Home Sweet Home

Home Sweet Home

     Before leaving for Philadelphia I started an article. It is in the polishing stage - to be posted soon. Since my longstanding readers might like a report of our Philadelphia experience I am posting this chatty piece first.

     Many thanks to those who said a prayer.  The emails and caring cards sent across the miles, were appreciated. I was touched to tears. What sympathetic readers I have. It is delightful to be home.

     I am sad to say that Nigel’s two-weeks of medical treatments in Philadelphia were unsuccessful. Dean and I sank under the disappointment initially. But we trust God for His ongoing blessings of life and love. Nigel has his low moments but generally he is looking forward to freelance work and has accepted having to write his own instruction manual (figuratively) for living with RSD by holistic means.  

     Through the long winter Nigel put his talent and skill to work by building us a new website. He is eager to finish it. You might be startled when you see how gorgeous the graphics are. What’s the hold-up? It needs more text. He is waiting on me.

     I am reading aloud, Miss Buncle’s Book by D. E. Stevenson, from my kindle. It came highly recommended. It makes us chuckle. Nigel has read - and listened on-line - to stories by P. G. Wodehouse. To be nice to his mother he says that in comparison, Miss Buncle’s Book is almost as funny. (It has a sobering side, too.)   

Charming set of old row houses at the foot of the hotel

     Each day, while Dean wheeled Nigel from the hotel along the city sidewalks to Drexel’s out-patient infusion suite - and back again - I was across the street - in the hospital. Those twelve days were indeed trying. But I kept an upward gaze. Aside from Small Fiber Neuropathy I was given an additional diagnosis of Complex Regional Pain Syndrome from a top-doc, the Professor of Neurology at Drexel. The results of this series of treatments (unique to him) are pending my next month of out-patient treatments. I am a sort-of experiment.

     Dean, Nigel, and our married daughter Yolanda (who came to help) stayed at the Hampton Inn. The photograph (below) was taken from their hotel-room-window. Hahnemann Hospital is a few blocks away. I was on the 14^th floor. If I stood at the window in the hallway gazing at the busy city I could see their hotel-room-window.

    
As well as overseeing Nigel, Dean managed to visit me every day. Yolanda visited, too. One afternoon before Dean departed, he got an idea. “Let’s shine our flashlights at our windows at nine o’clock on the dot - as a final good night.” It worked. In the dark of the night I could see his little circle of light shinning clearly in his hotel window. He could see mine. My nurse smiled and thought this was cute. To me it was an inner comfort.

     How relaxing it is to be sitting in my sunny parlor again. It is necessary for women to find some way of counter-acting stress in their lives, especially when pain becomes a growing problem. Too often we shrug off, in disbelieve, the power that twenty minutes of calm can have in enabling us to unwind. Stitching a flower in four different reds was my chosen way to unwind from the stress of those two weeks in Philadelphia. At home in my parlor I re-entered the soothing, artistic world of sampler making. A rabbit with a nasturtium in its mouth and a fat bird perched on a branch, were stitched during subsequent sittings.

      This is a “make-do” sampler. I am only using threads leftover from other projects.

“Gold” Sophia decided, is the house color. The royal crown above the roof symbolizes

a Christian household where the family members seek to serve the Lord.  

    


     Commuting into Philadelphia is a daylong venture. The treatments make me weak and wobbly afterwards. The traffic makes the driver tired. Dean is an attentive husband and father. Recently, I dug out a picture of Daddy – complete with mustache and goatee – drawn during our daughter’s early childhood. He hasn’t changed much in twenty-five years. But I do think he now has a smaller head. 

Happy to be blogging again,

Karen Andreola