Focht Family Blog

After Atlanta we drove back to Statesboro so mom could buy a truck. She bought a 2004 Ford F250 diesel that has 60K miles on it. It has a club cab so we can all fit in it. She has always felt bad that we didn’t have a vehicle to drive when we stopped places. We stayed in Statesboro for another week so that Nathan could order all of the pieces that he needed to put onto the truck to make it towable and also make it so it could hold a camper. That gave him time for the parts to get in and for him to go to his friend’s house where he works on the Jeeps and get them all installed.

During the time in Statesboro I ended up taking two trips to the emergency room for allergy attacks and went to just about every doctor known to man to figure out why I was all of a sudden having such a bad reaction. I thought it was from a new medicine but they seem to think it didn’t look like a reaction to medicine. They biopsied my skin and ended up putting me on a HIGH dose of prednisone for a couple of weeks. End result is that it was/is a reaction to something I have come into contact with but they don’t know what. The best guess is that this is a really bad spring season and the trees are trying to kill me. :)

During all of these reactions we took a week and drove down to Ocala to pick up mom’s trailer. It was all fixed up but needed a lot of WD40 to get into all of the locks from it sitting for a month. While in Ocala my mom and I stopped to see my grandfather at hospice. He seemed more alert to me than he did when we saw him last. He was suffering from pneumonia the last time we saw him and ended up at the hospital. He is now at hospice. He doesn’t have a feeding tube but is still eating pureed food. The Parkinson’s makes it extremely difficult for him to swallow. I asked him if there was anything he wanted to eat because he wasn’t eating much the day we were there. He used to love lemon meringue pie and I told him I would make him one if he would eat it so I went back to the RV and made him some little tarts and brought those back with some ice cream. His wife and her daughter said he ate all of them. They have his memorial service planned for the end of May but I am starting to wonder if he may be alive for his own service. :) I have tough grandpas.

My other grandpa was kicked out of hospice in Savannah and was sent back to a nursing home. They have now written him up in their journal as one of their success stories. When we stopped to see him before leaving for Florida we had to track him down because he is now spending his days wheeling around the hallways singing.

While in Florida we stayed in Tampa at Lazydays Rallypark. They had a nice pool that I took the kids to one day and they have free breakfast and lunch at the park Monday-Saturday so the kids got to ride their bikes everyday to get meals. I bought Josh a small bicycle while in Statesboro and once we got to Tampa he figured out right away how to ride it and now he is always wanting to ride bikes. Nathan and I spent his $500 gift card at Camping World while there as well. We bought 2 folding bikes with bags and a hitch that goes between the RV and the truck that holds the kid’s bikes. We are putting our bikes in the back seat of the truck while we are driving since they are folded in bags.

Mom had a chance to catch up with old friends while in Tampa. She spent the time we were there staying at her college roomates house. They went out to adult things like nice meals and shows. :) The day before we left mom and I drove to Orlando and attended the wedding of my cousin, Brian. It was a nice wedding held lakeside with a beach atmosphere. There was a luah theme to it including a show during the reception. It was nice to see both of my aunts in one place and get to visit with them without having to worry what the kids were up to. Nathan stayed in Tampa with them. The only bad part of the evening was that we got home at midnight and were up at 7:00 the next morning to get everything ready for a long day on the road. We took turns driving because we had to drive the RV pulling the trailer and someone else had to drive the truck separately. It was a tiring day but we made it back to Atlanta in one day.

We are now in Stone Mountain. Mom traded the trailer in for her truck camper on Tuesday and she has spent the week getting everything settled inside. She had to throw out a few more things and she says that the truck camper will keep her in good shape because she has to climb to get to everything in it. Punch has a new bed in the aisle by the door so she can sleep on somewhere soft because she cannot get up on anything either. I need to go out and walk Misty in a minute and while I am out there I will walk to mom’s site and take some pictures so I can show what is now going to be pulled behind us. I will have to wait until we get to a large parking lot so I can update the picture on the front of the blog to show the truck behind us.