August 15, 2017 9:35 pm
Nothing of note really happened today. It was another day at Craig. Josh attended all of his therapy classes and did reasonably well. He made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in his occupational therapy class. It took him forever and both the peanut butter and jelly layers were thin. He took one bite and was done. Mary got out of the hospital for an hour or so today, which was good for her mental health.
The biggest excitement of the day came just as we were leaving Josh's room to come back to our apartment. The power in the hospital went out. As you might imagine, backup generators immediately came on, so although it caused a stir for a moment, there were no emergencies. But that wasn't the case when we got back to our apartment building, which is in a retirement home. The power was out on the card reader at the front door so we had to wait until someone came walking by on the inside to let us in. No sooner did we get in the door (and determined that the power outage had affected the ice cream maker) than we heard someone yelling for help.
We ran down the hallway to find a very elderly gentlemen whose oxygen machine had gone out with the power. We used the flashlights on our phones to find our way into his apartment. He had a backup oxygen canister, which took us a few minutes to figure out how to connect, following his halting instructions. But when we connected it, we learned that it was empty. So the gentleman tried to explain to us how to connect the backup canister to a large tank sitting in his living room. Neither of us had any idea how to fill the backup canister, it was dark and we were feeling some pressure to get oxygen to this poor guy. Again, he gave us halting instructions but we couldn't get much oxygen into the canister. We finally got enough in to sit him down on a chair and hooked him up. He told us there were medical personnel on the third floor, so we left him sitting on his chair with a promise that we would be back in 10 minutes, and we went for help.
Fortunately, a nurse with the retirement facility was in the lobby as we ran through and came back with us to this gentleman's room. She knew what she was doing (we do now too) and had him set up within about two minutes. Just as she did that, the electricity came back on. We were very relieved, especially when the ice cream machine was up and running too.
We got up to our room on the fourth floor and Mary heard some commotion from our next door neighbor. She ran to check things out but, fortunately, everything was OK. Her life alert alarm had reset with the power going out and back in. As we type this, the electricity is on, both in our apartment building and outside too, where we are seeing a brilliant display of lightning!
Nothing of note really happened today. It was another day at Craig. Josh attended all of his therapy classes and did reasonably well. He made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in his occupational therapy class. It took him forever and both the peanut butter and jelly layers were thin. He took one bite and was done. Mary got out of the hospital for an hour or so today, which was good for her mental health.
The biggest excitement of the day came just as we were leaving Josh's room to come back to our apartment. The power in the hospital went out. As you might imagine, backup generators immediately came on, so although it caused a stir for a moment, there were no emergencies. But that wasn't the case when we got back to our apartment building, which is in a retirement home. The power was out on the card reader at the front door so we had to wait until someone came walking by on the inside to let us in. No sooner did we get in the door (and determined that the power outage had affected the ice cream maker) than we heard someone yelling for help.
We ran down the hallway to find a very elderly gentlemen whose oxygen machine had gone out with the power. We used the flashlights on our phones to find our way into his apartment. He had a backup oxygen canister, which took us a few minutes to figure out how to connect, following his halting instructions. But when we connected it, we learned that it was empty. So the gentleman tried to explain to us how to connect the backup canister to a large tank sitting in his living room. Neither of us had any idea how to fill the backup canister, it was dark and we were feeling some pressure to get oxygen to this poor guy. Again, he gave us halting instructions but we couldn't get much oxygen into the canister. We finally got enough in to sit him down on a chair and hooked him up. He told us there were medical personnel on the third floor, so we left him sitting on his chair with a promise that we would be back in 10 minutes, and we went for help.
Fortunately, a nurse with the retirement facility was in the lobby as we ran through and came back with us to this gentleman's room. She knew what she was doing (we do now too) and had him set up within about two minutes. Just as she did that, the electricity came back on. We were very relieved, especially when the ice cream machine was up and running too.
We got up to our room on the fourth floor and Mary heard some commotion from our next door neighbor. She ran to check things out but, fortunately, everything was OK. Her life alert alarm had reset with the power going out and back in. As we type this, the electricity is on, both in our apartment building and outside too, where we are seeing a brilliant display of lightning!
Never a dull moment. Did you get some ice cream? Sending love and prayers!
ReplyDeleteI once heard a wise man say "there is no bad ice cream.: When all goes wrong, and the lights go out.....God gave us ice cream. A chant from my childhood: You scream.....I scream.....we ALL scream for ice cream!
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