Margret Sloan

When the phone rings really late at night it is never good news. I actually hate to even answer a phone that rings any time between midnight and 7:00 am. It’s going to be bad news, and sure enough around midnight we got a call that we didn’t want to get. My mother-in-law passed away suddenly and unexpected.

Today we’ll be getting things in order around the house so we can leave for Oklahoma. My sister-in-law has offered up her spare bedroom and we need to get out there as soon as possible to help with the funeral. Hubby has to get someone to cover for him at work and I have to find the church clothes and arrange for a kennel for Buster Brown.

I’ll check the airfares to Oklahoma City, but there are rarely good rates without at least 2 weeks notice. More than likely we will drive, which is a hard 18 hours on the road, but the price of 5 tanks of gas and 2 nights in a hotel room halfway there is still much cheaper than two round trip plan tickets at full fare.

Watching the ESPY’s awards show today I was happy to see Robin Givens on the stage as a presenter for the “Perseverance Award” to Kevin Everett, the football player who suffered a broken neck on the game field. He actually overcame the injury with top notch surgeons who operated on him and intensive physical therapy that helped turn around the first diagnosis of “you’ll never walk again” to “miracle recovery.”

Everett was able to walk onto the stage to accept the award, and it brought tears to everyone’s ears during a standing ovation. What an awesome moment and testimony to the mantra, “Don’t Give Up.”

There’s a commercial airing now that strikes close to home. It’s called “Stand Up To Cancer” and shows dozens of different TV and movie stars standing up solemnly where the narrator speaks the message. It brought back memories of my own fight against cancer and how much I owe my mother and stepfather for their help and support during that awful time.

My cancer treatments were completely debilitating. I could barely function at all for four months while I underwent intensive radiation therapy. There was no way I could work at all, or even take care of my family. It was horrible to be so sick, helpless, and dependent on others with no real timeline or even hopeful prognosis for a recovery. Thanks to my parents and my grandmother, and the best doctors in the world, I was able to get through those terrible months, but the bills pilled up and that was probably the worst financial situation I’ve ever been in and recovering from a serious illness plus recovering from extreme financial distress took a very long time.

For some people in similar or sadly worse situations, all they can do is run up the bills for as long as they can and then try to file for Bankruptcy. I know there have been recent changes to the bankruptcy laws that make it more difficult to file, but I surely hope that honest people who have to face a serious or life threatening illness still have some hope of help with their finances.

I know that if anyone in my family or circle of close friends has to go through what I did, that I will be there at their side to help them through it as much as I possibly can. That’s what family and real friendship is for.

Gosh, just when I thought everything had settled down with our pup and he’s on a nice routine taking his meds, today he had a seizure while lying at my feet at my desk. He makes no noise at all, he just goes into horrendous convulsions and looses control of his bodily functions. It is a horrible thing to watch.

I don’t even know if I’m supposed to do this, but my mothering instinct takes over when I see the convulsion and I grab a warm fluffy towel from the bathroom and wrap him up in the towel and hold him in my lap until the shaking is over.

This is very upsetting - I thought we had it under control and I don’t understand why he had the seizure today.

Now that my sister has moved “out to the boonies” in Virginia, shopping is much more of a challenge for her. She’s used to be within 10-15 minutes of all kinds of stores and services. Now that she’s out in the boonies, she has to plan and consolidate her trips and limit the trips to town to just once a week. that’s a big lifestyle change but she’s slowly adapting to it.

Another option for her is to order as much as she can over the internet and let Big Brown bring it all to her doorstep. One of her big personal needs is support hose, which she has to wear every day - even in the heat of summer. So I was delighted to come across an internet source for the ones that she likes. They are called TED Stockings and she has to wear them from the moment she gets up in the morning until the moment she turns out the bedroom light to go to bed. It’s a serious problem but that’s what she has to do to avoid a fatal pulmonary embolism. Blood clots are serious business - you can’t mess around with them.

Just to be nice, I’m going to order her a couple pair from the website and have them delivered as a little surprise. Then she can order her future pairs from the same place.