Luke’s Notebook

I also wanted to give a brief update on my knee. I have been so blessed to have people from all over the place inquire about my knee, and tell me that they’re praying for a speedy recovery. So in addition to saying a big “thank you” to everybody for everything, I also want to just let you know what is going on here.

Not a whole lot has changed since I wrote that. My knee is still pretty swollen, and I still have some very interesting bruises on my quad. I am pretty convinced, though, that it is not a knee injury per se. From talking to the doctor this morning, this is probably what happened.

I tore something. Maybe it’s a tendon, maybe it’s a muscle. Something was/is torn, though, and that explains the large amount of bruising and swelling. The reason my knee is hurting so much through this is simply because of the pressure that is put on my knee from the loose fluid. So it causes my knee to hurt a lot, but it doesn’t seem like the injury is to the knee.

As far as the injured area itself, it really doesn’t hurt that badly. It’s sore, kind of similar to a pulled muscle in the thigh, but it really isn’t that terrible. Of course, to be fair, I haven’t really tested it at all beyond walking and climbing stairs. But it just doesn’t seem to be that bad.

With visiting the doctor this morning, I came away with good news and bad news. The good news was that so far, this doesn’t seem like this will have to end in surgery. I’m thinking the chances of that are pretty slim, thankfully.

The bad news, really, was it sounds like I may just have to more or less wait this out, for the body to resorb the extra fluid, which sometimes just takes a really long time. The doctor talked about the possibility of draining the knee, but he said doing that right now would be a bad idea, and that the knee would basically just fill up again, until the tear has healed.

Honestly, I was hoping that somehow he would say, “Hey, this doesn’t look that bad. Let me get a needle, and we’ll get your knee back down to size.” Evidently that would be a little premature, but it sounds like that could be a possibility down the road, if after the bruising goes away this loose fluid doesn’t also start to move out.

So we’ll see what happens. Really, this is very good news in the sense that it looks like whatever was torn was not actually hurt badly enough to require a surgical fix. So that is awesome! Thank God. But I guess me, getting a little too ambitious, was hoping that somehow I could be good to go within a couple of days, and fit in a few more softball games before it’s all said and done. But, it doesn’t sound like that’s very likely.

As far as a prognosis goes, my guess is that the worst is over, and that within a week or two we’ll see some serious improvements. I’m optimistic that I won’t even need to see another doctor. We’ll just have to see how things play out, but either way it is just comforting to know what’s going on. I know that, yes, something was torn, but, no, it doesn’t seem to be any huge concern.

What really makes me laugh about this injury is that it is affecting me more, “disabling” me more than the injury to my right knee, for which I had surgery on last fall! I had the surgery on a Wednesday morning, and the following Tuesday I was back at the Y! Granted, I was hobbling around and not in any shape for running a marathon anything, but still! It’s just kind of funny how it works.

I will say one thing, though. Once I’m healed up from this, I want to get back to running. In recent months at the YMCA, I have kind of cut back on actually running, but I want to get back into that! Historically, I haven’t even ever been a big runner, but I am really eager to get back on the track or treadmill and start burning some calories and gaining some speed!

Thanks once again to everybody who has let me know that they are praying for me to heal up quickly. It means a lot that you all would pray, and would take the time to write in and let me know. I’m pretty blessed!

First things first. We have been making a few changes to FamTeam. Some small, and others fairly major. Two biggies are the revamped Dad’s Diary section, which now provides much easier access to the thousands of archived entries. Since the Diary dates back to September of 2000, and Dad has written an entry nearly every day since then, we have quite the collection of old entries!

So if you look at the Diary, you’ll notice that there is now the Archives column on the right, where you can easily jump to a given month. Additionally, now the Diary will display roughly 30 entries per page, which should also make browsing much easier. And, as a bonus, you can now search through the entries.

The only downside to this setup is that some of the older entries look kind of funny with their formatting. As an example, browse to February of 2003. You’ll see how there are some odd line breaks. It’s still very readable, but it just looks a little strange.

I’m trying to figure out a good way to fix those, but it’s a little tricky as there are hundreds, and possibly over a thousand, entries with that similar problem. Short of manually editing them, which could take some time, I am not totally sure what to do. Thankfully, they are not that bad, though. Slightly funky, but it could be worse.

(Which gets me thinking… anybody interested in putting some of your free time to good use?? I might just have a job for you!)

The second major change within the past few days is the addition of the Dad’s Fireside Chat player, which provides easy access to old Fireside Chats. In the past, you could download the MP3s to your computer, but here you are able to play them immediately, right from the website. Pretty nifty! Check it out at http://famteam.com/chat/. Keep in mind that these are the older-generation Fireside Chats. The newer ones ( from 2008 ) are being archived, but are not yet available on FamTeam.

Those are the two major changes. A minor addition is a new how-to page for tuning in to the webcasts. It has visual step-by-step instructions for both Internet Explorer and Firefox users, so hopefully it will make tuning in to a webcast very simple.

That’s pretty much it as far as the changes to FamTeam! Hope you all enjoy them, and as always we love to hear suggestions for any way we can improve the site!

This morning, much to my surprise, I learned that I might just be through with softball for 2008.

During our game on Thursday evening, I hurt my left knee when sliding into second base. It was a bad slide, and I ended up pretty much just landing straight on my knee, with a great deal of force. Immediately, the knee started swelling, and in just minutes it had expanded quite a bit.

Throughout the rest of the night, it hurt quite a bit, and I just couldn’t get over how swollen it was and how much it was hurting. I have hurt my knees plenty of times in the past, but this was definitely something new, and I wasn’t sure exactly what was going on. Still, though, I was optimistic that the swelling would go down, and that a day or two later I would be in much better shape.

Things haven’t really improved that much in the last six days, and it’s still pretty swollen. There has gotten to be a large bruised/discolored area around my left quadriceps muscle, and it still hurts a lot — especially when standing up.

When I’m sitting or lying down, it’s really pretty tolerable. But once I stand up, and the fluid has a chance to move its way down and on to my knee, it’s very painful. When I’m standing, and when the fluid is down on the knee, it actually feels and looks like a water balloon. But when gravity isn’t pulling everything down to the knee, it’s less swollen, and it doesn’t feel so bad.

Anyway, obviously I realized that this wasn’t just a normal sprain when a few days passed and my knee was still quite swollen. Still, I thought the problem might simply be what they call “water on the knee,” meaning that the doctor may just have to go in and drain the excess fluid, and that would be that.

So this morning, I went in to see the doctor. He couldn’t be totally sure what the problem was, but he said that he thinks it may be a tear in the quadriceps muscle. Due to the tenderness and the bruising, he thought that might be the case. He ordered an x-ray, which I subsequently had taken, and told me to return on Monday morning. I suppose by then he will have had a chance to look at the x-rays, and will have a better idea of what’s going on. Also, as five more days pass, I’m sure it will be very telling to see what happens between now and then with my knee. Will it improve at all? Stay the same?

He was also mentioning the likelihood of wanting to get an MRI scan done, as that would be able to show a tear. I’m not sure what kind of treatment he’ll have in mind, but I would imagine that if I start to improve by Monday, we may be able to just wait it out and see if it heals on its own.

I don’t know much about this type of injury — and in fact have spent a little time today Googling, trying to learn about the different scenarios — but I don’t think surgery is likely, at least as of now. I understand that if it was a complete tear or rupture of the muscle, then surgery might be required. But I’m pretty sure that’s not the case, because I can still walk on it and flex my leg, although it’s not very easy.

What I do know, though, is that it’s not a smart idea to continue with softball, or anything aside from walking. And as we have about three weeks of ball left, I’m kind of thinking that this may be it.

I’m not going to rule it out, and I’m definitely praying that God would just speed up the healing process. It’s really kind of funny, because this was such a freak injury. It was a bad slide, granted, but I just couldn’t believe the immediate swelling and pain, and then, moreover, that something could possibly be torn! I thought I would just have a sore knee for a day or two from the impact alone, just as if I had hit it against a wall or something.

Oh, well! That’s the way it goes sometimes! I’m thankful that this wasn’t worse, and I’m extremely thankful for everything else that is functioning just fine these days! It’s times like this where I realize how grateful I need to be every day when I have the ability to just walk up and down stairs with ease — simple things like that. And I’m pretty confident that those days aren’t that far away!

I can’t sleep!

This is a little embarrassing to admit, but I am just giddy. Tomorrow morning, I plan to drive on over to the South County Mall in order to pick up 10 brand-new BlackBerry Curves.

I made a blog post back on August 29th, explaining how we might be switching over to Sprint for our cell phone service. Well, this afternoon Dad and I went over to the mall to have lunch, and to take a look at some of the available phones that Sprint has to offer. So we drove on over there, and the friendly workers at the Sprint kiosk let us play with a few of their different phones — specifically, the HTC Touch, HTC Mogul, Palm Treo 800w, and the BlackBerry Curve 8330.

What was unexpected, and what kind of blew me away, was the offer that the worker gave me when I told him that we were thinking of opening up a 10-line account. The long and short of it is, he made a pretty incredible offer, and we’re going to take the plunge.

This will allow us to have 10 phones that have access to e-mail, the web, Sprint’s nifty GPS service, and an assortment of other things. And, by the way, we’ll get to do so on these nifty BlackBerry Curves!

Now, for some reason, he also offered a tremendous deal on these Curves, making them pretty much on par with almost any “regular,” less-fancy phone out there. If you’re not familiar with the Curves, they’re pretty attractive:

So I’ve just been ecstatic! If all goes well — and so far, it seems like things are moving along just fine — then this just revolutionizes things. It opens up a whole new realm of possibilities for us, and I keep brainstorming about how this can affect FamTeam.

Already we have the capability to make photo and voice posts on FamTeam Today. But what else can we do? If we think outside of the box, we might be able to come up with some innovative features. At the very least, it should make posting in FamTeam Today much, much easier for everybody, which would be a great help on its own.

As things stand now, we won’t actually have our service activated until Monday, October 6th. So we’ll have 13 days to play around with these cool little BlackBerries before we can actually use them to make a phone call or get online. But, time is flying, so that’s going to be here before we know it.

This all seems a little too good to be true! To imagine being able to save on our monthly cell phone bill, yet add on all of these new features, and be able to get these great new phones? It’s very exciting!!

I’m eager to play around with my BlackBerry, although at the moment I’m leaning towards trying to sell it or trade it for a different phone, specifically one with Windows Mobile, like the HTC Mogul. One big reason I want a “WinMo” phone is because I can actually remote-control computers from my phone… which means that pretty much anywhere I have cell phone service, I should be able to log in to somebody’s computer (whether it’s Dad’s, Mom’s, a friend’s, or a client’s), and control their computer remotely! The idea still fascinates me.

But anyway, that’s why I am considering swapping my BlackBerry for something else. With this great deal on the BB Curve, though, it should make it easy to sell it, and then buy a Mogul or some other such phone that can do the remote feature. Whatever the case, I’d say that’s a pretty good problem to have.

To think… it was only six years ago that I got my first cell phone, the Kyocera 2135:

Wow, how things have changed!! It’s kind of scary to think what we’ll be using six years from now, but I bet these stylish trendy BlackBerry Curves will look pretty archaic then!!

On Friday morning, Mom, Mark, and Jude hit the road with Grandma and Grandpa in their RV. They plan to take a two-week trip out west, visiting the Grand Canyon and some other national parks in the area.

What is so remarkable is that six days before their departure — that is, last Saturday — Grandma had to be rushed to the hospital, after she passed out at home. Thankfully, Grandpa was right there with her when she did, and he was able to get help immediately.

Several hours later, she had had emergency operation to install a pacemaker, as evidently her heart was just starting to slow down, and getting ready to come to a stop. If Grandpa had not been there with her at that time, her heart may have just stopped beating altogether.

So we are all super thankful, obviously, that Grandma is doing well, and has rebounded from the surgery, healthy enough to leave for vacation less than a week after being taken to the hospital via ambulance.

Throughout this whole ordeal, in learning how Grandpa handled the situation, I was reminded what being pro-life really means. See, my grandma is not in very good health. She has Alzheimer’s disease. For the past several years, she hasn’t really been able to do much of anything herself.

She is extremely pleasant to be with, but she just doesn’t really do or say anything without being prompted. When you ask her a simple question, she’ll oftentimes answer it. When she doesn’t, she just looks at you and smiles.

Anyway, evidently at the hospital, Grandpa had a decision to make. Considering her health, he could allow her to just kind of go as-is, and her heart would have just slowed down and eventually stopped there in the hospital. Or, they could rush and put a pacemaker in.

He told them to go ahead with the procedure, and, knowing Grandpa, I doubt he hesitated at all in giving them the answer. Fast-forward six days, and there they are, setting out on an ambitious RV trip.

Well, my grandpa is not in great health, himself. We had quite a scare down in St. Augustine, Florida, in February of 2007, when he had a small stroke as Paul and I were getting ready to leave a campsite with him and Grandma. We ended up rushing to a nearby hospital. Mom and Aunt Jane flew in immediately from St. Louis to Jacksonville. It was a very scary experience. (Blog entry from February 24, 2007.)

Back then, after he bounced back from the immediate health concerns – the stroke (or trans-ischemic attack) and then what they thought was an imminent large heart attack – after all of that, doctors estimated he might have another six months to a year.

Here we are, a year-and-a-half later, and Grandpa is still so full of life, so ambitious. It’s just so true-to-form with who he has been as long as I can remember. He’s just so pro-life. He loves life, and he just dives headfirst into it.

Back a few years ago, when we were building our house, Grandpa was so instrumental in helping us take care of different things. He even came out here in the blazing heat and helped us build the porch, among other things.

I just really admire him for his outlook on life. He has never been one to just pull back and take the safe approach, not risking anything. Heck, he has 10 children! Not only is he adamantly pro-life when it comes to unborn babies, but he’s also extremely pro-life for kids, for teens, for adults, and even older adults.

I think of what an outstanding example he has been, in so many ways. Over the past few years –- really, dating back to August of 2005, when Mark and I went on the first-ever RV trip with him and Grandma, a westward excursion -– I’m so thankful that we have gotten to really know him so much better, to get close to him and Grandma. What a great experience it has been!

It especially gets to me, because I know I have a tendency to pull back, to get intimidated, to maybe not be as ambitious or bold as I would like, and instead take the safe route when it comes to different things. But his life has been a great inspiration to be fearless, to meet life head-on, letting go and trusting God.

Earlier this evening, I walked into the kitchen to pour myself a glass of pink lemonade. I emptied the jug, so I decided to make another gallon of lemonade. I went ahead and put the jug in the sink, and turned on the drinking water.

We have a well, and so our water isn’t naturally as pure as can be. Our regular tap water passes through a filtration system, and then it goes to all of the faucets and the bathrooms in the house. Then our drinking water actually passes through a reverse-osmosis system, and it comes out as the perfect drinking water. That’s kind of a side point, but I just wanted to mention that, to give you an idea of what our water system is like out here.

Anyway, back to the story. So as I was filling this jug up, I was just kind of struck by how amazing it is that all of the water in our house — from the bathrooms, to the sinks, to the hoses, to the washing machines — everything — is fed by this one well that we have.

It’s roughly 40 feet deep, which is very shallow for a well, from what I understand. So it’s 40 feet deep, and it supplies a very, very active family of 16. We have been out here for nearly five years, and it has never shown any signs of slowing down! In fact, I can still go out and walk over to where the well is, and the grass surrounding it is almost always wet, simply because it’s just kind of overflowing a little bit.

I am so grateful that we have such a powerful well, such a great and reliable source of water. But since it is a well, and we’re not city-fed or anything, there’s always the thought, “Well, what if it dries up? What if we just simply use up all of the water?” Seriously, what could we do if we just… couldn’t find water? If the well dries up, we’re in trouble. That is our one and only source for water.

So in a sense, there’s a bit of a helpless feeling, knowing that we simply have no control over what is in that well. But, amazingly, it has been just shooting water out for five years now.

It’s just so humbling to see how wise God is, how brilliant it was to have underwater streams that can be tapped in to, so that people who live out in a field can still have water. It’s just such a smart design.

And this is just one of countless examples of just how good we have it. Not only do we have access to water, but we don’t have to go outside and pump it. We don’t even have to pump it inside. And not only that, but it’s purified! All of the sulfur, iron, and other gunk in the water gets taken out, and by the time it reaches the kitchen sink, it’s crystal-clear.

We just are so blessed. It’s popular to say “God bless America,” but how about America simply thanking God? We just have it so good, it’s almost embarrassing. We really need to make sure that we are humble and thankful towards God, for all of these amazing things that we just so easily take for granted! Thank You, God!!

I was just reading through Exodus 16 and 17, where the Israelites are traveling through the desert after being freed from Egypt, and here they are, griping about being hungry, complaining about being thirsty.

It always is so striking to me to wonder what in the world they could have been thinking! I mean, they have just witnessed several miracles in Egypt, and God even parted the Red Sea for them to cross!

Yet, here they are, several weeks later… complaining. “If only we had died by the LORD’s hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death.” After that, God rained down manna in the morning and quail in the evening for them to eat.

Then, later on, they were thirsty, and again they grumbled to Moses. “Why did you bring us up out of Egypt to make us and our children and livestock die of thirst?” So after that, Moses asked God what to do, and God had him strike a stone, and water poured out.

In a way, it’s very puzzling to wonder just what in the world they were thinking. First, God delivers them from slavery in Egypt, then He provides food for them ever day, and then water from a stone. Yet still — still! — they went on to rebel against Him.

Sadly, this is kind of familiar. So many times, I will worry about the future, about things that I don’t have the answer to, and I’ll start to wonder if perhaps God forgot about me, or if I need to take matters into my own hands.

I quickly forget the amazing — simply amazing — things that God has done in the past, all of the times God has shown that, yes, He is on the ball, He does have a plan, and He will continue to lead.

My memory can just be so short sometimes. It’s like, I can’t deny these things that God has done, all of these countless times that God has just had an incredible plan. Yet, I still find myself thinking, “Yeah, I know, but…” as if this time — this time — will somehow be the exception. This will be the time where God doesn’t come through. Somehow, this worry, this concern, this problem is just something that God hasn’t thought of before.

It makes no sense. It really doesn’t. I’m kind of ashamed to admit that I can so quickly forget the promises that have come true, just the countless checkpoints along the way, as if God was giving the thumbs-up, saying, “You’re right where I want you to be.”

Well, what is helping me more and more lately is to just get down to facts. Either God is steering this thing, or He isn’t. It’s either yes or no. So since I have so much evidence of past instances where He has so clearly been orchestrating things, I really have no good reason to doubt, to think that He will stop, especially when, at the end of the day, I just want to do what He wants me to do.

I know that’s pretty easy to say — “I want to do God’s will.” It’s another thing to actually do it, to be willing to give up anything. I have thought about this, and I know that I really do want to be smack-dab in the center of His will for me. Not because I think that being there will mean an easy life, a wealthy life, or anything like that. But simply because I know that nothing can replace the peace of knowing that you’re doing what God wants you to do.

Even if it’s a very humble position — say God tells me to go be a garbageman — well, I really believe that nothing else would ever match the kind of peace that would come with doing what He said, whatever it is, just because He said it.

I’ll admit that I have my preferences, and I think I even may have a few talents here and there, but I don’t want to just assume that “doing God’s will” means fame, or means money, or means an easy ride. I just am convinced that nothing can come close to hearing God say, “Well done. You did what I wanted you to do.” I know money won’t match that. Friends won’t. Nothing else will.

So now, I’m pretty encouraged, confident that God can get through to me, can continue to send me marching orders. There is no reason to think that these are suddenly going to stop, that all of a sudden God is going to cut me loose and say, “Well, Luke, you’re on your own.” Those worries, although they can be so common and feel so very real, are actually completely baseless, and I just need to do a better job at trashing them before I start buying into them.

I’ve been meaning to announce this for quite some time, but I have recently started up a new blog over on our ArndtComputer.com site. It’s called the Tech Stuff Blog, and you can reach it here. As the name implies, it’s primarily about technology-related stuff — whether it be software, hardware, gadgets — whatever.

I initially thought about just making those posts here in this blog, but I decided it might be nice to have a separate location for the tech-related posts. I still may cross-post some entries, though. I’m not totally sure on that one.

At any rate, feel free to check it out! It’s at www.arndtcomputer.com/blog/. Hope you enjoy!