Thursday January 14, 2021

                                                 Year to Year Seems Much The Same

https://indiancountrytoday.com/news/a-century-ago-so-much-like-now-AYCWep2qoEyazUf-8xYW-Q
 

“The year 1920 — like 2020 — was a presidential election year. And the winner, Warren Harding, ran against the incumbent government promising normalcy. “Normal men and back to normalcy will steady a civilization which has been fevered by the supreme upheaval of all the world,” he told supporters. “Back to normalcy” and “return to normalcy” were quickly adopted as Harding campaign slogans (along with another one, “America First.”)

Then the famed newspaper editor William Allen White of the Emporia Gazette in Kansas had a different take on 1920. He wrote: "What a God-damned world this is! I trust you will realize that I am not swearing; merely trying to express in the mildest terms what I think of the conditions that exist. What a God-damned world! Starvation on the one hand, and indifference on the other, pessimism rampant, faith quiescent, murder met with indifference, the lowered standard of civilization faced with universal complaisance, and the whole story so sad that nobody can tell it. If anyone had told me ten years ago that our country would be what it is today, and that the world would be what it is today, I should have questioned his reason." Thus continues humanity. 

But in Roseau County we have a community of caregivers for which we all should be thankful. My wife and I do, in spades. She was taken to the hospital by ambulance around midnight January 9th. She was having severe abdominal pains. Afraid of contracting Covid 19 at the LifeCare Medical Center in Roseau, twenty miles away, she refused to go, hoping the pain would subside in time; exacerbating the situation was her high tolerance for pain. Upon seeing her, the doctor on duty said she appeared sepsis. A CT scan indicated the problem was her appendix. Had she hesitated much longer it was likely she may have died.

It was foggy that night; little wind if any. The highways clear of snow, but icy in places. Getting the ambulance back to Roseau wasn’t the problem, getting to our house though was. When I called 9-1-1 and gave the dispatcher, a young person, all the necessary information I added, I was glad for GPS this time, for the last time we had an ambulance in here, for me, in 1991 or thereabouts, things had gone wrong; I heard the ambulance siren nearing the intersection of Co Rd 8 and Co Rd 125 -- and shoot right by our turn, despite the accurate directions I heard my wife give the dispatcher: “. . . then turn east at the one-room schoolhouse there . . .” They continued on a half mile south, before turning east down a field road, and arriving in Layton Oslund’s farmyard, where the Oslunds expediently sent them on their way, assuring them that yes, we were on the schoolhouse road at the very end of that dead end.

So it was in 2021, on that foggy January night, even with GPS, with my wife moaning in pain walking about the house with all its lights on including our yard light by the door, we waited for the ambulance to arrive. Expecting them anytime, I had started our car and parked it out of the way of the ambulance, so it could get turned around and back up close to our door. Looking up I saw the headlights of the ambulance coming down our narrow tree-lined road that curved along the high banks of Mikinaak Creek; the road I had blown clear with my tractor-mounted snowblower a couple weeks earlier and the UPS truck had managed a few times since. So it was I didn’t have any doubt it was wide enough for an ambulance.

I had gone back into the house and told my wife that I could see it coming down our road, so to gladden her heart a moment, but the ambulance didn’t come. I started to think that I had imagined it or had seen a reflection of some sort in my car windows. Looking toward our road again, there was no vehicle there. I took my phone to call 9-1-1 again, thinking they had backed out, thinking they were in the wrong place or something worse had happened, when I saw headlights and clearance lights coming; I was so relieved!

Requesting an ambulance is an expensive decision in our day, but offers instant reassurances that at once seem well worth its cost. When they arrive, the highly trained personnel professionalism and manner of care are applied to your individual’s needs, and allows you to let go of some of the stress, thankful that your loved ones are presently in better hands than you could provide; the reward of their treatment is to your combined benefit.

Seeing to her immediate needs while still parked in our yard, the wife was plumbed with IV tubes and plugged into skin patch monitors attached to a computer. Although she was still quite uncomfortable, nauseous, and in much abdominal pain, they worked as quickly as they could completing their regimen one step at a time. A reading from a heart monitor curled from its printer; wavy lines in parallel rows on the small rectangular page. Red and green lights blinked on different machines. Readying their equipment to start the long road back, I said, “Goodbye! See you later!” to my wife, who probably didn’t hear me over the pain she was in as I know things can become blurred and forgotten when time stands still on your way to the unknown -- except, as the wife related later, an ambulance rides like a truck hitting every bump and dip in the road.

I got in our car and drove to the intersection by the one-room schoolhouse to await the ambulance. I noticed that there were tire tracks off our road that weren’t there earlier that day, which gave me pause. It looked like the ambulance had driven off the west side road where the ditch is shallow, (fortunately not its east side where the shoulder is very narrow and the ditch about eight feet deep) -- and then backed up to the adjoining township road.

The second day my wife was in the hospital, she substantiated my suspicions by telling me they admitted they had, in fact, got down our road about half way -- then stopped and backed up to the schoolhouse road, thinking they were on the wrong road. They called the dispatch, “They live east of the one-room schoolhouse at the very end of that dead end road!” And so it was, as years before.