More about Claire's trip to Quebec later, but check out the cool marionette she brought home for Alison!

Of course, she is stereotyping knitters as old and grey, and we all know that's not true ... I will edit this post later and add some great pictures of our January 4H Sheep Club Meeting to attest to that!

Second hospitalization socks ...

I'm particularly proud of these socks. I knit the first one this past April, and then, because of my EVIL cats, ended up being unable to complete the second one. Here is the post describing their heinous acts. They actually BIT the yarn off eventually, causing me to give up the whole concept of "pair".

Then, during my decluttering bee of early January, I found the replacement ball I had purchased "some time" in the summer ... and ... heh, heh ... forgot about. Because, of course, it was summer, and who wants to knit wool socks in the summer? (Okay, if I had the time, I would, but we're too busy with the wool-MAKERS at that time of year!)

This became my project during Kev's Picton hospital stay. I knit this baby in record time, and if you are a knitter, you might notice that all the stripes line up perfectly, and my tension was pretty decent given the months in between, and the fact that I didn't even knit it on the same needles. (Same size needles, but I used my new KnitPicks Options Size 3 circular needle rather than the Addi Turbos).



One sock (the one the cats played with, rolled around in and stretched around chair legs) is slightly softer and larger at the moment, but this should even out eventually!)

Next thing on the needles? Beautiful purples/blues custom dyed for Alison by my friend Ann-Marie ... (plug for AM; here is her Etsy shop where she sells hand-dyed and handspun yarns online). Isn't it lovely??



I'm looking forward to experimenting with some different patterns for the instep and leg with these socks, rather than plain old ribbing.

Day in Kingston

We made it to Kingston.

We waited quite a while for Kev's appointment, however his leg started to really, really hurt (no way to elevate it in the waiting room) so they kindly let him come in and lay down on a gurney.

The stitches came out ... some of them had actually been grown over, so it was not a pretty process. The nurse called herself "Gentle Joan", however ...

We were sent home (the first time in a month that the hospital decided not to admit him; hurray!) ...

... with physio instructions that said "post op necrotizing fasciitis i & d", so apparently that was what he had. He had many more people from physio come in to ooh and aahh over his leg. He will start physio this week.

We now have coverage for physiotherapy. Double hurray!

I treated Kev to a meal at Red Lobster on the way home. We haven't eaten here in years since our one feeble attempt to successfully eat a gluten-free, dairy-free meal. Well, times have changed! They treated us like stars, and the chef actually re-created the meal I wanted FROM SCRATCH so it would be gluten-free. Truly. Amazing. Service. They were extremely well versed in food allergies, and said the only allergy they had a hard time working around was shell fish :-D.

Now, we are both wasted ... home resting until the kids arrive ... couple of gimps ;-).

The January that Time Forgot

On Friday evening, after Kev and Claire returned home, I started to feel pretty awful. I managed to pick up strep throat. I've never had it before. I shivered and slept and ached through all of Saturday; was slightly more lucid on Sunday but didn't do much. My friend (thank you SO much, Ann-Marie!) picked me up to take me in to the ER (we don't have a clinic here) to pick up a penicillin Rx. In and out of the ER in 20 minutes: priceless. Here's looking at feeling better SOON.

I feel bad though. I'm supposed to be of great service to my recuperating husband, and I've been out flat. Grrrr. Our kids have been amazing, but I must say, given the weirdness of this past month, they really deserve to have some fun. Yesterday was the free movie at the Regent Theatre in Picton, and no one could take them. Sigh.

Today, Sickie (me) and Gimpy (Kev) will be driving to Kingston to get Gimpy's stitches out, and find out more about continuing follow-up/physio for his leg. We're quite the pair :-D.

On the Kevin front .. he is doing much better. His stitches look ready to come out. He is still having pain, and still requiring the mega pain medication, but he is definitely feeling more energetic and mobile. He was doing some show prep yesterday for the morning show; even though he can't be there any time soon he really wants to help Dana out since she's running the show all by herself and will be for much of February as well.

All three kids are doing speeches this week at school; Alison is doing hers on our overdependence on fossil fuels, Claire is doing a speech on Rosa Parks, who she is fascinated with, and Iain is talking about interesting predators found in the Great Barrier Reef.

Hopefully I'll get some fun photos up soon. We've had some beautiful snow these past few weeks; just daily, shimmering, glittering snowflakes over everything with no great accumulation. It's been a PERFECT winter so far; snow early in the season, snow for Christmas, a lovely long January thaw, and beautiful snow now, with no really cold temperatures to speak of. Our sheep look like they've been dusted in icing sugar, and I've been meaning to try and take some photographs. Funnily enough, it just hasn't happened :-D.

And on the home front ... tomorrow ...

Claire is due home from her trip to Valcartier!

Kev is due home from his last hospital stay ... hurray!

Alison is staying home all day, so she will be helping Dad settle in and "home-schooling" for the day (and she is saying "hurray!")

I'll be driving Kev to Kingston on Monday for a follow-up/stitches out appointment with his ortho. surgeon. I feel an odd undercurrent ... will they keep him once again?

It looks like Kev will be off until the end of February. He'll be able to return to some of his HR duties online from home, but the office is not wheelchair/crutch accessible in the least.

Oh, and I neglected to mention one more incredible "coincidence" re: these last couple of weeks. Since we've been back to Canada, we have not had extra health insurance. For my American friends, the basics are covered by provincial health care in Canada. Emergency hospitalization, doctors visits, etc. Supplemental health care, such as dental, sometimes glasses, drug coverage, physio, better hospital rooms, etc. , can only be had by having extra health insurance. For five years, we had no supplemental coverage ... and no major illness. Our extra benefits package (a very, very good one) kicked in December 1st. Kev was hospitalized (for the first time) January 9.

Hmmm. :-).

This makes me so angry ...

Link to article on Westboro Baptist "Church" 's planned demonstration at Heath Ledger's funeral

I am a Christian. I'm a "born-again", Bible-believing, sinner whose life was changed at age 24 by the grace of a loving God. All those words that used to make me cringe, now make me free. I normally don't make a big deal of this around here; not the purpose of the blog ... but my faith is lifestyle and a "love"-style and it colours how I see the world around me. It was, and continues to be, a huge, real event and I am thankful/grateful/awestruck.

I read this article, and I am deeply embarassed and very sad. Embarassed that some people, who don't understand that life in Christ is the most freeing, loving relationship possible in this world, will associate me and my faith to these people just because of my "label". And very sad, because of the hypocrisy. I just. don't. get it. I'm wondering whether Matthew 7:1-6 has been preached from recently in this church. Also sad that the media is able to ferret out so efficiently all of the unkind things that God's church is responsible for, and yet His people are responsible for so much good that goes uncelebrated. Sigh. Enough said (for now).

Kev is in the hospital ... again :-(

Took Kev into Picton today to our family doctor because of sore muscles. We figured he needed physio, but by the time they did an ultrasound (to check for blood clots) and made him wait in the ER (to check back with the surgeon) his leg, already weirdly swollen today, started to turn red. So he is now admitted into our local hospital on IV antibiotics .. again. I don't think it's a recurrence of what happened previously, but just a general infection ... Kev feels fine, no fever, and he's bored stiff in the hospital. He will have to stay in until Friday morning, and they have him in a private room (isolation unit). Sigh.

We appreciate continued prayers to get him out of there and get this leg healed up for good! Thank you.

Things that we are very thankful for over the past couple of weeks.

1. A God-timed visit to Alison's fiddle teacher Tuesday night. After a day of Kevin having "extreme" flu-like symptoms, I shared these symptoms with Michelle Found (fiddle teacher's mom) and she said "That sounds just like the cellulitis my husband gets! Does he have a rash?" At that point, he didn't. But because of this I got up with Kevin the next morning as he left for the station at 4:00 a.m., and sure enough he had a fist-sized rash on his shin. While he went to work, I wikipedia'd cellulitis and found photographs of Kev's leg, and a symptom list that could have been Kev's from the day before (also the disconcerting words "necrotizing fasciitis" which I filed away as a "yeah, not possible"). We headed to the local hospital as soon as his morning show was over. Any further delay ...

2. The new doctor in town, who was working the ER that Wednesday morning. He studied Kev's leg for approximately 12 seconds before sprinting down the hall to the ER phone. He then spent 20 minutes on the phone with an old Prof, ER at KGH personnel, etc. and set up the Nec. Fasc. antibiotic cocktail in Picton. Kev's surgeon at KGH credits Dr. Colby's quick thinking for saving his leg. Had the antibiotics waited until the ambulance arrived in Kingston, the outcome may have been substantially different.

3. That although Kev had to sign a "consent for amputation" form prior to the emergency surgery on Wednesday, that was not the outcome and that when he came out of anaesthesia during the night Thursday morning, his leg was still there.

4. Our church family, who rocked. The financial support, so we were able to park wherever we liked, and eat meals right there, was so appreciated. And the prayer support ... well, I could literally feel it. On Wednesday evening, and into Thursday, when there were still unknowns, I could feel myself wavering on the edge of losing it completely ... and coming back down from that place. I can only attribute that to prayer.

5. Janna Cylka, who thank God had not moved yet. Each night the kids came home on a different bus to her home, where she fed them dinner if I was not home from the hospital. This is the woman who SAYS she can't cook, but I know better now ;-). The pork dish she served one night could have been served at a restaurant. Even better, she sent us home with leftovers so I didn't have to panic about lunches on my way back out to Kingston the next day.

6. Kevin's two sisters, who came and stayed overnight in Kingston (from Cambridge and Bradford) and got an extra room so the kids and I could stay overnight. This was so awesome. My two "less-comfortable-in-the-hospital kids" could have a short visit with Dad, then were able to swim with their cousins and hang out. Kim and Karen also paid for our meals while they were there. We are so grateful.

7. A wonderful woman who came and stayed at our place to watch the animals.

8. That when above-mentioned wonderful woman accidentally got my instructions confused and fed our sheep 1.5 BUCKETS of barley rather than 1.5 scoops, our sheep only had tummy aches and went off their feed for a week, rather than dying which would have been the more normal outcome.

9. The love and care we received from so many folks in so many areas of our life; family, church, community, work, friends in NJ, homeschool community, the children's teachers at school. I still owe return phone calls and e-mails.

10. The special time the kids and I had on Wednesday night at home while Kevin had his first surgery. We were scared. It was real life. We cried together, and prayed together, and saw God answer prayer together. My children's perception of Who God is and what He can do is much bigger now. Priceless.

Perhaps more to come, but Monday is starting and there is much to do :-).

On what can be accomplished in 3 hours in an OR waiting room ...

I was able to finally complete sock no. 2! Here are Iain's socks, washed and blocked (on coat hangers) and drying. As I've said before, waiting rooms are the best places to knit, especially mindless inches of straight knit or simple knit-purl pattern.

While, of course, the surgeons were accomplishing this in the OR ... (I've made this picture small. For those of you who are brave, click on the photo to see an enlargement of the surgeon's handiwork).


My last view of Kev as he was whisked away to the ambulance was my hand-knit socks keeping his feet warm as his fever was rising.

And one more life/knitting parallel ... since her many visits to the hospital, Alison has been looking online at medical schools. She was incredibly "at home" in the hospital, and coped with situations that would leave many of us freaking out. She had nurses showing her how to use monitors and other equipment. She was not overly disturbed by the tiny man dying of cancer in the next door bed. I ended up pulling her from school for two days and bringing her with me since she was learning so much from "life" (still a home educator at heart). She is wondering whether her love of knitting and all things sewing, along with her love of all things medical, might mean she should look into becoming a surgeon. Yikes. Knitting people back together again.

Kev is home ... :-)

Kev is home today ... and well on his road to recovery. We still appreciate your prayers as he figures out the walking-with-crutches thing, and using muscles differently than before.

We are very, very thankful that he is here, and still has both legs; although the surgeon said he had to do a hack job on his leg due to the emergency nature of the surgery, I think it looks good. He has a couple of extremely impressive incisions up the sides of his left leg. It was necrotizing fasciitis, although between prayer and quick thinking at Picton Hospital, it was already being halted even as his fever skyrocketed (105 degrees) and he was sent by ambulance to KGH.

God is good. God still would have been good had the outcome been different, but we are grateful that He chose to answer in this way.

I'm pretty tired though :-).

Thank you everyone for your prayers.

A drawing courtesy of my friend Janna

Kev is in the OR as we speak. Because I figured he wouldn't want photos done, I'm borrowing my friend Janna's fun image.

We appreciate your prayers, for this last (hopefully) surgery and his recovery.

It feels like it's been a week since Wednesday morning ...

More details later, but Kev was taken by ambulance (lights and sirens) on Wednesday just after lunch from our local hospital to Kingston General, where he had emergency surgery and is awaiting follow-up surgery, for probable necrotizing fasciitis. God is good ... he is alive, the infection was minimal (we caught it early due to an incredible "coincidence"), but it has been a roller coaster. We have also learned today that he is anaphylactic to penecillin, one of the three necessary antibiotics. He is not dead (25% mortality), he has not lost his leg (50% possibility); he had horrible reactions to morphine and has developed an anaphylactic reaction to penecillin (which will be challenged tonight at midnight to confirm). He hasn't eaten in three and a half days.

At the first surgery, biopsies were done and the results will not be in until midweek. So although they have treated it like nec. fasc., it may still not be. However it was an extremely aggressive cellulitis that still would have required surgery; we are thankful that the medical community worked well and quickly.

Our community and church family have rallied around us; God is good but I am tired and praying for this to be over. More later ...

How quickly time flies ...

I haven't been blogging much because I've been a decluttering and organizing fool. Prior to Christmas I cleaned out all our storage areas; now that the kids are back at school I have torn apart our school room and office area (note the slip: I will always be a home educator at heart!).

But I had to take a few minutes out of my self-imposed chaos to post some photos ...

I found this while decluttering ... this photo was taken May 28, 1998. Alison had just turned 4, Claire was 2.5, and Iain was 7 months.


And here are the kids' school photos from December 2007. Alison is coming up to 14, Claire is 12 and Iain is 10 ... just under a decade later.

Making the decision to have a child - it's momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart walking around outside your body.
- Elizabeth Stone

Oh, my heart :-).