Heros are Born

Wednesday noon we had a little excitement (Rest Home Style}. We were peaceably eating lunch in the Main Dining Room. My seat is perhaps closest to the door. Suddenly, there was a loud, explosive-like noise from the kitchen. There are multiple chandeliers throughout the dining room. Each has eight or more mini light bulbs shaped like candle flames. The bulbs all popped like a Chinese fire cracker display with flashes of super bright light. Old folks in wheelchairs like me peddled for the door in a mad panic. What caught my eye were the high school kids that act as waitstaff leading the rush - except for one who stayed calm. She moved to the bank of light switches and turned all of them off. She then went back in to help the residents escape.

She (Tamber is her name) probably did not do the right things from the point of view of her personal safety. There was no time for much thought, but something made Tamber take the selfless path to help others.

A rational review later showed there was never any acute danger, but in those few nano-seconds, Tamber and those few of us that observed her actions knew that she was of the stuff of heroines.

It is an isolated feeling being in a rest home like this.I do know that Lake Tahoe is in bad trouble with a fire and that Paris Hilton got out of the "slammer" today or yesterday. There is only one TV for my roomie and I. Sharing is difficult because he is very deaf and actually dislikes TV. He is a nice guy though, and I don't want to annoy him. He gets tucked in about 7:30 PM so I turn the volume down to the point that I doubt that he can hear and I watch away. Outside of CNN and Fox there is little news on then - and besides, I do enjoy a bunch of the "adventure" series like Law and Order. Between that and the fact that a majority of the staff speaks Spanish makes me feel like I am in a foreign country.

Tomorrow they stuff me into one of those "Non-emergency Ambulances" aad transport me to my surgeon's office. There, the stitches in my tum-tum are scheduled (I don't know if that is spelled correctly but I can't find a dictionary in this library) to be removed and tests run to see if all is working as it should. That should be a pleasant change of pace.

I had a conversation today with a nurse about getting off pain pills that fog me up like a windshield in the early morning. She told me to relax, that they could tell when was the right time to quit. Unbelieving and curious me decided to run an experiment of my own and avoided the pills from 9AM until about 5PM. At that time the routine blood pressure testsing lady came along. My pressure was through the roof and the pain was at high pitch. They gave me BP pills and pain pills and I lay down until dinner was served. I feels fine now, but will leave drug research to the pros in the future.

How Nice To See so Many Comments

Sally has pushed my wheelchair up from my room to the library where this computer is and I was pleased to see so many welcomes. There is a piano concert going on right next door. It is my kind of '40's music (Blue Moon right now) so if my typing sort of jumps, it is just what the music does to me. I am feeling a little devilish right now. I know that liver and onions are not on my diet, but I couldn't resist at lunch - they really know how to cook it!

My roommate by contrast is having a down day. He is eighty nine and suffering a broken leg which he got while trying to make himself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. They have a steel rod in there to prop him up, but real healing hasn't started yet. He is told that healing just takes longer at this age, but he gets discouraged. Old age can suck.

Despite my roaring incision infection, the powers that be decided that I should pursue physical therapy this AM. Seems like I should be mad at someome, but I do really sense that progress is coming along. {Damn, that pianist is GOOD!}

Have I mentioned that that there is a cat named Petunia, that hangs out here in the library? He knows that the doors open to the outside when he get close to the detector. So the whole outdoors is his litter box and he can mootch food from every or any room in the place. He's a fat cutie.

I plan to be back tomorrow.

Hi Folks, I Am Still Clicking

Boy, this spring has been a bad-un. The computer at the "Skilled Nursing Home" is up and working, sort of. So here is a brief update. Since February, I have been in the hospital, at the skilled nursing home, and home again, and then started the cycle over again. I hope that I will be completing this round in a few weeks and can get back to the comforts of home again. A large part of the difficulty I have had in writing about the Last Quarter, has been the considerable amount of pain involved and the subsequent pain killers administered. The latter can fog up the thinking apparatus to a good extent.

There are occasional bright spots. The cardiologists report that my heart survived the biggest operations in good shape after lots of worry about the possible need for more valve work. On a different scale, but a bright spot nonetheless -- one of my favorite foods is smoked salmon. This morning a salmon platter was served up as the breakfast entre' and I was able to con the waitress into serving me two breakfasts.

Well, I hope that is enough to establish that I am still around and of good morale. I shall try to conquer the distance to this computer via wheelchair and the fussiness of the thought process and scribble more in the near future.