Volunteers?

Audry and the rest of the family have recieved a lot of questions from everyone on how you can help out. Here are a few things that we've thought of that you can do to help:

1. Get the word out - forward this blog on to friends and family of the Sciglianos to keep them up to date on Joe's progress in order to help eliminate phone calls.
2. Meals - offering to bring a meal would be appreciated. Best drop off locations would be Mark/Shari's or Jill/Dan's. Call Shari or Jill to coordinate. (see phone number below). Enough food for 10 would be great.
3. Snow removal - as winter storms approach we could us help clearing driveways and sidewalks, particularly Joe/Audry's and Josephine's.
4. Babysitters - we could use a list of people to call if we need babysitters in order to make visits to the hospital.
5. Gift cards - Audry could use gift cards to Hy-Vee, Walgreen's, Kum & Go or Walmart instead of flowers/plants or other gifts. Joe should not receive flowers/plants as they can carry bacteria. GCs can help to allow others to run errands for groceries, prescriptions, etc.
6. Cards and Letters: Joe can receive mail at the hospital at the following address or send home:
Joe Scigliano/Room 374
Iowa Methodist Medical Center
1200 Pleasant Street
Des Moines, IA 50309-1453
7. Prayers, prayers and more prayers! Special intentions at mass.
8. If visiting or talking to Joe try to keep it positive and not ask a lot of questions about health status - this tires him out.
9. Email addresses - I could use a volunteer to help gather an email list of friends and family members so I can create one list to send special messages to, or coordinate activities for volunteers, etc. You can also email me at sscigliano@iowasolutions.com with your email addresses.
10. Errands - volunteers to run errands.

If there are any other ways you'd like to help, or you are willing to help with above items, call Shari at 779-4549 or Jill at 556-9770 and we'll put you on a list. Thanks so much :-)

Jan 11th - a good & bad day

Today was a good day. Joe ate a "hearty" breakfast today, almost half his cream of wheat and a 1/2 cup of coffee. Sounds like a little, but it's a lot more than usual. He is feeling good today, more perky. The new medicine helped him through the night with no vomiting, but he conveniently got sick when the doctor came in and asked how he was feeling. His blood pressure and temp remained steady and he's getting back some energy. He did keep his meds down today. No word yet though on when he may come home.

We got some bad news on another front though last night. For those of you who know the Shafer family, Steve Shafer found out some unfortunate news last night that he has a brain tumor. After several days of prolonged migraines, they determined he has a tumor in the cerebellum, near his spine. They did emergency surgery this afternoon and removed the tumor. Testing is being conducted now on the tumor. Our thoughts and prayers are with Steve and his family, who is like another family to us. Mark has been best friends with his son Matt since second grade, so this is rough news for us.