I believe the better the friendship the more raucous the laugher—the real belly laughs that make you think you are going to die of asphyxiation. I have a number of friends that are enjoyable to be with but I have just two or three that make me really laugh. Donna and I worked in home…… Continue reading Laughter: the measure of a friendship
Tag: writing a book
Keeping “To-Do” Balls in the Air.
Have you ever been caught in the rain without an umbrella, raincoat or a nearby shelter? Since I’m a city girl and don’t hike, camp, bike over mountain trails, I rarely get caught unprepared. There is a lot going on in my life right now. I am in the process of publishing my first book,…… Continue reading Keeping “To-Do” Balls in the Air.
WHY DO WE WRITE?
Originally posted on Getting Older: Charting the Uncharted:
I attended the book signing this past August. Farther Along, written by my friend and mentor, Carol Henderson, which told the stories of thirteen mothers (she is one of them), a bakers dozen as Carol points out, who had lost children at various ages. I was prepared…
Don’t Question the Doctor
My friend Lois and I were talking on the phone the other day. We both graduated from diploma nursing schools in the early 60s. It was a time when the nurse was considered the “handmaiden” of the physician. We played the Doctor-Nurse Game* and even stood up when a doctor entered a room. Feeling powerless…… Continue reading Don’t Question the Doctor
Cardiac Advances Versus Patient Benefit: A Moral Dilemma
My story, Closing the Door, recently published in Stories That Need to be Told: A Tulip Tree Anthology, tells of the emergence some fifty years ago of cardiac catheterization, artificial heart valves and cardiopulmonary resuscitation and how I, as a young nurse, had to make sense of the advancement of technology versus patient benefit. This…… Continue reading Cardiac Advances Versus Patient Benefit: A Moral Dilemma
The Compliment
Two weeks ago I flew to Sioux Falls to visit my good friend, Lois, in her new home. She and her husband left a Chicago condo off Michigan Avenue facing the lake to settle in a small town with less excitement than a big city. That weekend we attended the South Dakota Annual Festival…… Continue reading The Compliment
My Mother’s Boyfriend
Happy Mother’s Day. My mother died the day before Mother’s Day sixteen years ago. Each year at this time my memories of Mom revolve around both her life and death. Her last few years weren’t what I would have predicted. When Ernie and I moved from the Midwest to Maryland in 1993, Mom came with…… Continue reading My Mother’s Boyfriend
Nurses’ Books Need More Media Attention
In my last post, I told you about a couple of books I discovered—short story collections written by nurses. Lynn Rosack wrote a comment on my last post reminding me that Echo Heron, whose book I covered, Emergency 24/7: Nurses of the Emergency Room (2015) had written other nursing books. One of them, Intensive Care:…… Continue reading Nurses’ Books Need More Media Attention
The Things I Treasure
Tomorrow we are having the rooms on the second floor of our new townhouse painted. Before we moved furniture to the center of the rooms, I stored in a large cardboard box, out of harms way, the treasures I kept on the shelves of my desk. Among the various memorabilia I packed away were the…… Continue reading The Things I Treasure
Make My Mother Proud
I’ve mentioned that I’m rewriting the manuscript that I thought I had completed. Besides adding more about gerontology, I am digging deeper into the dichotomy between my bent for caring for older persons and my difficulty getting along with my own aging mother. Living with Mom had never been easy. Being an only child of…… Continue reading Make My Mother Proud
Getting Older: Charting the Uncharted 