New Sights

       Here's a bunch of pictures we wanted to share with you to show you a little bit of our first week in New Haven, CT.  It's been good to explore this new place where we will be for the next few months! Hope you enjoy our little documentary :)

Our new crib :)

Heading downtown to check out the city. Passing Yale's med school.

Central Green downtown New Haven

Church on the Green

One of the many amazing buildings on Yale campus!

      

        The local Starbucks...Yale students and their Macs!

Hey they stole our idea! But I think I found a new favorite spot :D

Walking down Chapel St...lots of cute shops!

Me and Mike outside of the Yale School of Art

Yale dorm (I think)

Picking my roommate ;)

Pretty Yale!

At the Yale Daily News! Just call me Rory Gilmore :)

Dragon Lady ;)

Here’s a quick story that my mom told me recently and I wanted to share it. It’s another reason why she’s my hero:

During mom’s time in the Air Force she had several jobs in various offices within the Pentagon. She described one of her co-workers in one of those jobs as a confident man who loved to chat, especially about his dog – the man would brag incessantly about his faithful companion.

After some time spent working with this fellow, mom noticed some changes in his behavior. Instead of standing up straight and walking tall, the man began to slump. His performance at work did not really fall, but his interest in talking about anything did. He even stopped talking about his dog, except to say that he had been kenneling him recently.

Thanks to a previous boss, mom was well trained in suicide prevention. Recognizing the changes in her friend, she took her concerns to her boss. Unfortunately the boss did nothing. A short time later mom went to another person with the observations that she had made. This boss told her flat out that the man indeed was depressed, but it was “just” because his wife was openly cheating on him with someone who was technically his boss. This boss told mom to stay out of it, and that it would work itself out.

Around that time, mom was transferred to another office. This office happened to communicate with the first, so mom continued occasional interactions with her depressed coworker. Finally, mom took the problem to another boss. This one finally acted, and had the man seen by a psychologist – who had him admitted to the psych hospital because he was in such bad shape.

I was amazed to hear my mom tell me, without pretension, of how she saved someone’s life. She saw a problem in a friend and didn’t give up until he got help. I thought this was such a great story from a superhero mom. Happy Mothers Day.

On the Road Again

        It was difficult to leave my family today, and I miss them so much already. But we said our heartfelt goodbyes at the house, drove to the hospital, and spent some time with dad before the inevitable moment where I had to force myself to stand up, grab my purse, and make myself say goodbye to him. With a hug and a kiss, dad said, “We couldn’t have done this without you guys”. Of course they could have; my parents have proven to me their incredible strength and determination over and over again. But they don’t have to do it without us, no matter how far away we are. We will always be here for them, to love them, support them, and fight along side of them. I couldn’t hold back the tears as he said this to me, and I looked at his cute little bald head, feeding tube and all, and my heart just melted. He’s so freakin’ cute.

       

      It’s amazing how much has happened in the last couple months, from packing up and leaving one city, driving home and being there through this whole ordeal, and loading the car once again to start yet another journey. Well, we made it...New Haven here we are! Home sweet home...I guess. I feel like each little period of my life in these last 2 months have been lived by different versions of me. Am I ready to switch back into the travel nurse Katy version? As we were driving to CT today, all of those old feelings of nervousness, excitement, anticipation, fear, and a little bit of adventure began to resurface as I allowed myself to start to process this new step I was taking. Although what I know of New Haven so far is limited to approximately two streets and our new apartment, which include some exciting things like four Dunkin’ Donuts in a 2 mile radius, Target, Olive Garden, a suspect neighbor who enjoys rocking out to 90’s slow rock jams, and a beautiful sunset to end our first evening here, our little apartment is already starting to feel a little bit like home. Our bags are unpacked, our few family photos are up, my Dove chocolates sit comfortingly on the coffee table in front of me, and although my heart is still in Lancaster, I am a tiny bit proud of myself for making it out of that hospital door and ending up at our next destination. It’s time to attempt to embrace this new journey!

A beautiful sunset for our last night in Lancaster.

Goodbye Lancaster county!

Passing through NYC

Here we come!

Seeing a little bit of the Long Island sound :)

Home sweet home 

Our first Connecticut sunset

Now that's what I call a home coming :)

Fighting

I’ve tried so many times in the last couple weeks to sit here and start my next blog. My fingers sit on the home row and my mind is churning with so many thoughts, but for some reason I can’t organize anything long enough to let the words flow from my brain to my fingers. This month and a half have flown by, yet at the same time it feels like one of the longest periods of my life. I guess what helped to get me started was yet another trip to the hospital on Monday night. I wanted to share more of my thoughts and frustrations, as I have had so much going through my mind and heart lately, but for now I will try to stick to the updates as I know many family and friends are wanting to hear how their Kenny is doing.

Over the weekend, my dad was feeling worse and worse, with episodes of vomiting, stomach pain, headaches, body aches, extremely high blood pressure, and complete exhaustion. On monday after dialysis, he slept the rest of the day, too sick to even attempt to get out of bed. In the evening, he had a low fever and chills that did not go away after two hours, and at that point we called the dialysis center to report his symptoms. We were immediately sent to the ER where they did blood work and scans and found that he had left upper lobe pneumonia, so they admitted him for treatment with IV antibiotics. Since then, things seem to just be hitting him one after the other. They found a bacteria growing in his intestines that is causing a lot of his gastrointestinal symptoms, and have started him on couple other medications to treat this. His blood pressure continues to be extremely high, and they are changing and adding different blood pressure meds. On Tuesday night, he had an episode where his left foot and hand went numb for a few minutes, and they ordered a head CT and MRI. The MRI came back showing some “abnormalities”, but they ruled out a lot of the major life threatening reasons and are now doing other testing to see what could be the cause. On top of it all, dad has been having issues with his swallowing over the last month which has been one of the largest factors contributing to his frustrations with his difficulty eating. Because of this, they did a swallow study. During the test, the liquid started to go into his lungs and caused him to start coughing, so they stopped the test and will likely repeat it sometime on Friday. Because they are concerned with his swallowing at this time, they gave him a feeding tube tonight that goes in his nose to his stomach as a temporary solution until they can get more information on why he is aspirating things into his lungs. It is very likely that this issue caused what they call aspiration pneumonia.

You are lucky...you just got the short version of what is going on. I know I make it sound so concise, but in reality it has been pure hell. I keep thinking to myself, “how much more can he possibly go through?!? This is not right.” My heart just breaks watching my dad have to suffer through all of this. How many times can a heart break before it is too late to glue the pieces back together? Because I think mine breaks at least 100 times a day. I must say, I am getting quite sick of hospitals. I have a feeling this isn’t a good thing considering I start my new job on Monday, but I really hate this place. As I was leaving the hospital tonight on my way home to some Chinese take out, I noticed that dad was calling me. As soon as I saw his name pop up, my first thought was “shit, what’s wrong now?” As I answered the phone, I knew by the silence that dad was in tears. He told me about needing a feeding tube, and as I turned my car around I talked to him and calmed him down and reassured him that he can do this. I guess I’m just a softie when it comes my daddy, but he ripped my heart out as I realized how much he needs me, and I raced back to that damn hospital so I could go be there to hold his hand.  After all was said and done tonight, he did a great job with yet again something completely awful and miserable. I lay here on this cozy (sarcastic) chair for the third night this week, my belly still full from the Chinese food smorgasbord Mike brought me and the travel mug of red wine mom and Keri snuck me to say “happy cinco de mayo” :)   I look over at dad, falling asleep beside me, and I still can’t believe that this is my dad. This man who took care of me, changed my diapers, bought me candy and movies when I was sick, who took me to baseball games, suffered endless times at Hershey Park enacting a dramatic death scene every time I came by in my flying spaceship shooting him with my machine gun, who came to every sporting event I played in and helped me practice my lay-ups regardless of how bad I sucked, who has supported me and encouraged me and helped to make me the person I am today. He is the most amazing dad and person that I know, and he has amazed me everyday that I see him battle what he has battled so far. It just sucks to see someone so amazing have to go through something like this. I know he is scared, I know we all are, but I know he is strong. He told me tonight, “I don’t know how much more I can take”. This seems to be a common phrase as he has had to endure so much, but I reminded him of how many times he has said this. And although what he has had to go through really, really sucks, he continues fighting through it all. I don’t want him to have to deal with anything else, and I pray that we start getting some positive news to make the fighting a little bit easier every day.