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STORIES:
_____________ The Nudge I am often aware of the things I should do to make needed changes in my life, but all too often resist. The word change scares me into the middle of next week. When it gets real bad, God gives me a nudge. A case in point: I was riding my bike on a perfectly beautiful autumn day. The sun was floating high in the sky, warming the air just enough to keep me from breaking a sweat. The sky itself was Easter Egg Blue, and a loud cacophony of bird chirps followed me down the street. I felt like singing “Zippity-Doo-Dah.” I saw the black car as I approached the busy intersection and knew in a moment that it was traveling much too fast. My last thought before crashing into the side of it was, “He’s not going to stop.” Strange that I had no feeling of panic or fright; surprising that facing the inevitable, I didn’t become hysterical or scream my head off. Up to that point, I had always thought if I were about to cash in my chips I would yell, “No! No! Not yet! It’s not my time to go.” But nothing like that passed through my mind. In fact, I felt unbelievably calm as I looked into the face of almost certain death and just before everything went from white to black. A paramedic was gazing into my eyes while other emergency personnel covered my body with a light blanket when I regained consciousness. I was totally confused with no memory of what had happened. “Am I having a bad dream?” The young paramedic smiled at me, but before he could answer, I returned to Zoned Out City. Much later, I came to realize how close I’d come to pedaling up to that big bike path in the sky. The E.R. doctor told me, “Last week a woman riding a bike was hit by a car and died at the scene.” That I survived at all was amazing to everyone, but especially to me. At first, I shrugged it off. “It wasn’t my time to go after all.” My bike and I had crashed into the side of a speeding black Camaro. After being thrown onto the hood of the car, I bounced off the windshield and onto the pavement. By the time I landed, my face looked like raw hamburger. One look at me and the E.R. called in a surgeon. “I can see that you’re a pretty lady,” he said, “and I want you to still be that way when you leave this hospital. Your injuries are serious and you need a specialist.” What woman in her right mind would argue with that? The plastic surgeon laughed real hard when I asked him if he could make me look like a movie star. He thought I was joking. I wasn’t. Looking back to that day, it’s easy to see that many unseen forces worked in my favor. In fact, I believe that God looked down from heaven at 2:30 that afternoon, saw that I was in real danger, and made up His mind right then and there to change the odds on my personal playing field. You don’t believe me? Well, just before I got to the intersection on my bike, a doctor and his nurse reached the opposite corner. Waiting for the traffic signal to change, they were standing only a few feet away from me at the moment of impact. An ambulance with four paramedics inside had only moments before stopped at the same intersection on the opposite side of the traffic light. Crash! Bam! Boom! My bike collided with the black car and I flew face-first onto the windshield and that’s all I remember. The doctor and nurse were there in a heartbeat. The paramedics, en route to another accident, prevented me from going into shock by administering first aid and calling for backup. Was it coincidence that my accident occurred on that particular day and at that precise moment? I don’t know the answer; I doubt I’ll ever know how or why things fell into place so beautifully, but they did. I’d like to think God heard a prayer asking for my protection as I peddled unperturbed toward the fate awaiting me. I choose to believe that’s when God seized the moment and changed the odds. He gave me a nudge. In time, my battered body healed, although a concussion left me with temporary amnesia that hung around to haunt me. I remembered only that I had been enjoying a pretty afternoon up until that car sped through a traffic light. In order to reclaim my lost memory, I realized I would need to find an eyewitness to help me. I located a woman who happened to look out of a fourth-story office window at the same moment I hurtled headfirst into the car. Seeing my body fly through the air and hit the windshield, she gasped as I landed like a rag doll on the pavement. She watched as blood slowly covered my face, and strange as it may sound, she noticed that it matched the red sweater I was wearing. A prayer sprang from her lips. “God, please don’t let that woman die.” Each time she closed her eyes, she saw the after-image of my red sweater. For the rest of the day and into the night, she reiterated her prayer: “God, please don’t let that woman die.” I was able to track her down by chance through a friend who worked in the same office building. I have since come to believe that there are no accidents. When I think of her, Shirley was her name, I get a clear vision of an umbilical-like cord of love shining down from a four-story window and connecting our two souls in a moment of need. Others have suggested that the caring people I encountered just happened to be in the right place at the right time. I know better. The doctor and nurse on the corner, the paramedics, the ambulance, and even the pharmacist who came running when he heard there had been a serious accident, were all strategically placed by the only power strong enough to transform a tragedy into a blessing. I didn’t know then what God had in store for me, but when I was able to make sense of things again, I promised myself to be open for whatever turned up. An extraordinary chain of events taught me that it was okay to face my life head-on, to fix the things I had thought unfixable and to conquer my fear of change. God’s not-so-little nudge gave me the courage to become the writer I was born to be. No, I’m not famous and I probably never will be. But I’m doing what makes me happy. I can only pray (and I do) that one day God will smile down from heaven and say, “This is my beloved daughter in whom I am well pleased.” A Little Red Bag I woke up one morning in an Army hospital. It was in Vietnam in 1968 during the Second TET Offensive. I had been evacuated to the hospital and all I had with me was the jungle fatigue uniform and jungle boots I had been wearing. The lights had been dimmed during the night and everyone in the neighboring beds seemed to be sleeping. I raised up a bit and could see an Army nurse sitting at a desk at the end of the ward which was in a corrugated metal Quonset Hut that thankfully was air conditioned. She was reading something by the light of a small desk lamp and would occasionally look up from her book and glance down the length of the ward. She soon noticed that I had raised up on my elbows and came to see if I needed anything. It had been many months since I had seen an American woman. She was young, blonde, and very attractive, even wearing Army issued jungle fatigues. I was embarrassed to have to tell her I needed to use the toilet. My bladder was about to burst. It did not seem to bother her a bit and she reached into the nightstand next to my hospital bed and pulled out a plastic container commonly called a duck. I thanked my lucky stars that I did not need a bedpan, at least not at that time. When I finished filling the duck, she took it from me and left to empty it, wash it, and then returned it for future use. I later became really attached to that duck now that I knew where it was stored and learned to turn on my side to reach it. She informed me that the lights would be turned up at six o’clock and everyone who was awake would clean up for the breakfast that arrived at seven. She noted that I had no belongings in the nightstand and told me she would bring a ditty-bag for me to keep. A ditty-bag? That was a new term for me. She left and returned with a small red cloth bag that had a black shoelace tied around the opening in the top. She said that everything I needed to clean up with was in the red bag. I untied the shoelace and opened the bag to examine the contents by the dim lights in the ward. It contained a safety razor and a packet of blades, shaving cream, a small stainless steel mirror, a toothbrush and toothpaste, a small bar of soap, a small washcloth, a small black comb, a writing tablet of Red Cross stationery, and a gold-colored Parker ball-point pen with its distinctive arrow-shaped pocket clip. The Red Cross had put everything I would need in that small red ditty-bag. Using a basin of warm water, I shaved. It took a long time to do it from a reclining position. I then brushed my teeth and washed my face and hands and other things I could reach. I looked in the small stainless steel mirror and decided I did not look too bad for someone brought in earlier unconscious with a fever and chills. The doctors treated it as a tropical disease that had probably been insect borne, and was a combination of malaria and dengue fever. Anyhow, I now felt cleaner and surprisingly good. I returned my new possessions, courtesy of the Red Cross, back into the ditty-bag. Breakfast came and it was devoured with gusto, Tang imitation orange drink, powdered eggs, powdered reconstituted milk, and all. Now what I wanted was to be released from the hospital and get back to my unit in the 25th Infantry Division at its base camp at Cu Chi. I did make good use of the writing tablet and the Parker ballpoint pen to write a few letters home to let the family know I was well. It took a few days for me to convince the Army doctors that I was okay and wanted to leave their air-conditioned comfort and return to my unit and the jungle and rice paddies. I took my red ditty-bag with me and it now was useful as my toilet article kit. A year later, I returned to the United States with my faithful ditty-bag in my duffel bag. After I retired from the Army, I soon outgrew the ditty-bag as a toilet article kit. It soon found a new job as a bag to contain and protect my new Sony camcorder. It fulfilled this job for many years. One day, not too long ago, I was using the camcorder and when placing it back in the ditty-bag I noticed a small label sewn into the inside of the bag’s neck. On it was printed, “American Red Cross – Rock County, WI Chapter – Not To Be Sold.” I was intrigued that ladies in Wisconsin had sewn the ditty-bag and filled it with the goodies I found in Vietnam. I decided to write a belated letter of thanks to the Rock County Chapter telling them how much I appreciated their effort and that I was still using the Parker ballpoint pen. A few weeks after I mailed the letter, I received a letter from the Red Cross Chapter director in Janesville, Wisconsin. It was a nice note thanking me for my letter and expressing the thought that the ladies in the chapter were quite appreciative for having their patriotic work recognized by someone who had received a ditty-bag. It also contained a note from a gentleman who said that he was a vice-president of the Parker Pen Company whose factory was located in Janesville, and he wanted to use my thank you letter in the company’s newsletter. He asked for my okay to use the letter and I gave it to him with gratitude. I still have the ditty-bag and still use the gold-colored Parker ballpoint pen. They are the two best souvenirs of my thirteen-month service in Vietnam. A Mother’s Love Let me begin by introducing my “children” to everyone. I am the proud mom of not only a married son, Scott, but also of two beautiful dogs, Boo and Hallie. I found them 4½ years ago on Halloween and fell instantly and madly in love with them. They are brother and sister, part German Shepherd and part Sher-pei. But it took a recent incident to make me realize that my maternal love could extend unconditionally to my two canine offspring, proving that a mother will do anything for her children. Hallee ran helter-skelter into the house late one night and began rolling madly on the floor. Then she headed to my bedroom where she dove onto my bed and continued this bizarre behavior. Upon closer inspection, I saw blood on the sheets! “Oh my God, Hallie, what’s wrong with you?” Boo jumped on the bed and began sniffing Hallie. Then the smell hit me. She’d been SKUNKED! Her eyes and nose were burning. She had rolled around on the floor and on my sheets so hard that she’d skinned her nose and mouth. I checked every inch of her body and couldn’t find anything else. I immediately thought “Vet” whenever anything happened to either of them. This time was no exception. I pulled off my nightgown, quickly dressed, and grabbed the phone to call Karen, my daughter-in-law. She called every night and I didn’t want her to worry when she got the answering machine. “Karen, I’m going to the emergency room.” “Nanny, what’s wrong with you?” “It’s not me, it’s Hallie. She’s been skunked.” After her uncontrollable laughter–I didn’t think it was funny at all–she proceeded to try to talk without laughing any harder because she knew I was upset. “Wash her eyes and mouth with a wet wash cloth, she’ll be just fine. Call me when you finish and let me know how she’s doing.” “OK, I can do that.” My voice still quavered. Being a Certified Nursing Assistant, I should know how to handle emergencies. Go figure. Now I know why doctors are advised not to treat their family members in the emergency rooms. “Hallie’s calmed down now,” I told her a few minutes later. “Good. Going to the vet for that’s a little extreme, even for you Nanny.” They all think I am totally overprotective, which I am and make no apologies for it. “Karen, I’m not a country girl like you and I mean that in the nicest way. I’ve never experienced anything like this before, although I’ve heard of it happening to other people.” By this time, I could hear my two granddaughters giggling in the background. “Now give her a bath in tomato juice and that should do it”, Karen said. “OK, I’ll talk to you tomorrow. Hugs and kisses. I love ya’ll.” I was glad Scott, my son, was away on business because he thinks I have completely gone over the top when it comes to my “babies.” In my defense, I was the same way with him until his pediatrician kindly advised me that I was over reactive. “I’m too old for this nonsense,” I grumbled to myself. I was completely exhausted after I finished “juicing” Hallie. I gave her a BIG hug and kiss and went to another bedroom. She jumped on the clean bed and fell asleep. And I realized that, just like children, they know where their safe haven is after they get into trouble. The house smelled like a skunk, which didn’t matter to me. That could wait until the morning. I needed sleep. My baby was safe and I could tell she was having a sweet and wonderful dream by the little twitches and noises she was making. Ahhh. I could finally sleep knowing that everything was OK in her little doggy world. Gift of Love I found out that I had kidney failure at the age of 14. My kidneys were the age of those of a seven-year-old and never grew with my body. I went through high school on blood pressure medicine and after graduating high school, I had surgery to tie a vein and an artery together in my left arm to withstand dialysis. In 1982, on my eighteenth birthday, I began dating Russ, my brother Todd’s best friend and my future husband. I’d met him in the eleventh grade. Now we realized our feelings for each other. My entire family (my mom, sister, and two brothers) went to the Cleveland Clinic for tests to see if any of them were a match for the transplant that I needed. I was on dialysis from November 1982 until February 14, 1983. Dialysis took a toll on my body. I would go to the hospital three times a week for three hours a day for dialysis, and toward the end, the dialysis was not working as well as it should have been. On one occasion, in mid-January, the doctors decided to run the dialysis for three-and-a-half hours instead of the three hours it normally took. My boyfriend, Russ would come to the hospital and pick me up and take me back to his parents' house and make me breakfast until my mom could get there to pick me up. On this particular Friday, I was having trouble speaking and talking to Russ and his dad. I was sitting on Russ’s lap and couldn’t get my words out right. I remember telling Russ, “Just let me lay my head on your shoulder and get it together, so you can understand me.” The next thing I knew, I was in the hospital ambulance. I had stopped breathing, literally died. Russ and his dad brought me back to life. I was rushed to the hospital and spent the night. Two weeks later, test results showed that my older brother Terry, who had offered to give me one of his kidneys, was a perfect match. That was a huge decision for Terry. He was married at that time and his wife was against it from the beginning. But Terry wanted to do it. I still have a newspaper article from our hometown paper about his gift of love. On January 17, I had my left kidney removed at Cleveland Clinic. I spent 10 days in the hospital recovering. Then on February 13, both Terry and I were admitted to Cleveland Clinic. Our transplant procedure was scheduled for Valentine's Day, 1983. I remember well the morning of our surgery. I was wheeled to the operating room but waited in the hall for my room to be ready. I looked across the hall at the other bed. Lo and behold, it was Terry. We commiserated about how scared we were. I was nineteen; Terry was twenty-three. I still marvel at his courage. Am still, twenty-two years later, in awe. The nurses came to get him. “I love you, Tracie,” he said as they wheeled him toward the OR. “I love you, too,” I called after him. We had adjoining operating rooms. As soon as they took Terry, they came back for me. After about two-and-a-half hours, a doctor came into my room, letting me know that Terry's surgery was finished and it was my turn. “How is he?” I asked, praying he was okay. “He did great,” the doctor replied. I saw the kidney being carried into the room. “Are you ready?” he asked. “It’s your turn.” “About as ready as I can be.” It was a day that’s remained etched indelibly into my memory. I was crying, feeling terribly frightened as they placed a mask over my mouth and nose. Seven hours later, I woke up in the recovery room and Terry’s bed was right beside mine. Once he was assured that I was okay, he was whisked away to his room. An hour later, I was taken to mine. Under ideal circumstances, it would have been great to share a room, but since I was a transplant recipient, I had to go to a special floor (the eighth floor) and Terry was on the fourth floor. For the first couple of days, we weren’t able to see each other, but Mom and the doctors kept me informed of Terry's progress. Since losing a kidney is more traumatic than receiving one, his recovery took longer than mine. He was in the hospital almost as long as I was. I stayed four weeks afterward and he stayed there three of those. Needless to say, Terry and I have a very close relationship. How can we not? I can never repay him for the gift that he has given to me. Life. At that time, I had not experienced salvation. But, looking back now, I can clearly see how, throughout that entire situation, God had his Hands on us both. Twenty-five years later, I am still doing okay. Terry and I continue to be as close as ever. Shortly after celebrating the 25th anniversary of the transplant this year, I was diagnosed with CKD – chronic kidney disease. After the wonderful gift Terry had given me, my kidney is now getting tired and weak and is not functioning as it once did. The hardest thing I had to do was to break the news to Terry. We both cried and he said, “I wish I had another kidney to give you.” What unconditional love he has. He is truly a remarkable man. Now as I go through this next phase of kidney disease, I am so very thankful and blessed that I received 25 years of life that I wouldn't have had if not for Terry’s generous gift of life! While we never know what the future holds for us, I know that God will use the events in my life to glorify Him. I have total faith that God will bring me through this, just as He did before. Our God is a mighty God. Papa Hippo Comes to Call Mid-morn, a hippo takes a seat upon Instead, the paramedics heed your call They get you wired, ECGed, and jabbed, it beeps and hums, and flashing numbers slide A doc comes in and stethoscopes your chest, By now you’re starved. Your only meal was break- A mostly sleepless darkness dawdles by. A surgeon whom you never see inserts They stick a stent in place to keep a pass- You find they’ve also added to your dai- Pink pills, pastels, the medication route; You lie and wait, you’re feeling better, nur- Next thing you know, you’re wheeling down the hall- Back home at last, you slip back into old on risky conduct are essential now, |
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