BUT NOW HE'S BACK!

If you've been reading this blog for a while, you know that my hubby's retirement hasn't exactly been a barrel of laughs. First he had a mild stroke. Then he passed out at Mima's one day, conked his head, and had to be life-flighted to Austin with bleeding in his brain. A few months later, when he was threatening to pass out again, we rushed him back to the hospital, where we discovered he had ventricular tachycardia (which probably caused the Mima's episode) and needed a pacemaker. A short time after coming home we discovered his pacemaker had come with a bonus -- a nasty staph infection, which was already coursing throughout his bloodstream by the time we got him back to the hospital. After another week in the hospital under the care of an infectious disease specialist, they let him keep the pacemaker, but sent him home with a picc line and a man-purse filled with antibiotics, which were pumped into him around the clock for six weeks.

A few weeks after finally getting the all-clear, we took our first little vacation since it all started, and the infection came back! Which meant paying an extra thousand bucks to get a flight back one day early, so we could rush him straight to the hospital and his cadre of doctors. They yanked the pacemaker this time, left the wound open to drain, started pumping him with antibiotics again, and eventually put in a new pacemaker on the other side of his chest. As you can imagine, it has taken quite some time for him to get over feeling like he was a doomed man!

When he first retired and moved up here to Wimberley full-time, his plan was to do some consulting work now and then, just to keep his toe in the water, and to have a bit of fun-money. When an old work-buddy approached him last year about doing just that, he turned him down. Not only was he not up to it physically, he wasn't certain he was still up to it mentally. Could you blame him for getting depressed?

So, imagine my surprise when he announced last week that he might be taking a 6-8 week gig down in Sabine Pass! I guess he figures that, if he managed to survive a week at SXSW, he ought to be ready to take on anything.

You've come a long way baby!