{"id":20711,"date":"2017-06-11T11:49:09","date_gmt":"2017-06-11T18:49:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=20711"},"modified":"2017-06-11T12:01:33","modified_gmt":"2017-06-11T19:01:33","slug":"sunday-bag-o-blessings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=20711","title":{"rendered":"Sunday Bag o’ Blessings"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"blessingI took the motorcycle out for a putt early this morning. I wanted breakfast, and I\u00a0wanted to be home before it got hot. I rode curvy back roads to Vail, then cut back into Tucson. Along the way I considered several restaurant\u00a0options, finally settling\u00a0on an IHOP. There were\u00a0lots of good local\u00a0restaurants along the\u00a0way, but I didn’t want to put up with squalid one-holer restrooms. Not that I anticipated visiting\u00a0the loo, but if I did I didn’t want to wait in line. Thus IHOP (or Denny’s, or a Village Inn): nice clean restrooms.<\/p>\n

Maybe that’s\u00a0the wrong\u00a0criterion. Yes, IHOP has\u00a0nice restrooms, but when I asked my server for a small tomato juice she said they no longer serve it, just apple and orange juice. When I went up front to pay, there was a long line and only a single cashier. The woman at the head of the line was monopolizing the cashier, trying to get a conversation going with her. The people behind her were\u00a0becoming impatient and pushy. I took my place in line behind them, wishing I’d gone to Viv’s on the corner near our house. The ride was nice, though. Fifty\u00a0miles on good roads with no traffic, home before most people are even up.<\/p>\n

Polly’s here, doing her laundry. The job she got a month ago hasn’t started yet. She says they’re waiting for background check results. I think they’re stringing her along. It’s equally possible she’s stringing us\u00a0along. We ganged up on her and got her to\u00a0put in an application at Ace Hardware, where she worked before. I don’t know who’s paying her rent. It’s not us. When this shoe drops, I fear the thump will be loud indeed.<\/p>\n

Then I think of friends who are parents our age, and their son, and count our blessings. Fifteen\u00a0years ago the son, then 18, underwent serious brain surgery. He’d suffered debilitating epileptic seizures all his life and was barely getting through school, even on the\u00a0special education track. Having the damaged portion of his brain removed\u00a0and letting it “rewire” itself seemed\u00a0the best option, but imagine the agony he and his family went through, wondering if they were doing the right thing, wondering\u00a0what the consequences might be.<\/p>\n

It was\u00a0a leap of faith. It worked. The seizures stopped and he began to learn to learn again. Though he’d always need some degree of support to finish\u00a0school and hold down a job, his family had the resources to give him that support, and he began to get back on track.<\/p>\n

About ten years ago, he shit the bed at\u00a0a really good job his father had helped him get. I don’t know the details, but from the hints his parents gave us it sounded like he went on a rage at work. More training, eventually another job, then a place of his own to live and a car, the family there to fall back on when needed, and things got back to normal. Four or five years ago he had additional brain surgery. I don’t know what happened to prompt that. A month ago, he had some kind of neurological episode. This time he checked himself into hospital. His medications were adjusted and he went back to work. Then, last Wednesday, he had a stroke while he was driving\u00a0and smashed into a tree. The stroke is affecting\u00a0one side of his brain. The accident damaged the other. He’s in a trauma center ICU. They can’t treat the stroke with blood-thinners because he’s still bleeding on the car wreck side. Although he’s beginning to respond to commands he’s unable to talk. He’s still in his early 30s.<\/p>\n

We’ve known him and his parents since he was in junior high, well before the first brain surgery. We haven’t seen his parents much over the past two or three years, but we stay in touch with him. A couple of years ago he asked me about joining the Air Force. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that with his medical history he didn’t stand a chance of getting in. His optimism could be heartbreaking, as it was then. Other times he’d be down in the dumps. Our daughter Polly, also one of his close friends, alternates between peaks and valleys, though\u00a0they’re slightly less extreme.<\/p>\n

Our\u00a0first reaction to news of the stroke, the additional brain damage, and the gloomy prognosis was\u00a0hey, at least his\u00a0mom and dad were able to give him 15 good years\u00a0and a shot at a normal life. Then we\u00a0remembered the setbacks he’s suffered during those years. Okay, then, they gave him some good years. What would his life had been like if he’d never had neurosurgery in the first place? For all we know he’d still be struggling to finish high school, and would have been living at home all this time. He would not have wanted that.<\/p>\n

No one knows what will happen now. With his rewired brain, it’s impossible to predict how his recovery will proceed, or to what extent. We’ll hope for the best. The young man has a lot of folks looking out for him, that’s for sure.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, we’re counting our blessings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I took the motorcycle out for a putt early this morning. I wanted breakfast, and I\u00a0wanted to be home before it got hot. I rode curvy back roads to Vail, then cut back into Tucson. Along the way I considered several restaurant\u00a0options, finally settling\u00a0on an IHOP. There were\u00a0lots of good local\u00a0restaurants along the\u00a0way, but I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,2],"tags":[2329,2328,1976,2330],"class_list":["post-20711","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-motorcycling","category-personal","tag-neurosurgery","tag-restaurants","tag-restrooms","tag-stroke"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20711","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20711"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20711\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20722,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20711\/revisions\/20722"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}