LHT Allergic Reaction

Myrna  wrote:

LHT had an allergic reaction this a.m., I hope to the tape, but I do not know for certain. I will not be going to the temple today or tomorrow because I do not dare leave him. He developed hives around the surgical site (under the arm, on his chest, on his ribs and on his upper back). I have a call in to the doctor. I removed the bandage and gave him Benadryl. I do not know, yet, whether the tape was latex or not. Though we think it was the tape, at this point, the nurse has said that she thinks he should not take any more percocet (oxycodone and acetaminophen) and just take ibuprofen instead. The nurse said that there were no interactions they knew between Benadryl and ibuprofen

On a high note, the surgery on his shoulder was highly successful. Dr. Robert Jackson said LHT did not have a rotator cuff tear. The cuff was a bit frayed but he was able to take care of that by making it bleed. The blood will force the cuff to heal properly. He was able to remove all of the arthritis and the bone chips that were in the joint. The worst problem was that LHT had a biceps rupture (studying the subject on Google will lead you to an understanding) and Dr. Jackson was able to "take care" of that. He will explain more when we see him next Thursday.

I will keep you all posted.

Love to all.

Melanie wrote: A friend of mine is allergic to the Betadyn solution that they use to prep the skin with before surgery. I have bad allergic reactions to latex adhesives and balloons.

Eva About Fresno

David (Dixon) had go go go Fresno last week to meet about a big new building he has designed for down there. He said there were 20 new missionaries on his plane gong to Fresno.  I told Ben about it when I wrote him on Sunday.   He is a fine missionry.  ours, Chase (David's 4th son) also got transferred.  He has been in Wales and loved it there.  he will be working mostly English now.  They surely grow up in a hurry.

Richard was in the hospital again the end of last week for thee days of chemo.  The have to keep his body clear of cancer so the transplant will have a  better chance of working.    He did not get out until late Sat. night. Chemo takes its own time to complete.   He will have the transplant mid-March after they do the first of his two catartact surgeries.  They were caused by the chemo.  

Love you, Eva

Information About LHT

Dad is having more surgery. This operation will take place on Wednesday, Feb. 27, at Utah Valley in the same day clinic. Dr. Robert Jackson will try to repair the rotator cuff on his left arm. (I hope it works out better than the one his brother did on his right arm.) The biggest ticket, however, is that he will scrape out all of the arthritis in the joint. So, Dad says, even if the doctor is not able to repair the rotator cuff better than was done on the right arm, he will at least get rid of the pain.

I tease Dad that, when he has pain, the doctors can get rid of it with a scalpel but when I have pain, I just have to learn to live with it. That is not fairly spoken, of course, I could have back surgery if I could find a doctor nutty enough to do it (and I am certain I could) but that is not going to happen. I have found that weighing 123.2 pounds has really helped as has forcing myself to learn to walk through the pain. After I start a long walk, the pain usually clears up and I am good again. That plus the fact that I now use one of those tubular foam exercise forms before I go to bed each night. That really works.

Enough about my aside. Dad had our home teachers come today and give him a blessing. This was the first time for Ben Horrocks, who is leaving on his mission in a couple of weeks. He had studied up and did a really good job. He has grown up and will make a great missionary.

Now all Dad has to do is survive my driving AGAIN. I think I about drove him nuts coming home from the surgery center in Salt Lake after his eye lid surgery. :) It was a good thing he couldn't see what I was doing. They released us during rush hour and he could only feel the car starting, slowing, speeding, etc. I could see it. Ugh and double ugh. But we did live.


Kirsten wrote: Does anyone want to do a family fast? Kirsten

We should all have listened better.

Justin (Childs), I suppose that you read the info on Facebook from Uncle David about your Great-Uncle Aldo Childs being the person that your father was referring to. I knew him as a great man but I did not know that he could heal anyone over the telephone. That is amazing. I hope that Vernon answers David's request soon because I would really like to hear more about him. 

I think that I remember a lot from my youth but I do not always have all the facts down. As I try to recall some of the stories I heard from our beloved ones who have gone ahead, I find that I am missing pieces and important bits. For example, I knew that my father built a lot of bridges in Zion's Park after the war. I don't remember which ones and neither does anyone else.

My Great-Grandfather John Pritchett was also known for his ability to heal but he did it with his own drugs and herbal concoctions. You know, of course, that he moved to Huntington from Provo and to Provo from Mt. Pleasant. He received his training in pharmacy from his wife's family. The Ericksen's owned a drug store in Mt. Pleasant and he learned from them. The store they built is still there. One of Great-Grandma's aunts married a Mabin who owned a pharmacy in Provo. He moved there and worked for them while Vivian and Jessie went to BYU Academy. He then moved his family to Huntington and built a pharmacy/drug store (they sold all sorts of things, including fountain drinks) there. He was a pharmacist in the days when that meant that the doctor prescribed a medicine and the pharmacist made it from scratch. If a doctor was not availabe, he could make medications to assist the ill on his own. He made some medications of his own formula that were so excellent that I wish I could get my hands on some of them today. Your Grandmother Renee had one tin of salve that he made that would cure an infected sore in just a couple of applications. Even though his son, Frank Pritchett, became a pharmacist, he did not have his father's formulas. He was a pharmacist in the years when the drugs needed came from pharmaceutical companies. So those formulas died with Great-Grandpa. People used to come to him for salves and other medications that he formulated and he had a knack of knowing just what was needed. A pharmacist, in those days, could formulate medications and dispense them legally. He saved many lives and helped heal many people with his knowledge of herbs and formulations. That was not quite the same thing as what your Uncle Aldo was able to do. 

Actually, Uncle Frank gave up his own pharmacy. He sold it for a tidy profit (it was located in Salt Lake City) and moved to California. He opened a chain of camera shops and invented lots of ways to make cameras work better. He shot underwater film for Disney. One of the inventions of his is still used by Kodak today and the many millions of dollars he made from his inventions have gone to help charities that benefited ill children (like Shiner's Hospital) so that, while he did not have the gift of healing that his father had, he did save lives by donating money to help ill children.

My Great-Great Grandmother, Mary Ann Fulcher Pritchett, was a midwife/nurse/Relief Society president in Fairview, Utah, in pioneer times. She had the gift of healing. On June 14, 1868,  the Relief Society was first organized in Fairview, and she was chosen president, and held that position up to the day of her death, which occurred March 5, 1901. She is legend in Sanpete County. She was noted for performing deeds of service. She was ever at the bedside of the sick as nurse and caregiver and was midwife to the women. She was known to heal and help. She was trained as a midwife when Brigham Young became concerned about the conditions pioneer women suffered when they gave birth. He had training for the women who would act as midwives. But she also served as a nurse to anyone who was ill. Whenever anyone was ill, they sent for her. In addition, she could be counted on for wise counsel as well as practical help. The needy were never refused her assistance. 

Justin wrote: Wow thanks lot of stuff I never knew! I have something to share. When Carrie first moved in with me, my youngest son was severely allergic to cats and they would throw him into asthma attacks. I would lay with him and rub his back and talk to him and he hasn't had an attack in 7 years and can stand to be around cats.

Myrna wrote: Yes, I would say that you have the gift. Thanks for sharing. Do you have other experiences like this one?  

About Funeral Photos

I posted on Facebook all of the photos that I took of Ila Pay's funeral. Just go to my site and there they are. I can send them via email but you will be sorry. My kids hate when I do that because it bogs down the world. If you would email me the addresses for Jimmy, Neldon, Loy Beth, and Tammy, I would be happy to pass on the information or to share any way that I can. I uploaded them in the highest quality setting so they should download in a usable form for printing or sharing.

I also have upload to photobucket. I will send the link. It is password protected so I will send that as well. I love you all.

They are all high resolution uploads and should make good prints. There are quite a lot of them so you will want to pick and choose. 

To Jim Llewelyn from Myrna:  I hope all is going well for you and yours while you are in Ohio. Do you have much left to do before you can rent out your new property? I sent your email to my son, Todd, who lives in Ohio.

OK, Guys and Gals

When we went to Ila Pay's funeral, we learned that she had (even with her horrible illness) kept a family newsletter going for 33 years. She had only two children but she had countless siblings and her husband was one of four. Why could she succeed when I can't? Collectively, we have so much going on in our lives right now that the others should know about. I set up the Trauntvein blog so that you could all stay in touch; it didn't work either. The newsletter failed. The blog failed (though it is still there). I think, also, that Facebook is not working either. What to do? What to do? Should I start the newsletter again and just email it? Well, some of you do not read email. Some of you do not read the snail mailed copy. What to do? What to do? When I die, please do not mention that I tried to do a newsletter but that only half of you took it seriously. Is that failure? Please just don't mention it at all.

By-the-way, I am sending on to each of you all the emails that, individually, you send me about your various and sundry activities. At least you will know something about each other. Some of you will, likely, object to that. Oh, well.

I remember wondering why Grandma's Trauntvein, Smith and Pitts and Grandpa Pitts were so concerned about the families (theirs) staying close together. I think that they just were concerned, as I now am, that, as happens in some families, no one keeps in touch after the primary "In-Touch Keeper" dies. Not to hammer home a point, but Dad and I are getting along in years. While we enjoy mostly good health for people of our age, so did my predecessors. They were all there one day (expect for Grandma T, who stayed out long enough for us to say good-byes), and gone the next. Who will be the "In-Touch Keeper" when Dad and I are gone? (I even do it for my own family and I am, sadly, losing touch with Garth and Alyce's family. I try but I still did not know that Alyce had had another bout with cancer recently. Dad's family is better. All except for Uncle Don, they talk a couple of times a month.)

So, what to do? What to do?

Comfort

Myrna wrote: Melanie, thanks for reminding me that you have some health problems but are upbeat and doing well. You take care of your health and that is so important. I have learned that I should have been doing that for years and not just blaming my overweight problem on thyroid. I now weigh 123 and I feel better than I have for a long time. I am off my GERD meds. All I take, as a prescription drug, is my thyroid med and one for high cholesterol. (I remind myself that my dad also had high cholesterol and it was pneumonia that killed him.) I also take an aspirin and a vitamin. I love walking and doing stairs. (My cross trainer hurts my tailbone.) I am not a runner. I never did like it. I do like jogging a block and walking a block. Running always makes my lungs hurt. (I know, wah wah.) 

I think Julie's irregular heart beat flare up comes from no sleep. Jim has been in California and Jens is cutting eye teeth. She was really quite frightened, however. When she called, she was crying. That is not the usual thing for Julie. She is Pioneer Farm Woman to a "T" and is usually stoic. 

David also has the same problem. They found his in high school when he passed out just after wrestling practice. He wore the monitor but was really ticked off about it. When he was 16 he was ticked off about everything. Todd, I think, also has an irregular heart beat. I have everything else but that. Odd. I have a functional murmur, left over from rheumatic fever. I now have isolated systolic hypertension. The top number, systolic, is high (140) but the diastolic (bottom number) is low (72). My pulse is 60. I can't wait to find out what that means long term. Actually, I am probably running out of long-term anyway. When you are 72, it is anybody's guess how many more years on earth that translates into. The endocrinologist said that diabetics usually live 10 years less than they might have otherwise. We'll see. Nobody that I know has a urim and thumim that they are willing to produce to prognosticate my chances for longevity at any rate. ;) 

Melanie wrote: The main reason for reminding you of the heart situation, is so that you wouldn't worry. It is very common, especially in middle aged women, and often goes away after menopause. Also, I had so many tests done after 2007, heart stress tests, EKGs, ERTs, sonograms of the heart, sonograms of the arteries, CT scans, MRIs of the heart, neck and head, an agitated saline test, all the tests found nothing wrong with the heart other than the arrhythmia. I tried to call Julie to let her know what my heart doctors in MA had told me, so that I could put her at ease, but I never found her at home. I didn't want to call on her cell phone, as I know that when she is out with the children that she is very busy. 

I have elevated cholesterol, it is hereditary, but it isn't to the point where I would need to take medicine for it. I have extremely low blood pressure, to the point of fainting sometimes, so that is a different worry.

I am glad that the steps you are taking have benefited you in ways that you have desired for years. I am sure it gives you great peace of mind. 

Love you.Mel

Myrna wrote: I know. You are such a comfort to me. I am thankful for you. It was a good thing that Heavenly Father sent you into my life because you keep me sane. I love you!

News of Family

Ams and family went to Disneyland recently. Megan and Kyle were there with the band so the other, on the spur of the moment, went there also. Rachel ended up not feeling well and so she was carried about rather than enjoying herself.

Jim and Julie decided to take their family (using their income tax return) to Disneyland also. They left on Thursday a.m. and will travel back late at night on Sunday.

Go to Amy J's Facebook page and find the latest performance of Madilyn. A.J. also, while we were in Colorado, received his Arrow of Light. Eric said that a ward member took some photos and she will share them so we may get to enjoy them.

David also posted some neat photos on facebook. We were not there for the happenings so it was nice to see the photos.

Sorina's Choir and Dane's Graduation‏

Wed, May 8th, Sorina Orchard Elementary Chorus 6-7pm, at Canyon View Junior High.

Thurs, May 23rd, Dane UCAS Graduation, not sure on time yet or location. You will get a formal invitation in the mail.

Invitation: Donovin's Arrow of Light

Arrow of Light for Donovin Trauntvein
When: Thursday, March 21, 2013, 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM
Where: 1950 North Coral Canyon Boulevard, Washington, UT 84780

Myrna wrote: Three cheers, we have been waiting to hear. Which of the two dates is right? On the formal invitation, it says Friday but on the other heading, it says Thursday. I assume that Friday is the date, but I am not certain. Please clarify. Either way, we will be there. I love you, M

David wrote: Huh, that's weird. It is Thursday from 6 to 8.

Myrna wrote: I am glad to know the date. Thursday is great and we will be there. We would, of course, also be there if it was on Friday. Love you all, M