What a Ride!

Good News Update!

My hiatal hernia /acid reflux surgery went well yesterday. I spent the night last night here I'm surgery ICU. I typing under the covers so the can't see me!! Just kidding, they said I could text. :)
I also found out yesterday that I made the lung transplant list!!!! YIPPEE!!!!'
I included a photo of me laying in bed, to show that I am doing well!!
I might be staying in the hospital a fee more days and possibly get out on Friday, which is my birthday!
Until next time!

Astros Game and Visiting with Friends

Saturday morning we drove up to visit our Camping Friends RV club up at Country Place RV Park in Cut n Shoot, Texas. We were supposed to take the motorhome up there, but since I had the heart catheter done on Friday I could not drive for 2 days. Sue didn’t want to drive the motorhome through Houston, I don’t know why? We had a good visit with everyone up there and we were even treated for some stew made by our good friends Ralph and Carolyn. Thank you Ralph and Carolyn! Thank you camping friends for a great visit!

While we were in Cut n Shoot, we got a call from our friends Nancy and Richard asking if we wanted to go to a Houston Astros game. Sue said that sounded like a great idea, so we drove back to the motorhome and Richard and Nancy picked us up. The Astros won 8-2 against St. Louis with the Astros hitting a grand slam! Our oldest grandson, Trevor, was also at the game. So Sue and I walked over to visit with him for a few minutes. The Astros won and great company with Richard and Nancy was a night to remember! Thanks Richard and Nancy!

There were also fireworks after the Astros game celebrating Cinco de Mayo. Here are a few pictures of the fireworks.

….

…..

Sunday we drove down to Space Center RV in League City, Texas to visit our friends Ed and Lavaughn. You may remember them from previous posts when we were in Yuma, AZ back in January. We stay at there place with the motorhome whenever we are in Yuma. We had breakfast with them at Cracker Barrel and then visited a little more with them at their motorhome. We had a good visit with them. Thanks Ed and Lavaughn for stopping by on your way back home!

Today I had my colonoscopy and everything went well with it. No problems found there. So far they have told me that all of my tests look good, so hopefully when the transplant team meets tomorrow morning I will have some good news to share with everyone.

Tomorrow morning at 7:30 AM I will have the hiatal hernia/acid reflux surgery done at The Methodist Hospital here in Houston. They said I will be spending one night in the hospital, possibly 2 nights. I will be updating the blog after I get back to the motorhome on Wednesday (maybe Thursday) with the latest news.

Until next time!

Another Health Update!

Finished almost all the tests today and met with the pulmonologist, transplant surgeon and the cardiologist on the transplant team and it looks like all my tests this week looked good! Yeah!!!

They have me scheduled for a heart catheter tomorrow at 11:00 AM to check the pressures in the heart and lungs (one of the last two test I have left). It is an outpatient procedure, but since I have to be still for 4 hours after the procedure I don’t know when we will be back in the motorhome.

Monday I have the colonoscopy scheduled at 2:00PM which is the last of the tests that I need to have done for the transplant team.

The transplant team meets every Tuesday morning to go over the candidates to see who they think are good candidates. Depending on the outcome of the last two tests I think I should qualify as a good candidate. I still need to lose about 11 more pounds to get on the list. I am also scheduled for the hiatal hernia/acid reflux laparoscopic surgery for Tuesday providing that the cardiologist from the transplant team gives them a cardiac clearance. I am pretty sure that the surgery is going to happen on Tuesday. I have to stay at least one night in the hospital following that surgery with a possibility of staying two nights. I will have to be on a liquid diet for two weeks after the hernia surgery, that should help me lose the last 11 pounds!!

I won’t be able to drive for a least a day after the surgery so we will still be here in Houston. If all goes well we will leave Houston on Thursday to go to Lake Charles.

Until next time!

Palacios, Texas Rally

Thursday we left Houston and drove to Palacios, Texas for our Lonestar Allegro Club rally at Serendipity RV Park. We got a drive in site that faces the marina full of sailboats.

Our line of motorhomes facing the marina.

Friday morning Sue and I went with Richard and Patsy to Matagorda Bay and check out the RV park down there.

….

…

We then took a ride out on the beach (after getting a beach permit) to check out the gulf. Everything was ok until we got stuck in the sand!

Sue and Patsy flagged down a couple guys in a jeep and pickup truck. The guy in the pickup had a tow rope and attached it to the jeep.

The jeep pulled Richard closer to the water where the sand was wet and a lot firmer.

After out excitement for the day, we drove back to Palacios. We had brats, potato salad and other deserts for Friday night supper with the group.

 

….

…

Everyone seemed to have a great time this weekend.

We will be heading back to Houston Sunday to start a week of tests for my evaluation for the lung transplant. I post updates toward the end of the week. Hopefully all will go well and we can meet with our other RV group next weekend.

Until next time!

Field Trips!

This last week I had the opportunity to go on a field trip with our oldest grandson to visit the “Nina” and the “Pinta” sailing ships. These replica ships are anchored at the seawall of Civic Center in downtown Lake Charles.

I found out where they hide their wine!

Trevor’s friend Regina is posing for me.

A view from up on the poop deck.

I finally got Trevor to pose.

Our next “field trip” was on Saturday as we went to visit my cousin, Kay, in Basile. Darwin, her husband boiled us some crawfish. My brother Danny and his wife Mary were also there. Two of our grandsons, Trevor and Weston, came along to enjoy the crawfish. Those guys love crawfish!

Boy were those crawfish good!!! Sorry, no picture of the crawfish! We were too busy eating them! Thanks Darwin and Kay for the crawfish!!!

We will be in Lake Charles until Wednesday when we will go back to Houston. I have a doctor’s appointment at 3:30 PM on Wednesday with the doctor that going to repair the hiatal hernia and do the acid reflux surgery. I also have a doctor appointment on Thursday morning with the doctor that going to do the colonoscopy. I don’t know the exact dates of those procedures yet, but I know I need to get them both done before they put me on the transplant list.

We plan on leaving Thursday after the doctor’s appointment and head to Palacios, Texas for a weekend rally with our Lonestar Allegro Club group. We will then be back in Houston on Sunday, because starting Monday, April 30 they will be starting all the other tests I need to do to be considered for the transplant list. Hopefully everything will go well with those items. We might have to stay in Houston a little longer depending on when they schedule the colonoscopy and the acid reflux surgery/hiatal hernia surgery. I am also down to 258 lbs., just 15 more pounds to go!!

Until next time!

Good Health News!!

Today was a busy day!! First off we decided to take the free Medical Center shuttle from the RV park to the Medical Center in lieu of driving and parking in the parking garage. Well the shuttle broke down half-way to the Medical Center and we had to wait for another shuttle to pick us up. They then had to run their route before taking us to the Medical Center. So we were a little late arriving to Methodist Hospital and then us trying to find the Outpatient Center (which is new) we arrived about 10 minutes later for the first appointment. Of course, that put us behind for the rest of the appointments. So the days started out kind of hectic, but it all ended well.

After the tests this morning we met with the transplant doctor and he said that if I lose weight, down to 243 lbs that they would consider putting me on the transplant list providing that all the results of the evaluation tests come back good. So starting April 30 they will be doing several tests for about a week to make sure that everything else is good with me.

I weighed 275lbs two weeks ago and today I weighed 261, so I have another 18 to lose and I am pretty sure I can do that!

So things are looking good!!

Until next time!

Going to another Rally and Health Update!

After the Passport America rally we decided to attend a rally of our Camping Friends. Some of our grandkids were out of school for the Easter Holidays so we planned on them joining us for the rally. There was a mix up with what days the grandkids would be able to join us, so I schedule doctors appointments in Houston. After the grandkids joined us we left to attend the rv rally up in Coldspring, Texas.

Here is a couple photos from the rally.

Sue, Austin, Weston with Trevor in the back. (with the Astros stuff) on our hiking trip.

After the hike, we sat around one of the trailers and enjoyed the each other’s company. Sue Yoder and Marvin discussing all the world’s problems!

Marvin, Jodi, Gail and Darlene listening intently to Sue Yoder.

Ralph gives his approval.

Tom doesn’t quite believe all the lies that are being told.

The RV park and our camping friends had all kinds of activities for the grandkids and all attendees to participate in at the park. There was a scavenger hunt on the hiking trails, Easter egg hunt, bean bag baseball, volleyball, horseshoes, rental bicycles and a few others I can’t remember. We also had a potluck that the RV park had and they supplied the meat. It was all very good!

We left on Easter Sunday after the rally and headed down to Victoria, Texas. Our good friend Richard King, was having a heart catheter done on Monday and we wanted to be there for him and Patsy in case they needed anything or any help. Everything turned out well on his heart catheter, so we are still parked in his driveway.

Saturday we will be traveling with them to San Marcos, Texas where we will be attending an Allegro Club meeting. Tiffin’s Allegro Club is trying to start a San Antonio/ Austin chapter. Richard got a letter asking for him to attend and he invited us to go with them. We will see how that goes.

Health Update

For those that haven’t been reading my blog, I will try to get you up to date. I was diagnosed with pulmonary fibrosis back in November 2011. With the pulmonary fibrosis I found out that there is no cure (except lung transplant) and no treatment. A good friend of ours from our Lonestar Allegro Club put us in touch with a doctor at Baylor College of Medicine that was doing clinical trials for pulmonary fibrosis. So they had me do a pulmonary fit test, CT scan and echocardiogram on Monday, April 2. I then had my appointment the next day with Dr. Frost, the doctor doing the clinical trials. First off she informed me that my lungs were now at 25% capacity down from 50% capacity that I had back in December 2011. Since they were now at 25% I was not acceptable for clinical trials. She also said that it looked liked my heart had a myxoma/growth near one of the valves. In her opinion my lungs were too bad for heart surgery and the heart was too bad for lung surgery. Catch 22!! What a shock!!!

But she then said “I am not a cardiologist, so I want you to get a MRI and let a cardiologist looked at it” So Wednesday I had a MRI done that was supposed to last 1 1/2 hours, but lasted 3 hours instead! Apparently to take good pictures of my heart they needed from me to hold my breath. But they wanted me to hold my breath for about 20 to 30 seconds. First I had to take a deep breath, then blow it out and then hold my breath. Well there was no way I could to that. So they had to adjust how they were going to take the pictures with the MRI. Well after all that, they discovered that there was no growth in my heart but a large Eustachian valve. GREAT NEWS!!!

We have now been referred to a lung transplant team for evaluation. We now have a tentative appointment for Monday, April 16th to meet with them. The reason I say tentative is that they are having difficulty getting in touch with my case manager at Cigna, my insurance company. I sure don’t need them to be dragging their feet about getting me to meet the transplant team. Now once we meet with the transplant they have to evaluate me to see if I am a good candidate for a lung transplant. They want to make sure that when they do a lung transplant that the person that gets it has a good chance of survival (no other medical issues, cancers, heart disease, etc.) So the first hurdle is the insurance company approval, and the second hurdle is if I am a good candidate for the transplant. If I get approved as a good candidate that I am sure there will be many, many more hurdles to go through.

They have also put me on oxygen for any exertion, like going shopping, hiking with the grandkids, washing the motorhome, etc. So that is something I am going to have to get use to.

I will know more next week and will post to let everyone know!

Until next time!

Passport America Rally–Rayne, La.

We really enjoyed the Passport America Rally we attended last week in Rayne, La. They had jambalaya for one evening meal, a catered meal one night and potluck meal another night. They had evening entertainment every night and free soda, tea and water during the day while you are attending the many seminars. Our friends Bruce and Sherran from our Lonestar Allegro Club was there at the rally and we got to visit with them for a little while.

Here are a few photos.

One of the evening entertainers. They had some decent Cajun and Zydeco music, but what was strange was there was no fiddles in any of the bands that played this week. You SHOULD have a fiddle in a Cajun band!!

Since Rayne, La. is the “Frog Capital of the World”, the theme for the decorations were frogs! Here is our frog decoration singing Toby Keith’s song Red Solo Cup.

Volunteers serving the catered meal.

Our friends Howard and Linda from RV-Dreams were there doing seminars and doing some RV weighings for RVSEF. Check out these websites – very good resources for RVers.

We were also sitting with Don and Bonnie from Precise Satellites who were also vendors at the rally. We had a great time visiting with all these folks. We also met some folks from Mississippi and they invited us to eat fried catfish one night at their RV. The food was great and so was the friendship!

We left and returned back to Lake Charles just in time to be able to visit with our friends Bob and Vicki who were on their way to Caldwell, Texas for Bob’s doctor appointment.

They had a couple problems with their RV, so I was a RV tech for a day and we fixed all their problems. They were all electrical problems, so that was fun, troubleshooting them and then fixing them. We also had time to visit with them which is always a joy. You may remember them from our trip to Alaska in the summer of 2009 as Vicki was my fishing partner most of the time of there. We enjoyed your visit Bob and Vicki!!!! Thanks for stopping by!!!!!

Sunday we drove over to Houston, Texas because I have some diagnostic tests on Monday (today) and a doctor appointment tomorrow. The diagnostic tests were a CT Scan, pulmonary fit test and an echocardiogram. The appointment tomorrow is with a doctor from Baylor College of Medicine to evaluate me to see if I am a candidate for clinical trials for the pulmonary fibrosis that I have. Hopefully, I will have more to write about that tomorrow after the appointment. I figured it will at least be a second opinion of my medical condition!

Last night we ate out with our friends Roger and Donna who are here in Houston. Donna is trying to get some relief from a bad knee here at the medical center. Tonight we are supposed to eat out again with them and some other friends – Richard and Nancy, and Bob and Leeann.

You may remember from my blog a few weeks ago that I bought the dishwasher that I just installed in the motorhome we bought from Richard and Nancy. Nancy is also the nice lady that put me in touch with the doctor doing the clinical trials for pulmonary fibrosis. All the people we are going out to eat with tonight are members of our Lonestar Allegro Club.

We will be in Houston until Thursday when we will leave to go to another rally up in Coldspring, Texas with our Camping Friends club. We will be there for Easter and then head back to Lake Charles. At least that is the plan, but we all know that our plans are written in Jello!

Until next time!

Dishwasher Update

I finally got the front panel for the dishwasher I installed a couple weeks ago. I installed the front panel today and here is a picture of it.

It sure looks better than the plain blank metal adapter. I still have a little adjustment to do to make the wood panel flush on the left like it is on the right. But that is for another day!

Tomorrow we will be leaving our parking spot at my brother’s house and head just a few miles down the road to Rayne, La. where the Passport America Rally is being held. We will be there until Thursday where we will then be headed back to my brother’s house. We stay there until probably the weekend and then head to Houston.

Hopefully I will have some pictures of the rally to post.

Until next time!

Busy in Lake Charles!

Since I posted last, we have been a little busy, but not too bad. We had a couple birthday parties to attend, a wedding to attend and the installation of a dishwasher in the motorhome.

That’s right a dishwasher, rather I should say a dishdrawer. We have a friend that had one installed in his 2009 Allegro Bus, but his wife said they would never use it and she would rather have a storage drawer. So they had the Paykel dishdrawer removed and had a drawer made to fit the opening. They used the wood panel front as the front of the new storage drawer. Now the dishdrawer is an integrated type dishdrawer which means it had a wooden panel on the front to match the rest of the wood drawers in their kitchen. They tried to sell the dishdrawer, but no one wanted it because it did not have the wood panel front. I didn’t understand that, because the wood in their motorhome is cherry bark and it would probably not match whomever would have bought the dishdrawer anyway. For instance, our wood is medium alderwood, so even if it came with their wood panel, I would still have had to change it out to match our wood.

Here is the before picture.

Here is the after picture, before the wood panel is installed.

I am getting the wood panel made in Red Bay at the Tiffin Service Center and when I get it I will put that picture in the blog for everyone to see. If you want to see the entire install, you can go to my Phaeton Modification page and click on Dishwasher Install. Sue is really enjoying the dishwasher!

We went to a birthday party at a local Mexican restaurant for my cousin, Paula’s husband Marc. You may remember them for a previous post when we were working the insurance claims up in Pennsylvania last year.

We also attending the wedding of my favorite nephew, Trey! Of course, he is my only nephew! Sorry but I didn’t get any pictures of the wedding that came out. I was using my iPhone and they just didn’t come out very good. Sorry!

This past weekend we attending the birthday party of one of our grandsons, Gabe. He turned 10! Happy Birthday Gabe, since today is really his birthday. Here are a few pictures from the birthday party, Gabe is in the red shirt on the right.

….

Here is Austin catching some really good air!

Our daughter had these water bottle labels made for the birthday party.

The front one.

The back side label.

Our daughter even had these candy wrappers made.

We will be here in Lake Charles for another week and then we will be traveling down Interstate 10 to Rayne, La. for the Passport America Rally. Rayne is only about 60 miles east of Lake Charles, so it will be a short travel day. After the rally we will be back in Lake Charles for another week, before we travel to Texas for another rally with our friends over the Easter holidays.

Someone sent me a photo of a top RV resort they are thinking about buying a lot in. In looks pretty upscale! Maybe I should called it a Redneck Mansion!

Sorry couldn’t resist!

Until next time!