LIFE IS A SERIES OF UPS AND DOWNS, THANK GOD FOR GOOD FRIENDS AND FAMILY

Well, I have been absent a lot lately and it has been just crazy around here!  We are still working on our house AND yard trying to get caught up after all the illnesses we have encountered over the last year. 

My mom had surgery for stenosis of the spine at Christmas and she is doing much better now also.  She had gotten where she could not stand to walk or even sit because it hurt so badly.  She is buzzing around now almost as good as new.

My brother had a heart attack in March.........scary had 4 stints put in and is doing well now, just tired from inactivity he says.  He is working on that and he will be here to visit in about 2 weeks.  Yeah!

The latest thing is my oldest cousin had a bad stroke and I have spent a fair amount of time with her at the hospital.  She and her husband had gone for a short walk and she fell in the street and it messed her face up really badly, it was the stroke that caused the fall.  It will be 3 weeks this Tuesday and she is doing so much better.  She has paralysis on her right side and still isn't able to speak, but I have high hopes that will remedy itself with physical and speech therapy. .

So it has been almost scary to answer the telephone around here wondering what is going to happen next.....then I read the struggles the rest of you are having and I know we are not alone.  

We all have struggles in life and we have to buckle up and deal with them, but we do have each other to keep us spirited on. I am grateful for my friends and family and my blog family.  Thanks so much for all the support you have offered over the past year.  I will be back posting with my guns blazing soon!   

CHAPTER 13 SCOTLAND Leaving the hospital

Cherie got her crutches and I got the Zimmer! I am actually able to use it and get around very nicely! It means for me I get off the potty chair and that is wonderful!
I start slow but by the time the day is over I am scooting around nicely and it is so exciting! The girls are cheering me on and it feels good! Now I am getting somewhere!

The day cleaning crew comes in and starts tidying up and cleaning like every morning except this day the cute little lady cleaning has her helper with her and he starts elevating every one's beds up as far as they can go. I am wondering what are they doing? Well I soon see that the cleaning lady is crawling under the beds to dust! When she gets to mine I hang my head over and say that looks scary to me! She grins and says what you have to do to make a livin'! I would be afraid one of those beds might collapse and squish me!

Friday night goes okay and I am still alive to tell about it, the only thing was it was so hot in the hospital during the day and that night.

That Friday Ross was upset because he could not find a tee shirt in the hospital gift shop that said Aberdeen Royal Infirmary.......he said they have them at Mayo Clinic! I told him he was funny!



Richard and Angie came to visit that night and Richard in his English accent told me "we might be late tomorrow afternoon visiting, because they were doing a whiskey tour." I thought he said they might be "lit"! I said you wouldn't do that to me when I am in the hospital would you? !!!!! That is one of the things tourists do in Scotland is go to the Scotch Whiskey distilleries.

Glenlivet distillery

.
Ross said to me a few days before that they rent Ambulances to get home from the hospital. I said of course they do because everyone drives a bandaid box here! How would you get in one if you had broken bones and could not crunch up!
Richard is always talking about my Denali and the other big cars and trucks we Americans drive around. Well that is okay for them, but I saw what damage little cars and big trucks do while I was in the hospital there. I want a little protection thank you very much!


It is Saturday and about mid afternoon one of the little day nurses aids comes in and walks down to "the girls end" and announces that they need beds and she hates to break up the happy little family but 2 have to go and it isn't Isla
We all looked at each other and I thought we were going to flip. We said to her we aren't going! We refuse to leave Isla there alone without us! She finally got us to say okay, but we would not go if we were not going to be in the same Ward. We were getting closer to going home than Isla and we knew we would have to go through this sooner or later. We both felt terrible to leave Isla there but Isla put up a good front for us.

They took Cherie down first in the wheelchair and our Ward was going to be in Plastic Surgery by the burn unit. Okay, now what kind of plastic surgery do you get in a government hospital I thought to myself?

The nurse got back to take me down and away we went. I tell you I was so nervous about this move. When I got there it was a tiny room with 3 beds in it and mine was an antique version like I had never saw before and it was stuck behind the door. This bed did not even have any way to lift the head of it up and I had to sleep elevated! It's headboard had a hay rack for a method of elevation! You just had to stack pillows on it. Gad, the thing was horrible! Actually our friends we were visiting just had a new grandson and they were showing us the photos of Mom and baby in the hospital when he was born. I made the comment what kind of weird bed is Louise on?

Oh, just like this one! ha ha

Looking up my nose in my hospital bed! You can see the hay rack headboard

Well I am not too keen on my situation down here in this old part of the hospital, but Cherie was just going on. I am visiting with the nurse and she is helping me get settled in. She was fixing me up with some bandages on my knee because it had started oozing water out of my surgical wounds....lots of water...gross..
Same situation the nurses are very nice down here and we did get away from Godzilla and Isla told Cherie maybe she will get fed now she is down there.

In a little while a nurse comes down to talk to Cherie about her complaints over us getting thrown out of our ward upstairs. Well I did not know this yet but when they delivered Cherie to her new room they pushed the wheelchair up to her bed and left her. She asked the nurse "well what do I do now"? The nurse looks at her and said "you get out of that wheelchair and get on your bed". Cherie looks at her and said, "How am I to do that, I can't walk and I just got these crutches an don't know how to use them yet!" and " the next one, Karen, that they are bring down is worse off than me!" Cherie said you should have saw the look on that nurses face then. The nurse told her they said we were ready to go home when Physios ( their term for Physical Therapy) releases them. The toilet down there wasn't a handicapped one so Cherie couldn't even use it! They had to modify it with the cute little raised seat with arms. There wasn't a shower in it either but the nurses were nice.....

Isla emailed (Facebook) Cherie and said no one was taking care of Margaret now and that our beds were still empty. Actually my bed was still empty when I got out of the hospital...........who do you think banished us from Ward 43? They did not need the beds like they said did they!

Okay now we are settled in and this floor is weird. The patients down here are all mentally deranged. There was one woman who tried to get Cherie out of her bed because she said it was hers..... scared her to death since she has a broken hip and sometimes those old people are strong as an ox! She constantly roamed the hall exclaiming "oh, my God" over and over in a dying voice. Creepy and it was dark and gloomy down there too. We had a roommate who had plastic surgery on her abdomen trying to fix some damage from an 8 year old car wreck. So that is the kind of plastic surgery you get in a government hospital. She informed us she never sleeps when she is in the hospital ever. She said I roam the hall and read, so actually she wasn't in the room much that night.

We have our evening visitors and we are telling them our story of the day. Then when visiting hours are over it gets creepy again. Cherie and I are laying in the beds and the lady is doing her chanting and you could hear the sound of a TV muffled and what sounded like someone banging a tin cup on jail bars.... I said to Cherie " Cherie do you think we are really in plastic surgery or are we in the NUT HOUSE? I did not sleep much that night because I was afraid to shut my eyes!

The next morning I am sitting up in my bed and I am thinking I am getting out of this place today one way or another! I was getting depressed and Cherie says "Karen, what are you thinking?" I told her I was getting a little depressed and she said I want you to snap out of it!" and I did. I told the nurse I wanted out of there today and she said that it was Sunday and Monday was a holiday and Physios aren't working today. I said well you better find some of them today.

The nurse comes in and sends me down the hall to the room of a gal named Karen and her roommate who have a good shower and they won't mind us using it. Okay, I thought that odd but I hobbled down on my Zimmer and to the shower I went. When I got there I saw Karen and asked if it okay I took a shower. She nodded and tried to smile. Karen obviously had been burned very badly over her entire chest and body area with half on her lower face. She was so thin and a fair redhead and I wondered what tragedy had befallen her. It was obvious she had been there for a long time because her scars were not fresh, they were healed. While in the shower I discovered the Zimmer made a great towel rack.

When Cherie went for her turn I told her, to leave her crutches this time and take the Zimmer, it makes a great towel rack and you will need it. She zipped off and went to shower.

Then two gals from Physio showed up to give me crutches. I took to them really well and they said the would be back and where was the Zimmer? Oh, that, Cherie took it to use as a towel rack and you can pick it up when you come to give me my stairs test with crutches. You could not get out of the hospital until you could climb stairs on your crutches. So Cherie and I got our crutches test and passed! I was going to be free to go!!!! Ross arrived about then and I told him I was getting out of the hospital where were Richard and Angela? He said on their way back to Banchory.
Ross called them and they said they would turn around and come back. Well the bad news it took hours to get dismissed from the hospital.

Ross went down to the nurses station and informed her our beds upstairs were still empty. He said the nurse was very annoyed they told her a white lie about Cherie and myself and why they needed us in their ward.


I wanted to go back upstairs to tell Isla goodbye, but I knew I would cry and not want to leave her. It was late and Richard and Angela had waited long enough. I was going to miss my best Scottish girlfriends Cherie and Isla, I had known them only a week but we had gone through what seemed much longer and lots of pain together. We celebrated our small accomplishments in our own recovery. We had hooked up on Facebook to keep in touch with each other in the future and Cherie made me promise if I came back to find them. I will you can count on that. Cherie was going home on Monday if she could get a ride in an Ambulance, but is was a labor holiday on Monday in just Aberdeen, so I am not sure if she had to wait until Tuesday or not.

It was one of the worst and one of the best experiences of my life all wrapped up into one package...
I had so many people praying for me from home for my recovery and I am also very thankful to them for that. I truly felt their power of prayer, and I felt so bad that they were all so upset. I had phone calls to my bedside and Ross's cell while I was in the hospital from my in-laws and my church stake President and my Relief Society President. I love them all and I couldn't have made it without their support from the homefront.




Now it is time to see Scotland on Crutches!

Chapter 7 Scotland I'm BACK

The third morning was easier for me to be there in a strange place because of Isla and Cherie being there with me and having someone to talk to and feeling bonded to them. I really don't think I would have done very well without them.



One of the fun things was to watch the tea and coffee cart coming around for tea and biscuits 4 times a day. Now we don't get that here at home! The English ritual was alive and well here in the hospital!


In my Ward 43 there were 6 of us and besides "us girls" there were 3 women the youngest of them 85 years old and the oldest was 93 at that point in the week. Margaret was blind and I never really knew what she was there for. I am sure she had something broken and fixed before I got there. The other 2 women had broken hips and one came in the day I did and one was there already. They were not sent to surgery to fix those hips, they just gave them pain pills and told them they were not an emergency....so they would have to wait until they had time to take care of them.

It was a little before this point that I started paying attention to the situation there. I had been in this Ward about 12 hours when I started to notice a lot of differences in the care of the patients than I was used to here at home. You know the United Kingdom has socialized medicine and I am here to tell you....
it ain't what you are used to if you are from the States!

I kept asking the nurse why am I not hooked up to a IV drip bag to keep me hydrated and to administer my medication. She said, we don't do that here.
What???? I was on IV antibiotics but they were just pushed into my IV port in my hand 3 times a day with syringes. I thought that was odd and a very old fashioned way of doing it.

If you were not able sustain yourself and to sit up and drink your water and eat what came on your tray you became weaker like I watched the aged do. Visiting hours were from 2 to 3:30 in the afternoon way after lunch, and evening hours were 7 to 9:30, way after our "tea time" which was the evening meal. So you had no family members there to feed you, and if you were old or too sick and a nurse didn't take an interest in you, well you didn't get much to eat or drink. The 93 year old next to me looked good when I first arrived but she quit eating and drinking on my 3rd day there. She got red streaks running down her cheeks and I told her family she was not eating or drinking and no one was trying to get her to eat. Now that is just wrong in my opinion.

Not everyone had a call button that worked on their bed either and I noticed that Cherie always was watching to see if anyone needed a nurse. She was the "little mother of the Ward". Actually Isla and myself became "mothers" also, but Cherie was the natural!

Actually I became quite fond of all the nurses and even the cleaning crew on my stay there in the hospital. I only had problems with one nurse and I will tell you about her later on in the story.

I found the Scottish people to be the most sweet, adorable, humorous people. I quite fell in love with them and would not have known them if I had not landed up in this hospital. I had been in a state of anxiety the first full day I had been there then on the 2nd day my husband made the statement that day when he came to visit I seemed like I was starting to like it there! Well I must admit I really liked most everyone we came in contact with.

Margaret made it hard to sleep at night because she had night terrors and called out and moaned "oh my God, I am dying" and that made me creepy, but, I did get used to it. Margaret also yelled out "where's Doris?", which is my mothers name and that got to me also.... She spoke Gaelic but I did not know what that was about.

The worst part was the other 2 women on my side of the Ward who were waiting to get their hips set. They would have the doctors come in every day and tell them they were not emergency cases and maybe tomorrow they could go to "theater" (surgery). They would change their sheets and give them baths, but they cried out in pain. It was very sad and depressing to that they were not perceived as emergency cases. It would have been the same for me if I had been there with a broken leg or hip, but these people are old!!!! It took each of them 5 days, yes, I said 5 days, to get their surgery. My 93 year old ward mate went to surgery and then they brought another woman 85 in to take her bed with a broken hip. I am sure she waited just as long to get it set. I don't know if the 93 year old made it through her surgery or not, she was awfully weak, and that made my heart ache.

It wasn't all horrible, the 3 of us young ones ( ha ha) always kept things going when we were not asleep from too many pain pills. :) We celebrated each others accomplishments and also talked about our trials and tribulations.
Isla was planning a wedding next September and we talked about that and how she missed seeing her boyfriend. He was hurt in the same car accident but had been released to home, but could not travel. We got to know each others families and friends and that was so much fun. Cherie had the two cutiest little boys ever! Isla had a dear mother we talked with alot and my husband was totally taken with them all also.

The girls were always mad that my husband was not allowed to hang with us during the day. I told them, hey I get it, it is for privacy. They said "we have all the privacy we need, we have a curtain!" I said I did not think the older generation would see it like they did. :)

to be continued. . . . . . . . . . . .

Scotland Chapter 4

As I lay sobbing on my bed and looking at my hospital gown that I was told to put on I heard this sound from the other side of the curtain.... "who's crying, did you hear that? Who is crying?

Well, it was the two young ladies across from me. They were all worried that someone was crying. I replied saying that it was me, I am behind the curtain. They both said it was going to be alright and trying to comfort me and asked me what was wrong? I said I wanted to go home and I was going to be having surgery. They both responded with, "Ahhhhhh" and then said "where are you from, you have an accent"

Hubby opened the curtain and I faced them telling them that I was there from Oklahoma, in the United States visiting friend, and that we were celebrating our 25th Wedding Anniversary with this trip. They really Ahhhhhhhhhed on that one. They wanted to know when I got to Scotland, and I told them last night I arrived to my friends house. They were sorry that I had gotten there before I even got a chance to see anything much.


We chatted back and forth and introduced ourselves. The older one straight across from me was Cherie. Cherie is 26 and had fallen down the stairs at her home after tripping on a toy her son and left on them. She had been home alone and said it took her 4 hours to crawl to a telephone to call for help. She had gotten a plate and four screws in her hip! Cherie works at a local school and is Mom to 2 absolutely adorable boys.

My Cherie

The next bed across was Isla (pronounced I la) and she and her boyfriend were in a car accident when a farmer pulled out in front of them on the highway. Isla had a broken back and Isla is a19 years old university student.

Isla Sweetie

Then the anesthesiologist came to talk to me before I went to surgery. She was a Indian woman and asked me all the usual questions before surgery. She asked my weight and I told her and she slapped her forehead and fell backward into the wall.......

Hubby said POUNDS not kilograms, which is about twice as much...that was a little humor, when I wasn't seeing any! I can still see her doing it and laughing to myself!

to be continued....................

Oh my gosh, how sweet!

Gillie before she left Oklahoma

and below her meeting with The Gillespie's!

She loved them from the start just like we did! They are the nicest couple you would ever want to meet, and their children are adorable!

Cowboy has been taking Gillie to work with him every day so I would say she is a happy camper!

After we met TrainWreck and her Cowboy, Train Wreck gave me a box.

In it was an amazing assortment of gifts.

She is so sweet and thoughtful and she is such an amazing person and she is such a talented and giving woman.

She made this adorable personal frame just for me with pictures I had posted on my blog.

It is the cutiest thing I have ever saw! It is on a scrapbooking theme and I love it!

I don't know how she finds the time to accomplish all she does!

Then there was that adorable bucket with kisses in it, a reed infuser with the most wonderful vanilla scent, Chocolates in the heart box, the little book of inspiration, the cowgirl paperweight made by TrainWreck, and the oh so adorable pendant TrainWreck made also.

This barb wire candle holder...........so cute

and a selection of her prints. They are wonderful and I am going to mat and frame them!

They will remind me of her always!

I am never going to forget her kindness.

I wish she lived next door to me, we would have so much in common and have a great time!

Maybe one day they will want better grass and come be our neighbors!

Okay it could happen! :)

and Gillie is my granddog so it would be closer!

A Long Time Gang found in Oklahoma!

Did that get your attention?

Well today I am going to tell you about the friends that I went to school with. Yes, we were ornery in school. . . . . . . . . Brenda Jean was our ring leader. . . . . . we were a gang of sorts! :)

This picture was taken the last day of our Senior year of high school 1971. It was Senior day....can you believe that, we only got a Senior Day at our school back then! Other schools at least got to go to Six Flags or something like that.... oh, not us, we had Senior Day and we got to go to the City Park and the bowling alley in the next town, lame as it was we accepted it. I can't imagine we would have been a liability to the school, could you?

Look at those sweet children. . . . . .

Pictured are Dorinda, Sherri Sue, Brenda Jean, & me.

I know you can't recognize us in our disguises... oh, and I am sorry we thought we were cool to smoke little cigars , Swisher Sweets, which I have in my hand. That little phase luckily did not last past this photo.

We are in the same order by some fluke a few years later at our annual All school Christmas reunion in 1976 and still full of vinegar!

Then here we are at our class reunion in 1996

Brenda Jean, Sherri Sue, Dorinda, and me.

still cute aren't we?

Then this is the gang girls outing we had in about 2002 and we just went up into Kansas

Antique shopping and ate lunch together on the Yellow Brick road....didn't see Dorothy or Toto.

Me, Brenda Jean, Rita Sue, Sherri Sue, and Francie

This is another girls weekend we had in 2002 where we went to Branson, Missouri.

Hee Haw Capital of the Ozarks....

Me, Rita Sue, Brenda Jean, and Francie

Sherri could not make it to this one. Naturally we are at the dinner table at Lambert's!

This is at Sherri Sue and Joe's wedding reception.
Rita Sue, Brenda Jean, Sherri Sue, Me and my hubby.

Then in Jan 2006 Brenda Jean's daughter got married and the reception was at the Tulsa Summit Club. We had a wonderful dinner and a great time again! The bride was beautiful and so was the bride's mother!

Francie, Brenda Jean, Sherri Sue, Rita Sue, and me.



We even went on a Caribbean Cruise to Jamaica, Gran Cayman, and Cozumel as a 35th class reunion January 2006. This is the class members that went, not that many but we had fun anyway!

Sherri and I are in the middle and Rita is on the outside right. Toni Jean is on the outside left and Judy Kay is next to me on the left.




You know how the story goes, you graduate, get married, move away, have kids, and any assortment of the logical variables. Sherri moved the farthest away, got divorced, then after several years moved back home to start over after her kids were grown. Some of the others divorced and have remodeled their lives, but we stay close and keep tied together. You know life happens in all sorts of forms.


When we graduated from high school "hope chests" were the big deal. I got a set of Noritake china for graduation from my parents. Brenda Jean said I did not need a hope chest because I was hopeless.... I was the only one who did not want to get married to anyone at the time....and it was 13 YEARS before I was to marry my hubby. Brenda, Toni, Sherri, Judy and Francie all got married quickly out of high school. I guess Brenda knew what she was talking about...because I did not unpack the china even when I bought my own house as a single gal!

Rita and I spent the most time together during the post high school years because we both stayed in town and worked for Phillips Petroleum Co. We were both professionals and we were both single the longest, yes a fancy way to say we were the "Old Maids".

This is Rita and I at Gypsum, Colorado for my cousin's wedding over Labor Day 1978

then here we are in 1977 at my apartment

then here we are at . . . . . . .

Uh oh, we are at Rita's Bridal Shower. . . . .

now I am going to be the lone "Old Maid" !

. . . . . . . .which at that point seemed pretty okay to me, because my hubby had not come on the scene yet in my life, I knew him from work, I just did not know I liked him. That would not happen until 1984....still a long way off...

well we look diffrent now, hair diffrent, bodies diffrent... (except Judy...she still looks the same)

but it is still us,

the Wild Gang!

Kansas City girls weekendSummer 2006

Rita, Judy, Toni, me, Sherri




It is truly a blessing to have friends who "knew you when". It is the rich history of knowing all about someone forever that is what makes friendship a lot richer. They "get it" when you have little quirks, or feel blue, and need a chattering release. They ignore you when you are a little too blunt.... , which I am known for....Rita always reminds me when she got pregnant at 40, with her second child, which the oldest was already 12 years old, I said to her "Rita, do you know how old you are?"

she never forgot, but the important thing is, she did not hit me . . . . . .

I wouldn't trade our friendships for anything!


We are still a gang of friends!

Sheri, Mary and me.... HAPPY THANKSGIVING

Sheri, Mary, and me....girlfriends forever is what we are! I always think of them at Thanksgiving because it is their favorite holiday!

You know we were the cutiest girls in the area! ha ha he he ..... hey what are you laughing at?

We did get separated.... Mary moved to Wyoming in about 1979 to teach school, Sheri then was lured off to Nashville in 1986 to work for a friend who just made it big (Reba), and I stayed here working at my boring oil company job. Our lives are all so diffrent but we are close at heart. We went through so much as teens and young adults we will be close forever. You don't even want to get us started telling all our funny storys of that time frame.... Linda and Rita were part of the crew later on but I will talk about them later so be prepared girls! :) You aren't off the hook yet!

This is at a Christmas party at my house in 1986.... Rita, Mary, Jess, me, Sheri, and Linda.

I saw Sheri a month ago when she was in Oklahoma getting her mothers things in order and sorted out after her mom went into a care facility. Her mom and her sister, Mary, live in the southern part of Oklahoma and Sheri came up to visit friends after she finished there. She was just a wreck and sick, but it was a lot of emotional stuff going on. It is hard to see your parents go down hill and not be the parent we had when we were children. We all go through life's various stages from being young silly girls to now past middle age adults worrying about our parents like they used to worry about us when we were young (and silly). It is a hard transition going from being cared for to being the ones doing the care giving and worrying. Sheri and Mary have had to watch their dear mother deal with her share of health problems and it is heart wrenching. It is physically and emotionally draining, but their mom seems to be very happy at this stage in her life Sheri says. Mary, Me, and Sheri at Mary's daughters wedding about 5 years ago

Sheri & I so long ago I can't remember but I would guess about 1979 since my hair is short....Sheri gave me a perm in my long hair ( I wanted the Barbara Striesand "a Star is Born" look) and burnt it up....so she had to cut it all off.... :O
It has been short ever since.

So in this season of thanksgiving I give thanks for the friendship we have shared for close to 40 years.... wow that sounds unbelievable dosen't it! Time and miles keep us apart, but they are the sisters I got to choose.