Posted on 12/29/2004 3:18:19 PM PST by GretchenM
As the Asian quake and tsunami death toll topped 100,000 and is rising, President Bush said the United States' initial grant of $35 million in SE Asia was 'only the beginning of our aid.' He said the United States, India, Australia and Japan have formed an international coalition to coordinate worldwide relief and reconstruction efforts for the Asian region. Aid agencies today warned disease will also cause massive casualties among the survivors as the biggest relief effort in history began.
The president took issue with Jan Egeland, the United Nations' emergency relief coordinator who called the US "stingy" in regard to helping other nations. (Egeland later said his remarks were misinterpreted.) Bush noted that the United States provided $2.4 billion "in food, in cash, in humanitarian relief to cover the disasters for last year. ... That's 40 percent of all the relief aid given in the world last year."
Enjoy your visit to Sanity Island!
Thanks I'll keep praying and keeping the faith :o)
Keeping your dad in my prayers.
Hello Pippin - Happy New Year - I will post your chocolate from work on Tuesday what with dad going into hospital have not had a chance to do so before.
Hi, Snugs! Just conscientrate on getting your dad back in the pink! :0)
The hospital are threatening to send him home tomorrow but although he wants to come home he wants them to sort the problem out. The infection maybe gone now as his temperature is back to normal but something caused it in the first place is what he is concerned about and want before he comes home for the doctor he is under for this problem to liaise with his urologist who is based at the same hospital before he is released to check that it is not the urology problem causing the infection as he has not felt right for several months but with mum getting worse and eventually going into care he has only just realised this. Things a bit better at hospital today I believe that this was because there was a sister on duty not just staff nurses and auxiliaries and therefore people worked not chatted half the time.
beyond the sea, I thought you'd enjoy this post from joybelle (#418):
"Recently saw "Finding Neverland" and "Beyond the Sea". The latter with Kevin Spacey is great for anyone old enough to be a Bobby Darin fan. My foot couldn't stop tapping."
Good evening Gretchen
"The photo might have been reversed in error. Time mag has a photo of him scribbling down some notes about the hurricane in FL, and he is writing right handed. The writing is not reversed, so that has to be accurate. Maybe ambidextrous?"
That very well could be. 'Tis a mystery! I saw the cockpit picture where he's writing with his left hand on Kitty Mittens's page, so I'll be on the lookout for further evidence.
**That very well could be. 'Tis a mystery! I saw the cockpit picture where he's writing with his left hand on Kitty Mittens's page, so I'll be on the lookout for further evidence.**
That photo is GHWB who is left handed not GWH who is right handed. See Kitty Mittens post 404.
Hello to both of you and hope you're having a good day! It was icy here this AM so didn't get to church, which I always miss.
I'm going to start on cleaning my office now, which is why I'm here 'talking' to you and putting that off . . . LOL!
Snugs, glad to hear your dad seems to be improving!
Good afternoon to you, too!
Got my iniitals wrong slip of the fingers.
To re-cap GHWB is left handed GWB is right handed see Kitty's post 404.
Ahhhh thanks, snugs, for pointing that out. Obviously missed it!
"Good afternoon to you, too!"
Thanks. homemom!
Well it will be good for the urologist to see him so they can better determine what's going on. Hope they can do that in a timely matter! Glad there were better staff on today at the hospital.
I loved the way he sang, it was a shame he died so early. Kevin Spacey was on a Letterman repeat on New Year's Eve, and as I was sitting home on that bizarre celebration night, I watched it. Kevin made a point to mention that Darin went through and made a mark on about seven or eight music styles in his short career. He was a good guy.
Thanks again, and here's wishing you a pleasant and healthful new year.
Just for the record, I was in a Cardiac CCU!!
The first roommate, in CCU, was a man, who had NINE people around his bed, after visiting hours but had just been brought into the CCU. Yes, I hit the "nurse's buzzer" on that one.
They left me next to this clown for 2-1/2 days, until I guess they could tell that I was upset - I was on a heart monitor and even I could hear that my rate had increased.
So, they moved me to the Cardiac step-down unit, PCCU, whatever that stands for. Was put on a portable heart monitor. Put in room with a hard-of-hearing cardiac patient. She yelled at her kids, thinking she had to, for them to hear her. They yelled at her, because they had to else she couldn't hear them.
I asked one of her son's if she didn't have hearing aids. "Won't wear them" he announced. I hit the Nurse's buzzer, where they asked me over the thing "what is wrong?" I told them to come in the room, I wasn't going to announce my "problem" to the world. In they came and I told them that they HAD to get me out of that room - that I'd just come from a CCU with 8-9-10 people hovering around an elderly man, and now I was in a room where the son was going to spend the day with his Mother, except the yelling was unbearable.
Within the hour, I was moved down the hall. To a new roommate who either spent all day talking on the phone with every one she knew, or visiting with one of her 3 kids, or their spouse, or her Grandchildren. Very upsetting to have constant voices, even if they are not yelling.
As I mentioned above, I live alone and can choose when and if I want the TV on, or when I want to talk with someone. I tried using my TV as a block - but no Fox News. Only the regular CBSNBCABC channels, and of course, the obligatory CNN. Yuk.
Finally, I asked a friend to bring me a small tape player and some music tapes. She brought the player, a tape of a recent sermon from Church but NO music, and the dang radio in the thing wouldn't play IN the Hospital. So much for that plan. I should have asked for ear plugs!
With all the talking, periodically someone from the "monitoring room" would come in and adjust my heart monitor and ask me "Are you all right, dear?" And I'd answer, "No, the constant sound of someone talking is going to make me crazy." They'd suggest turning on my TV and finding something, anything to watch and so ultimately, I would find a golf game or a baseball game or something that wasn't news or a soap opera and leave it on the station, hoping for a sound barrier. It rarely worked.
It took them 10 days to run enough tests to decide what it was I'd had and whether it was related to some other deadly disease, and finally, at my begging, let me go home 2 days earlier than they really wanted to. Trust me, by then I was ready to try to bribe my Cardiologist to let me go home - close to either throwing a hissy fit or trying something really extreme to get myself outta there. I was desperate for a solid 7-hours of sleep, desperate for an entire DAY without the sound of someone's voice, constantly talking 4' away from me, and desperate to NOT be awakened at 4 AM because they'd check my roommate's blood pressure and finding it over 200, would start working on her, nevermind that I was in there, trying to sleep.
The good news, if there is any to this pitiful story is that the new cardiac wing, at this very Hospital, opened a week after I was discharged, and EVERYONE now has a private room. NO having to listen to someone's voice all day. They'd figured out when they started building/designing this new cardiac center, that recovering patients did better if they had their own room than if they had to be in with a roommate. Gee, ya think?
The problem I suppose is that the cost of my stay would have doubled - going from a semi-private rate, to a private room rate. I wonder how they get the insurance companies to pay for that one? They must have some way of doing it - maybe there's been some study on how cardiac patients recuperate faster if they don't have an annoying roommate they HAVE to put up with or something.
I just know this - I was close to spastic most of the time I was in there and when they made some comment about my blood pressure being high - didn't tell me that this was one of their concerns until about the 6th or 7th day of my imprisonment, I all but yelled, "Gee, you don't think having to listen to someone talk ALL day or being awakened at 4 AM because you have a roommate with a pressure cooker blood pressure number and ALL of the lights go on, has anything to do with it, do you?"
Now, the bad news is that by fighting to come home, I came home in a really weakened condition and the discharge papers said "Required that you get help with dressing, bathing and food preparation for the next 2 weeks" which wasn't possible - a friend dropped me off at home, and that was that. I had to ask another friend to go to the store and get some fresh fruit and veggies and stuff for me - and yes, I had to fix it myself, as well as bathe myself, and get myself dressed, and go downstairs and do laundry myself, etc., etc., etc., while using crutches in order to remain upright.
But here's the thing. I didn't have to hear anyone's voice. All day the first day I was home, I turned Fox News ON, I turned Fox News off. I turned on music. I turned music OFF. I was just so thrilled that I had C-O-N-T-R-O-L of my environment, I think I spent the entire day, just turning the TV or the CD player, or whatever, on and off! I probably was a little nuts by the time I got home.
And I discovered I was very weak, and it took 3 sessions of cooking/food prep to get Breakfast in me, same for lunch, same for dinner, meaning that it pretty much took all day just to get 3 meals in me. But I survived, and slowly, my stamina finally began to come back. It still isn't back to where it was before I was Hospitalized, but I think it will, eventually, come back.
In the meantime, if someone starts to talk on a cellphone near me, I either ask them to stop talking, or I leave wherever I am. If there is music playing, and I can hear it and don't like it, I leave.
Fortunately, I haven't had the problem with the Giant food store that you have, but mostly I shop at Shopper's Food Warehouse - no music at all!!
But I know what you mean about noise. I simply can no longer tolerate it.
Thanks for understanding my predicament and for your sympathy and empathy. I really, really appreciate it.
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