Thank You From Odie

Hey friends, Odie here today. I just thought I would check in today. This has been a crazy eight days. God has been so good to me.  He has given me peace and strength continually. The Lord has let me know that He is nigh to me.  His spirit is definitely my comfort. 

I am not through this completely yet. I am resting on my Great Big God to resolve this totally. We are praising God for every good report!!

Here is the report from last night.

Odie finally had the scans she needed Friday night. They could see No tumors and we praise God for that. There was No obvious problem seen in the MRI. After consulting with the ophthalmologist in Paducah, Dr. Baker, the doctors here are going to treat her for Optic Neuritis. This is inflammation of the optic nerve. It shows up about 50% of the time in an MRI. They could not see it but they think this is a likely suspect. It is one of the possibilities Dr. Baker warned us of last Monday. Treatment begins with massive intravenous steroids tonight then oral steroids. Ww will follow up with a neurologist in Cincy. Vision loss is NOT always recovered with Optic Neuritis but can be. God is able! Thanks for praying. 

They gave me the steroids through an IV at the hospital last night and I am supposed to start on a high dosage by mouth today. I will taper off of those over the next 16 days. If I have inflammation in the optic nerve the steroids should help.

I want to personal say thank you from the bottom of my heart for your prayer and concern. Your out pouring of love has overwhelmed me! Words do not exist to express my appreciation. All the calls text and emails have encouraged me tremendously the last several days. The family of God is awesome!!! I am blessed beyond measure to be apart of His family!

My parents have been wonderful during this process. They are amazing and they have truly been my rock. I can never thank them enough for all they have done. 

I do not have many pictures from home this week. Here is one from Dryden Road Thursday night. My friends Anna and Seth Hoover showed up at church Thursday. It was wonderful to have them in service at our home church.  Of course my cousin Jacqueline will show up in a pic when I am home. I love you Jacque!

Have a blessed Easter Weekend. I am So thankful HE LIVES!!!

Odie

A 35 Gallon Oil Change On The BoggsMobile

It was special to be at our home church at Dryden Rd Thursday night. Praise God for His people. We love our Pastor and our church. It was good to be with them again.

I had this post ready to go live early this week but it was preempted by all of the excitement. I had some pretty exciting days in Tennessee last week and that is what this post is about. Before you know it last week will be ancient history so I thought I better post it now.  You can see the the latest on Odie HERE.

While I was in Vonore, Tennesse having a window replaced they lifted the BoggsMobile to look at a few issues and discovered I had a wheel seal leaking. It was not leaking terribly but a wheel with no gear oil is not a problem I want to deal with out on the road so I scheduled an appointment at Prevost in Nashville.

I had also been leaking a little more motor oil than "normal" and they pointed out that some of it was coming from one of my oil filters. I was within 1500 miles of my scheduled oil change but the normal place I have the work done was so busy that I would have been waiting for hours on the day I passed by there. In retrospect I probably should have had them change it in Vonore even though their price was quite a bit more expensive.

I asked them to do it while at Prevost and they started the oil change first. It was all going well until....

While the mechanic from Prevost was adding oil with their automated dispenser, the dispenser failed to kick off and they overfilled the engine. In fact, they drastically overfilled the engine. It holds about 40 quarts or 10 gallons. After they discovered the problem they drained 25 gallons to get down below the full line on the dipstick. Yep, you read that correctly. 25 Gallons too much!

Three buckets of oil


Plus a pan that was filled above the 50 quart line

They called the oil company out (If I understood correctly they had just been there to service everything that day) and the rep found he had left that particular dispenser on manual rather than automatic. He immediately corrected the problem. If he pays for 25 gallons of oil, that may be the last time he does that.

It could have been catastrophic had they started the engine. They did not start it because even though I had stepped away for a moment, the bus door was locked so they came looking for me to start it. While I was unlocking the door, going inside and getting seated they noticed the oil level was too high. You better believe I will look at the dipstick myself before I start it on future oil changes. (That is something they always do at where I normally have it changed.) 

They turned the crank on the engine by hand which is what I found out they were supposed to do. (Thanks to Bro. Scott Morris and his brother in law.) Once they realized it turned easily and had no oil above the pistons they had me start it and everything seems fine.

Once that baby heart attack was over it was time to move on to the leaking wheel seal. All of that went pretty smoothly.

This is the end of the axle.

This is the whole length of the axle. It is standing in front of a bus motor mounted on rack outside of the bus it is supposed to be in. This is a position that I never want to see my motor in by God's grace.

My old bus does not have a place to add gear oil directly to the wheel once it is put back together. So they seal it all up, lift it in the air, add gear oil and then tip it to the side and let gravity fill it up. It looked like it was fixing to lay over on its side. I am sure Prevost has good insurance!

Wow! What fun I had in Nashville.

Davy

Odie Update and A Travel Day

Recent Post

Faith Church-Revival In Pictures

I will continue to post updates concerning Odie as long as we need to and we have pertinent information for you. I will also try to add the blog updates and texts we send out to the page where I initially told you about her eye problem. I will post the new updates on the top of the page. That way you can go to one place to read it all if you like. HERE is a link to that page that you can share if you like.

Odie saw Dr. Cindy Smith, the Primary Care Doctor assigned to her in Lebanon, Ohio today. The doctor is trying to order the MRI's. Odie's insurance requires Jumping through a lot of near impossible hoops to obtain preauthorization for an MRI. Dr. Smith is trying to convey the fact that this is a real emergency in order to receive authorization now. The insurance company will not even authorize an MRI through an emergency room visit. A neurologist would have to order it there too. 

All of this is kind of ridiculous but there is not much we can do. Kelly Jo found a place that does the scans the ophthamologist in Paducah wanted and also accepts Odie's obviously limited insurance. They also take cash pay and we are willing to go that route if we need too in order to get the ball rolling. There is a question of whether or not the insurance would accept the scans even if we pay for them since they have not ordered them. The word circus comes to mind again.

Please Pray for a miracle. As far as she can tell Odie says she is about the same. We know that our God is able to heal and IF things slow down a little in the next few days I have several thought percolating that I would like to write down and share with you.

Thankfully we all made it to Ohio safe and sound. Kelly Jo and Odie left after church Tuesday night and arrived about 3 AM. I left Wednesday morning and arrived just before 7 PM. It took me 9 hours to drive 340 miles!

The main reason it took so long was the fact that I was driving 45 mph or less the whole way. When we parked at Faith Church in Salem on Saturday I noticed that one of my tag axle tires had a severe separation in the sidewall near the rim. I did not want to have a blowout.

These tag tires are nearly 6 years old and have over 80,000 miles on them. That is pretty good for a tag axle tire. They were the first tires that I replaced on the BoggsMobile after we bought it and I have been trying to replace them for about 6-8 weeks. I want to buy two new Michelins and put them on the front and then move the front tires to the tag axle. The tires have been back ordered so I have not been able to replace them. 

This tire coming apart adds quite a bit of urgency. Now that we are home, I do have a tire I have kept for emergencies that I can put on in place of this one. I am so thankful I made it home.

One of the other reasons I was so long on the road was a classic Cincinnati traffic jam. Welcome to Ohio! I seriously thought about pulling over on the shoulder and taking a nap to give it time to clear out.

Thank you for all of the calls, comments, texts and emails concerning Odie. You do not know how much it means to us. 

Just for clarification, we have only cancelled one revival. The rest of our schedule remains the same as of now. Our plan is to take it one week at at time.

God bless you all.

Davy