New news, new vistas, new learning

I'm out of town, at a Road Scholar learning adventure.  I'm working at the Corning Museum of Glass all week.  Road Scholar is a terrific program, tons of different opportunities, for every activity level.  The trip I'm on is 6 days, 5 nights, lodging and all meals but one included, all supplies and fees for the Glass Studio included, and it's only $799!  Go to the CMoG site and you'll see why this is such a bargain.  On our first day, I learned to gather the glass from the furnace, learned a lot of safety rules, and actually got to practice a bit with the hot glass.  Today we should make our first piece there.  I'm also learning flameworking and kilnworking.  In just my first day at the torch, I learned so much, I can't wait to see the kinds of beads I'll be able to produce when I'm done.  In the kilnworking shop, I've already learned that I want my own kiln.  A small one should be about $400, but it would make my beads better, and allow me to make more glass pieces for the jewelry I make.  I did 4 suncatchers in the kilnworking class, all of them are already earmarked for special presents, and I did 6 beads.

The teachers are all very good.  Their explanations of the way glass works and why it does what it does are very clear.  We have people in our group that have done this adventure 7 or 8 times, and people that have never touched glass artistically.  The instructors are very good at making sure everyone has every question answered.  I am very excited about glassworking now.  Looking forward to today's experiences.

My father is gradually improving.  They ended up taking his toe to down just below the knuckle.  The surgeon said there is other damaged tissue in his foot, that we need to wait and see if it heals now that the circulation is better.  He finished the one IV med yesterday, and hopefully will be discharged to a rehab sometime this week.  We're really hoping for one of the ones in Cortland, but we don't get much choice.  He will NOT be going back to Crown in Cortland, we made sure of that.  He will need to be in a private room because of the MRSA, even though they believe they've gotten a handle on that.

Well, I'm off to play with hot stuff! 

Exhausted but no end in sight

Well, my father's back in the hospital.  Been there for 2 weeks now.  The toe that has been causing problems now appears to have MRSA in it, his femoral artery has several blockages, so that foot has very poor circulation, and the MRSA went systemic.  On Saturday, the vascular surgeon did a bypass.  The original plan was for there to be 2 or 3 small bypasses and for the foot surgeon to amputate as much as necessary on his toe/foot.  The entire process was estimated to take 2-3 hours.  Four and a half hours later, the vascular surgeon, who is an incredibly caring, involved doctor, came into the waiting room visibly discouraged and told us he ended up having to do one very long bypass from the groin to just above the knee.  He found extensive scarring from the PAD in my father's thigh, and wasn't able to find a vein the size he wanted.  He told us he did the best he could.  They were not able to do the amputation.  My father has had internal bleeding while he's been in the hospital, they've had to take him off the heparin drip because of it.  As we were getting ready to leave today the hospital called to tell us they are going to do a colonoscopy and endoscopy to try to find the source of the bleeding, then at 4:00 they are planning to start the amputation.  We decided to wait until 2 PM to go up because he won't really be in his room much and he will be groggy from the anesthetic. 

I am so exhausted.  Physically, mentally, emotionally I am totally drained.  It seems like I need to be strong for everyone, because my entire family believes that i I lose hope, it must be incredibly critical.  I am working hard to stay grounded, to stay in touch with my guides, and feed my soul.  But trying to help my mother and the rest of my family understand what is going on medically, making the phone calls to my brothers who live out of state to keep them up to date, plus dealing with my daughter's health issues, the psychiatric issues in the family, my own pain and other issues, trying to take care of my household, be there for my kidlette, maintaining my relationship with my husband as we re-establish our marriage after the events of the spring, and the fact that, while I have wonderful, loving friends, I feel like I'd be bothering them to dump.  I'm sure that most of them would insist that is not the case, but everyone has problems.  This year has been a very bad year for so many people I know.

I guess that's why I come here.  I can spew it all out, it just comes flying out of my fingers when I find the time to get here.  I don't know if anyone is reading this.  Since I haven't really had any comments and I only have one follower, I'm thinking I'm talking to the air, but then again, maybe the sylphs will carry my pain to the undines and they'll send healing.