I LOVE SEATTLE! I should probably clarify that though I do truly love the city Seattle, when I refer to Seattle I am more referring to the Eastside and my great hometown of Bellevue. Emily and I had a chance to go to my home for the Thanksgiving holiday and it was great. After moving to Denver this past June I thought it might be a while until we made it back up to Seattle but about a month ago that changed.
A brief background may be in order. My parents were going to come out with my little sister and meet baby Kathryn on Halloween. But a week before the visit my Mother had a bad fall and they had to cancel the trip. My mom has MS which has really effected her balance. She was heading upstairs and to go to bed and she lost her balance and fell. I could easily fill a quite a bit of space with the roller coaster of events that has happened since then but I will just give a condensed version. She went to the emergency room and and they found that she had blood on her brain and and was suffering from seizures. They weren't sure how bad it was but after a couple days she started slowly improving and things where looking better. But she had developed a very bad case of pneumonia so before the neurological issues could be addressed her respiratory problems took over. Things got very bad and she was put on a ventilator and feeding tubes. She started again to improve and they took out the ventilator but she quickly got worse again and they had to put her back on the ventilator and feeding tubes and eventually did a tracheotomy to make it easier on her to breath. In the picture I am attaching of the "two Kathryns" below you can see the trach. At this point my Mom couldn't move most of her body and thought the doctors were hopeful she would make a full recovery things were still really scary. At some point during this time we decided we would make a trip up to Seattle for thanksgiving though we had previously planned on just hanging out in Denver.
By the time we go to Seattle my mom was doing a lot better and even improved a good amount the 10 days we were there. She has been in the hospital over six weeks and spent around 4 of those in ICU. But she is now on a rehab floor and they are hoping for a discharge by Christmas. They took the trach out the last day we were there and she is now walking the halls with the aid of a walker (albeit rather slowly). She still has a long way to go but she has done great and prayers have been answered. She loved seeing her namesake and just keeps talking about her "tiny" grandchild. (Update, My mom is doing well and is scheduled to come home December the 29th)
Though my mom was the focal point of our trip, the chance to see other family members was great. My older sister Sara and her husband Eric were there with their two boys and my little sister Becca was there as well. We had a lot of fun and it was just awesome hanging out with everyone. I really miss Mario Kart on the Wii. It was a bit strange but I can't remember a vacation or trip where I felt as sad leaving as I did this time. I think it may have something to do with this being the first time I had a career job to return to, but who knows. So that was our trip and it was great. Time for the pictures! (Since I am in Iowa and most of our pictures are on our home computer in Denver, you'll have to live with these few that I have on my work computer)
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