The Unexpected

Please pray for Grampa. This morning, I came down to make his birthday breakfast - guess what? His favorite: waffles!- and found that he was already up, getting his cereal out... When I said Good morning, he turned around and looked at me a little funny, like he was upset, and then opened his mouth to say something but his words were so slurred, I couldn't understand what he was saying. Right away, I knew he must have had a stroke - or something like it- and my heart sank.

He had another mini stroke last month and spent almost a week in the hospital, getting tests and eventually a pacemaker put in. ( I don't think I wrote anything about that.) But the only thing we had noticed wrong that time was that he was having trouble swallowing food. Other than that, he seemed totally normal. But when we took him to the doctor, they said he'd had a little stroke and told us to go to the hospital.

Anyway, that was last month. This morning, as soon as I realized what was going on, I told Grandpa to sit down, went upstairs and told Brad who scurried around, gathering up the right paperwork to take with him to the hospital. Meanwhile, I went back down to the kitchen to talk to Grandpa. Fortunately, he was able to walk, and could sort of write. So that was encouraging. It was a little hard to understand his writing, but he could basically get his point across. I read him a birthday card from Aunt Gladys, and afterwards, Grandpa sort of sang, "Happy Birthday To Me...." - just the first line. It was so sweet and funny and sad. I could only really understand the tune, and the "to me" part, but it conveyed that he hadn't lost his sense of humor. Poor guy- Happy 85th Birthday! Let's go to the hospital to celebrate! Man. Not how I'd want to spend my birthday. A few minutes after that, Brad and Grandpa left for the hospital.

Many thanks to Penny who came over to calm my jitters b/c I was pretty freaked out and loaned me her car for the day so I could go do stuff to keep busy and visit Grandpa this evening. I'm just waiting for Aiden to wake up ( his schedule has been pretty disrupted today) so I can feed him and then we can go.

Please pray for Grampa. One thing to pray for specifically is that he will recover his speech fully. I think losing the ability to talk would probably be a pretty frustrating thing to endure, and not to sound totally self-centered or anything, but it would make living with him and caring for him pretty challenging.