Blogging

Well I'm new to this, but Andrew wants me to give it a try. I think we might be better off with separate blogs, but I guess this will work for now.

Had a great Christmas, got lots of stuff, most of which I really didn't need, but am enjoying anyway. I've noticed the more I have the more stressful life seems to be. Have to take care of it all and that gets overwhelming when I think about it. I keep telling Andrew that if he ever dies I'm going to get rid of just about everything we own and move into a little two-bedroom place with Megan. He just loves "stuff" though, so we keep it all. I love books, and they take up more than enough room, but I could do without so much of what we have. Stuff is everywhere, but I guess that's how most people live nowadays. I keep cleaning it out, but to no avail.

Well, I hope you enjoy the blog. Happy New Year to you all!

Final update-I hope

This is for those who haven't already heard. My dizziness is finally gone! I actually felt fairly good about a week before Christmas, but then was told I have an upper sinus infection. I am on an antibiotic for it and must use a nose spray for about a month, but then should be fine. I am supposed to return to work on January 5th, so that worked out well as far as Megan being out of school. I'm sorry I didn't get this out sooner, but things were crazy with Christmas coming and me finally being able to do something about it.

Thank you for all of your prayers and concern on my behalf.

Also, for those who've not heard, Andrew has a job! Yeah! It doesn't pay much, but it's something and that's better than nothing. :-)

Happy New Year to you all!

4th update

I wish I could say this was going to be my last update, but sadly I don't think it will be. Not much has changed. I went to the Dr. again today, which I'm sure getting tired of doing I must say. Andrew is getting tired of being "James" the chauffeur and I'm tired of being "Ms. Daisy" who is being driven around. Alas, we still have our roles to fill. Most days I'm doing OK, yesterday however was really bad. I got through about 20 mins. of Church and then left because I was so dizzy. I drove home (though I probably shouldn't have, I thought it couldn't hurt if I didn't use the gas pedal since there would be virtually no cars moving). I made it home safely, but even just letting the engine idle was rather too fast for me. I stayed in bed for another six hours after that and finally started to feel OK about 5pm. The sad part is that I missed out on a special Relief Society meeting that I really wanted to be there for. Oh well I guess. I didn't have much choice.

Today I had to go back to bed after the Dr. appointment for another three hours roughly. I'm finally up and hoping that I'll be OK to do the shopping tonight for a needy family that I committed to doing. I'll feel bad if I can't go.

The Dr. gave me another Rx that I'll be taking for about two weeks and then I'm supposed to follow up with him again. I think he is tired of seeing me. LOL That takes me pretty much to Christmas. I feel like I'm slowly getting better, but then it seems like yesterday and today were relapses. Not sure if that is because the shot from last week wore off or what, but I'm hoping it was that since I'm really hoping I'm on the mend.

Good news, Megan got her cast off. YEAH! She has some pain where she broke it so she is wearing a velcro splint that she can take off and put on as she pleases whenever she feels that she needs it. She is excited to have the flute back and to play piano again with both hands.

Andrew seems to have a job. We are waiting to see if he passed the "drug" test. We're pretty confident he'll pass, but the formality is still there. Once the results are back, he starts the next day basically, so he is now rushing to finish the last of this semester's classes only to start on a new class today that he needs to complete as quickly as possible so that he can start more classes on January 12th. Whew!

I guess that's pretty much it for now, hope all of you are doing well and enjoying the Christmas spirit. Would love to hear from any of you...

3rd update

All right. The medication I took ended up letting me not sleep much at all, which was great for a couple of days but got old very quickly. I called back to the Dr.'s office and explained the problem. They advised me to take something that would make me sleepy, like Benadryl. Well, in the past small stuff doesn't work so good for me, so I went straight to a sleeping aide, Unisom. It still made little to no difference the first night, so I increased the dosage the 2nd night-that was a bad idea. I woke up Thanksgiving morning around 2am and nearly woke up Andrew to take me to the ER becauseI was concerned that I had OD's on the medication and was going to need medical attention, but I perservered and prayed instead. I got through the day finally, but not without a nap. Ridiculous because we were hosting, but it worked out OK. Friday we went back to the Dr. I was concerned about taking the medication again, turns out it was a steroid and the effects it had on me (not sleeping, couldn't think straight and my judgement was severely lacking) were not good. Saw a different Dr. again since the other was out of the office for the day. She told me to not take the steroid again, explaining it was to help with the inflammation of the ear drums. She advised me to take 800mg of ibuprofen every six hours. I have been doing so ever since. Getting old. It does help quite a bit with the dizziness, however, I'm still dizzy all the time. Thankfully I have much better judgement and my vocabulary is back.

Went to the follow-up yesterday with the "main Dr." (meaning I've seen him twice now). He was surprised that I was still dizzy (not a good sign to me) and told me to continue the ibuprofen treatment and then gave me a shot. He is hoping that this will make a difference for me. I am too, I really need to get back to work (although I found out I get paid 2/3 of my normal pay instead of the nothing that I thought I was getting) and I'm extremely tired of not being able to drive. Andrew is tired of driving me around too. I follow up again with him on Dec. 8th, which is Monday.

It appears that Andrew has a job. They are doing a background check on him. Assuming that comes out OK (we are reasonably sure it will) he will have to do a drug test. That will also come back clean so they will then offer him a job. We don't know how much longer the process will take, but are hoping it'll be before the beginning of the year.

It's nice to be home at this time of year and I'm enjoying time with Andrew, but things are going to change for the better financially speaking, and we are all for that!

We did find out finally that we were approved for AHCCCS. Now we have to get them to take care of the bills that occur before our effective date of November 14th-which is pretty much all of the bills. Megan broke her arm on October 20th, so we are hoping they will pick all of that up. We haven't been able to talk to anyone at AHCCCS yet, so we are waiting on that.

Hope Thanksgiving was good for everyone. Ours was mixed as I mentioned already. Hope you enjoy the Christmas season as well and can find the things that you can be grateful for.

By the way, totally off the subject, Elder Wirthlin passed away and his funeral is Friday at noon for those who are interested. You can get more info at LDS.org of course.

2nd update

Hi everyone,
Quick update. Went to the Dr. AGAIN on Friday and saw yet another Dr. (this being the fourth Dr. I've seen in a week). He cleaned out my ears (which made the dizziness worse for several hours) and told me that my problem is actually an inner-ear infection. He gave me a medication to take, but it won't really solve my inner-ear infection, just supposed to help. I am scheduled to return with him on December 2nd and see how I'm doing. So far, the medication hasn't made a difference other than making it hard for me to go to sleep because I have to eat right before bedtime and get indigestion, which as you can guess isn't really helpful. We are hoping it will work soon though. The good thing is that I seem to need less sleep. YEAH! I was sleeping about 10 hours at night for the first week of the problem and then another 2-3 hours for a nap each day. I still need to lay down during the day usually, but not for as long and I'm sleeping less than 8 hours at night, so I have much more day to do things.

No word yet about Andrew's job, although we heard from the guy who referred him to the company and it sounds like he will be hired, we have not heard from those who will be hiring him.

Sorry it took so long to get this out, it has been crazy since the Dr. appointment. I'll leave it at that.

Hope you are all doing wonderful and would love to hear from you if you get the chance. :-)

Lisa Having Medical Problems again.

Hi everyone,
Some of you may already know this, but if not, at least now you will. I'm sorry I didn't send something out before, but I didn't see where it would last this long, now that it has, well you know.

Thursday the 13th I got out of bed to go to work and was suddenly very dizzy. The room was spinning at an alarming speed and had I been standing (I was sitting in bed) I would have fallen down. I didn't feel safe driving, so I called out. We thought it might be my blood sugar, but it wasn't. Next we thought I was too tired, but that didn't pan out either. We tried the chiropractor, thinking I was out of joint, but nothing was wrong there either.

Friday we went to the Dr. They did some blood work, it all came back normal, and no, I'm not pregnant. (One of the tests they did). Around 9pm I felt fine and stayed that way until around 9:30AM Monday morning while I was at work. Suddenly I was very dizzy again. I ended up calling Andrew to come and get me.

We went to the ER Monday night because the Dr's office said that if the symptoms persist or get worse to go there. Dad (Merkley) and Andrew gave me a blessing first. They did an EKG and CT Scan, all was fine. More bloodwork, still nothing wrong. The best thing they could tell me was that I had a lot of wax build up in my ear and I probably had something wrong with my inner ear, which they couldn't see or test apparently.

We went back to the Dr. yesterday, the 19th. Still can't drive. They wanted us to go ahead and try to clean out the wax in my ears, but said that's very likely not the problem. So now I can't hear most of the time. They are referring me to a neurologist. I don't know what's going to happen from there, but we are trying to get in sooner than later. Andrew is taking good care of me. I'm doing the best I can.

We'll try to keep you updated. Right now we don't have anything to go on, but are hoping the neurologist can get me in quickly and can figure it out and fix it quickly. The one good thing is that we are fairly sure it's not a brain tumor, since the CT Scan came back fine. We know it's not my heart or a stroke as well, but that's about it. They said it doesn't sound like traditional vertigo either.

Good news is short, but Andrew may have a job. We should know the first of next week.

We appreciate your prayers in our behalf and we know that Heavenly Father is looking out for us, we have faith it will all turn out for the best, whatever that may be.

We love you and pray for you as well.

Lisa M. Smith-Happiness is a good friend

A Year in Review

Andrew's Adventures

This year was very interesting.

At the end of last year I started a new job with Earnhardt Nissan. We were happy to be there. I found that many people worked there that I had worked with before back when I was at Earnhardt Dodge. I was happy to be at a job that looked like I could be there for awhile after 2007 was full of job hopping. Well in August all of that changed. True to Earnhardt style they laid me off because they thought they could bring someone else in that could make the dealership more money than I was making them. About a month later they thought wrong and they also found out that they lost one of their best Service Advisors when it came to customer service. Within a short few weeks several other employees left the dealership as a direct reflection of them laying me off.

Lisa and I took they change in stride. We have been tired of “playing cars” for the last 12 years so figured it time to make a career change.

I have now gone back to school, attending Rio Salado online, getting my AA degree in Computer Technology. I hope to have finished this degree by the spring of 2009 and starting my bachelor degree at ASU East. We are hoping that this new career path will be a little more stable and ample enough to be able to let Lisa go back to school soon.

Being laid off this past 2-3 months have given me ample time to catch up on projects around the home and be able to learn lots of new things to do with emergency preparedness. I have been having fun taking lots of cooking classes and using our year supply. I now make a mean whole wheat bread and whole wheat cinnamon roll. Lisa and I also tried a new corn bread recipe made out of ground popcorn. The other cool thing I have done is change the way I go gardening. I am trying my hand Hydroponic Gardening. So far it is going very well. My plants are growing so much faster, and NO WEEDS. J

Lisa's Life

Well I was hoping for a less eventful year, and I guess in some ways it was, but it really wasn’t when it comes right down to it.

I’m working at Macy’s for those who don’t already know. The job I reported last year ended three days after I began it. The environment was terrible and I couldn’t stand it, so I left.

Megan's Melodrama

I started piano. It’s going great, and I love it. The piano teacher’s name is Sis. Jensen. I’m learning how to play “Silent Night” and “Jingle Bells”. I’m looking forward to my first piano recital. I started learning how to play the flute. It’s going great, and I love it. The flute teacher’s name is Mr. A or Mr. Anderson. I learned how to play “Hot Cross Buns” and I’m learning how to play “Aqua De La Lune”. I also started Porter Pops for my 2^nd time. I’m singing “Surfer Girl”, “Under the Sea”, and “Surfin’ USA” among others.

I got roller blades for the first time. I got them at Big 5. The colors are black, white, gray, blue, dark blue, and light blue. They were only $50. I love them. Sadly, two days after I got them I broke my left wrist (it’s really my arm). I was jumping and turning at the same time.

I also got to ride Jake (a horse up in Strawberry). Also I learned how to do the lope. I rode him with another horse in the same corral (for the first time). I love riding. I also helped give all the horses their carrots.

I got two new teachers. One is Ms. Allred and the other is Ms. Devereux. Ms. Allred teaches me in the afternoon and Ms. Devereux teaches me in the morning. I love 5^th grade.

For Halloween we got to be a 50’s family. I was going to wear my roller blades, but then Mom and Dad told me I couldn’t with my broken arm.

Well that was some of the fun and not so fun things I did this year.