It is hard to believe that I have not had time to write in the blog, but time just gets away from us and suddenly it is late and the day is done.
We arrived in Costa Rica on Sat around 7pm or so. There was suppposed to be a driver waiting for us. We looked and waited and got others to help us. We finally decided that it was time to get ourselves to the hotel. Dean spotted another group of people who looked in the same boat as we and found they were also waiting for a ride to the same hotel. So we all got in a van together.
The hotel is quite nice. It has a resteraunt, a pool and a small bar. After getting dad setttled into the room, Dean and I took a walk to see about getting a small dinner together. The hotel restaraunt is quite expensive and we really didn't need much. We walked up to a small 7-11 type place and bought some bread, ham and drinks.
Sunday morning we all felt much better. We were rested and with the sun shining, it felt great to walk over to the buffet and grab a wonerful breakfsast. We then gave dad's friend Robert a call and he came to pick us up. We spent the day at Robert and Zeda's house. Zeda made us an amazing dinner of BBQ ribs, shrimp shish-ka-bobs and Chillean wine. They live in a small subburb and so we had a wonderful relaxing afternoon. Robert also took us for a drive around to show us some property they are developing.
This morning (monday) we had breakfast and headed over for dad's firt appointment. It was a pre-op appointment where he got an EKG, blood tests and an ultra sound of the veins and arteries in his neck. They check to see where the blockages are so they have a heads up for the opperation. They can't tell for certain if there will be more blockages than what they see on the ultra sound until they start the operation and put the dye through the viens and then they willl see more. SO far we know that Dad does have a blockage in his right jugular vein and something wrong with his left vertabrae vein. The ultra sound showed that the blood on his left vertabrae vein was not draining properly and as a result the blood was back traking into his brain, which is not good. So they will try to fix that on Wednesday.
We spent the whole morning at his appointments and stopped at the nearby malll to get some lunch. It was really a lot of walking and waiting and as a result dad was ready to get back to the hotel and have a rest and get off his feet.
We have been paired up with a lady and her friend from Calgary for our appointments. Dawn and Heather came down on the same day as us and it has worked out great as we have made some new friends. Heather also has MS and it was really neat to meet them in Calgary airport and now again at the hotel. Heather is also having her surgery on Wednesday so we have been travelling from appointment to appointment together. We also had lunch with them at the mall.At 3:15 dad has his pre-op physio appointment so they can evaluate his condition before surgery and will know how things have changed post surgery.
Apparently this is a bit of a workout so I am hoping that dad will get some rest before his appointment as he has had a big day already. Dean and I are getting a bit of sun and now I have time to make a blog post.
I heard that the kids don't have school today. Sounds like a nice long weekend for them before exams.
On another note. We have seen James from town and things are looking really great for him. He is traipsing around the hotel. Looking very steady and happy to be able to walk well again. Very great to see. Everyone at the hotel that is here for the MS procedure get together and talk about what they have been going through and supposrt each other through the days before and after the surgery. It is very nice to see people banding together and helping one another through this time. Some people have had great results and others have been dissapointed with how they feel after. Some peoples expectaions were a bit high for the results that they got I guess. But most are smilling which is great to see.
Well, time to get back into the sun. No sense in waisting the time I have in the shade when the sun is shinning. I tryed to type on the computer in the sun and I couldn't see the screen. Turns out we don't have internet in our room for free,so I have to come out to the lobby. Which will make it harder to blog and skype I guess.
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