Saturday, January 28, 2012

Changes in Iowa


Hi Everyone,

It is a beautiful, sunny day in Iowa City. It did snow a little yesterday, but nothing much stayed.

On Thursday Charlie had an echocardiogram, transthoraic to see how his heart would stand a lot of extra fluid going through the body which is what will happen during a transplant. Yesterday, we got a call from the cardiology clinic and they wanted us to come in for an appt. in the afternoon. Well, the upshot of this is that Charlie is temporally (we hope) off the transplant list, because the test showed that while yes, it can stand the fluid pressure just fine, but there were concerns about the aortic valve opening which showed some scarring and narrowing – aortic stenosis. (We think that is what they were saying!) The transplant surgeon has to have a heart clearance and they can’t give it right now. The plan is that Charlie will have, next week, a heart CT scan done by a special machine that the cardiologist said that there are few of these in the country. It has higher resolution and can show clearer the measurement of the aortic valve opening.

This has been quite a shock and upsetting to us since everyone both in CA and in IA have been saying that his heart is good to go. The cardiologist did say to us that he thought that Charlie was going to be OK to go ahead because the pressure measurement was good and that somehow the narrowing and OK pressure just doesn’t compute. (This has been the story of Charlie’s health history lately!) The test they do next week he says will be the tiebreaker.

On a better note, Charlie’s sister is flying here today from CO for about a week to see her favorite (only) brother – I am sure that Charlie is going to so happy to not have my eagle eyes watching his every move.

We hope that all is well with you and we will you posted on this latest “bump” in the road! Please keep Charlie and the CT scan in your prayers.

The picture of the field house is where Charlie use to work as an ROTC instructor when we were here from 1971 to 1974. The eagle is what we see along the Iowa River and the others are of the hospital area and of course, the football stadium which is across the street from the hospitals.

Monday, January 23, 2012

Waiting, Looking and Being Ready



At old Capital on the University of IA campus, Lucy's picture, and snow outside our building

Sunday, January 22, 2012

Well, no “call” yet – we keep our cell phones handy and charged up at all times. We also have a "go" bag packed just like you do in the last weeks of a pregnancy! The coming week involves an endoscopy tomorrow – the 17th one, then on Tuesday, a bone density test, and on Thursday we see the liver specialist. Hopefully, this will be the last endoscopy – Charlie is so ready to get the call and get the transplant going! His spirits are good, but I can tell he is getting “antsy!”

We have been having some snow and ice – we had to scrape car windows today and I almost fell down walking to the church close by.

We keep busy roaming around Iowa City, reading, and exercising – that is the first item on the agenda for Charlie every day.

We have included more pictures – one shows Charlie holding a picture that Lucy made for him, Meg and Doug while they were here, Charlie in front of Old Capitol in downtown Iowa City, and the picture of us going to the Iowa-Michigan basketball game.

We enjoyed hearing from you and hope that all is well.

Charlie and Mary




Off to the game, Iowa Basketball, Meg and Doug, and ice sculpture at the Coralville Ice Festival



Monday, January 16, 2012

Greetings from Iowa



We have been thinking of the best way to keep in touch with all of you and thought why not a blog. We like to do blogs, although this will be different than our normal travel ones and will be more of keeping you up to date on what is going on with Charlie.

We mentioned in our last email that the doctor said that the motto of their department should be “Hurry up – get here, and then wait.” Well, we did hurry up and arrived in Iowa on January 5th. Now we are waiting! We are settled in downtown Iowa City at the Hotel Vetro where we have an apartment/suite that has a kitchen and is quite roomy. On two sides we have floor to ceiling windows so it is quite sunny. In the building there is a health club and on the first floor a deli/grocery – the Bread Market which is really nice. We also have parking in the parking ramp connected to the hotel. (So we have no digging the car out of snow!)

Speaking of snow, the first week here was like spring! It was in the 50’s and sunny! Of course, this is not normal winter weather and last Thursday winter did arrive – Snow and it was cold! It was fun to watch it and not have to go out.

Charlie is doing really well and the goal now is to get him as physically healthy as possible for the transplant when it comes. So he is exercising everyday and I have even started hitting the treadmill.

Meg and Jen flew to our house in CA last Tuesday and then drove our car to Iowa City arriving on Friday noon. Doug flew in on Friday and we met with Julie, the transplant coordinator at the hospital. The kids had a lot of questions and we came away feeling quite positive – we know that it is not going to be easy, but we are very impressed with what we heard.

The kids flew home yesterday – we had a fun weekend especially since Iowa beat Michigan in basketball! It was a great game! They both will be back when Charlie has the transplant.

Charlie had an endoscopy the day after we got here and has one scheduled for next Monday unless we get the “call!”

My brother, David, and his wife, Sue live here in Iowa City and have been very helpful. We have gone out to eat several times together.

There is a way to make a comment on this site and if you can figure it out great, if not, we would love to hear from you just at the chasbr@surewest.net!