Sadness. . .

Unfortunately hard things in life are always replaced by harder things. It seems that everything you experience in the past, wasn't near as rough as what you are going through at the moment. "Everything is okay in the end, if it's not ok, it's not the end."

Hence the past couple weeks of our lives. . .

Shane's cousin and his wife had a little baby boy, Brody, on April 27th. At 2 days old he was transfered to Children's Mercy Hospital to monitor a heart defect and determine if immediate intervention was needed. He was also battling possible pneumonia.


4 days into his life mom and dad recieved the news that he had aortic valve stenosis and a narrowing of his aorta.


6 days old: Surgery to put a balloon through the aortic valve to open it up and allow more blood to pass through.


14 days old: surgery to fix the coartcation. They made a 3 inch incision under his left arm and cut out the area of the aorta that was constricted and not allowing enough blood to flow thru, than sew the aorta back together and pray no scar tissue develops. Following surgery they will keep him sedated for 2 days.

16 days old: Surgical swelling dramitically reduced, 1/2 the IV's and the vent were removed. By the end of the day he was moved out of ICU, only had a drain tube near the incision and a feeding tube in his nose. He continues to take hydrocortizone to help BP, Zantac for stomach acid and pain reliever as needed. But over all things are looking up. He will probably have to have another surgery at 1 years old to balloon the valve again. As long as everything continues to stay positive the entire family will be home some time next week :)
On April 8th, Shane's Aunt Bea was diagnosed with advanced lung cancer. The family and the physician decided to take aggressive action and started chemo that Saturday. My impression was that she was tolerating the treatment fairly well, very fatigued, but remained in good spirits. The only gripe a person ever heard out of Aunt Bea was "I don't like it, I don't like it one bit."
On May 2nd Shane's mom and his sister were in Burlingame visiting with Aunt Bea and mom heard a noise, thought the dog had knocked something over. After a few moments went to investigate and found Aunt Bea on the floor, having a stroke. They rushed her to the hospital at which point it became a waiting game. She was given some type of medication to hopefully decrease any damage from the stroke, but it did very little for her. She was still able to communicate, but had very little use of her left side.

She spent the next 2 days in intensive care, surviving on her humor and being strong for her family around her. On May 3rd she was moved to Hospice care. We got the call on Friday May 7th that she moved on to be with our creator at 7:30 that evening.



The funeral isn't being held until Saturday the 22nd, in Burlingame due to her son wanting his pastor, out of KC to deliver the message. Aunt Bea is survived by 12 of the original 22 siblings, her son Billy and many nieces/nephews and grandchildren.


I do know that we will all heal with time and that we will be better and stronger people as a result of losing her. I've learned from every rough patch in my life and it always makes the next one just a little bit easier because I've learned - its always okay in the end.