Adversities

I had to run to Walmart yesterday to pick up a 'script and a few things I found missing in the pantry. I use the word "run" figuretively as I don't "run" anywhere these days. I don't even do a fast walk; it's more like a slow shuffle. I suppose I should say I shuffled off to Walmart yesterday. OMG, I'm wandering around here on this post. 7 lines down and I haven't even started on what I intended as my subject for this blog. Maybe it's appropriate for what I encountered yesterday.

I was standing in an aisle at Walmart  making a monumentous decision between Skippy brand and Peter Pan when a man in one of Walmarts' motorized chairs attempted to get by me. We engaged in polite greetings and somewhere after those polite greetings we started chatting. Apparently the reason for him using the Walmart chair was a horrific auto accident that crushed his skull, broke his neck,  punctured his lungs and shattered his knee. He was in a rehab facility for the past year and now was living in an assisted living facility until he was fully recovered to return to work and unassisted living. He was there with his counselor and 3 other men in the same condition. I ended up talking to the other men; their injuries were as varied as the gentlemen I had been talking too and with some of these men, their mental faculties were lacking from their injuries. It was much like talking to an innocent trusting child. They were excited to have someone talking to them and eager to explain and discuss their current lives and accomplishments. One man has just finished up a degree in graphics at a technical school; the other man already had two degrees from LSU when he was injured.

As I left these 3 men, I counted myself lucky to have managed to have this encounter with them. What an inspiring day for me. Three men fighting their way back from disasters that changed their lives for the past 2 or 3 years while they recovered from their head injuries and each one of them did have injuries to their skulls and brains and were in a specialty hospital that deals with brain injuries and rehabbing them.

I thought often about them through the afternoon; then I got a phone call. My friends' daughter was being emergency transported to a hospital here from one of the small outlying hospitals for emergency surgery.
I dressed Carrie and told my friend I would meet her at the hospital. I spent the next 3 hours with them and waiting for a surgery suite to open up so that daughter could go to surgery.


I had to bring Carrie home as it was getting later and later and still my freind's daughter hadn't made it to surgery. Carrie needed desperately to go to bed and I didn't make it back to the hospital last night.

Soon Carrie will be going home to be with her mother. I will be dressed and going back to the hospital to visit my friends' daughter. I don't know what the outcome was post surgery. It's something I will find out about when I get back to the hospital.

I'm outta here to get dressed. I may even have to forego my nap today.