Burning Gas–Driving Through a Cloud

Posted on 14/04/2011 by Grumpa Joe

About a year before Peggy and I took this trip to the Northwest, our friends Bill and Lois toured the area by train. Bill couldn’t say enough for the scenery along the route between Banff and VanCouver. Peggy and I did it by car, and I can attest to the beauty of this section of mountains. One of my grandest memories is coming down the QEW-1 into a valley covered by a layer of clouds. Everything went foggy for a few minutes then we broke through the cloud layer and the grandest little town appeared before us. On the way out of town we went into the clouds again to break out into the blue sky at the top of the mountain.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Among the many reasons for this trip was to see this section of Canada, and to show Peggy a real garden.

We arrived in Vancouver during  evening hours, and settled into a hotel near the ferry landing. The following morning we boarded the ferry for the hour ride to Vancouver Island. We checked into the Fairmont hotel and did a walking tour of the historic district. The day was sunny, and mild. We enjoyed the shops and the food.

Related Articles

Filed under: Garden, Memories, Ponds, Travel | Tagged: , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Assessing the Damage-Part Four

Posted on 13/04/2011 by Grumpa Joe

I had been in hell for a long time when a new doctor arrived. My leg still had a tube with fluids running. The bed was still on an angle with my feet up in the air. Why? It was a way to keep fluid from filling my lungs. Unbeknownst to me, I lost the nerves that control the muscles for swallowing. All saliva and drool ran out of my mouth or down my throat. It also meant I could not take food or drink by mouth without choking.

The new doctor asked me to move my head from side to side. He held his hand against my face as I strained to push him away. He asked me to smile. I did. He asked me to smile again; I told him I was smiling. My face muscles were paralyzed. Even though my brain was telling me to smile, and I really thought I was, the message didn’t get to my cheek muscles. During my stay at CDH I became known as the ‘kid who never smiles.’ I couldn’t move my mouth to form words very well either. None of it made sense. I thought I was smiling and talking normal, but no one understood me, and they thought I was grumpy all the time.

My arms were next. I was able to move them up, down, around, and to put pressure against his hands. He moved to my legs.

“Bend your knees and hold them together.”

I moved my legs and bent them as he asked. The doctor put two fingers against my knees. “Now spread your knees apart against my hands.”

I pushed with all of my might but nothing happened. At that moment I realized I wasn’t going to make it to tryouts.

Related Articles

Filed under: Biography, family, health care, Jun-e-or, Memories | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Where Is Everybody?-Part Three

Posted on 12/04/2011 by Grumpa Joe

I didn’t see Mom or Dad for days, and I wondered why. An aid explained that visiting hours were twice a week for half an hour. Mom had been there to visit, but I was too sick to know it. Because the hospital’s function was to control contagious diseases, visitors were never allowed into a room with the patients. The hospital restricted visitors to a special glass corridor. Each room had glass walls separating it from adjacent rooms and the corridor connecting them. Parallel to the staff corridor was another corridor separated by glass. Visitors were restricted to the space behind the second glass wall. When I was able to see Mom it was through two walls of glass and across a space of twenty feet. We couldn’t talk to each other because the voice wouldn’t carry through all the glass. At first, it was a lot of waving and lip reading. Visits became frustrating because of the difficulty of communication. Visits also ended in what seemed like a second. When visiting hours ended, the security staff moved visitors out. The time machine went back to ultra slow where one second was a minute, one minute was an hour, and one hour seemed like a day. Now more than ever, I wanted to go home and play football.

Filed under: Biography, family, health care, Jun-e-or, Memories | Tagged: , , , | Leave a comment »

Talking to the Devil–Part Two

Posted on 12/04/2011 by Grumpa Joe

After going to hell for a long conversation with the devil, the ice bed began bringing my temperature down. It lasted for what seemed like eternity during those first seven days in the Contagious Disease Hospital. When the fever finally dropped, I began to notice strange things all around me. The rooms and hallways are separated from each other by windowed walls. A huge, beige colored tank with glass port holes stood in the hall along the window outside my room. What is it, I wondered? I never asked, but later learned that it had my name on it.

A few months ago I asked my brother Bill to tell me about the death of our older brother Joe. Since I wasn’t born when Joe died, the details of his story escaped me. Brother Joe died at age seven of scarlet fever in the same hospital. Wow! It finally dawned on me. Here I am at age 64 finally realizing the agony that Mom and Dad must have gone through when they took me, their second son named Joe, to the same hospital where their first born son died. They earned their way into heaven with the suffering and mental anguish. I apologize, Mom and Dad, for having put you through that horrible wringer again.

After the ice-mattress, the doctors invented a new torture. Two aides came in and raised the foot of my bed with blocks. Now, I had to lay there with my head down, and my feet up in the air, and my arm tied.

The IV-line in my hand blocked, and it needed to be moved. A doctor came and started doing something to my leg. The next thing I knew, the tube was in my ankle. He cut my ankle open to find the vein and inserted the tube down there. The nurses referred to that as a ‘cut-down’. They tied my leg to keep me from pulling it out.

Time slowed to a crawl in that fish tank of a room at CDH. An hour seemed like a day, a day like a week, and a week like a month. Still, all I could think about was getting out in time for tryouts. The start of a new school year drew closer, and I realized it would take time to regain my strength from being in the hospital.

Once the fever subsided I felt much better and more mentally aware of the surroundings. When a doctor came in, I asked, “When will I go home?”

“Soon,” they replied. That is not the answer I wanted to hear.

Related Articles

Filed under: Biography, family, health care, Jun-e-or, Memories, religion | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Out of My Mind–Part One

Posted on 11/04/2011 by Grumpa Joe

The Length of the ride in the ambulance to the Contagious Disease Hospital is all I remember. I don’t recall how fast they drove or if a siren sounded. The attendants moved me into the hospital, and slid me off the cart to a bed in a room alone. The room seemed dark but I didn’t care one bit. My head pounded, and it hurt like heck to move my neck.  My throat felt like fire and I couldn’t swallow. The fever made me delirious. I wanted to sleep, and make it all go away.

A steady stream of doctors and nurses came throughout the night to examine me. Each one asked the same questions. Each one tested the stiffness of my neck. One nurse stuck a glass thermometer into my mouth another stuck a needle into my hand and taped it there. She hung a bag with fluid and started it flowing. A male nurse inserted a catheter. I wished they would leave me alone and let me sleep. When they finally left, I lay in a hospital gown tossing and turning, the fever cooking me from within; my arm tied to the bed so I couldn’t jerk the needle out.

After what seemed like an eternity, two nurses came. They rolled me to the edge to spread a rubber mattress on the bed. A male aid came with a tub full of ice cubes. I wondered what they were going to do, but didn’t really care. I was hot and my mind was everywhere.

The aid began pumping ice water into the rubber mattress under me. At first the coolness felt good. After awhile on the chilling bed I began to shiver uncontrollably. The nurses kept replacing the water in the mattress, the aid brought more ice. My teeth chattered from the cold, my body shook uncontrollably. Lying on the ice mattress made me cold, but the fire in my body raged on. They threw a blanket over me to help, but I kept shivering under the covers.

Many weeks later, I learned that my body temperature went over one-hundred-five degrees as the virus worked its evil in my body. The torture of the ice mattress was necessary to save me. As uncomfortable as it was, I couldn’t care less.

During the endless hours of delirium, visions of Mendel and football tryouts played through my mind. I needed to get out of this place to make it to the tryouts. Plans for an escape filled my mind.  Each time a doctor came to check my condition I asked if I’d be home in time for the tryouts. None of them ever answered.

Filed under: Biography, family, health care, Jun-e-or, Memories | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

« Previous Page — Next Page »