Blessedly boring post

Life seems pretty boring these days, but then you step back and think “well, thank Heaven for that!” We’ve been getting outdoors a lot more these last couple of weeks as fall has arrived in Arizona. The evenings and mornings are absolutely perfect (dare I say I even felt a bit of a chill on my bare arm one morning as the sun was coming up?), but it’s still reaching the mid- to upper-90s during the day. Give us two more weeks and I will be blissfully happy with the weather (which I haven’t been able to say for about four months).

Fisher, the twins and I walk Emma to school every morning, and she is infernally jealous that we get to stop to play at the park on the way home while she’s slaving away in first grade. My motivation, though, for letting the kids play for, oh, say an hour or two, each morning is that I’ve been reading the third book in the Twilight series. I can’t justify sitting in my house all day and reading, but if the kids are getting some fresh air and exercise, my hands are tied, right?

Thankfully, for the sake of my family’s nutritional intake and the state of cleanliness of my house, I just finished the book. Which is also why I have an extra second to update everyone on my blessedly uneventful life.

Emma brought home her school pictures today. Beauty, eh? If you look close enough at her necklace, you'll see it has a picture of Troy and another charm that says "I love Troy." If you have to ask "who's Troy?" you're either lucky to NOT be a parent of a 7-year-old girl, or you're totally out of touch.

And some pictures...

The twins in a moment of togetherness. They are so cute following each other around the house. Or if one is out of the room, the other will start yelling "where are you??" (in words only a mother can understand, of course) and walking around until they find each other.


The twins have decided that highchairs are for the birds. So now we have four little kiddies in a row for mealtime. This is the brood eating breakfast yesterday. Note the highchairs are still up (it's called wishful thinking).


Extreme Makeover, Curtis Edition: The kids' cousin Madison and her friend Kayla babysat one evening while Mom and Dad went to a movie. When we came home all four of these hooligans came running out of our bathroom, and the kids had a whole new look. Fisher looks thrilled, no? Actually he asks me to do his hair like that all the time now.

Dinner in bed...

Well, it’s been too long since I’ve posted anything – I’ve spent the last week playing catch-up for the five days our life was put on hold. After many follow-up visits with specialists, blood tests and medications, Jarad is back at work, coaching, running… pretty much back to normal. We made reservations for the fifth and final Rock and Roll event in San Jose on October 14, so he’s working toward being able to finish that one (he promises not to try to beat any Kenyans). With this event under his belt he will have logged 78.6 race miles since January, and will be an official Rock Star. I’ll post a picture of the medal when he gets it!

Here’s Jarad’s embolism episode from the four-year-old perspective…

Fisher: Mom, when I get a big chunk of blood in my chest (thanks to cousin Jacob for explaining it to Fisher this way), will I have to go to the doctor’s too?
Me: Yes, if you have a chunk of blood you’ll have to go to the hospital honey.
Fisher: And will that man bring me dinner in my bed?

A couple of days later I was talking to Emma and Fisher about how much something cost and mentioned that we had just spent a lot of money on dad’s hospital stay (seriously, I’ll say anything to get out of buying another Polly Pocket – way to guilt my six year old!). I explained that all the doctors and nurses who took care of him had to be paid, and the medicines and tests he had cost lots of money.

Fisher: And the guy who brought him dinner in bed too.

Yes Fisher. We have to pay for the guy who brought him dinner in bed.

Home Free!

OK I just posted the long entry I wrote yesterday in the hospital, but we couldn't get an Internet connection so you get it a day late.

I'm writing this update from home, and am happy to report that Jarad is home and on his way back to health. His pain has subsided a ton, which I am so grateful for. He was just so uncomfortable for so many days. Now he's on a rigorous schedule of doctor appointments, blood draws and giving himself shots. But at least he's home.

Anyway, just a quick update from "yesterday's" post. Thanks again to everyone for all the phone calls, prayers, food and babysitting. We have the best family and friends ever.

Jarad Curtis: CLOTTER

Nothing much new to write about lately. Oh, unless you’d be interested in reading about Jarad’s PULMONARY EMBOLISM (for those of you who, like me, need a lesson in medical-ese: that’s blood clots in his lungs. You know, the stuff of strokes and heart attacks). Huh? How does that happen to a 32-year-old marathoner you ask? Yeah, that’s what the docs are asking too. It’s been a crazy few days, but the good news is that Jarad is going to be just fine… once the clot that’s causing all the pain gets smaller, he’ll be back to normal. Whatever that is.

Another piece of good news is that we have the most amazing family and friends who have taken care of kids, meals, prayers and support for us so I’ve been able to be at the hospital with Jarad almost 24/7 since we came to the hospital on Thursday morning. So to all of you we say THANK YOU SO MUCH. You will never know how much it has meant to us.

Here’s what happened: Tuesday evening Jarad coughed – once, not like a sick cough… just a throat-tickle cough. He said “man, it feels like something just flew into my chest.” But he figured it was just a tweak or something. The next day he went about his normal day – work, coaching, running etc. – but as the day wore on he felt increasing pain in his chest whenever he took a breath.

Wednesday night around 8 he fell asleep on our bed and woke up at 10 in serious pain. We figured he had just tweaked something inside – you know how sometimes you take a deep breath and get stabbing pains, then something pops and it’s better… We discussed going to the hospital, but figured it wasn’t a heart thing since it didn’t really have the symptoms of heart problems. No, we never even considered lung problems! So I gave him a Vicodin pill left over from my surgery and we went to bed. The alarm went off the next morning and I heard Jarad get up to start the shower. A few minutes later he was shaking my shoulder saying “I’ve got to go to the hospital NOW.” Not something a wife ever wants to hear her husband say, since by the time a husband says something like that you know the pain is excruciating.

We called Jarad’s dad to come over and left the 4 kids sleeping (again, tells you how bad the pain was that we couldn’t wait 5 minutes for Grandpa to get there!). Of course he was brought right in at the Emergency Department, since he stumbled in clutching his chest and unable to breathe. Right away they did an EKG and ruled out heart problems, and the triage nurse said his symptoms pointed to a blood clot in his lungs or pleurisy. Neither sounded good. They ran a whole battery of tests and finally gave him something for his pain. After about 3 hours, they had pinpointed the problem as multiple blood clots in both lungs.

The theory about why the clots formed is that Jarad got on a cross-country flight within a few hours of running a half-marathon last Sunday in Virginia Beach. The doctors are baffled as to why someone so young would form them, though, so they are running tests on his blood to find out if he has a genetic predisposition to clotting.

So here we are today, Sunday, Jarad’s fourth day in the hospital. He’s on a couple of blood thinning medications and a lot of Morphine. When his blood has thinned to the required level he will be able to come home. The bad thing is that his pain is not going away as quickly as the doctors (and he!) had hoped, so we don’t know when he will be able to return to work and other normal things.

Jarad has a great sense of humor about this (he jokes about being “eye-candy” for the nurses, since he’s in the Telemetry unit surrounded by cardiac patients who are at least twice his age) and is in good spirits. We have both had our moments of being frustrated, bored, scared, etc. but for the most part, we are grateful that it has turned out so well given what the outcome could have been. And it doesn’t appear that he will have problems with this in the future.

So that’s what we’ve been up to this weekend. What about you?