Pink Floyd's #1 fans in town! — Lung Story Short...

June 9th - June 18th.

Our next visitor to come was our dad. He was coming for a whole week and Rima and I were very excited. Our brother was also coming for a few days later on that week to overlap with our dad. The day before our dad flew in Rima had a clinic appointment. The way it was scheduled gave us a three-hour break in-between blood test x-rays and meeting with the doctor. So Rima and I took advantage of this free time to go check out one of the cafes that have been on our "let's go" list. They had crepes and smoothie bowls, sold! It was in Saint Paul and super cute, we will definitely be back!

Evening walk, look at that super tall grass

Sunday early afternoon we picked up our father from the airport. After we checked out the Mill City Farmers market for a hot second and then headed back to the house. We kind of laid low that day and went out for a walk later that evening to show our dad the close by walking trails. Sundays weather was not looking very promising. That morning as I was taking Rima's vitals at 8am we were trying to decide if we should go out for a walk before it started to rain. We knew it was going to rain that day but you could hear thunder booming in the distance and it was nonstop. Luckily I checked out the weather for our exact area and it said "heavy hail" which would start in about twenty minutes. "Screw the walk we need to cover the car windows!!"

Getting ready for the storm, the car has a shark fin!

Good thing my dad was there to help me. I would've been able to do it by myself but with him the whole process went much faster. We covered the front and back windows of the car with cardboard and then a canvas shut in between the doors to hold everything in place. We finished just in the nick of time, strong wind and rain began to fall heavily. The sky was crazy, we had never seen sky like that. It was green, like it's tornado time green. UNSUBSCRIBE! Within minutes rain brought crazy wind and the green sky was over us. All of a sudden thunder and then BOOM hail on hail. So much wind so much hail. For about fifteen minutes we all thought the windows would bust in. I was convinced that a tornado was going to touch down.

No warnings went off on our phones, which was total bullshit. Fail, fail fail!!! Warnings go off for amber alerts miles and miles and miles away, but the one time it should have gone off it didn't! Our father had never experienced a Midwest storm before and he was not a fan. I mean Rima and I love a good storm but neither of us were fans of this one. The power went out too. Good thing Rima was not on oxygen anymore! I could only imagine what would have happened if the power went out and we were also low on portable liquid O2 which happened quite frequently over the weekends. Finally, the storm began to subside and no windows got blow in. Although I'm sure they did somewhere not too far away.

There were little balls of hail all over the ground! It looked like it had snowed! There were twigs and branches everywhere! The front of the house was plastered with leaves and even got some damage from the hail. The street was a river of rainwater and floating hail and tons and tons of leaves. Rima and our dad started to work on a puzzle together during the storm, since the power was out, why not right? I'm not a puzzle person, never have been probably never will. Luckily after about two hours of no power it came back on. We decided to go get pizza at our favorite pizza spot, Young Joni and then drive around the city lakes and show our dad around.

On the drive down to the city we passed a lot of downed trees and just destroyed lawns littered with tree branches and leaves and hail. Our dad agreed with us that Young Joni had some of the best pizza ever. After we drove around Lake Harriet, Lake Calhoun and Lake of the Isles. We even found a super cute rose garden and Japanese garden by Lake Harriet that we had totally missed multiple times!

On Monday June 12th we drove up to Franconia, a sculpture garden about thirty minutes north of us. Our dad is an architect and loves art and sculptures so he was the perfect audience for this type of show. We walked around the grounds and checked out some of the coolest and strangest things we had seen in a while. We also had a picnic there, of course! The more picnics the better! That evening we met up with our new friend Lisa. Rima met her during the online CF Minicon for transplants by the CFF and we had met her in person once before. She was also a CFer and had received her double lung transplant at the U of M. Coincidentally she also lived down the street from us! What a small world! We grabbed a bite with her and her husband at an outdoor patio. Rima and I picked their brains and asked question after question about life post transplant. It was great to meet and befriend other people who had gone through what we just did and were over year post transplant.

On Tuesday we drove down to the MN landscape arboretum. Our dad also loves parks, flora and fauna like we do. He was very impressed with the grounds! We had a picnic there too, duh. Rima even did some stairs! It was super impressive seeing her bound up and down the stairs that a month ago she would have just looked at from the car window. The last time we had gone to the arboretum Rima was pre-transplant and could not walk very far at all so she was in a wheelchair. I was so determined to have her experience the grounds as much as she could that I pushed her up and down the hilly three-mile road. It was quite the workout but totally worth it and I'd do it over and over again if it would make her happy. After, we went to another restaurant we had on our list, Bellecour. We went there specifically for the crepe cake. It was auuhhhhmazingggg!

On Wednesday Rima had a clinic appointment in the morning. Our dad got to accompany us there and experience a clinic day. Rima's PFTs were at 75%!!!! HOLY MOLY! WOOOHOOOOOOOOO! Not excited whatsoever about that number clearly. The air in-between her right lung and the chest cavity had disappeared, another victory. Now that the air was gone she could get her first bronchoscopy after leaving the hospital, which would happen the next morning. After a very positive doctors appointment we grabbed some ramen for lunch. I had exposed my dad to my favorite documentary series, Chefs Table, I'm obsessed with it, obsessed may be an understatement. We had just recently watched the Ivan Ramen episode and were all craving some salty noodle soup!

Thursday morning we were up bright and early for Rima's bronchoscopy. She was a bit nervous for it since in the past she had been quite awake during the whole procedure. She was told to request more medicine to ensure that she would be more sedated than usual. Her body must process it fast than others so she needs more of it. They don't want to give you too much because it can slow your breathing down or even stop it and doing this post transplant time especially a few weeks post it's not the best idea. We were there for about three to four hours. The waiting room life for my dad and I. When Rima came out she said it was not as bad as she had built it up in head but they were very stingy with giving her more sedatives. Poop!

After we left the hospital we went home for a little and then drove to the airport to pick up our brother Paul, who was flying in from Denver. After we swooped him up we went to lunch at a German restaurant Rima and I had our eye on for quite sometime, if only to eat at their really cute back patio. After we naturally took our dad and bro to Gyst for some amazing Kombucha.

The food kind of sucked but the patio was cool

Friday we checked out Minnehaha falls. This was the first time we had gone back to the falls since Rima's transplant. What a difference two working lungs make! The last time Rima and I had gone it had taken her eleven minutes to walk up the 108 stairs. This time it took her right around a minute give or take some change. WOW! We were even able to walk down the trail past the falls, a place where Rima had been unable to walk down before! After we had a picnic at the nearby park, typical. We then drove next to the Mississippi river for a little playing tour guide to out two guests. We ate lunch at a very cool Venezuelan restaurant, Hola Arepa. It was yum yum in our tum tums.

Saturday we checked out the Walker sculpture garden. It's home to the cherry on the spoon which is in the basic Minneapolis photo, whenever you google Minneapolis. They had just redesigned the garden over the past three seasons. They even added a few new pieces of art like a giant blue rooster. After, we grabbed lunch at another one of our favorite places, The Sample Room and then after walked around the nearby park, to aid the digestion of all the yummy food we had just consumed.

Sunday was our brothers and dads departure date. It was Father's Day and for breakfast my dad made his famous Dutch Babies. Rima helped, but sort of poured too much cinnamon in one of them, she said it came out too fast, yeah likely story... Since our dad arrived to our place the pervious Saturday he had been working on a project in our basement. We have a boat load of packing foam from all the IV boxes we have received since October. We've been storing it in the basement. A while ago I build a little fort with some of it but we wanted to build an igloo. Our dad's an architect so we waited for him to come to execute this plan. We asked if he would help us and lo and behold he rolled up his sleeves and took the project upon himself.

He spent hours in the basement measuring, cutting and sticking the foam together. The foam is made out of cornstarch and is biodegradable. When you get it wet it becomes sticky. So our dad would get the sides wet and stick them together and when they dried it acted as glue. We think he really enjoyed the project thoroughly. He finally finished the Igloo on his last night. Of course, he found faults in kinks in it, but to us it was amazing and perfect! What's a vacation without constructing something out of packing foam?!