Unspoken About - But Should Be?

     One of my renters decided to clean up his back yard in the spring. Turns out it was covered with poison ivy. He cut it, threw it in a pile with other brush, and burned it. The smoke put his neighbor in the hospital. When that juice evaporates, and you breathe it in, it becomes much more than a distraction real quick. Never do that!

     I knew a really nice lady who had a surgical procedure. A one night stay in the hospital was needed, the doc said. She died that night. Nurses are wonderful, but they can't be in every room at once. Nothing like a family member, standing over you, watching everything that happens the first night after surgery. I've never had a surgery, except when I was six, Dad and Mom just loaded all us kids up in our 1948 cattle truck, hauled us to the hospital, and had our tonsils all taken out at one whack. But anyway, like I was saying, if I have surgery major enough for a night stay in the hospital, I want someone who really loves me there, watching me, all night long. Someone bold enough to get out in that hall and scream, loudly,  when they think there's a need. If you don't have that special person, and you live close enough, call me. I'll sit up with you. And I can get loud quick! Just ask Barbara. I would do about anything to keep from losing one of my readers.

     Another little thing I will do, say, if I'm going to have a leg operated on. I'm going to take a permanent marker, and write on that leg, "This one, Doc!" while I'm still in control of my senses and can do it.

     Fathers were not allowed in the delivery room when our children were born. I've always regretted that. Now we can, and that's a good thing. I was talking to a retired nurse friend of mine one day, and she just had some things she wanted to get off her chest, I guess, about her career. She told me nurses were not allowed to deliver a baby where she worked. That doesn't sound so bad, on the surface, but what if the doc has a car wreck in his rush to the hospital? She went on to say that she had, on more than one occasion, pushed the baby back into the birth canal because the doc was not there yet. Since then, I have heard of two occasions where the doc was late, and the baby was brain damaged for life. Now, I know that's just something most people don't like to talk about, but it seems to me we all should be talking about that. LOUDLY.! Isn't it written somewhere, "FIRST AND FOREMOST, DO NO HARM." or something like that? Knowing what I now know, If I were the daddy, and I was in that room, I would be flinging folks right and left to get that baby out.

     I've read a lot of books about pioneer times, about how hard childbirth was, and it was horrible. A lot of babies and mothers did not survive it. But I've never read a passage about pushing the baby back in. I doubt if any midwife ever did that either.

     We are horrified in reading and hearing about some African tribe's circumcision of women. Calls it mutilation, and I fully agree. But as I get older, I find myself asking, are we mutilating boy babies? Seems to be a religious tradition, and we don't want our sons to look "different." Surely we would not do that, just for those reasons, would we? Back in the days when it was a major thing taking a bath in the winter, if they did at all, there were good health reasons. But now, when we can easily stay clean daily, is there still a good reason? I was born at home, as were my siblings. Delivered by my Dad's brother. Not just any brother, but a traveling country doctor, on horseback for many years. I've heard it said he was way ahead of his time. He did not circumcise boy babies, and I'm beginning to think he was FAR ahead of his time. That little bit of skin was put there for a purpose. Just askin'.

     My Uncle Franz, in his older days, was told he had an Anurism in his stomach. He was told, "If we don't operate, and it ruptures, you won't have time to get to a hospital." He thought it over, then replied, "Leave it alone. It sounds like a good way to go." A few months later, he did go. Just that way. I'm not saying I would be brave enough to do that. You hear lots of people say, "I don't want to live to be 100." But I've never yet heard a 99 year old man say that. I suspect if I ever live to be 100, I will be clawing and scratching for every breath I can continue to draw. I still have a lot of posts yet to write.