Heartbreak

The snow kept falling and then we were awakened at 1 am on Saturday morning by our grandson Michael to get our phone.  Kristi, our DIL, wife of Travis, our 44 year old youngest child, called to tell us that Travis had a major heart attack and she had given him CPR until the paramedics got there to take over.  

He was taken to the emergency room and has been under the care of a cardiac team.  Our son Shawn went to the hospital to be with him and was there for almost 10 hours.

They put a ballon to assist his heart in pumping and we have learned they put 5 stints in.  They put him in an induced coma while they worked to keep him alive.  They warned us he might not come out of the coma or if he did he might not be the same person.  Needless to say we've been frantic and tearful and brokenhearted that our precious son was in such perilous condition and to be honest we could have lost him.  

Dayle took over by his side yesterday. Once they removed the balloon they were relieved that his heart was beating on its own and his blood pressure was good.  They planned to bring him out of his coma by raising his temperature and ceased sedation last evening.  Dayle called Kristi to tell her that he came to quickly and was following commands which meant he had brain function.  The removed the breathing tube and he was able to speak.  Needless to say we were all relieved and were cautiously optimistic.

He has continued to improve, Shawn is with him again today, keeping us all informed.  They are only allowing one family member a day and Kristi has a cold so can't go in and I can't go in as Dayle doesn't want me driving on the snow and icy roads, so his brother and father are taking turns staying with him.  Today he is eating and talking so things are looking up.  ::whew::  Thank you to my friends and family who have been praying for him and keeping Travis and the family in their thoughts.  

Back on the home front, Caleb has been helping me out while Dayle was with our son.  He's filled the pellet stove, fed and watered the chickens, fed the wild birds and switched out the hummingbird feeders as they froze.  He also had some boy/snow fun by digging out a snow fort of a big snowdrift on our deck.

The wild birds are happy to have some food.

The freezing rain came in last evening and all night we heard thumps and crashing ice cubes hit our roof and skylights over our bed.  It sounded like a war zone and made it hard to sleep, plus the worry about our son, I'm kind of like a zombie.  This is the view out of our bedroom French doors to our woods.  See the chunks of ice and bits of tree limbs?

 

Dayle texted me from the hospital to tell me to look in his armoire for a surprise.  He'd gotten a red velvet heart of chocolates for me for Valentines Day.  Sweet man.

Yum.

The Meadow blanket that Lucy at Attic24 blog designed and has a CAL (crochet-a-long) going helped me stay calm while I hooked away while waiting for news.  I was reading my dear blog friend Lucy's latest post and lo and behold, she'd visited my blog and shared this photo of my blanket and even shared a link to my blog.  What a doll she is!  Below I did a screenshot of her post so you can see what she said.  :-)

The image below shows you how Multnomah Falls looks during this storm.

My dear husband made us a loaf of banana bread for our breakfasts, I found the recipe on King Arthur's website and it calls for 3 TBS of orange marmalade and wow, it is delicious!

OK.. time to take the valentine tablecloth off and I have a new one to put on, I will show on my next post.  I hope to have a lot of good news, too.  ((hugs)), Teresa :-)