The last week of April we had a few social activities. We went to dinner with our missionary Maddie and her husband Parker Wheeler.
We had a dinner date with another missionary, Morgan Clawson.
We went to dinner with Glen's sisters and their husbands at Timbermine Steakhouse in Ogden Canyon.
Laurie came to town for a few days to help Emma move out of her Provo apartment. They brought all her stuff to our home to store for the summer. Emma went back to Nebraska with Laurie to spend the summer there.
They went to dinner one evening at Teppanyaki. Neither Emma nor Natalie wanted their vegetables and Laurie knew I would love them, so they brought the veggie leftovers to me.
I enjoyed eating the veggies the following morning for breakfast. YUM!! That was so thoughtful of them!
My sweet Aunt Helen passed away and we attended her funeral. It was a wonderful thought knowing she and my Uncle Merlin are reunited once again after only a 5-month separation. I love thinking of heavenly reunions.
We attended a play at Hale with Dad, Mom and Nani and had our usual Red Lobster meal following the play.
I hate to admit that I was around all those people during that week that I was getting sick. My chief complaint was a sore throat. And, as I am prone to do, I developed an annoying, constant cough and wheezing.
Once I determined I was not going to get well on my own, I went to urgent care. I had already taken a Covid test, which was negative. They did a strep test, which also showed negative.
I had chest x-rays, which didn't show anything of concern. So I was given doxycycline antibiotic, medication for my nebulizer breathing treatments, and prednisone. I left feeling very hopeful that I would be feeling better soon...
Five days later, I was still coughing my head off and wheezing like crazy and feeling like the medication had not helped me at all. In fact, I felt worse as the days wore on.
So back to urgent care I went to get more x-rays, another breathing treatment, and the news that my lungs were worse--just as I suspected. I was told to stop the antibiotic and was prescribed a stronger antibiotic, levofloxacin, that I could only take every other day for 10 days.
I wondered about the need for more prednisone since I do best if I take both an antibiotic and prednisone together.
It wasn't until a few days later when I got on MyChart to read what the doctor wrote about my visit that I saw the diagnosis of pneumonia. WHAT??!!?? She said my lung looked worse in my right lower lobe, but never used the word pneumonia at the visit.
There was also this attached information in my file about treating pneumonia. It was actually a bit of a relief to know why I was struggling much more with my illness than usual. The pneumonia explained it.
It was a long several weeks for me as I was coughing and wheezing so much. I could not sleep well at all. I had to be in a chair sitting straight up or else I would feel like I was suffocating. The nights were so long!
Six days later was Mother's Day. I had gotten a few hours of sleep Saturday night and felt like that was just the Mother's Day gift I needed.
Although I missed yet another week of being out and about, we had invited the kids over for dinner. Glen was cooking. The girls would clean up. I was looking forward to having people around. I had been lonely being homebound for so long.
Natalie joined us for dinner that day. Since Sarah was unable to be here because her family was in Cedar City that weekend, I had us pose with Natalie's Taylor Swift t-shirt as the focal point so Sarah could see we were thinking about her. (She is a fanatical Taylor Swift fan.)
Ben's family soon joined us. Kade and Levi were so excited to show me the gigantic Mother's Day card that opened up into a bouquet of flowers.
There was the sweetest note attached to the card as well. So cute to see the boys be such eager, happy gift-givers.
I loved this photo Haley posted of her with her three boys. So sweet. Perfect for Mother's Day.
I had another extremely rough night, coughing and wheezing as I unsuccessfully attempted to sleep. It had been a whole week since I had changed antibiotics. I was faithfully doing my home breathing treatments around the clock. I was so discouraged.
I decided to see if my pulmonologist would prescribe another round of prednisone. Thankfully, he did just that--5 days' worth. I was so anxious to start that medication again. I just knew I would be on my way to recovery...
Because I had been on so much medication for quite a while, I figured I wasn't contagious anymore. Just annoying because of all the coughing. I decided I wanted to get out of the house and went with Glen to Jeff and Sarah's home so Glen could help Jeff put up his new shed.
Jeff had gotten the land leveled and bricks laid down in preparation for the shed assembly.
Sarah and I were getting a kick out of the guys coming inside every so often to watch another segment of the YouTube shed assembly video so they would see step-by-step how to put the shed together.
Meanwhile, in the garage, Sarah and I got busy cleaning. There were a lot of boxes to break down.
Sarah got busy organizing the shelves.
Sweeping finished off our project for the day.
Sarah had been willing to fix us lunch, but Glen insisted we get take-out. Sarah opted for Olive Garden.
That afternoon Carson's grade was putting on a Shakespeare performance at the elementary school. I went in Jeff's place since he was still busy with the shed.
Carson's costume was very adorable with the purple feather in the hat. He was the one introducing his little play segment to the audience.
When Sarah's boys got home from school, Jonah was especially excited about the new addition to their backyard. He felt like the shed was his new little playhouse.
Job well done, men!! Who knew it would take the whole entire day to put that thing together???
I have to say it did my heart a world of good to get out of the house and spend the day at Sarah's.
Glen and I stopped by Rebecca's home on our way home from Sarah's. Not all the cardboard went in the recycle bin. We took a pile of it to Brooke. She was making a Viking ship out of cardboard for a surprise birthday gift for a friend. I am sure the finished ship will be a masterpiece with Brooke's creativity.
Brooke came over that evening for a financial planning session with her grandpa. While they were doing that, I went to get Chick-fil-A for our dinner.
Unfortunately, despite taking the added prednisone, my coughing and wheezing were increasing once again. I struggled that evening and the next day feeling like I was not improving. I was so discouraged. How would I ever be able to sleep again and be able to go about my daily activities??
When Glen got home from the prison the next day, I told him to eat while I packed some stuff to take with me to the ER. I was told not to go back a third time to urgent care if I felt like I was not improving. I should go to the ER. I did NOT want to go to the ER, but I was so tired from struggling so hard to breathe and from coughing so much and from feeling like I was suffocating on all the mucous in my lungs.
It was a good thing I had gotten a substitute for that evening doing CASAS educational testing at the prison. I would have been miserable, and the men taking the tests would have gone insane listening to me coughing. It was also a good thing I had gotten a substitute for my Thursday temple shift for the third week in a row. Coughing in the temple would not be appreciated by anyone!!
Surprisingly, as that Wednesday afternoon wore on, my coughing eased up and I then determined I would wait it out 2 more days, until Friday, when I finished up with all the prednisone and with the 10-day course of antibiotic.
Happily, Thursday was a much better day. I was able to sleep for a few uninterrupted hours that night. And, miraculously, Friday morning I woke up with clear lungs. HALLELUJAH!!!!
That was such a huge blessing because we had planned many weeks earlier to have the couples we serve with in our Currant Branch at the prison come to lunch and a planning meeting on that Friday. It was a joy to welcome them into our home when I could breathe and my coughing had ceased. What a relief!!!
We fed them a nice lunch, had a counseling session with them getting our three new couples worked into the daily schedule, and having a little bit of time to just visit together. We love these people we serve with. They are such dedicated and faithful people who are so willing to "serve time" at the prison two and sometimes three days a week.
The next day, Saturday, Glen was very anxious to spend the day at home. He had been going strong the whole three weeks I had been sick. He wanted to just stay home. After all those sick weeks, I was very anxious to be out of the house doing something other than being sick.
Nani and I had planned a play date. FUN!!!!
I had enjoyed the movie "Escape From Germany" so much that I wanted to take Nani to see it.
When I woke up that morning, I felt like the food from the day before was just sitting in my stomach. It was an uncomfortable feeling, but off we went to the movie. After the movie we went to Golden Corral. I thought the food there tasted good, but I kept leaving Nani to go to the bathroom. UGH!!
After bidding her good-bye, I had planned to stop at some stores before going home, but decided it would probably be wiser for me to get home so I could be near a bathroom. That turned out to be an excellent idea.
I got so ill as the day wore on. Along with the bathroom runs, I started vomiting and having chills. I was miserable. All I could think about was the food that I had fed our couples the day before which had not settled well in my stomach. Thankfully, none of them got sick, so it wasn't food poisoning.
At least it wasn't Golden Corral that left a foul taste in my mouth and with my system. I do know it will be a long while before I will ever have the desire to eat the meal I fed our friends.
Everyone was expecting to finally see me at the prison after my weeks-long absence. They were surprised when I didn't show up yet another week. I slept many hours on Sunday and could barely eat a thing. The same with the next day. The rest of the week I felt nauseous.
It was totally unbelievable that I had a mere one day where I felt well finally after all those weeks of sickness, and then the very next day I got another illness lasting another week. SHEESH!!!
How thankful I am to now be feeling healthy once again. That was way too long to be sick!!
