Grandpa's Care

It has been a little over a month since I came to Florida. I am here to help Grandma with Grandpa's care. He has a disease known as sideroblastic anemia. He was diagnosed with it around 6 years ago. At that time his prognosis wasn't very good. They gave him only a couple of years. However, they did come up with some new trial treatments that helped for quite a while, and he is still with us. He is now taking blood transfusions every 2 weeks. They help for a while but then the shortness of breath and weakness start to return near the end of the 2 weeks.

On December 3rd. he took a nasty fall in the living room and bruised his ribs. Of course, as stubborn as he is, he didn't bother to wake Grandma up to tell her and continued on to his appointment he had that morning. She didn't find out until he came home later. On January 5th, he was involved in a serious car accident. He was going to town with his good friend. They were riding in a 68 volkswagon. They were traveling down a straight road around 60 m.p.h. when a guy came up from behind, at a major high rate of speed, and slammed into them. They were hit so hard that both their car seats broke and they were thrown backwards. Somehow his buddy was able to bring the car to a stop 400 ft. down the road. They were very lucky as there was a pond nearby and they were able to avoid it. His buddy is having head & neck problems. Grandpa is having severe nerve pain in his right arm. He has minimal use of his hand & is always apologizing for his sloppy signature. He is currently seeing a neurologist for this problem and should have some better results in about a week.

Yesterday, Grandma had to have surgery for a basil cell cancer on her nose. The poor thing looks like she was punched in the face. Her eye is purple and swollen. She is doing very well and is having very minor pain.

As for me, I am very glad that I can be here to help them out. I miss my friends and kids a bunch! Grandma & I have our favorite shows we watch during the week & we have been going out to eat a lot. On Saturday, I am going to a valentines party down at the porch. Grandma & I are probably going to go to the movies sometime soon. We don't like to leave Grandpa alone for to long. Kevin & the boys are in Texas right now. The boys are working and Kevin is waiting to work. He is very torn about where he should be. He really loves his Dad and wants to be here as much as he can. If he is not working soon, he might just come here for a while.