To 2015 - hopefully a better year

Hi everyone, here we are in 2015, did you do anything exciting to help bring in the new year? I really had good intentions of posting more often in December but life as usual gets in the way.  For a good portion of November and December, I was busy taking Dad to his doctors appointments, taking him for bloodwork, etc and to make a long story short, he was finally admitted to the hospital on Dec 22.  He was diagnosed with congestive heart failure (CHF).  He was having trouble with his legs, he kept retaining fluid to the point where he was about 16-18 pounds over his normal body weight.  The doctors kept increasing his diuretic but he still kept gaining weight.  For those of you with elderly parents, please, please, please get involved with them when they go to see their doctors.  I never knew that my father also suffered from chronic kidney failure, if I had known that I would have done things a bit differently. The day he was admitted to the hospital, they did an ultrasound of his legs and found a blood clot, how long had this been there, we're not sure but the point I want to make to all of you is to get involved.  I was astonished at the answers that my Dad gave to the emergency room doctor, the admitting doctor and the cardiologist!  He kept saying No, I don't think so and I kept answering the questions with the necessary information that the doctors needed....so all this time that he went into the doctors office by himself, how many times did he say No when he really should have said Yes, maybe he would have been admitted to the hospital earlier.  We will never know but please, please, please for your new years resolution please get involved, you never know, I thought my Dad was still sharp but I should have realized when he started complaining that the easy crosswords were getting too difficult for him.  Thank you for taking the time to read my blog, I do plan on being better at posting in 2015 than I was in 2014.  And to end off on some good news, the total raised for the FOP for 2014 was $1000.  Yahoo.  Hugs and kisses, Louise