Back to work..thankfully!

Well, we made it back to the hospital tonight. While mom is still not feeling great, she did not have that miserable cold she had last week that kept us home. Just kind of tired and cranky, more than anything. But we did head on down to Dodd this evening, and as usual, I am glad we did.

It has been incredibly hot here as of late - I mean record breaking heat. I think the record today was 89 and we broke it at 91. Don't all laugh, but I guarantee you every one of us Ohio girls has our AC cranked. I talked to Chelsie's auntie Jodi last night in Reno and she said they had 2 days of snow already! I assured her we were burning up out here! I will be singing a different tune next week, it is supposed to be in the high 50's Thursday. It was toasty walking to Dodd from the car.

Chelsie spent most of the day in recovery from her agility competition this weekend, in which she performed very well - she was somewhat low key tonight. The nurses at Dodd have put little paper pumpkins outside all the rooms that say happy Halloween on them. Tonight when we got here, we were greeted by an older woman walking down the hall with a walker. She had heard one of the nurses say that the "puppy was here" so she got up to see what was going on. She was one of the more mobile people we have seen there. She petted Chel in the hall, and then we went down to the common room by the nurses station and visited there. Chel was very patient and let this woman pet her for 10 minutes. She had a chocolate lab at home who she missed very much - and she used to work from Iams. :) We ended up visiting her when we got down the hall to her room again. As usual, I knew as soon as we visited her that no matter what happened for the rest of the visit, we made a difference to one person tonight.

The rest of the night was pretty low key. One other neat thing was that in one of the rooms, the patient's 4 grand kids came to see him. I did not actually go in the room - I asked the kids if they wanted to pet the puppy and they did, so we stayed outside in the hall. But you could just see how thrilled the guy was to see the kids. There were 4 of them - a boy that looked to be 12 and three girls - if I had to guess, I would say the girls were about 8, 6 and 2. Super cute, super nice kids. Chelsie kissed the 2 year old..pretty much because she was about at eye level! She laughed and then used her dress to wipe her face. I am sure her mom loved that.

I know I have reflected on this before, but Dodd is a very difficult place to be, and family support is so important. We saw this one man tonight - older, laying in bed, sort of coherent and had a black eye (which is really somewhat irrelevant) His room was bare and empty, and I felt very sad for him. This was in sharp contrast to another room we visited later - this man's wife was sitting in there with him and there were family photos EVERYWHERE. Recent, older, kids, family, grand kids. I think he had a stroke - he could speak somewhat clearly, but the wife started asking him if seeing Chelsie made him remember their dog. Super sweet man, smiled and thanked us for visiting. The patients work so hard all day, and unquestionably, family support makes a huge difference. Again, I am reminded about how truly lucky we all are to have such strong families.

I thought you would all get a kick to know today was a very strange scent day. I walked out on the deck this morning while my precious was taking care of business, and IT hit me - that's right, skunk. For the rest of the day, my sniffer was sensitive to EVERYTHING! The smoke smell in the Immke Honda Courtesy van and at the hospital (go figure - you would be amazed at the amount of SMOKERS around the hospital!), the peanut butter when I opened my PB&J at lunch, and even the Febreze odor in my car. But thankfully, no more skunks have come into my baby angel's yard.

As usual, we hope this finds everyone doing well. We are well, and headed to bed soon. I am hopeful I can convince Chelsie mom needs a few minutes of cuddle time, but cuddle time has not been high on her list, so I might have to talk my trusty old teddy into some cuddle time.

Take care everyone and have a great week.

Love,

Nicole and the Chelsie Belle