I logged back in to this long-lost blog and found that the last entry I made I'd never published...so I did. It was from December, 2016! Wow, how time has passed and life has changed. So the update:
In early 2017 I applied for a job in Montrose, Colorado with Rocky Mtn. Health Plans as a care coordinator, helping Medicaid members identify needs and helping to connect them with resources. It sounded like it would be a good fit for my gifts and interests, paid well, and it would get us back to CO. We moved back in March, 2017 from NC and I started my new position the end of that month. I worked at home and drove a lot throughout Montrose and Delta counties mainly, visiting Rocky Medicaid members and helping them. It was good work and I enjoyed it - although it was definitely a different schedule than what I was used to. It was a treat, I admit, to have weekends off once again! We attended First Presbyterian in Montrose and began hosting a bible study in our home that fall. We made some amazing friends, and that group was just wonderful. We did a couple different studies - The Jesus Life was my favorite. Such a good book.
In the summer of 2018 we started looking for a house to buy and even had a contract on one when I was approached by two different people encouraging me to apply to for two different jobs. One was in GJ with Charis/The House and the other was for a different position within Rocky working on a federal grant project. It was surprising since I hadn't really been looking for another job, but knowing how God works, we paid attention to things and prayed a lot about if I was supposed to apply for these positions.
Well, the contract on the house fell through so I applied for both positions. I interviewed for both, and ended up being hired for the Rocky position. As it turned out I could really live anywhere so we decided to take the opportunity and move from Montrose back to Grand Jct.. We found a small house with an awesome yard and outdoor space and bought it and moved in August, 2018. I started my new job that same month. It was a steep learning curve, once again, to learn all about social determinants of health (SDoHs) - things like housing, food scarcity, transportation, utilities, safety and social isolation and how our project would recruit clinics to screen people for these SDoHs, refer them to care coordination to help connect them to resources, deal with all the data we'd be getting, and all the logistics that go along with all of that. I've become much better at Excel (which isn't saying much), know a lot more about what drives overall health, have made some wonderful friends in my new work colleagues, and I now even supervise four people. It's been a crazy ride.
Before anyone had even heard of a pandemic our lives started changing and our world was becoming much smaller. In January, 2019 we noticed that Kim's speech would occasionally slur and he was losing his balance a lot more often. The fall of 2018 he had been hospitalized for what looked to be colitis. His stomach issues had worsened over that summer and he had lost close to thirty pounds (which he really couldn't afford to lose). Something was going on.
The spring of 2019 he wasn't getting any better and the neurologist in GJ referred him to the Neurology Clinic at UCHealth in Denver for testing. He had a spinal tap done, which ruled out a number of scary things like ALS, MS and Parkinson's disease, and when we went back a second time they zeroed in more on what is called Spinocerebellar Ataxia. Ataxia is a word for both a disorder and symptoms like what a drunk person has - slurred speech and imbalance and not always clear thinking. For Kim these symptoms were caused by something triggered in his cerebellum. We have since learned it is more than likely genetic (sadly, his sister has been have similar symptoms as well) and it is progressive, so we should expect it to worsen over time. (That has proven to be true.)
During this same time, March 10th to be exact, I had a very close call driving home from church and almost hit a man on a bicycle crossing the street as I was turning on to it. I never saw him. The Bullseye Macular Degeneration that I was diagnosed with continued to worsen to the point that it was unsafe to drive. So I made the difficult decision to stop driving that day. It was the beginning of a long, dark road for me that I'm only now beginning to come out of and will write more about later.
As time went on our son Sean and daughter in law Megan suggested that maybe we should consider living closer to them (we only lived about five minutes away), but they were offering to tear down their garage and build a small house in its place where we could live and be close and easy to help. We dove into the project in late fall of 2019, started demo on the garage the end of January, 2020, and we moved in Easter weekend (April 11, 2020)! It went SO fast!
So we are in our little 780 square foot one bedroom, beautiful house behind Sean and Megan's house - literally ten steps from their back door - and we love it. Unfortunately, the week after we moved in Kim fell out front on the driveway and broke his femur. He was in the hospital for a few days and it cemented the fact that he really needed to use his walker all the time, and he has ever since.
We are so thankful to be where we are - not only for Sean and Megan's help, but our good friends Karen and Dave Jensen and so many others who reach out regularly to help, to offer a meal or a ride. It's amazing.
There's so much more to share, but at least this brings everything up-to-date and I can begin again, hopefully sharing more about how God has drawn me back into his presence and the many ways I see God's presence and love and guidance as we live out this new normal now, additionally, in the midst of a pandemic along with everything else. I hope you'll come along for the ride and be encouraged. Thanks for reading.
