Here We Go

Well, here we go. I'll be leaving early tomorrow morning with Dad to go to Birmingham to the hospital. DeAnne's got to go to in-service tomorrow so she's going to follow behind us with her Mom and Grandmother. Keep us in your prayers the rest of this week. We've got a lot of people traveling up to be there, so if you're coming, be ready for a crowd. I don't know how many of you I'll actually see, but I'll know you were there even if I don't get a chance to see you. I'll post when we get home. If all goes well, I think we'll be home between Sunday and Tuesday.

One other note...Anyone reading this prior to Wheel of Fortune coming on tonight, my good friend Courtney's Mom and sister are going to be on the show tonight. Watch and cheer them on.

See you all after the surgery.

--Paul

Info!

At long last, we have the packet of information about UAB and the surgery. Basically, I have to be there on Thursday at 11:00 and I won't leave again until they release me to go home. Dr. Pacifico will come and talk with me about the surgery sometime Thursday afternoon and then the surgery will be between 6:30 and 10:00 Friday morning. A specific time will be set Thursday afternoon when we talk to the doctor. After surgery, I'll spend a minium of 24 hours in ICU and then they'll move me to a room. 3 to 5 days later, I should get to go home.

The packet also included info on parking and hotels, so if anyone that's planning on coming needs that information, call or email me and I'll get it to you.

We've got less than a week to go now. The nerves are starting to kick in a little, but I think I'm doing pretty well. All of the reading and research I've done about it has helped I think. There's also been a lot of prayers offered up on my behalf, and I can't thank all of you enough for that and I just thank God Himself and praise Him that He's blessed me with people around me that care so much. It's meant so much to not only me, but to DeAnne as well.

I'll try and post again on Wednesday, but if I don't, it'll be after we get home before I get another chance to write. I'm going to try and remember everything I can and I hope to take some notes so that I'll be able to better post the experience here, but without a direct link to the internet so that I can get things up right away, I may forget something.

--Paul

After Pictures

I'm a day late with the after pictures, but better late than never. As you can tell, the floors really lightened up the house. We went with a maple, but it's more finished looking than some maple that you see that's very, what I would call, raw looking. DeAnne wanted a light color and I think she made a good choice. As I said before, we're really pleased with the way they turned out. It's nice too to get them in before having my surgery. It took the guys that did it from about 7:00 to 5:00 friday to get them done. If I had done it myself, it'd probably taken a week at least and probably wouldn't look half as good, so I would say it was well worth the extra to have them put in.

We're coming up on 3 weeks till surgery. Still no packet from UAB, so nothing else to report at this time.

--Paul

Dinning room after.

Living room after.

Hallway after.

Before Pictures

I posted the "before" pictures below. They were able to get all the floors installed yesterday and they look pretty good. All we've got left to do is to put some quarterround down to cover the gap next to the walls. Hopefully we can get that done next week. I'll take some after pictures later today and get them posted. All in all, we're really pleased with the way it turned out.

--Paul

Living room with carpet.

Dinning room with carpet.

The hallway with carpet