March/April Pandemic 2020

Since my last post three years ago, our little clinic has grown and thrived.  We consist of a nurse, a receptionist and myself in a tiny, but functional 2 exam room, one lab and one office building.  We have changed from the original staff we opened with, except myself (my original receptionist is in school training to become a nurse, and my medical assistant was replaced with a nurse, which was a good but sad transition because I lost a special person in the upgrade 😩).

For me, it is a real Twilight Zone to be in the middle of a world wide medical crisis. Until the beginning of March our little clinic was open five days a week.  When the social distancing began, people stopped coming to the clinics and hospitals, and this created a crisis with our hospital.  In the beginning we weren't given any tools to help people with COVID19 symptoms - we couldn't test them, and we had to just tell them to stay at home and isolate unless they had difficulty breathing.  It was new and scary to everyone. We couldn't test them unless they had either traveled to Hubei, China, Italy or were exposed to someone we knew had COVID19 for the first month or so.

Now we are 6-7 weeks into the social distancing, I think.  We are allowed to order tests for anyone with respiratory symptoms, thankfully, for the past week or two.  We are not seeing zero patients any longer.  We "see" 7-10 people a day in our little clinic, which isn't too bad, but they still aren't letting us open more than two days a week.  I'm not really sure what is happening when people call in on the days we are closed, because the calls forward to the main clinic where they are supposed to be helped.  I haven't really seen people being scheduled on my schedule after those days, and I don't come back to phone messages waiting for me to return them.  I do hope people are being taken care of.  I don't think this is good for our community, where our only other clinic is closed for remodeling.  I hope to be able to add another day to our local clinic schedule soon.  I'm hoping by the first of June.

Besides working in the clinic in our small town on Mondays and Thursdays,  I am also working on Fridays at our Prompt Care clinic in a bigger nearby town, and picking up a few other random shorter weekend days there each month.  I am grateful to have some stored up earned vacation time to help fill in the salary gaps.

This unknown person dressed as a dinosaur walked
down our main street in front of the clinic on Thursday. 
It is great to see the efforts people make to keep everyone's spirit's lifted.

At the beginning of March, I got sick myself.  It started with mild cold symptoms - headache, low grade fever, body aches, fatigue.  Then I got a sore throat and swollen glands for several days.  After about a week I developed shortness of breath - not anything too scary.  We were in the stage of the pandemic where no one was tested unless they knew there was a high chance of having it - if they had recently travelled to China or Italy, had severe illness in the hospital, etc.  Until I ended up showing pneumonia (day 11) on a chest xray, they did not let me be tested.  I finally was tested on day 12 for COVID 19.  It came back negative three days later.  Thirty percent of those tested are falsely negative, so I still wonder if I had it.  I slowly got better and at this point I only cough after eating.  My illness was never severe, but it had me out of work for a week.  In the couple of weeks prior to getting ill, my daughters and I traveled to Chicago where it was just starting to break out.  Also at that time shortly before I got sick, three families were coming in to our clinic with flu-like symptoms and high fevers but out of about 12 people only one showed positive on a test for influenza.  I wonder about whether they actually had mild COVID19 too.  We only know of one positive COVID19 test in our community so far, but he wasn't my patient.  Interestingly, he was tested the same day I was.

The schools have been closed and doing school virtually since the beginning of March some time (just before spring break).  JoJo's music festival was cancelled, which would have been his first opportunity to play in an orchestra.  He had worked hard to prepare.  His trip to Washington DC was postponed ($1500!) the next week (so far they're still hoping to reschedule in August).  Now the state is mandating school closures for the rest of the school year.  The poor graduates this year won't get graduation parties or ceremonies.

I've enjoyed having JoJo home all this time.  His school, Princeton Christian Academy, has been assigning schoolwork to do at home.  They come in twice a month to get new assignments and bring back finished work.

DH has worked with JoJo to build raised garden beds in the back yard.  They have put in dirt, composted manure and peat moss to make the dirt (not the quality we were hoping for) better.  I love to see them working on it.

JoJo and DH building a raised bed garden.  I'm really proud of them.

JoJo is also doing virtual violin lessons with his violin teacher, Katie Roy.  This is not as great as in person, but doable.  He has been much more consistent with his practicing too.

LE has been homeschooling for a little over a year.  She decided public high school wasn't her cup of tea.  Homeschooling has been great for her.  She has also plugged into a home school group that does cooperative classes 8 times a semester.  This semester she was doing sign language, drawing, and cooking with this group in addition to her other subjects at home.  She has made us a meal a couple of times - score!!  DH taught a drum building class last semester too, but now that group gatherings have been shut down, he has a bunch of partial drum shells waiting for them to be able to finish some day.

CC had to give up her job of almost two years at the local nursing home.  Her back has really been hurting her.  She has other health issues too.

CC is growing her hair out.  Isn't she beautiful?

JJ has really been depressed.  In spite of all her doctor appointments, we've really not found any solutions to her multitude of health problems. We've been working on trying to get her on disability, but that is very difficult.

We've not gone into Walmart since this social distancing has begun.  They offer curbside pickup, which works nicely without being exposed to all the people who go into Walmart.  When we get home we wash each item with bleach water before we put it away.  The fruit we wash and rinse with dish-soapy water and a little bleach.  We buy what we usually get at our local grocery store, plus what we can't get at curbside pick-up.  It is a real blessing to have a local grocery store in our town for the past 2 years. If all else fails, we order online, mostly from Amazon.  Our spending has been cut back a lot because of my hours being cut at the clinic.

Sunday is the highlight of my week.  We watch/listen to the online sermon our church posts in the morning and eat homemade donuts (once made by yours truly 😃).  At two o'clock some of the people from our church gather virtually in a "Breakout Group" on Zoom.  I love this weekly fellowship.  Other than the six or so coworkers I see regularly at work, and the patients, this is my one time to meet with friends, catch up a little, talk about the sermon and pray for one another.  On Tuesday evenings a small group of us from the community meet over a Messenger phone call to pray as well.  We were meeting at the church weekly before the social distancing began, but now we do it from home.

This was our family getting ready for church at home one Sunday.

Other things we have done while virtually distancing have been doing a virtual Passover dinner, celebrating Easter with just our family, and one day we did some geocaching.  DH and I have worked on cleaning our room and the garage - both could still use some work.  I caught my hair on fire that day we cleaned the garage as I was putting some sawdust and wood pieces in an already lit burn barrel.  It flared up and burned my face and hair, but I praise God that it was very minor and didn't need to be cut, since my hairdresser wouldn't have been able to help.

JoJo finds first geocache of the day!

Not all of the caches could be accessed.

It's fun to go to places I've never been before.

LE, CC, JJ, JoJo, and me.  I've never been here either, but it is less than 30 miles away.

CC at our 4th find of the day

JJ and DH joined me on a short walk around the Ross Preserve outside of Walnut on Saturday.

This is me.  It was a windy day.

Saturday night we had a fire in on the patio and roasted hotdogs and Peeps - thanks for the fire, JoJo!

Our new town

We are half-way through the first semester/a quarter of the way through our first year living in this small town in rural America.  I have lived in rural towns most of my life, and so far this is the best town I've ever lived in. So much good is here.  Not perfect, no.  But so many good things.

When we looked over this town, we liked the second hand store, Pass It Along, that was situated downtown. The owner was very friendly.  Indeed, I have still to meet an unfriendly person here!  We were saddened when the second hand store closed within weeks of our moving into town, but since then a wonderful salon has opened in its place and next door they are remodeling the unused store to house the new Pass It Along, which will be run by the same woman!  The original store closed in order to make room for the salon as it was opened by the previous owner's daughter.

Our new hometown also has three sit-down restaurants, if you count the country club outside of town, a small carry-out ice-cream, gyros, burgers and pizza place, and one gas station that sells fried chicken everyone loves one day a week, and has another ice cream counter :).  We have a Ford dealership, a t-shirt shop, another gas station, two insurance companies, two banks, a couple of realtors, a grain elevator (right in the middle of downtown - but it seems to be closed), two clinics (now that our hospital opened mine), several churches, and at least 3 larger manufacturing businesses that offer jobs to the community.  One of these businesses is Avanti's.  It makes Gino's frozen pizza and sells lots of specialty cheeses and some meats.  It has a neat little store that sells us the cheeses and such locally and also provides a place to get unique gifts as well.

Up until now we have not had a grocery store here.  No Walmart, Dollar General or any place like that.  I've heard that Dollar General is going to open a store here, but in my 4 months here I haven't seen as much as a ground-breaking event.  Beginning early next month, however, we are going to get a grocery store!  The owners have their own farm and have been working on opening a butcher shop to offer their organic high-end meat, but for the past 1-2 months have felt the Lord leading them to go further and also make it a grocery store!  They will offer organic and regular produce as well!  I am so happy to hear this, and you can believe that we will shop there!

Our little hamlet does not have a pharmacy.  I've thought that would be a problem, but one pharmacy in a larger town 30 miles away is offering delivery of prescriptions for $3 by one of it's employees who lives in our town! She also said that she would deliver for free if you were willing to come to her house to pick it up! You can't even drive to that town and back for $3!  I'm hoping that this will get people patronaging our local clinics when they know that they won't have to drive to town to get their meds afterwards.

Have you ever read the series of books by Frank Peretti starting with This Present Darkness?  Sometimes I feel like I am in that little town of that first book.  I see God working here.  I love the new church we are attending, and I see everyday miracles happening in the lives of people who attend there.  About a month ago a six year old child lost control of a motor scooter he was trying to ride and went right into the path of a huge semi-trailer that subsequently ran over him.  The testimony of this child and his recovery is so amazing and shows God's hand in it in every area.  He is recovering and every day we read miracles about the new things he is able to do.  The community and towns around our little town have stepped up and raised so much money for this family that it is unbelievable.  The "Prayers for Caleb" Facebook page that daily tells his recovery story is liked by over 25,000 people everyday!  So many people are praying for that little boy and his family.  My son shares a class with his sister at school.  The school has also taken part in several fundraisers for the family.

More about our church:  our church has a worship band and two pastors.  The head pastor speaks straight from the Bible and digs out the message in prayer each week, probably spending a huge portion of that time on his knees.  He is very active in the pulpit and quite entertaining.  The more I've been to this church and heard the sermons and sat in the group afterwards that discusses the sermon with the head pastor and elders, the more I have come to love this church.  These people are genuine and seem to share the same values that my husband and I hold.  It isn't uncommon that I just feel God there - in the sermon and in this after-class especially.  I haven't been reading my Bible pretty much since I moved to this state from Alaska 3 years ago.  Bible study become a burden to me.  I still have a close relationship with God and pray and depend on Him dearly, but I was burned out on the Bible.  I don't know the whats or whys of how it happened, but I found the Bible so troubling and confusing and made me feel separate from other believers.  Lately, though, as I go to church at our new church, I am feeling drawn to read my Bible again.  I want that sweet communion that I used to have when the Lord would speak to me from His Word on a daily basis directly about my life.  Not just the do's and don'ts, but just the tender whisperings that He is there and sees me and has everything in control.  My 3rd daughter has started going to junior high youth group at our new church and loves it.  My son also has a midweek program called Kool Kids after school that he attends there.

This summer our new town put on two town-wide celebrations.  One is celebrated around the 4th of July for several days, and one is held in the fall.  I was surprised by how many people take part in these celebrations.  It takes a village committed to having a wonderful place to live to pull these things off, and you can see that in these celebrations.  I didn't get to take part in much of the fall celebration because I was tied to a booth promoting our new clinic and the hospital I work for.  My kids had a great time.  There was live music, vendor booths, jump houses, face painting, free cider and donuts, pumpkin painting and lots of frolicking.  Next year I hope to do something more mobile so I can take part in more and also I would like to tour the fire station (which I forgot to tell you earlier that our town also has.

One down side to our town right now is a thorn in everyone's flesh.  We have a large building downtown that has been neglected by out of town owners and has sat empty for some time.  Now there are bricks falling down from the building to the sidewalk below and the area has had to be fenced off.  The village leadership is working on coming up with a solution that won't cost the town too much money, but I haven't heard what will happen yet.  In spite of this eyesore, the downtown area is being renovated and building by building new businesses are taking up space.  I keep thinking that my husband and kids should open a bakery/coffee shop, but my husband isn't convinced yet :) .

End of Summer

Early Summer Happenings 2017

Sometimes life catches me in its tide, and I just have to go with it.

LE in burgundy is one of the society ladies in "Pollyanna"

 

Joe's first spring recital.  I just love to listen to all of the kids play.

The younger kids finished school at the end of May.  There were music recitals at school and two for Joe's violin group.  There was a play that LE was in.  There was a graduation ceremony that both kids played instruments in (Joe on violin and drums).  The school also had a spring concert in which both kids played solos, and LE sang a solo.

JJ in middle hamming it up as the youth group gets ready to head to Florida

JJ finished 11th grade, went to CamPossible as a volunteer and is just returning from a week in Florida with her youth group today.  In another week she may go to high school camp at Camp MennoHaven.  In August she will be a Leader in Training at Camp Oasis in Wisconsin.  She wants to try public high school for her 12th grade year, which will be a wild transition with all her health issues, especially since she has never experienced normal public high school.

CC came home from Bluffton University and is experiencing her own set of health issues.  I think they are getting in better control, but she has seen three specialists (gyne, cardiology and neurology).  We have ruled out seizures with a 5 day inpatient EEG ($30,000!).  We have found help with her horrible periods with hormone therapy she can tolerate.  We have found a medication that takes care of her chronic daily headaches.  She is still having a lot of anxiety issues and dysautonomia symptoms.She is doing physical therapy, which hopefully will help her back pain.

I'm second from the right with the scissors.

Joe and LE with a friend at Walnut Days showing off their balloon creations.

On June 19, we opened the Perry Memorial Walnut Clinic.  That has been an exciting adventure!  Last weekend, July 1, we had an open house, grand opening and parade complete with ribbon cutting  ceremony that went along with Walnut Days.  The community seems very pleased to have us there.

LE and Joe with DH after fishing contest.
LE won largest fish overall for the girls and largest catfish in her age category

On Monday, July 10, we will close on the house that we are buying.  We've been living in a pretty primitive cabin in some woods.  There is one window air conditioner and wood floors, walls and ceilings.  It is dark (which helps it stay cool, but is hard on the girls with depressive tendencies).  There is a large hole (5 inches across) that leads to the crawl space and if we don't cover it with the litter box, big spiders make their way into our home at night.  Don't get me wrong, however, I am really grateful to have a place to live since we had to leave the camp we've been helping to staff at the beginning of the summer to make room for the new facilities director and his family and other summer staff.  Our new house wasn't available yet and we otherwise would have found ourselves homeless.

This is the agreement DH had to read over and sign for his C-Pap machine!

Speaking of such things, DH is done at camp now.  It was determined this spring that he would never be released from restrictions on his ankle to be able to do his job as facilities director.  He gracefully bowed out.  He went before a legal advocate (acting like a judge) on the worker's comp claim that they were trying to settle out of court.  The advocate didn't feel like the insurance company was giving DH a fair deal, so he refused to sign it.  He encouraged Tim to get a lawyer who can help get at least future medical coverage for when the ankle replacement needs to be redone in 10-15 years.

Navy Pier trip to see Romeo and Juliet with Eliana

Eliana's junior high from Princeton Christian Academy took a trip to Navy Pier in Chicago to see Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.  We took a train from Princeton to Chicago, then rode a bus to the Navy Pier.  After the show Eliana and I hung out with some of her friends and rode the giant ferris wheel and ate Chicago style deep dish pizza - yum!  It was a fantastic trip and the show was amazing!

Illinois Valley Honor Band

Elli was chosen as one of three from her school to be a part of the area wide junior high honor band.  She was thrilled to be chosen.  They went on two separate occasions.  The first was an evening to practice together.  The next was to actually perform for us.  It was a great experience for her.

On the right is her teacher, Mrs. Dawn Marshall

Tim's Recovery and Prayers about What's Next

Tim has been trying his hand at making knives.

In this picture he is doing a method of patina which

decorates the blade with a design which causes a protective

oxidation that also prohibits bad rust.

Tim finally finished the last day of his work conditioning yesterday.  He has been lifting heavy boxes, carrying 80 lb beams, walking on treadmill, riding an exercise bike, using a stair stepper, riding an arm bike, lifting weights, carrying 5 gallon buckets around the room, pushing and pulling a loaded sled around, going up and down a step-ladder, shoveling fake snow, stretching, working on balance apparatuses, stretching and undergoing manual joint manipulation.  Oh, and he said he had to operate a remote (LOL!)

The kids joined a group from our church at some friends' house

for making valentines in February.

His ankle doctor has released him back to work by increments.  In about 5 weeks he will be able to work full time.  Right now he is supposed to work 4 hours a day, then in another week, he'd be allowed to work 6 hours a week.  Finally two weeks after that, he could work full time (8 hour days).  Unfortunately, the director of the camp he worked at is gone on sabbatical and won't be back for another 2 weeks.  Another person is doing Tim's job in the interim of his leave (since last August).  We don't really know if he will have a job now or if this other person will be better suited to the job and replace him permanently.  The boss has been forbidden to talk to Tim about anything work related due to his worker's comp restrictions.  This has been very awkward for us and them.  Tim hasn't talked to him about what the future holds for us for months.

This possum was sitting on a log near the driveway to Camp

Menno Haven in February.  He just sat there and stared and let

us take picture.  Sorry for the blurriness.  It was taken on my

phone with a zoom.

This muskrat decided to walk along the sidewalk in Sterling

right in front of my car when I started home from work on a

weekend day at Ready Care.  I wasn't sure what this oversized

rodent was when I first saw it!

We've been wondering what God has for us next, of course.  Will it be here?  We do want to stay in the area.  We've looked at houses around us, but can't make an offer unless we know for sure we have to move.  We've seen some houses we liked be sold out from under us.  We've considered moving to Plow Creek again.  That is an intentional Christian community not far from here where we lived in the early 2000s.  That community is in limbo now.  They are considering closing their doors, but that hasn't been decided for sure.  There is still a core group of people who are interested in reviving/reinventing it, and we are considering being a part of that.  Lots of things to pray about!

At the Flour House in Princeton

Ciara home for spring break. 

We are enjoying some time at the Flour House in Princeton.

Our friends had an accident that we came upon on our way home from Princeton

on another day.  Thankfully, no one was seriously injured.

My new employer, Perry Memorial Hospital, put on a

community educational event a couple weeks ago.

My nephew Cannon, in the middle, is fighting a rare form of sarcoma.

Posing with him is his brother Matthew and sister Melissa.

Please pray for his full recovery and the cancer to die!