Maplewood Mania - Part 2

Kris, Lynsey, & Ellie lived with me for about a year…and we had some really good times. Kristopher loved pasta and Italian foods, and we made baked ziti, and lasagna, and Sopranos’ Sunday Gravy. But after a year at the Maplewood abode, they decided that they needed to be closer to where they worked and rented an apartment. The problem was the apartment didn’t allow dogs…so Ellie stayed with me.

My daughter Aimee and her significant other, Sean, Bryanna (their nine month old daughter) and Tigger (Sean’s cat) moved in with me and Ellie when Kris and Lynsey moved out in the middle of June. Sean and Aimee got married that July and they asked Kris and Lynsey to take Ellie…well that didn’t work, so Ben and Jena took Ellie to live with them and their Standard Schnauzer, Sadie. Sadie and Ellie got along pretty well except for the fact that Sadie’s favorite game became “Whack a Mole” with Ellie. Ellie attached herself to Jena and Sadie remained Ben’s dog. This arrangement lasted until Kris’s dad got his and Lynsey’s job back at the Unemployment Security office in Phoenix, and they took Ellie and moved back.

In September, when Bryanna turned one I started taking care of her and it was a lot of fun. I got to know my granddaughter very well and we became very close. For the most part I didn’t have too much trouble taking care of her, except for one incident when she was straining to poop, passed out, and stopped breathing. She really scared the hell out of me even though I was able to get her back right away.
In February of 2006 Aimee had their second daughter Danielle and she went to Aimee’s friends Ben and Stephanie (who had taken care of Bryanna until she was one) while they worked. In October that year I had a biventricular pacemaker put in which was supposed to give me more heart function and allow me to get some of my energy back…that turned out to be a real fiasco.

What was supposed to be about a half an hour procedure turned into about five hours and they still couldn’t get the lead in place. I need to come back in November and they surgically attached it to the wall of my heart…only problem was that they collapsed my left lung, paralyzed my left diaphragm, and hit the vagal nerve. To make matters worse I developed pneumonia in my right lung and what was supposed to be an overnight surgery tuned into a major hospital stay. My breathing was much worse than when I went in, and I had constant nausea. I was pretty sick and I had a six week lifting restriction so I wasn’t much help with the girls. Things gradually got better but the nausea went on for almost two years when my Primary physician was able to prescribe something that “settled the nerve down” and the nausea went away.

More next time…