the Martian tray and is ready to “serve” it to you for a hefty price. She wanted 97 bucks the other day!!! We settled on two bucks! She’s either going to be a con artist or one hell of a salesperson when she grows up. Regardless, she’s bound to make more than this teacher sitting here!
Okay, enough rambling. I spent my birthday at Katie’s kindergarten open house, so yes, it was special. It’s hard to fathom that she is almost all the way through kindergarten. I really want to go back and jerk a knot in one particular cath doctor’s ass at Cook Children’s who told us after Katie’s first cath that she would be lucky if she made it to her fifth birthday as the majority of the children with a similar combination of defects die within the first five years. Jerk!! I won’t mention his name but it starts with an L - and an a and an s and an h and a u and an s..........oh, my gosh, does that spell Lashus? why, yes, I think it does............snicker, snicker.............jerk! His bedside manner is more suitable for an ME's office than a pediatric cardiothoracic unit.
Anyway, thank you guys again so much. Many hugs and much love. Janet