Luck is Luck Whether Good or BAD

This week/month has been quite interesting. Two weeks ago Monday night around 7:15 pm we were hanging up clothes in our closet when I heard Kathy yell that someone hit my car. What I yell back??? I grab a shirt and throw it on and ran outside. Our neighbor across the street called Kathy that a kid riding a "Rhino" kind of an off road vehicle(ORV), stopped to look down at something then drove into the back quarter panel of my little car. We ran out there and Kathy Says loudly What's going on out here?? The kid’s mother was out there in her new Saturn SUV and yelled at us to “CALM DOWN!! IT WAS JUST AN ACCIDENT!! HE DIDN’T MEAN IT!!! SO JUST CALM YOURSELF DOWN!!!” It was a strange reaction to Kathy's question and her manner of stating the question. Kathy then said back to her don’t talk to me like that you have no right to talk to us like that. She needed to yell at herself. The lady then proceeded to call her husband to come deal with these angry people…. Wouldn’t you be angry if someone’s kid just ran into your car?? He was 16 not licensed neither was the ORV he was driving. I asked the father that weren’t those vehicles illegal to drive on the road, he said that since we live in a gated community it is Ok to drive those here, He should know he is the President of the Homeowners association. In the course of the conversation he mentioned it about 4 times. Our neighbor Jon said that it is Ok to drive golf carts but these are illegal on the streets. The father said those people have one and those over there also has one. Jon then said SO WHAT anyone else has YOU ARE the PRES. YOU SHOULD SET AN EXAMPLE. It was quite humorous; it was a good relief to a stressful situation. That night I called our insurance to get the claim started they were very helpful. Later that week we got a call from Brian, the father, that he thought that we could do this without involving the insurance and if we could take it to this one guy that he knows and try to get it fixed there, it the process he would tell the auto body shop that his car hit and he would have his insurance company take care of it. Ding Ding Ding… This is considered Insurance fraud. Sorry we will not be part of that I said. We believe in being honest in all our dealings with our fellow men. I also said that we are trying to teach our children to be truthful. With much backpedaling he agreed that wouldn’t be right….yeah whatever he was just trying to cover his rear. WOW what a great Pres. of our HOA. He then went into that he is a good Christian man and that he is going through a hard time his wife is divorcing him and he is selling his home before he looses it. And that we would be kicking him while he was down if we put it through our insurance and that they would end up suing him to get the money. So we agreed to go see this shop and to have an estimate done there. We really liked the Shop the guy was honest and really educated us. The first estimate was around $3,500 using used parts whereas the 2nd one was only $2500 and used new parts we called up Brian and told him the news. That it will be around $3000 I then ask that if we went to the shop he wanted us to go to I would want the money up front + a rental car. I then told him that if we went through our insurance company they might set up a payment program, if not I would want it up front. That was Tuesday we haven’t heard from him since. So Monday we are sic-ing the insurance company on him. Kick him anyways, Christ said to love everyone, this is true but not to let them walk all over you. So that is a big stressor going on in our life, but of course things can always get worse and they have. (We've ended letting the insurance take care of it and we're taking it the shop of our choice not his.)

Thursday evening was Enrichment night at church and Kathy was going to go. She had dropped Kylie off at piano lessons and Rachel and her crew at Activity Days. (She drives a route that covers most of the neighborhoods in our ward to pick up girls whose mom’s are working or sickly just so the girls can go to Activity Days.) After dropping them off she headed to Home Depot with Cooper to buy tiles for a couple of her projects that night. About 4:10 I got a phone call from her. She was crying and telling me to come right away that two boxes of tile had fallen off the shelf and landed on her foot and that it was lacerated and bleeding. I was in the middle of a pt at the time so I hurried and dictated her case and sped over to Home Depot. On the way I was nearly sideswiped by some idiot on their cell phone. I rushed over and found her lying propped against a pole with her foot extended covered with a teepee of paper towels and three Home Depot employees and a couple that had stopped to help her. Cooper was hidden under a shelf not wanting to come out, when he saw what happened to his mom he curled up in a ball hiding there telling people to leave him alone that he was grumpy. When I got there he finally came out. I saw the boxes of tile on the floor, they had been stacked improperly. They were 20 by 20 inch and instead of lying flat or even like a book on a shelf they were like a book’s front cover facing out toward the aisle. They reacted like a domino effect falling off the shelf and on to her foot while she was looking at some tile up above. She didn’t even see it coming. Most of the employees were just standing around wondering what they should do. I asked for their first aid kits and water to cleanse the wound. It hadn’t bled as much as I thought it should have seeing how deep it was however there was still a puddle of blood on the ground. It cut through the dermal layer exposing the underlying structures. I first looked to determine the extent of the damage seeing that there was no vessel or tendon damage at this time I dressed the wound and told them that I would be taking her to my office to have X-rays and to be stitched up. They were kind enough to help us to the car. And that is the last we have heard from them. Meanwhile X-rays were negative and a colleague of mine had the honors of sewing her up; 13 sutures across the top of her foot. Now 5 days later her foot still hurts and she can’t bear weight on it. Luckily I have a wheelchair from occupations past to help her get around. Well I took a break in writing this to take her back into my office thinking we would just be getting a shot of Rocephin (for an infection brewing) but no it just couldn’t be that. I decided to take more x-rays and well yeah she has a fracture. So we have a friend who is a podiatrist thank goodness. He’s going to take a look at the x-rays tomorrow. She’ll probably need a MRI to make sure there are not anymore broken bones and then they’ll put a walking cast or Moonboot on, hopefully. What a mess!!! I think I’d better take out a bigger life insurance policy on her, but on the other hand, I’m bound to learn everything I need to know about medicine from her. I think I’ll write a book someday titled, “Everything I Needed to Know about Medicine I Learned from My Wife.” I joke because I can but I’m amazed at how well she’s handled everything through the years. She takes everything in stride and endures the pain and there’s been a lot of it. She does keep wondering why the craziest stuff keeps happening to her but she can empathize with anyone’s pain. She needs a job as a patient advocate in post-op. Anyway, other than that we’re good. We hope everyone is doing well.

Love ya,
Steve