Pumpkin and Spice

My dad is doing better, but is still not fully recovered. His heart is doing well, however his lung function isn't where the doctors want it to be. He's still in critical care at the hospital, and it's hard to know when he'll be well enough to be moved to a regular room, let alone go home. Thank you for all your prayers and well-wishes. Please continue to think of him, and also my mother. She's been dealing with this since January, and is terribly stressed.

On another note, I have loads of recipes to share, so once I have a little free time, I've got some lovely (healthy) goodies to lay on ya'! Check back Wednesday!

Hey, everyone... Things are pretty stressful right now. At the begining of the month, my father was feeling ill with flu-like symptoms. After nursing what he and my mom thought was the flu for a couple days, he collapsed and had to be taken to the hosptial. Blood cultures revealed that he had MRSA, which is a medication resistant staph infection. He was on anti-biotics for two weeks, and seemed to be doing better. The day he was supposed to be released, his blood cultures showed he still had infection in his system. He had an endoscopic cardiogram, and the doctors determined that the MRSA had settled in a heart valve and had damaged the valve, meaning that he would require open heart surgery to clean and replace the damaged/infected valve.
He went into heart surgery yesterday, and things went well (or as well as can be hoped when you're having open heart surgery...) However today his heart was being "sluggish" (the doctor's words) and was not pumping as strong as they were hoping.

This morning, he went in to surgery to have a balloon pump in his heart (I don't know what that means.) Currently he is in critical care. His blood pressure is exceptionally low and he is on constant dialysis to keep fluid from accumulating in his lungs and other organs. Kyle and I were going to fly up (to Kansas) on Monday to visit, but have moved our flight to tomorrow morning, as at this point things are pretty precarious.