So, 2024 has started with a bang and not a good one. 🙁

BookWormMom, our wonderful recipe queen, started the year with some health issues. Thus no recipe the first Wednesday of January.

During that week, instead of preparing a post for this past week, I was preparing for a cruise and to send my youngest son on his way to basic training. We had his going away party Friday night, and my husband and I left EARLY Saturday morning for the first leg of our drive to Cocoa Beach, Florida–approximately 10+ hours away.

Sounds normal, right?

Well, turns out nothing about last week was normal.

Sunday night (first evening of the cruise), my husband had a heart attack, but we didn’t know that’s what it was. We went to bed. Monday morning, he still felt bad, so I told him to go to the onboard doctor, an expensive endeavor but worth it. Less than five minutes later, I get a call from the medical team and was told to join my husband in the infirmary where they told me he’d had a heart attack. They made plans to get us home to the US. EARLY Tuesday morning (2:30-3:00am), we were shuttled to the closest island and then flown to Fort Lauderdale, where we were sent to the hospital there. Turns out what I thought was a minor heart attack–because he survived for 12+ hours without medical treatment–was a major heart attack. Many blessings saved his life. One, the crew on the ship had a specific shot that helped clear the blocked arteries. Two, God had designed him with extra veins that helped feed the blocked side of his heart. Three, we had purchased travel insurance (I highly recommend purchasing this), which paid for our trip home for advanced medical care.

Once we made it to Florida, we sat in the ER for many hours. I finally found a hotel, thanks to the international liaison at the hospital, that had a shuttle back and forth to the hospital, since our car was several hours north. I left. He was taken to a room on the cardiac floor and then into surgery. They checked his arteries and implanted two stents, one in the artery commonly known as the widow maker. I don’t know all the ins and outs, but he’s “lucky” to be alive.

Our son and daughter-in-law were on a ship which returned on Wednesday in Miami, which is about 45 minutes south of Fort Lauderdale. They stopped at the hospital, chatted with the nurses and my husband (they’re both nurses), and then took me to my car another three hours north, which was on their way home.

I got in my car and drove back to Fort Lauderdale.

They drove home. On their way, they got hit by a stray tractor-trailer tire. Damaged their car, but they were not injured.

Thursday, my husband was released from the hospital. We started our drive home, stopped outside of Tallahassee for the night and continued the trip on Friday morning.

During this time, I was in contact with all of my children, even our youngest–at least for a little while. He was able to call on Thursday to let us know he was safely at his destination, and he was able to talk to his dad, which allowed him to know that my husband was okay. My son said it eased his mind about the situation.

So, as you can see, my week was wrought with stress, but also with blessings. God orchestrated SO many things in advance to work for us. And while it was traumatic, to say the least, it wasn’t fatal, which it easily could have been, both for my husband and for my son and daughter-in-law.

Praise God with me.

Also, I may be a little lax in posting for the next few weeks. It takes me a couple weeks to recover from things like this. I stay strong during the moments it’s needed, but later, my body requires downtime. Now is that downtime. 🙂

Blessings,