Author: Melissa Gullickson

First off, I just want to say that Aron is doing well and heading home tomorrow. We are both very much looking forward to his return.

Big milestone today, the drywalling is finished!!! Now we just have a bunch of dust to cleanup and then priming and painting begins.

Work on the porch has been proceeding. The tongue and groove pine ceiling is in and the trim is around the door. All the lower level windows have the trim completed and I expect next week we should see some siding going up.

The weather has been pretty great the last while and the forecast for the next few days is sunny, which is fantastic. Even had a lovely sunset the other night, which is rather rare.

Thanks for checking on our progress!

Well it has been over a week now that Aron has been back in Alberta. I don’t mind too much being on my own, thank goodness the weather has cooperated so far. It sounds like he should be heading home by Saturday, so just 6 more days to go. The puppies are good company for me and I’ve tried to keep busy and have also done some Netflix binging.

So Aron had his surgery yesterday and it went well. The doctor told him that the retina has been detached for a while and has some scarring, so they really can’t predict the outcome with his vision, only time will tell. They also put a heavy oil bubble in the eye to keep pressure on the retina to keep it in place while it heals. If they had used an air bubble instead (like they did last time), there would restrictions on travelling (elevation limitiations, no flying, etc.) and also you need to lay face down for a week. So luckily he won’t have to do that. Also the air bubble eventually dissipates on its own but the oil bubble will stay for as long as they need it in there. Eventually they will have to remove it. Aron also got another new cornea as the one transplanted last time had to be removed for the surgery and the doctor indicated that it wasn’t looking great (may have been rejected). Aron did some research and the younger you are the more likely it is that you will reject a cornea transplant, and if you have rejected one, then you are more likely to reject another. They can give you drugs to minimize rejection and if all fails, they can give you an artificial cornea. I hope this one works out.

As for progress out here, I spoke with the drywallers last week and they indicated that they should be done by the end of this week, so I’m hoping that was an accurate assessment. I asked them to finish the laundry room and upstairs bathroom last week, so on the weekend I primed both rooms and painted the ceilings. So we now have 4 rooms primed!!! I’ll be happy to finally get rid of all the drywall mess and dust, blah!

It sounds like our youngest son Zachary will be coming back to BC with Aron to stay and help us for awhile. I’m very excited to see him and to get the extra help. Aron is restricted from lifting anything over 5 lbs and bending at the waist for the next month. Having Zach here will be fantastic!

Thought you might want the latest update on Aron. After his quick drive to Calgary on Sunday, Dec 30th, he saw the retina specialist on Monday morning first thing. In order to assess if the retina is detached, required them to do an ultrasound on the eye. Once that was complete they confirmed that it was detached.

Normally to reattach a retina requires them to view the retina through the cornea to do the repairs. Because of his cornea transplant being fairly recent, the cornea is still cloudy and so they cannot see the retina. This means that the only way to proceed is to remove the new cornea, put on a plastic cap over the eye, do the procedure and then stitch the cornea back onto the eye again. They want to ensure the total success of the procedure, so they want the cornea doctor as well as the retina doctor to work together on completing all the work.

Since they need two specialized doctors and nurses and it is right during New Years, they don’t feel they can coordinate the surgery until Friday. So Aron will stay with the kids in Calgary and Airdrie during the next few days while he waits for confirmation of the surgery and during his recovery.

Once they reattach the retina they will introduce a bubble into the eye again to put pressure on the retina to help ensure that it stays in place while it heals. This will mean that Aron will likely have to lay face down for about a week to ensure the bubble is in the right position. So he won’t head back to BC until after that.

So they really don’t know what the damage may be to the retina overall and there is no guarantee that once it is attached again that there won’t be permanent damage. The procedure to fix the retina may also damage the transplanted cornea and it will have to eventually be replaced with another cornea.

My wish for 2019 is that this surgery is successful and that Aron is able to recover and come home and enjoy a normal life for awhile. It is likely that no other procedure will be done for some time while the eye has a really good chance to recover. Send all your good wishes his way.

Seems like every bit of good news we have is usually tempered with a bit of bad news. This is the case again now. Yesterday we finally just got running water in the house and even hot water to boot. This was fantastic as we now have a working toilet, sink and tub. We both enjoyed the luxury of bathing in nice hot water in the house (beats an outdoor shower hand down).

Obviously you can see these are just in a temporary state (No tub faucet, etc.), but I won’t compain at all, just love having them.

The real down side is that Aron was noticing some issues with his damaged eye, where he only had some vision part way down and the top half was dark. This was a new occurence and after some on-line sleuthing he found out it is likely a detached retina. He just got back from the local emergency and they are sending him back to a specialist in Calgary. He is packing his bag and heading off shortly as he is expected to see the specialist first thing tomorrow. Sounds like they could laser it back in place or put an air or oil bubble back in the eye to keep it in position. Not sure what the final outcome will be yet, I’ll update you when I know more.

Just hoping the drive goes well for him. We had a big dump of snow the other day and they had the Kootenay Pass closed down for awhile. It looks like it is open now, so I hope the drive is good for him.

So I’ll be here holding down the fort while Aron heads back for treatment. Life sure is a roller coaster ride.

It sure has been a crazy year, lots of ups and definitely a few downs. Overall though, both Aron and I are happy to be here in BC and happy with the progress on our new house. We are thankful that Aron has been able to get excellent treatment for his eye injury and that he is on the road to gaining back his vision.

We recently had some nice fluffy snow fall and this has made it feel very Christmassy here. Since there aren’t any workers in the house this week, we’ve decided to do a bit of Christmas decorating and spend Christmas Day there. I have to say, I was not feeling like it was Christmas at all until just the last couple days.

I’ll share some photos, so you can see what we are experiencing.

Here is some of our Christmas decorating in the new house

We are planning to cook Christmas dinner at the house tomorrow so we set up our movie theater to while away the hours while dinner cooks

Some photos of the beautiful Christmas Eve Day here at our place (If you look hard you should be able to see our trailer and our tractor)

View up river

Maggie absolutely LOVES running and playing in the snow. 

Our beach 

Walking back from the beach, you can see the back of the garage

View down river

This is our driveway, Aron has been doing a fantastic job of plowing the road with the tractor!

Last, but not least, we are very thankful for our great kids (and granddaughter) and their partners (Photo is missing Zach). Also, glad to have them all back in Canada

Sweet dreams, hope Santa finds you  and that you’ve been good this year!

Aron just returned from a very quick trip back to Caglary. He met with the Cornea specialist and everything is looking good with his transplant.  He wants to see him again in a couple months, but wants us to see a local ophthamologist in between, just to keep an eye on things.  Once things have healed enough, he can continue on with the rest of the repairs that need to be done (new lens and iris).  We are both relieved that the eye is on the road to recovery now and things should just improve from here.  In case you are wondering if he can see out the eye, he has blurry vision of shapes, movement, light and dark.

As for the house, the mudding and taping is well underway, but will be stopping next week for Christmas. The siding crew have not been back, so I assume we won’t see them back until next year. Aron and I have plans to get some things done while the house is empty, such as tiling some floors, getting a bathroom functional, etc.

We wish you all a safe and wonderful Christmas and a happy, healthy New Year!!

Who’s there?

Our front door, that’s who!!!

Our long lost front door finally arrived today. This finally wraps up our window and door order with Jeld-Wen. I would say dealing with them has been one of the most stressful parts of our house build so far, thank goodness it is over.

All our exterior doors are fiberglass, so they can be stained like wood. Since it is mid-winter, none of the staining will be done until the spring. So even though the door looks a little weird unstained, it still is great just to have it installed.

As for the drywalling, the have a few final things to finish up tomorrow and all the drywall is installed. Mudding and taping will start tomorrow and we have been told it will take two weeks.  Of course Christmas week is a write off, so it will be 3 weeks, at least, before it is completed. They have promised to get the powder room finished first so we can set up a toilet and sink in there right away. Maybe next week we will have a working indoor bathroom, what a great Christmas present that would be.

Hoping to see the siding guys here sometime this week, no sign of them today.

Still lucking out with the weather. Temperatures are above zero during the day and night for the next 4 days.  Makes those out door showers a little less traumatic.

 

So things continue to progress. Mainly the drywalling. The exterior had a little start last week, but no work was done on it this week. Hopefully they will be back at it soon.

We had a huge dump of snow the other day, 10-15 cm! The snow here is so wet and heavy. I went to shovel it off our deck and once I got the snow in the shovel, I could literally turn the shovel over and the snow would not fall out. Had to bang it out. The weather has warmed up since then and now we are getting rain on and off. This make the snow on the ground rather slippery to drive on, so that has been interesting.  Not sure if we will actually have a white Christmas or if it will all be melted away by the rain.

We’ve hired a young Australian lad (he worked for our roofer) to come help out the last few days. Aron isn’t supposed to do any heavy lifting, so having him here was great.  Aron could get all the things done that he was hoping to work on. The biggest accomplishment was the finishing of the walls of the pumphouse and the beginning of the installation of the flooring.  I think it will be the most nicely finished pumphouse ever! Next step will be to get all our pumps and tanks installed and then we should have water in our house, a huge milestone.

Monday the drywallers should be finished hanging the drywall and Tuesday the mudding and taping crew will get started. Things are already looking so different with the drywall up. Makes us realize how much painting we have ahead of us!

Oh, and  one big acheivement of the past week was that we finally have the  official ‘pass’ on our framing inspection. This has been a bit of a concern for the past couple weeks, but our builder was able to make a change to how one of the major beams was supported which satisfied the engineers, so everyone was happy. Especially us!

For better or for worse, our little trailer is home to us (for now). Even though the circumstances of our trip to Calgary were not ideal, it was great to see family and friends but equally great to come back home again.

First things first, I’m sure you are wondering how Aron is doing.  He had an emergency cornea transplant on Thursday.  The surgery went well and when they removed his cornea, all the damaged done from the accident was removed, so that is good news. The recovery for a cornea transplant is slow, full recovery is about 6 months to a year. He has to take it easy for a few weeks and not bend over or lift anything heavy. That will be hard for him as we have so much going on out here. He will also have to go back frequently for follow-ups with the surgeon. We are so greatful that we have such a good health care system in Canada, it may not be perfect, but we could focus on what Aron needed done rather on how much things cost or how we would pay for it.

So we got back home on Saturday night.  The roads were good so it was a good drive.  We made it just before the forecast changes to snow/rain for the next week. We got a bit of snow last night.

We thought we’d have loads of activity here Monday morning with drywallers and siding crews going all last week. But for some reason, no one has shown up today.  Hopefully tomorrow things will kick into high gear again.

Here are some photos of some of the work completed last week.

Drywalling

Window trim and soffits going on

Also, Maggie had a little procedure last week when we were in Alberta. She has a growth removed from the side of her face. Now she has to wear the cone of shame (poor girl). She’s doing pretty good with it on, uses it as a scoop shovel out in the snow. It is hilarious, she loves the snow and she runs with her cone against the ground and fills up the cone with snow.

We did our Christmas with our kids early, on our visit back last week, as we won’t be back together until next year. Took a few pictures with JJ, our grandaughter. We had lots of fun with her over the week we were there. Can’t wait for her to come visit us out here again in the summer.

On Saturday evening Aron came in the trailer and said he thought something was going wrong with his injured eye. During the day he thought his eye was watering a bit and also his left nostril was running. What he didn’t know then, but came to realize at this time, was that the fluid was leaking from his eye. When I took a good look, his injured eye appeared much smaller and sunken in than his other eye. We called the Rockyview hospital and they were anxious for us to come into emergency. Because it was already dark, we decided to leave first thing in the morning as driving the mountain roads is already challenging in winter, but driving all night without sleep as well, was a bit too risky.

We got to Rockyview Emergency the following day and they immediately took Aron into to assess him. After determining that the cornea was in such rough shape that trying to repair it would likely not be very viable.  They recommended gluing the rupture closed and then performing an emergency cornea transplant. So we are staying in Calgary for this week and Aron will be having his cornea transplant tomorrow.

While we were gone the drywalling started and unexpectedly the siding crew showed up. Also we found out that one of our major beams is not supported as the engineers expected. We are unsure of how it will be corrected, but it may be a fairly significant effort. So this was a series of events that have definitely thrown us some curve balls.

If all goes well with the cornea transplant we expect to head home on Saturday.  Once we are home I will post some photos of the work that has been done this week in our absence.