June 18, 2005
Good Samaritans Do Exist
Every once in a while it's good to hear that good people do exist, so I thought I'd share this little story with you.
My husband's been misplacing his cell phone quite a bit lately. 3 times, in the last month. Yesterday he lost it again. Seems he had put it on the bumper of the truck while loading the trash and then drove off to the dump with it still on the bumper.
Enter the Good Samaritan. She happened to see the phone laying in the road, stopped her car and picked it up. Amazingly it still worked after it's little ride down the road.
My husband didn't even know it was missing until after he got home from the dump and running a few other errands and found messages on the home phone from different people giving him the Good Samaritan's number and one from the Good Samaritan, herself, about his phone.
Seems she pulled up the phone list and started calling people. She left messages on a few phones.
I guess after a few calls and messages, she hit pay dirt. She'd called my sister-in-law's work number. She works for a small company in Nashville. The company got a call from this woman, asking if anyone there knew someone from Virginia and was called 'Sissy' by that person. My sister-in-law said she heard that when her co-worker yelled out this information with the "Hey! Does anybody know...." and thought to herself. "I know someone from Virginia!" "He calls me Sissy!"....IT'S ME, IT'S ME!!! My sister-in-law told the woman who owned the phone and gave her our home number.
He got his phone back, met a neighbor, she lives about a mile from us, and she invited us to their party next Saturday. I love a happy ending.
Posted by aster1961 at 08:06 AM
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June 09, 2005
Something For Me
Yesterday I walked into our local community college and dropped off my application. It's been a quarter of a century since I have been to school....that was a shock when I thought about it that way.
It was a bit daunting to walk back into a school with me as the student. Summer semester has already started, but this gives me time to get my transcripts and get set up for fall. I'm starting off simple for now. I figure I need to ease back in. Just a certificate for Medical Secretary/ Transcriptionist. It's only two semesters and I can test out of a couple of the classes (Keyboarding and Word Processing) and I'm hoping some of my Emergency Medical classes I took for my EMT certification way back when can count.
I never got a degree. I hopped around from one thing to another but never settled down. Part of the reason was because I could never pass the math placement test and was always told I had to pass the no credit remedial math class first, which I never could. I gave up. Then came marriages, kids....and well the real world...it's that old story.
What's prompting me to do this? Mid-life crisis. For a few months now I've been feeling the seeds of discontent with my life. I'm restless. I want something different. My kids don't need my constant attention. I'm bored with my work. I'm getting those "what have I done with my life" thoughts.
I've taken the last 6 weeks off to try to figure out what I want to do when I grow up. It hasn't helped and killed the checking account. I redecorated my daughter's old room, which now is my 'office'. That was fun, but didn't enlighten me. I threw myself into mine and my mom's gardens. Good exercise, beautiful flowers, but not a solution.
I'm beginning to realize that a mid-life crisis isn't a crisis, but a second chance. A second chance to look at where I've been and make modifications in my life. To again consciously set a direction in my life. Once again I have the time and freedom to focus on me.
It's been a very long time since I've done something that has brought this feeling of excitment and of being challenged in a good way. I haven't had any goals to speak of and it's good to once again look forward to something. It's a small step, but it heads toward reclaiming my life for me.
Who knows after I accomplish this, I might just brush up on my math and try that placement test again. I've always wanted to work in the health care field and now with the additional 25 years life experience, a little more backbone and a stronger will it doesn't seem so impossible. I'm thinking that the 'empty nest' might be fun after all.
Posted by aster1961 at 07:46 AM
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June 01, 2005
Digging In
I feel like I'm about to be put under siege again. I really don't know why I feel this way, I have no current basis for it...yet.
Something is wrong with my husband. It's been a very long time since something was amiss. I know it may be minor. I know it needs to be looked into. The tests have all been done and now we wait to see if anything turns up.
I guess there are some things in life you never really get over.
March 11, 2000 I walked into the hospital where my husband was a patient and I was told by 2 doctors, the HMO PCP assigned to that hospital and the ID doctor covering that weekend, that they didn't think he would live through the day. The ID doctor told me in person. The HMO PCP told me over the phone while I stood at the nurses station, as we also discussed my husband's DNR wishes. I wondered if this was the first time he'd ever had to tell a family member someone wasn't going to make it. Maybe that's why he hid behind a phone line.
It's good that my husband and I had talked about all this when he had a Power of Attorney and a Medical Directive done a few months before. Times like that the mind just doesn't funtion up to par.
He spent the day in and out of lucidity. His family was with us. They had gathered from all parts of the country. About 11 that night, my in-laws drug me out of the hospital, telling me I needed to rest. I remember crying myself to sleep...and around 4 I woke up...crying. I headed back to the hospital and fueled myself with more coffee...I had been living on it recently. I checked on him, but didn't wake him in between refills. I walked back into his room around 8 and he was sitting up bright eyed and bushy tailed. I was stunned! Overjoyed, but stunned. It seems one of the doctors had the idea to give him steriods sometime in the night.
The events leading up to this had begun months before. Little stuff. Then they progressed to bigger things and I got to know the ER doctor's at our local hospital better than I would have liked. Mostly they'd run tests, call our doctor, prescribe something and send him home, telling him to see his doctor.
Then came his first admission. I had once again taken him to our local hospital, they conferred with our doctor and it was decided he needed to be admitted. However our local hospital was not part of my HMO, so he was admitted to a hospital in the city my HMO covers...90 miles from home.
He was there for 2 days. He'd had an allergic reaction to the anti-biotic he had started.
I got him home. He was so weak. Then one afternoon, his whole body just seemed to crash. We went through the whole routine again with the ER and the admission. The ER once again released him so we could take him to the other hospital. My brother drove this time. Rush hour. We crawled. All this time my husband laid in the back seat, looking more dead than alive. We got him to the hospital and up to his room. The nurse took his bp...it was 66 over 20. Too low. At this point the HMO doctor had yet to make his appearance. He had been paged, but the nurse's couldn't do anything.
At this point an angel walked in the room in the guise of an Anesthesiologist. He introduced himself and said he had overheard the nurses talking and would I give consent for him to look at my husband. I said "Of course". The next thing I knew he had that room hoppin' and poppin'. He'd told the one nurse to find the HMO doctor, now! He had the ICU resident called up. He was calling for IV's and medications.
In between all that he was rapid firing medical history questions to me. In another time and place it could have been a game show...how fast and how concise could I answer. Beat the Clock.
It wasn't until our doctor got back in town the following Monday, after all this that I was able to really get any information. I was told he had Pneumonia. The doctor said the good news was it was just a bacterial one and not PCP, that he probably pick-up during his hospital stay shortly before...and that drop in blood pressure might have been due to a stroke, but they really didn't know.
His hospital stay was just about a month. During that time, one thing or another would seem to crop up. They had trouble taking him off the steriods after putting him on. His Potassium levels were almost non-exisitant, etc, etc, etc. Our doctor said when a body was as far gone as my husband's was...any little thing was a major thing.
We had many long months of recovery. We battled OI's. I learned how to set the IV drip for Ganciclovir. I dug out my old BP cuff and got good again at taking BP's. I kept track of a mile long list of medications and when to give them. I watched him like a hawk for any little change. I did that for months.
So, now there's something up. His overall health is better now, then before, which should give me comfort. There's nothing to say there isn't an easy fix to this. But like I said...there are some things in life you just don't get over.
Posted by aster1961 at 09:03 AM
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