health

Sorry that almost a month has gone by since my last post. When leaving Chicago and heading home from the National Conference, I heard that my Grandmother's health was seriously failing so I changed my flight to Omaha for the weekend. I stayed for two days and then flew home Sunday night; Grandmother passed away Monday morning.

Since then I've spent most of my time in the Midwest trying to support my family and get through the grief that comes from losing a Grandmother who wasn't really a grandparent but really a parent. There aren't words to express what Grandmother meant to me - I don't know if there ever will be. I hope that I can remember all of her advice and all of our times together over the years in order to share her legacy with my little one some day. We had a viewing/prayer service at which my sister made an amazing speech that expressed much of what I was feeling/missing about Grandmother. The next day was the funeral. And then Sunday we had a service at the nursing home since Mom was unable to attend the other services.

Of course nearly all of our family was there (or returned) for Thanksgiving which was bittersweet. Grandmother hasn't cooked a big Thanksgiving meal in many years so we weren't missing that... it was just difficult to all be together without her. My sis hosted a baby shower for me on the day after Thanksgiving which was the same - great to all be together but difficult with Grandmother missing. I got to spend a week with Lauri and Lila which was really special even if it was for an unfortunate reason.

Since returning to real life, I've been trying to get things in order. Recovering from missing many days of work, recovering from a wicked cold (can't take anything to relieve it when you're prego) and ear infection, nailing down some baby-on-the-way items, thinking about snow, Christmas and upcoming house guests.

But Olive wasn't eating. So we went to the vet and he said she seemed healthy but did bloodwork just in case which came back TERRIBLE. We subsequently admitted her to the hospital on Thursday where she still sits, poor girl. She has acute kidney failure due to some unknown toxin... or maybe due to lymphoma but we won't have the results of that test until tomorrow. She'll stay at the hospital as long as her kidney function continues to improve. Best case scenario: Olive gets back to normal and we bring her home and it's like it never happened (except for the bill) and we'll never know what the toxin was. Worst case... she doesn't get back to normal, or she gets back to normalish but can't maintain that level, or she has lymphoma. In any case she should be coming home in the next day or two. We've been visiting her twice a day and bringing things that smell of home - got to keep those spirits up!