Update on Patricia’s health:

As some of you know, I stayed home to be with Patricia rather than attend LibertyCon. She was having health problems and I wanted to be with her.
Patricia has suffered from acid reflux disease all her life. Last spring she suffered an attack so bad that she aspirated acid, and had to go to the doctor, who gave her some new meds as well as an inhaler.
She’s had a few more attacks since then, and two weeks ago she started having chest pains and shortness of breath. A doctor’s visit and x-ray showed she has scarring on her lungs, probably caused by aspirating acid over the years. The doctor said it looked like she had emphysema.
They also saw an enlarged heart, and agreed to schedule a visit to a cardiologist. The following weekend was LibertyCon, so I’m sure you understand why I didn’t go.
Between her sore throat, plus apparently some side effect of the medicine, Patricia stopped eating, and so she became very weak. That probably slowed her recovery. By Monday she still felt bad enough that we decided to go to the ER of a hospital in Texarkana.
That was a complete waste of time. If you didn’t see what I wrote, there’s a link to my story about that earlier on my wall.
By Monday night she started to eat again and by Tuesday and Wednesday she started recovering. We went to a follow-up visit to the doctor on Friday. He had good news. He had a radiologist look at the previous x-ray, and he said there didn’t seem to be anything serious going on. Plus the BMP reading from the blood taken the previous week shows no sign of heart damage.
Patricia will still be going to a cardiologist in the future, in light of this scare, but I am happy to report she seems to have recovered. She back at work at the paper this past week and things are getting back to normal.
Thanks for all the expressions of concern. I’m sorry I missed the convention, but a health scare like this puts everything in perspective.