It takes an innate ability to read an audience to be a decent classroom instructor.  Especially when your students are:

1) Adults,

2) Very Bright,

3) In your class mandatorily to maintain their certification, and,

4) Medics.

I don’t know that I would have the courage to lecture such a roughened, seasoned, bunch of extreme, living-on-the-edge-for-a-career kind of people.

(Heck I’m amazed I have the courage to show up at all, even just to sit in the back.)

But these guys do:

Joe, Adam, and Ty….Decades of experience between them.  Hundreds of lives saved or healed for the better because of them, personally.  Thousands of lives affected positively because of the medics they teach and train.

To be able to teach a subject is to have mastered it.  To be able to teach it in a way that keeps the student not only interested, but also entertained, is a talent.

In this particular case, everybody wins.  The teachers, for the mastery… the students, to grow their skills and knowledge… and the citizens they serve, for they will get better care for it.

Most people don’t realize how much work goes into and behind each and every 911 call that goes out.  It’s not as simple as getting into an ambulance and picking the patient or victim up.  Hours and hours of training go into it.

Why?

Because the medics want to do a good job?

Because the medics don’t want to be caught with their pants down?

Because the medics are afraid of litigation?

Because the medics have some kind of ‘Hero’ or ‘God’ complex?

No.

It’s simply because they care.

The school my kids go to, Monocacy Elementary School, is in the midst of its 50th Anniversary.  We’ve been having little celebrations for it throughout the year in one form or another.

Tomorrow night we are having an Old-fashioned Strawberry Festival.  It was something that the school used to have, back in the day, and they are bringing it back to life.

I am so stinkin excited, I can’t stand it!  Why?  I love tradition!  I love small town, old-fashioned.  I love strawberries and sugar and children laughing and playing and people in straw hats and ….  you know, CAMPY.

The school lies at the foot of our county’s only ‘mountain’ named Sugarloaf.  It is beautiful and surrounded by farms and orchards and vineyards.  Idyllic doesn’t begin to describe it.

And I’m psyched because it is supposed to be not nice weather, but holy-crap-beeeauuutiful weather.

And check it out:  I was put in charge of the bake sale!  Why?  Because, DUH!, I’m the fat chick, and fat chicks know how to sell food!  Who would you rather buy cookies from: A skin and bones, I-eat-salad-all-day soccer mom, or a squishy, cushiony, jolly Mrs. Claus type of soccer mom?

Exactly.  Mrs. Claus wins.

But the bake sale is not the only thing we’re doing!  There will be a moon bounce, and strawberries and ice cream, and dinner food, and family games, and cake walks…and a ton more!  Of COURSE there will be a strawberry recipe contest and you KNOW I have to enter.  It’s a pride thing.  I just haven’t decided which recipe I am going to steal and call my own make yet.

I’ll be sure to take pictures.

If you are in the area, it starts at 6pm tomorrow night (Friday, May 18) at Monocacy Elementary School in Barnesville, Maryland.    Come and join us!

My Dad had both knees replaced.  My Mom had both knees replaced. My Grandmother had both knees replaced.  All four of us children have had ACL Knee Repairs.

Was God smoking dope when he designed the chromosomes for my family’s knees?  More importantly, am I going to hell for asking that question?

So I went back to Orthopedic Surgeon Dr. Raffo today because:

1) I’m working on becoming a professional hypochondriac,

2) I’m trying to get all my medical needs taken care of before our nation’s medicine gets socialized,

3) All of the people in that office are beautiful, and sometimes I just like to surround myself with the beautiful people in this world,

4) My knee still hurts like hell, despite the cortisone shot, and I’m no hero and don’t like to suffer.

So off I went.  I’d had an MRI done earlier this week and the pretty young tech, Kate, who prepped me for the doc had given me a printout of the results. It read:  Effusion (swelling).  Possible meniscus degeneration.  ACL might still be intact.  OsteoArthritis.

No surprises there.  Seemed pretty dry reading, really.  I feared it would not be enough to adequately describe my pain and deterioration of quality of life so I added in letters similar to the typeset:  Hurts like a bitch.

(It’s ok to use the word ‘bitch’ as a medical descriptor.  On the pain scale of 1-10, it’s around 11 or 12.)

I’ll give you a short version of the visit, because I know you care:

1) His intern, Kelly, is still cute as a button.

2) His X-ray tech, John, is Italian and was teaching me romantic words and cuss words.  Because in Italy, those two are often in the same sentence.

3) Dr Raffo gave me my options.  Then he sucked around 25cc’s of fluid that had chunks of osteoarthritic materials (otherwise known as ‘gunk’) floating around in it, out of my knee.

4) He injected 6 cc’s of Chicken Comb into my knee.

Wait, WHAT?

Well, not exactly chicken comb.  Just a compound from the Chicken Comb.

Oh.  That makes so much more sense.

You see, there is this medicine called Synvisc that mimics the Synovial Fluid that we naturally have in our knees.  It acts as a cushion for the bone on bone situation going on in there. And when you have osteoarthritis, that cushion gets broken down and goes away.  The theory with the Synvisc aka Chicken-Comb-Crap is that it replaces our Synovial Fluid Cushion, and bada bing, bada boom, we’re back in ambulatory business.

So let me paint this picture for you.  Picture a needle.  A Big Honkin’ Needle.  Oh sure, there are bigger ones out there, but for the sake of good story telling, go with the Big Honkin’ picture.  He violently stabbed that thing in my knee about a dozen times like I was in the shower in Norman Bate’s Motel or something.

No?

Oh, all right, it was only once and he was fairly gentle.  But it might as well as been a dozen.  I’m such a wuss.

And then he jammed roughly 2 gallons of the chicken goop into my knee.

No?

Ok. It was only 6 cc’s, or, a teaspoon and a half.  But it was the biggest teaspoon and a half I’ve ever had stuck into my knee.

I whimpered.  I may have yelled ‘SON OF A BISCUIT!’ out loud, because I vaguely remember Kate shutting the door quickly and saying something about young kids in the next room.

So now we wait and see.  He said we’d know in two weeks.   If nothing gets better…it’s….it’s…. it’s….

THE KNIFE.

(Dun Dun DUN!)

My Captain came home from working 12 hours of overtime today, during which he ran a rather disturbing, pediatric, trauma call.

Memories of the day must have been dogging him.

Stress, and suppressed high emotions, must have been banging around in his head and heart as he pulled his truck into the driveway.

Re-runs of how the call unfolded must have been looping in his brain as he tiredly, and ever so slowly, walked to the house.

The picture of that child’s face must have been haunting his thoughts as he put down his keys, and walked into the family room to join us.

Did he voice them?  Did he share them?  What did he do first?

He grabbed Critter and asked him to go get his new, handmade, homemade, paper boomerang to show it off.  Then he followed the very enthusiastic boy outside, soaking up the Critter’s joy.   He encouraged him, and applauded him, and loved him as Critter laughed, and ran, and jumped, and threw that thing for his attentive audience of one, again, and again, and again.

And My Captain’s face relaxed.

He had taken a deep breath

…..and was home.

I had a guy tell me today that he thinks I hide a lot of pain with my humor.

I was speechless.

How do I tell someone that the depth they are attibuting to me is false?  How do I tell them that I am really about as shallow as the urine-polluted kiddie pool at the YMCA?  What words would convey the shocking limits to my understanding?

Then it hits me. Maybe this guy NEEDS to believe there is depth.  Maybe he is so scared that the horrific lack of sensibility I display might be real, that he has to dive into denial with both feet.

I respect that.  I’m a big fan of delusionment.

So I squeezed out a tear and begged him not to tell anyone about the hidden pain deep, deep within me.

And went on about my way, cracking jokes about farts and pee-pees.