The Georges in Peru

So here’s a news update on our lives.  Paul’s been doing school-work, getting up at 6:00 a.m. some days for classes.  I think he’ll be happy once we begin moving east into a different time zone.  Mia has been working on making her drug cards for nursing school.  She jokes that she’s doing drugs so watch out.  Yesterday, we joined Sarah and Zach via zoom for some of their orientation for UIC med-school.  It was good to see how excited they are to begin this new life stage.  Ben’s moved into a new house with some friends and is ready for his last school year to start.  Allen’s been working on organizing our lives and keeping the house-work in check.  He’s cut out most of his Peru work in order to take care of me, but still has a bit of project and missionary-related work.  Since surgery, I’ve finally been able to do two courses that SIM requires which I was unable to do before because of my health.  I’ve also been going on daily walks, stretching, and practicing my breathing.  Today I walked a mile for the first time, which makes me feel quite satisfied.

Today we went to another Mayo Clinic campus to get some autonomic tests done (like a tilt table test where they take one's blood pressure lying flat and standing up by moving the bed while the patient is motionless) and I was reminded again of how beautiful Arizona is.  There are amazing rocky ‘desert’ gardens all over the city, artistically and creatively bringing out the very best this landscape has to offer.  Cheerful red and yellow flowers, prickly cactuses of many shapes as well as unique emerald- and fall-coloured trees with the most interesting leaves I’ve ever seen.  Tall stately palms add contrast as well, and the roads are lined with walls engraved with interesting designs that catch and hold the eye.  It’s a little easier to be cheerful today, because the miniscule improvements of the last week are adding up into substantial improvements, including walking in to my check-up today and sitting upright in the waiting room which felt like a huge achievement.  I also took a 15-minute walk around our neighbourhood!  At our appointment yesterday with Dr. J., she said she was quite pleased with my progress which also improved my spirits.

Yay!  Mary Beth was released to home from the hospital today around 2 pm.  Here you can see her with nurse Carley getting into our car to go home.   'Home' is used loosely here, since Mary Beth had never been to where we are staying before I brought her here.  But she is glad to be here none-the-less!

She is still having some discomfort and taking pain medicine but glad to be 'home'.  She said that she is having less pain than she expected from what she had read about the recovery process.  But she is by no means pain free.  She was having a lot of pain at 5 pm, so I gave her another Tramadol and it helped right away.  She is, importantly, able to stand up without her heart rate going up significantly, so the surgery has already made her markedly better.  Thanks for praying!

The day has finally arrived!  A month ago MB decided, "I want to go to Mayo.  I'm going to tell God that's what I want, even though it doesn't look like it is possible.  He likes to give us what we want if we ask for it."  So she started praying to be able to go to Mayo and here we are against all odds!

We're hoping that Mary Beth will suddenly be able to stand up without being light-headed and having tachycardia (fast heart rate) again.  We were told that it very likely won't be instantaneous, especially since she will be sore immediately after surgery, but we are hoping for a quick improvement.  We were told to realistically expect 3 weeks to 3 months to be back to normal.

I was given a tracking number to follow Mary Beth's progress like a marathoner with a chip in her shoe.  She is the top yellow in the right column ending in '434'.

1:36 pm

Everything went well.  The surgeon said she had to put in 3 bars instead of 2.  She said the heart was being compressed even more than Sunday's echocardiogram had demonstrated.  I'm not surprised, having taken care of her and monitoring her heart for the last 2 months!

6:47 am

Mary Beth got her results from her nasal swab test yesterday and they are negative, so she was allowed to go in for her MRA (magnetic resonance angiogram) to make sure the circulation to her head is unimpeded by cholesterol plaques or anatomical abnormalities. 

8:00 am

Attended our Peruvian church by zoom.  They collected an offering for us, which made us feel very loved.  They ask about how things are going daily and are praying for us.

10:00 am

Dropped Mary Beth off at the door of the hospital for her MRA and they swept her away, saying I could go no further than the lobby.   It took them longer than expected and Mary Beth found it surprisingly difficult to hold still in the machine.