A brief update and needed pause

I wanted to let my vast readership know what is going on in my little slice of the world.
Since last blogging, our new baby girl has been doing well and the family is adjusting to the new pecking order! Her father ( that's me!) however, has taken a turn for the worse. My health has become much worse than we anticipated. Mostly, it is related to general pain and the need to take large doses of really nasty medicine. For those of you who are not familiar with pain medicines let me tell you that they cause as many problems as they solve.
The upside is that they have completed a few successful, albeit, painful tests that have determined the level and extent of the nerve damage. This will allow them to see exactly where and how the spinal cord is injured and come up with a long term treatment plan. For this, I am very grateful.

For the past month I have been in a virtual whirlwind of pain and/or delirium from the medicine and the associated problems. I am planning a few blogs on this whole process and what you can expect from our new socialized health system, since that is what I have been on for the last 12 months to get to this point. A very long year to get a few answers that could be achieved in a few days if the right procedures are applied! Anyway, that will have to wait because I will be out of commission for the next month as we are planning to leave for a trip to the mountains for the month of August. We were originally planning on going back to West Virginia and felling trees and saw milling them into lumber for this whole month but my health has changed our plans! Instead, our gracious hosts will be taking us on a tour of our national landmarks and do some general resting. The day before leaving I will get a spinal block that is supposed to numb all nerves in my injured areas so it will be a pain free/drug free month!!!!! I will post the updates in the second week of September, just before my expected surgery dates.
All prayers are appreciated and I thank you for your patience in my delays answering your comments. There have been few lucid days lately and I look forward to being pain/drug free as soon as possible.
Until then...