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Weekend of Worry and Washing Pots
It’s been an interesting Labor Day Weekend. Probably the most I’ve ever labored. I spent the weekend helping out around my brother and sister-in-law’s house trying to catch them up on some chores that had gotten away from them during the recent months. Mostly I just did dishes, made food and tried to keep my nieces from killing each other.
I’m really here for my mom to help her keep busy and not worry too much while my brother is traveling and having heart trouble at the same time. At this time of writing Shawn and CC are heading directly to a hospital in Bakersfield. We’ll hear more in an hour.
They were trying to make it all the way home but Shawn got more and more uncomfortable as the drive progressed. We’re very worried about a blood clot that showed up in some tests that were taken while he was up in Oregon. When they called an on-call doctor here in the sticks, he directed them to go to the nearest hospital right away. The good thing is that the nearest hospital turned out to be a pretty good hospital. Much better than our home hospital in the sticks. So that’s some good news.
Meanwhile we are all worried sick. It’s been a stressful weekend to say the least. The nieces seem to be taking everything in stride. Though they’ve both come down with colds. They cough and moan in their sleep as they toss and turn on the couches in my mom’s living room. My mom will probably stay up all night waiting for more news.
I’m probably going home tomorrow just because I feel weary and I think I need to go home and rest up so I can be a better person. I can worry and pray from home too. But I’ll probably be back. Somebody needs to do the dishes around here.
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Update on my brother
Hi, all. This is just a quick update on my brother. I don’t know if many of you have been following the news on my twitter feed but my brother suffered from some heart pain and pain in his left arm the other day. He spent several hours in the emergency room getting tested. All the tests came back inconclusive but it looks like he has congestive heart failure, an enlarged heart and lung. He seems to be okay now though. He is on his way back home from Oregon (he is a long-distance trucker) and will get more tests when he gets home to figure out what is going on. He can’t drive right now (obviously) so one of my cousins is driving up to get him in Oregon and will bring him down to Red Bluff and from there CC will drive him home.
We’ve all known this could happen. My brother pretty much looks like a walking heart attack, not to mention it runs in our family. My grandfather had six heart attacks before he turned 40 (I could have my facts wrong but it was something like that). Shawn has been cutting back on his food intake for years and has been off red meat for a long time. Making life changes is of course a big issue here, but when I talked to him on the phone yesterday he seemed even more worried his job and family.
After many many years of failed careers it seemed as if he’d finally found something he enjoyed, was good at and actually came with a decent paycheck. It was a big leap for him to become a trucking teacher because he is surprisingly shy but he turned out to be really good at it. We’ve all been so overjoyed by this latest success.
BUT now that he is at risk of heart attack, he will probably lose his job which is exponentially damaging to him and his family. As you know they’ve barely eked by for years. If you are the praying type maybe you could add Shawn and his family (and especially CC who shoulders most of the stress) to your list.
Thank you from the bottom of my heart. I might try and put together some kind of fundraiser for them…so if there is any kind of art, coloring sheet etc. that you’d like me to sell for maybe a $1 a download or something, let me know in the comments. I’ll try to get on that ASAP. Also I’m donating all profits from my etsy shop to them too.
(photo taken at their 10-year anniversary in 2007)
