I didn't see any heavenly white light but someone held my hand

Aug. 18 was the last time I posted to my blog on my PC at my Cheyenne writing desk. Chris and I moved out of our house in Cheyenne on Aug. 22. New owners took over and we shuttled down to Denver Aug. 24 and got on a plane to Orlando. My PC was packed in a U-Haul trailer with many of my other valuables and my son and his girlfriend embarked on a road trip to Ormond Beach. We unpacked and Kevin and Luisa stayed with us a couple days and we took them over to the Orlando shuttle and said farewell, for now.

On Sept. 9, I made a detour to La-La Land (a.k.a. Advent Health Hospital) for a medical journey that I partly chronicled via my cellphone at https://hummingbirdminds.blogspot.com/2024/10/homecoming-ormond-by-sea-oct-4-2024.html. I cross-posted it on my Facebook page and my friends said WTF or something like that. I had numbness in my arms and legs and urged Chris to call 9-1-1 and the ambulance took me to the E.R. where I promptly had two seizures and they coded me twice. The very good ER crew intubated me, put down a feeding tube, and stuck with an assortment of IVs. I spent the next four days in I.C.U. none of which I remember. My wife took a picture of me as I was transported and I swear I look like an old man who almost died. Which I was. When I awoke in I.C.U. the next day, I was a bit fuzzy on the month and the day of the week and struggled with my name and birthdate. I would have been scared but I was too high (Fentanyl the E.R. notes said) to be scared.

Read more in my earlier post. I had to relearn how to pick up a spoon and walk. Reality set in and I got very scared. I asked to read the E.R. notes on the hospital's MyChart. A total of 11 staff worked on me, Doctors and nurses and techs and X-ray people. My story sounded like someone else's story They gave me a big dose of antibiotics because they detected a bacterial infection of unknown origin and it caused sepsis which is really bad and sometimes people die of it -- some call it blood poisoning. If it sounds as if I was in a remote region of Indonesia and stirred up some bad juju, I was not. Cheyenne was the most exotic place I'd been and then meandered through construction at the Denver airport (I was nowhere near the giant red-eyed horse or the Illuminati types who haunt the basement), but then I did get on a plane and you know know how many germs one finds there and then I was in the Orlando airport with many sneezing children and spirits from the Pirates of the Caribbean. 

But it was none of those. The nearest I could figure was the staph infection I had in a leg wound that was treated with antibiotics and skin grafts were applied. Maybe the antibiotics didn't do their job or the grafts were somehow infected. This is all conjecture. I was a sick puppy who spent 25 days in the hospital, half of that time in the 12th floor Therapy Center which takes only stroke patients, the partially paralyzed, the fully paralyzed and some Dementia patients. I received four to five hours of OT and PT five days a week. 

A few days in, PT Adam asked me to see far I could walk with the help of my walker. 5.5 feet was all I could do. Later, he had me try again and I got my Irish up and went 10 feet. He gave me an attaboy and I kept moving the line 5-10 feet a day. I wanted to cry sometimes but I pushed those tears deep inside and used them for fuel for my damaged leg muscles. My last day, I walked 50 feet, rested, and walked 50 more, squeezing out the last few steps. 

Chris was with me the whole time although she only spent two nights with me -- the last one during Hurricane Helene which wasn't much of a hurricane at all in our part of Florida. We had to wait for MIlton for that. A big thank you to all of my family members, especially those who yearned to bring me some white shrimp from Hull's Seafood, But I passed as the tasteless hospital food was all I was supposed to eat. The infection or all the drugs took away my taste buds. They are back now after several dosings of hot salsa and Extra Flamin' Hot Cheetos. Damn, those things are hot. I loved the Cheetos TV movie, by the way.

One last thing. I talked to my Evangelical Christian daughter and told her that someone or some presence was holding my hand while I was not fully there. Might have been one of my brothers, Pat or Dan, or my parents. No, she said, God was holding your hand. All you have to do is ask and He will be here for you. I didn't ask, but he might have been there anyway.

On Nov. 6, we bid farewell to Trump and his Project 2025 ghouls

I would not/will not vote for Trump, not even for dogcatcher. He would find some way to make dogcatching benefit Trump. Some sort of Cruella Devil scheme. I have many reasons not to vote Trump in 2024. One of them is my selfish insistence on using Medicare to save me life. I also have secondary private insurance whose main job is picking up the pieces, if any are left behind by Medicare. Darn few, so far.

Trump and his assembly of ghouls at Project 2025 want to end Medicare as we know it. The program a socialist plot to take profits away from American oligarchs like Trump and the high-tech whiz kids from Silicone Valley. They already got a big tax cut from Trump but they want more, they always want more. So, to save me and the rest of us from Trumpism, vote Harris/Walz. They will lead us into the future. My wife and I contributed to their campaigns. Just a drop in the bucket but lots of drops in lots of buckets means we will have a future.

So, as I recuperate in my Ormond Beach home from almost dying and a 25-day hospital stay, I look ahead to a day when Trump and his Project 2025 minions crawl back under the rocks they came out of.

Milton leaves waves in his wake

The waves are huge. Hurricane Milton is out there still. The waves at its core could be twice the size of those that show up at Ormond-by-the-Sea. Tourists gawk. Surfers ponder and wonder what tomorrow may bring. They know the waves will gobble them up, the currents sweep them along the beach. They can wait, maybe tomorrow. Maybe Saturday the wind will shift offshore and sculpt the waves. It will be worth the wait, days this observer guesses. He sits. Waits, with camera.

Hurricane night

Winds whip the palm fronds, the rain peppers the roof. Hurricane Milton, October 9. 2024.

Milton works his way across the Florida peninsula. Made landfall this evening near Sarasota with 100-plus mph winds. Inland on the Florida East Coast, we get the fringes of the storm. I am snug inside our friend Cathy's condo. It's almost new, built to the latest codes. Power still on. Watched Mets advance to National League finals. Interviewer snagged Cheyenne homeboy Brandon Nimmo. He was in Annie's elementary school class. I hope he was nice to her.

I go to bed with the sounds of Milton in my ears...

Fleeing Milton but I never did get to the end of "Paradise Lost"

We decided to evacuate to a friend's house further from the water. Tides on the beach are running high due to some troublesome hurricanes in the Atlantic and high tide may be really high. Watching hurricane news all day. Many press conferences by the governor and his minions. I almost hate to say this but I now find the voice of Gov. DeSantis quite soothing. It's quite a departure from the scolding uncle voice we usually hear when he's blasting "Woke" folks and supporting Moms for Liberty book bans. And cutting Florida arts funding due to a semi-nude character in a stage play. Big cuts, $160 million I think. No excuse for that but he found one. Maybe it was an R-rated "Paradise Lost." Milton -- get it?

I've seen fire and I've seen rain and still more rain

So, it's been raining for four days and a hurricane is coming. A trial by water. In Wyoming, a trial by fire. Many fires burning in the north part of the state. An hour of this Florida rain will put them out. It's the CFD rodeo and storm clouds come over the mountains -- you can see them coming 50 miles away -- and then there's some lightning so everyone takes cover. The rain last 10 minutes then it's back to bucking broncos. No problem if you get wet. The sun comes out and steam rises from your duds and the show goes on. Rain comes down here and swamps you and you will dry out just in time for the next rain. Maybe.

And what about that hurricane?

Homecoming, Ormond-by-the-Sea, Oct. 4, 2024

I returned home yesterday, Oct. 4. It was say 25 of my stay at Advent Health Daytona Beach. The fresh air was bracing, although the temp was a warm 85. It felt like heaven to me.

Chris was driving. It will be awhile before I’m confident enough to get behind the wheel. I have my Florida driver’s license and about 58 years experience behind the wheel. I just don’t have my wits about me. I just got over a nasty case of septicemia or blood poisoning. I read all the physician and nurses’ notes in my online chart. A potent staph infection from a leg would had entered my bloodstream and propagated until it caused my body to seize up and stopped my heart – twice. Due to quick action by my wife Chris, The ER staff came running, pulled me back from the brink, and I began what I guess I can call my healing journey. It really was a giant shit sandwich that’s still going to take a couple months to recover from.

First the good news: Here I am. I need a walker to get around but I’m getting around, slowly. Seems that when my body got whacked by microscopic bugs, it forgot how to take one step after the other. I’m one of the lucky ones. First, I will walk again probably with help. Second, I’ still on Planet Earth to do so. Maybe that’s first, I still get a bit confused by priority lists. When I first awoke in ICU, I had no idea where I was nor who I was. Well, I knew my name but that’s about it.

The last half of my hospital stay was in the excellent Advent Health Therapy Center which occupies the entire 12^th floor of Advent Daytona.  The staff is first-rate: physicians, nurses, techs, physical and occupational therapists. When you go to the twelfth floor, you sign up for OT and PT for four to five hours daily. You’re assigned exercises to do in your room. The nurses are always there to help and a more empathetic yet stern bunch would be hard to find. I love them all.

My first task after I got out was to round up a seafood meal that was on the healthy side and sit down with my wife at home and enjoy. My choice was the planked salmon dinner at Stonewood Grill & Tavern with shrimp and scallop skewers on the side. I didn’t so much eat it as swim through it. A pleasurable swim to be sure, one topped off by Key Lime Pie. It was a big deal because Chris and I arrived in Ormond Beach on August 24 and were busy getting organized until Sept. 9 when bacterium came to call. I had not had a single seafood meal nor had I been to the beach. There was a big old ocean out there but it might as well have been Wyoming’s Red Desert.

So I’m home. Now what?

Welcome to Ormond-by-the-Sea which, surprisingly, is next to the sea

My new home is in Ormond-by-the-Sea, Florida. It is separated by the Inland Waterway from Ormond-not-by-the -Sea where most of the rest of my family lives. They just call it Ormond. As I drive A1A up the coast, I look out at the billions upon billions gallons of water in the omnipresent sea or Atlantic Ocean as some call it. It is so vast that I stand by-the-sea and gape.

It is a big change from Cheyenne-by-the-Prairie which is also a vast land that, coincidentally, was once an inland sea where plesiosaurs pursued prey under my patch of dry ground. A better name might be Cheyenne-pretty-close-to-the-mountains which is the Laramie Range and then the Snowy Range and if you travel south the Mummy Range and Rocky Mountain National Park. Beautiful, beautiful places where our family spent a lot of time and those memories will be forever lodged in my heart.

Vedauwoo was our favorite. Son Kevin learned to free-climb there and our daughter Annie loved to hike and camp. We watched UW’s Vertical Dance on a rock face of 1.5-billion-year-old granite. I’m pretty sure Florida will be underwater by then. I recently saw a map that showed Florida twice the size 18,000 years ago due to a 30 percent drop in sea level. Ormond-by-the-sea would have to move east to maintain its name and dignity.

Yesterday Chris and I drove to Flagler Beach. You can see the waves break from A1A. The day before, a stretch of this road was swamped by a monsoon rain and traffic had to be rerouted. Once we reached Flagler, we had to slow down for construction. The Army Corps of Engineers brought their massive equipment here to refurbish the beach and roadway washed away during the last two hurricanes. They are piping in beige sand from a huge barge. The current sand is red which has its origins in coquina rock and is a rougher sand that washes away easily. The beige sand is more stalwart.

After six or seven miles of construction, we get to the Flagler Pier and summer crowds. Surfers have arrived in droves to ride the waves which break better near the pier. My brothers and I surfed here in the 1960s and ‘70s. The crowds were smaller and the locals pretty welcoming unless you took off in front of them on a wave and then they would kick their board at you trying for some decapitation or maybe just a few bruises. We did the same thing at our beach in Daytona. All in fun.

Chris and I were on a mission to get our Florida driver’s licenses and tags and also register to vote. We didn’t want to miss out on the most important vote of our lifetime. We volunteered for election day duty. Some say it’s going to be a free-for-all but ruffians will think twice when they see this gray-haired man in a walker sent to keep the peace or die trying. It’s easy to come unglued at times like this. MAGA people and Christian Nationalists have followed Trump’s lead and issued threats. The other side (my side) tries to keep cool heads and say only positive things online. We often fail.

Chris and I accomplished two of our goals. The tags had to wait due to additional paperwork. We celebrated by taking naps and ordering take-out from Stavro’s, a fine Italian place just up the street and in sight of the sea. I should say by-the-sea.