Less than a Week...

Kirstin’s update

June 2^nd, 2016

Hello everyone,

I am sitting here with Kirstin and am going to write another update on her behalf.

Kirstin’s surgery is on Wednesday, June 8^th  at the Ottawa Civic . They won’t know the time until the day before, but the surgery itself will likely be about 6 hours long. She’s been off anti-inflammatories for about a week now, which is pretty painful, and means that she can’t do much, especially with her hands. Greg usually has to help her get dressed in the mornings -- like back in the early days of RA diagnosis. Morphine amounts increase daily.

It was a big gift/relief that last Friday the doctors gave her a steroid shot in her knee because it was so swollen (and incredibly painful). She’d gotten to the point that she mostly couldn’t walk except with a walker, and she’s now much more independent again. Hopefully that will last beyond the surgery.  For a few days, over the weekend, she had a little ‘overflow’ relief in her hands as well, which meant that she could delight in watering & a wee bit of weeding in the garden on Sat morning, be the first to discover that two hens had hatched out their eggs (current chick count is 18!), and even play a little Rook at the beginning of the week with the Dycks (flashback to high-school summers!).

Although she has some neck pain, the major issue these days is the arthritis pain, which is what she now primarily takes the morphine for. Doctors are in discussion as to how soon after the surgery she can start taking her arthritis medication again.  (2 weeks? 2 months? Different doctors think different things, but the arthritis has advanced so much that changes are even visible now – arthritic nodules, etc -- and we’re hoping that the rheumatologist [the 2 weeks person] will win this battle.)

A handful of local teens have been helping out in the garden and around the house: making her lunch, bringing her lattés, distracting her with Eng Lit tutorial needs – all of which keeps her happy. At the same time, she and Greg currently have very heavy hearts for dear friends (former roommates of not only Kirstin, but also Bruce & Amy), whose young daughter has just died after a long battle with leukemia. It is at times like this that physical distances between dear friends and family is hardest.

Today I’ve helped clean & sort her room to get it more ready for return from surgery, which should be about a week afterwards (it’s apparently hard to predict exactly how long she’ll be in).  My daughters will trim her hair and manicure & pamper her in other ways on the wkd to prep for the hospital stay. They won’t know until after surgery what the visiting restrictions will be like, or how soon they can start. Once Kirstin’s out, her mom is going to come up to help out for a little bit.   Kirstin will remain mostly ‘hidden’ during the Linlathen conference, but will fully benefit from the presence of dear friend and former hospital chaplain, Revd Julie Khovacs, during that time (Julie put in her hours helping tend Kirstin way back in Scotland-days, when she was fully wheel-chair-bound). We still have our eyes set on Kirstin’s Cambridge lecture in late-July as a ‘recovery-goal,’ though much has to transpire between now and then.

Valerie Michaelson.