This week has been filled with Christmas preparations, medical appointments, Temple service and visits. We leave for Germany on the 10th of December and we have been preparing for that as well.
Tom’s blood tests were good this time with his PSA dropping to 1.4. His appointment with Dr. Jenicki was not as good as he was not too positive about possible treatment for Tom’s herniated disc. He says Tom’s two spinal nerves at disc point are in the same sheath and that situation would make surgery difficult. He told him to go ahead with massage therapy though. We were disappointed with our visit to the medical oncologist Dr. Suo as he didn’t seem as interested the Germany visit as Tom hoped he would be but Dr. Bahl our radiation oncologist seemed very interested and wants to see the report sent back with us from Germany.
We attended the Temple once and served in the Temple twice or at least Tom served twice. I go with him on Wednesday evenings when he fills in for Br. Barrett as the sealer and I act as a patron. On our Saturday afternoon shift I was assigned to a living sealing. It took me awhile to realize that the elderly sister I was working with was Elnor McNaughton from the Vancouver Stake as she was using her maiden name and she is now almost 90 and in a wheelchair. She was being sealed to her deceased husband, a living son and a deceased son, her daughter-in-law sealed to her deceased parents and Elnor’s husband sealed to his parents. I kept saying it would be so nice for Tom to do this sealing as he had been Elnor’s Stake President and had known her for years and then the miracle happened. Tom’s assignments were changed and he was assigned to perform the McNaughton family sealings. It was lovely and we were thrilled for Elnor and her family. We were both assigned as patrons on the last sealing session when a young ordinance worker, Jacob Goeders, fainted after kneeling for awhile. We helped out with that and waited until the paramedics cleared him and Jacob left under the care of his fiancée Krista Jahn. Jacob is Brendon’s cousin.
Our Christmas cards arrived and I was able to get them done and orange rolls made and frozen. Max will leave for Australia while we are in Germany and the Hardy family are celebrating a little Christmas with him before he goes so I have orange rolls and spiced almonds ready to contribute. We also went to the bank with him and set up a joint account to help him get his money to Australia. We added money to the amount he made on the BMW so the total would come to 25,000. We are planning on giving this amount to each of our grandchildren around the time they get married. We need to give it to Justin and Ross in the new year.
We went to visit Roger Jahn in the Langley hospital. We were happy to be able to see him but not with the conditions of the area of the hospital he is in - such a contrast to the hospital Tom goes to in Bad Berka. We have much to learn from Germany.
We went thru a great deal of stress on Monday when Tom felt impressed to check on our flight to Germany and found that our reservation had been cancelled. He was on the phone with the agent for a long time rebooking and having to pay an extra $1,400 for cancelling and rebooking. We had never cancelled so should not have had to pay for cancelling or rebooking. He had cancelled the rail portion of the ticket and we feel that with our language differences, they misunderstood and cancelled everything. We felt blessed that he felt to check on the status of things and that they did not charge us the full amount of the tickets again as they had kept our initial payment. We are still trying to work with the airline to get things completely cleared up. None the less it created a great deal of anxiety as we need to get to Germany for Tom’s treatments. We don’t need added stress or anxiety but we were grateful for the positives of the situation.
We are always grateful for the love, support and prayers of so many on our behalf.
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