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I am usually pretty lucky with colds. I very seldom get sick, but this year I am on my second cold of the season. Because I seldom get sick, I don’t always get a flu shot. Not because I am against them, mostly it’s just out of laziness. This year I did get my flu shot though. Many people would correlate getting sick twice proving that the flu shot doesn’t work, but remember correlating doesn’t always equal causation. I haven’t gotten the flu this season—and if I did, it would mean I just caught a different strain—just some annoying colds.

I blame being around more people than usual this season as the cause. With my Mother-in-Law’s situation, I have spent much more time in hospitals and around family than usual, and I have spend time around a bunch of people making sandbags to help fight this years flood. Being in close quarters with other people is probably the number one way to get sick. Being sick more this year will probably just encourage me to make sure I get my flu shot next season.

Well, I’m back. I drove through the night rather than getting up early to get home at a reasonable hour. The sugary went well. No surprises for the surgeons. We were hoping she wouldn’t need a LVAD put in, but she did. It will be a little adjustment to learn haw the LVAD works, and get use to always having a battery pack strapped to her. Now she just has a long road to recovery. She will be in the hospital for two more weeks, and then she needs to stay near the hospital, in an apartment for a couple more weeks to make sure she can handle the LVAD on her own, and be close for checkups. She is also now on the transplant waiting list. She will need a transplant sometime in a near future. So if you’re not a donor, why the hell not? I have been a donor since I first got my license at 16. If I’m not going to need my parts, might as well give them to someone who does.

The bad thing is the price of all of this. They are probably lucky that they don’t have any money or health insurance, otherwise this would have probably bankrupted them. Since they have nothing, there are programs out there to help them out, which is great. There will still be a bunch of costs that us, and the rest of the family is probably going to have to chip in to cover.

The loss of my Mother-in-Law’s income is really putting them in a bind. My Father-in-Law just has some crappy $12 an hour job, while that was still more than my Monther-in-Law brought in, they really miss her paychecks. I couldn’t imagine living on $12 and hour. We probably put more into savings a month, then they make a month. It almost make me feel bad.

Okay, that’s the update, now time to get back to my RSS feeds. The hospital wifi was down on Wednesday, so I got way behind.

Tomorrow is my Mother-in-Law’s surgery day. She is having a quadruple bypass, so it’s a little scary, but doctors nowadays are pretty amazing, so she should be fine. I’m heading out to Minneapolis in the morning and should get down there shortly before she is out. Then it’s a long and boring week in the hospital. I’m not sure how long I will be down there, but I won’t have much internet access. I think the hospital has wifi, but nothing at the relatives’ house that we are staying at. I am already getting the shakes. I wish I had my iPhone already because the wifi hotspot would be nice, but I still have 37 days left of my contract.

I am hoping that I can sneak out early since most of the family is going to be down there all week. Not that I don’t want to be with my family, it’s just that once she is out and fine, I don’t feel the need for me to be there. I would rather be someplace with internet. Yeah, I might have an internet addiction problem.