Prayers Answered

The past few weeks have been busy for us. Catherine is doing much better from her surgery. She is now back to work after taking 3-4 weeks off. Her work is excited to have her back.

We received a call from our property manager for the house we are currently renting. They told us the land owner would like to sell the house, but have us stay until the house is sold. We decided that would not be in our best interest since our lease is up April 30th. So we looked really hard to find a new house to rent. Our prayers were answered when we found a nice rambler in Riverton. It is 3000 square feet with a 2 car garage and plenty of storage. We got the okay to rent the house just this afternoon (3/29/09). We are very excited.

So Monte will be planning the moving crew this next month. We will take possession of the house on 4/15/09 (Tax Day).

So that is the news from the Monte Stark family this week.

A Week To Remember

Some things in life happen to make you think and reflect. This happened for our family just last week.

To preface the week, last Sunday we found out a person in our ward passed away in a fire just down the road where will live. This event got my mind working and that night I dreamed that something happen to Catherine at work and that I would have be a widowed father with three kids under the age of eight. I am so glad that is not true.

Well, On Thursday morning at 2:30 am Catherine woke up with sharp pain in her stomach area and vomiting. She woke me at 3 am to give her a blessing, I did, but the symptoms did not go away. I called into work to take care of Catherine for the day, thinking it is real bad case of the stomach flu. But the pain nor the vomiting did not stop since 2:30 am. So the kids and I took Catherine to the ER to be checked out. The Pain was so bad that Catherine needed a wheelchair when we got to the hospital.

They said they needed to do some tests and an ultrasound to check her out. While they are doing that, Jen was very kind to take the kids until this was done. When I got back to the hospital, they had already done the ultrasound and found that Catherine had Gallstones trying to leave the Gallbladder, which was causing the pain and vomiting.

Catherine need surgery to remove the Gallbladder; this was the only way to solve the symptoms. The surgery went fine and the Dr. even offered to give us the Gallstones. We kindly declined. So Catherine was in hospital all day Thursday and came home Friday afternoon.

She is now resting and will be out from work for three weeks. She struggles a little bit, because they had to make three small incision in her abdomen. You never know how much of a muscle you use until it has been cut or damaged.I want to personally thank Jen Stark (my sister-in-law) in watching our kids (Bronwyn, Connor and Danielle) Thursday. She helped me to focus on Catherine during this time. I know that if we where still leaving in Minnesota this would have been a tough challenge for our family.

I am grateful that this was not as serious as it could have been. Gallstones are not dangerous unless they try to leave the Gallbladder or rupture the Gallbladder.

Thank you for your thoughts, calls and prayers.