Getting Personal

Okay, BJ Vinson is going to have to fend for himself this week. I, Don Travis, his creator and master (I like to believe) am going to hog the spotlight. It’s been an “interesting” couple of months. On Saturday, August 4, I thought I was a young squire again. You know, one who could walk and chew gum at the same time. After all, I was on my way to pick up a lady named Bobbi for a nice dinner out. Well, I walked straight off two steps and ended up falling on my hip. A neighbor helped pick me up from the concrete, and I limped the rest of the way to my car. I went to dinner, as planned, and figured things weren’t too bad.

Yeah, right. By Wednesday or so, I was virtually helpless. After considering my options, I dialed 911 and took my first ride in an ambulance to the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Albuquerque. The Emergency Room of any hospital is not normally a pleasant experience, but those folks took pretty good care of me. Most likely, because they recognized I’m a big baby when it comes to pain. The long and the short of it is, I was admitted that night and had surgery for a herniated disc between L4 and L5 (and there are more of you out there who understand that terminology than I would ever have believed) on the 16th. They either felt I was recovered sufficiently to release or got fed up with my mewling, because they threw me out on the following Monday. But since I live alone, I was delivered into the hands of the lady who went to dinner with me that fateful night of the fall. 

I am sufficiently recovered to return home; however, as fate would have it, my Florence Nightingale had surgery on her right hand, and now we provide mutual help. She’s the legs, and I’m the hands. Together, we manage to get everything done, despite the fact she has six dogs, a cockatiel, and three canaries.

Next week, I’ll try to do better.