Captain Tin Man's Journey to See the Wizard

We are officially just over 5 months post open heart surgery. Sorry it's been a bit since my last update. Let me tell you, though, no news is good news! We've just been busy livin' life. Last update I was just getting ready to start back to "light duty" at work. Turns out "the office" was a great experience. I say 'was' because I just finished up my first couple of shifts back on line...full duty. I'm officially back on the truck with my crew! Fortunately, things don't change much and coming back was just like riding a bike (as soon as I remembered all my various passwords and codes and such). I quickly realized that all of the same nursing homes, trailer parks, and regular customers are still going strong. Other refreshing things were that all of the same jokes and predictable firehouse banter are unchanged. I even got to see a little fire first day back. Office duty went well and I really appreciate the experience. I got to take p...

9 weeks ago today we invested in the pricey rebuild kit for my faulty heart valve. So far it's proving worthy of the extra sacrifice and trip to BelieveLand. I've been told on numerous occasions I really suck at updating this blog. This is very true and I've caved to the guilt, so here goes. It's so appreciated some have actually taken the time to follow along. As we've mentioned before, the outpouring of support has been humbling and is so very appreciated. As anticipated, recovery has been full of ups and downs. Overall, I feel so fortunate and couldn't expect to be in a better place than I am now. I've been reminded on numerous occasions to be patient with recovery, and my favorite, "listen to your body". I'm not exactly overflowing with patience and sometimes feel that if we always listened to our bodies we'd all be overweight addicted to prescription pain meds and wearing holes in our couch, or Rascal Scooter seat (think WALL-...

We're home and home never felt so good! Cleveland (the City and the Clinic) exceeded our expectations, but healing is better done with your own bed in the mix and not having to work around the hotel housekeeping schedule. Thanks to everyone for the amazing support we've received. We're overwhelmed by the awesomeness of those around us. Many have asked how the healing is going and what we're up to now, so hopefully this post will provide an update. I was really enjoying Amber's posts and wishfully thinking maybe she would just continue, but apparently it's my turn. I certainly have enough time in a chair to make myself useful.  I know I'm not nearly as funny as her, plus my heart was just stopped and put on ice less than two weeks ago, so no guarantees this will even make any sense. They say you can lose some cognition and affect can change being on that heart/lung bypass machine. They call it " Pump Head ". It's real...and now my new lifel...