Dixie where are you?????

Hey where ya hiding at? Did school start? Did you retire? When are we gonna meet up? Anyways.....I won't make it a whole 20 questions but miss you and hope all is well!!!!! jesi

Hi Jesi, Sorry I've been MIA. It's been a very interesting & stressful last few weeks. To answer your questions- School has not started yet. I was scheduled to start July 10 but it looks like I'll have to postpone it until the October term. My job is screwing me around. They won't release me (which would mean I'd get my severance) so the only way I'd be able to start in July is to quit, losing my severance package & the possibility of drawing unemployment when the severance time is up. They are running into snags with replacing the computer room jobs with automation & outsourcing. I'll be lucky to be done by late August, I think. Hopefully I"ll hear more today but they keep telling me that. I'll retire when I am able to leave. I am so ready as I am beginning to hate my job because of all the crap going on. However, for the last few weeks my future hasn't seemed very important to me. My older sister got gravely ill & is in the hospital in Iowa City. I spent several days there taking my turn sitting by her side. Actually, I sat with her at night as the kids were kind of afraid to be there alone in case something happened. I let then go to bed & I stayed with her on the nights I could get off work. She has a very rare condition called Capillary Leak Syndrome. It's the first time they have seen it at the IU Hospital & as far as they can tell there have only been 61 reported cases of it. Her body, over a period of several days filled with fluid. It was very painful & swollen. The capillaries were allowing too much to leak into the tissues, resulting in very low blood pressure & kidney failure. Fortunately, while they were trying to figure out what was wrong, the doctors treated her exactly the way she needed to be treated to keep her alive until they found the drugs that helped. She spent over a week in ICU, pretty much out of it. She gained over 60 lbs of fluid! She has made improvement & moved into a regular room on Wednesday. I haven't talked to anyone today but know that the move was very hard on her & her care was not what it should have been. We are hoping she'll be well enough to come home soon but also know that this will continue to happen for the rest of her life. They will have her on a couple drugs to take to try to prevent it & she'll know the signs. It's a nasty thing & her chances of living a long life are not very good. All the reports indicate that eventually they succumb to it. We're going to work hard to keep her around as long as possible. She's just 59 years old & the cornerstone of our family. I do want to meet up with you soon, perhaps when you come up this way to visit your family. Janie & I have been talking about seeing if we can arrange a time that she, you, Andrea, & I can get together also. Better run, my granddaughter is coming to visit while Mommy mows their lawn. Dixie