Slow and Steady

Not much to report on the recovery front, other than Josh and Ben are both doing well and getting a little better every day.  They both have a long road in front of them before they are back to their old selves physically (or even better than their old selves, in Ben's case), but they are making good progress.

Yesterday Josh suggested taking an 'expedition' to get out of the house for a little bit.  We're getting a little stir crazy since we've spent the past week and a half confined to the hospital and Ben & Laada's house.  His aunt Priscilla invited us over to her daughter's house for lunch, where she was babysitting her granddaughter.  That was a good first outing, since Josh hasn't yet reached a point where he feels comfortable wearing real pants -- just sweatpants -- while his abdominal incisions are still healing, and he gets tired easily if we have to do a lot of walking.  So until he's up to wearing jeans or khakis, we probably need to limit ourselves to visiting friends and family or extremely casual venues.  No trips to the opera or fancy restaurants.  We had a nice visit with Priscilla and baby Nora and made a quick stop for groceries on the way home.  It was nice to have a change of scenery -- hopefully we'll get to see Josh's cousin and her husband sometime soon.

In the evening, we had a visit from Lynne's cousin Laurin, who some of you might recognize as the  minister who officiated at our wedding 10 years ago. 

Josh, Laada, Larissa, Laska, Ben, Laurin, and Lynne

He lives an hour north of Seattle and had come into the city for the day to attend a meeting at the university.  It was nice to catch up with him.  He mentioned that the kidney transplant had served as inspiration for many of his recent sermons, and shared an incredible kidney-transplant-related story.  One of the members of his congregation suffered from kidney failure and needed a transplant.  Another member of the congregation, a very fit man in his fifties, offered to be tested as a donor.   His own father had died of heart disease at age 40, so this man had done everything in his power to avoid that by living a healthy, active lifestyle.  He passed all the necessary kidney-function tests and was approved as a donor, but the nephrologist insisted he also undergo extensive heart testing, due to his family history, before she would go forward with the transplant.  It turned out his arteries were 80% blocked and he could have died at any minute -- he was in surgery within half an hour.  His selfless desire to save someone else's life ended up saving his own instead. 

(Unfortunately, we didn't hear what happened to the lady who needed the kidney transplant, but let's assume another donor was found so that this story has a happy ending all the way around.)

We got a few inches of snow last night, followed by an inch of rain, so most of it had melted by the time we got up this morning. 

The view from the back deck.  The rain washed all the snow out of the trees, but it was pretty late last night.

Since it doesn't snow much here, the schools were on a 2-hour delay this morning, which seems unnecessary, even by wimpy DC standards.  But Seattle is very hilly and they don't have the equipment to treat or plow the roads in residential areas, so it probably was tricky for some people to venture out this morning in the slushy mess.  It looks like it will be a bit warmer (40s & 50s) and rainy for the next several days, which is typical for Seattle at this time of year.

Not sure if we'll be able to venture out today, but hopefully we'll figure something out.