What a last couple of weeks

I have not make any posts in the last few weeks because this site was pretty far down my list of priorities. On July 25, my friend Tony Dorris committed suicide. Tony had a history of drug abuse and in a dark state believed some lies about himself and took his own life. He was a member of my Sunday School class and leaves behind a wife and an 8-month old son, Lake Hanson Dorris. His funeral was that Saturday, and the Pastor gave a terrific sermon both at the funeral and the following Sunday.

That Monday we went in for our first pregnancy visit with the doctor. We did the ultrasound in his office, and we could barely see little Meadors. Dr. Matt is our doctor and our friend, and he did not take this as a problem that we could not see our baby yet but thought using the hospital's vaginal ultrasound would give us a much clearer picture. Shannon and I dislike using the hospital's vaginal ultrasound because it is so invasive, cold and we have bad memories due to past miscarriages. I suggested we take blood work to check her hCG numbers. Matt had schedule two sets of blood works a couple days apart back when we first found out we were pregnant to make sure the numbers were going up. Since we had those numbers, another check at this stage could give us confidence in the state of the pregnancy. Of course, if the numbers came back, the pregnancy may be lost.

We had blood work done on Tuesday, and it takes a day to get the results back. Matt called me on Wednesday and the first thing he said was "I am glad I got hold of you instead of Shannon" which led me to the conclusion the numbers were not good. He said her hCG numbers were 10,000 which is higher than the 5,000 from the last blood work a few weeks ago, but not what you would expect at this stage. Then as he was talking he paused and said "Wait, that is 100,000 and not 10,000. Those are numbers consistent with a 7 week pregnancy which is typically too early to see on my ultrasound." The shift in my emotions were tremendous, and I breathed a sigh of relief. We go back in 2 weeks to his office for another ultrasound which should show us our baby. Shannon continues to have heavy morning sickness, including the morning times in Tennesssee, California, Japan, Beijing, Athens, Germany and London.

We then get word that my father may have a blockage in his heart. He has already been suffering from atrial flutter of the heart, but the idea of a blockage was very scary given his triple by-pass 12 years ago. I went up on Friday to be with Dad and Mom as they looked for the blockage. Thankfully it was a false positive. However, just a couple of days ago he passed out because of atrial flutter and had to go back to the hospital. Yesterday they shocked his heart back into rhythm to remove the flutter, and he was released today.

To add to the mix, my work last week was extremely frustrating and difficult. It would take too long to explain all the issues. Let's just say it was illustrative of the saying that when it rains it pours.

This week has been better, but I need to just catch up on little things after the craziness of last week. I have missed writing on this site, and I hope to get back to a more regular writing next week. I will talk about Jacob's preschool finishing up, our experience with Lexi, our friend's dog who we have been taking care of, and get to that survey of the 3rd chapter of Acts.

Let me leave you with some fun Friday reading on two company newsletter articles I wrote on industry profiles. Besides my Mom, Dad, sister, Greg and Tori who read this site, I have it on good authority that Lee Scott, CEO of Wal-Mart, Frank Blake, CEO of Home Depot and many other leaders in supply chain retail visit my site for inspiration in living life to the fullest, serving God with a cheerful heart and maximizing the efficiency of their B2B communication with their trading partners. Industry leaders, these articles are for you!

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