The first surgery went well, but...

Margie's first surgery went well, but she did not get to come home. For all of yesterday and into this morning, we thought she would likely be released early today, the second surgery could be scheduled for later and we could still make our planned trip to Arizona.

But it was not to be.

Five gall stones were removed from her, but they left a blood infection behind and it must be treated or it could become very serious. So she is still in the hospital, she will have her second surgery tomorrow and, for now, our trip is off.

Lynxton is still going, though. Tomorrow, he will head out with his parents and his big bros. They will fly to Phoenix, overnight there, then drive up to the White Mountain Apache reservation. The introduction of Lynxton to his Apache and Navajo family will begin.

Melanie, Charlie and Lisa are also scheduled to go.

It will be a different kind of Thanksgiving here.

Margie in surgery right now; chilly this morning - we still might make it to Arizona

Margie is undergoing surgery right now. As soon as I finish this post, I will head for the hospital so that I can say "hi" to her when she comes to. As it was explained to me, the reason for the two surgeries is that it is possible pieces of gall stone could have broken off the big one in her gall bladder then got stuck in various ducts that lead away from it. If the gall bladder were simply removed, those stones could stay behind and cause trouble.

This surgery involves no cutting into the body. A scope and stone removing tool is sent down through the mouth to search the bladder and the ducts.

This surgery is not supposed to be that hard on a person. Margie may be able to come tonight. Furthermore, depending on what is discovered and how it goes, the second surgery, the one to remove the bladder altogether, might be able to be postponed or dropped altogether and we might still be able to go to Arizona.

There is only chair in Margie's hospital room and Melanie will not sit in it if I am there. She insists that I do, so I do. She looks more comfortable lying next to her mom than I feel in the chair, anyway. 

Unless you are looking at this in the click and blow-up size, it may be hard to read, but the unlit sign on the back window of this car says, "see me about lighted car signs."

When I took the picture, the temperature on this part of Muldoon in East Anchorage, which gets much colder than at the airport which sits right by the inlet, where the official Anchorage temperatures are read, was -14.

When I got home, it was -15 (-26 C) in our driveway.

This morning, it was -26 (-32 C).

One might think that this portends a good, old-style, cold winter ahead, but experience tells me that we cannot count on it.

Sometimes it starts out this way and then one of those troughs sets up in the Pacific and then pulls one South Pacific storm after the other up from Hawaii and ruins everything.

I hope that doesn't happen this winter. We will see.

I like my winters cold.

Now I am off to the hospital, to see Margie and maybe bring her home.

A rumbling train causes Margie to sit right up in her hospital bed

Jobe and Kalib came to the hospital last night to visit their grandma. They did not quite know what to think of her hospital room and were a little hesitant to enter.

But enter they did. Kalib greatly loves his grandma and immediately began to tell her about a great adventure in his life. It had something to do with trains - and in particular, a train named Thomas.

Holy cow! What is that in Kalib's hands? Could it be a train? Could it be... Thomas the train?

Practically the whole family was there - except for Caleb, who had to stay home and go to his regular night shift and Lisa, who had spent some time hanging out here earlier in the day.

All present were very curious to see what Kalib would do with the train that he held in his hands.

Why, Kalib put the train on the table in front of his grandma, found a tunnel, and drove that train right through it and to the edge of a cliff!

Astute readers will notice that Jobe also holds a train engine - that's Percy - Percy the train. As we were all talking about Percy the train, the door opened and in walked my friend... Percy! Percy Aiken from Barrow, who had come down to be with his brother Earl, who is intensive care.

I know many people are wishing the best and praying for Margie and me, but Earl needs prayers and good thoughts much more than we do.

I went down to the ICU unit to see Earl and there I also saw some friends from Point Hope. Caroline Cannon who was there to support her son, Leroy Oenga, who also has a great need for good wishes and prayers.

This morning, I slept very late. I've been doing that a lot lately. When I got up, I knew that I should fix myself oatmeal, but, solitary individual though I am, I wanted to go someplace where I could sit in solitude among people, eat, sip a bit of coffee and be waited on.

So I headed off to breakfast.

Here is a lone diner, at Abby's. We were both alone, him and I.

The truth is, I forgot my camera when I to breakfast this morning, so these last two pictures are actually from Wednesday morning, before Margie came home from Anchorage, before her gall bladder struck her down. These pictures are standins for today, although today I went to Mat-Su Family.

They are now planning to subject Margie to two surgeries - the first one to remove her gall stones, and the second one to remove her gall bladder. I do not understand this. I do not know why they don't just take the gall bladder out with the stones in it and get it done at one time.

There must be a good reason, but I do not yet know what it is.

They are hoping to do the first surgery tomorrow and then the next the day or two after.

They would do the first today, but they still need to bring down her level of infection.

We are scheduled to depart for Arizona Monday morning on Alaska Airlines.

We are not going to make it. In Arizona, Lynxton will be introduced to his bigger Apache and Navajo family and we were greatly looking forward to being there for it.

I was going to do some heavy blogging.

Now it will go unblogged. It will be documented, though. Lavina will be posting on Facebook.

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Margie off to the emergency room; awaiting surgery

After spending a couple of days in town helping to take care of the little ones, Lavina brought Margie home about this time yesterday afternoon. At first, all seemed good with her. Later, she started to complain about abdominal pains. Then, even bundled up under blankets or standing just inches from the blazing wood stove she felt that she was freezing.

Outside, it was freezing - the temperature wasn't bad, but windchills were down to 40 below, they said on the radio. Inside it was warm, but Margie was shivering and freezing.

I kept saying we should take her to the emergency room but she kept refusing to go, saying this would pass and she would be okay.

Just before 10:00 PM, her suffering struck me as extreme so I told her we were going and that was that.

So off we went to the Emergency room of the Mat-Su Regional Medical Center.

The story gets kind of long and I am in no mood to tell it right now and am even wondering whatever got into me to ever include daily life in my blogging at all, but, to make it short, Margie is now at the Alaska Native Medical Center in Anchorage. Before they sent her there, the doctor thought her gall bladder might have to be removed even before the night was over, but the the medication they gave her by IV worked.

Now, the doctor in Anchorage thinks she may not need to have her gall bladder removed, but she has some bad gall stones which definitely must to go. So they are evaluating her further to see which route to go - full bladder removal or stones only.

As for me, while I believe I have turned the corner on these shingles, they still do rage and I still need much more sleep than normal and I forgot to take my pain meds to the hospital with me and my jacket too and it hasn't been easy and I damn near froze just walking through the parking lot (I dropped Margie right at the door so she did not have to face the wind) and this is enough for now.

I am getting tired of reporting on these little crisises - and that's what they are - little. They are not big. They are not life-shattering. She will get her surgery and she will be fine and these shingles will pass. So many people I know have been suffering much worse.

Still, as small as they are, bundled together they kind of makes it harder to move on to the next step - especially because all I want to do is to sleep, and one can't accomplish anything when one is asleep.

How long can an iPhone last at -20 F? A "that's so Wasilla" moment

I still had my iPhone when I took this picture Sunday of Kalib back in his house after Rex's birthday. That phone has really become a part of me. My life is wrapped up in that phone. But it would soon disappear.

Look! Look! This guy has an iPhone! Is it mine? It must be! Mister, you better give my iPhone back, right now! 

Oh, wait a minute. I still had my iPhone when I took this picture. I was sitting in the passenger seat of Charlie's little car with Melanie at the wheel and we were stopped at a red light in Anchorage, watching penguins waddle by. This guy had called the head penguin and was telling her to get her birds out of the road, because he had places to go.

The penguins paid him no mind at all, they just continued to waddle by, one by one, until all 5,000 had passed through the light.

I would have taken a picture, but the penguins had posted a "Do Not Photograph the Penguins!" sign. I felt like my First Amendment rights were being violated, but penguins don't care about American law, the US Constitution, or the First Amendment.

They follow penguin law and penguin law only and they were carrying Ak-47's and shoulder-fired rocket launchers just perfect for blasting Charlie's little car right off the road.

I did not photograph the penguins.

This is where the story starts to get tricky. It was Monday afternoon. Thanks to these shingles and the fact that all my immediate work was out of the way, I hadn't done much but still I took my coffee break and went through the drivethrough at Metro.

I had my phone with me. On my way home, I saw this school bus stop on the road, red lights flashing. Naturally, I stopped, too. This dog came walking out to meet the bus. I was certain the dog had come to meet a student debarking from the bus. But the bus just sat there and the dog just stood there, for about one minute. 

Nothing else happened. Finally, the bus left the dog behind and continued on its way without a single student debarking.

Pretty strange.

After I returned home, I came out here to my office and got into my computer. After half-an- hour or so, I became aware that my iPhone was not in my pocket. I searched the area around my desk. It was not there. I searched every single place in the house that I had been. No iPhone. I searched the car. No iPhone. The weather had turned cold and I had been to the woodpile a couple of times, so I searched all around the woodpile.

No phone.

I called my phone in all these places and more. It did not ring. I called it with all the lights turned out, including the flash light. It did not glow.

I just could not find that phone.

Just before I went to bed, I did another outside search. I did not wear gloves. My hands are very cold conditioned and I can man my cameras bare-handed for long periods of time in zero degree F weather but it was well below zero now and pretty soon my fingers went numb.

So I built up the fire and headed for bed, making a stop at the bathroom to the master bedroom along the way. I could see my breath in there.

The next morning, yesterday, Tuesday the temperature here stood at -20 F (-29c) and it would stay below zero all day. I called my phone. It went straight to voice mail - this meant the battery had died. That meant that I had most likely lost it outside.

But where?

I did a lot of re-searching, both in places I had searched and in places I had not even been before the phone got lost.

Once, if you lost a phone, you lost a phone. Annoying, but no big deal, really. You just replaced it. But now when you lose a phone, you really lose something. Your whole identity gets wrapped up in that phone. There are notes and photos and recorded interviews and aps going here and going there and intimate notes sent back and forth to your wife written when you are separated from her and plenty of personal information.

Losing a phone has become a big deal.

Today, I slept in very late. I have turned the corner toward healing, but I am still battling these nasty, painful, shingles and I still need as much sleep as I can get.

When I got up, I found a note from Caleb. He had found my phone - wedged into a very strange place in the car where I swear I had looked myself. My theory is that the phone froze and so did not ring nor glow when I called - because I called it a few different times from within the car and never did it ring or glow.

But I have it now and life is okay, once again.

Now about the picture: yesterday afternoon I went to Metro one hour earlier than usual. I had not seen Carmen in two weeks, maybe more, because she leaves early these days to pick Branson up from school. So I dropped by a little earlier than normal.

When I pulled into the drivethrough line, there was big pickup truck in front of me, just one space behind the window itself. I could not see a car in front of the truck, so I reasoned that someone in a small car was sitting at the window in front of the truck, which I figured blocked my view of it. It was one of those trucks with a darkened back window, obscuring the occupants from view.

I sat there, waiting in line for several minutes, wondering when the order to the lead car that I could not see because the big truck was sitting between us would be filled and the line could progress.

Just as I was growing so impatient that I was just about ready to jump out and go up and see what was going on, a woman who I had never seen before walked out of the coffee shop, climbed into the truck and drove away. There was no smaller vehicle in front of her. She had just parked her car in the drivethrough line one space back from the window, left it there, went inside, made her order, and took her time.

Boy! This falls into the category of behavior that my daughters call, "That's so Wasilla!" It really isn't indicative of most Wasillans, but we have more than our share. Like all those times that you pull into a crowded parking lot and find someone has parked their big truck at angle across two spaces - sometimes three, if they can figure out how to manage it.

When I pulled to the window, I saw Shoshana and Carmen on the other side. They had wondered why it had been so long since anyone had pulled up to the window.

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