Salt Lake City snow - Rebekah flies away - Rex takes his first walk

After I got up this morning, I drove from Mary Ann's house downtown through the lightly falling snow - now at least a foot deep, maybe more - to Mom and Dad's old house - now Rex's - in Sandy, usually about a 25 minute drive. It took close to one hour this morning.

I drove there to pick up Rebekah who needed to get to the airport so she could fly home to North Carolina to be with her husband and her 11-year old daughter and eight-year old son. On the drive, wet, slushy snow on the wipers hardened into clumps of ice, making it difficult to see sometimes.

Before going into the terminal, she broke the ice off.

The last time I saw her was at Dad's funeral - before that, Mom's funeral.

I'm glad it was different this time.

When I arrived back here at St. Mark's, I found Rex undergoing a blood transfusion and still thinking about last night's basketball game. "BYU better not play Saturday like they did last night," he grumbled. "If they do, they'll be in trouble." Then he started to describe the game to me.

He remembered the game, but had forgotten I had been here to watch it with him.

BYU plays Santa Clara.

Shortly after that, he took his first walk and completed a full lap around the ICU ward - a couple hundred feet, at least. The effort left him exhausted. He had me adjust the bed for him and now he sleeps.

Not bad for a guy who, just two days ago went into surgery to have his chest opened up and his heart exposed to the doctor for the third time knowing full well there was a strong possibilty that this was it.

Maybe after I get home I'll write the story up a little better.

Well, he just woke up in pain - bad pain - but has two hours more to go before he can take another dose. Sometimes he coughs - as he must to avoid pneumonia - and it is a frightening thing to hear. The struggle before him remains.

As it remains for us all throughout all our days.

Comments

[Nancy]

God bless all of you. I've been watching to see how he was doing. Thanks for blogging.

[Mrs Gunka]

Thanks for the update Bill. He really looks good. Glad he's coughing it up! That was a good storm! It's knocking on our door now and we have about 2inches out here on the plains. It's the cold that is bad. The Broncos play the Ravens tomorrow. Guess we will both be busy cheering on our teams. Hope we are all happy when it is said and done! Hope Rex continues to get better!