What a good sport...

Emma is so lucky to have a brother who goes along with her wild and crazy plans. Camden loves sitting in the laundry basket so Emma decided to bury him with toys and movies just for fun. :)

Another Long Weekend...

Well as you can gage by the title, we still do not know what is going on with my heart. Had the echocardiogram yesterday, and according to the tec, they got some beautiful shots of my heart...Oh goody...Of course she could not tell me a damn thing about them...How convenient.

Want to know what happens when they go through this stuff. Would love to tell them the same things. So the funny thing about seeing my heart yesterday was that I almost hyperventilated(spelling?) You try looking at your heart while you can feel it beating and at the same time you are trying to control your breathing...You try to put it all in sync but it just ends up freaking you out a little bit....

So to finish this entry I will say that everyone is telling me that if there was something seriously wrong, I would be in the hospital...Thats a good thing I guess...but no offense, I will feel better when I know if it is my dying heart, the diaphragm(which I have now said more in one week then I said the previous 33 years of my life)..and in case some of you are still confused, the diapragm is not that tool(bad verbage) that is used for Birth Control...Because that in itself would explain the blood flow problem...

See you can scare the man, but you can't scare out the sense of humor...Thank you for the continued prayers...Love...Chris

Cautiously Optimistic

So this afternoon got off of the phone with the nurse...Yes that nurse the infamous one for telling me that it appears my heart may be dying....

So my tests from last Thursday show my numbers in relation to BloodPressure, Exercise, Heart Rate to be normal...There concern is with the flow of the blood through the heart. They believe that there are two possible reasons for this....

1) Muscle Damage...the Heart Disease Scenario or
2) My Diaphragm....may be causing the flow of the heart to be different...the make up of my body...

So this is not bad news or good news, just optimistic news... but figured you would all like to know for now....Echocardiogram will take place tomorrow at 2:00 p.m.

Fingers Crossed....I can honestly say I do not know a whole lot about the diaphragm other than when you get punched, kicked or pummeled there,you lose your breath....Well I have never been a bigger fan of the diaphragm then I am right now..Thank you all for your continued prayers.

Washingtonians for a year

Believe it or not, a year ago yesterday, we left Japan to begin our new life in Washington. Boy has time flown by! We had planned a big Labor Day Weekend camp out with our camping buddies, but everyone decided with the gloomy weather forecast and other things occupying our minds and time, we'd just do a BBQ to celebrate the great summer we all had.

Camden & Chris are ready to kick off the college football season with their Hawkeye gear!

Camden loved chasing Emma while she rode around Claire's driveway.In honor of our original plan to camp, we did have a camp fire in the Warthen's backyard. As you can see, Emma is enjoying the best part of a campfire...s'mores. :) The Kasparek gang...don't mind Camden stuffing a graham cracker in his mouth. Chris and Emma were die hards and camped out in the Warthen's yard. Here they are all bright eyed this morning.

Echocardio What???

So after a few days of uncertainty and with some urging from Vanessa, I have decided to write about the last few days for us here in Washington.

A few months ago, I scheduled an appointment with a Family Practice Doctor here in Washington since after living here for almost a year I still did not have a doctor. To me this was a great thing...I had no reason to go and see one. So I go in for a routine physical and get my blood pressure checked..It was a little bit elevated, and the doctor said, "That's OK, it's probably due to the fact that you thought you were going to have your rear end checked." I of course appreciated his sense of humor and left the office with his instructions of checking my blood pressure a few times over the next month, and coming back in..

So this past Wednesday was my return to the office, and oops I had not done what the doctor asked me to do. So he sent me downstairs to the lab to do some blood work, pee in a cup, and get an EKG done. Ok, I can handle that...So after having some wires hooked up to my body, giving a little blood and topping off a little clear cup, I headed back to work with the words from the EKG Tec still fresh in my head "Looks good".

Fast forward now to 4:00 p.m. on Wednesday. I get a call from my doctor's nurse..."Chris, there were some abmormalities on your EKG from this morning, we need you to come back in and take another one." So I call Vanessa and give her the news and am back in the EKG lab within 20 minutes having the wires hooked back up to me...The tec, once again tells me that it looks good and sends me upstairs to see my doc. You may insert at this time your choice of a movie theme to play in the background, because at this time it all started to feel like a movie.

I get called into to the doc's office after what felt like hours, and get to talk to the nurse. She informs me at this time that the 2nd EKG looked normal, however that the 1st one indicated that I may indeed....theme music now getting faster and louder, heart disease...and in words that I heard, your heart tissue in areas may be dying. At that time, the tears started to well up a little bit, and I could not say a word..The nurse was great, as she stated that this is alot to take in...No kidding...So I ask, how this will affect the shoulder surgery that I am scheduled to have the following Wednesday to repair the damage from my 4 shoulder dislocations(you all remember those funny stories right). She states that this is a good question and they immediately schedule the tests that they were going to run anyway for Thursday.. Myocardial Perfusion Imaging. Let the fasting and thinking begin. Went home and immediately discussed with Vanessa and called the parents. Will not lie, at this point I was pretty scared...Heart and Dying are never words you ever think you will hear...

So Thursday at 1:00 p.m., after hours upon hours of fasting and thinking and thinking again, I head to the cardiologist, the last place I thought I would ever be after spending the last 2 years of my life getting back into shape. They start an IV and put a radioactive material into my system that will allow them to see the internal workings of my heart. So I lay on a table and watch as a imaging maching travels around my body taking pictures...I then move to a treadmill and show off my running skills as they monitor my heart rate and blood pressue. After 10 minutes of running it is back to the imaging machine, so that they can compare pictures from my resting heart, to my now active heart. Then they send me home. Now I must say, the tecs at this lab were amazing..Immediately it was the small world experience. Two of the three had been in Yokosuka at one time in their lives and the third had been in Sasebo. Small World.

So Friday, yesterday, I am now waiting to hear back the results. For all of you that have ever been through anything like this, waiting for results, you can understand what this was like...So I call the doctor when I do not hear anything by 10:00 a.m. (love my patience) You know it, I wanted to know what the he, double hockey stick was going on. I leave a message for the nurse and wait. At 3:00 p.m. when I still have not heard anything I call and leave another message...Do they not know that it is Labor Day weekend, and the last thing I want to be thinking about is whether or not my heart is going to be OK...

So at around 4:00 p.m. I get the call..The nurse says that she cannot see my lab results to give me specifics, but that there is an abnormality. Insert Dramatic Music....and that I will have to have another test done on Tuesday or as soon as they can get me in, called an echocardiogram, an ultrasound of the heart, and that my shoulder surgery will need to be postponed...

So heading into the weekend, this is where I sit....scared, confused, praying and thinking, thinking and doing more thinking. ACtually it is 2:37 a.m. as I write this, because I am having a little difficulty sleeping...go figure.

So I apologize for the long drawn out blog, but any of you who have known me for any period of time, know that this is what I do, ad I have not doen it for awhile. My family and friends are those that I care about the most, and I wanted you all to be informed and up to speed as Vanessa, Emma, Camden and I move forward hoping and praying for the best...and because my little angels always make me and all of you smile, I will conclude with another picture of them, because they are my inspiration. Have a great Labr Day weekend and please send any extra prayers that you have lying around our way, we would truly appreciate them. Love Chris

Future Olympian???

Emma LOVES going to gymnastics! Chris snapped a few pictures of her in action this evening. She is quite a sight to see swinging on the rings while she's hanging upside down. Mr. Ed is her wonderful 70 year old teacher and has the patience of a saint with his crazy group of gymnasts!

Puzzlers

Camden and Emma were quite the team putting puzzles together yesterday. I just love watching them play with one another!