Support for LateToSchool

somemom · July 23, 2008, 9:15pm

Hey, corranged, you ought to be banned but we’ll overlook your grammatical gaffe!

Hi LTS, it’s funny how pleased and even excited I get when I see you posted…and I get such a big grin when I see you posting on some other threads. You are da bomb, girl! Even in this huge battle you are still thinking of others and taking time to share your knowledge with other posters, many of whom have no idea about your other projects.

mominva · July 23, 2008, 9:41pm

Well, LTS, you can be presumptuous on my behalf;)
Thanks for all you post, epistrophy.

maineparent · July 23, 2008, 10:56pm

Well…here is a funny item to make everyone who reads this thread laugh… I hope you like this LTS… maybe share it with a doctor or two… I think it is a great example of the power of language and a sense of humor… smart people came up with this…

The Psychiatrist and the Proctologist

Two doctors opened an office in a small town
and put up a sign reading"
“Dr. Smith and Dr. Jones: Hysterias and Posteriors.”
The town council was not happy with the sign, so the doctors
changed it to read,
“Schizoids and Hemorrhoids.”
This was not acceptable either, so in an effort to
satisfy the council, they
changed the sign to “Catatonics and High Colonics.”
No go. 
Next, they tried “Manic Depressives and Anal Retentives.”
Thumbs down again. 
Then came “Minds and Behinds.”
Still no good.
Another attempt resulted in “Lost Souls and Butt Holes.”
Unacceptable again. 
So they tried “Analysis and Anal Cysts.”
Not a chance. 
“Nuts and Butts?”
No way. 
“Freeks and Cheeks?”
Still no go. 
“Loons and Moons?”
Forget it. 
Almost at their wit’s end, the doctors finally came up with:

“Dr. Smith and Dr. Jones, Odds and Ends.”

Everyone loved it!!

marite · July 23, 2008, 11:01pm

ROTFL!

Quoting Samuel Pepys, “And so to bed” Night all, and good night to LTS!

soozievt · July 23, 2008, 11:53pm

Maineparent, that is very funny.

Keymom…many congratulations and positive thoughts on the joy of being done treatment. I am sure you have endured a great deal and I am happy to learn that you are on the upturn. Many well wishes to you.

aibarr · July 23, 2008, 11:58pm

I had to recite that to my husband, making him pause the show he was watching. =) Spectacular, Maineparent!

latetoschool · July 24, 2008, 12:01am

Maineparent that was just hysterical…thank you for that…

timely · July 24, 2008, 12:52am

Keymom, congratulations! How exciting to finish your treatment. Taking a vacation to celebrate was a great idea. I hope that soon all of it will be just a dim memory.

Maineparent, it sounds like you sent LTS off to bed on a happy note. :)

DeniseC · July 24, 2008, 1:38am

LTS, kudos again to you for raising such a fine daughter. She is doing the right thing, again and again, sometimes according to your wishes, sometimes against your wishes.

2blue · July 24, 2008, 8:39am

^^agreed.

Here’s hoping the dehydration has improved and you’re feeling better today.

Keymom, best wishes to you.

binx · July 24, 2008, 10:05am

A couple pages ago, when we were discussing humor, I wrote a post - that I deleted before I posted (as I do about half the time!) I said that Epistrophy was our Google King for informative and inspirational stories, that ADad was our thought for the day guy, and we needed someone for a daily dose of humor.

Maineparent, you’re elected. I sent it to my mom. She’s 850 miles away, but has a loud laugh. I expect to hear it any moment.

jym626 · July 24, 2008, 2:35pm

Here’s one of my favorite, although slightly off-color jokes (warning- any proctologists reading this- please don’t take offense)
Q: What is the definition of a proctoscope?
A: Its a tube with an a$$hole at each end!

NYMomof2 · July 24, 2008, 2:50pm

Keymom, Congratulations on finishing your treatment! May this be the end of the cancer story for you.

Thanks for the laughs, Maineparent and jym626!

timely · July 24, 2008, 3:58pm

This was written by former White House press secretary Tony Snow during his battle with cancer. It’s long, but I thought it was really beautiful.

'Blessings arrive in unexpected packages,

<ul>
<li>in my case, cancer.</li>
</ul>

Those of us with potentially fatal diseases

<ul>
<li>and there are millions in America today -</li>
</ul>

find ourselves in the odd position of coping with our mortality

while trying to fathom God’s will.

Although it would be the height of presumption

to declare with confidence ‘What It All Means,’

Scripture provides powerful hints and consolations.

The first is that we shouldn’t spend too much time

trying to answer the ‘why’ questions:

Why me?

Why must people suffer?

Why can’t someone else get sick?

We can’t answer such things,

and the questions themselves

often are designed more to express our anguish

than to solicit an answer.

I don’t know why I have cancer, and I don’t much care.

It is what it is, a plain and indisputable fact.

Yet even while staring into a mirror darkly,

great and stunning truths began to take shape.

Our maladies define a central feature of our existence:

We are fallen.

We are imperfect.

Our bodies give out.

But, despite this, - or because of it, -

God offers the possibility of salvation and grace.

We don’t know how the narrative of our lives will end,

but we get to choose how to use the interval

between now

and the moment we meet our Creator face-to-face.

Second, we need to get past the anxiety.

The mere thought of dying

can send adrenaline flooding through your system.

A dizzy, unfocused panic seizes you.

Your heart thumps; your head swims.

You think of nothingness and swoon.

You fear partings;

you worry about the impact on family and friends.

You fidget and get nowhere.

To regain footing, remember that we were born not into death,

but into life - and that the journey continues

after we have finished our days on this earth.

We accept this on faith,

but that faith is nourished by a conviction

that stirs even within many non-believing hearts

<ul>
<li>an institution that the gift of life, once given,</li>
</ul>

cannot be taken away.

Those who have been stricken

enjoy the special privilege of being able to fight

with their might, main, and faith

to live fully, richly, exuberantly

<ul>
<li>no matter how their days may be numbered.</li>
</ul>

Third, we can open our eyes and hearts.

God relishes surprise.

We want lives of simple, predictable ease,

<ul>
<li>smooth, even trails as far as the eye can see, -</li>
</ul>

but God likes to go off-road.

He provokes us with twists and turns.

He places us in predicaments

that seem to defy our endurance and comprehension

<ul>
<li>and yet don’t.</li>
</ul>

By His love and grace, we persevere.

The challenges that make our hearts leap

and stomachs churn

invariably strengthen our faith

and grant measures of wisdom and joy

we would not experience otherwise.

‘You Have Been Called’.

Picture yourself in a hospital bed.

The fog of anesthesia has begun to wear away.

A doctor stands at your feet,

a loved one holds your hand at the side.

‘It’s cancer,’ the healer announces.

The natural reaction is to turn to God

and ask him to serve as a cosmic Santa.

'Dear God, make it all go away.

Make everything simpler.'

But another voice whispers: ‘You have been called.’

Your quandary has drawn you closer to God,

closer to those you love,

closer to the issues that matter,

<ul>
<li>and has dragged into insignificance</li>
</ul>

the banal concerns

that occupy our ‘normal time.’

There’s another kind of response,

although usually short-lived,

an inexplicable shudder of excitement

as if a clarifying moment of calamity

has swept away everything trivial and tiny,

and placed before us

the challenge of important questions.

The moment you enter the Valley of the Shadow of Death,

things change.

You discover that Christianity

is not something doughy, passive, pious, and soft.

Faith may be the substance of things hoped for,

the evidence of things not seen.

But it also draws you into a world shorn of fearful caution.

The life of belief teems with thrills, boldness, danger, shocks,

reversals, triumphs, and epiphanies.

Think of Paul, traipsing through the known world

and comtemplating trips

to what must have seemed the antipodes ( Spain ),

shaking the dust from his sandals,

worrying not about the morrow,

but only about the moment.

There’s nothing wilder than a life of humble virtue,

<ul>
<li>for it is through selflessness and service</li>
</ul>

that God wrings from our bodies and spirits

the most we ever could give,

the most we ever could offer,

and the most we ever could do.

Finally, we can let love change everything.

When Jesus was faced with the prospect of cruicifixion,

he grieved not for himself,

but for us.

He cried for Jerusalem before entering the Holy City .

From the Cross, he took on the cumulative burden of human sin and weakness,

and begged for forgiveness on our behalf.

We get repeated chances

to learn that life is not about us,

that we acquired purpose and satisfaction

by sharing in God’s love for others.

Sickness gets us part way there.

It reminds us of our limitations and dependence.

But it also gives us a chance to serve the healthy.

A minister friend of mine observes

that people suffering grave afflictions

often acquire the faith of two people,

while loved ones accept the burden

of two peoples’ worries and fears.

‘Learning How to Live’.

Most of us have watched friends as they drifted toward God’s arms,

not with resignation, but with peace and hope.

In so doing, they have taught us not how to die,

but how to live.

They have emulated Christ

by transmitting the power and authority of life.

I sat by my best friend’s bedside a few years ago

as a wasting cancer took him away.

He kept at his table a worn Bible

and a 1928 edition of the Book of Common Prayer.

A shattering grief disabled his family,

many of his old friends, and at least one priest.

Here was an humble and very good guy,

someone who apologized when he winced with pain

because he thought it made his guest uncomfortable.

He restrained his equanimity and good humor

literally until his last conscious moment.

‘I’m going to try to beat [this cancer],’

he told me several months before he died.

‘But if I don’t, I’ll see you on the other side.’

His gift was to remind everyone around him

that even though God doesn’t promise us tomorrow,

he does promise us eternity

<ul>
<li>filled with life and love we cannot comprehend, -</li>
</ul>

and that one can, in the throes of sickness,

point the rest of us toward timeless truths

that will help us weather future storms.

Through such trials, God bids us to choose:

Do we believe, or do we not?

Will we be bold enough to love,

daring enough to serve,

humble enough to submit,

and strong enough

to acknowledge our limitations?

Can we surrender our concern

in things that don’t matter

so that we might devote our remaining days

to things that do?

When our faith flags, He throws reminders in our way.

Think of the prayer warriors in our midst.

They change things,

and those of us

who have been on the receiving end

of their petitions and intercessions

know it.

It is hard to describe,

but there are times

when suddenly the hairs on the back of your neck stand up,

and you feel a surge of the Spirit.

Somehow you just know:

Others have chosen,

when talking to the Author of all creation,

to lift us up,

<ul>
<li>to speak of us!</li>
</ul>

This is love of a very special order.

But so is the ability to sit back

and appreciate the wonder of every created thing.

The mere thought of death somehow makes every blessing vivid,

every happiness more luminious and intense.

We may not know how our contest with sickness will end,

but we have felt the ineluctable touch of God.

What is man that Thou are mindful of him?

We don’t know much, but we know this:

No matter where we are,

no matter what we do,

no matter how bleak or frightening our prospects,

each and every one of us who believe each and every day,

lies in the same safe and impregnable place,

in the hollow of God’s hand.'

T. Snow

eddieodessa · July 24, 2008, 4:01pm

Dear, dear LTS - I am praying for you again today. Hope you have an easier one and feel a little bit stronger as time goes by. It’s a beautiful day here in Maryland, so DC should be, as well. Just look out your window and marvel at the beauty and colors, at the breeze blowing the leaves on the trees, beautiful blue sky…It’s a tiny gift from the creator.

ADad · July 24, 2008, 5:28pm

–Louise Nevelson, Dawns + Dusks

epistrophy · July 24, 2008, 7:43pm

–Marcel Proust

(P.S. As I’ve mentioned on another thread, I’ve been reading Proust little by little over the last year or so. [I’m now in the fourth of the seven volumes of *In Search of Lost Time*.] Proust had, I’ve found, interesting things to say about, well, almost everything, including illness. [At his best, Proust seems to me to be equal parts poet, psychologist, and philosopher - a combination I haven’t encountered in quite the same way in any other writer.] He had severe asthma himself, so he was only too familiar with the body’s frailties and vulnerabilities.)

epistrophy · July 24, 2008, 9:17pm

and another (lung cancer “survivor”)

“Flowers bring smiles to cancer patients”

It was a moment designed to give the retired farmer from Osborne reason to smile. It most definitely worked.

There in the hallway at the Tammy Walker Cancer Center on Wednesday morning were five women waiting to give Raymond Vohs flowers.

“We made this for you, so I hope it brings a smile to your face,” said Lisa Petty as she presented the bright yellow smiley face mug full of carnations, daisies and accent flowers to Vohs.

Vohs said he couldn’t remember the last time someone gave him flowers.

“It’s really nice of you,” he said. “It sure is a surprise.”

Earlier, Vohs had been in the room down the hall with the linear accelerator, a machine that delivered his radiation treatment. He and his wife, Lois, have been staying at the Morrison House during the week since early June while Vohs receives radiation for prostate cancer.

“Only seven treatments to go!” Lois said. “He looks so good, we’re going to eat Brookville chicken today.”

Yet another reason to smile.

Cancer patients were surprised and pleased to see the women in the hallway handing out the bouquets donated by the Heart of America Unit of Teleflora and The Flower Nook, 208 E. Iron, as part of Teleflora’s annual Make Someone Smile Week, July 20 to 26.

**Salinan Adelia Wilson, a cancer survivor who came for a checkup, said it’s been almost two years since she was regularly in the hospital with lung cancer and two ministrokes.

“I miss getting flowers every time I turn around,” she said.

She hugged all of the women who were distributing flowers on the chemotherapy floor.

“This is so neat,” she said, clutching her smile bouquet. “Wow! These people are wonderful.”**

Healing power of smiles

The healing powers of smiles and flowers will be shared at Salina Regional Health Center and Hospice of Salina today. Stuffed animals will be given to children in the pediatrics ward.

Wayne and Peggy Debey, owners of The Flower Nook, said the shop has participated in the Teleflora program for the past four years. Wayne, who is a member of the Teleflora Board, said Salina and Concordia are two out of 250 locations nationwide this year where people are being surprised with flowers through the program.

Peggy said delivering the flowers is always a rewarding experience.

“People have been in tears,” she said. "Our staff has come back in tears. “It’s that human touch that makes the difference when you’ve got someone in the hospital.”

This year, Peggy Debey decided to invite several women who had taken flower-arranging classes from her to assist in making and distributing the 144 arrangements to be given away. She said she had a group of quick learners in the four floral design classes she taught through CLASS, Community Learning And Skill Sharing, an instructional program offered through the Salina Public Library.

“I was so impressed by their advanced level and technique,” she said.

Flower Nook employee Joy Northcutt said the women really made the process of making the arrangements go much more quickly.

“This particular class was just remarkable,” she said. “It was nice to have them come and help, because they’re all really fast learners.”

Esther Kempton, a member of the class, said the students were equally impressed with Debey.

“She’s an awesome teacher,” she said. “She makes it easy.”

Classes start in the fall

In the fall, Debey will be teaching classes again, this time combining her flower-arranging talent with instruction from various local artists. Class participants will arrange flowers and then do a water color painting of them, photograph them and press them. Anyone who takes all three classes offered through CLASS will be able to make a Christmas floral centerpiece.

On Tuesday, the women from Debey’s class spent nearly six hours at the shop cutting and arranging flowers and greenery. They wore their Make Someone Smile Week aprons as they worked, while stems and discarded greenery piled up on the floor around them.

“And we got a free lunch – so never say there’s no such thing as,” said Jo Reed, who cut her finger at one point but soldiered on with a bandage on her pinkie.

Also assisting were Betty Rassette, Petty, community learning coordinator for CLASS, and Margaret Burke, a 15-year-old who recently completed a 40-hour certification training in floral design.

Arranging the flowers was fun, but seeing the smiles they brought to the faces of people receiving treatment for cancer was the true reward.

“That’s what I always wanted to do – deliver flowers – except to funerals,” Kempton said. “Of all the jobs, I thought that would make people happy.”

Debey would agree.

“Everybody’s got to have somebody looking after them,” she said. “That’s the power of the flower.”

[Salina.com</a> - an online service of The Salina Journal](<a href=“http://www.salina.com/rdnews/story/happy-flowers-7-23]Salina.com”>http://www.salina.com/rdnews/story/happy-flowers-7-23)

maineparent · July 24, 2008, 11:38pm

Glad you all liked The Psychiatrist and the Proctologist…
aww Binx, not sure I can come up with a daily dose of humor…but I will be on the lookout for things that make me laugh out loud…there was a thread a while back on XM or Satellite radio…and I was in the car for a long time today, listening to the comedy channel off and on…so now my challenge will be to remember the jokes and who to attribute them to…

but I will keep LTS and this thread in mind as I wander… goodnite loons and moons!

latetoschool · July 24, 2008, 11:55pm

Maineparent, my oncologist ordered a nurse to come see me, so, she shows up this morning, and she ordered humor every day. I’m not making this up, she really did; told my daughter to make sure I am laughing about something at least once during each day.

I am absolutely horrible at remembering jokes - but, I do like “real life” humor.

Tonight, my daughter made me dinner - we are both working really, really hard to get the calories into me and keep them there, and this continues to be a struggle but it’s getting slightly better each day - anyway, she made for me cheese quasadillas - and - at my request, she put some white corn in them. I thought perhaps eating more corn might be a better option than taking the meds I was prescribed to deal with the poop issue. (Epistrophy, this doesn’t mean I’m not “listening” to you. LOL. Just trying corn first.)

So I get what I ask for, and then some. My daughter is an imp. She does not tell me but she sneaks protein powder into the food.

I took a bite, and, almost lost it. I told her I was so sorry but I just couldn’t eat what she made for me. She asked why; I told her it was simply disgusting, I just couldn’t eat it, it tasted terrible.

She said how, it couldn’t be that bad? Then she tried it.

It turns out that instead of the plain protein powder, she accidently put in vanilla flavored protein powder. It was soooooo disgusting - can you imagine that mixed with cheese???

She thought this was very funny. I am still trying to find the humor in it.

Happily, she made me chicken soup for dinner instead. :)

Support for LateToSchool

CONNECT WITH US