It's A New Year.

Hello Everyone,
What a year we have had! We were so busy last year, we were traveling to all parts of out state and others as well. We met some really great people who are like family to us and we were so blessed to have them in our family. In August, I had a huge eye opener. I found myself being short of breath, and went to a doctor to found out that I have an enlarged heart, and after a round of tests, they find that my left ventricular has an EF of 25-30%, which is the ejection fraction of that chamber. So my heart is only pumping out 25-30% of the blood on every beat and the left chamber pumps the oxygen rich blood out to your body. I also had a sleep study done to find (which we knew I had sleep apnea) that my sleep apnea was so bad. They measure apnea with an AI number and anything over 15 is considered extreme, my AI number was 72.5, yep that bad, plus my O2 saturation in my blood dropped down to 78% , so I'm not really sure how I'm still here, but by the grace of God alone. I have been on heart meds that is supposed to improve my heart function and also I sleep with a cpap machine with oxygen pipped in at night. Man, I forgot what it was like to really sleep. It has been a long time since I ever slept all night. At first, I really felt great, better than I have in years, but that slowly changed back to and I got to feeling bad again. I have no energy nor can I do much of anything for very long before I get really winded. After three months of therapy, there was no improvement at all. My EF is still at 30% and I have way too many PVC's which stands for premature ventricular contractions, at about 4-5 in a 10 second EKG test, so that is preventing me from having the cardiac MRI that they want to do to see what else might be causing the weak heart. So now, They are sending me to the UT Southwestern hospital in Dallas to see some heart failure specialist there. This is the # 1 ranked heart failure hospital in North Texas. I should be getting a call from them soon to set up an appointment. They say if you have HF, this is the place to be. I am so looking forward to getting there. I pray they find the cause and lets get this thing fixed so I can back to living. This is a big wake up call for me as well as my family! So please be in prayer for me as well as my family. Thank you for the prayers. Ok, my music is going good. We are recording another CD and hope it will be out this spring. We have some new places to play, Mobeetie and Grapecreek and the new Duncan festival as well as all the others we have played, like Vega,Tucumcari, Coffee Creek,Perrin, so we are getting busy plus all the different churches to come along the way. God is good. Danny is doing good. Debbie is still driving to City View to school each week. We look forward to seeing and visiting everyone along the way. Bring a friend and come see us this year! Hope you all have a blessed year! See ya then!