What A MOnth!

January 2009…what a month!  And it is not over yet.  Good and bad and everywhere between.  This has been an emotional, soul searching and trying three weeks.  It is during times like these that Romans 8:28 provided comfort.  Am I glad that God is in control!  I assure you that we are not. 

Good = I got my bonus check, I started a BSF mens Bible study, my father had his 83rd birthday and my wife still loves me…and Tina still has a birthday to come this month.

Bad = Fischer’s illness and hospitalization, the childrens’ shifting professional priorities, my brother-in-law’s current hospitalization and a few other straws on the camel’s back.

But the greatest news of all is that our family’s love will share the burdens and multiply the joys. 

2009 has a lot to unfold.  But I fear not knowing that the love of God and family will overcome any and all darts and challenges that come our way.

Hearing Aid Day

What did you say?  I said today is “hearing aid day”.  What does that mean?  Today I drive to the VA Hospital in Columbia to pick up my hearing aid.  Why must you go to the VA Hospital in Columbia?  That is the place where a veteran gets audiology services.  Was it difficult to get into the VA process?  Not after making an appointment and waiting a long time.  How did you qualify for this through the VA?  I lost some hearing a long time ago when serving in the Air Force.  What happened to cause the loss?  I was rather immature and decided not to go to the flight surgeon, but flew a mission anyway, the air pressure in the aircraft caused further damage to my ear which was already hurting.  Why didn’t you go to the flight surgeon?  I did not want to be pulled off combat status and expose myself to being called a coward for not flying in combat.  Was that very smart?  No, but I was young and not real mature.  So are you now paying for it the rest of your life?  Yes, but the price is far less than 58 thousand paid while serving in Viet Nam.

Doctors Aren’t God

It seems to be human nature to look at doctors with a high level of respect-perhaps too high which is not necessarily a fault of theirs.  Doctors simply do not know the answers, the cures or even the attacking disease from time to time.  I watched my mother-in-law suffer through an undiagnosed cancer for several weeks and only her autopsy was able to answer questions that fine well educated doctors could not do while she hung on to those last days of her life.

With Fischer’s recent hospitalization (and he is not well yet) the doctors seemed to display a compassionate outpouring.  However, they could not diagnose the problem with any accuracy in the beginning.  Sophisticated procedures include a CAT scan, a spinal tap and finally an MRI was needed to make a diagnosis.  What did the world do less than a generation ago, when none of those procedures existed? 

So one can only conclude that doctors are simply well educated human beings.  They are not God.  If we make them such, we are setting ourselves up for disappointment.  And this is not a comment that points to a doctor’s mistake but one of the health services consumer…or me anyway.  I always need to be reminded that God created this challenging product, the human body, in His image.  So the creator is surely the one and only true Physician.  And He will never disappoint!

Fischer’s Hospital Update (1-4-09)

4:45 pm

Just getting home…yuck…it was a 3 hour discharge because some doctors were in a meeting for a VERY LONG time.

1:00 pm

Getting discharged.  Yippee.

11:45 am

Good news.  Test results are back from the MRI and the pediatric neurologist is sure that this is a case of acute cerebullar ataxia or Cerebelitus.

So, this should go away over the next few days.  That is good news.

Also, the culture from the spinal tap came back negative, so more good news.

Now, we just have to surround him while walking because it is like he is learning to walk again with all the wobbling.

Going home as soon as we can sweet talk the nurses.

11:05 am

Fischer just got out of his MRI and is awake now.

Here are some pics so you can see him finally able to eat for the first time today.

He has much made improvement today and we are hoping to hear some good news back from his culture. (takes 48 hours)

We are anticipating coming home very soon, especially since this all begun by a pediatrician visit for a what we thought was an ear infection.

Thanks for the support and prayers.

Oh yeah, Oslow, the floor black lab, came by to see Fischer…that was certainly a highlight of the morning.

Fischer At The Hospital But No Room At The Inn

Yesterday was a long and trying day for Don and Buffy.  Fischer’s 2nd birthday is only 8 days out and he was admitted to the children’s hospital.  As a stomach virus (my diagnosis) ran through the NC family, Fischer displayed symptoms that exceeded those of the other s – mainly a sense of dizziness which made him stumble and eventually crossing his eyes.  A visit to the pediatrician led to a trip to the emergency room where he spent the balance of the day and was officially admitted for a 48 hour observation.  It seems the white cell count was high.  A spinal tap followed some other extensive procedures and the doctors decided to monitor him with expectations that this count will come down.  The word meningitis is very intimating to this grandfather.

Sick children are a norm for parents.  But admission to the hospital is no picnic.  It is only human nature to think the worst.  And then God reminds us that all of us are temporal, but His love started long ago and is as strong today (and 48 hours from now) as it was on that first Christmas Day.

Don let Fischer talk to me on the phone last night.  His sounds were left to my skills of interpretation, as his vocabulary is yet to be clear and/or expanded.  But his laughter and sense of play was communicated from that ER room to my BlackBerry and into my heart.  Of course, my early morning prayers start and stop with intercession for my only begotten grandson.  May God, the Great Physician, grant the hand of healing to be placed fully upon that little boy.  May God wrap his arms around Don and Buffy as they wrestle with the anxieties that are common to every parent in this situation?  And may this same prayer be multiplied for each and every child in that hospital, as there was no room available at the time of the phone conversation (no room at the inn).  Many other parents, siblings and grandparents are surely offering this same prayer, or versions thereof. 

In JESUS name Rick Warren and I pray!

New Years Eve Eve

You got it..Dec 30, 2008…New Year’s Eve Eve.  Upon reflection I can hardly believe that there are fewer than 48 hours left in 2008.  It seems like just yesterday we were worried about Y2K and now I am counting down to 2015 when I will turn 66 and be able to draw full Social Security.

I have never been a real late night kind of guy.  Most New Year’s Eves I am in bed at the regular time (by 9 or 10) and sawing logs.  The fireworks have not been my most enjoyed past time.  And I do not drink.  So getting bombed is not my cup of tea.  I am boring!

Back in my early CPA days,  this was inventory observation time.  All CPA’s have their “war stories”.  Mine sort of settle around steel yards.  There’s nothing like wearing a hard hat and counting I-Beam’s, Angle Iron and Re-bar in the cold.  The guys who are there with you are not too happy either, as they would much prefer being back home watching their favorite bowl game versus telling some college grad where to find a 6×6 24 foot long piece of steel.  If you want to hear some real “winners” just ask any CPA friend about their most fun inventory observation.  The best story I have heard is about the counting of turkeys.  Just imagine telling them all to stand still so you can count them!

So if anyone has plowed this deep into my New Year’s Eve Eve blog, I wish you the utmost in health and happiness for 2009!

Christmas – Come and Gone

Wow!  So Christmas 2008 has come and gone in a whirlwind.  With age creeping into this set of bones, the experience of Christmas seems to take on some unique differences than Christmas past.  Well, I am on the road as always – to my mom’s which is a tradition.  We exchange gifts which is always fun.  We stuff ourselves with too much fine home cookin’ – an American tradition.  We take time off of work, which is always good.  And New Years seems to usher in a new challenge with the cool air offering a variety of sniffles, sore throats and blah stomachs.

But how have Christmas traditions changed?  With family scattered and no children close by, the big overdecorated Christmas tree has become a small artificial leftover from Christmas past.  Shopping season now starts prior to Halloween.  Gifts are more in the forms of cash or gift cards.  Airplane tickets have joined the cost of travel.  Cell phones with unlimited minutes have allowed for more relaxed and longer conversations with those loved ones who are in distant places.  Fewer lights and glitter need to be placed back into the attic.  And the scales seem to be showing a little more guilt than ever.

So best Christmas ever?  It is hard to say.  My Lionel Train is perhaps my most memorable childhood gift.  Having Jackie’s grandmother with us was always a delight, as she was more of a kid than our own children.  And my first Christmas home from overseas with my new wife places high on the list.  Of course, firing cap guns in Alabama with my cousin was fun.  And my dad being home for Christmas was always a treat, when he was not out to sea on a Navy ship.

My worst Christmas?  Second worst was the lonely day, my first full day, on Okinawa on Christmas Day 1968.  No one was around the barracks and it seemed like the Twilight Zone.  I hired my first taxi and the driver did not speak English.  So I rode around and returned to the barracks to enjoy the solitude and safety of the beginning of a long journey in my Southeast Asian experience.  But my worst Christmas was a very, very lonely and a sad day sitting at the base of Monkey Mountain the Christmas of 1969.  We had completed a failed project on top of the mountain.  I was thousands of miles from home or anyone that cared I even existed.  And I was separated from my squadron, as my buddies were about 12 miles away on the other side of the bay.  I listened live to the Bob Hope show on the radio as Bob was about 20 miles south of me with thousands of GI’s cheering on his appreciative crew.  I completed the day at that little base next to an ARVN group that we never trusted.  The sad thing was that the people in that country we were trying to defend were sprinkled with VC who eventually conquered that little piece of real estate and made all the sacrifice that Christmas in vain. 

Christmas has come and gond for 2008.  It was a good one!  And I am thankful for each and every Christmas that is gifted to me.

Passwords?

Hey.  Has anyone noticed how many Passwords are needed these days?  It is absolutely ridiculous.  I have a password for my office computer and a different one for my home computer; one for my office alarm another for my home alarm.  I have not set up a password on my Blackberry yet. 

Then on the Internet I need a password for the newspaper on line, my 401(k), my IRA, my tax return and who-knows-what-else.  I need to get a computer to keep up with all my passwords.  But then again maybe not.  You see my first granddaughter’s name is one that I use primarily (and bamboo under the fingernail torture will not drag her name out of my mouth!).  Then all of a sudden I am told that I must have a combination of numbers and letters.  What was Maggie’s birthday again?

And the day comes along that my son tells me I must get back to blogging.  So I run into my Peach Holler favorite places and low and behold, I need a user name and a password.  So I try two or three user names and a combination of passwords and get nothing.  Finally I stumble onto the user name.  And I hit the little line that says it will send the password if I forgot.  And these blog folks simply do not have a good name for grandchildren.  They sent me a garbly gook password.  Get this  …  “WD37oY$^p2u“.  Now who in their right mind is going to name their child that?  Perhaps this site is actually run by a bunch of robots whose great-great-great grandfather is R2D2. 

Is life complicated for a boomer or what?

A.W.O.L.

Guilty as charged.  I have been A.W.O.L. = Absent WithOut Leave.  And there are no excuses to offer…but let me try.  First-I am a Boomer and not a Gen-X’er.  So “bloggin” does not come natural to me.  Second – I forgot how to get into the site.  Third – well no one really cares…but I’m back ((for how long???…well, until my son throws the guilt my way and I get back into the groove.)).

AWOL is actually a military term, I believe.  And I would say that to my knowledge I was never AWOL.  But let me think about that again…only twice.  Once in California I missed the 8 AM muster.  It seems I overslept at a friends house (off base) and got in late.  My buddies covered for me.  And then in Texas…I saw my name on a roster for weekend duty…just before I left for a long weekend away from the base.  Our vehicle broke down and we never got away.  By the time we got back, someone noticed I was gone (AWOL) and covered for me.  So I guess I never was actually AWOL…and I got the Good Conduct Medal.  Now tell me how many guys got the Good Conduct Medal?  And how many guys would brag about getting a “Goodie-Two-Shoes” medal?  Having the MARKSMAN Medal sounds more…macho.  How about the OUTSTANDING UNIT CITATION.  Now that sounds cool.  And how about the V DEVICE (for valor)?  Now that sounds really cool.

Okay…back to blogging.  Hmmm…it is Christmas Eve Eve (although this blog seems to say it is 12/24).  And we finally got the small tree up and decorated.  With no kids around it just does not seem all that fancy to decorate.  I do not want to be a “ba-hum-bug”, but Christmas without kids is not too fun.  After all, Jesus was a kid on Christmas.

I did try a new Christmas project.  In my new workshop I actually found some plywood and cut out a Nativity.   I stuck it outside next to the telephone pole so the light could shine on it at night.  Joseph has fallen over a couple of times (too much of that new wine?).  But I am quite proud of myself.  My next project?  A cowboy with his horse maybe?  We’ll see and it will give me something to blog about.

So with that useless dribble, I will complete this blog and think about my next one.

Dad the AWOL Blogger

Don & Photo Booth