Beware of Unreliable, Good Samaritans

That would be me.

Here's what happened (and this is also on the of the reasons you haven't seen any new blog posts recently.)

 My friend Cindy sprained her ankle/broke her foot about a year ago. She had it fixed, heard the instructions about "Staying off it," "Taking easy - let it heal" and all that - and may have tried to follow some of them. Not easy for someone like Cindy who does NOTHING with either her mind or her body under 90 miles an hour. So, predictably when ski season came along two months later, she did her darndest to ram her foot into a ski boot convinced it had healed enough to ski on. Well it hadn't. Which fact she discovered while trying to extract that piece of her anatomy from the boot. Not so good. In fact it was so bad that Cindy found herself going under the knife in a Highly Specialized Foot Reconstruction Place in Vail Colorado.

Her husband stayed with her for one week of the two week recovery process. It was clear she needed help so her powers of persuasion were lined up, put into high gear and and fired in my direction. Would I come and spend a week in the mountains and help her out?

Sure. Why not? Just off a trip to Ohio, followed by a trip Kansas and an upcoming trip to San Francisco, I could think of a pleanty of reasons Why Not. But my heart tries to be mostly in the right place, my intentions are mostly good and my friend was held captive in an armchair with her foot in an oversize black boot with instructions to put NO weight on it for six weeks. So off I went in full sanctimonius Good Samaritan mode
to nurse her back to mobility. But mainly to keep her nailed down.
Everything went well for a while. A little jet-lagged, snuffly and dragging, we attended follow-up appointments, visited bookstores, visited Drew's old friends at his old hotel and went to Physical Therapy sessions. All such forays were accompanied by The Boot, Cindy's bicycle, her shopping bag and crutches. Oh yes - and her Dollar Store scarlet botox lips that went along to entertain bystanders and anesthesiologists. (Not the easiest people to entertain.) I threatened to buy her a tee-shirt that said "Biker Babe " accross the chest.

Then everything went nuts. I threw a wobbly. Woke up one morning trying to heave my insides out, my head ached, my eyes felt like sandpaper, my mouth like a desert and all available blood appeared to have drained overnight. "You look like a ghost!" My friend announced. I looked in the mirror and nearly fainted. No one that white could survive. Clearly, ghost-hood was just around the next corner. Shortness of breath (that dire forerunner of catastrophy due to lack of air) had moved in and we made a beeline for the Emergency Room. Me charging ahead on a rush of adrenalin brought about by near-death, Cindy pedalling furiously behind on one foot and the taxi driver motoring in behind hauling crutches, spare boot and yelling "God Speed " or something ominous that scared the rest of the blood out of me. Tha last thing I needed right now was for the Creator to step on my gas pedal and have me speeding down that oneway street to eternity.
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It all worked out in the end. It appeared that Vale's 10,000 ft high altitude, mild dehydration complicated by the common cold had been trying to reap my soul but medical science stepped in and thwarted the attempt. (You'll have to wait a littlle longer for me Sweet Drew) I have a Thanksgiving trip to make and another bawdy high school reunion to go to in May. I can't leave now, for Pete's sake.

And I didn't. Pumped up with Oxygen, bloated by gallons of Gatorade, everything moving in blimp-like motion, a friend packed me into the back of her car, Cindy wedged herself into the front with the boot and the bike and the crutches ... I don't know where the biket and the crutches and the back up supplies of Gatorade went.... but somehow we all turned up in back in the condo and lived happily ever after. :)

Happy, Happy Thanksgiving everyone. Here's to life, feet that work, Gatorade, 0xygen and Botox lips! And friendship. Freindship above all.

Your Stories

Thank you all so much for sharing your own stories about those moments before dying. I love hearing them.
  It's so important that we know that dying is nothing to be frightened of.

What Did He See?

Last night I saw a televison piece about the last moments of Steve Jobs life. A brilliant inventor, businessman and entrepreneur. Did you see it?

His family was gathered in his room, around his bed. He knew he was dying, in fact it was reported that with only minutes to live he had already said his goodbyes. Moments before his death the family noticed that he was staring at something beyond and behind them. Then his face suddenly lit up and he was heard to say, "Wow ... " then, "Oh Wow! ... Oh Wow!" And he died.

No one else saw anything. What did Steve see? I don't know. Did he see someone he knew? Someone who had already passed over? Was he given a glimpse of the other side at the moment of physical death? Or was he already there - moments before he left?

It's a common story. One that you will hear time and again from hospice workers and other people, family, friends, doctors, who are in the presense death. The dying person will sometimes make motions, call out names, recognition will light his face or he - or she - may reach out to someone no one else can see.

I can only imagine what Steve Jobs' Heaven looks like! With that giant mind and massive imagination he surely took with him, I can only imagine that if it took his breath away it was wonderful beyond words. Oh wow.

He will not be resting peacefully for very long. Just long enough to catch his breath, I should think. So all I can say to him is HAVE FUN!