Update on Norene

 It's been a week now since Grandma fell.  The week has consisted of near daily trips to the hospital to check in on progress and spend time with her.

Surgery went well, and after a few days on the medical floor we moved her to the longer-term transitional care/rehab unit.  The first few days after the stroke things seemed so bleak.  Norene wasn't able to do much of anything for herself.  Slowly though, we can see little improvements, and it gives room for some hope.  She was actually up in a chair today eating her meal!  Luckily her dominant hand was not affected.  She is getting speech therapy, occupational therapy, and physical therapy almost every day and they will work up to doing physical therapy twice a day.

The whole experience has been physically and emotionally draining for all of us, but through it all there have been so many blessings.  I found this quote that captured how I have felt and made this post on Instagram:

 "I have never felt this more than during this past week!  So grateful for all the tiny miracles that are perfectly placed by God and selflessly executed by those around me. 💗"

I should have written down all the little things at the time because I am sure there are some I am missing, but here is a sampling of some of the things that miraculously made it possible to get through this past week and the weeks ahead...

This time of year is one of the busiest for me in the dress shop with GC Prom and Sweethearts dances at the rest of the school.  Norene's fall happened on one of THE busiest weeks.  Most weeks I get a slow start on alterations/repairs as Monday is usually housekeeping/bookkeeping day and Tuesday is errand day, so work on the dresses really kicks in on Wednesday and consumes the rest of the week until pickup on Friday begins at 4 pm.  The week of her fall, however, I started working on the dresses first thing Monday and had them almost done by Tuesday with just a few remaining hems that were not sewn, but had all been measured and pinned up!  With just a few hems to finish and a handful of dresses to review for repairs, I called up my mom and she happily stepped in and finished them up for me.  The girls that I had working in the shop had been trained on steaming and bagging the dresses to finish up dance prep.  It was amazing how it all fell together perfectly.

Also related to the shop, I had been meaning to put together a procedural book of sorts since all of the daily operations were just in my head.  I figured it would come in handy if I wasn't immediately available and one of the girls needed a few details on how to do something.  Well, I finally sat down to do it in December, and that seemingly small thing turned out to be HUGE.  It enabled me to be able to leave the operations of the shop in the hands of my employees for the most part.

I had also been taking dinner into our neighbors, Ken and Savanna Baker, about every other week and the weeks right after Norene's fall, they did not need me to bring them in.  One less thing to worry about!

I had been planning to take the boys skiing over the weekend for Aggie Ski Night, but with all of this going on I was not going to be able to.  Griffin had REALLY been looking forward to it, and luckily Ethan was coming home for the weekend.  He was so awesome and took Griffin up skiing to Cherry Peak.  I was so grateful because through all of this I felt like Griffin was getting very neglected and I hated to see him miss out.

It was many little things like this that came together just right to make life manageable.  What a blessing from God when we needed it most.  He really is in the details of our lives.