New Year, New You or What You Want to Be?

January 3, 2012 the first day back to work for many people, and for many a new resolution to go about this year as a new person or someone you want to be.

We all start the year off with good intentions, and then many times they fade from our memory. But if you write down what you want in your life and post it on your refrigerator and look at it every day, do you think you will make a change?

Most of us need to be reminded of what we want to be or wish to be, and reminders on the refrigerator, or the bathroom mirror, or on a kitchen cabinet with help us be true to our goals.

Having a calendar and charting out when you want to carry out things and then backing up and setting time periods for those steps to reach those goals will help you.

We all must take baby steps to reach the goals of  life.  Yes things will happen and we will stop or be detoured, but if we keep on our quest, we will get there.

When I was in high school, I wanted to go to college, but I was from a family with five children and no way to pay for it.  But I sat down with a teacher and we looked at scholarships that were available and then I met with my counselor, we developed a plan.  I had always been a good writer, and Journalism was something that had always appealed to me.

With the help of the Journalism teacher, I moved up as one of the school newspaper editors, then I applied to be a high school teen news correspondent  for a major newspaper, then I applied to the second newspaper in our city and was accepted.  Soon I was writing for both. My clips started adding up.  It didn’t happen over night, but I kept at it over the year and went to the Journalism Day for our high school.

By my senior year, I was interviewing celebrities who came into our community and I was getting more experience at feature writing and in-depth articles.  When our school when to the Journalism Day at one of the colleges that year, I entered a newswriting contest at the insistence of my Journalism teacher.

I chose to write on the luncheon speaker and not the handout that was given to us, and that made all the difference in the contest.  He was on of my favorite writers from one of the newspapers, I wrote for as a teen news editor, and I followed his speech that day and took notes.

Evidently, I was the only one who did, and I won the contest.  I applied for a Journalism Scholarship given by the Oklahoma Gridiron Association. (At the time, no women were members)  I remember the night of the interview, when the “Question” came.

“Why did I want to enter Journalism? It is a male dominated field. “

The answer was simple to me, a 17 year-old girl who had just won the news writing contest, I answered “Because, I can write as good as any man”.

They all laughed at my bravado, but I guess I had a sense of innocence as well. I didn’t know about the fighting between the sexes, I just wanted to write.

I won the Scholarship, and that allowed me to go to college and I applied every year and had the scholarship for 3 years until I did not need it my senior year and I allowed others to apply.

We create our new Year, and New You and what we want to be! I did and I have recreated myself several times in my career when it was needed to support my family. Times are tough, but we can do it if we think we can!

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The Role of Nurses in Natural Disasters & Pandemics Reviewed

Image via Wikipedia- OKC Memorial

This morning, I want you to take a moment and check out this link about how nurses deal with the sick and injured in time of crisis.   http://wp.me/CCDa

As someone who was in Oklahoma City when the we had the bombing, nurses and doctors risked their lives to rush to the bombing site and treat victims.

No one stopped and thought about their benefits or whether their union would want them to rush there, they did it.  I don’t think that was on anyone’s mind.

The above article talks about a new movie dealing with a pandemic and how it states there were no nurses because they were on strike.

This does happen in the state of California and it happened just a few weeks ago, but for only 3 days and many of the facilities knew ahead of time and had replacements to cover for the short time period.

It is very much like Hollywood to paint everyone with a broad brush and I am sorry they did so in this movie, Contagion.  Every nurse I have ever met has been dedicated and committed to the care of their patient, and this does get overlooked in Hollywood.

Don;t believe everything in the movies, it is after only a movie!

 

Related articles

• Nurses and Pandemic Outbreaks (nursingtrends.wordpress.com)
• ‘Contagion’ Screening a Busman’s Holiday for CDC Staffers (blogs.wsj.com)
• The Science of Contagion: Why You Should Be Scared of Hollywood’s Latest Pandemic Thriller (time.com)

Mom Throws Baby Off Parking Garage, Arrested for Murder, Was it Postpartum Depression? Similar Case in OKC Many Years Ago!

At Children’s Hospital in Orange County, California, a distraught mother, threw her 7-month old baby boy off the 4th story parking garage.  He lived for two days and he passed from his injuries.  The mother was found immediately after a witness gave a description of the vehicle and security cameras were looked at for the license tag on the car.

The family says, she had been in and out of the hospital for postpartum depression.  She  evidently was out of the hospital during this brief time, took the little boy and the family car and went to the hospital.  After throwing her son off the garage, she walked into the hospital and asked for her parking ticket to be validated.

Does this sound like a murder??  It does on appearances, but it brings back for me a similar crime that occurred  in Oklahoma City with my friend, Candy.  Candy had her first baby and had been very active in her professional career prior to the baby’s birth.  I had gone to college with her husband and we both had majored in Journalism.

A few weeks before Candy took her life and that of her baby’s by tossing her son off from the 7th floor parking garage, and then jumping herself, I had spoken to her and she wanted to come back to work.  I was getting ready to change jobs and I told her I would put in a good word for her so she could apply for my job.  That seemed to brighten her spirits.

I said, Candy, are you ready to come back to work?  The baby is so little?  She replied,” I don’t think this mother thing is for me, and the baby will be fine.

Not knowing that she had been under a doctor’s care, I did not relay that conversation to her husband, although, I wish now I had.  I don’t think it would have changed her mind, but it might have helped her husband to know her mind was still not back to normal.

The morning Candy went to downtown OKC, her husband Jim, had someone with her everyday for months.  This one morning, he had a client appointment 90 miles away.  He left that morning, and said later that Candy was happy and urged him to do what he needed to do.   He thought she might be coming back to her old self, since she appeared upbeat.

I had just started my new job with a large adverting agency in OKC, and my boss and I were discussing our plans for the day.  All of a sudden she asked me if I knew Candy?  Yes, I said, Why?

My boss, Joyce, then said the words that still haunt me, “Candy threw her son off the parking garage in downtown, OKC and then jumped right behind him!”, my boss had just heard it on her office radio and they had just identified her from the contents of her purse.

She did leave a note for Jim, it said that she felt she wasn’t a good mother, and that there was something seriously wrong with her, and that the baby had it too.  She didn’t want to go on with her life.

Candy had postpartum depression the doctors announced after her death.  I will never forget her warm infectious smile and her cheerful demeanor.  She was the last person I would expect to take the life of her son and then her own.

I do not know if this mother who threw her baby off the parking garage at Children’s Hospital had postpartum depression, only the doctors know that, but I do know we need to treat postpartum depression and not prosecute these women.  They are not in their right minds when they do these terrible deeds.

As much as I love children and babies, if a mother has postpartum depression, we need to give her all the help that she requires to insure her safety and that of her child or children.  We have to look at Andrea Yates in Texas who took the lives of all five of her children, and she too had postpartum depression.

Hospitals and laws need to be changed to allow these women the time they need to heal.  Too often hospitals have to dump patients because insurance has run out or they can only hold them on a 72-hour hold, but if we change the laws to show that if a woman suffering from postpartum depression needs more time, she should be allowed the time needed to get well.

Related articles

• Postpartum may be at play in infant boy’s death (mercurynews.com)
• Mom in baby-dropping case on suicide watch (msnbc.msn.com)
• Baby dropped from parking structure: Father defends wife (latimesblogs.latimes.com)

Remember When? Facebook Posts Are Wonderful Ways to Bring a Community Together!

Image via Wikipedia

Many of us are on Facebook and have personal pages.  My high school has an Alum page and recently we started a thread discussion Remember When? about the community we grew up in.  Before we knew , many of us were connecting with people we had not spoken to in 30 to 40 years.

The memories of our elementary schools and the teachers and crossing guards, came rushing back to all of us.  Our Kindergarten teacher and the photos pulled from Mom’s who had so carefully stored them for us, were suddenly posted.

Our community, Del City, was a Baby Boomer Community where the Veterans came back and bought homes and we grew up.Our city  we could ride our bikes and visit the grocery store for our Mom’s and wave to everyone on the way home.  We watched every new business that came into the community and we remembered those that were no longer there.

One of the television stations in Oklahoma did a story on the Remember When threads going across Facebook about the many communities in Oklahoma City.  Although, I am in Los Angeles now, it made me homesick for a time when all was simple and pure.  Our lives were filled with going to the Drive-in Sonic and Burger Train and seeing our friends after school.  Life was not filled with the stress  of debts and recession, although, we did have the Vietnam War that took lives.

What we all realized as we came to the end of our high school days, was that we had lost many of our friends over the years, and then the Remember When turned into a Memorial Wall postings of who had passed and left our lives too soon.

If you have not participated in a Remember When? thread on Facebook, I urge you to see if there is one going for your community.  If not start one, and relive the history of your community.  I emailed the current city manager for our community, and advised him that much of the history of the developers and the business owners was now part of the thread for our community.

Knowing the history of how things started and who started them, can help you understand growth and why you and your children need to continue to carry that growth forward for your community and our country.

Norway Bomb Compared to OKC Bombing, and Home Grown Terror

Image via Wikipedia

“WE SEEK  THE TRUTH. WE SEEK JUSTICE. THE COURTS REQUIRE IT. THE VICTIMS CRY FOR IT AND GOD DEMANDS IT!\” A quote spray painted on the wall by search and rescue workers at the OKC Bombing site 4-19-1995.

Seeing the devastation in Oslo, Norway, brought back the images of Oklahoma City that day for me.  My neighbor is from Oslo, Norway, and I rushed home to make sure none of her relatives were injured.  Many of her family have come to visit her over the years, and my daughter and I have met them.  Wonderful people, fun loving and sincere.  They were all fine, I’m happy to report.

The quote above was written on the Journal Record Building, the building across the street in Oklahoma City from the Federal Building ,and people died in that building as well.  Just as justice was demanded  in that case, it will be demanded in Oslo.

The fact that the Oslo bomber, used the same type of bomb as Timothy McVeigh in OKC, and that he lived on a farm as Terry Nichols, the co-conspirator of McVeigh, it makes you wonder if the Oslo Bomber learned his bomb making from the articles about the trial in OKC?

I’m just saddened by this tragedy, knowing that a community must mourn the loss of so many young people who were gunned down by this terrorist in Oslo.  My prayers go out to the families and the community members who will suffer these traumas over and over for many years to come.

Related articles

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Tornadoes Ravage South Bring Back Memories of Big One in Oklahoma

Image via Wikipedia

As I have watched the news and seeing the devastation for the massive tornado that hit Alabama yesterday, and the many tornadoes that hit the south.   I am reminded of the big one that hit in Oklahoma that was on the ground for over 70 miles and damaged my mother’s house in Moore, Ok. It  was May 3, 1999, a day that changed many lives.

At the time, I lived in Edmond, and my daughter was in highschool preparing for a band concert that night, when the TV weatherman was telling everyone that a “big one” was coming and to get underground. 

Living in Tornado Alley, the TV weathermen are the best in the US and they can pinpoint the Tornadoes down to the streets.

The one that touched down in Chickasha stayed on the ground through the edge of the H.E. Bailey Turnpike, and the edge of southwest Oklahoma City and tuned into Moore, then crossed I-35 and went into the edge of Del City, and then Midwest City and the edge of Tinker Air Force Base, the edge of Choctaw and into Stroud, Oklahoma before it finally lifted back up into the air.

It was massive and powerful and some estimate it had the power of a f.6 tornado which had winds over 300 miles per hour.  All I remember is there was no grass on the ground, or bark on the trees, or houses even left on the foundations, just concrete stairs going up to nothing.

Walking through the rubble that night to find my mother huddled together with her neighbors at the end of her cul-de-sac, was dangerous.  She was okay  but finding her was the beginning of a nightmare that lasted weeks.  She had survived because she escaped into an interior closet in her bedroom.  Her car was totaled, her roof was damaged by a 20 foot steel long bar from the shopping center on the corner of Santa Fe and 12th Street which was demolished that night.

I remember my mom saying her house was gone, but I told her it wasn’t, it was still there, but the houses on the next street were gone, I had just seen the steps left on those.  My mother was never the same after that storm, it was the beginning of her decline and one that lasted 10 years until her death.  I will always blame the trauma that she went through all alone in that closet with the noise of things breaking all around her. 

My mother was a faith-filled woman and she had her bible and her crucifix with her in the closet and she had closed the door.  She was also right across from the half-bath in her bedroom.  She had closed that door to the half-bath because it had a small window.  All of the windows were broken on my mom’s house, glass was blasted into her carpet and furniture and everything had to be replaced.  But closing the half-bath door saved my mother’s life. The steel beam that traveled from the garage through the ceiling of the house into my mother’s bedroom, stopped at that half-bath door.  Another few inches and she would have been killed.

Many people died that night in the Killer Tornado that hit Oklahoma, but my mother survived.  My heart goes out to those who have lost loved ones in the South and their homes.  Homes can be rebuilt, but the trauma and the memories will always be there.

Repairing Our Minds After Tragedy

Image via Wikipedia

We have come through another Tragedy!  What happens now to our minds?  The professionals will say that those close to the event will have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.  They will see the event even when they close their eyes.  Loud noises will cause those who were there to startle.

Yes these things will happen.  Having gone through one of these events myself in Oklahoma City, I can attest that it will not be easy.  I was not in the building that came down on April 19, 1995, but I was on the freeway driving into Oklahoma City.

I saw the fireball shoot above the trees from the highway from 36th street and Walker, on the Broadway Extension.  As I continued on the Extension, I saw the smoke go from white to black.   Coming closer to 5th street, large bellowing smoke rose from the city and moved to the southern end of the city.  I was listening to KOMA Radio, Ronnie Kaye, radio disc jockey, came on and announced there had been an explosion in the Federal Building downtown.

I circled the city on Interstate 35 moving to  Western Avenue, to go South.  When I exited, several large plate-glass windows of a boat dealer were smashed and broken.  This was 20 blocks away from the Federal building.

I had an appointment at a hospital in the South West part of the City.  When I arrived, Ronnie Kaye was announcing for all nurses and doctors to report downtown to St. Anthony hospital to give aid.

You see after all these years, it is still as clear as the day it happened.  You don’t forget, it stays with you, and I did not lose a family member, just good friends from church and my daughter’s dance program.

Several months later, I was visiting a friend in Dallas, I remember a loud boom went off, I could hardly breathe or talk.  My heart raced and my friend asked me what was wrong?  I didn’t realize it then, but I was suffering from the bombing aftereffects.

It took me years to even talk about that day without crying.  So many people died and were lost.  Our ideal life in the heartland was shattered by two men whose ideas were not like the rest of us.  Very similar to Arizona, but that young man may have had a mental illness.  The men in Oklahoma City did not.

Time will help, and having counselors in the community available will help.   When the trial happens, counselors will be needed again, just like in Oklahoma City.  It brings it all back up again, and you get angry and you get frustrated, and you don’t know how to feel.

My heart goes out to all the people who were there at the Safeway a week ago.  You will have friends to help you, and yes it will not be easy, but just know that feeling your feelings is the best thing to do.

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