Al & Dotti's Year - 2004

January – Jim Tiffee (my step-father) Rushed to Portland Hospital
On Monday, January 12th, Jim Tiffee was rushed up from Roseburg, to Portland's Oregon Health & Science University. He had suffered paralysis in all of his limbs, and they were having trouble trying to figure out why. His diabetes was suspected as the root cause but many tests were run to try to pinpoint the cause. Mom (Betty Tiffee) spent her nights sleeping in a chair beside him, or in a room down the hall, while he was in the hospital.

On Friday, January 23rd, Jim was moved from OHSU to a rehab center in Vancouver, Washington, where they were hoping to help him get more strength into his limbs. However, he was not happy at the rehab center, and was anxious to get back home. It was good to see Mom Finally get a good night's sleep in a real bed though.

February – Al and Dot Get New Puppy
On the 9th, Dotti and I got a beautiful and happy little puppy that we called Peaches. She was 1/4 black lab, 1/4 spaniel, 1/2 golden retriever, was born on December 23, and was 6 weeks, and 6 days old when we picked her up and took her home. She promptly turned our lives upside down. What a handful!

Under normal circumstances she would have been a blessing, and we would have worked through the puppy stages, creating some happy memories of her antics. Unfortunately, we did not know what this year was to bring for us. One of the main reasons that a new puppy this year was beyond our capabilities, was Dotti's health. For some time Dotti had been in pain, and not able to sleep well. When she was sleeping, she would very often cry out in pain when she rolled over in bed. She was constantly tired, and her joints were always in pain. We had been walking and hiking mountain trails regularly before, but it got to where she was hurting too much to do that any longer. She couldn't get up and deal with taking the puppy outside. She was having trouble with the simplest tasks of living, let alone the added responsibility of taking care of an active pet during the day. After a few weeks, we realized that we were going to have to return Peaches to her original owner, who then found her another home. (I continue to check on her, and fortunately Peaches is doing very well right now.)

March – Rheumatoid Arthritis Suspected for Dotti
On the 22nd Dotti received the word that her blood work had shown that she has Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA). The doctor had been talking about her possibly having Fibromyalgia, because she had so many of the symptoms associated with that nasty malady. She made an appointment for April 2nd with a RA specialist. In the meantime the doctor gave her some sleeping medication that allowed her to finally get a good night's sleep, after months of little sleep.

Mom's Angiogram Looks Very Bad
The afternoon of Friday March 26 found us in a mad dash to hurry up and get into rush hour traffic and wait. At about 2 PM, I had received a call from Jim's niece, whose voice I did not recognize right away. She started off by calling me "Glenn." Only businesses and a few family members call me that. I verified that I was the one she was trying to reach, and she replied, “Are you driving your car?” I knew this wasn’t going to be good news. It suddenly came to mind that Mom was supposed to be going in for cardiac testing (angiogram) that day, and I braced myself for the worst. Fortunately, it was not the worst, but it was very bad. Mom had some serious blockages on the blood vessels connected to her heart. She was in route from Roseburg to Eugene where they were going to perform emergency bypass surgery. I let my job know that I was leaving immediately. My customer sanely reminded me to stay calm and to drive very carefully with the state of mind that I was in. I packed up my computer and was out the door. (I later realized that I had left the power supply there and couldn't use the computer until I came back. But I was so frazzled that I didn't even notice.)

When we got to Eugene we found that they were not going to do the surgery until Monday afternoon. That concerned me, because the doctor in Roseburg definitely had indicated time was critical. On Saturday she was doing well, but on Sunday she started having some chest pains. They moved her surgery time up to the first thing on Monday.

Mom Has Triple Bypass Heart Surgery
Dotti and I arrived before 06:00 on Monday because they said they would taking her to surgery at 06:30 and we wanted to be there with her when they wheeled her in to the operating room. Mom was smiling and in very good spirits. She was ready to face the surgery and recovery, or if all went badly, she was ready to face what comes after this life. Her faith was very evident at that time, and I held on to that vision of her beautiful smile all the time that they were working on her that morning. After several hours the doctor came in and said that they had done 3 bypasses, and they all went very well. Mom was heading into ICU very soon and we could see her. That was very good news!

When we went in to see her, she looked pasty white, and her eyes were closed. The breathing tube was in the side of her mouth, and her chest was moving, as the machine pumped the air in and back out. There were numerous tubes and IVs connected to her body and monitors that spit out data on her heart rate, blood pressure, breathing rate, blood oxygen level, and who knows what else. Some of the machines were showing duplicate data and it was comforting to see that in those cases the data matched, indicating that the monitors were actually reading real information out. However, to be honest, I didn’t see all of that stuff at first. All I could see was the face of my mother looking like it was lying in coffin, and it was hard to witness. Especially after seeing her smiling so brightly before surgery. Yet, I have unfortunately seen Dotti coming out of surgery a number of times and, on one occasion especially, she looked a lot like Mom did. So, I did not fret over how bad Mom looked, and instead focused on the fact that the surgery went well and she was going to be okay.

Wednesday, Mom went back to her room. She was still looking pretty sad, and it hurt to move much at all. But she was lucid and smiling again. She unfortunately had a nurse, whom I subsequently started to refer to as “Nurse Ratchet,” and that lady was as gentle and concerned about Mom’s condition as a bull rhino would have been. At one point that morning she moved Mom to a chair for a meal, that didn’t arrive, and then back again to her bed. (The meal arrived after she moved back.) During the moves, the nurse was not paying close enough attention and she had Mom’s IV, which was stuck in her neck just under her right ear, pulled tight, by inadvertently trying to stretch the tube beyond its normal length, using Mom’s neck as the pulling point. On the move back to bed she had Mom literally screaming in pain, and I had to step out of the room before I committed assault. Of all the staff at the hospital, fortunately “Nurse Ratchet” was the only one like that. The rest of them were patient and gentle and Mom was looking much better by the afternoon.

April – Mom Has a Stroke
On Friday the 2nd, thinking that the greatest danger was over for Mom, Dotti and I were going to make a run up to Portland. Dotti had waited weeks to get in to see the RA specialist, and her pain was still a big problem. We also wanted to retrieve some personal articles that we had forgotten in our mad dash south last Friday. Our plans were that we were going to check out of the hotel, and go home on Thursday afternoon, get our stuff done on Friday, and come back on Saturday morning, when Mom might be checking out of the Hospital.

As we were rolling the hotel cart out to our car, loaded to the top with all the stuff we had from our room, my cell phone went off. I didn't recognize the number and was wondering who it could be. It was Mom’s doctor on the phone, and he was all business. As soon as he verified who I was and identified who he was, he told me that Mom had had a stroke. I just stood there in the parking lot for quite some time, not sure what to do. I felt like I had been hit with a hammer. Dotti went to the hotel counter and told them that not only would we not be checking out, we would be here for an indefinite time. She also called and canceled her doctor’s appointment, because it was clear that we would not be able to make it.

After we arrived at the hospital, they sent Mom off for a Computerized Axial Tomography (CT) scan, and that was something that I understood well, since I used to maintain them years ago. But I was shocked at how fast she got back. They wheeled her away and I am sure she couldn’t have been gone 10 minutes and they had her back again. CAT scanners must be a lot quicker than they were in 1981 when I worked on them.

The neurologist came by, and in the meantime Mom had started having serious trouble. She was losing her ability to talk. She would start a sentence and have it drift off into unintelligent babble at the end. Then she got to where she couldn’t even begin the sentence. She had things to say but couldn’t say them, and she was very frustrated. The neurologist said that he had spotted two very small indications of stroke on the CT scan. However, he was a bit confused as to why Mom had gone from normal, to having pronounced stroke symptoms, back to normal, and then returned to having the symptoms again. He tested her reflexes and went through a number of simple tasks for Mom to do. She got up and walked, which was comforting for me to see, but she seemed to be having some trouble following what he was saying to her. He told us that it was not uncommon for a patient undergoing open heart surgery to have a stroke, and it was just a wait and see situation; we very well might see a full recovery in time. I tried to put a pen in her hand to see if she could write down a phone number that she knows very well. She couldn’t write. She had trouble holding the pen, and the whole process didn’t work.

She had two phone calls over the next few hours, and she seemed to understand what was said to her, and she tried to respond. She even got out a few intelligible words in response to what was being said to her. In the evening, before we left, she actually got out a couple of short but complete sentences. I went to sleep that night with hope that she would recover in time.

Friday, Dotti and I decided to go ahead and make an up-and-back trip to Portland to get the things we needed. Mom’s condition appeared to be stable, and the day before the doctors hadn’t seemed to think that there was much of a chance of things getting worse during the time that we were away. We weren’t going to check out of the hotel, merely drive the 2 hours up and 2 hours back, with the additional time away for however much time it took to get our stuff done.

We headed over to the hospital to check on Mom before we left and when we arrived the nurse said with a smile, “She is back to normal again!” We walked into the room and there she was, smiling and talking up a storm. I asked her how much she remembered from the day before, and she said, “A lot!” She had understood what was being said to her, but she just couldn’t get out the words. She knew she was talking gibberish, but couldn’t do a thing to fix it. We were so relieved to see her doing so well. It was like the day before hadn’t happened at all. (We have since heard stories very similar to hers from other open heart patients. Apparently it is lot more common than we knew.)

We headed off to Portland/Vancouver with light hearts, and were back at her bedside by early evening. When we walked into her room she was sitting up at her bedside table and reading the Bible. Now that is the Mom I know so well! She just looked radiant sitting there. She was soon writing daily in her journal again, which is her normal custom.

Dotti Diagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis
Dotti was diagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis and put on some new medications. Along
with some medications to ensure a good nights sleep she continues to feel better. It has been very hard for Dotti to accept that she is now dealing with a chronic illness but she is handling it well.

May - Al and Dot in Bloomsday Race
In 2003, we had made an agreement with Jim J. and Tammy, our best friends. They gave up their yearly 7.46-mile Bloomsday Race in Spokane, Washington, in order to come to Dotti's DWLZ.com conference in Vancouver, Washington. In return, we agreed to come to Spokane and do the Bloomsday Race on May 1, 2004. The race always occurs on the first Sunday in May, and we were there.

It seemed like the entire city turned out for the race as spectators, if not participants. There were 50,000 racers, and it was a lot of fun! Dotti, Jim J., and Tammy were held up with some medical issues, and so they walked as a group. Jamie, Jim and Tammy's daughter walked with them as well. I wanted to see how fast I could do the walk, and headed out on my own. I jogged on the downhill portions of the course, and walked the rest of the way, and completed the 7.46 miles in 1 hour 35 minutes and 35 seconds. The group took just over 2 hours, and I thought they did very well! (If you would like to see some personal pictures of our Bloomsday adventure, and read a more detailed description of it, please Click Here.)

There was a lot of celebrating after the race, with booths set up beyond the finish line, and later in the day we went to Costco, wearing our shirts and people treated us a bit like celebrities. It was a great day, except for one thing, that turned out to be very bad indeed.

Jim's Final Battle
Right after our race was complete we got a phone call. Jim Tiffee couldn't get his blood oxygen level back up into the normal range. An ambulance came for him and he was being taken to the Roseburg hospital. He has had a number of incidents where he had to go in to the hospital, and we assumed this was another one of equal magnitude of severity. His sister and her husband had happened to be visiting Mom and Jim at the time, so Mom was not alone. We felt that things were well in hand.

We were back home on Wednesday when my cousin Chuck called me up and said that Jim appeared to be far worse than we had imagined. Mom hadn't called us, so we had no idea. Dotti drove down Roseburg on Thursday May 6, to make sure someone was with Mom, and I came down on Friday evening. There were 5 or more doctors who were working on Jim, and by this time each one we talked with gave very little hope that Jim would recover.

It had only been a few weeks since I had seen Mom in ICU and, only a few months since Jim had been paralyzed and lying in a hospital bed in Portland. This was beginning to feel unreal to me, as each thing added onto the previous. Each day passed with no good news. Dialysis, antibiotics, and other things they tried did little good. His organs began shutting down. After 2 weeks in ICU, Jim passed away on Sunday, May 16th. Mom and I were at his side when he died, as well as the pastor and a deacon from Mom's church. Mom showed great strength through the trying time. The funeral was held at Milo Seventh-day Adventist church on Wednesday, May 19. Then on Thursday May 20, there was a graveside service, and Jim's body was laid to rest. We spent some time with Mom to help her get settled in at home before we returned to Vancouver. Mom is an amazing woman, and after only a few weeks of recovering from her triple bypass surgery, she was doing very well.

On Saturday morning, in the wee hours of May 29, Jim J. and Tammy arrived at our house. Their presence was a real blessing at a time when we surly could use one. They had to head back on May 31st, Memorial Day, but we were so happy that they came down! We just did a few relaxing things, and it did so much to soothe our rattled nerves.

June – Amazingly, the month of June didn't add any new stressors to our lives, and that made it unique so far in during the year 2004. Jim J. and Tammy came down for a visit the first week, and Dotti and I just loved that! I was having some abdominal pain, but it didn't seem serious. My continuing issue with back pain was nothing new, and everything seemed to be settling down towards normalcy. We even hiked to the top of Hamilton Mountain, a hike of 7.6 miles, with an elevation increase of 2000 feet. Considering how much pain Dotti had been in this year, it was like a miracle that she could do that hike!

July – July started off with another visit from Jim J. and Tammy! We normally go to Spokane on the week of July 4th, but I couldn't get the vacation time to come up to Spokane this year. Our DWLZ conference had come at such a time that it would run my vacation into the Memorial Day weekend. My boss didn't want to give me vacation associated with both Memorial Day and the Fourth of July, so I was stuck with not getting the July vacation. (Then, because of the funeral, and our canceled conference plans, I didn't take the Memorial Day vacation anyway.) As it worked out, Jim J. and Tammy came to visit us in July, and then I took a week in August instead of the one in July, and we got up to Spokane for an extra visit. While they were down we went shopping an other fun things, and we got in a hike, to Rodney Falls, and Beacon Rock.

In mid July we went down to visit Mom and she was doing very well, all things considered. To have to face the loss of a loved one is always tough, but to do so only 5 weeks after heart surgery is even worse. She was already walking everyday and doing very well. We really enjoyed visiting with Mom. She is such a jewel!

In the month of July, I was plagued with abdominal pain. It was later diagnosed as "irritable bowel syndrome." It had actually started in May, but had gotten quite painful in July. I had been walking all year long fairly consistently, but in July I only walked 16 miles, a number far below my average.

August - In August I finally was able to have a test done that fortunately eliminated the scary possible sources of the pain, and brought the diagnosis to IBS, and allowed a very effective treatment to be prescribed.

The first week in August we were able to go to Spokane to visit with Jim J. and Tammy, and during the relaxing and enjoyable week we made a trip over to Grand Coulee Dam, and Dry Falls, once the largest falls on planet earth. I had wanted to go see the Dry Falls for years, and it was a lot of fun! This year, our friends have meant so very much to us. We seemed to be bouncing from one crisis to another all year long, and they were so helpful in holding our lives together.

In the middle of August I had to go in for the aforementioned diagnostic work, and it was not pleasant, but the results were. One week later, I turned 53 years old. Enough said on that topic.

September – The first week in September, we had to go to Pocatello, Idaho for my job. I had to help with a Preventive Maintenance activity that normally takes 16 to 24 hours of work time to complete. We took two days on the way out to do the 10.5-hour drive. The first day was 12 hours long and very tiring. The second was easier, but that was good because I was tired and sore. On day three we left for home at a pretty decent hour, and were able to do the entire drive in one day.

The following week Becca and Alistair, our two "surrogate children," and their new baby boy Jonathan flew out from Massachusetts for a visit. It was a great visit, and we loved having a chance to spoil our new "surrogate grandson." (The relationship started because of Dotti's web page, but has grown far beyond that.)

On September 15, Dotti and I celebrated the thirtieth anniversary of the day we met. It is just mind boggling that so much time has passed since that day!

I next had an unhappy visit with a urologist, which led to an even more unhappy visit to the radiology department. When all was said and done, the urologist proscribed some pills and things improved drastically.

In late September, Mount St. Helens started rumbling. It looked like it might erupt again, but things settled down, after it built up a new dome in the crater.

The last weekend of the month we had a houseguest (Joan, Jsche123) fly in from Wisconsin. We took her to the Silver Falls trail and saw the many falls there. We also found 3 "letterboxes" along the trail. (A letterbox is a watertight container that someone plants somewhere, and then gives directions on the Internet on how to find it.) It was fun. Click Here for Pics

October - Mid October, we were in Depot Bay with Mom. The Oregon coast is beautiful, even if the water is too cold to swim in without a wetsuit. Mom and I took a walk together on Sunday October 17, and it was very nice. She had shown such a great improvement since her surgery!

Dotti spent the week with Mom at the coast, as I returned to work. They arrived in Vancouver at the end of the week, just in time for the weekend. We showed Mom the local sites, including the Columbia River Gorge (Multnomah Falls, Crown Point), and the Pittock Mansion. It was nice, after having lived here for so many years, to finally be able to show her around the area.

November – The first week in November, we got hit with the flu, just after Mom had left. (I am glad that she didn't get it!) It took a couple of weeks for us to shake it off. I missed a total of 3 days of work, and felt pretty bad for a number of other days. Dotti and I both had our temperatures climb up to about 101º, and they didn't return to normal for several days.

For the week of Thanksgiving, we headed up to Spokane, Washington, as we normally do. We had a great time up there, including the best meal of the year for us, as always: Tammy's Thanksgiving Day dinner. The week was fun, and it was relaxing. Things had just seemed so hectic the previous few weeks; it was nice to just relax.

We left Spokane on November 28, and headed southeast down to Pocatello, Idaho once more for yet another PM. We cut through the Idaho panhandle, and over to Missoula, Montana. Once we hit I-15 we went straight south to Pocatello. The temperature was in the twenties when we left Spokane, and it was 19º when we pulled into our parking place at our Pocatello hotel. It wasn't until we were headed home on Thursday, and deep into Oregon before we saw the mercury climb to 32º again. One morning I went to work with the thermometer reading 4º. That is pretty cold for a resident of Vancouver, Washington. We had some snow while we were there, but it was fluffy, and extremely dry. It brushed off the car like it was made of cotton.

December – Dotti’s Mom Passes Away
On Wednesday night December 1, the PM was essentially done, when Dotti got word that her mother was in serious condition. We grabbed a couple of hours sleep and then hit the road at 4:40 Am on Thursday December 2. It was her mother's birthday, and we feared that she would pass away before we could reach her. The drive started out in bitterly cold weather, but it was dry. We saw a few snowflakes drop out of the darkness the first hour, but after that we didn't see another one fall all day. The roads were in great shape most of the way, until we hit the mountainous area around Baker, Oregon. There the left lane had snow and ice on it, but it usually had some gravel on it. The right lane was pretty clear. It was tough to get around the slower moving trucks but we managed. After finally dropping out of the mountains, we expected the weather to be great for the rest of the way home. However, out of Pendleton, there was some seriously heavy fog. Once we got through that, the driving conditions were good the rest of the way. We stopped for lunch just north of Pendleton, and the 38º temperatures felt so warm after our days in Pocatello, we didn't even wear our coats into the restaurant. When we arrived at Dotti's mother's bedside we were stricken by how bad she really looked. We hadn't arrived too soon. It was almost exactly 36 hours later when she passed away. Dotti slept over in her room on Thursday, but she was up and keeping vigil as the hour approached 2 AM on Saturday morning, and the waiting came to an end. The next few days were a blur as we once more went through funeral preparations, and dealt with terrible feelings, and emotional upheaval. It seemed like all of the things that had happened already in this trying year were piled on top of what we were going through right then. The funeral happened on Tuesday December 7, and Dotti's 7 siblings joined with her, and her stepfather in saying their goodbyes.

Later that week, LeRoy helped us put up our outside decorations for Christmas, and those cheerful lights have done much to brighten our outlook at the end of this trying year. I have always loved the Christmas season, and I am hoping that this year, the magic of the time will lift our spirits.

We drove to Mom's house on Christmas Eve, and Christmas day we spent there with Mom. We enjoyed visiting, walking, shopping, and eating some good meals during our 4-day visit. Mom's health seems to be much improved and she is getting some exercise nearly every day! She walked with me for over 4 miles on Christmas day, and did 2 other walks with me that were 3 miles in length!

One day before the 9th month anniversary of her triple bypass surgery, I was ready to finish my 1200th mile of walking for 2004. Mom wanted to do the last mile with me, and she ended up doing the last 3 miles with me as it turned out. March 29 I had walked my total miles up to 1197, and Mom and I set off up the road beside her house. The road climbed about 50 feet on its way to the 1.5 miles turnaround point we went to. Mom and I walked up to it, and turned back to finish off the walk. I was honored to have her with me as I reached my walking goal for the year, and I was so thankful that she had survived her heart problems so that she could do it!

Dotti and I drove back home on Wednesday the 29th, because I had to cover the pager for Portland for the rest of the holidays. It was really nice to be able to share Christmas with Mom, and I hope we can do it many more times in the future!

Thanks to Dotti's efforts, I have been on a weight loss and control journey since May of 2001. My weight has remained below my goal weight since late 2001. All my life I have tended towards being overweight, and this is the first that I have ever felt like I was in control of that. (Thank you Dotti!!!) I have documented every step of the way in my Online Journal with written descriptions, graphs, and tables. Many people track what Dotti and I are up to by going to the journal every week. It is focused mostly on my weight loss, but this year has included my walking program, and throughout the journal I share what is going on in our lives. So, if you are ever interested, you can drop by and read (possibly) more than you may care to know about our family.