Back to the Midwest for Christmas....I forgot how cold it can be here. Brrrr

After our 3 day road trip to the Midwest, we arrived in Illinois on Tuesday the 16th and 24 degrees. Man that's cold when you have been enjoying 60 - 80 degree temperatures. We are staying with my brother. (Thank you Kent) We have had the opportunity to visit with Dad at the nursing home the past two days and do some catching up with my brother and his family. I also had the opportunity to go back to the office I worked in at State Farm and visit with my former co workers. It felt good to be there as a RETIREE. As I posted before, my Dad broke his hip in September and due to issues with his heart he was unable to have surgery to repair it. We were able to secure a room at a local nursing home and for a while we thought he would not be with us for much longer. Well we called in hospice for comfort care and got him on some pain medications. It looked like the end would come soon BUT.....

My Dad has 9 lives and since then he has continued to improve in his health so I spoke to his primary care doctors nurse yesterday and she said that it might be possible to have a partial hip replacement with a spinal block instead of going under full anesthesia which caused his heart to act up. So we are contacting his cardiologist to see if we can get an ok from him to explore that procedure. This has given Dad some new hope for a better quality of life for a few more years. We wish someone would have encouraged us to explore this avenue and not have wasted 3 months in the nursing home thinking he didn't have much time left.  Of course there is no guarantee that the procedure can be done but now we have a plan. My brother is setting up the cardiology appt next month and hopefully by the time we are back in the spring he will have had the surgery and doing some rehab.  Who knows if all goes as planned he might even be able to move back to an assisted living home instead of the nursing home. Time will tell.

We plan to leave Normal, IL tomorrow afternoon and drive up to the Chicago area where our oldest daughter, son in law and youngest grandson live. We will be there through the weekend and celebrate Christmas with them. Then we will travel to Osceola, IN and visit our other daughter and the four grandkids there. We will celebrate Christmas with them and then plan to drive back to Normal, IL on Christmas eve day so we can spend Christmas day with my Dad, brother, his ex wife and our oldest nephew. We plan to leave this frozen tundra on the 26th and head back, as quickly as possible, to our rig and home in AZ. The temperature hasn't been above freezing since we got here and many not before we leave. The weather forecast is looking favorable(no major snow storms) until we leave. Really looking forward some family time but also getting back to OUR home. My hands are cold typing this.