A Bit Of Catching Up....

A New Project

I seem to always think I know more than I actually do.

Last week I got an email from my manager letting me know there was a new project on my plate and that I should call the contact person this week to get the details.

I’d talked to this particular person several times over the past few months about his needs with respect to a publication one of his teams is responsible for. I assumed that it was this project that had officially been moved to my plate.

Once again, I’d out smarted myself! The project in question had nothing to do with the other, and, is in fact, an entirely new project.

It has to do with generating statistics on the health of equipment. The data from sensors is collected and warehoused in databases, but, up until now, the statistics generation has been a manual process. I’ve been charged with developing an application that will automatically gather the data and generating the statistical reports according to the predefined schedule.

This is one of those “Christmas present” type assignments. I love statistics, well generating them anyway. It’s been part of my stock in trade for over a decade, and until recently one of my most underutilized skills. I’m going to enjoy automating this process!

After reading the 87 page ‘scope’ document I can see why they want this automated! I’ve got a meeting scheduled with the lead analyst on Thursday to nail down some initial details and data locations and it looks like I can begin on it next week while things are quiet between the holidays.

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I know I promised a write up on the heart surgery my Mom had, but I failed to bring the pamphlet home with me, so, I’ll try to recall what it said.

In essence, the surgery is much like a ‘bypass’, they open up the whole chest, place the patient on the ‘heart-lung’ machine, cool the patient down, stop the heart and do the procedure.

In this case it involved opening up the heart, removing calcium deposits and replacing a valve. Due to the amount of removed tissue during the calcium removal, the Doctor opted for an artificial valve instead of the ‘tissue’ valve they’d originally wanted to use.

When the procedure is finished, they close the heart and begin to warm the patient back up.

During this warming procedure they’re waiting for the heart to restart, or to restart it. In my Mom’s case her heart restarted on its own.

All of this took place between 1:00 and 7:00pm on Tuesday.

By Wednesday evening, Thursday morning she was sitting in a chair and had taken her first post-surgical walk!!

Even after witnessing, not only her, but several other similar patients be up and around so quickly, this all seems fairly miraculous to me. I found myself thinking about the mid eighties when my Dad passed on, and how this was the stuff of science fiction then. Oh, there were heart procedures then, but no one was up and around in 24-36 hours!

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Another thing, that really needs to be said here is, what a great man my Mom married!

Andy was a rock through all of this. He’s a pretty private guy, and not given to expansive displays of emotion. However I could see the emotion on his face when it became clear Mom was going to pull through, the relief, the love, the caring this man has for my Mom was very, very wonderful to see.

He was also great to watch as he worked around that Irish (meaning stubborn) streak my Mom is known for. Convincing her to try a little harder on the respiratory therapy, working with the nurse, and me to talk her into taking just a short walk, even though she was tired.

He was there, and has been there, for her through all of this, never thinking about anything but her well being. I’ve told him to his face, but I just want to put it in ‘print’…

He’s a good man! A man I’m very honored to have as part of our family.

He was not prepared to lose her now, any more than the rest of us were. I continue to be very thankful they managed to find one another, and that they’ve built a solid loving relationship.

It seems difficult these days, to see folks manage to find one good relationship and these two have each managed to find two!! There’s a lesson in there somewhere, while I work everyday on the my marriage, I hope one day I fully understand their secret!