Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better

"Thats my crazy family!!"  The only words my grandpa said after the excitement that he missed on Friday night at the casino.  I think he was just being politically correct in front of my mom, because, as most of us who know Big Big Don, aka Senior, could tell you, he probably wanted to say "Its a good damn thing I wasn't there cause I would knocked Daryl over the head with a beer bottle."  You see you don't have eight kids, 24 grandkids, and a great grandkid without knowing how to stick up for someones smart mouth once in a while, and goodness knows there are more than a few smart mouths running in the Dulle family.  Well it is a good thing he went to bed early on Friday night because it turned out he would have a little fight of his own coming up. 

Without Senior there would be no Big Don, and so this post is dedicated to Senior who came out to see his oldest son, offer support and love, and just decided he wasn't quite done with his visit as early as was planned. 

Saturday evening we decided to stay in and BBQ with friends and family rather than go out and risk getting into another verbal altercation.   After dinner grandpa went in and sat on the couch to watch some football with a big smile on his face and a belly full of ribs.  I mean he had a great day out with Big Don riding in the convertible not a hair on either of there heads to blow in the wind and plenty of laughs about anything and everything.  Then his heart decided to act funny, and his internal defibrillator shocked him (basically when you watch ER and they say CLEAR and shock someone thats what happened to grandpa during the Arizona State Oregon State football game,).  And its a good thing it did because it turned out to save his life.  We took him to the hospital and after some tests, a few more shocks (4 total) and a few attempts by him to escape to the airplane and head back to St. Louis, the doctors decided the only thing to do was to perform a five way bypass on him.  So on Monday the good people at Scottsdale Memorial North cracked his chest and saved his life.  He is now resting comfortably and its planned for him to go to a rehab facility this Monday, modern medicine is awesome.  Senior is doing well and is as onry as ever, he really is probably one of the toughest of all the loudmouth Dulles, so we are confident he will come out of this fine and go home in about a month.  Personally I think he just wanted to give Big Don something else to think about as chemo can start to get pretty boring.  So on Tuesday as grandpa was getting the tubes taken out of his throat and chest and dad was getting pumped full of chemo, the strongest and by far healthiest Don Dulle, the third, was busy working (hey somebody has too) and thinking about his two predecessors.  I mean what do we have to worry about cancer and a heart attack and they are still going strong, maybe I should hide under my bed for a couple weeks.

We all love you Senior no matter how cranky you get and we all have your back just like you have ours, we might be crazy but we are family.

Big Don and Senior