Mom seems to be
developing a habit (for lack of a better term) of waking up confused in the
morning, often looking for her Momma. As the day progresses, clarity seems
to return. She continues to eat a little more each day, & sits in the
Neuro-Chair. She says she does better when she hears our voices, so we try
to call the hospital as often as we can; it's hit & miss to see if she's
sleeping.
Between basketball games, I called Mom to tell her
what was happening at the game. I told her about the many people at the
game that were asking about her. She said to give them all her hugs.
She had the nurse call me last night (the 1st time
she has thought to have a nurse call home), & Mom told me the nurses
would not listen to her when she told them there was something that would not
allow her to move her leg. She thought there were pillows jamming her leg
up against the rail or something. I talked to the nurse, & found it
was the CPM leg machine. It had only been on for a half hour, & it
needs to be on for 2 hours. There really was nothing the nurses could do
for her. Mom was really upset that she couldn't convince them something
was there.
I would like to offer thanks to Verizon. With the
assistance of Liv at Absolute Solutions, Verizon Wireless reversed all charges
incurred on Shaun's phone after it was stolen. The folks at Absolute
Solution have saved my bacon on many occasions, over the last dozen
years.
I'll take a moment of your time to
explain how important these folks have been to us. I bought my 1st cell
phone at Sears, on Dewey's birthday in 1994 (I remember because I
got something for his birthday). I also remember I paid a penny
for it. The following spring I went to Absolute Solutions & bought
Dewey's 1st phone. I was a stranger to the staff & they to
I.
It couldn't have been more than a few months later
that I dropped my phone from my pocket, as I was closing the gate after having
driven through it. I then drove over the phone. It was soft
mud, so it didn't damage the phone. Phew. I washed it out. It
still worked. For about an hour. That's the day I remember meeting
Kathy. Since then Kathy, DeLynn & Liv have been challenged
many times by my needs! With Dewey being on the road, his phone
is very important to his work. They've gotten me through the cell phone
needs of two teenagers. They have been absolute Saving Angels.
I sent Mom & Dad to Absolute Solutions when
they needed a new cell phone, or changes to their service. And I think Tom
told me that he's been in to see them, after losing his phone in Kansas.
They've really taken care of us.
I sent the following email on the 19th (dated it the
20th), but used the wrong computer, which doesn't have the current version of
Mom's Support Group, so not everybody got the email. It's a duplicate,
for many of you. Then, yesterday I tried to send an email that my
computer ate. I gave up & went to watch Morgan play Basketball (she
didn't get to Cheer because of the order the games were played in). I can
brag that the Burns Broncs beat the Pine Bluffs Hornets, although the girls
lost, but gave it a fight. Dewey got to watch his daughter play for the
short times that she was in.
1/20/07 Things I Cannot Control
These messages come from both Tom &
I, although it is usually I that writes the too-long emails. I try to keep
them focused on Mom & Dad, but today you get to hear about my own personal
challenges. We have made every effort to think rationally & logically
during this ordeal, and to deal with things as they occur. But I find
myself faced with numerous things that are just beyond my
control.
A lifetime ago,
I saw a councilor regularly. She explained to me that some people learn to
deal with crisis so well that they don't know how to cope without it. If
they have no natural crisis, they create their own crisis. Through
Rene Haller's experienced guidance, I learned to identify crisis, stop
creating it, deal with it, and walk away from it whenever possible.
Despite all this, I chose to become a School Bus Driver. And to this day,
I claim to have the best kids in the county, & a big stick to prove
it.
But now I am
bombarded with crisis I cannot control, nor walk away from. It began with
one moment in time and a 16-year-old girl I've never met.
Mother Nature stepped up to ensure we struggle each time we travel. Being
in Tulsa, knowing that my pipes are freezing at home & the horses haven't
had an ice-free water trough for two months falls into this catagory.
Having family & friends to help with these situations eases the mind, but
the thoughts are still there to torment me. Airplane schedules are beyond
my control. Losing contacts in a room with no light may not be completely
out of my control, but when there's nothing I can do to find it, frustration
sets in. I broke the key, but waiting on somebody else's schedule to fix
it is beyond my control.
A
favorite family author is C.J. Box, who happens to be local, right next door to
us, in Cheyenne. He's one of those fellows that you can't put down
once you pick him up. Each year we await the spring eagerly, to read his
new book, in the Joe Pickett series. Tom introduced me to him, I shared
him with Dad, after Dad finished one book he handed it on to Mom, & Morgan
waited in line. Anyway, when you've read the entire available series
(which simply MUST be read in order), you are hungry for more ... that's how I
found his website. And at one point (just before going to a book signing
-- which caused me to miss graduation last spring) I read his entire Tour
Diary. It turns out to have been a very healthy thing indeed. It was
his entry from 5/7/05 that saved my bacon. It's entitled "My friends at
TSA." I am NOT a big flyer. I love my Mom a LOT, and I can prove
it: I've been on three airplanes since the accident
(our first trip to Tulsa included two charter flights. The first one had a
minor radar problem, & with the weather the way it was, we turned back &
ended up going out again an hour later on a plane that was twice as big
as the first (which had less interior space than the inside of my
full-sized conversion van).
There are a
couple variables that probably sent me to the 'extra security' for my own
personal metal scan & pat down. Mind you, leaving Mom, the weather,
the stress over the problems with the motorhome, the very fact that I
was flying, realizing that I risked losing a deeply
personal valuable (the LOH pocketknife my parents gave me after they won it
at an Oklahoma HOG Rally, if I remember correctly), which I stashed in my
suitcase, trusting to the goodness of all mankind that it would be in my luggage
when I got home, and several other things -- all combined to bring me
to the brink of a serious emotional breakdown. (I have managed to get past
it this time without causing damage to anyone or anything!) But
having a one-way ticket that was purchased nearly two months earlier was a major
red flag. I did almost loose my mind when I realized they'd also searched
my luggage (not that it should have been unexpected, but it was), & I could
not find the pocketknife ... which I just didn't search deep enough for ... I
have it. I never lost my marbles getting through security (remember I had
C.J. Box's knowledge that this happens to all good Americans sometimes), walking
onto the plane (I would have called it smallish, if it hadn't been for those
charters!), or taking off (with tears in my eyes, cause this really was leaving
Mom).
The flight was
fine. I found my luggage very quickly. I only had to wait a few
minutes for June to pick me up. We had an enjoyable dinner at a new
restaurant she wanted to try in Denver, Cinzzeti's, then I slept back to
Burns.
The kids on my
bus are well-behaved, despite themselves. But they are kids &
my telling them that I have a zero-patience tolerance working doesn't always
remind them to be quiet little angels! We work through that. I don't
try to control them, I am in charge of them. And despite my lack of
patience, they are all still alive -- I plan to keep it that way. I am
always concerned about having a sub, & have rarely taken time off, simply
because these kids are so important to me. But taking time off is
now beyond my control. They have to have a sub. And they are to
BEHAVE appropriately for every sub they get (silly dreamer, Val!). It has
been hard on them, & when I tell them I have to leave again, they express
their feelings. To this I must respond that everything we do has
consequences, often ones that we will never realize. I am sure that
the girl that hit my folks never thought about how a bunch of school bus kids in
Wyoming would respond to her actions.
Our
family has been beset with cell phone issues since this began. (Well, some
of us always have these issues, but they have certainly multiplied.)
Going over limit on our minutes (limits we never expected to even come
close to), not having phone chargers, and losing phones. While these cell
phones are so important to us, they fall right into the same cracks that the
rest of our lives have fallen into. Shaun lost his phone (nobody that has
ever met Shaun is surprised by this). We searched the van
repeatedly. With 7 people & lots of baggage in a van, a lot of
stuff gets lost! We never reported it, because we thought it was in the
van. Finally, I talked Shaun into taking an older (previously lost but now
found) phone & putting it back on his phone number. This took place
while I was driving to Tulsa on December 27th. At the time I thought it
was a pain in the spanking-spot (school bus appropriate wording) to be driving
in the dark & taking down phone numbers, calling Verizon to get it switched,
etc, etc, etc. But it was a fortunate thing that we did it when we
did. Somebody had found Shaun's phone, & unlike the fella that found
Tom's phone at a Kansas rest area, this somebody didn't call & let us
know. He started using the phone December 24th at 1:50 in the
morning. We made the switch on the 27th at 6:32 in the evening. In
that time, the phone bill was run up $221.92. I don't even know anybody in
Mexico. All calls were made from Tulsa, although we'd arrived home on the
22nd. I am in the process of reporting this, & trying to find out what
can be done about it. But please do take this as a warning: if
you don't know where your phone is, SUSPEND the phone number. It will be
there when you need to reactivate it.
Of course, while I have been out-of-touch with reality, off in
Tulsa-Land-Of-Ice, Tom & Deb have been taking care of business here at
home. Again, we think we are nearly complete in handling the affairs of
our parents, & then we open another envelope ...
I should share a few words on Mom before
I close. She continues her Physical Therapy. For the last few days,
Mom has sat in her Neuro-Chair, dizzy only at first, and is now eating her meals
there. She eats a bit more each day. This morning she ate a half
dozen bites of EGG! Mom is not a huge egg eater. Shelly is currently
her nurse, and Mom has talked her into warm tea. She conned Shelly into a
back rub (it's Shelly's own fault ... she used it as a bribe to get her into the
Neuro-Chair!) She still receives her breathing treatments, the bed
sores that had formed on her spanking-spot have been upgraded to
better. In the morning she seems to be more confused, looking for her
Momma. But as the day progress, her mind clears. Shelly says she
enjoys Mom's sense of humor, saying that Mom is always making some off-the-wall
comment.
Thanks for letting me vent. But
now I've taken too much of your time, & I have business to attend to, so I
must go. ~ Val & Tom