Tired Hearts and Far Away Places...

It was a big day on Friday, July 10th. Big in many ways.....

It seems odd to write of Tim's latest struggles with health issues and Jordan's mission call in the same blog post but that is exactly what happened....both on the same day. In our typical style, multiple things were happening on the same day. It cannot be said that our life is boring, that is for sure!

So......

Friday began with Tim going to the cardiologist first thing in the morning. The day before Tim had his monthly check up with the Fabulous Dr. O and it was there that it was discovered that Tim's heart rate was pounding at 146! Being a fabulous doctor, Dr. O sent Tim right away for an EKG. After the EKG Tim went back to work (how crazy was that?) and later in the day his heart rate was still quite elevated so he called our family doctor and they told him to come right in. Once there the doctor did another EKG and didn't like what he saw. He called a cardiologist and together they were deciding whether or not to put Tim in the hospital for observation over night or to have him go in for an appointment first thing on Friday morning. They decided to have him go to the cardiologist at 8:30 Friday but warned Tim that if anything changed during the night he was to go to the ER immediately.

So Friday morning we saw the cardiologist and by 2:30 Tim was at the hospital having a Cardiac Ablation done. It was a 5 hour wait to hear any news of how things were going and in that time Jordan had gotten his much anticipated mission call. When he got the envelope he brought it up to the hospital along with Abigail and Annah. The plan was that maybe by the time he got to the hospital that Tim would be out and Jordan could open his call with all of us there.

It began to be apparent that there was no telling how long Tim's cardiac ablation was going to take so Jordan opened his mission call in the waiting area of the hospital!

Here is a video clip that is up on YouTube...




So there it is.... Jordan is going to the Brazil Belo Horizonte mission and he will be speaking Portuguese! He reports to the Brazil Missionary Training Center on October 21st.

Tim wasn't able see Jordan open his call but when I was able to tell him where Jordan was going he was very happy for him. We are so proud of Jordan that he has chosen to dedicate 2 years of his life to serving a mission. He is such a fine young man who will touch the hearts of many people that he will come in contact with. We truly feel that our family will be greatly blessed by Jordan's decision to go and serve. I know that it was a hard thing for him to decide knowing that his father has cancer. I remember the day that Jordan and I were talking about it and he said that he wasn't sure what to do because of his Dad's cancer. I told him that he needed to do what he felt was the right thing for him and trust that everything would be taken care of. I believe that with all of my heart.

And speaking of heart....Tim is doing really well. He stayed over night at the hospital and was able to come home on Saturday afternoon. The doctor had to do two ablations as Tim had several types of arrhythmia's going on. He said that Tim's case was more complicated than he had anticipated because Tim presented with three types but only two were addressed during the procedure and even with that the doctor is not 100% sure that the problems were solved. He's a little sore in his chest but otherwise is doing well. He's got some new meds to be on and has to go back to the cardiologist in 4 weeks (sooner if he has more problems). The doctor thinks that Tim has had these problems for a while. I told the doctor that we had noticed that Tim's heart rate was elevated about mid-way through his radiation treatments and we asked doctors about it on a number of occasions but they never seemed concerned about it. While the cardiologist doesn't think the radiation (a.k.a. stress on Tim's body) caused the tachycardia problems, he does think it contributed to tipping the scales to having an accelerated heart beat on a pretty consistent basis.

So Tim's heart is on the mend and Jordan has been called to labor in Brazil for two years. Oh...and my camera also got out of the hospital on Friday (and I am holding on tight to it!).

I am taking a deep breath and am thankful.