How We Spent Our Summer....

As full time Rver's one of the things that you do when you go back "home", usually your last stick and brick house, which for us is Homewood, Illinois, is to

 1. Visit Family

As any full time Rver will tell you, the number 1 thing that you miss when you are in your RV is seeing your grandkids on a regular basis. So when we are back in the area we always find time for them.

I always love the chance to see Samantha and Spencer.

2. Geocaching

We have several caches in our old hometown that need to be checked on and maintained. So being back in the area is a good time to do it. We were also trying to compete the 31 day challenge, which was to find a cache every day during the month of August.  We did good for awhile...

3. See your doctors...One of our favorite is Doctor David Looyenga.

He is a GREAT cardiologist that the Gold's have been going to for over 20 years.

We did a lot of both this summer. Our original plan for the summer was to spend a few weeks visiting family, going to the doctors and our daughter Jennifer's wedding. Then we were heading to Branson Missouri for a second season of camp hosting.

The family visits were great, the wedding was wonderful, the doctors visits....not so good.

Fred had his first heart attack in January of 1996, since then he's had several stents, bi pass surgery in 2003 and lots and lots of doctors visits. The one thing that he insists on every year is a Nuclear Treadmill Test. This is where they inject you with dye, have you walk the trend mill and look to see how the blood flows. He had this test done on June 19th and it showed an irregularity. He had a follow up test done on July 3rd that confirmed that something wasn't right. So on July 24th, he had an angiogram. During this procedure they discovered that one of his bi-passes was 100% clogged, so they put a stent in it. However, they also noticed that he had an aneurysm in his aorta.

A normal aorta is 2 cm wide, they estimated that Fred's was 5 cm, but they were looking at it from the inside so it's hard to accurately determine from that angle. They normally like to operate when its 5 - 6 cm. Because of the dye that they used for the angiogram, he had to wait a few weeks for the dye to dissipate before he could be tested further. So on Monday, August 19th he had a CT scan which showed that the aneurysm was almost 10 cm!!! This type of aneurysm is 95% fatal...

 He was admitted to the hospital on Wednesday and had the surgery on Thursday. What was to be a five to six hour surgery ended up to be twelve hours long, He had to be resuscitated on the table and he received 19 units of blood. He spent twelve days in ICU and another six more recovering in the hospital. We truly believe that Fred has some good guardian angels that were watching out for him.

 After his discharge, we stayed at his parents house while he recuperated. We rented a hospital bed and set it up in the den on the first floor so that he didn't have to climb stairs and would be more comfortable. We truly appreciate his parents for letting us interrupt their lives for us.

4. Fall Colors

We definitely did not think that we would still be in the upper Midwest to see the fall colors. If you've ever tried to camp in the Chicago area, you know that the options are limited. We joined the camping group Thousand Trails in 2006. On our trip up the East coast this summer, we upgraded so that we would have more options.  Thank goodness that we did. There is now a TT campground only 77 miles from Fred's parents house. So during the time of Fred's surgery, we were able to keep our RV in Michigan for three months and it only cost us $57!!!

Once Fred was feeling better, we did go out to the RV for a few days at a time and we got to see some beautiful fall colors.

We didn't get to do exactly what we wanted to do this summer, but we are so grateful for the way that it turned out. Fred is recovering nicely and its time to get back on the road. Branson here we come!!!