Tag Archives: surgery

Seven years

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It is hard for me to believe that today marks our seventh wedding anniversary. Sometimes it seems like time has flown by, and at other times, it seems like we’ve been married for longer than seven years. We are really blessed. Some of the events of the past seven years include the following:

  • three more children (Keegan was eight years old when we married)
  • three household moves
  • the death of my father
  • my mother-in-law’s hospitalization and long recovery from dilated cardiomyopathy, as well as a later surgery to replace both of her knees
  • the death of both of Michele’s grandfathers
  • the death of one of Michele’s uncles as well as two uncles and an aunt of mine
  • the legal adoption of Keegan as my son
  • Michele’s extended neurological illness (which has since reoccurred)
  • my hospitalizations for meningitis and other weird ailments including a severe case of the shingles
  • purchase of two different minivans, and the sale of a car and one of those minivans
  • the adoption of three dogs, two parakeets, several kittens, and several freshwater fish
  • three job changes on my part
  • three graduate courses taught
  • more than 15 emergency room visits
  • thousands of miles traveled to/from relatives and one plane trip as a family (to Maine)
  • the purchase of two Mac computers
  • several business trips made by me, including a trip to Sweden, two trips to the UK, and trips to various parts of the U.S.
  • several other funerals and marriages of friends
  • the marriages of a niece and a nephew

I’m surely forgetting some other important milestones, but this list covers a lot as it is. Happy anniversary to us!

Teaching an online course

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Today is a sad and troubling day because Michele and I heard from my mom that my sister-in-law, Linda, is very sick again and hospitalized for intense pain in her stomach region. She spent two weeks in hospital about four months ago for similar pain and had an operation to clear up intestinal adhesions. Now we wonder if that really is the problem or not. She is in surgery as I write this and we are praying for her and my brother Tim, as well as their children. Fortunately Linda’s parents are over here from Great Britain and staying with them right now. I’m regressing into feeling worse again with this cold or whatever it is, and it looks like Tristan has come down with it, too, judging by his runny nose and general crabbiness. Today I accepted an offer to teach a course this fall as an adjunct professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Graduate School of Library and Information Science in their distance education curriculum, known as LEEP. It’ll be a great experience but it scares me to death as I’ve never done something like this before. Just the thought of developing a syllabus is awfully intimidating!

Adoption process

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Keegan got his report card yesterday. We noticed that he has gone down hill a little bit in some areas, but overall, he did well. He’s on the honor roll again at school and he will be honored at a dinner hosted by the school in a few weeks. Still no word about the adoption report from Indiana Child and Family Services, though. It’s sitting on some supervisor’s desk waiting for her to review and approve it. Once that’s done, it will be submitted to the court and then a court hearing will be set as the last step in the whole process. I can’t wait for this whole process to be done with. At work, we’ve been praying for Mark Cosgrove, chair of Taylor’s Psychology Department and husband of Jo Ann, our ILL person, who was diagnosed with a brain aneurism last week. He is in Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis, awaiting the proper time for surgery.