Holiday Letter, 2014

We enjoy your holiday letters and photos and wish you health and good times in 2015!  Many of you are really good at making these newsletters!

2014 started with a bang for us but was short-lived on the activity side.  We left for Nicaragua in early February to both see the country and improve our ailing Spanish. We signed up to stay in a local person’s home in Granada to experience Nicaragua life and cuisine, and, attend classes in Spanish at The Escuela del Mia for five hours each morning during the week. The afternoons included trips to historical and local recreational activities like volcanos, Lake Nicaragua.

We were having a great time and could see noticeable improvement in our Spanish at the end of the first week. We decided to go to San Juan del Sur (the last Survivor show was filmed there) at the other end of the island for the weekend where the surfers and the beach lovers go. That Sunday morning I fell & sustained some bad injuries. Sufficiently bad for me to recommend you purchase medical to get you back to the states when you travel overseas in a 3^rd world medical country. Having been to a hospital (just to see it) in Bolivia I should have thought about this. There were no doctors in San Juan. It took about ten hours to get me to the capital, Managua, where the private hospital for the rich go and pay. The general public has National Health Care. The well to do would fly to Miami for anything serious.  It took seven days for the airlines to come up with a front, but small seat on the very small planes that fly from Miami to Managua. Since I was basically wrapped in wide elastic to hold me together this was not an easy transport. In all honesty, I could not have flown any sooner on a commercial plane, even doped up. I crushed my left side, shoulder, arm (humorous), ribs, clavicle and scapula and broke my right foot. I am now bionic. They don’t do knee or hip replacements in Nicaragua so you can imagine the dilemma for other parts. We did go to a free hospital for the people much closer to San Juan (4 hours) initially just because that is where the taxi driver took us who was not familiar with Managua or its private hospital.  I am pretty sure I would have lost my arm had we stayed at the state hospital. “Emergency” was a warehouse, cement walled room with about 40 of us that Sunday afternoon.  A guy from a motorcycle wreck came in screaming while I was laying on my gurney with everyone else and we all listened to him while watching him get stitched up.  He actually left afterward with the help of his friends, pretty drugged up. We probably all felt grateful to know they HAD drugs.

I was finally taken to my room, #34, in that particular room. I mean I was Number 34. No such thing as a semi-private room. The beds had no linen, pillows, screens in the windows, etc.  I think I must have been in shock as I watched the flies landing on my bloody wounds.  I couldn’t move so I could not swat them off and no one else seemed to notice anything out of the ordinary. Ed was out looking for sheets and trying to talk to doctors. I thought about how we all have stronger immune systems than they let on in the U.S. . . Every once in a while, I would hear a loud pop out back and I wondered if those were the ones they shot who were just too beyond help. This is a situation where you really wish your Spanish was fluent and not just O.K.

It took until June or July before I was moving much again. My bionics can now hold a glass (but I can’t get it to my mouth to drink) and I can hold on to a stair railing. I can hold the left side of the newspaper and a book. My doctors here told me my left side would always be bigger than my right. That seems odd but I do notice that my “V” neck sweaters think the “V” should be over my left shoulder rather in the middle under my neck. My hands also get to be bigger and I finally had my rings re-sized for the 1.5 size increase. Now Ed gets to wear them too!

 I’m completely caught up on every mini-series I ever missed and lots of documentaries on Netflix. I try to focus on the positive as you can tell. People tell me all the time that to look at me you’d never know anything happened.  It’s also amazing how you can drop out of people’s lives for a year and it’s like it was just yesterday when you talk to them again. The bottom line is all is well and you just can’t have too much travel insurance.

Now, about Ed. He retired again and turned into a great care-taker and cook.  He has even gone to Williams and Sonoma and bought himself some great cookware which the serious need. He started back to work in the late fall on scheduled call at Sidwell/Barfoot, the Veterans PT Facility right next to McQuire Veterans Hospital here in Richmond which is supposed to be one of the best next to Walter Reed. Since he returned to school in his early 50’s to begin his third career, I am glad he finds it so gratifying. I am lucky he is a Physical Therapist as I need one.  Too bad he is not also a psychologist as I could also have used one of those this year.

Our plans after Christmas include a trip to TX in January.  I’m looking forward to a visit from some high-school friends this spring before the re-union. Also have enjoyed reading little snippets some of you have shared on the Re-union site. I’m anxious to hear more detail. 

I have looked for my old address books to find Betty Reese’s old address in Knoxville but no luck. Last time I talked to Betty, Reese had just married Ryan Philipi. I saw on 60-minutes/Charlie Rose where Reese said she bought a house near her mom’s in Tennessee so I thought Betty might still be there. I thought she had moved to California near Reese a long time ago.  Hope someone knows how to contact her. Neither Sally, Irene, nor I know and we all used to go to the Tea Dances together our senior year at Annapolis.

Sorry this year’s letter is all about ME, ME, ME, but that’s just how it is some times.

Fondly,  Janet Polk & Ed Lehre