Woody Cavenaugh

Carteret General Hospital located in sunny Morehead City is a fine facility that has always strived to keep its fingers near the pulse of what the trends are on the Crystal Coast. In doing so they have built a huge wonderful birthing center that is really the pride of the community. Due to a minor miscalculation however the "finger" on the pulse clearly belongs to a proctologist. Reason being? The trend in this county for at least 20 years has been the influx of retirees, an aging local population, and a graduating high school class who can't wait to get the heck out of here!

So when a baby is born in this county they get the greatest attention possible in a new and state of the art facility. If someone of the average age in this county suddenly has a heart attack, they are shipped 40 minutes away to New Bern Regional in Craven County. I believe if Carteret General has any sort of cardiac unit at all, their motto must be, "Hey, they were alive when we we sent them to New Bern". Many of the local doctors know this and try to send their patients proactively to New Bern, but sometimes the heart doesn't wait.

Dad's doctor is one of those people who sends patients strait to New Bern. Dad's doctor enjoys racing his Shelby Cobra replica as a hobby. Dad's doctor's wife drives a Lotus Elise, which she also races on the weekends. I wish I didn't hate being around sick people so much, I could have a Lotus too. This doctor's office is built into an old restaurant, so the layout is different from any other office I have ever been to. The office furniture is all wicker, the decorations are nice, the atmosphere is relaxed, and the sick people are always just out of site as instead of one large waiting room, he has a series of twists and turns with little seating areas. The largest area has a TV in it larger than the smallest area. Homeless people could sleep in this TV. Remove the guts of the TV, hang two hammocks and the Skipper and Gilligan could live in the TV. If this TV had plates you could drive it. The doctor has a high attention to detail. He sent dad to New Bern. He noticed that one of the pictures on the wall was crooked when he spoke to dad and I in the lobby. Dad's been on something of a "I'm not dead yet, tis only a fleshwound" tour.

Its the cough that carries you off
Its the coffin they carry you off in
Besides little plastic pans and a portable urinal dad brought home a deep cough from the hospital. He still hasn't been able to shake it. The hospital told him it was because he was on oxygen. I think it was because he was in the hospital. Either way mom put a humidifier in his bedroom last night and it seemed to help. He has coughed much less today also. It looks like he may survive his trip to the hospital after all.

Mom, seeing opportunity and seizing upon it, had me take down the shutters across the front of the house. Since she used vacation time to take care of dad, and she had planned to do this task during her vacation, she has had to try to do both. Me being here to take the shutters down, and take care of dad, has been a big help. However, I did have to tell her that if she was going to have her own heart attack she'd better do it while I was already down here. While I love a good road trip to clear the cobwebs, the car is getting up in miles.

My grandfather used to tell me "What you get out of life is what you eat." When he got so old that he didn't really enjoy anything he was eating, he stopped loving life. Oddly enough, a man with that philosophy, one would think would be rather rotund. Not him. His weight was always right where it ought to be. I was the only tubby one in the family. Now, dad is home from the hospital and now that he has had the menue read to him by two giggling school girls we've had to figure out how a man who has eaten one way all his life is supposed to suddenly go salt, fat, and flavor free. I believe that this will be a long slow process if it is to happen at all. Mom thought that the little packages of Mrs Dash in his hospital plates was going to be the secret ingredient. Then we made her try to season her serving of grits with it. She is now a believer that there is no easy substitute.

The retired lifestyle isn't all that bad. Of course I don't have it 100% yet. If I could go to bed at sundown and wake up and sunup I would probably have a better grasps of what it is like. As it stands by the time I have been getting up at seven or eight after going to bed at nine or ten, the retiree's day is nearly spent. I also noticed that retired folks eat different from me. I eat four or five times a day with lunch being my largest meal. They eat twice. Ok, three times if you count the bowl of ice cream just as the sun is going down. My metabolism has a long way to go before I will be ready for my 6am breakfast and 4pm dinner with a 7pm bowl of ice cream. What about tenzies??? What about second lunch??? If I don't get my tenzies I've got the shakes by lunch time. But they don't see that. they only see that I jiggle when I walk. Hey old guys! My jiggle's sexy! (be even sexier if I were a girl, but I'm not so get over it. OK?)

As you can see, things are slowly returning to condition yellow around the Cavenaugh home. I feel ready to return to my life already in progress. Tomorrow, I'll be back with my lovely wife, and the next day I'll do my best to give her a happy birthday.