Hi everyone,
I am working on the next chapter of The Great RV Adventure and while looking through my photos I found this one of a window and it has been on my desktop every since then.
Miss Helen called me.
“Peg, can you take me to the doctor’s on Thursday?”
“Sure, what time?” I asked.
“One-thirty.”
I had no idea why Miss Helen had a doctor’s appointment but I was glad I could be there when she needed me.
So Thursday, at one o’clock, I get in the Jeep and go to pick up Miss Helen. She doesn’t live far from me, only about three miles, so it didn’t take me long to get there. When I pull into her driveway I see her garage door is open. I pull right into the garage so Miss Helen doesn’t have far to walk. The door into her dayroom is right there, three steps from where I parked the Jeep.
Once I’m parked and the engine is off, I get out and open the back door to retrieve the step stool. It’s a long climb up into the Jeep even for me, let alone a slight ninety-four year old woman, stooped with age. Without the stool, she would never be able to get in.
With the passenger door open, and step stool in place, I turn and open the door into the house without knocking. I don’t know if this is rude or not. I have never been given permission to just walk in, but I hardly ever show up without her knowing I’m coming because if you do, you won’t get in. All the outside doors are locked up tight.
Miss Helen is expecting me so I just walk in, calling out as I open the door. Well, unless she’s sitting right there in her day room. But if she’s not sitting there I’ll call out, “HELLO!” If I don’t hear an answering ‘hello’ I’ll call again as I make my way to the kitchen. “Miss Helen! I’m here!”
But on this day, I didn’t have to call out. Miss Helen was sitting in her day room, her hair all done up nice and pretty, a touch of color applied to her lips and cheeks and her going-out-of-the-house clothes on.
“Are you ready?” I asked.
“Yes,” she answered.
“Where are we going?” I asked not sure where her doctor’s office was located.
“Out to the wound clinic,” Miss Helen said.
“The wound clinic!” I was surprised.
“I fell,” she confessed.
“You did!”
Then Miss Helen told me what happened. “I was laying down on the day bed when the phone rang. I sat up to answer it and I was sitting on the edge of the bed, with my feet on the floor and my legs just gave out and I slid to the floor.” Miss Helen couldn’t understand why it happened, why her legs gave up-or out, she just knows that she ended up on the floor with both her shins scraped. Now, let me tell you that when you are ninety-four, your skin is tissue paper thin and rips easily. So we were going to the wound clinic to have the bandages changed.
I help Miss Helen get to the Jeep and I am careful to not help her too much. Because here’s the problem when you try to help old people. You can end up hurting them more. People have bruised her trying to help by gripping her too tight. Rather than take her arm, I offer her mine. Then once at the Jeep I stand by, right behind her, as she finds her handholds and footing and climbs up into it.
We chat as we drive and we end up at the appointment about twenty minutes early. “Maybe they can take us early,” I say to Miss Helen as we pull up in front of the hospital where the wound clinic is located. I let the Jeep run as I go inside and get a wheelchair. When I come back out I open her door, position the wheelchair and lock the wheels.
Getting out of the Jeep is easier than getting in. Miss Helen didn’t need the step stool, she just holds on, steps down to the running boards then down to the ground. Once she turned around and sat in the chair I unlock the brakes and push her into the foyer where she can chat with the people at the information desk as I park the Jeep.
Okay, so I park and come back in and collect Miss Helen and wheel her down the halls to the wound clinic and we register at the desk and go to the waiting room to await our turn. Miss Helen and I are just getting settled in for our wait, her with a Woman’s Day magazine and me with my Nook, when the assistant comes in.
“Helen, when is your appointment for?” she asked.
“One thirty,” Miss Helen answered.
“We don’t have you on the books until Monday,” she told us.
They had a slight argument -- and argument is really too strong of a word -- about when her appointment was, but Miss Helen would prove it to her. She reached into her little purse and pulled out the paper she was given last time she was there with her appointment written on it.
It was for Monday. “Oh,” she says. “Since I’m here is there any way they can see me?” Miss Helen asked.
“I don’t know, we’re really scheduled tight today.”
“Transportation is a problem for me. Can you just check and see?”
The receptionist said she would, but don’t hold your breath, and she left.
“I’ll bring you back on Monday,” I told Miss Helen.
Miss Helen and I talked about it for a little while and she felt silly for making an issue of it, and if I would bring her back Monday, that would be fine.
I went to find the assistant and I found her in an office speaking with a doctor. “We’ll just come back Monday,” I volunteered when they looked my way.
“Since she feels so strongly that we need to see her, then we should see her. We’re going to find someone to change the bandages for her.”
I went back to the waiting room. “They’re going to see you,” I told Miss Helen and sat down again.
We didn’t wait very long before they came to get us. I pushed Miss Helen into the hyperbaric oxygen treatment room.
“I really don’t have anything to do while I’m waiting on someone who’s in the chamber,” the nurse told us, “so I said I would change her bandages.”
She had Miss Helen stay in the wheelchair as she opened and spread a pad out at her feet. The she pulled a stool up and using safety scissors, she carefully cut the bandages that covered Miss Helen from toe to knee on both legs, dropping the old bandaged onto the pad. Once she had them off she went for the attending physician to check the wounds.
“They look better than the pictures from the last time you were here,” he said. “They’re healing nicely.” Then he told the nurse what to apply and how to re-bandage them.
I asked a lot of questions that day. What are all the different layers of bandages for? Why do you put them on that way? Why do you use tape instead of the clips? I don’t remember the names of the different layers of bandages but they did different things and she applied them in a way to allow for swelling. The metal clips with the sharp teeth on them are a danger so they throw them away and just use tape to secure the ace bandage on the outermost layer. “It works better anyway,” she told me.
Cool.
“Could you check my arm while I’m here,” Miss Helen says out of the blue.
“I sure will,” the nurse said. “What’s wrong with your arm?”
“I fell again this morning and scraped it.”
The nurse finished with Miss Helen’s legs, checked on her patient in the hyperbaric chamber, then came back and helped Miss Helen wiggle out of her blouse. “I was between the dresser and the bed and my legs started walking on their own! Without me even wanting them to! And then down I went.”
“Can you use a walker in your house to keep you steady?” the nurse asked.
“I do,” Miss Helen replied, “but there isn’t room between the bed and the dresser and I had plenty of things to hold on to… I just don’t understand why my legs walk on their own!”
The nurse cut Miss Helen’s bandage from her arm, peaked and immediately slapped the bandage back into place, commanding Miss Helen to hold it for a second and said, “I’m going to get the doctor to look at this,” and she was gone -- in a flash.
“Why didn’t you tell me you fell again this morning?” I admonished Miss Helen.
“Well, I just had it in my head that they could check it while I was here and I never thought about it again,” she said.
The doctor came back in with the nurse and carefully took the bandage off as I watched. Again, Miss Helen’s skin is so fragile that what wouldn’t even break our skin, peeled back a layer of hers which hung in a flap! Ouch!
“Pull the skin back into place and use steri-strips to hold it. Put some of this, this and this on it and bandage it up,” he told her. He might have used actual medical terms where I wrote the words ‘this, this and this,’ but I can’t remember a single one of them!
“It’s a good thing you came in today,” the nurse said. “The sooner you get the skin put back into place the better the chances are that it will reattach itself and the better it will heal.”
Remember that folks. If you fall on Saturday, don’t wait until Monday to go see the doctor like somebody I know did! Call your neighbor girl who loves you and have her take you to the ER. Or press your Life Alert button in the very lest!
“I thought it could wait,” Miss Helen said.
Miss Helen gets all taken care of and I agree to bring her back on Monday for her regular appointment.
The weekend passes and Monday comes. I arrive at Miss Helen’s at the duly appointed hour and pull into her open garage and gather her up and take her out to the wound clinic in time for her appointment.
This time her appointment takes place in a regular exam room instead of the hyperbaric oxygen therapy room and I sit on the sidelines and the three of us, Miss Helen, the nurse and I chat as the nurse cuts the bandages from Miss Helen’s legs.
One leg done. Bandages off. Scraped shin exposed. “It’s looking good,” she says. “All this pink stuff is new skin.”
The nurse starts working on the other bandage, using her safety scissors to cut the bandages off when all of a sudden Miss Helen gasps and lets out a little yelp. Conversation stops as the nurse checks to see what’s going on. The tip of her safety scissors somehow picked up the top layer of skin and she cut about an eight inch swath on Miss Helen’s calf before she knew it.
The nurse was devastated! “I’ve been doing this for four years and I’ve never cut anyone before!”
She documented what happened and went for the doctor.
“Miss Helen! Why didn’t you yell sooner?” I asked.
“I didn’t know it. It just felt like a little pinch at first.”
Poor Miss Helen.
<<<<<>>>>>
I was coming home from running an errand when I got a phone call from my youngest and very handsome son, Kevin.
“Mom, I just left your place and when you pull in the parking lot, there is a car sitting there with a dog in it. It’s 90 degrees out! The windows are open but you might want to keep an eye on how long it’s there,” Kevin told me.
Boy, was he right. I care about those who cannot speak for themselves and in this case, it was a dog, left in a car, on a hot -- wait a minute, I mean --HOT summers eve.
I checked the outside temperature reading on the Jeep’s dash and it said ninety-two degrees. In just a few short minutes I pull into the parking lot and spot the car with the windows down a few inches. I parked, delivered Mike his Frosty from Wendy’s and went to see if the dog was in distress.
I was careful as I approached the car. “Hi baby,” I said. She looked up at me from where she was laying in the passenger seat, got up and came over to the driver’s side window. She never barked. Her tail was wagging so hard her whole back end wagged. She lifted her nose to catch my scent.
“How are you?” I cooed.
Her tail wagged harder.
I put my hand up to the open part of the window ready to draw it back if she looked like she was going to snap at me, but she didn’t. She just sniffed. So I put a couple of fingers inside the car and touched her. She was way okay with that so I reached the whole way in and stroked her head. As I pet her I could see her teeth and they were smallish and white…I bet she’s just a pup.
I don’t know what kind of dog she was, she had short blondish hair, pink nose, and weighed probably thirty pounds. Her nails needed clipped, but I don’t have any room to talk. My girls need their nails clipped too.
With just my hand and forearm in the car it didn’t feel too hot, so maybe she hadn’t been in there long when Kevin alerted me to her. So I stood there for -- I don’t know, five or seven minutes and honestly, I was getting tired of standing there in the ninety-two degree sun, hot blacktop underfoot radiating even more heat up at me. But I didn’t want to just leave her there. She’d be way better off in the shade under the awning then in the car, don’t you think?
I looked around in the car and I could tell the owners were traveling because the back was loaded! Loose clothes, shoes, a cooler, and full duffel bags were among the distinguishable items. Then I spotted a leash, between the seats but behind the console on a pile of stuff. I tried the door but it was locked. There wasn’t any knob on the door to pull up to unlock the door like there used to be in the old days, but I bet there was something; some button or something by the door handle to unlock it. I got my nerve up and felt around the driver’s door handle and felt a lever. It felt like it could be a lock. I pulled it and heard the door unlock.
Yes!
I opened the door just a little and the dog wanted to come out. “Just a minute, baby,” I told her. I would probably be in big trouble if the dog ran away so I grabbed her collar with one hand and reached for the leash with the other. I got a hold of it and quickly snapped it onto her collar. Then I let her out closing the door behind me.
Holy cow! Was she strong!
Right beside our garage door I keep an outside automatic water bowl for any and all strays that come through and need a drink. When it’s empty, I fill it. When it’s nasty, I clean it. I took this little girl over there and gave her a chance to drink, but she wasn’t all that thirsty. Another good sign. Then I took her to the grass to see if she needed to do her business but there were too many distractions there for her.
I kept an eye on the car for the owners to return and after a few minutes I took the dog over to the awning and sat down to wait.
After I had her for about fifteen minutes, I called Kevin. “Guess what I did?”
“What?”
“I took the dog out of the car.”
“Aren’t you afraid of getting into trouble?” he asked.
“Heck no! Let them call the cops,” I said. “They’d be in more trouble than me.”
“I just meant for you to keep an eye on it, Mom.” Kevin sounded a little worried about what I did but I suspect that it’s because his mom, who never breaks the rules, is now a rule breaker and it’s all his fault! But I know he’s secretly proud of me, I could tell. He loves dogs too.
I sat there for another ten minutes and Mike came outside looking for me and since I was sitting there with a dog he never saw before, I had to fess up to what I did.
“What if they come back drunk and are mad?”
Personally, I felt like they would be happier with what I did then if I had called the police, but Mike was freaking out. “You just can’t get in peoples cars and take their dog out!”
“Look. I’m not afraid of the cops. I’ve had the dog for twenty-five minutes now, but if you think it’s best, we can call the police.”
So we did.
They sent an officer who pulled into the parking lot just as the owners came back to their car. The gal went to the car and realized the dog was gone. She spotted me and headed my way as I was headed toward her.
“I was worried about your dog,” I told her. “It’s ninety-two degrees!”
“We were in there for like literally five minutes,” she said to me.
I didn’t want to call her a liar and maybe she just didn’t know how long she was gone, but I had to be honest with her. “I’ve had her for twenty-five minutes,” I said flatly.
“Well, she’s okay,” was all she had to say about that and loaded the dog back into the car.
By this time the officer had circled the lot and pulled up behind them. He got out and approached. “I guess you know why I’m here?”
“Yes,” she replied and I didn’t hear anymore. Mike steered me away.
I hung around a little while but the officer just let them go and they left and the cop got back in his car and left without talking to me so I went home.
Do you think what I did was wrong?
Let’s call this one done.
Lots and lots of love,
Peg and Mike
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