My family (immediate and extended) has been doing a great job over the last few weeks of keeping our doctors in business.

Tammy’s ankle surgery went very well this Thursday. She had plenty of tendon in place to do “option one” (as opposed to the tendon graft that was “option two”). She spent yesterday on the recliner, but is in very little pain. This morning she made her first solo trip to the bathroom, requiring no help getting out of and back into her nest of pillows and blankets on the recliner. She’s also telling me, as I type this, that she’s ready to get up and go out for breakfast. She’s either a real trooper or has a terminal case of cabin fever. Probably both.

Tammy’s dad had heart surgery Friday. They expected to do a quintuple bi-pass (that’s five blocked blood vessels) but after getting in there and finding the tissue very weak, they stopped at three. I’m not sure what the plan is for the other two.

There was some concern last night because he was not breathing steadily enough on his own to remove the ventilator (which means he had to keep the hose down his throat and needed to be sedated).

But this morning we got news that he’s off the ventilator and talking. (PTL!) He’s still in a lot of pain and he has a historical problem with medications making him sick. The search goes on for the right pain medicine to keep him comfortable and not make him sick.

My Aunt Martha, is home (sort of) after open heart surgery. Her recovery has been slow and difficult, but she moved from the rehab center to a room in her daughter’s basement yesterday. She lives in Beaumont, Texas, but all this has taken place in Maryland. She’s far from home, but at least she’s “home.” If you know Martha and want to follow her story more closely, my cousins, Kathy and Daina, are keeping a blog of her recovery.