My Son s Best Friends
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Kindness Ch. 04 free porn video
This chapter contains two stories of a life-changing nature. In both, people stepped forward and gave of themselves to help strangers that really needed the help. As noted in the other three chapters, kindness is not rare, just under-reported. The purpose of this series is to let readers become writers and tell their stories of unexpected and unconditional kindness. I hope you enjoy and appreciate their efforts.
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Of all the acts of kindness I have been fortunate enough to receive, the most dramatic by far happened in 2008-2009.
In August of 2008, I experienced a massive stroke in the upper-rear area of the right side of my brain. The doctors told my wife that it was so massive that they were amazed that it had not killed me outright. I spent the following 6-8 weeks in a coma-like state (the doctors insisted that it wasn’t a coma, but was merely a ‘deep sleep’. Gee, ya think?)
My wife Susan was, of course, beside herself with worry. We had only been married for a little more than a year, and she was not ready to become a widow.
She posted about my condition on an online forum where I had been an active member for many years, and was quickly overwhelmed by the dozens and dozens, perhaps even hundreds, of posts of sympathy and concern. Among those posts were many offers of help, both financial and otherwise.
While these were perhaps technically not strangers, I only knew them in the virtual world of the Internet, having met only a handful of them in real life at conventions put on by the organization behind the online forum.
My wife posted the address where people could send non-monetary gifts and when I awoke from my ‘deep sleep’, I was amazed to find my hospital room flooded with get-well cards, books, balloons and stuffed animals (but not flowers, which were not allowed in the ICU). I had no idea that I even knew that many people, let alone that many people who would be that concerned about my health! My mother and siblings were even more surprised than I, having only vague knowledge of my online friends.
Those friends quickly grew impatient with my wife’s reluctance to accept financial help with my rapidly mounting medical bills, and continued to post questions about how they could help us in that regard. While our medical insurance (through my wife’s employer) was handling my hospital bills, Susan soon began to realize that there would be many long-term expenses related to my condition such as making our home ‘wheelchair-accessible.’ I was now a ‘left-side hemiplegic’ – meaning that I had little if any control over the muscles in the left half of my body. The largest of these expenses was the purchase a wheelchair-accessible vehicle in which we could get to my many doctor and therapy appointments!
Since I was now physically disabled (fortunately, my mental/cognitive abilities were still very much intact), my employer laid me off after I missed several months of work while in the hospital, and it was not clear whether or not I would be employable ever again. So, when one of the members of that online forum asked Susan’s permission to set up a PayPal account where those who still wanted to contribute financially to my medical-related expenses could do so. Susan finally relented and gave her permission. She also made sure that I was comfortable with this, knowing that I might be hesitant to accept any form of ‘charity.’ She convinced me that it would be unkind to not let all of my online friends help in a more tangible way than just sending stuffed animals and get-well cards.
The PayPal account was set up, and donations began to be accepted by the woman who was administering the account.
Susan had learned that it would cost around $20,000 to modify a minivan to make it wheelchair accessible. She asked the woman administering the account how much had come in. We were stunned to learn that people had donated a little over $21,000!
We gratefully accepted it, as there was no way we could have come up with that money otherwise. That is how, at the end of my eleven months of post-stroke hospital stay, I was able to drive my motorized wheelchair up the newly-installed ramp of our minivan, and Susan drove us home to our radically-changed life!
And radically-changed it certainly was, but we have dealt with that change remarkably well, thanks in no small part due to the kindness of who-knows how many friends and strangers to whom we will remain forever grateful. It has been more than five years now since we got our modified minivan, and hardly a day goes by without our using it to go places I would not otherwise be able to go were it not for the kindness of strangers.
This next story is an excerpt from a memoir being complied for the daughters of Celticdavinci.
I had just been promoted to captain in the Air Force in June 1967 when I was asked if I would like to attend either pilot or navigator training. I looked at my shoulder and ascertained that it was wide enough to carry at least one star and probably four stars. Wings plus my Harvard degree would put me on the fast track to being a flag officer. Besides, I had been given meaningful work to do and still consider my six years on active duty as the best job I’ve ever had (other than husband, dad, and granddad). I was going ‘with the flow’, keeping the world safe for democracy and pursuing my avocations of eradicating the twin curses of celibacy and virginity, smoking fine Maduro cigars, and drinking 12 year-old Irish Whiskey (which I still do). I was to report to primary pilot training on Monday, October 23rd at Moody AFB in Valdosta, GA.
I fell asleep on a Sunday evening in the VOQ at Maxwell AFB, Montgomery, AL. I have no rational memory of the next 14 days. What I’m about to say has been reconstructed through both accident and medical reports.
I was leaving the town of Sasser, Georgia, in my 1963 Cadillac convertible, 2nd in a line of 3 cars accelerating to the speed limit of 65 m.p.h. when a 62 year-old widow from Texas in a 1966 LTD ‘ran a stop sign’ at 65 m.p.h. and broad-sided the passenger side of my vehicle. My automobile’s vector was altered and the Caddy stopped when it hit a mud bank head-on 37 feet from the point of impact.
The medical report conjectures that I was ‘rendered unconscious by striking my head on the driver’s window upon initial impact. The subsequent impact led to the driver, while restrained by a seat belt, jack-knifing around the steering wheel and striking the right side of his face on the dashboard. Both his hands went through the windshield.’
The report goes on to list the 8 fractures of my mandible, 4 fractures of my maxilla, the fracture to my right eye-socket, the fractures of 8 ‘meta-carpal flanges’ (fingers, but not my thumbs), and 6 broken ribs. The jawbone was protruding through the skin.
Back to the accident report: The two ladies in the other car fared worse. The driver was pinned in her car by the engine which fractured both legs. Her passenger was thrown from the right rear seat through the windshield and died on the road. The first people on the scene removed me from the Caddy and laid me on the ground. I was having severe problems breathing, described in the medical report as ‘stentorian’.
The first policeman (local) who arrived apparently removed my military ID, my Massachusetts driver’s license, and my New York registration from my billfold and put them in my shirt pocket. He then put the wallet and my loose change into my briefcase. The second policeman, a GA state trooper, seeing the uniforms, thought I was a military courier and locked my briefcase in the Caddy’s trunk.
The next arrival of consequence was an Army corpsman, just back from a tour in Vietnam. He had reported to Ft. Benning and was on post-combat leave to visit his family. He stopped to see if he could help and performed triage. The other driver, incessantly screaming with fear and intense pain, was being helped. He knew the passenger was dead, but that
I was in respiratory difficulty. He was evaluating me when I stopped breathing. To establish an airway, the corpsman performed an emergency tracheotomy with a rusty can opener and a ball point pen barrel. He hammered my sternum and my heart restarted. He stayed with me until the EMTs arrived. He briefed them about my condition and the action he had taken to restart my breathing. Then he left without revealing his identity. Talk about anonymous service! Was he an angel sent by God?
Four months later, while dressed in the hospital-issue pajamas and bathrobe, I went to the cashier’s office to pay my maid’s fee. While I was standing in the inevitable line, a medic stopped, did a double-take, and then approached me.
‘Pardon me, by any chance, are you an Air Force Captain?’
‘Yes, I am.’
‘Who was involved in an accident in Sasser, Georgia last October?’
‘Yes, I was.’
Glad you made it, sir!’
‘Thanks!
And the medic walked away before I could read his nametag. I didn’t understand the significance of this encounter until I read my medical records in October 1969. To this day, I don’t know the identity of my roadside savior. Talk about ‘anonymous service!’
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Thanks to these two readers who volunteered to write their stories of unconditional kindness shown to them. I’m sure there are many others out there that you can contribute. Please send your story to me by using the contact link or the feedback link.
Happy New Year to everyone.
Lizbeth
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