It turned into a major news event here in Florida. Having lived with what was featured on the television news for most of my life, I never gave it any thought.
All the stations covered it, with several different groups of people involved.
What was it? SNOW.
It was hard to imagine that so many people had never seen snow and witnessed it on the ground for the first time in their lifetime. There were moms, dads, kids, firemen, and policemen playing in the snow.
It was also funny to me that several areas in the panhandle of Florida received record snowfall amounts – the most was nine inches, shattering the previous four-inch record. In many areas of northern Florida, it hadn’t snowed in over 60 years!
Our home is far enough south that we didn’t see even any flakes, but it was cold here (near freezing) longer than a lot of long-time residents could recall.
You can imagine what nine inches of snow did to an area that hadn’t seen snow in over a half-decade – it shut it down. Even an interstate highway was shut down for a couple of days, and several Florida cities had to borrow snow plows to help clear their streets. I imagine those cities also had to “borrow” the snowplow operators.
It was kind of funny watching people playing in the snow, and enjoying it as they did – It was probably a lot easier enjoying the snow event when they all knew it wouldn’t be on the ground more than a day or two, not like in Minnesota when snow can stay around from late October until late April.
I had to try to picture myself seeing snow for the first time in my lifetime, and it helped me understand the enthusiasm created by that white stuff on the ground.
I was happy I didn’t have to shovel it.
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I recall mentioning how badly more doctors are needed here in Florida – and probably a lot of other places as well. Unfortunately, we ran across an example of how much the lack of doctors can force people needing a procedure to wait.
About two months ago, my bride was getting up off the couch and felt a “pop” in her left shoulder; her arm went limp, and the pain kicked in. Having nowhere else better to go, we went to a stand-alone emergency room. The doctor there ordered an X-ray, asked a lot of questions, and even accused her of falling and not remembering it. He told us nothing was wrong with the X-ray, gave her some pain meds to pick up, and sent us home. The next day, the pain was so bad we called her pain doctor, who squeezed us in. He ordered an MRI. Nobody near us could do the MRI for at least two weeks, so we were forced to drive almost two hours to where we could get one done two days later. That MRI showed a tear in her rotator cuff. We had to get squeezed into the pain doctor again to learn this, and he then sent orders for STAT orthopedic surgeon consultations. Over a week later, the first surgeon told us that, indeed, there was a tear, but their doctors couldn’t do surgery for several months. The PA we saw told us we might have better luck with a new orthopedic clinic that just opened in The Villages, where we live. We set up an appointment and met with the surgeon, who told us the best he could do was schedule the surgery for about a month later. What else could we do? We scheduled the appointment.
Surgery was done on January 16th. Post-surgery pain was excruciating for the first several days, but subsided a little each day. Physical therapy in our home started the day after surgery, and outpatient therapy started this week.
It’s not easy listening to “We can’t get you in until next month” when you have someone you care about suffering intense pain, and we were told on a few occasions that her condition was not life-threatening, so we just needed to wait for a time that worked into the schedule of the doctors.
We also found out there’s a long recovery time for rotator cuff repairs, and we would have to wait and do much of nothing for at least six months, all the way to a year.
Since there isn’t much of any other choice, wait is what we’ll do, while hoping physical therapy goes well.
Have A Good Week!
