I can not watch the show, which is tough on me. American Idol was one of my favorite shows since it first came on.
I have friends and family that watch it, and tell me what happened. I guess last night there was a lot of drama.
It was group week. Hope was in a group where one girl wanted to run the whole group and dictate what everyone did. Hope wasn’t having it. She wanted to voice her opinions as well. She is like me in that sense. We let people know what we think, for sure.
Two people made it through to the next round out of her group. Hope and another girl. I’m so excited! She was put through to get closer to the top!
I believe next week she’ll be on again. Everyone tune in and watch my Hopie Jo on the show to see what happens and how far she makes it.
Now that I am using a braille display full-time, and nothing else, I am getting better at operating the PC on my own again.
With speech, it was no problem In fact, everyone came to me with computer problems because I could do almost everything on a computer that didn’t require vision. When the hearing started going, so did my computer skills.
I hated braille—mainly because I am so slow at it. But using it on a daily bases, I am getting just a tad faster.
Using a braille display on the PC is harder than speech, to me. Things are arranged a little differently and it takes a second or two to go back and forth from the keyboard to the display. It just takes longer, and well, we all know I’m not that patient.
I had Edwarrd do a lot of my tasks for me on the internet because Internet Explore was just too hard. But, I’m getting better!
I’ve been posting my own blogs and doing a few Google searches. Now I’m about to start working on changing a few things on the blog. I do not need the donations anymore, so I need to make people aware that I got what I needed, and not leave this old information up there. It’s also time to push my book a little harder.
I don’t need donations, but I do need funds to help pay for travel and lodging to and from L.A. since I’ll be going back several times within the next year. I will try my hardest to sell the rest of the books I have, and use that money to do this
So things are going well. I am recovering nicely, and I’m adjusting to this deafblindness well. I am improving on my braille skills, and not freaking out quite as much over the silence. I still get a wave of anxiety sometimes, but it’s getting better. From here, I can only move forward.
Wow…I was just sitting here at my computer this morning typing an e-mail to my DB buddy in L.A. I looked down and what do I see?
My trach is hanging there by the neck band. The tube is all the way out of the hole. Oh geez, what to do now?
I tried to stick it back in, but I didn’t try very hard. I was afraid to push or touch it a lot. I went and woke Edward up. We called my mom and I said just to leave it out. I don’t want that blasted tube anyway. I was planning to have the doctor take it out Monday.
Well, we decided to go to the ER and see what they thought. They looked at me and saw that I could breathe fine on my own, even with the trach hole covered, and said that I could just leave the tube out and it would start closing on its own.
It is already starting to close, but they said it would take two months for it to heal completely. It’s that easy? Just take the tube out and let it do its thing? And to think, it was an accident that it came out on its own. Oh well, it’s more comfortable without it anyway.
Music is everywhere in my family. Seems that everyone either loves to sing and/or play music.
My niece is one who loves to sing, just like her Aunt Holly. As she got older, she got even better at it.
She decided to try out for American Idol this year. She made it to Hollywood.
Last night they showed her at Hollywood. She sang “I Hope You Dance” by Leann Womack (probably misspelled that). I wish I could have heard her. I’always loved hearing her sing. People say she did really good.
I am keeping my fingers crossed and praying that she goes far in this. This is something she loves to do and really wants out of life. I’m so proud of her for trying to follow her dreams. Way to go, Hope. Go far and pray you make it to the top.
I’m finally home! They let me out of the hospital after 16 days.
This surgery was a huge success, even if there were complications. I feel so blessed. I have an excellent team of surgeons operating on me.
There are several truly amazing things about this whole experience that definitely show me that God was at work here. Right now the one I’m thinking about is the surgeons saving my face.
I had a 5cm tumor. That is extremely large for an acoustic neuroma. It was life-threatening. It was causing me to choke on food and drinks, have no balance, falling all of the time, and making me space out. The spacey spells I was having were very scary. It would feel like I had been injected with the strongest drug out there, and I would feel like I was about to pass out. I couldn’t think, talk, focus, anything.
Now, the spacey spells are gone. I can walk using a walker, I can stand in place and sit on the side of the bed without swaying like a drunk, and I don’t lose focus anymore. I do have headaches off and on, but that is from the surgery. They aren’t near as bad as they were.
So I am home and recovering nicely. I still have a trech and a feeding tube. I am going to have my PCP get an appointment to take the trach out, I think an ENT has to do it, and order a swallow study to see if things are still going to my lungs. I think everything is fine. I know the trach can be taken out. Everyone there is safe now.
We flew home Saturday. Little Rock was very cold and the streets were slick with snow and ice. Since it was late in the evening, we had to get a hotel room for the night and try to drive home the next morning.
The long drive was even longer. My Dad had to drive very slow because the roads were so bad. I’m just glad we finally made it home safely.
We got home Sunday afternoon and as soon as we pulled into the driveway my aunt, who was watching Isaiah for me, opened my door and put him on my lap.
I gave Isaiah the world’s hugest hug. I missed him so much. My family missed him too, but at least they could call and talk to him on the phone. I had no contact at all and I would get so sad and lay in my hospital bed and cry because I just wanted to hold my baby. He signed, “I love you Momma.” Oh what precious words.
Hearing is completely gone now. It’s scary not knowing who or what is around me, if anything. At home it’s not so bad, but in the airport I nearly had a few anxiety attacks. I didn’t know if danger was around, afraid someone would try to attack or abduct me. Yes I know, I’m crazy but I am a chicken when it comes to crime. If it can happen to other people, it could happen to me as well.
It’s also very lonely and boring not being able to hear a thing when you are totally blind. There’s nothing to do to occupy your time. The only thing you have is touch. In L.A. I had two options. Talk to my parents or Edward, which can’t be done every second of the day, or read a book. I had my PAC Mate (braille note taker) and I have a digital book on it. I read it with the refreshable braille display on the note taker. Doing those two things, and praying a whole bunch, I got through those rough days in the hospital.
I want to thank everybody for their prayers, good vibes, encouragement, and support. It really helped and I could not have gotten through this without all of it. Thank you so much. I know God is watching over me. He was in the surgery and he still is here at home. Everything will be fine now, and the ABI will be a huge success because God isn’t finished with me. There is a reason I received that huge donation and was able to get the device. He wouldn’t have made that happen if it wasn’t going to work well for me. It is a miracle, and I really do feel so blessed.
Hello everyone. You must have thought this was going to be the last update I was going to put in the blog. Well you got it wrong. It’s time for a new one. Our son Isaiah was at his mother and father-in-law’s house today (that’s my mother and father-in-law’s house–he was at his grandparents house today). Holly asked me to go over there today, and asked them not to fix any supper tonight. She said she wanted to make supper herself tonight. Oh she definitely has done that and I mean done that in a good way. She was able to walk around the entire kitchen holding on to either the counter or stovetop–not the hot ones mind you, but at least the ones that she knew where not hot and was able to hold onto. The funniest thing about it was that after I got done putting the hot oven gloves away after we took the chicken out of the oven, I went back to the stove, to see if she was still there. I figured she would still be standing there waiting on the chicken to get done, but instead she wiped completely from the kitchen on the way back to her desk. Just completely away!! Anyway, I thought that was pretty interesting. I thought maybe you guys might want to know a little bit of these interesting facts.
Hey everyone. Finally time for me to update the blog. I apologize for not updating in several days, but it’s been a very busy couple of days. Well, I’ve got some very exciting news: Holly was released from the hospital on Wednesday! Well it seemed to take most of the day, but we were finally released around 7:30 that evening. I know she was extremely happy to be out of the hospital, but we still have to stay at the guest center until Saturday but should be tomorrow. But she had an appointment with her doctor this morning, at the clinic, and everything was going well. He said that she looked very good and nice with her makeup and clothes on. But it’s definitely wonderful to have her back to a real person and not a person in a gown, or in a hospital bed for that matter. At least I get to hold her at night. That is something I definitely missed in the last two weeks. Really, but we will be catching a flight out tomorrow morning at 11:50 AM and will not be getting back into Little Rock till later in the evening. I hope everything goes well with the weather in Arkansas. Quite bad right now. They are getting a lot of snow. Well this will probably be one of my last posts in the journal for a while, as I’m sure Holly will be updating it herself. I know she will be glad to get back to her computer and braille display. I look forward to keeping you guys updated and hope I did a good job, I know I haven’t updated as frequently as she probably would have, but I do my best. I know Holly would like me to say this once again, thank everyone for all their support and prayers. It is greatly appreciated and very helpful to all of us as a family. We try to stick together is a close-knit family network, and I know that it helps Holly to know that we love there for her. Well until next time, I hope you enjoyed everything I’ve updated you on, and it has been at least somewhat understandable with this voice recognition software. It doesn’t always get everything correct that I say, but hopefully you will get the gist of it. It takes much more time to go through and edit word by word and character by character, so I figure I’ll try to leave it as it is and hopefully you’ll get the gist of it. Everyone take care, and hopefully the next update will be from Arkansas our hometown. Thanks once again. Take care.
Hey everyone, I just wanted to update the blog and let you know how Holly is doing. A couple of days ago, she was able to be removed off the IV lines and now she has to have an antibiotic. They have her on a nine to lock for. This makes it much easier for her to get around, especially when she is not hooked up tonight
Or this evening too. At least you don’t want to start out. One of the doctors came in today, and said the Holly was looking extremely well. They are going to do a study next week by taking a scope, and looking at her vocal cords to see if they are functioning any better than they were post-surgery. I’m sorry, I meant pre-surgery. I always get those mixed up. Either way, they’re going to do a study on the vocal cords, to see if they are functioning any better than they were before surgery. If they find that she is able to swallow, they are going to possibly remove the trach. This would be exciting news for Holly. I know she will be thrilled when she finds this out. We have not told her yet, because you want to make sure from our regular doctors who come during the week, that this is going to be the case. But it looks like it will be. So hopefully the study will go well. I seem to be having a little bit of trouble with my speech dictation software, it’s making a lot of mistakes. I extremely apologize for that. I don’t know if I put this before, but Holly has been able to do a lot of walking, especially since they have been able to take her off the IV lines. She has walked completely around the nurses’ station, which is quite a trek for someone whoo just came out of surgery almost 2 weeks ago. She is recovering nicely. Well that’s about all I have to say for now, but I will keep you updated as to more information. Thanks so much for all your support and hopefully you find these updates interesting.
Hey there everyone, I would like to apologize for not updating the blog in the last couple of days, but it’s been kind of busy. I’ve got some exciting news. Holly wants to update the blog herself, so I am going to dictate what she says to me from her: Hi everybody. Edward is posting this for me. I just wanted to let everyone know that I am trying to stay strong. But right now, I am scared. But code, it doesn’t look like there is an end in sight. But please keep praying, and sending positive vibes. But I think that it probably feels like there is no end in sight, because lately, she has been running a fever. They haven’t been doing a lot, because they are trying to figure out where the fever comes from. They’ve taken blood samples, culture samples, urine samples, and doing a chest x-ray. This fever started a couple of days ago, and they’ve been treating it with antibiotics. I think they finally narrowed it down to a bacteria in the blood, I can’t remember the name of it, but they are trying to figure out where it came from to begin with. The temperature has been running somewhere between 99 and 104. Hopefully, they will be able to get it all cleared up with antibiotics, soon as they can finish treating her, and we can go home. I’ll keep everyone up-to-date as much as I can. Thanks so much and hope you enjoyed that bit from Holly.
Hello All.
I wanted to let you know what a wonderfull day Holly had today.
Physical thearpy worked with her on walking, and she was able to walk about 80 feet back and forth up and down the hall.
She also got the new feeding tube, which was inserted through the stomach. I know it makes it easier to have that one versus the one in her nose.
Hey because of that tube she has now, I was able to get my first kiss in over a wwk! Yahoo!
Now back on topic, Holly also walked a second time today, and did just as well, only this second time, she used a 2-wheeled walker which she did very well on.
Today, they also downsized her trach from a size 6 to a size 4, and she is so very happy. She says, “I can clear this one out on my own, without suction.”
So, all in all she’s doning very good and hopefully will learn how to talk with her new trach tomorrow. They are going to have a speech thearpist work with her for that tomorrow.
Everyone take care and we’ll keep you up to date as much as we can.
