Un-fun Travels

First off, sorry for leaving you hanging with that last post. After a couple of long days of driving, I was tired! That coupled with being home, after working out of town away from home for nearly six months, I was enjoying my time at my own casa. 

I flew back to Iowa on Black Friday but was back home soon after. My travels since have been many but not the fun kind. After returning to work in less than a couple of weeks, I received word that my father was having issues and was diagnosed with colon cancer, so I promptly hopped on a plane back home. 

I was back and forth a few times in December then, as I was about to take off to Iowa shortly after the new year, he was admitted to the hospital. Sadly he did not leave the hospital and passed away mid-January. I stayed off work and home to help my mother all through the remainder of the month. I was back and forth a few more times but was recalled back to Texas just last week. So I loaded the wagon up and headed south just as a snowstorm blew in, the last of my snow for a while!

I was already planning on taking off for an upcoming surgery of Amanda’s. This will be one of only a few nonheart-related surgeries she has had. It is related to the transplant in a way, though. She had a fall down stairs almost a year and a half ago while on a mission trip to New Mexico. 

Amanda’s immune suppressants caused joint issues and early-onset osteoporosis. The combination of that with the fall caused her knee joint to fail prematurely. Our orthopedic doctor has seen her since the fall. He performed a shoulder repair on Amanda after a fall from a heart-related fainting episode years ago. He has taken a conservative approach to care, not wanting to do any surgical intervention with Amanda’s heart history. After over a year of treatment with injections, the last only working for a few weeks, he was confident there wasn’t a tear but sent her for an MRI. 

Once she returned for the follow-up, he promptly sat down with her and said he was correct; there wasn’t a tear, but the joint was compromised entirely, and she would need a total knee replacement, a shock to all of us. He left it up to us when to have the surgery. We’d already discussed a minor surgery and how we would plead our case if he didn’t want to fix things. So after talking it over with each other, it was a no-brainer to have the surgery. After so many years of heart issues culminating with a heart transplant, we didn’t see the justice to her new life to limp around for years to come. 

So tomorrow, she will undergo a total knee replacement. The surgeon was pretty confident that with Amanda’s size, this replacement would likely last her lifetime. I will be updating on her surgery and our time here in San Antonio over the next few days, so stay tuned for our hospital travel journey!