Well Done!

I am as guilty as the next person for bemoaning the fact that the U. S. Government can’t ever seem to get a job done efficiently. So it is not often that we have a real reason to congratulate government employees for a job well done.

But I have experienced the exception that proves the rule – I know it‘s a cliché – but I really have had an exceptional experience at the hands of unknown government employees.

I mailed my passport renewal application by standard U. S. Postal Mail on Thursday, December 29, 2011. Allowing for the New Year’s Day holiday the application could not have been received in Philadelphia any sooner than Tuesday, January 3, 2012. I did not use priority mail, I did not request expedited service; I simply put the paperwork and the check in the envelope on the mail box on my front porch for pickup by my local postal person. I didn’t even take the envelope to the local post office.

My renewal passport was issued on Monday, January 9, 2012, seven days from the earliest possible application receipt date, and it was delivered into my possession today, Thursday, January 12, 2012. Exactly two weeks from the date I mailed my application.

Had I needed my passport for an upcoming trip it would have taken the five to seven weeks processing time reflected on the Department of State website. But I have no imminent plans to travel. I just sent my renewal in because my previous passport expired in March and I didn’t want to be without the ability to travel on short notice should the opportunity arise.

I am certain there is some lesson to be learned from this experience, but I can’t tell you what it is. I can only say thank you to the unsung heroes of the postal service who managed to get my application from West Coast to East Coast in a timely manner and to the passport service employee or employees who processed my application so quickly.

If you personally know any postal employees or passport service employees please pass my thanks on to them as I am certain they will never see this blog.

If you read this blog, please leave a comment. I never know if there is anyone out there.

Live long and prosper!

EARTHQUAKE WEATHER

Moderate temperature, neither hot nor cold; slightly increase humidity, not like Texas or Florida, but just a little bit sticky; funny color sky, neither blue nor gray, but a bit of both; and still air, so very still, no breeze, no tremble of leaves on the trees, no movement, just still. That is the description of what people in the San Francisco Bay Area call earthquake weather. Pets get a little bit edgy, they seem more alert, and there is a sense of waiting. It is most frequently experienced in April and October. That is what today was like and the date is October 14.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not forecasting an earthquake, I am only saying that today was still and a bit eerie. So if some time in the next week we see a significant earthquake in northern California, remember you read about it here first.

As for me, I am doing very well. I still require oxygen, but not as much and not constantly. If I am sitting quietly reading or writing I am able to go without my tether for hours. I am not yet up to strenuous work without supplemental air, but as long as I don’t exert myself I am fine. And we all know I am capable of not exerting myself. I can ‘not’ exert for long periods of time, with no effort at all.

I don’t need to exert myself to prepare dinner, so many people have provided me with ready to nuke meals (I can’t use the stove top because of the oxygen), I will have forgotten how to cook when I am fully recovered. Rosann brought me delicious homemade chicken and rice soup that fed me for almost a week. Julie brought me scrumptious homemade sausage lasagna that I enjoyed for four or five days. Today Cindy brought me a wonderful chicken casserole that she and Paula put together for me last night that will provide at least four servings.

My dining room looks like a florist shop or a nursery. Shortly before I went into the hospital I bought myself an orchid plant. It has survived in spite of my black thumb – probably because I wasn’t here to overwater it. Julie brought me stargazer lilies in the hospital. Kathy brought me a live plant of lilies. The flowers are like small calla lilies but in a gorgeous purple. (If anyone knows what kind of plant that is, please tell me.) I haven’t killed that plant either. This morning the FTD man brought me a huge bouquet of flowers from my son, daughter-in-law, and grandsons in honor of my birthday. This afternoon Suzanne, a friend from my days at City of Pleasanton, came by with a lovely pink begonia plant.

Everyone is offering to drive me wherever I wish to go. They seem disappointed when I tell them that the doctor has cleared me to drive and I am no longer considered house-bound.

And my friend, Penny, has served above and beyond. She has shopped for me, dusted furniture, vacuumed floors, helped me relocate furniture, and made beds. What makes this special is that Penny hates housework as much as I do, and she has been doing it at my house.

I have been blessed with an outpouring of caring and kindness and it is not because I am special, it is because my friends are.

Live long and prosper!

Not Wonder Woman!

How disappointing. I have discovered I am not Wonder Woman. I assumed I could come home from the hospital, take a couple of days of R&R and resume my prior lifestyle. Wrong!

I can barely empty my dishwasher. Sweep the floors, vacuum …no way! I can’t even make my bed in the morning. Of course, I never was Martha Stewart, but now I have an excuse to lie around all day. It doesn’t look as if I will be getting back to my clutter fighting project – search and destroy – any time soon.

I looked up Pulmonary Embolism on the internet and learned just how sick I was. None of the doctors or nurses managed to impress on me just how serious my condition was. They were too busy trying to save my life. Probably just as well, I might have died of fright if I had known.

What really impressed me as I read about the condition is that much of the time it is misdiagnosed and the patient dies as a result of not receiving timely intervention. The ER doctor at Kaiser had a preliminary diagnosis of PE in less than an hour. Treatment with blood thinners was started, once the diagnosis was confirmed, only a short time after I arrived. It is true, God sends His angels to protect fools and small children. And we all know I am not a small child.

Thanks to all my friends who have pitched in with food and transportation, it doesn’t appear that I will miss outside events that I am physically capable of attending. I just need to restructure my expectations.

Live long and prosper!

All the gory details, part 3

Saturday, October 1st dawned overcast and grey. I was feeling yet much improved from the prior day. I had gone for twenty-four hours without a pain pill. The doctor stopped by and confirmed she was discharging me. A nurse appeared and told me I would be able to leave about noon. My friend Penny phoned and I asked her to pick me up at twelve noon.

Talk about a circus. In the late morning, a priest from St. Mary’s came by to bring me Eucharist. He anointed me with the sacrament of the sick. He had no sooner left than my friend Violet phoned to check on me. While I was on the phone with Violet my doctor appeared to give me my discharge instructions. So I had to hang up on Vi. While with the doctor, someone else came in to give me more discharge information. The phone rang and it was Vi, she thought she had hung up on me. The nurse was telling me that Apria Health Care Services would be delivering oxygen to my house between 12:00 and 4:00 p.m. The pharmacy had a question about my discharge drugs; food service arrived and asked if I wanted lunch. (I said yes, who knew when this farce would end.) My friend Penny arrived to drive me home and I am certain she wondered how good medicine could result from this chaos. It does, it really does. Then the nurse arrived again to tell me Apria was at my house ready to deliver my oxygen. The nurse told them to return at 2:00 p.m. I would be home by then.

At 1:15 pm Penny and I are telling the medical staff I need to leave if I am to be home by 2:00 p.m. to sign for the oxygen delivery. Remember I am recovering from a serious medical trauma; I need peace and tranquility to recover.

A candy striper arrives with a wheelchair to transport me downstairs and outside. But no one has told her that the wheelchair needs to transport oxygen as well. So down she goes to get another wheelchair properly equipped. She arrives with the wheelchair but then remembers that because she is a minor she is not allowed to transport hazardous material (oxygen). So in the interest of getting me out of the hospital the charge nurse gets behind my wheel chair and out we go.

When Penny and I arrive at my house, the Apria truck is sitting in front of the house. We check our watches; it is not yet 2:00 p.m. We are not late; they are early. The comedy of errors is about to come to a close. Four additional oxygen tanks are delivered into the house. The oxygen concentrator is brought in and installed. The sign “Oxygen is Use – No Smoking” is posted on the front window. I have fifty or eighty feet of tubeing that allows me to go anywhere in the house without moving the concentrator. When I leave the house I will use one of the tanks that have been delivered. I cannot turn on the burners of my stove or my oven. I must cook using my microwave or my George Foreman grill. No open flame. I wear the oxygen twenty-four seven. I am not allowed to drive. I cannot shower unless there is someone in the house who can call 911 if I go down again. I am totally dependent upon my friends and neighbors. I am on prayer lists all over the country. I am blessed to be surrounded by so many good people both from my church and from my writers’ group. I love them all.

All the gory details, part 2

Thursday, September 29th, I awoke feeling significantly better. I wasn’t ready to run a marathon, but I no longer felt I needed to be fitted for a casket. I actually felt well enough to be concerned about my appearance, so I ran a comb through my hair. I discovered that my long spell of unconsciousness was not due entirely to my black-out. I had done significant damage to my scull when that part of me made contact with the tile floor. I had an abrasion at the hair line, two large bumps under my hair, and a black eye. When the doctor came in that morning, I reported my discovery to her. Back down for a brain scan to make certain I wasn’t bleeding into my cranium while they were feeding me blood thinners. Bear in mind that everywhere I went in the hospital I went with an IV connected, oxygen, and a heart monitor. I was able to walk, with assistance, from my bed in the hospital room to the gurney in the hallway but I had all this hardware I was carrying along. The CT scan discovered that my hard head had protected my marginal brain, and I was no more scrambled that usual.

My day was brightened by a phone call from my daughter and a visit by a deacon from St. Mary’s in Walnut Creek who brought me Eucharist and prayed with me. My daughter’s call enhanced my emotional well-being. The Eucharist enhanced my spiritual well-being. Lest any of my friends who phoned and visited think I have forgotten their contribution to my well-being, I know they did bring me joy and healing, I just don’t remember on which day. My brain was and is still scrambled.

Friday, September 30th, I awoke feeling even better than the day before. I was improving by leaps and bounds (I don’t want any of my writer friends criticizing my use of clichés). It still took large amounts of concentration to remember what day of the week it was when the nurses asked; thank God they didn’t want to know the date as well. I continued to have a half dozen blood draws a day. I have more bruises (from needles) than the survivor of a multi-car accident. Children turn away from me in horror thinking I must be a monster of some sort.

When I saw the doctor in the late morning she told me she was thinking of discharging me late that afternoon and sending me home. I told her I was not ready to go home that afternoon, but would like to be discharged the following morning. She agreed, so I got one last night of being waited upon.

All the gory details, part 1

Even I get bored listening to the story of my pulmonary embolism over and over again. So I am going to tell it once, as completely as I can remember, and you may read or not read depending upon your interest.

My first recognized symptoms began on Monday, September 26th, in the early evening. Was it six o’clock or seven? I don’t know. Since I didn’t anticipate it to be the beginning of a life changing event, I didn’t make a special note of the time. Suffice it to say it was early Monday evening. I began to experience a pain that felt like a cracked rib on my left side. The pain was moderate but bearable so I tended to ignore it. I slept poorly that night and still had the pain in the morning.

The pain worsened on Tuesday, September 27th, but I still managed to attend a Weight Watchers meeting at 5:45 p.m. Tuesday evenings, after WW, Penny and I usually go to dinner at Applebee’s. We have a full week until our next weigh-in. But that evening I begged off and we went on home. Penny drove my car as far as her house (I have to be feeling bad to give someone else my car keys) and then I drove the last two miles to my house on untraveled back streets. I made it home, grabbed a light snack and dressed for bed, intending to make it an early night. When I lay flat on the bed the pain was so bad I had to get up. I headed for the recliner where I spent many a night while nursing Joe. At this point I started to think about calling for an ambulance. But I didn’t know what I could tell them other than I hurt. I dozed off and on in the recliner until I came awake at midnight.

Wednesday, September 28th, barely awake I struggled to the bathroom to relieve my bladder. I sat down on the commode. The next thing I knew it was five minutes later and I was nose down on the bathroom floor. My first thought is what am I doing on the floor? As I attempted to get up the pain was so debilitating that I didn’t think I would be able to get off the floor and out of the bathroom. I am very grateful that the bathroom is handicap accessible because I was able to use the grab bars next to the toilet and on the wall to pull myself to my feet. There was no question I would call for an ambulance. As I made my way back to the recliner, I turned on the porch light and unlocked the front door. I slipped my feet into the canvas slip-ons that I wear for slippers, collapsed into the recliner, picked up phone, and dialed 911.

“911 Operator, what is your emergency?”

“I need an ambulance,” I responded. We went through the address thing, then my symptoms and finally I was assured than an ambulance was seconds away.

When the knock came on the door, I tried to respond. But between the solid core door and my weak voice, the EMTs and the ambulance crew couldn’t hear me. But they pushed the door open and I assured then they were in the right place. They put the BP cuff on me, asked a few questions, and soon I was on the gurney. They turned off my inside lights, I managed to lock the front door, and then I was down the ramp and being loaded into the ambulance. The fire department EMTs cleared me for transport and the ambulance pulled away from the house.

I drifted in and out of consciousness and only came alert when I was being wheeled into the ER. I had nurses and an ER technician attaching leads to my body and the BP cuff to my arm. Then I was wheeled into x-ray to determine if my ribs were broken. They weren’t. But my lungs appeared clouded on the x-ray. The ER doctor had a preliminary diagnosis in mind when she sent me down for a CT scan of my lungs. When I finally got back to my cell in the ER and the doctor returned I asked her if I would be going home.

She replied, “Not anytime soon.”

She then told me I had a pulmonary embolism and I wouldn’t be going home until they pulled me back from the brink. They started me on Norco for pain, Coumadin to thin the clots, and an antibiotic to prevent infection. They admitted me even though they didn’t have a bed for me - they needed to wait for another patient to be discharged. After starting on the Norco I drifted out of consciousness. I awoke when they moved me into a bed in the medical wing.

I knew I needed to contact some people to take care of the cat and my mail. I had deadlines I was going to miss and I needed to let people know I was down but not out. While the deadlines would be missed, the submissions would be made late rather than never. I turned on my cell phone and brought up my address book. My cell phone does not hold a charge so I had only minutes to write down important contact phone numbers. I called my friend Penny to tell her we wouldn’t be walking our two miles that morning. I gave Penny the pet sitter’s phone numbers and asked her to tell Teri I was hospitalized and request that she look after Red. I called the only CWC member whose phone number was in my cell, because we had car pooled a few times, to let the club board know that the newsletter was going to be significantly late. Then I phoned my daughter so that a family member would know I was very ill but planned to recover. After that last phone call I zonked out.

At some point an x-ray technician appeared with a portable x-ray machine to take another picture of my lungs. I had an ultrasound of my legs to see if there were any clots lingering in wait to attack my lungs; none were found. I assured everyone for the fourth time that I had not recently taken a long airplane flight or a long road trip. I had not been sitting for an extended period with my legs immobile. I walk for one full hour, four days a week, a distance over two miles. I am not a couch potato, I do not smoke, I eat healthy, and I don’t engage in high risk activities or non-activities.

When the doctor came in late Wednesday afternoon I asked her to stop the Norco. The medication left my brains scrambled. She agreed to change from the Norco to Vicodin which is only half the strength of the Norco.

Wednesday night was Grand Central Station for the entire swing and grave yard shift. I would drift off to sleep then awake suddenly with a body standing over me. They would always apologize for startling me. They would check my IV or my oxygen, take my blood pressure, ask if I needed anything. “Yes, please, I would like to sleep longer than thirty minutes without interruption.”

Memorial Day 2011

Memorial Day is a day dedicated to remembering those who died in service to our country.

While every war has its opponents: people who don’t believe in the cause, don’t believe the US should be involved in a particular place, or people who are opposed to any war in principle. Those opponents must not ignore the sacrifice made for us by those who served and died. The very freedom that allows people to protest and to burn the American flag if they so choose was won by those who fought and died in defense of that freedom. Nor should we forget those who fought and are still living.

Having been an Air Force wife during Viet Nam, I knew some of those young men and women who gave their lives or returned home damaged in mind or body. I won’t say that I support one war or oppose another. My feelings about the current conflicts in the world are of no importance. What is important is that we salute our service men and women, those who have died, and those who were willing to die, who strive to ensure that we do have the freedom to worship as we choose, to vote as we choose, to protest as we choose.

We have a moral obligation to take care of those whose minds and bodies were broken by going to war in our defense. While parents and loved ones mourn the death of their fallen warriors, those warriors may be the lucky ones, their suffering is over. What are we as a country doing for those who have returned to us wishing they had died, preferring death to the hell in which they are currently living. Every day, in every large city and a few smaller ones, we see those wounded warriors living in poverty, despised as the dregs of humanity.

We are not the first country to abandon those to whom we owe so much. Rome did as much to their returning warriors after the campaign against Hannibal. England was as bad or worse in their treatment of returning soldiers after the Napoleonic Wars. Are we destined to repeat the sins of the past? Can we not learn from the mistakes of others.

I won't pretend to know the answers. I don't know exactly what it is we should do to correct this outrageous wrong. But we should do something. We have a bi-lateral Congress of the USA, senators and representatives who should make it their priority to find a solution for these issues.

So if I can urge you to take one step, as a free member of a free democratic society, contact your congress person and your senator, and urge them to address this shame that confronts America, protest any decisions to reduce funds dedicated to helping our wounded warriors. We have survivors of many wars in our midst, survivors of World War II, of the Korean conflict, of Viet Nam, of Desert Storm, of Afghanistan and of Iraq.

Ask yourself, while you are thinking of your loved ones who surrendered their lives for our country, what are we doing for those who are dying a slower and more painful death because they are abandoned by the very country for which they gave their best.

Live long and prosper