Monday March 25th Tom was released from the hospital and stayed in a hotel for the week. Daily appointments have kept them busy. Some days the appointments are many and tiring. Saturday March 30th Tom was struggling and had a lot of pain. Sunday morning the pain became too much and they took Tom back to the hospital. He spent his Easter in the hospital with CT scan of his abdomen and lungs. Testing results improved and they were released at 6:30PM that night. Tom explored the store for a brief time using a motorized cart and a restaurant (during a slow time). He had a couple visitors as well, which he enjoys greatly. We do need to stress that for the rest of Tom’s life any exposure to illness is extremely deadly. That means that we appreciate all visitors and family if feeling slightly unwell or even exposed to a sick individual to not visit with Tom. A mask will not protect him from respiratory illness and we want to keep him around for a long time. We understand that this means some plans will need to be canceled last minute and that is way better than him being exposed. I appreciate all the care and caution that everyone is taking to reduce his exposure and risk, even for a cold/allergies symptoms and of course the worse things out there.
Monday April 1st was a big day, thankfully Tom was having a good day. Tom had appointments from 8am until 3pm, that Kathy helped him attend. During that time Tracy moved all the items and equipment from the hotel to the rental house for the next month. Thanks to donations they are able to fund their home near the hospital for the month as well as a recliner to allow a sleeping place for Tom. He has been unable to lay flat since surgery, so the recliner was an unexpected necessity. They had a man deliver the chair that is an organ transplant recipient of 27 years! Today Tom is struggling and not feeling well. Today is “a bad day, some days are good and some days are bad”. Continue to pray for them as this journey has just begun and has much healing to go. My 6 year old son calls Papaw Tom’s incision site his “zipper”. When we talked on the phone he asked “I want to see Papaw’s zipper”. Thankfully his incision is healing well and ironically looks like a zipper due to the cut from arm pit, across the chest and to the other arm pit, that is crossed with many staples. We pray for many more good days, controlled medication side affects, and of course to soon be pain free. Of course we know pain can be much longer or life long, but we have a mighty healer named Jesus on our side.
Ashley Bolser
