I am SO excited to report that we are making steady progress on the book, The Heart of a Father. This project has laid dormant for about 5 years and I started to wonder if it would ever be finished. I fretted about it, but didn't know how I could continue to homeschool my children, run my business and do all of the other things that needed to be done AND finish the book. With my older son going to public school and my father joining my business, I finally found a way to do it all. :-) There is just no way I could do it alone.
Dad and I have broken the book up by chapters and last week we edited the first chapter -- Dads in the Hospital. This week we edited Dads Around the World, but not all of the essays we have are complete. We also discovered that the Dads Around the World chapter could still use an essay or two, especially if they were from Asia, Africa, South America, Central America or one of the many other countries not represented in the book thus far. We could also use more essays for the Catch 22 chapter. That chapter is about the Catch 22 situation so many dads find themselves in when they have to work to provide the health insurance needed for their family and yet they feel they need to be at the hospital with their child OR having to work while the mother and child are sent to another hospital in another town, state or country OR perhaps there is another Catch 22 situation that a dad found himself in. Write to me at jaworski@vvm.com if you have an essay you'd like for me to consider for The Heart of a Father.
We have received a number of CDs with music for the ebook. It's very exciting to see how the ebook is going to be different from the other books I published in the past. The multi-media aspect really makes it a fun project, albeit a bit daunting. We also have video that we'll be incorporating. I know this is going to be a challenge, but even so, I'm so excited about it! It really will be fun to see how we pull it all together.
This Friday Alex and I will travel to Houston, Texas for an amazing quilt show. The quilt show will feature quilts that have been made in honor or memory of special people born with congenital heart defects. I'm hoping Alex's quilt -- Quilt #9 -- will be there. If you haven't ever seen these quilts, please visit my website: www.congenitalheartdefects.com and look towards the bottom to the links to for Congenital Heart Defect Awareness and Legislation. That's where you can find this link.
It is exciting for us to see Jess and Nancy McCain again. We were fortunate enough to see them when we went to San Francisco. It'll be nice to see them again.
I hope all of you have a terrific week!
Sincerely,
Anna Jaworski
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Miami Heart Conference DVD
I am very excited to report that I had a DVD made of the two speeches I gave in Miami at the American Heart Association Heart Heroes Conference. This is the very first DVD for Baby Hearts Press to sell. We learned a lot making this DVD.
It is always hard for me to watch myself on television because I see so many flaws, but I watched this DVD and was happy with the results. The gentleman I hired to put the DVD together did an awesome job of putting in the PowerPoint slides that I used.
Most of the stories I told in my speeches deal with Alexander and hypoplastic left heart syndrome, but I did talk about some other people I know with different congenital heart defects. I mentioned some people from The Heart of a Mother because every conference participant received a free copy of the book. I even used some of the pictures from the book in my presentation. One of the neat things I was able to do was to show some pictures of people from the book, which was published in 2000, and then later in my speech I showed a much more current picture. It's been so much fun to watch some of these young people grow up.
I wanted to upload a picture of the DVD in my blog, but for some reason, this blog is having problems accepting pictures from me. I'm wondering if it's because I'm using FireFox as my browser. For whatever reason, it's not working. :-( I'll try again later and maybe then I'll be successful.
Monday, October 8, 2007
American Heart Association Heart Heroes Conference
I wish I had brought a camera and could have taken a ton of pictures at this amazing conference, but I was too busy talking! It was so much fun meeting the Miami heart families. The children were all over the place having a wonderful time. The parents, you could tell, were relaxed with having the volunteers channel their children's energy into positive experiences. There was an electric excitement in the air. I'm still feeling the effects of it days later.
The keynote address went very well. I had practiced the speech so much before I left that I was afraid it wouldn't feel fresh, but the energy I got from the audience really pumped me up and I think I gave the best presentation in Miami. I know I made some mistakes -- there were some distractions that caught me off-guard, but I know I was forgiven because so many kind parents came up to me afterwards and thanked me for my talk. It really felt good.
I think what made me feel best, though, was when I was out in the lobby during a question-and-answer session and a woman came over to me exclaiming about how Alex was in karate. She turned to her husband and said, "Alfonso can do karate!" Her husband was all smiles and they were so excited to know that they could go home and sign their son up for karate. Apparently he had been begging for years. Now, since they'd heard Alex's story, they were ready to let him try. That makes every minute of preparation I took for my speech worth it.
It was so exciting to see Gene, Ethan and Nathan Bortnick! I met Gene in Philadelphia over a year ago, but I hadn't met his darling little boys. Nathan was born with hypoplastic left heart syndrome and Ethan is heart healthy. Ethan has been all over the news lately because he is a piano genius. He charmed the conference participants with several songs on the piano. What was so delightful was how he told us the story behind the song he composed himself -- at 6 years of age! Then, at the very end, he had us all stand up and do the chicken dance while he played the music on the piano. He is quite the showman! I'm so happy they were able to attend the conference. I only wish I could have had more time to talk to them.
The break-out session speech went well. After the keynote, I had a chance to get a quick bite to eat and talk to some other parents. In the bathroom, I talked with a young mother who confessed to me that she didn't know the name of her child's heart defect. She told me that she had all of the medical records and she was going to go home and look it up. In the course of our dialog, I asked some questions and talked about the most common heart defects. By the time we were done talking, she realized that she did know the name of her daughter's heart defect -- she had a VSD! Now she knew what it was, she told me that she wasn't going to forget it and she was going to make a point of letting her daughter know the name of her heart defect as she grew up. Another victory! Empowering parents is what this conference was all about!
Right before the last talk I was to give, a mother came up to me and told me about her son's karate experience. She told me that her son, who had aortic stenosis, was the last one to finish running the required laps for his Black Belt test. As he was going around for the last lap, all of the kids in his program got up and ran that last lap with him. What a beautiful story! I had to use it in my speech, but I didn't realize it was going to bring tears to my eyes!
The audience was so overwhelmingly supportive and loving. It underscored the importance of having our heart families get together. No one understands us like we understand each other. I felt such a bond with them. It's been a while since I've been to a heart conference but now I'm eager to attend another one -- this time with the whole family. I haven't felt a need for support in my own journey of living with a son with a heart defect lately. I forgot how wonderful it feels to give that support to others (it's different when you're doing it over the computer than when you are face-to-face). The amazing thing to me was that in giving the support away, I felt so enriched! I know I have in the past, but this time it was different. It's been a number of years since I've spoken to a group of heart families. I've changed a lot as a speaker. I was much less nervous about remembering exactly what words I was going to use this time and more focused on how my message could help as many of those parents as possible.
I really appreciate Pepper Adair of the American Heart Association and all the hard work she put into the conference. It was a wonderful experience for me and I believe we worked well together to help other parents of children with congenital heart defects to feel empowered and able to help their children have a bright future. It was the kind of conference you hold deep in your heart for a long time. I don't know if Pepper can appreciate the kind of gift she gave those families to the degree I can. As a heart mom, I know how frightening the future can seem for our children. I also know that by being united and working together we can make our world a better place. Thanks to Pepper, I had a chance to bring some sunshine and happiness into the Miami area. Little did I know I'd leave with more than I brought.
My dad video-taped the sessions. I gave the tape to a gentleman I know who is great at putting videos together. He helped create an awesome video for me that I can distribute to people who are interested in hiring me as a speaker. I want to put it on my website, but my webmistress says it's too long. Eventually I'm going to ask Peter if he can somehow make the video into 1-minute clips. That's what Sue (my webmistress) says it needs to be. For now Peter has his hands full trying to see if he can turn what Dad taped into a DVD others might want to watch. I'll keep you all posted on what happens. If it turns out well, we'll make it available for sale on the website.
I hope the video does come out well because I feel there is so much we can learn from one another. I was a bit nervous part of the time because I was holding a microphone that had a cord and I felt constrained on how far I could move. I really didn't want to trip and fall over the cords and they were not secured properly. I also used a PowerPoint presentation for the first time in my life. That was quite an experience, but thanks to Dahlia, all of the slides were fine and I was able to click through the pictures with the remote control without difficulty. The only bad thing was that I couldn't move very much because of the projector. I usually like to be out where I can touch everyone and that just wasn't happening with this presentation.
I learned a lot about myself in putting this presentation together. The keynote was about finding balance in your life and in the process of writing the speech, I found myself re-evaluating my own life and making some changes. I did a lot of research on the psychosocial development of children with congenital heart defects. I was delighted to see some actual literature in medical journals addressing this important aspect of raising a child with a congenital heart defect. The best news was that our children's heart defects don't have to doom them to a life of unhappiness. Our children have the same opportunities to lead a normal life as a heart healthy child IF we parents do our part. There is a very small fragment of the population whose heart defects are so severe that they are greatly restricted and cannot lead a normal life, but the number of people who are in that category seem to be decreasing as technology and medical advances are helping to cure or palliate most heart defects.
I think I'm going to have to go farther with some of the ideas and things I learned from putting together two speeches for this conference. I have a whole binder of articles I found on the Internet and I think I'm going to be writing more about these topics. Pepper put her finger on some very important isssues in raising a child with a heart defect. Finding balance, looking forward to a bright future and empowering parents were the themes I was to focus on in my speeches. If I can help other people learn those lessons, too, even though they couldn't be at that conference, I will feel our good deed will be so much better.
The keynote address went very well. I had practiced the speech so much before I left that I was afraid it wouldn't feel fresh, but the energy I got from the audience really pumped me up and I think I gave the best presentation in Miami. I know I made some mistakes -- there were some distractions that caught me off-guard, but I know I was forgiven because so many kind parents came up to me afterwards and thanked me for my talk. It really felt good.
I think what made me feel best, though, was when I was out in the lobby during a question-and-answer session and a woman came over to me exclaiming about how Alex was in karate. She turned to her husband and said, "Alfonso can do karate!" Her husband was all smiles and they were so excited to know that they could go home and sign their son up for karate. Apparently he had been begging for years. Now, since they'd heard Alex's story, they were ready to let him try. That makes every minute of preparation I took for my speech worth it.
It was so exciting to see Gene, Ethan and Nathan Bortnick! I met Gene in Philadelphia over a year ago, but I hadn't met his darling little boys. Nathan was born with hypoplastic left heart syndrome and Ethan is heart healthy. Ethan has been all over the news lately because he is a piano genius. He charmed the conference participants with several songs on the piano. What was so delightful was how he told us the story behind the song he composed himself -- at 6 years of age! Then, at the very end, he had us all stand up and do the chicken dance while he played the music on the piano. He is quite the showman! I'm so happy they were able to attend the conference. I only wish I could have had more time to talk to them.
The break-out session speech went well. After the keynote, I had a chance to get a quick bite to eat and talk to some other parents. In the bathroom, I talked with a young mother who confessed to me that she didn't know the name of her child's heart defect. She told me that she had all of the medical records and she was going to go home and look it up. In the course of our dialog, I asked some questions and talked about the most common heart defects. By the time we were done talking, she realized that she did know the name of her daughter's heart defect -- she had a VSD! Now she knew what it was, she told me that she wasn't going to forget it and she was going to make a point of letting her daughter know the name of her heart defect as she grew up. Another victory! Empowering parents is what this conference was all about!
Right before the last talk I was to give, a mother came up to me and told me about her son's karate experience. She told me that her son, who had aortic stenosis, was the last one to finish running the required laps for his Black Belt test. As he was going around for the last lap, all of the kids in his program got up and ran that last lap with him. What a beautiful story! I had to use it in my speech, but I didn't realize it was going to bring tears to my eyes!
The audience was so overwhelmingly supportive and loving. It underscored the importance of having our heart families get together. No one understands us like we understand each other. I felt such a bond with them. It's been a while since I've been to a heart conference but now I'm eager to attend another one -- this time with the whole family. I haven't felt a need for support in my own journey of living with a son with a heart defect lately. I forgot how wonderful it feels to give that support to others (it's different when you're doing it over the computer than when you are face-to-face). The amazing thing to me was that in giving the support away, I felt so enriched! I know I have in the past, but this time it was different. It's been a number of years since I've spoken to a group of heart families. I've changed a lot as a speaker. I was much less nervous about remembering exactly what words I was going to use this time and more focused on how my message could help as many of those parents as possible.
I really appreciate Pepper Adair of the American Heart Association and all the hard work she put into the conference. It was a wonderful experience for me and I believe we worked well together to help other parents of children with congenital heart defects to feel empowered and able to help their children have a bright future. It was the kind of conference you hold deep in your heart for a long time. I don't know if Pepper can appreciate the kind of gift she gave those families to the degree I can. As a heart mom, I know how frightening the future can seem for our children. I also know that by being united and working together we can make our world a better place. Thanks to Pepper, I had a chance to bring some sunshine and happiness into the Miami area. Little did I know I'd leave with more than I brought.
My dad video-taped the sessions. I gave the tape to a gentleman I know who is great at putting videos together. He helped create an awesome video for me that I can distribute to people who are interested in hiring me as a speaker. I want to put it on my website, but my webmistress says it's too long. Eventually I'm going to ask Peter if he can somehow make the video into 1-minute clips. That's what Sue (my webmistress) says it needs to be. For now Peter has his hands full trying to see if he can turn what Dad taped into a DVD others might want to watch. I'll keep you all posted on what happens. If it turns out well, we'll make it available for sale on the website.
I hope the video does come out well because I feel there is so much we can learn from one another. I was a bit nervous part of the time because I was holding a microphone that had a cord and I felt constrained on how far I could move. I really didn't want to trip and fall over the cords and they were not secured properly. I also used a PowerPoint presentation for the first time in my life. That was quite an experience, but thanks to Dahlia, all of the slides were fine and I was able to click through the pictures with the remote control without difficulty. The only bad thing was that I couldn't move very much because of the projector. I usually like to be out where I can touch everyone and that just wasn't happening with this presentation.
I learned a lot about myself in putting this presentation together. The keynote was about finding balance in your life and in the process of writing the speech, I found myself re-evaluating my own life and making some changes. I did a lot of research on the psychosocial development of children with congenital heart defects. I was delighted to see some actual literature in medical journals addressing this important aspect of raising a child with a congenital heart defect. The best news was that our children's heart defects don't have to doom them to a life of unhappiness. Our children have the same opportunities to lead a normal life as a heart healthy child IF we parents do our part. There is a very small fragment of the population whose heart defects are so severe that they are greatly restricted and cannot lead a normal life, but the number of people who are in that category seem to be decreasing as technology and medical advances are helping to cure or palliate most heart defects.
I think I'm going to have to go farther with some of the ideas and things I learned from putting together two speeches for this conference. I have a whole binder of articles I found on the Internet and I think I'm going to be writing more about these topics. Pepper put her finger on some very important isssues in raising a child with a heart defect. Finding balance, looking forward to a bright future and empowering parents were the themes I was to focus on in my speeches. If I can help other people learn those lessons, too, even though they couldn't be at that conference, I will feel our good deed will be so much better.
Sunday, September 23, 2007
The Wedding, Miami and Boston
The Wedding
Here is a picture of my grandmother, father, sister and me at my cousin's wedding. I'm standing next to my dad and my sister Chrissy is sitting next to our grandmother. Megan, my beautiful niece, is taking the photograph. :-) Unfortunately, the pictures of all of us didn't turn out well. :-( I hope to have some color pictures after a while. Megan took the pictures deliberately in black-and-white to fulfill a project in school.
So Grandma made it to the wedding and she even danced at the wedding. Megan got a picture of that, too, but sadly it didn't turn out well.
Crystal was gorgeous. I think brides always look lovely, but Crystal was clearly in love with Mike and the look on her face made her more beautiful than ever. I wish those two lovebirds all the best. It was very nice of them to share their special day with us. I can't remember the last time we had so many family members gathered together . . . I guess it was for Grandma's 80th birthday, but Crystal's family couldn't make it to that. So this is the first time we've had that many members of these families together. It was very special.
Miami Conference (see www.congenitalheartdefects.com's calendar for more information about this conference)
Since I've been back from Mississippi I've been very busy preparing for the conference I'll be speaking at in October. It is going to be so wonderful. I just found out that there is going to be a very special little boy performing for the group during lunch. The piano player is a brother to a little boy with hypoplastic left heart syndrome. I'm so excited that I'm going to have a chance to meet this little boy. I met his father in Philadelphia over a year ago. At that time I had a chance to hear Gene talk with pride about his two boys. Now I'm going to have a chance to meet them and his wife. It will be great to see the whole family under such happy circumstances.
Boston Conference (go to the www.congenitalheartdefect.com calendar for more information on this conference, too)
I've just finished reading an email from Mary Kay Klein, the organizer of the Boston conference for adults with congenital heart defects. Mary Kay has been helping to organize the conference in memory of her daughter Karen. I am so happy that I'm going to have a chance to attend this conference. Now that I see Alex becoming a young man, what these people have to say is going to be even more meaningful to me than it would have been 10 years ago. While I don't know if any of the speakers will be adults with hypoplastic left heart syndrome (the heart defect Alex has), I'm sure many of them will also have complex heart defects similar to Alex's. I'm also certain that the challenges they have faced are ones Alex will also have to face someday.
Most importantly, I will have a chance to hear how some people have survived having a heart defect and even thrived. It is such an inspiration to listen to these people. I met Karen years ago when she visited Austin to see a heart friend she'd made on the Internet. My friend, Jane Hunt, and I had gone to a support group meeting at Brackenridge Children's Hospital and we couldn't wait to meet this young lady. We then took Karen and her friend, Anthony, where they needed to go after the meeting. That gave us a few minutes to talk to them away from the others at the meeting. They acted just like other college kids we knew.
Mary Kay wrote for The Heart of a Mother and her husband Ted is writing for The Heart of a Father. I'll be bringing my autograph copy of my book for Mary Kay to sign. So far I've gathered quite a few signatures. I can't wait to finish The Heart of a Father so I can do likewise with the dads I have a chance to meet.
I hope you all had a great weekend!
Sincerely,
Anna Jaworski
Friday, September 7, 2007
HOF Update
I know I just posted a note about what I'm doing regarding public speaking and Baby Hearts Press, but I thought there might be some of you out there excited to hear about how The Heart of a Father is going.
Having my dad, Bob Daigneault, help with this project has made a world of difference. Because of some technical problems, most of the electronic versions of the essays were lost. I was devastated to discover this. We sent the word out to the dads and some were kind enough to send us what they had. Of course I had printed versions of everything I'd already worked on, but it was starting to look as though I was going to have to retype a lot of pages.
Dad went with me to Fry's to look at scanners. I got one for the business and last week we started scanning in an essay. Dad helped me get started and left. I don't know what I did wrong, but even though I seemed to scan the pages in correctly, when I saved them, something odd happened. I saved each page individually and gave it the author's name and page number. I don't know why the scanner took Page 1 and saved it 5 times in a row -- as pages 1-5.
Realizing how frustrated I was after a long time of fighting with the machine, Daddy came to the house and took it away. I don't know how he worked his magic, but somehow he was able to scan and save Jim Larson's 13-page essay in two PDF documents. They look great! He's already sent them to Jim for updating and revising. We're on our way!
I think what has taken us the longest amount of time to do so far has been housekeeping types of activities. We've been trying to reconnect with all the contributers and many email addresses are no longer any good. We've been trying to clean up our YahooGroup listserv, too. There are people on there we don't know and we're trying to figure out who is who and why they're there. There's the whole issue of who has sent in his permission form and essay and who wants to update what he's sent. All in all, it's very slow going! The good news is: it's going.
Dad made a timeline for us when we started working on this project and so far we're doing what we hoped to be doing. I'm happy to announce that thus far Daddy approves of the developmental editing I'd already done and he is looking forward to doing the line editing. I already did a lot of copy editing when I did the developmental editing, but Daddy is going to make the book more consistent.
At our weekly meeting we took a look at all of the wonderful pictures, videos and music that the dads have sent us thus far. We are so excited about this project! It really is going to be a special eBook experience. Stay tuned for more updates as we continue to work on this very special project. And if you are a contributor and you haven't heard from us, it's because we can't contact you. Please contact me! My email is jaworski@vvm.com. Even though some essays have been accepted for publication, we still want to touch base with everyone and let everyone know what's going on. We appreciate people helping us spread the word!
Sincerely,
Anna Jaworski
Having my dad, Bob Daigneault, help with this project has made a world of difference. Because of some technical problems, most of the electronic versions of the essays were lost. I was devastated to discover this. We sent the word out to the dads and some were kind enough to send us what they had. Of course I had printed versions of everything I'd already worked on, but it was starting to look as though I was going to have to retype a lot of pages.
Dad went with me to Fry's to look at scanners. I got one for the business and last week we started scanning in an essay. Dad helped me get started and left. I don't know what I did wrong, but even though I seemed to scan the pages in correctly, when I saved them, something odd happened. I saved each page individually and gave it the author's name and page number. I don't know why the scanner took Page 1 and saved it 5 times in a row -- as pages 1-5.
Realizing how frustrated I was after a long time of fighting with the machine, Daddy came to the house and took it away. I don't know how he worked his magic, but somehow he was able to scan and save Jim Larson's 13-page essay in two PDF documents. They look great! He's already sent them to Jim for updating and revising. We're on our way!
I think what has taken us the longest amount of time to do so far has been housekeeping types of activities. We've been trying to reconnect with all the contributers and many email addresses are no longer any good. We've been trying to clean up our YahooGroup listserv, too. There are people on there we don't know and we're trying to figure out who is who and why they're there. There's the whole issue of who has sent in his permission form and essay and who wants to update what he's sent. All in all, it's very slow going! The good news is: it's going.
Dad made a timeline for us when we started working on this project and so far we're doing what we hoped to be doing. I'm happy to announce that thus far Daddy approves of the developmental editing I'd already done and he is looking forward to doing the line editing. I already did a lot of copy editing when I did the developmental editing, but Daddy is going to make the book more consistent.
At our weekly meeting we took a look at all of the wonderful pictures, videos and music that the dads have sent us thus far. We are so excited about this project! It really is going to be a special eBook experience. Stay tuned for more updates as we continue to work on this very special project. And if you are a contributor and you haven't heard from us, it's because we can't contact you. Please contact me! My email is jaworski@vvm.com. Even though some essays have been accepted for publication, we still want to touch base with everyone and let everyone know what's going on. We appreciate people helping us spread the word!
Sincerely,
Anna Jaworski
A Wedding, A Speech and Toastmaster Friends
Tomorrow morning I will be flying to Mississippi to attend my cousin's wedding. I hope to have some good pictures to post sometime after I get back. My aunt is going to be the photographer for the wedding and I hear she is wonderful.
I hope C.J. and Michael have a beautiful day for their wedding. The weather predictions are not as favorable as we'd like, but then again weathermen (or women) are not necessarily known for their accuracy. My Aunt Terry has wisely decided that a tent would be in order, so I'm sure we'll be covered.
This wedding was an excellent excuse for my grandmother and me to go shopping! Having just been sent home from the hospital days earlier, I really didn't think Grandma would be up for a big shopping excursion, but I should have known better! Six hours after we started out, Grandma's purse was a little lighter and my bunion was screaming at me!
Seriously, we had a lovely lunch and then had a wonderful time finding Grandma the "perfect" dress for the wedding. Leave it to Grandma to not only find ONE perfect dress, but TWO! Now tomorrow she will have the difficult task of deciding which lovely dress she'll wear.
The past several days have been very busy planning for this trip, shopping and working on my speech (oh! and being a mom to two busy boys and homeschooling Alex!). I gave Part II of a three-part speech that I started last week at my local Toastmasters Club, Texas Stars Toastmasters. The three 10-minute speeches will add up to the one 30-minute speech I'll be giving in Miami next month. So far my Toastmaster friends have been awesome. Their advice has been right on and their comments are boosting my confidence in what I've put together. This is making me even more excited about going to the conference!
I really believe everyone should join Toastmasters at some point in his or her life. It has been such a blessing to me to be able to practice my speaking and leadership skills. I also feel that I have made some life-long friends in the process. I think one of the things I like most is that, in my experience, Toastmasters are there -- not only to improve their own abilities -- they are there to help and encourage others. In that spirit, Texas Stars Toastmasters will have their regularly scheduled meeting next week and then a group of them will go to a local restaurant for dinner and an opportunity to help me by listening to my 30-minute speech uninterrupted. I'm even going to bring the dress I plan to wear to the conference to get their feedback.
I am so excited about the opportunity to go to another CHD conference and to meet new CHD parents. I'm thrilled with the way the organizer for this event has worked with me. She has been wonderful about explaining exactly what she wants in me as her speaker. That has made planning so much easier and fun! I will post some pictures of the event on the website when I come back.
That's all for now. I feel lucky to have something wonderful like a wedding to look forward to, a goal to achieve (writing a great speech) and friends along the way to help me get where I need to be. Thanks Texas Stars Toastmasters!
Anna
I hope C.J. and Michael have a beautiful day for their wedding. The weather predictions are not as favorable as we'd like, but then again weathermen (or women) are not necessarily known for their accuracy. My Aunt Terry has wisely decided that a tent would be in order, so I'm sure we'll be covered.
This wedding was an excellent excuse for my grandmother and me to go shopping! Having just been sent home from the hospital days earlier, I really didn't think Grandma would be up for a big shopping excursion, but I should have known better! Six hours after we started out, Grandma's purse was a little lighter and my bunion was screaming at me!
Seriously, we had a lovely lunch and then had a wonderful time finding Grandma the "perfect" dress for the wedding. Leave it to Grandma to not only find ONE perfect dress, but TWO! Now tomorrow she will have the difficult task of deciding which lovely dress she'll wear.
The past several days have been very busy planning for this trip, shopping and working on my speech (oh! and being a mom to two busy boys and homeschooling Alex!). I gave Part II of a three-part speech that I started last week at my local Toastmasters Club, Texas Stars Toastmasters. The three 10-minute speeches will add up to the one 30-minute speech I'll be giving in Miami next month. So far my Toastmaster friends have been awesome. Their advice has been right on and their comments are boosting my confidence in what I've put together. This is making me even more excited about going to the conference!
I really believe everyone should join Toastmasters at some point in his or her life. It has been such a blessing to me to be able to practice my speaking and leadership skills. I also feel that I have made some life-long friends in the process. I think one of the things I like most is that, in my experience, Toastmasters are there -- not only to improve their own abilities -- they are there to help and encourage others. In that spirit, Texas Stars Toastmasters will have their regularly scheduled meeting next week and then a group of them will go to a local restaurant for dinner and an opportunity to help me by listening to my 30-minute speech uninterrupted. I'm even going to bring the dress I plan to wear to the conference to get their feedback.
I am so excited about the opportunity to go to another CHD conference and to meet new CHD parents. I'm thrilled with the way the organizer for this event has worked with me. She has been wonderful about explaining exactly what she wants in me as her speaker. That has made planning so much easier and fun! I will post some pictures of the event on the website when I come back.
That's all for now. I feel lucky to have something wonderful like a wedding to look forward to, a goal to achieve (writing a great speech) and friends along the way to help me get where I need to be. Thanks Texas Stars Toastmasters!
Anna
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Grandma
I know this blog is supposed to be about Baby Hearts Press, but everyone needs to know that BHP is a family-owned and run business. Therefore, if something is happening to a dear family member, it will affect the business. That is exactly what happened last week.
Last Wednesday, my grandmother went to the Emergency Room because she was having trouble breathing. She had already been diagnosed with atrial fibrillation and was on Coumadin, so we were already concerned about her. For months she has become increasingly more out of breath, but complaints to her doctor went unheard. Finally, fearing for her life, she called my father and he quickly went to her house to hand deliver her to the ER.
Meanwhile, my husband called down to the ER to let them know Grandma was on her way. We got VERY lucky. There was hardly anyone needing to be seen when she arrived, so we went straight back. I live only a few minutes from the hospital, so I met them there.
It didn't take long for the doctor to determine that Grandma was in congestive heart failure. Because of Alex's heart defect, I knew what that meant and was able to help Grandma anticipate what was coming next. I told her that when Alex's CHF was diagnosed, the first thing they did was put him on lasix. Not surprisingly, they did the same thing to Grandma. Then Grandma, just like Alex, was admitted to the hospital. It was kind of like deja vu.
For six days we watched, worried, prayed and stayed optimistic. Once the lasix started working, Grandma's sense of humor returned. She was the ideal patient. She gave blood without complaint and let them do whatever they felt they needed to do. She was as upbeat as she could be. I was proud to be her granddaughter.
The next major concern with Grandma was damage done to her kidneys because of the agressive lasix therapy. Grandma's kidneys were already starting to have problems and she was already being seen by nephrology, but now things became more critical. There was concern that she might have to go on dialysis. It was a wait-and-see game for a while -- something we parents of children with heart defects know all too well.
Yesterday the good news finally came: Grandma was doing better and could go home! Her kidneys were starting to heal and the doctors felt she would heal better at home. She was relieved, as were Dad and I. We couldn't wait to pack her up and take her where she belonged.
The last week was another good example of how families can pull together during a crisis. Frank was so wonderful about letting me be up there as much as I could. The boys took care of the kitchen and laundry. We all went to visit her one day as a family. I'd like to think that visit really cheered her up. Dad and I tried to manage the schedule so that somebody would be with Grandma at all times except when she was supposed to be sleeping. We had a workshop we had to go to on Saturday and my sister and niece drove all the way from Houston to spend Saturday with Grandma. It really was heartwarming to see how everyone pulled together to help Grandma as much as possible.
I think that all of us were better prepared with what to do because of Alex's stays in the hospital. We know what it's like to have a loved one in the hospital. We now know what to do to be a good advocate for the patient. Dad and I started a journal with information we were being given when we started getting conflicting information from some of the different individuals she was seeing (she was at a teaching hospital -- so she had a huge team of people overseeing her care). By the time Grandma left, everyone, including my sister and niece had taken a turn writing notes in Grandma's journal. I'd like to think that the consistency which we demanded helped her to get better faster.
No one lives forever, but we knew it wasn't Grandma's time to go yet. I'm going to include a picture of her playing pool at my house with the family. Usually she runs circles around everyone. She calls bingo twice a week at two different nursing homes where she volunteers. She belongs to her church's Altar Society. She is faithful about going to church every week -- and with getting her hair done once a week! :-) But she also has something very serious coming up which she didn't want to miss: my cousin is getting married in September. She has to dance at that wedding!
Thanks to all of you who knew what was happening to Grandma and took a moment to say a prayer for her. She's doing great and I might even have a picture to post of her dancing at C.J.'s wedding in the next month.
Anna
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