I'll Fly Away

It was the first coherent words that I had heard her speak in 2 days. She was 93 years old and what the nurses call “pleasantly confused”. Her body was tired, her hearing was gone, and dementia had taken most of her mind and left her in a “happy place”.

I walked into her hospital room to find her reaching up with both crippled hands toward the ceiling. Because of her deafness, I was usually able to sneak in and out of her room without her ever noticing me. But this time as I tried to sneak past her bed to hang another IV antibiotic, she turned and looked at me.

“Please let me go” she cried. “They are all waiting for me”.

“Let you go where” I asked. (She may have suddenly become coherent, but she was still deaf)

“Please” she pleaded, “Just untie me and let me go with them”

I suddenly got the feeling that there was someone else in the room with us. I was almost afraid to look up to where she was reaching.

I know she didn’t hear me, but I patted her shoulder and said, “Its OK – They're in no hurry – They will wait for you - You will fly soon enough”.

She put her hands down and went back to her happy place.

There was an old David Crosby and Graham Nash (of Crosby Stills & Nash) song that I remembered from my Hippy days (the 70s) called “Carry Me”. The lyrics were about an old lady in a hospital bed waiting to die. The line that I remembered went something like this:

She lay in white sheets, just waiting to die.
She said “if you would just reach under this bed, and release these weights”
“I could surely fly” “I could surely fly”

Could there really be something to it?

Some glad morning,
When this life is over,
I’ll fly away.

Psalms 90:10 The length of our days is seventy years—or eighty, if we have the strength; yet their span is but trouble and sorrow, for they quickly pass, and we fly away.
241 / 6

Fresh Out of Excuses

OK, Like it our not, tomorrow is here. I've been dreading it. I've been putting it off as long as I possibly could - but there is no denying that the tomorrow I have been waiting for has finally arrived. I am fresh out of excuses.

This Thursday marks exactly thirteen weeks until my 51st birthday. That is 91 days to be exact.
I tipped the scales today (Sunday 7/20) at a portly 244.8 lbs. That is exactly 24.8 lbs. heavier than back when I was fat.

So here we go....

I have a strategy but I won't bore you with it. I have some modest fairly realistic goals, some of which I will tell you about, some of which I will not. (I don't want to embarrass myself unnecessarily) I will however, to keep me honest and motivated, share my progress with you along the way.


One goal is to run 100 miles in 91 days. That is only one mile per day with a few extras thrown in here and there. Lynetta has already far pasted that mark.

So along side my usual boring little stories, for the next 13 weeks, you will see this fraction which represents my current weight / and my total miles ran.

244.8 / 0

It's going to be a long 13 weeks.. Please pray for my family. I tend to get grouchy when I'm hungry.

Life is Precious

We treat them differently. We don't mean to, but its hard not to.

Most of the patients that we deal with in critical care want to live. They are struggling with every ounce of their being to to hold on to this precious life for as long as they possibly can. Everyone involved in their care works feverishly to give them every possible chance to do just that. It is a constant battle that none of us wants to lose.

But, occasionally, we are faced with the patient who does not share our respect for and our love of human life. They are the ones who have tried just as desperately to end their lives. If they do happen to make it past the ER to us, it simply means that they did not do a very good job.

How do you deal with a grief stricken family in one room who's loved one lies franticly gasping at their last few breaths of life, while in the room next door you have an otherwise healthy but angry patient cursing and screaming at the top of their lungs demanding to be left alone so they can die.

It is really hard not to get an attitude. Sometimes you just want to rip their good lungs out and give them to the guy next door who would appreciate and cherish them. But that thought quickly passes. These people are usually just as desperate - they just don't know it.

I can not imagine the intense pain that must lead to this type of behavior.

We have on occasion saved a few. We have cleaned their lungs, repaired their hearts, detoxified their livers, and cleared their minds - if only for awhile.

I remember one young man in particular who walked back in to the CCU on Christmas eve to shake our hands and hug our necks and thank us for saving his life.

He was an intentional cocaine overdose who had come to us 3 months before. He had been as good as dead for two of those three months. For weeks that he laid paralyzed in a rotating cage, swollen beyond human recognition, hooked to more tubes, drains, and IV lines, than one nurse could possibly handle. But God decided to give him another chance at life.

I remember giving him "The Speech". The Speech goes something like this:
"You are a walking miracle. By all odds shouldn't be standing here today. You have been given a second chance by God. You can not go back to your old life or you will surely die. You have a new life now - make it a good one."

He thanked me, hugged me, and walked away. I found his obituary two months later. He died of a cocaine overdose...

Lessons From The Garden Part 1

I planted cantaloupe.

I watered it. I fertilized it. I weeded around it. I kept the bugs off of it. I checked it every day. I waited patiently for it to ripen. I even thumped it with my finger just like the people who know about this kind of stuff do when they are picking out a good watermelon or cantaloupe in the grocery store. (I'm not sure why they thump them, but I have seen them do it - so I did it.)

When the day finally came, and I was sure that it had been thumped enough, I picked my prize cantaloupe and proudly brought it into the kitchen for the whole family to admire. But, to my surprise, when I cut into this perfect cantaloupe, I found that it was not a cantaloupe at all.

It seems that I planted my cantaloupe a little too close to my cucumbers. The cantaloupe had cross-pollinated with the cucumbers (My first clue should have been all of the little round cucumbers that I had been growing) Now I have a garden full of canta-cumbers, which are not very tasty and basically useless.

The Spiritual lesson to this silly little story is obvious. It is something simple that I learned as a child back in Sunday School:

Do not be misled: “Bad company corrupts good character.”
(I Corinthians 15:33 NIV)

We don't like to admit it, or talk about it, but living too close to or becoming too comfortable with certain groups of people can influence and change us - cross-pollinate us if you will. We may still look like a child of God on the outside, but in the end, when all but the soul is stripped away, we may end up being something entirely different.

We are all influenced in one way or another by people and the culture in which we live.
The Bible tells us that we are to keep ourselves unspotted from the world (James 1:27) . Yet, simply avoiding sinful worldly people is not the answer. Paul says in I Corinthians 5 that to avoid immoral people we would have to leave this world altogether

Tomatoes and corn grow great together in the same garden. Neither are influenced in a bad way by the other. It is only certain groups that can not live and grow together. Notice the people whom Paul tells us to avoid in II Timothy 3:5 "Those who have a form of Godliness, but deny the power thereof." In other words there are some religious folks that you would do well to avoid.

Job 19:20 By The Skin Of My Teeth

It was close - really close.

But I passed.

I am now officially a CCRN (Critical Care RN)

Lynetta also passed her certification test (by a very slim margin as well) She is now a CPC - CPCI
I have no idea what all of that stands for, but it means that she is now certified as an instructor in in her field of Medical Coding and Billing.

I just know that we both need to to add the letters BBBBG behind both of our names:
Bless Beyond Belief By God

Sorting It All Out

I have a huge test on Tuesday. I really need to be studying. I have already paid over $500.00 just to take the test. Passing this test is really important to my nursing career. But... my heart and my brain are just not in tune….. I’m having trouble right now concentrating on the finer points of hemodynamics.

It happened to me last year as well - It lasted about a month. After returning from the medical mission trip to Belize I seem to always find myself in a funk - overwhelmed with guilt, despair, confusion and depression. Most of it, I’m sure, can be attributed to exhaustion. But, the thought of children living without food, shelter or even clean drinking water tends to bother me. The stories Jesus told about the “Rich Man and Lazarus” (Luke 16), The “Rich young Ruler” (Luke 18), and the “Rich Man and his Barns” (Luke 12) are keeping me awake at night.

On the long flight home we stood in line at the airport with a famous baseball player. I noticed that just his watch, bracelet and earrings were probably worth more than my entire house. Is this the “Rich people" that Jesus was talking about?

When we visited the village where the children with no floor lived
(see Russ’ Blog)
I realized that I had more money stuffed down in my pockets at that moment than their entire family would see in a year, maybe two. Am I the "Rich Man" Jesus is talking about?

Let me ask you a question. It has been on my mind ever since I got home from Belize.

Please comment and help me sort this out…

Is it selfish, uncaring and sinful to buy my children nice things like cell phones, new cars and Nintendo game when there are children less than eight hours away from me (26 hours if you fly American Airlines) who are going to bed hungry every night?