Off To The Hospital

What a change in plans I had this weekend! I was getting ready to leave the house Saturday morning and was looking forward to "my last hurrah" with a friend who is moving out of town, when I got the phone call saying that my sister was leaking spinal fluid and was rushing to Ft. Wayne's Lutheran Hospital.

For those of you who don't remember...my sister, Gail, had a brain tumor removed on February 23rd.  I know the day well because it was Tyler's 1st birthday. The tumor was benign, but was the size of her fist and needed to be taken out. She recovered remarkably...or so we thought.

Gail with her sons and granddaughter one week before her surgery at our sister's wedding

Gail had emergency surgery on Sunday. When she reached the hospital, her temperature was 102 and her blood pressure was 190/117. Turns out she has an aggressive strep infection. What we thought was spinal fluid leaking from her incision and ear turned out to be the infection. They had to reopen her skull and go in to suction out what they could and replaced the metal plate that was inserted in the first surgery with bone from her hip.

She has been in horrific pain and is on a morphine drip along with strong doses of antibiotics. The doc said yesterday that she will likely be on antibiotics for 4-6 weeks! Her temp has gone down, however, and she is slowly improving. I'm hoping to find her in her own room today and out of ICU.

Throwback Thursday!

I have a confession to make.  I'm a geek.  And I sometimes do really odd things that I find hilarious but most people just think are, well...odd.  I've always been this way.  Luckily, I have a couple of partners in crime though, because apparently the oddity is hereditary and my sisters share the same trait.  You see, when we were children we used to pretend we were characters of popular television shows and we used to "play" them.  Yep, we would take on the characters and then pretend different situations.  Unfortunately, my oldest sister was already out on her own when most of this occurred, so she didn't get to participate in most episodes.  The three sisters that were left, though, had a blast. 

Sometimes I got a good character...like "Chris" from Charlie's Angels.  Oh how I loved to play Charlie's Angels!  It was particularly interesting to play on my grandfather's farm.  Most of the time, however, I was stuck with the person my elder two sisters did not want to be.  Ah, the joys of being the youngest. 

I proudly injected feelings and emotions into characters such as "Mrs. Howell" from Gilligan's Island, (you can only imagine the fight over who got to be "Maryann" or "Ginger") "The mom" from One Day at a Time, and "Vera" from Alice.

My absolute favorite show to play, however, was the ultimate Barbara Mandrell and the Mandrell Sisters Show.  We belted out songs and danced our fannies off after choreographing elaborate routines...which we then forced our parents to watch and applaud vigorously afterward.  Naturally, I was "Irlene."  My mother always insisted that she was really smart and she just acting dumb for the show, but when you are 5, that's hard to swallow.  I just wanted to be Barbara...but of course, I never got to be.  Except when I pretended to be her when my sisters were not around. 



Honestly, it really doesn't get any better than this for me.  I am a Barbara Mandrell fanatic!  I remember taking pictures of the display cases at her museum in Nashville.  What a bond I feel to her and her family.  It is pretty natural actually, I mean the whole sisters thing, and I am sure they helped shape my childhood in some aspect.  What good role models the Mandrell sisters were!