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I just spoke to Mike. He says he is 100% better now that he is home. Still in pain quite a bit of the time, but with pins and plates in two locations, that is to be expected. Mike’s mother-in law is coming over each day to help out; what a blessing. He sounds in much better spirits; coming home will do that to a person.

Mike had his first physical therapy session last night. They are coming to his home to ‘work him out.’ He’s been told it will be 30-60 days until he can put much weight on his left foot, some time after that before he will be able to go back to work.

I talked with Skyler, Mike’s oldest, for a few minutes, he says Colleen & the family is getting some good rest and will soon catch up after spending so much time at the hospital and going back / forth. He is working at Park’s Sportsman and will start school at UVSU soon.

spoke with Mike this afternoon; he was eating dinner and in pretty good spirits, considering the long road to recovery he has ahead of him.  He is up and walking, with the aid of a walker, and he laughed when I said I had to take a minute to build that image in my mind, Mike using a walker. He might get to go home as early as tomorrow, but has been told that for 8-10 weeks he cannot put weight directly on his hip. I am sure this will be a real challenge for such an active guy.  Mike referees soccer games, races mountain bikes, and even participated in the Baja 1000 off-road race.  But if anyone can rehab themselves back to full health, it’s Mike!

I did find a short video of Mike’s accident (see link below for the full article incl. the video). You can clearly see Mike is fortunate to have survived.  (Sorry, you have to watch a short commercial before the news video begins).

Video Courtesy of KSL.com

My brother Rich sent me some clips from the video; thanks Rich.

Heidi is keeping me posted on Mike’s condition to reduce the phone calls that his family has to field.  A hospital patient and immediate family can sometimes get overwhelmed with visitors and calls causing some sleep deprivation.  I told Colleen the other day that she had to take care of herself too. The staff there is plaid pretty well to get Mike what he needs.

We hear that Mike made it through his hip repair surgery rather late last night; needed six pins and a plate to hold everything back together.  He will have to keep his weight off the joint for up to eight weeks, which for a super-active guy like Mike, will be a real challenge.  He may get to go home early next week.

I will post more information here when I receive it.

Sent Mike some Get Well balloons.  Hopefully he will feel well enough to get the joke!

My youngest brother, Mike, was in a serious car accident yesterday.  His truck was t-boned in the driver’s door by a lady driving too fast for the snowy conditions.  Colleen, his wife, said he had to be cut out of the truck and is very lucky to be alive.  He suffered a skull fracture w/accompanying very large & deep gash on his forehead and a shattered hip socket.  He is being treated in a SLC hospital. They wanted to life flight him there but the weather was too bad.

After some surgery using some titanium, the damage to his skull is repaired and the gash is closed. Mike is now painfully waiting for the surgeons to determine how to best fix his hip.

Heidi & Shane visited Mike in the hospital; his injuries are more severe than described and he is very fortunate to be alive.  I will share more information here as I get it.

UPDATE 11/6/2008 evening - I spoke with both Mike & Colleen this afternoon. Mike is doing remarably well considering the severity of the crash. His hip surgery is scheduled for tomorrow and hopefully that outcome will be as good.  Bruce & Tina visited Mike; we are all rallying around Mike as best we can.  He has done so much for other family members, esp. Mom, now he must adjust to receiving the help. Being in such good physical condition as he is, we are sure he will respond to his treatment and be back on his feet soon.

Mom is staying in good spirits through all of this and knows Mike is in good hands. We also hope that Colleen, Skyler, and Sam are also able to take care of themselves during this challenge.

In October, Lyal and I drove up to northern Montana to see Dolores. She has been working as a traveling nurses aide at a hospital close to the Canadian border.  We only stayed a couple of days, but it was so good to see after seven weeks.  She has made friends with some of her fellow ‘travelers’ (not the gypsy kind) and has been able to travel to Great Falls and into the Indian Reservation close by.  Here are some photos from our trip; we sent into Canada on a short jaunt so Lyal could say he’s been to a foreign country.

The last photo in the gallery is significant; we made it back to the US /Canada border with only 15 minutes to spare. Any later and we would have faced a three hour extra drive to a crossing that stayed open 24/7.

It was a long drive up and back in just three days, but well worth it to see our sweetie pie!

Mom returned home to Summerfield Manor from the hospital; again making use of a wheelchair to cross the street. Mike provided the horsepower; I wish we had video tape of either crossing.

Mom is in good spirits, but is tired. She’s feeling some discomfort from the pacemaker surgery, but knew that was coming and seems prepared for it, commenting, “the second day after surgery is always the worse.” I personally think the third day is, but at least she seems mentally prepared for some recovery. Nothing wrong with her phone or voice; she welcomes phone calls from any and all relatives and friends.

I spoke with Mom this morning for almost half an hour. She is still in ICU and is being monitored very closely. But all of her vitals area good, even her blood sugar level.

Mom does not think she will be released from the hospital today, she had not see the cardiologist yet and he was not scheduled to be in until this afternoon. She has her appetite back and is feeling much better than she did Thursday night and most of Friday. She was also checking into whether the BYU – Wyoming football game would be available on the her TV there, so that is another good sign. (We talk at halftime of most games).

She felt the first inklings of trouble Thursday night, dizziness and a weight on her shoulders. She had several dizzy spells after dinner but felt better in bed so thought maybe the problem would go away. Friday morning she got up and tried to do some laundry, went to the cafeteria and ate breakfast. Then about 10 o’clock she got to feeling very dizzy again with that heavy weight pressing on her shoulders. She contacted the home health folks who had the staff there check her blood pressure and sugar. She had just had a full physical, including an EKG, on Tuesday, so when her Dr. was called, he instructed the staff to get her right over to the hospital.

Here’s the funny (not really, but so Mom) part; no staff was free to take her across the street until 2 pm, so rather than spend the money on an ambulance, Mom chose to way until then and then just had an aide roll her across the street in the wheelchair mentioned in an earlier post. As I assumed, she was more interested in saving a few bucks than getting to the emergency room two hours sooner. Yes, it only across the street, but her Scandinavian kicked in as there were pennies to watch.

Tonight my brother text messaged me just after Lyal went to bed. He arises as 4 am for work so he’s usually in bed by 8-9ish. My brother Mike, who only calls or texts when it’s something bad, told me that our mom had a heart attack today. She is now in the Timpanogos Hospital ICU with a brand new pacemaker. She is stable and all of her vitals are good. I could not talk with her to verify that but Mike assured me that she was doing much better.

I guess Mom was doing some laundry earlier today and was not feeling well, having dizzy spells with a heavy feeling on her shoulders. She had no arm pain, but real dizzyness and some difficulty breathing and felt bad enough to call the Dr., who told her to get to the hospital. An aide in her assisted living center wheeled her across the street where they confirmed the mild heart attack and inserted the mentioned pacemaker. Mike said she was now up to date with technology; I can hear her now mentioning the wheelchair ride and not having to pay for an ambulance call to cross the street. Once a frugal person, always frugal.

Will post more information here as I get it.

I recently purchase a new (refurbished, cannot afford brand-spanking new) computer. It’s an HP Quad Core machine with Vista Home Premium installed.  My impression of Vista after one week of installing and configuring all of the software that I use in web site and content development: some good, some bad.

First the bad: 

1.     Drivers. Vista has been out long enough that most hardware manufacturers have released updated drivers that are Vista compatible. Most notable on the list of the have not’s; Palm. There are no 64-bit Palm USB drivers, so even if I install the latest version of Palm desktop, I cannot sync my Treo 700p.  Some Google sleuthing found this forum thread:

http://forums.palm.com/palm/board/message?board.id=windows_hotsync&thread.id=17980&view=by_date_ascending&page=1

The work around is to sync through via Bluetooth through a USB Bluetooth adapter. Natch there is nothing like that available for sale out here in the remove Wyoming plains, so off to Latter-dayShopping.com to order through Amazon.

2.     Software. I am about 25% installed in comparison to my old computer.  So far I have had to purchase two upgrades, both shareware utilities, in order to get them to run on Vista. I know there will be more.  I also purchased an upgrade to MS Office to version 2007; this alone is really a challenge; lots to like in the new version, but many, many interface changes to learn and many keystrokes (yeah, the keyboard is still more efficient) no longer work that same. E.g., Save As in Word 2007 takes twice as many mouse clicks as it did in Word 2003. Figuring out how to get my handy button bar macros working in 2007 was also a challenge, but thanks to a Google find, I am happily working along doing my content conversions for Latter-dayVillage.com.  Hint: With Word closed, delete Word normal.dotm template from C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\Microsoft\Templates, copy old normal.dot from Word 2003 into that folder, and then start Word 2007 and finally exit. Word 2007 converts the old normal template into the 2007 format, creating a new normal.dotm file. Done.

I will post more software incompatibilities here as I run across them; can’t wait (NOT).

3.     I hate, hate, hate the black task bar.

4.     Rights issue when copying files from XP.  I should say attempting to copy some files from an XP computer.  I mapped drives from Vista computer over the network to several shared folders on the XP box.  But I cannot copy any .exe or anything from c:\windows, program files, or documents and settings, even with administrator rights.  Usernames are the same on both computers, but I cannot find a way to make this happen. The work around is to switch the KVM to the XP box, copy the files I need to a separate folder, then back to Vista, where I can then see and copy the files. This is necessary for programs that still have data and configuration files in program files instead of docs & settings/application folders. A couple of extra steps that are really unnecessary.

Now the good:

1.     With enough processor power and memory, Vista is not a dog. Granted, this new computer has an Intel Quad-core processor and 4GB of memory, but even with Vista running, my usual mix of running programs (Outlook, two Firefox sessions, IE, Dreamweaver CS3, Fireworks CS3, and a few others like Dazzle for postage and Media player for some tunes) is pretty snappy, much better than on my older Dual-core XP machine w/2GB memory. Even the new graphic features (switching windows and expanding/contracting dialogs, thumbnail previews) are fast enough to not be annoying. I am really pleased with how much faster all of the programs run, which doesn’t have as much to do with Vista as it does with raw horsepower, but still Vista does not seem to be as cumbersome as some software reviews have made it out to be.

2.     The Computer window is especially useful, I like the easy method of adding favorites to the folder list.