Update On Sue's Brother, Myron

Hi Everyone,

While I didn't get in to see Myron today, ( I'm still awaiting results from his cultures to come back negative), Stephanie posted a brief up-date on the Carebridge page.

Myron was kept sedated last night and today because he became agitated. So much so that his blood pressure became elevated and he required a B/P medication to bring it down. This could have been associated with pain or a drug reaction to the versed. He is being weaned off the Versed and begun on Ativan. The wound vac was to be changed today and there was a possibility that it may be completely taken out.

He will have a feeding tube inserted into the stomach and possibly a tracheotomy done to replace the breathing tube.

He has continued to responded to people, but not today due to the sedation. This is a small set back, but I don't think it is anything to be greatly concerned about.

I'll keep you all posted.

Sue

Thanks for keeping us posted, Sue. Prayers continue.

Watch This!

Fr. Terry Martin, aka Fr. Jake at his blog Father Jake Stops the World, gave a lecture in a series on evangelism in the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, DC. His lecture is excellent. I've had the pleasure of meeting Fr. Terry at our gathering New York some years ago and again in Anaheim, where we had a lovely chat in the lobby of the Hilton, and I enjoyed his company at another gathering of a group of us the following evening. He's a bit of an introvert, which was the only surprise to me when I first met him. I expected him to be an extrovert. So much for expectations.

The video is nearly one hour long, but it's well worth your time. You watch TV that long, don't you? Well, take the time to watch this TV. The time flies. You won't be sorry. Fr. Terry is not selling snake oil in the video.

Italian Honeymoon

After returning from his honeymoon in Florida with his new bride, Virginia, Zio Luigi stopped by to say hello to Grandpa.

Grandpa said, "Hey Luigi, how wasa da honeamoona?"

Zio Luigi said, "Everyting wasa perfecto except for da train ride down."

"Whata you mean, Luigi?" asked Grandpa.

"Well, we boarda da train at Grana Central Station. My beautiful Virginia, she pack a biga basket a food. She broughta da vino, some nice cigars for me, and we were lookina forward to da trip and open upa da luncha basket. The conductore come aby, waga his finger at us anda say, 'no eat indisa car. Musta use a dining car.'

So, me and my beautiful Virginia, we go to da dining car, eat a biga lunch and starta ta open da bottle of a nice a vino!

Conductore walka by again, waga his finger and say, 'No drinka in disa car! Musta use a cluba car.'

So, we go to cluba car. While a drinkina da vino, I starta to lighta my biga cigar. The conductore, he waga his finger again and say, 'No a smokina disa car. Musta go to a smokina car.'

"We go to a smokina car and I smoke a my biga cigar. Then my beautiful Virginia and I, we go to a sleeper car anda go to bed. We just about to go boombada boombada and the conductore, he walka through da hall shouting at a top of his a voice...'Nofolka Virginia! Nofolka Virginia!'

"Nexta time, I'ma just gonna taka da bus."

PS: I should tell you that no man in our family ever dated or married a woman named Virginia again.

That would be Doug's family, not mine.

Italian-Americans who read this, please note that I post this joke with all the good will in the world. I have three Italian-American grandchildren, and I love them very much. I think the joke is hilarious, and when my grandsons grow up, I hope that they would laugh at it. One of the boys is 15 and another is 13. Maybe they would enjoy it right now.

Send Prayers Their Way

Not much comment on Susan Russell's blog posts about being in the shadow of the Station Fire, Miss June. This morning winds are worse and I fear for their family and neighbors. The Jet Propulsion Lab stands between them and the fire, not good news for JPL/NASA either. There is also a wide ravine, but that will be nothing against wind-blown sparks.

I get the feeling not many people know. Would you ask for prayers please.

Thanks and God bless you and your loved ones!
Pat Klemme

See Susan Russell's post at An Inch at a Time and let them know that you care.

This Will Crack You Up

The delightful Dom Deluise with an egg trick on the Johnny Carson Show.

From Doug. I don't know about you, but I need cheering up.

Feast Of John Bunyan

From James Kiefer at the Lectionary:

Bunyan was born in 1628 near Bedford, in the agricultural midlands of England. He was the son of a tinker (a maker and mender of metal pots). He had little schooling. During the English Civil War, he served in the Parliamentary Army. He underwent a period of acute spiritual anxiety, and finally found peace in a Baptist congregation. He became a lay preacher, while earning his living as a tinker.

After the Restoration in 1660, Bunyan (under suspicion for having fought on the anti-Anglican side) was ordered to preach no more, and, since he refused to desist, he was several times sentenced to jail, where he spent his time studying, preaching to his fellow prisoners, and writing. His first substantial work was an autobiography, Grace Abounding To the Chief of Sinners. This was followed by other works, of which by far the most read and most loved is his The Pilgrim's Progress From This World To That Which Is To Come, usually called Pilgrim's Progress. The work recounts in allegorical form the experience of a person (called Christian), from his his first awareness of his sinfulness and spiritual need, to his personal conversion to Christ, to his walk as a believer. He is shown as a pilgrim in this world on his way to the "Celestial City," which will be his true home forever. The work was an immediate sensation, and its popularity endured. For a century and more thereafter, there were many English-speaking Christians who were thoroughly familiar with only two books, The Bible and Pilgrim's Progess.

I love The Pilgrim's Progress. Bunyan's Puritan theology is not my theology, yet I love his book. Amidst Christian's awareness of the Wrath to Come for those who are not saved, are many references to God's love and tender mercies. To me, there's a sweetness about the book that shines through and overcomes the ever-present sense of impending doom. And humor, yes humor. The description of poor Mr. Fearing in the Slough of Despond brought a smile to my face the first time, I read it, and it still does today.

THE HISTORY OF MR. FEARING.

GREAT-HEART. Why, he was always afraid that he should come short of whither he had a desire to go. Every thing frightened him that he heard any body speak of, that had but the least appearance of opposition in it . I hear that he lay roaring at the Slough of Despond for about a month together; nor durst he, for all he saw several go over before him, venture, though they, many of them, offered to lend him their hand. He would not go back again neither. The Celestial City, he said, he should die if he came not to it; and yet was dejected at every difficulty, and stumbled at every straw that any body cast in his way. Well, after he had lain at the Slough of Despond a great while, as I have told you, one sunshine morning, I do not know how, he ventured, and so got over; but when he was over, he would scarce believe it. He had, I think, a Slough of Despond in his mind; a slough that he carried everywhere with him, or else he could never have been as he was.

The passage is sad, but it's also funny. It's a classic description of a depressed person, but Bunyan's manner of expressing it as "the Slough of Despond in his mind; a slough that he carried everywhere with him" is so perfect as to perhaps give even a depressed person a smile. Of course, I could be wrong.

Folks say, "How can you read that? It's so dull and boring and out of touch with the times." But it's not to me. There's much in it that is good and wise and still

The Golden Rule

‘In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets.

The Narrow Gate

‘Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction, and there are many who take it. For the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it.

Matthew 7:12-14

PRAYER

God of peace, you called John Bunyan to be valiant for truth: Grant that as strangers and pilgrims we may at the last rejoice with all the faithful in your heavenly city; through Jesus Christ our Savior, who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Image from Wiki.

Our Lady Of The Driveway - I Remember Katrina

Mary, Full of Grace

Thanks to Athenae at First Draft for the photo and the title. She took this picture when she was in New Orleans at the end of March, when a group of us led by FD bloggers, Athenae and Scout Prime, gathered to gut a house, view the destruction, and squeeze in a little fun.

The statue of the Virgin Mary stood in a driveway. The head was broken off, but someone had put it back in place. The photo and the title struck me with such force when I first saw it that I have never forgotten it. The image of the statue of Mary in the driveway - "Mary, full of grace" as Athenae calls her - was the symbol of my destroyed and broken home town, my abandoned city, my beloved New Orleans - always full of grace to me.

Our Lady Of The Driveway

O Mary of the Driveway,
Broken like your city,
Your head lies on the ground.
A sorry sight, a sign,
A sign of devastation
Wrought by wind and water,
Angry blow and raging flow.

A passer-by, one of tender heart,
Sees and stops and mourns your head
Lying there apart,
And gently, gently takes it
And replaces it.
There. Our Lady's whole again.
Or so it seems. Or is it so?

Grandmère Mimi - 5-13-07

I posted the picture and the poem first on May 13, 2007 and then again on the anniversary of Katrina in the years that followed. Until I change my mind, I will post the picture and the poem every year on the anniversary of Katrina and THE FEDERAL FLOOD, which, in New Orleans, was not a natural disaster but an ENGINEERING DISASTER. I remember the more than 1800 people who died and all those who loved them. I remember the 275,000 who lost their homes. I remember those who survived, but suffered through horrendous conditions in the days after Katrina. I remember those who have not returned to their home towns, and who want to, but can't find affordable housing. I remember those in Louisiana and Mississippi still struggling to recover and rebuild their homes and their lives.

Katrina - August 29, 2005

UPDATE: See Paul the BB's post "Lest We Forget".

Yes, I know it's quite circular. Paul links to me; I link to him. But I don't care. His post is a beautiful tribute and memorial on this the anniversary of the tragedy.

As I said in his comments, "You know, I couldn't bear to do a post like yours. I'd be overwhelmed. But I'm so very pleased that you did in honor of those who suffered so much."

My Experience Of Democracy In Action

Mary Landrieu at the mic.

All right. Enough procrastinating about writing a post on Mary Landrieu's town meeting in Reserve, Louisiana, on health care reform. The local newspaper accounts are in the Times-Picayune and the Advocate. Check out the Advocate for the picture of the sign which reads:

OBAMA HAS A PRESCRIPTION FOR AMERICA - next to a hammer and sickle.

My account will be personal. It appears that this meeting may the only town meeting Mary will hold, so I suppose it was a good thing we went, although my experience of democracy in action left me shaken, as I still am today, and pondering gloomily on the future of democracy in this country. I reached home yesterday in a state of exhaustion.

We arrived at the National Guard armory at around 11:00 AM on Thursday for the meeting that was to begin at 2:00 PM to check things out, intending to grab a quick lunch and return to wait for the doors to open. When we saw the numbers of people arriving, we decided not to leave. We had water, and that was good enough.

As we walked to the door we encountered friendly folks who were handing out signs and stickers in favor of health care reform. We took the stickers and stuck them on, but not signs, because I was already carrying my purse and my laptop. I was sorry afterward that I did not take a sign. The stickers read:

HEALTH INSURANCE REFORM '09
WE CAN'T WAIT!

The weather was hot, but we found a place under the shade of the canopy in front of the door of the building. If we had left, we would definitely have lost our places in the shade, and Grandpère's bald head would have been exposed to the sun for two hours, because he didn't have his cap with him.

Apparently, our stickers were enough to attract those opposed to any type of health care reform, because they began to approach us with their spiels, "Do you know this about Obama?" "Do you know this about the health care bill?" GP would not contend with them, saying simply that he believed that we needed some type of reform and then letting it go. But - surprise, surprise! - I began to point out that some of what they said was not true. I began to cite information of my own. Some of the folks were quite civil. One woman showed me a picture of her 24 year old daughter, who has cystic fibrosis and is near death. She is a beautiful girl, and her story is heartbreaking. I asked the woman what sort of health insurance she had. She told me she had insurance from her husband's employer and from Medicaid. This woman wants no reform of health care which includes federal programs, but her daughter is covered partially by a federal-state program called Medicaid. Ordinarily, her income would be too high to have Medicaid coverage, but right here in decadent and backward Louisiana is a little known program whereby people with chronic diseases, which require expensive treatments, may, on a case by case basis, get waivers and be covered by Medicaid. My friend's son, who has hemophilia is partially covered by Medicaid, although he has health insurance, and his income would ordinarily be considered too high for Medicaid.

So here is this very sweet lady and her beautiful, but tragically ill, daughter covered partially by a federal program, but who is campaigning against any health care reform at all by the federal government because it will be socialistic. I don't get this at all. I pointed out that Medicaid was a federal-state program. She said, "I know, but I want to keep what I have." She has a son in Afghanistan, and I said that I would pray for his safety and for her daughter and for her whole family. And I said no more to her.

Another very sweet and polite woman (covered by Medicare and yet campaigning against any interference by the federal government in health care reform) and several others spoke of page 16 of the bill out of the House of Representatives, that allegedly would make private health insurance illegal. I did not know what was on page 16 of the House bill, but I said that I could not take their word for it, because I would have to see it in print to believe it. Here is the refutation of the page 16 allegations if you care to read. Too late to help those folk, of course, not that they would have been persuaded anyway.

Then the meanies came. The first woman told me one thing after another about Obama and the health care bill that I knew were not true, which I pointed out to her. I asked her if she thought health care was a moral issue, and she told me that she did and that her husband made quite a lot of money and why should her tax money go to pay for the health care of others, including deadbeats? That was the moral of her story. I tried to explain about what insurance was for, that it was about spreading cost and risk, but that got nowhere. She continued to get angrier and angrier and more and more in my face, until she was screaming and waving her sign so close that I thought she would hit me. Once we were inside the meeting room, and she saw that I was taking pictures, she posed sweetly, especially for me, with her sign. You see her below in the middle of the picture. Her sign reads:

FREEDOM IS BURNING AT THE STAKE
NO GOVERNMENT TAKEOVER



The next woman who approached me said that she'd had cancer and been treated at M. D. Anderson in Houston, and that she wanted to be able to go there if she ever had cancer again. She appeared to have had major surgery around her chin and mouth. I told her that I'd had cancer, too. When she said things that were false, I said, "But that's not true." And then she started on page 16, too, and I repeated that I didn't believe that, and she got really angry and said, "Fuck you, you bitch!" and walked away.

The nice woman who had the sick daughter insisted that I go over to talk to a Cuban-American woman. I had my sandals off and was standing on top of them, because my feet hurt from standing so long, and as I was trying to put them back on, the Cuban woman said, "She doesn't want to hear it." I put my sandals back on, and walked over to them, and the vital information that she had was, "Obama is Fidel". I said, "No, he is not." She turned away in disgust.

Then another woman droned on and on about socialism. I asked her, too, if she thought everyone had a right to health care and if it was a moral issue. She said that life isn't fair, it could never be fair, and that everyone didn't have the same rights. Then she proceeded to tell a long story to illustrate her point, of a teacher in the classroom with children, some of whom were doing well and others poorly, except she made the story really long and dragged out. Trust me, really long. I confess that I broke in once to ask her what the story had to do with health care. She said, "Wait! Let me finish!" It turned out that the story had nothing at all to do with health care, but, at the end, she asked me if I wanted the teacher to give all the kids good grades just to be fair. I said, "Of course not! But what does that have to do with health care?" She said the story was to illustrate that things couldn't be the same for everyone.

The group included a good many angry people and a good many ignorant people, and sometimes the anger and ignorance were present in the same person. The level of hatred for Obama should not be underestimated. Yes, hatred. I asked the screaming woman (before she started screaming) where she thought Obama was born. She said, "I haven't seen a birth certificate." When I said, "I haven't actually held the birth certificate in my hand, but I have seen pictures of it on TV and on the internet," she smirked and shook her head. "Why didn't he have to prove that he was born in the US?"

I never initiated one conversation. I did not indulge in name-calling. I may have raised my voice at times as the exchanges got heated, and I confess that I burst out laughing a few times at the absurdity of some of what was said, and that probably inflamed the opposition. I would not soon want to repeat this experience.



"Kill the bill! Kill the bill!" the crowd chanted over and over.

And tort reform will save us all. It's the answer for everything. I'll say more about that tomorrow in my post about the actual meeting.

What I heard just standing outside the building caused me to doubt the wisdom of democracy. "Lord, give us a king!" But what would be better?

As you see, my post is quite long. I've used the post to vent, because I needed to. I was stunned by the level of anger, and the level of ignorance, and the level of hatred for Obama. I've seen the same sort of thing here where I live, but on a smaller scale, and to see such a large group of people exhibit such anger, ignorance, and hatred was quite disturbing. The hatred of Obama is partly racism and partly the Muslim connection. He's not a real American.

Those who supported health care reform were perhaps a third of the group, and they were much less vocal. Let me emphasize that Mary Landrieu and her supporters were the good guys in this movie.

The New Nicholls Mascot

Here's a picture of the Nicholls State University mascot, Colonel Tillou, who will appear in his costume at sports events and perhaps other Nicholls events. I wrote about the new Colonel mascot here.

At least the costumed mascot appears more humorous than the macho tough guy emblem that will appear on T-shirts and other items. That image is copyrighted, and I can only give you a link. Good luck to the Colonel when he gets on the road.

Picture from The Daily Comet.

Update On Sue's Brother, Myron

Good Morning,

Here is the latest update on my brother. Yesterday the family met with a pain management doctor, who told them that Myron's pain was going to be managed locally instead of systemically. This will help with his alertness. 6 catheters were inserted at various locations on his chest and the medication (I don't know what) will be set at a fixed flow rate daily.

They then met with a neurological nurse practitioner who told them that the MRI show no spinal damage, and that all of the vertebral fractures were insignificant. (Imagine that) The MRI showed some old stuff that was already known and some age related changes that were not known. He will be in a neck brace for 6-8 weeks and a back brace, called a clam shell, for at least 8 weeks.

The brain injury is being termed a traumatic brain injury. There is still swelling and some bruising to both sides of the brain, but the right side is the worse. I won't go into all of the details, but the nurse practitioner did say that the injuries were recoverable and we'll just have to wait and see. Myron is breathing on his own, and again we wait to see if that continues before removal of the ventilator will take place.

One more thing; he has MRSA pneumonia and is being vigorously treated for that.

Again, Thanks for your thoughts and prayers. I believe when all is said and done, no matter what, Myron will be a living, breathing, walking, miracle. God has sure been good to him.

Sue

Sue, that is good news about all the bone injuries, and even the brain injury is improving. The infection is a setback, but we pray that Myron be free of this complication quickly. We'll continue to pray that his brain is restored to normal function and that the miracle results in a complete recovery for your brother.

I hope that Sue doesn't mind that I tell you this, but because of her compromised immune system, she is no longer permitted to visit Myron since he developed the infection, and she hates that. Pray for Sue, too.