Shana Bearden

First, Diane Donahue had her knee replacement surgery today and although she is in pain, she is doing very well at Plaza Hospital in Fort Worth. Her doctor said that her knee was in really bad shape and had 40 years of damage to it. She is expected to return home on Friday and will be laid up for about 6 weeks.
Shana has been a busy girl. She has been feeling pretty good lately and we hope that it continues. Shana also had surgery today to replace two stints from her kidneys to her bladder. She was in surgery for about one hour today and was home tonight. She is kind of ragged out from that and is having some reaction to the medicines she was given today. However, we hope she is getting over that as I write this.
After returning from the cruise, Shana was wistful about Lily’s birthday so at the last minute we got her a plane ticket to McAllen where she arrived just ahead of Hurricane Dolly. She hunkered down and played with Lily and April during the hurricane and luckily they had minimal damage to the house even though the winds got up to about 100 MPH. As my son in law recounts, this is the second time that Shana flew into town in the last 3 years and brought a hurricane with her. You may recall that Lily was born three years ago in McAllen during a hurricane and now had another hurricane on her 3rd birthday. Because of the Hurricane, Shana could not return until 3 days later than she planned but she had a good visit with Lily, April and TJ.
As soon as she arrived back home, Chrissy called from Houston and begged Shana and Kathy Segreti to come down and help her decorate Chrissy’s house. Of course Shana and Kathy both jumped at that opportunity and spent 3 days spending Chrissy’s money for a change (or at least that is what I am told). She arrived back in town Tuesday afternoon just in time to do her pre-operative testing and she went to have surgery today. She will rest tomorrow and then will get chemo (the bad one) on Friday.
April, Lily and TJ are coming in this weekend for April’s 10 year high school reunion. Chrissy is coming in as well and all are anxious to meet our new family member -Isabella–who incidentally may just be the best tempered child to ever hit this state– but that’s just a granddad’s opinion mind you.
I am having to put the brakes on Shana’s activities because I don’t want her getting too tired but she seems to be doing OK right now.
Generally, Shana is doing very good right now. We don’t know how long this will last but we are very thankful. While she was with Chrissy in Houston, Shana had an opportunity to meet with her cousin who lost her husband to cancer a couple of years ago. She seems to be doing well and adjusting nicely. Shana complains a lot about her skin which is very dry and rough from the chemo. She has tried everything to moisterize her skin but it just is not happening. She also suffers from what is called “chemo brain” which is a loss of some sh

7-21-08– I got permission today to announce that April Flowers, our daughter and the mother of Lily, is pregnant again and will be delivering about March 13, 2009. We found out about the pregnancy on the cruise but She threatened me within an inch of my life if I said anything on the blog until today. She had several friends she wanted to tell first and they read the blog. April found out about being pregnant on the same day that Bella was born–the 4th of July– and waited until the cruise to spring the information on her unsuspecting family.
April is only a little over a month along but she is already showing quite a bit and she has the glow about her that she had before. Lily is all excited about having a baby in the house although she is unsure how that baby pops out of mommy’s tummy. Lily will be up here in about two weeks and will get to meet her cousin Bella for the first time.
We have a surprise as well. Shana is flying down tomorrow to surprise Lily at her birthday party since she was so sad about Nana living so far away. She doesn’t know yet and hopefully it will be a big surprise.
Gotta run to take my bride out to eat. Hmmmmm ……we never cook at home anymore….we have maids……we are redoing the house……24 hour care…..she is spending money like it is going out of style…. could this all be a big scam? God I hope so.
Jim