I know you all thought I dropped off the face of the earth. Sorry about that. We did indeed fly home to Quito on the 24th of May, although it didn’t go quite like I expected it to.
Dan and I ended up with two different routes to Miami. Patrick and I flew through JFK and Dan flew through Chicago, and we met up in Miami. When Patrick and I arrived at JFK, we had just enough time to race to the other end of the terminal and catch our connecting flight. In all of the chaos, I ended up twisting my knee very badly, tearing both the meniscus and the ACL. By the time we arrived in Quito, I could not walk. Fortunately Dan had asked in Miami for a wheelchair or I would probably still be sitting on the plane waiting for someone to get me out of there! *Sidenote. Coming through Customs in a wheelchair while crying does wonders for expediting their system. That poor guy looked at me like he thought I was going to keel over right there, and waved us on through. I will remember this.*
On Sunday, Dan took me to the emergency room to see what was up with my knee. The doctor there did his level best to be useless, and I must say he succeeded admirably. He did manage to let me know SEVERAL times that they only had one knee brace there, and it was TOO SMALL for me. He emphasized this multiple times, just to make sure that I understood. -_- . On Tuesday I went to my hand doctor, who is very good at both hands AND knees. He sent me for an MRI (let’s just say it’s a good thing I only had to be in up to my middle!) and then sent me to get a brace. I went to the store where they sell them, and the poor guy working there came over and goes “Senora, this is the only…here. You had better try this on.” He must have seen the look on my face. Apparently his momma taught him to recognize the signs of a woman on the edge. Fortunately for both of us this one fit my very large knee! (Seriously–I don’t have huge knees. It was just crazy swollen.)
Coming home unable to walk put a damper on all of my “coming home” plans. I am up and about now, although I have to be very careful what I do, as my knee is very unstable and keeps wandering off in the opposite direction from the rest of my leg. Typically, I have everything unpacked and put away, and my house back the way I like it within a couple of days. This time it took me two weeks, and put a lot more strain on my poor hubby than I had intended! I am hoping and praying that I can heal this without surgery, as the surgery that my doctor described to me sounds crazy painful and very invasive.
As many of you know, we are facing a move for the first time in 10 years. Our sweet elderly landlord is no longer able to care for the rental properties that he has, and so he is selling them. The other half of our duplex was being rented by Extreme Response to use as overflow housing, but we terminated the lease on June 1st, since we did not need it for our teams this summer and we didn’t know how long we could have kept it. Our sweet landlord rented it AGAIN. Ahem. To some kind of security company. They are hands-down the loudest neighbors we’ve ever had. I feel like I’m living next door to some bizarre combination of construction site and frat house. We had originally decided to ride out the sale of our house (the paperwork here could take six months or six years–it’s a terribly long process) but now I am thinking that maybe we need to step up looking for somewhere else to live before my nerves are shot.
We are diving into Team Season–in fact, Dan’s first team arrives tomorrow night. It’s always a crazy time around here–most of the guys are out with teams all summer. It is not unheard of for us to have five teams on the ground at once! I don’t think our schedule is quite that packed this summer, but it will still be a good time! Patrick and I are looking forward to spending some time with teams this year. This is the first time in three years that we’ve been home for the summer and we’re very excited about it.
Patrick’s schooling is going well. We’ve moved to a “summer schedule”. Because of his learning issues, his retention is not good, so we are going to continue working on a limited schedule over the summer. Mostly he will continue with reading and some math, and the rest of his subjects will start up again in September. He continues to make me laugh all the time–he is just a very funny little boy.
I will post a ministry update soon. There is an awful lot happening here right now, but because of my handicapped status I haven’t gotten out to see most of it. Hopefully next week, after this team leaves, I’ll have lots of news!