The McMillen Family

Justin and I received an email from Dr. Gupta tonight.  The consensus of the doctors is that he does need surgery.  They are still talking to a possible surgeon who can do the surgery.   Dr. Gupta is staying in contact with them to find the next step for us.  The surgeon they are talking to right now is in Boston, but again no final details have been made. As we come to this information, it is a reality check all over again.  The reality of surgery and the scary parts of that. Having been through this once, we know more than we did last time, which could be good OR bad.  Anyway, I was thinking about the analogy, “going through the storm”.  Growing up I was terrified of storms to the point of physically being sick if there was a thunderstorm or tornado warning.  (I was like this until I moved to college and had to face the issue!)  You watch the tv warnings and take precautions, and you wait until the storm passes.  But the best pa...

I know many of our readers are “sitting on pins and needles” to know an update of our situation.  Ok, maybe that is a little vain of me to think that everyone is just waiting. We are just waiting.  Our doctor in Tupelo emailed to say he has no update from Boston.  But at least we know where he stands.  He has been great about keeping us posted! You know – waiting really is the hardest part.  You know how when you were little and Christmas or your Birthday just couldn’t get here fast enough.  Or a different waiting - when you were at church and your mom said, “wait ‘til we get home.” in that stern whisper.  And you started praying that she would forget.  Surely, I wasn’t the only person this happened to.  Well, sometimes that is how we feel.  You go from one extreme to the other.  That sinking pit of why can’t I just know so I can plan – for those of you who are OCD like me and need time to plan how your clothes will be organized i...

When Justin and I got married, I learned all about country life.  I know there are people who live much more in the country than I do, but we do have some country tendencies around here.  Let me name a few: washing the window unit air conditioner filters on the front porch, having your neighbors stop in the road to talk to you at the mailbox, hollering from your porch to theirs just to say hello, stopping both vehicles in the middle of the road to chat, getting off your lawnmower/tractor to chat, and then just being a neighbor!  I’m not as good of a neighbor as my neighbors are to me.  We know everyone on our end of the road very well.  (There is one couple that we only know of at one end of the road, but everyone else has lived here for as long as I can remember!) So, Justin and I came home from the hospital on Monday evening and then spent the day together on Tuesday.  Wednesday night, Mrs. Pearl and Mrs. Voilet Jo – who live next door – brought us a ch...

First, I would like to welcome our new blog readers to our lives online.  Because of Justin’s heart situation, we have some new readers to our blog.  I would like to encourage you to follow after this is all over with as well.  This is a fun way for Justin and I to share about our “interesting” (although you may not think so) lives! Health Update – Justin and I talked to and received an email from Dr. Gupta, the doc in Tupelo who is taking care of us.  He said that he is sending all of Justin’s info to Dr. Landzberg in Boston.  They should receive the info by Friday and hopefully review his info by Monday.  Dr. Gupta is expecting to hear from them by mid-week at the latest, hopefully by Monday or Tuesday.   So, Justin and the rest of the family are just in the waiting stage.  It reminds me of Dr. Suess’s book “Oh the Places You’ll Go”.  There is a page or two about the “waiting place”.  You can tell from the pictures in the book a...

First, if you haven't read the blog in a while you should read the previous 2 before reading this one. Today there is good news and bad. So to stick with tradition, we will start with the bad. Justin had his heart cath this morning and the new bypass artery from last year has closed. Basically putting us back to where we started. If you read my last blog you know that Justin and I have given this situation to the Lord. I can't tell you that we aren't scared, but we know the peace of the Lord. Good news 1. Justin was taken early for his heart cath this morning, so there was no time for worry or anxiety. 2. To close the heart cath, they were able to use a star close, which just to us means that he only had to lay flat for 2-3 hours instead of 6 hours. 3. Our cath doc, Dr. Gupta, has been more than wonderful. He has contacted and consulted doctors from all over looking for the best. He has talked to us, let us ask questions, and provided his contact info for our convenience...

The outcome from the doctor changed a liitle today from last night. Let me start there, but read the entire blog. This morning the doc said, if in fact the bypass is closed as we are 95% sure that it is, then you will need to have open heart surgery again by a surgeon who can do a special surgery to reroute the left main artery. Heart cath on Monday will double check the bypass artery. Everyone we have spoken to today we have asked to pray specifically that the bypass artery is open when we do the heart cath. Tonight Justin and I both got encouraging phone calls from different people. Justin's mom called to say that his papaw said, " I have been praying about this since I heard this afternoon and I have peace about it. The Bible tells us if we have faith even as a mustard seed, we can move mountains.". My dad called to remind me that when he was battling cancer, they found a gray spot that they were certain was a problem and was not. It gets better. . . Justin and I hav...

This week has been quite the whirlwind. Arts institute was great! Lots of ideas. Our team met today to make some plans for the school year. Lots of awesome people with great Today Justin stayed home from work beacuse he was hurting pretty bad in his chest. He was hurting really bad last night. We are not sure what is causing the pain, but think it is muscle soreness. Just to be safe, Justin went to our family doctor, who sent him to the cardiologist just to get a thorough check. Justin had a ct scan just like last year to be on the safe side. The scan showed a gray area on the new bypass artery. The doctor who read the scan believes that this new artery has shut down and not working. We have been admitted to the hospital for a heart cath which will allow the docs to know for sure if this is true. At this point they think that the old artery is still working which will be good. The old artery is supposed to have a clamp on it but we think that has come off, which in our case now wou...

So I am at the whole schools summer institute in oxford this week learning more about infusing the arts into lessons. Felicia Pollard, her blog link is to right, is also hereand asked if I had blogged about it yet. So I won't be out done. Thanks Felicia for getting me on the ball. Today I learned about using video as a form of assessment and video techniques. This afternoon I went to a session about learning though movement. It was awesome! I have a similar class a few more times this week. I also learned how to make a quilt that can be easily changed as often as you like with ziplock bags and duct tape. Very excited about this. More another time!

So- Justin and I went to Georgia and stayed in a beautiful cabin this weekend.  We were in the foothills of Lookout Mountain.  The trip was great and I will talk more about that in another blog because . . . After a 5 hour drive home plus a few hour detour for shopping, eating, and stretching of the legs in Huntsville, Justin and I pulled up in the driveway a little after 6pm last night.  Home-Sweet-Home.  We were so excited to see our sweet puppy- Ty.  As Justin says, the sweet puppy he had thought about on the way home – apparently went on vacation too and had not returned.  Ty was WILD!  Jumping, running, tugging, biting, tinkling in the floor, etc.  We took him out as soon as we got home and he went to the bathroom.  Then we brought him in and he went 2 or 3 more times.  It was crazy!  Anyway, wired as he was, we still tried to play with him.  I don’t think he had any interaction all day.  (He is much calmer this m...