6 Days Later

Warning this entry contains one graphic picture of Pop's wound!!!!!!!!
Pop came home from the hospital today. Six days and one operation later. On Wednesday, the doctors decided to open the old incision site and clean out the infection. They used a twilight anesthesia and the operation took about an hour and a half. When I got up to Pop's room , he was sitting on the edge of the bed eating his lunch, a large bandage on his left forearm. he was still on intravenous antibiotics every six hours. By Thursday, they decided the wound looked good enough for Pop to start oral antibiotics and to possibly go home on Friday. This morning Emilie and I were at the gym by 9:30am. We put in our hour, I went home showered,dressed and was at the hospital by 11am. The wheelchair came promptly by 11:30. (Chris and I had made Pop order lunch, just in case there was a delay in releasing him)
First order of business: go to Loukas Diner in Branchburg for lunch, then to drug store, home, and light a cigarette aaahhh! Chris had witnessed the changing of Pop's dressing so she had first honors today. I photographed it for posterity!

Don't gag! This looks 100 times better than it did on Wednesday. Why did we photograph it.......to document the healing and so we could note changes,etc.

Christine would have made a fine nurse ( there was no gagging, crying or screaming from either of them)

Smile! I'm taking pictures here!

All done! What a beautiful wrap job! Now, healing time is estimated at about three to four weeks with a new dressing every day. That totals............. well, I'll have to post dressing directions later so that we can get an accurate count of supplies used for the next four weeks.(I'll include gas mileage)

This was six days of intense Pop time and I realized again what a precious human being he is. His corny jokes, his blistering tongue lashings, his I can do it myself,goddammit attitude, Caro and I getting kicked out because we were making too much noise playing KISMET with Pop after visiting hours were over, Chris and I having to leave the room because we couldn't stop laughing about the trailer home guy and his wife. Talk about turning a sows ear into a silk purse. The good news is that we get to keep Pop longer!

Father's Day

Usually we take Pop out to Aunt Chris's for Father's Day. Today we decided to go all out and give him breakfast in bed! Unfortunately it was a hospital bed! Saturday morning he was admitted to Somerset Hospital with an infection in his left arm. (He had just had some minor surgery on it on Thursday to remove more skin cancer from an already operated area). Doctors wetre pretty concerned with the redness and the shooting pains going up to his shoulder. He is on an IV every six hours loaded with an antibiotic. He can get up and walk around and get himself to the bathroom.......so we shall see! By the way, in true Richard Gordon style he warmed his cold fingers on his right hand on top of the hot infected skin of his left arm, "natural heat"!

Colonial Park Rose Garden

Only Samantha came today, so I decided to take a field trip to the rose garden (with the promise of the playground after).

Wow! Tiny girl or really big tree.

"Grandma, I was here for Uncle Mark's wedding. I fell down on a step." And I thought that this would be her first visit!

You couldn't have asked for a better behaved three year old. It was hot, and there was not a lot of shade. Good thing we brought water.

The paths around the flowers are no longer just gravel, they have edged pavers that look beautiful.

As we left the park Sam yelled," Deer!" I immediately put the car in reverse and sure enough she had spotted a deer in the woods.

It made our day! (playground was too hot to go on so we decided to return to air conditioning.

It's all about the Grandchildren

They are both still three (at least until July, when Sam turns four) and they love to go below the dam and throw rocks. I always take my small, digital canon camera with us. Kamryn is in the red shirt and Sam is in the purple. Both girls are learning a great deal about nature. We spotted this "dragonfly" - whatever it is, it was cool. You thought it had flaps that hung down but it was just the coloring of the wings. Remember honeysuckle? That is a plant from my youth. I remember trying to suck out the nectar. I was surprised to find some in Victor Crowell Park.

Kellen will be three months old on Tuesday. He is now over 12lbs. and is in the 100th % for height.
If you work hard you can get him to vocalize and smile but then it's not fun anymore and we are back to crying. Mommy goes back to work August 1st. The plan is that I get him then (with a few practice runs in between).

Pop Update /LA Fitness/Bathing beauties

Hey everyone, Pop is fine! He got a haircut today, went to the bank etc. I on the other hand am applying for early admission to Carrier Clinic!
I joined the gym last week. I am going for a new look for my 60th birthday. Wish me luck!
(Ha! Ha! You thought I would put up my before pictures! Gotcha. Have them but not posting them for the world to see. stay tuned for the afters)

Today was sunny but windy so the girls only lasted till about 11:30am when they had turned into icicles. But we officially had fun. You just gotta love em!

Dinner with Pop

Caro and I left our house at 5:30pm , called Pop to let him know we were on our way and arrived at his house around 6pm. He was ready. He got himself into our car and off we went to try out the just opened William McBrides near Raritan Valley College. We ordered drinks, dinner and added on a potato leek soup. Just as Caro and I were finishing splitting the soup, our dinners came. Caro ordered a Cobb salad, I ordered a vegetable panini and Pop ordered a spicy seafood fra diablo.It was a little after 6:30pm when Pop got that look on his face...Caro asked, "everything ok Pop?" That made me look at him. He was sort of gagging, not really coughing. Caro gave him the soup cup to spit into (usually he just gets up and goes to the bathroom by himself). He had a tremendous amount of thick mucus that he was gagging out (sorry). Pop is 89 and has been a smoker all of his life. When we asked him if he wanted to go to the hospital, he said he didn't know ( That was scarey...Pop always knows what he wants to do). We asked waiter for the check, took food in take out containers and got Pop back into car. He continued with the gagging. I decided mentally that if we got to Route 22 and he had not improved , then we were going to Somerset Emergency room. As we approached 22 , I said to Pop, "I'm going to the hospital, ok?" " Gdammit, take me home", he said. I then told him that if he did not improve by 6:45 I would take him to the hospital kicking and cursing. He was very shaky going into his house...got the lights on , opened the door to the garbage can and did his thing again. " I think that did it",  he said. And then he lit up a cigarette, "Are we gonna play kismet or what?" he said.
Three cigarettes and three Kismet games later He was fine and we were wrecks! Left him about 9:30pm, kissed him goodbye, told him to call us if he needed us or to press his I've fallen and can't get up button, and yelled to him as we were leaving, "GOODNIGHT DICK!

Memorial Day in Middlesex

Middlesex did not apply for a permit to close Route 28 this year so the parade route started from Victor Crowell Park and then down Delaware .

Although Diego has lived here most of his life, this was his first Memorial Day parade. Caroline did not have a chance to flash her dazzling smile before I took the picture.

Doug Rex stands for the American Flag (Lillian Dooley in red, off to the side.)

OMG! Look at me. Red, white and blue, jewelry, makeup,hat, and a handsome young man on my arm!

I look like all the other OLD people.

Cool, but what kind of Army jeep is that, anyway?

This parade was about 20 minutes long but it had unique floats. You could tell that although small a lot of effort went into it. Excellent reproduction of our 911 monument.

I believe that the Memorial Day Parade would not be complete without Miss Little League.

Half the town marches in the parade. ( just kidding.)

This was a cool, animated float. (by the way, we had torential downpours around 6AM and it seemed that we might not have the parade, which started at 11AM)

The temperature is expected to reach 90 degrees today with pop up thunderstorms. I hope we get all our good grillin' in before . The menu today consists of BBQ ribs, hot dogs, hamburgers, homemade potato salad and deviled eggs, corn on the cob and angel food cake with strawberries, blueberries and cool whip or ice cream.