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Can we start the week over?

Greetings & Salutations Faithful Stapleton Blog Readers!

What a week! Jess, Petey, & I have all been put through the paces this week. If it doesn’ t kill you the Lord will only use it to make you stronger in your faith.

Lets start with Monday

Monday started out great, the morning was going well not running late Jess & I put Petey up for the day and started down the stairs and then I hear her scream. She has fallen down the steps in the townhouse again. Unfortunately this time she really hurt herself. She came down on her left elbow and then bounced down about 10 steps on her right hip, bumping off the side walls as she was going down the steps. While all the time leaving me a convenient trail of milk that allowed me to find her eventual resting place. That’s my Gracie! So I got her back up on her one good foot and took her to the ER. Now a little side note the last 2 times she has been to the Cabell Huntington Hospital ER it has been for fall injuries and this makes the third time in a row. So now we’re getting all the battered wife questions. (Is he always at home when you fall?), (So he was behind you on the steps?), (You had just bought an expensive purse & shoes?) After Jess had been examined and irradiated it was good news is no broken bones! She did however sustain a couple of sprains and was and still is very sore. All this is addition to the fact that she now has several areas of her body that are roughly the color of Barney the dinosaur. So I took her home to rest and heal for a few days.

Tuesday

I worked out of the house most of this week to help take care of Jess and we noticed that Petey was becoming lethargic, having labored breathing, and just plain was not acting right. So I took him to the Vet on Tuesday they pulled some blood work and he had almost no red blood
cells. I asked the doctor was wrong and she gives me 3 answers Bone Cancer, Autoimmune Disease, or a Tick Born Disease. The last one being the only one that is really treatable in dogs. Petey is only 4 and this news about killed us. If you have not figured it out yet it would be better for something to happen to one of us than to Petey. So the Vet wants to keeps him overnight in the Dog ICU unit (yes they have one) and if his numbers do not come back up he may need a blood transfusion. The Vet starts trying to give me estimates of what it is going to cost and I looked her straight in the eye and told her, I only ask for pricing on my wife’s medical bills the dog gets whatever he needs just do it! So we take Petey’s pillow and blanket over to leave with him at the vet and we return home. About 11:00 that night the Vet calls and says that Petey has responded very well to the IV fluids and medication they will call and let us know more tomorrow.

Wednesday

Jess is still laid up in bed, my dog is in ICU, & I am working out of the house. We call the vet and they want us to come to visit Petey in the afternoon. We get to the Vet and his red blood cell count has gone from 17 to 45! That is in the lower 1/3 of normal for a dog and they let us bring him home. The vet tells us that the way he responded she does not think that it is Bone Cancer. We looked at his blood under the microscope and there are dots in his red blood cells that are not suppose to be there. The vet tells use that they are going to send his blood off to an outside lab for a more detailed analysis. But the results won’t be back for a few days so we will have to wait. So all 3 of us go home very happy to be together again.

Thursday

Jess very painfully goes back to work, Petey is feeling a lot better, & I have to call on a customer today. Things were starting to look up at the Stapleton household although some clouds are still hanging over Petey’s health. Then I get a call that Uncle Sam is in ICU with pneumonia, he is on a respirator and unresponsive. For those of you who do not know my Uncle Sam has only 17% lung capacity left so this news carries more then it’s normal weight for us. Then Jess returns to work and finds out that a co-worker of hers has blood clots in his lungs and is going to have surgery on Friday. So with this news in tow I left about 11:00 to go on my call. I had a good meeting but I did not get home until about 9:00 that night. I come home and Petey is staring to breathe a little harder and there is no change in Uncle Sam. Now to be honest by now anytime Petey sniffles we are ready to call in every vet for 500 miles & just give them the AMEX card. So we decide to take Petey back to the Vet on Friday for another blood pull to check on his progress and continue to pray for Uncle Sam.

Friday

I go back into the office, Jess goes to work, Uncle Sam is in ICU, Jess’s friend is being operated on, & Petey is sleeping on his temperpedic bed. My bad day starts before I even get to the office with my cell phone ringing. I work in Banking Technology & Jess is in Human Services so we can not give too many details about our bad days (sorry). But today my bad day was mostly my fault I had made a error that took me all day to get corrected and worked out for the customer. The fact that the problem was my fault irritated me even more. However on the bright side Jess got some awesome news at work about a client so we leveled each other out. Then I get home that evening to take Petey & Jess to the Vet. While we are at the Vet we are told that all the blood work is not back yet but we have enough of the results to learn that Petey does NOT have an Autoimmune Disease and at this point anything that is going to come back in the blood work is treatable! We pulled some more blood and his stats are level at 45, we ask the doctor some more questions and with our worries satisfied and Petey doing great for as sick as he is we go home. So it’s Friday night Jess & Petey are both getting better! But then I called to check on Uncle Sam and there is no change.

It’s Saturday morning now and things are all looking up except for Uncle Sam. I feel very fortunate that Jess & I got to visit with him for about an 1 1/2 hours last Sunday. To be honest I do not get up there as much as I should but it was nice that we visited with Uncle Sam on a good day. He was feeling well, very conversational, and just plain awnry. We are all hoping for the best for Uncle Sam and keeping him in our prayers. Well that’s the week thus far in the Stapleton household. Can we take a do over?

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Catching up the Blog

Greetings & Salutations faithful Stapleton Blog Readers.

Let’s see it has been a while since a good update so here goes. Since my last update I have been to Gulfport, Mississippi for a Mission trip and been working like a dog! (Not a dog life like Petey lives, I am talking a work dog like a Sheppard Dog or something, maybe that’s why things have to be in order so much? But I digress.) I was buried before I left on vacation and came back to only 100 or so emails which wasn’t bad but it took my 3 days just to figure out what needed to be done. Like I have said before my job is great it just keeps me busy. I learned the other day that I will end up with 9 customers which range in geography from Marietta, OH to Elkins WV to Peterstown, WV. I know people look at the number 9 like it is small but I am basically a Customer Service & Project Manager to these Banks as well as a consultant of sorts. With 9 banks so far spread out and an average of a 20 day working month that means I spend almost half my month on the road behind a windshield and that number doesn’t included other special trips out to the banks besides my monthly calls, which can be frequent. So I am going to try to be as efficient as possible in order to keep up.

Jess has been pretty busy too she has been trying to fit in her business travel around mine and it has not been easy I have been out 3 ½ of the last 6 weeks. The other day she celebrated her third year at Autism Services Center. She is doing awesome in her job and she gets to help others everyday which she loves. Jess & I have some pretty exciting things on the horizon. Starting the week of July 10th Jess & I are back house hunting I am hoping that we can find something that we like and that the real estate committee I mean Jessica will like. I really don’t want to move any further than Barboursville, my drive is subsidized and we would have to pay for Jess to drive into to work so something like a Teays Valley location is out as far as I am concerned. We are also going to our first Communication Team meeting tomorrow for our 40 Days of Community campaign that our church is going to have this fall. This is addition to what we normally do for Church and Work we are looking at being very busy way into the fall. Our lives are tiring but rewarding so I guess we shouldn’t complain, but man we are tired. Well everyone take care, that’s the news and I am outta here.

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Gulfport Mississippi Mission Trip

Greetings & Salutations faithful Stapleton Blog Readers.

Well I have finally got around to posting a report on my mission trip to Gulfport Mississippi. First of all I feel the need to give some background information on how we found our way down to the Gulfport area. Last year about a week after Hurricane Katrina struck our Church which is packed with engineers and medical personnel (so if you need to build something we are there and if we get hurt doing it we have staff on hand) felt compelled to do something to help in the aftermath of Katrina. So our church got in contact with a medical group that was working in the Hurricane area just inside Mississippi. So the Church through generous donations and offerings were able to pack a few trucks and trailers with medical and other supplies. The first group left a little under 2 weeks after Katrina hit. Once our first group got to their destination they were told that no one knew they were coming and that their help was not needed but they knew where they were needed. So the group headed further south into Gulfport, Mississippi not knowing what to expect or what they would find. While the team was driving through Gulfport they came upon St. James Baptist church located just about 4 blocks from the gulf. This church is lead by Pastor Eddie Hartwell and had fashioned itself as a disaster recovery & supply distribution center. So our team stopped there they set up a clinic and those who were not medical personnel started taking care of other needs in the community. Our first team stayed about a week and the following week we sent in another team that did pretty much the same work. We have stayed in contact with Pastor Hartwell since then and learned he had setup a non-profit corporation and had started through donations to rebuild housing in the area. Our Pastor Greg Creasy wrote a grant to the National Baptist Convention to aid in the Disaster Recovery Ministry. So our church and several other churches in West Virginia are sending down several teams this year to aid in the reconstruction, that’s how I ended up in Gulfport Mississippi for a week in May.

So here’s my part of the story I cannot begin to tell you the destruction and devastation that still exists in the areas where Katrina struck. Things are just now getting to the point where people can begin to rebuild. Communities are still in recovery mode, there was a 38 foot storm surge in the Gulfport area. Houses were literally washed off of their foundation and moved inland. One person, one organization, or one government agency is not going to be enough to help this area recover we all must do our part to take help others make this area livable again. We are better together and can accomplish anything if we all just do a small part to help out. If you are a Christian I ask you to please help in Christian love if you are not a believer in Christ I would ask you to help out of shear human decency. There are still people hurting everyday where Katrina struck. In fact there is one facility called Katrina’s Kitchen that is still serving 1000’s of meal daily, just because this is no longer front page news does not mean the problem has passed. People are trying to help themselves but in many cases they are unable to. Most of the employment centers for the area were along the ocean front and were obliterated. Just a little bit further west of Gulfport there were 2 towns called Wayland & Past Christian. These towns were in the path of the eye wall of the Hurricane and were literally wiped of the face of the earth. They have merged in an attempt to draw people back in and generate enough of a tax base to start rebuilding.

With all this destruction what did I do to help? First all of I did not go alone I was joined by Pastor Greg Creasy & Lynn Hudson from my church, Ron Alyestock, Pastor Mark Jarrell, & Becky Vandergriff from Genesis Fellowship Church, & Daniel Beiling from Fist Baptist Church of Ravenswood. We went down for a week to work with the St. James Baptist Church Disaster Recovery Ministry. While we were there we helped in finishing out a house and did some other odd and ends. Like I said in an earlier post “Using power tools for the Lord it doesn’t get any better”! We had a good week of fellowship and very tiring work. When I set back and think about all that we did in the grand scheme of things it really did not amount to a hill of beans for what needs to be accomplished in the area. I believe that Mrs. Adkins will love her new home and she will likely not know that I had anything to do with it and that’s ok. This is all about living for the lord and helping his children, hopefully the work that we did that week brought the lord some small amount of glory. One of the hardest things that I had to get over when I became a Christian is that “it’s not about me”. That’s still a hard one that I must work at every day and frankly sometimes I fail miserably. But I get up the next day and try it again. There is one thing that I can be absolutely positive of however. A small group doing their part to aid in the recovery of Katrina made a small difference in a life and if we all try to do that just some of the time, the world could be a much better place.

Thanks for stopping by to read, that’s the news and I am outta here.

Link to a write up on the trip.

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May 23, 2006 By Jake Stapleton

Greetings all just wanted to drop a quick note to let everyone know that I am back from my mission trip to Mississippi. The trip went very well and I will do a full posting later on this week. I have also done some changes to the layout of the web site please feel free to respond and let me know what you think. Take care I will talk to you all soon. – Jake