July 26, 2011

Dear Family,

This week has been good...a lot like the last two weeks, but good. On Tuesday evening at the devotional, they took a picture of all the missionaries in the MTC. This is the second time they've ever done it, the last time being 10 yrs ago. so if you've ever been to the MTC and seen the panoramic picture of everyone, I'm in the new one they just took like that.

Thursday was the first time we taught in the TRC. We were lucky enough to have a volunteer from Serbia who has only been a member of the church for 15 months I think. He was pretty awesome. We didn't have too long to teach him, and at the rate we speak Croatian, it takes a lot of time to get anything across, but we got to know him for a few minutes, and then we talked about faith, how it motivates us to action, and how those actions in turn build our faith. We asked him to read Moroni 7 and then to make a goal of how he could strengthen his faith, and we made goals as well. I love the new way they do TRC. It's awesome.

One of the progressing investigators we've been teaching is named Marilena (she's actually Sestra Carter, one of our teachers). Yesterday we taught her probably the best lesson that Starjesina Mulder and I have ever taught. We were planning on teaching about the plan of salvation, but we ended up just talking about the holy ghost and prayer, that God is our father and he wants to hear from us, and that he is willing to give us knowledge that we seek. Even though Marilena isn't actually a real person, it's amazing how the spirit still tells me what she needs to hear and what will help her be happier and come closer to Christ.

So, the 50 words a day goal didn't quite work. I learned 150 words last week, which is still a lot, but not quite the 250 I planned to do. That was still a lot of words.

The temple is open again! I'm so glad. We get to go there later today. I'm excited.

So, I learned on Wednesday that the sister missionaries have been moved from Zagreb to a city farther east, i think it's called something like Osijek. so now they're there and in Zadar.

I didn't get a lot of sleep last night. First of all, I had a lot of trouble falling asleep, and second of all, at 2am I was woken up by the most shrill fire alarm I've ever heard. maybe it was more shrill because I was asleep, but it was pretty loud and obnoxious. I was so confused; I had no idea what was going on for like 2 minutes. Then we sat outside for a few minutes until they said we could go back to bed.

I've decided that 2 Nephi is pretty much my favorite chapter in all of the scriptures. read it if you get a chance, even if you've never read it, or if you've read it a million times. It's awesome. (scriptures.lds.org)

I decided to read the whole book of mormon before leaving the mtc. that's about 10 pages a day. I've really enjoyed doing that. It's great to read a little at a time, but there's something special about reading it fast all at once. I love that book

That's my week. Thank you for your prayers and support. I love you all. I know that God loves you and knows everything that you go through. Turn to him and you will see his power blessing your life. Have a wonderful week!

Love,
Sestra Black

week 2

Drugi Obitelj, (except i don't know the vocative form for family. oh well)

This week has been really good. I love being a missionary. I'm learning the language really fast, but I still get really frustrated that I know how to say very little, and it takes a century just to say one sentence. I'm glad I have patient teachers.

I talked to my teacher, Sister Carter, who got back from Croatia a year ago, and she says there are only 2 cities where sister missionaries serve--Zadar and Zagreb. There are only 4 sisters currently in Croatia. One has been in Croatia for 3 weeks now, 2 have been there for 11ish, and 1 is coming home when I go out. So when I get out there, my trainer will have been out there for only 4 months. Crazy, huh?

They've been making a lot of changes here in the MTC in how they're teaching us. Because they've been putting so much more emphasis on having us focus on the needs of the people we're teaching and tailoring our lessons to what they need in their lives, there are a lot of changes. For instance, the people who we're teaching in the TRC are no longer supposed to pretend to be not members of the church. They're supposed to be themselves, and we're supposed to help them, as members, come closer to Christ by teaching the basic principles of the gospel. We still teach during class to our teachers and each other as we pretend to not be members of our church though. On Friday, we learned that the investigator we had been teaching was actually the Slovenian teacher, who also knows Croatian. It made it more real though to not know who he was.

Now we're teaching Marilena, who is actually Sister Carter, one of my teachers, but she's pretending to be a non-practicing Catholic from Zagreb. It's so much easier to understand her than Uroš, our old investigator. Partly because she wasn't throwing in Slovenian words, but partly because she talks more slowly.

I watched the new Joseph Smith movie on Sunday. It's really good. I would highly recommend it. It's made from the old one that they showed in visitors' centers, but they've taken out a lot of stuff and added other scenes.

So, some elders in my district have decided that they will learn 50 words a day, besides Sundays and P-days, and I couldn't have them passing me up, so I'm doing it with them. It's crazy. That's a lot of words to memorize in one day. I've still got 13 words left to catch up from yesterday. The elders in my district are so good at memorizing. It's not fair.

Wow, 30 minutes isn't very long. I need to get better at writing these.

I know that God lives and loves me. I know that the Book of Mormon testifies of Jesus Christ as does the Bible. We can find more happiness in life by reading those books than by any other book. I love you all. Have a wonderful week.

Sestra Ariana Black

PS- thanks to whoever sent the cookies. they were very yummy.
Also, someone who knows Sabina could tell her that her email didn't go through, that would be great.

First Week at the MTC

Dear Family, (and friends listening in)
Dobar Dan!

I love it here at the MTC. I have the most awesome district and companions. I'm a solo sister, which means I'm the only sister going to Croatia right now. There are 7 other elders going to Croatia, and 2 elders going to Slovenia in my district.

My companions are wonderful. I have one companion named Sestra Izatt, and one named CECTPA Meyers. Sestra Izatt is going to the Czech Republic. She's 6 ft tall, blonde, and looks like a super model, only prettier. She is very friendly and has a wonderful testimony. She left a boyfriend at home. She has a wonderful laugh. CECTPA (that's sestra in cyrillic) Meyers is going to bulgaria. She's my height, and she looks like rapunzel from tangled after her hair got cut off. (or that's what one of her teachers told her yesterday). She has one of the most gorgeous singing voices I've ever heard. She has been here for 4 weeks already, so she keeps Sestra Izatt and me on top of things. She's such a good quiet example. I look up to her a lot. I want to be like her.

I love learning Croatian. One of the nicest things about it is that there are no articles, and not as many verb forms as in other languages i've studied. Our district is doing a pilot program where, instead of starting out teaching in english and then switching to our language when we actually know it, we're only teaching in croatian. this is the first Croatian district to do this program. It's sorta scary because my second full day here, I was teaching a lesson about the gospel in Croatian. We did a lot of reading in that lesson. Pretty much all we could do was say a prayer and testify that God loves us. Oh, and I accidentally had him read John 4:16 instead of John 3:16. Don't do that. It doesn't exactly teach the same doctrine... I about died laughing when I went back to my classroom and found out what he'd read. But our pretend investigator kept a straight face the whole time. I don't know how he did it.

There is a huge focus in the MTC on getting to know the person you're teaching well and seing them as God sees them, and then showing them how the gospel will bless their lives personally. As representatives of Jesus Christ, it's our responsability to show people how much God loves them and how much God wants to make them happy through his plan of Salvation.

I love this gospel. I know that God lives! I know that Jesus is His son, and it is only through His name that we can be saved. I know that Joseph Smith resored the church and priesthood of Jesus Christ to this earth today and that a prophet speaks today.

I love you all!
Sestra Ariana Black
Crkva Isusa Krista Svetaca Posljednjih Dana

Contact information for Ariana at the missionary training center

Ari's MTC address:

Sister Ariana Black
MTC Mailbox #103
Slovenia-Croatia 0905
2005 N 900 E
Provo, UT 84604

Remember: you can send me letters for free at www.dearelder.com!
Mission = Provo MTC
Mailbox number=103
Mission=Slovenia-Croatia
Departure date=0905

Why I'm a missionary

Ariana explains her feelings about her call to serve a mission on this web page (click on this sentence).

Lydia update

Lydia’s been doing well overall. She is off oxygen about 90% of the time, she has tolerated walking and climbing stairs better, and she is sleeping better at night. Tonight she has a sleep study at Children’s, I think mainly to figure out if her episodes of shallow breathing and slowed heart rate during the night are important.

Yesterday we left her in her crib alone for a few minutes and she pulled out her trach tube and threw it out of the crib. Fortunately I heard her distress from where I was sitting about 15 feet away, and we had her breathing with a good airway within maybe a minute of when she started turning blue. We got to tell the 911 dispatcher that she was OK after all, so no ambulance this time, but now we are skittish about her ever leaving our direct line of sight when she’s awake. Sigh. This is way too much adrenaline.

Oh, and to correct my last post, I forgot to count her albuterol inhaler, so really she takes 3 meds. Still, that’s way better than when she was in the hospital.

Lydia's getting better

After the hair-raising experience described in that last post, I figure I'd better report on progress. Lydia is improving gradually and during the day she is more or less back to her usual self: playful, eager, loving, and at times mischievous.

She is down to only one medication, plus the thyroid supplementation she had been on before her pneumonia. But at night she is still on a ventilator. It drives us crazy with alarm messages that often are spurious but which, especially after last Tuesday, we can't ignore.

A brief reverse

By the time the ambulance arrived, Lydia had started breathing and was pink again.

(How’s that for an opening line?)

We had way too much excitement night before last, but all is well again. Around 12:30 a.m. early Tuesday morning, apparently something obstructed Lydia’s airway and suctioning did not clear it. Her oxygen saturation kept dropping and she became unconscious and stopped breathing. Breathing for her with an Ambu bag wasn’t expanding her chest, and we ended up doing an emergency trach change on the floor of her bedroom. After a minute or so of “bagging” her through the new trach tube, she started breathing on her own again and her oxygen saturation was back to normal. That’s when the EMTs came in. Winona rode up to the ER with Lydia, and I followed in the car. (Webster Groves’s finest stopped me for going 41 in a 30, but they let me go.)

Lydia stayed the morning and afternoon back on the 7 East ward at SLCH. She hadn’t been in her room for 30 seconds—she was still being connected to the wall oxygen—when she signed to one of the nurses who knew her, “Signing Time.” “Only Lydia,” the nurse laughed, and explained that she would need to wait to watch her favorite DVD. Two Little Hands Productions would love a video clip of that scene for promotional purposes.

Anyway, she stayed the morning and afternoon with no more excitement, and is back at home.

The worst of it was that two separate people in the hospital said something about how we had done well considering “this was your first time.”

We really don’t ever want a second time.

Life at home

So. Are you considering a career change? Want long hours, low pay? Want to work with various bodily secretions? A career in 24x7 home nursing may be in your future!

Lydia, and her pulse oximeter and portable suction machine and an emergency kit and a small oxygen bottle, came home Tuesday as reported previously on this site. That night we had a couple of mysterious (fortunately very brief, as in <30 seconds) episodes of dramatic oxygen desaturation right after we hooked her up to the ventilator for the night. During these episodes the anxiety level in the home was very high as two people with graduate degrees, plus Charissa, who's in grad school, tried to urgently troubleshoot a home ventilator that had supposedly just been put together and checked out by the home health people earlier that night. (The air was not flowing due to a connection that had not been connected.) Then around oh-dark-thirty after numerous alarms, Winona talked to the helpful on-call nurse and the home health equipment on-call people and learned all about the effects on alarm sensors of condensed water in the air hoses. The next morning Lydia was needing 3-4 L/min of O₂ rather than the 0.5-2 L/min she’d needed in the hospital, she looked somewhat lethargic, and her temperature was 101°F.

But long story short, by that evening, and perhaps thanks to a dose of Cipro called in by her pulmonary nurse practitioner, she was back to her usual self and has been fine ever since. At the moment I'm sitting beside Lydia’s crib because Winona needs a break, and Lydia’s asleep breathing 0.5 L/min O₂ on the ventilator with 99-100% oxygen saturation. All has been fairly uneventful since Tuesday night. Well, except for the EPA Superfund diaper clean-up yesterday morning—nothing out of the ordinary. (Thank you, Winona, for turning down my halfhearted offer to take care of it!) We are kind of sort of back to normal around here, except for jumping up in the night if anything beeps for more than 2 or 3 seconds. And needing to take a small caravan if we want to take Lydia anywhere. And suctioning yucky stuff from her trachea.

Lydia hospital day 62 ... Homecoming!

Hooray! We have worked with the hospital team, the ventilator nurse practitioner, our home pediatrician, the home health agency, an electrician, cardiology, pulmonology, the pharmacy, audiology, and some family-members-turned-stevedores to rearrange Lydia’s room. We have an oxygen tank, tubing, a portable pulse oximeter, a heat and moisture exchanger (“artificial nose”), an emergency kit, portable suction, and lots of disposable stuff. The final inspection of our house and final training session on the new equipment began about an hour ago. We are scheduled to bust Lydia out of SLCH at 2p.m. today.

To celebrate, she rejected her grapes and even her pancake, fussed over her chest PT treatment, spit out her Ativan twice, refused her pants, socks and shoes, and interfered with her blood pressure measurement. But she ate her scrambled eggs and took her other meds. Hey, she’s 3 now, so I suppose she’s acting like a typical 2-year-old.

We can’t wait to see her safely installed at home. Most of her new medications from the hospital will be stopped by mid-April, and by the end of May we will have a good idea of how completely her lungs have healed and how long we can expect her to need supplementary oxygen.

Thank you again to all of you who have prayed for us or helped us in one way or another. Hooray!

Lydia hospital day 60

Dear Old Dad only got about 3 minutes with Lydia today, but Winona spent most of the day with her and the kids (well, the kids that aren’t at college) all had a couple of hours with her. (Unrelated comment: Ariana had her final interview for full-time missionary service today and the week after next she will probably receive her call.)

Starting at 2 a.m. this morning she was breathing room air on the ventilator. They cut back on her albuterol dosing so she doesn't need to get it at night and gets less during the day. During the day she had her “talker” on (Passey-Muir valve) so she could talk. She went to the rooftop garden and liked swinging on the glider thingy for a while.

We are getting excited about getting Lydia—and her train—back at home with us. Traveling, even around the block, will now become a real production. . . . Until her lungs finish healing, anyway.

Lydia video #2

This morning at the hospital, Charissa took a video of Lydia, Rose and herself, singing one of Lydia’s favorite songs while Lydia signs some of the words. (Vertigo warning: handheld camera with frequent, sudden direction changes.)

Lydia hospital day 59

Lydia has been gradually doing better. Last night she was breathing room air again, off the ventilator, for an hour. Ditto this morning. However, any exertion and her oxygenation starts to drop. When she’s asleep she goes back on the ventilator to help keep her lungs expanded. She is getting stronger. She is standing up for prolonged periods of time holding the top rail of the crib, or crawling. She is still her usual charming, winsome little self, enjoying most people, many foods, some toys, and her Signing Time videos.

The plan is still for her to come home Tuesday afternoon after an electrician does some work that morning (her new equipment uses over 16 amps) and a visit from the home health people to inspect the setup.

Last week when I was riding the elevator I saw a mom with a “PICU” name badge, and I was trying to be friendly with something like, “We were just in there. Our daughter ‘graduated’ last week.” The mom congratulated us on that but added, “Our boy’s not going to make it out. They can already tell.” Wow. I mumbled something that tried to be supportive, but I suppose there is no good answer to that. I felt totally insensitive. But it reminded me how very blessed we have been and how far she has come from 2 months ago when we weren’t sure she would make it out of the ICU.

Thank you to Klixi and Jen and Amy and probably several others I’m forgetting, for all the help this week. Belated but heartfelt thanks to the Welches—John and Rosalynde but also Elena and the younger children, for the wonderful support all through.

Lydia hospital day 55

Lydia has been doing well breathing on the ventilator at night with a modest amount of oxygen (1-2 L/min), and doing all the work of breathing herself during the day with the help of more oxygen (~40%). Yesterday Dad was supervised replacing her trach tube with a new one, and Mom, Dad, and the 3 school-age kids got trained on CPR and rescue breathing for a child with a tracheostomy. (“No, Mr. Black, the first rescue step is not to ask ‘so, how do you feel about breathing?’” ☺) This morning, for the first time in almost 8 weeks, Lydia was breathing 100% all-natural, genuine air all by herself, without help from a ventilator! She kept it up for an hour or two and now is on a trickle of supplemental oxygen. Today Lydia will be checked out on a valve that lets her talk around the tube, if she can tolerate the extra work. She is gradually getting stronger, but still she can only stand for 5-10 seconds with support before tuckering out.

Overall, all of this is very hopeful and the tentative plan is for her to come home a week from today. I think it is pretty amazing that in our ward (congregation) at church we have one RN who works on the pulmonary floor at SLCH, one RN who used to work as a home health trach/ventilator specialist, one member who grew up with a trach, and a couple of ENT docs who do tracheotomies all the time. Call it coincidence if you want.

A special thank you to Amy Parent, who has been simply amazing organizing a cadre of loving volunteers into an efficient support system!

Lydia hospital day 52

Yesterday Lydia lost her next-to-last piece of plastic invading her body, her PICC line. Now all that remains is her tracheostomy.

Last night a kind friend stayed with Lydia so Mom and Dad could have a dinner date together. Time alone! Thank you, Shannon.

Dad got to stay the night with Lydia. (Dad secretly admits he’s glad Lydia’s room TV carried the record-setting BYU-UNM basketball game.)

Today Lydia has looked great. She’s on the ventilator only when asleep. Since this morning she’s been breathing through an “artificial nose,” a little gizmo that provides some filtering of warmth and humidity so she can breathe with just an oxygen tank and small regulator. That makes it portable enough to ride in a little buggy thing up to a rooftop garden in the hospital, with Dad, Mom, Will, Rose, Jon, and a nurse (and a battery-powered continuous pulse oximeter). This is the first day she’s felt the breeze since January. She seemed to love it.