The holidays passed in an incredibly hectic blur. I am thrilled that they are behind me. On a positive note, all the food, goodies and gatherings at my home were successful, and my latest bottling of White Cranberry Pinot Grigio received rave reviews from 90% of the recipients and imbibers! The next wine adventure will be a pomegranate zinfandel!
So what has been happening since the holidays other than work, snow and cold?
Part of the process the agent and author go through in “shopping” a book to publishers is putting together a terrific submission package. The more persuasive information you put into that package, the more likely you are to find a publisher willing to buy. Including endorsements from other authors, experts, and celebrities can often be the “tipping” point in that decision.
I have already received one fabulous endorsement from Dr. John L. Turner, a neurosurgeon and author, who read the entire manuscript because it was “so interesting.”
Needless to say, I was thrilled. As a result, I have spent the last several weeks on a mission to garner more endorsements. I’ve been spending all my time pulling together appropriate information, formatting said information into electronic packets, researching the people I wanted to receive the packages, writing personalized letters, then physically printing, packaging, addressing, and shipping those packages to the intended recipients.
Fifty-four of those packages have been sent to a wide variety of medical specialists, cancer center heads, hospice experts, influential religious leaders, government officials in the area of health, and news persons and celebrities who have supported related causes for personal reasons.
Now the hard part is not stopping to check my post office box morning and night!
The endorsement package process was time-consuming and costly; but worth every minute and every penny if the effort results in having a few really high-profile endorsements to throw into the mix! I’m posting Dr. Turner’s endorsement below and welcome all comments. And if you just happen to think of anyone who might be a good person to endorse the book, feel free to let me know!
Healing does not always equate to curing. Healing may be spiritual and emotional. There is a way to provide such healing and when done anonymously, the act has great power. M. E. (Betsy) McMillan’s great book, Postcard Rx: Giving Comfort when the Diagnosis is Terminal, will teach you how a simple postcard a day - mailed to a friend, family member or total stranger suffering from a terminal illness – can, with messages of hope and encouragement, ease their transition in a most significant and meaningful way. When one is ill and becomes a patient, the secret in caring for the patient, is caring about the patient. Betsy’s stories are fascinating and describe her twenty-plus years of caring and compassion for those in need. I highly recommend this book.
John L. Turner, M.D.
Author of Medicine, Miracles and Manifestations: A Doctor’s Journey Through the Worlds of Divine Intervention, Near-Death Experiences, and Universal Energy
Showing posts with label death. Show all posts
Showing posts with label death. Show all posts
Friday, January 22, 2010
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Patrick Swayze and the Plight of the Terminally Ill
A truly amazing actor and human being passed away on Monday. Patrick Swayze lost his battle with pancreatic cancer. But, you know that already. We all loved the man, we loved the actor, we loved his roles. We loved the way that he carried on his personal life, not leaping from marriage to marriage or woman to woman. He had class and scruples. He was a rarity in the world of movies and television. He fought the good fight for almost two years against a demon that rarely loses.
I was not surprised at the reports that he was flooded with cards, well wishes, and prayers from fans all over the world. I’m certain that support helped fuel the intensity of his fight against the disease. And of course he had the unfailing devotion of his wife and close friends. Unfortunately, this is not case for most people suffering from terminal illnesses.
When someone is first diagnosed with a long-term or terminal illness, we send cards and flowers. We stop to visit. Then we do nothing. We stop sending cards; we don’t go to visit because we don’t know what to say or do. The ill person’s predicament makes us quite uncomfortable. With each passing day they become more isolated from everyone with the exception of immediate family and a few medical professionals, as the rest of the world, namely us, avoids them as though death itself is something contagious.
After our initial attempts, we subconsciously create excuses to avoid contact with that person. Those excuses run the gamut from “I’m too busy” or “I don’t want to impose” to “I’ll stop by next week when I have time.” Inevitably, we never do stop by. Days turn into weeks or months, and that acquaintance eventually passes on. We’re left with mixed feelings of relief (from the stress the act of avoiding caused us) and remorse (because we avoided and now we feel guilt because it’s too late).
How would you feel, if you were the ill person? Think of how much better it would be to leave this world with the love and support of all your friends and acquaintances, like Patrick Swayze did. Granted, the chances of having hundreds of thousands of adoring fans supporting you is pretty small, but it would be really wonderful to know that your friends and acquaintances were not ignoring you during your last and most precious days on earth.
It's something to think about!
I was not surprised at the reports that he was flooded with cards, well wishes, and prayers from fans all over the world. I’m certain that support helped fuel the intensity of his fight against the disease. And of course he had the unfailing devotion of his wife and close friends. Unfortunately, this is not case for most people suffering from terminal illnesses.
When someone is first diagnosed with a long-term or terminal illness, we send cards and flowers. We stop to visit. Then we do nothing. We stop sending cards; we don’t go to visit because we don’t know what to say or do. The ill person’s predicament makes us quite uncomfortable. With each passing day they become more isolated from everyone with the exception of immediate family and a few medical professionals, as the rest of the world, namely us, avoids them as though death itself is something contagious.
After our initial attempts, we subconsciously create excuses to avoid contact with that person. Those excuses run the gamut from “I’m too busy” or “I don’t want to impose” to “I’ll stop by next week when I have time.” Inevitably, we never do stop by. Days turn into weeks or months, and that acquaintance eventually passes on. We’re left with mixed feelings of relief (from the stress the act of avoiding caused us) and remorse (because we avoided and now we feel guilt because it’s too late).
How would you feel, if you were the ill person? Think of how much better it would be to leave this world with the love and support of all your friends and acquaintances, like Patrick Swayze did. Granted, the chances of having hundreds of thousands of adoring fans supporting you is pretty small, but it would be really wonderful to know that your friends and acquaintances were not ignoring you during your last and most precious days on earth.
It's something to think about!
Thursday, September 3, 2009
A Novel Experiment
This is part of the first chapter of a possible novel. I'm not sure if I should pursue the story. I'm welcoming all comments! Thanks!
Once Dead, Twice Shy
If someone tells you that death is the be all and end all, that when you’re dead, you’re dead…don’t believe a word of it because it just isn’t true. I’ve been dead, and I can tell you from personal, first-hand experience that all kind of activity was going on over on the other side. For one thing, the place was full of dead people. Dead kids were romping and playing like there was no tomorrow. Dead adults were milling around, talking, laughing and enjoying their “retirement”.
It was, quite simply, overwhelming. When I found myself there, I was instantly surrounded by crowds, everyone checking out the “newbie” to see if I was someone they needed to welcome. I was miraculously calm; not my normal self at all.
I searched the crowd for what seemed a good five minutes, and much to my delight, my grandmother emerged from the throng, a huge smile on her face. She gave me a bear hug…the kind she always doled out when she came to visit us long ago.
“Grandma!” I said and I started to cry.
“Good Lord, you haven’t changed a bit, Deenie…still weeping at the drop of a hat! You’re certainly not ready to be here, so stop your sniveling and go back where you came from!”
“Grandma?”
She pushed me backward until I tripped over my own feet. So much for a warm and welcoming reception! As I struggled to regain my footing, someone tapped me on the back. I whirled around to find my 8th grade English teacher?
“Mrs. Handeyville?” I asked, my voice dripping with incredulity.
“Deena dear,” she said and handed me a term paper with a big red “F” scrawled across the top. “That was a very nice try, but you’re just not working up to your potential. Now you go back home and do it right this time.”
She turned and walked back into the crowd; I stood there with my mouth hanging open, the F-laden term paper dangling from my hand.
The next and most unlikely surprise was Mac. From the time I was started kindergarten until we moved out of the city right after third grade, Mac was the beat cop with the kindly face that manned the crosswalk as I walked to school. I hadn’t seen him or thought of him in more than 30 years. Although he only looked vaguely familiar to me, I knew who he was the moment he firmly grabbed me by the arm.
“Go that way, Deena” he said, pointing me away from the light. “You’re not finished there and lives depend on you.”
“Lives depend on me? What do you mean ‘Lives depend on me’? What are you talking about?”
A little more information would have been helpful, but all he did was give me a hard shove back into the darkness.
Suddenly I was gasping for air.
I opened my eyes. Everything was white. I reached out and found a sheet over my face. As I pulled it away, the sterile hospital-room environment came swirling into view. What the hell happened? And what was I doing here?
Gingerly, I felt my arms, head and upper torso. Convinced I was still intact, I pushed myself into a sitting position. Were my legs working? Yes, I could feel the sheet on my toes. I swung my legs over the edge of the table before I realized I was buck-naked. Then my eyes and stomach began to swim and I lowered my head between my knees and took slow, deep breaths, hoping to regain my faculties. After a few very long minutes, I inched my way up until I was sitting normally again. Where were my clothes? I slid off the edge of the table and touched my feet to the floor, tentatively, wrapping myself in the sheet as I tested my ability to stand.
I walked forward a few halting steps, using the cold tile wall as my crutch. When I turned around, I saw a telltale, blue plastic hospital bag under the table.
“Thank God!” I said, aloud.
I opened the bag and extracted the remains of my clothing. My running shoes and jeans were intact, but my brand new L. L. Bean T-shirt, my favorite Victoria Secret bra and the matching panties were cut to ribbons.
“Damn! I only wore that shirt once. And my undies! Don’t these people believe in unfastening?”
I slipped into the jeans, sans the underpinnings. It was my first, and hopefully last, experience with rough seams rubbing and chafing in places unmentionable. I was over 40; it was hardly the time to start going panty-less, and although I wasn’t sagging as much as most of the over 40 crowd, going bra-less was not very appealing either.
With the sheet draped over my form like some kind of oddly huge sarong, I made my way to the wall of storage bins and cupboards. I flung open all the doors and drawers until I came across a stash of clean hospital gowns. After fastening all the appropriate arm snaps, I put one of the cursed things on backward, rolled it up above my waist and tied it under my unfettered bosoms, sort of a large hospital-gown dam, keeping the twins at bay. Dumping the remaining contents of the plastic bag on the table, I retrieved my cell phone, my purse (which amazingly appeared to be untouched) and my car keys. Then I slipped into my shoes and bravely stepped forth into the hallway.
“Excuse me,” I said to the only other human I could see…a nurse with her nose in some charts. “Could you tell me where I am?”
She didn’t even look up. “Metro.”
I guess I hadn’t yet made an impression.
“Would you mind telling me what happened, how I got here and who cut up my L.L. Bean T-shirt and my Victoria Secret undies?”
She looked up. The sarcastic retort she intended was choked off by a blood curdling scream. Then she hit some kind of button that set off a security siren.
Policemen and security guards came running, guns drawn. They found the nurse cowering in a corner and me, clad in jeans and my makeshift bustier, purse slung over my shoulder, leaning on the chest-high counter at the nurse’s station.
“She’s dead, she’s dead!” screamed the quivering mass of supposed medical knowledge.
“What’s going on here?” one policeman demanded.
“That’s exactly what I was asking. Then she started screaming and pushing buttons,” I said.
“You must have done something,” he said.
“Well I did. I woke up naked and covered with a sheet in a room down the hall. I found my shoes and jeans and what was left of my brand new L.L. Bean T-shirt and my gorgeous matching Victoria Secret bra and panties in a plastic hospital bag under the table. I got dressed as best I could and came out here to ask what happened, how I got here and especially who cut up my clothes. She took one look at me and went ballistic. I think the guys in white coats need to come take her to a safe place.”
“She’s dead, she’s dead!” the nurse continued to scream.
“Give it a break, lady,” I said. “You’re not the one who just woke up naked and covered from head to toe like a cadaver.”
Drawn guns followed me as I walked to the other side of the hall and sat down in a chair.
“I’m not leaving until someone tells me how I got here and who destroyed my clothing.”
The rest of the day will live in infamy, at least in my mind. I was detained for hours as the hospital administrator grilled me. I was re-examined at considerable length by the doctor who had declared me dead only hours before, as well as by his superiors and multiple other colleagues.
Upwards of 95% of the medical staff wandered in and out of the room gawking at the ‘miracle woman’ who had awakened from the dead. I was poked and prodded, quite literally, up one end and down the other. Finally, I was told that I was brought in by ambulance after suffering a severe allergic reaction…to crab cakes.
After about 8 hours of insanity, they put their collective medical degrees to work and came up with two conclusions that no lay person could ever possibly have figured out:
1) I was most definitely not dead and
2) I should avoid eating crab cakes…duh.
I never did find out the name of the culprit that slashed my clothing…and no offer of reimbursement was forthcoming. I wondered if I could claim the pricey undies on my insurance.
Eventually, I was released on my own recognizance. In other words, I refused to stay any longer. They had no legal right to keep me there. As I climbed into the cab that would take me back to the restaurant where the fatal crab-cake incident had occurred, I saw the screaming nurse, strapped to a gurney, being loaded into an ambulance marked Haverford Sanitorium. How fitting, I thought…and smiled.
Once Dead, Twice Shy
If someone tells you that death is the be all and end all, that when you’re dead, you’re dead…don’t believe a word of it because it just isn’t true. I’ve been dead, and I can tell you from personal, first-hand experience that all kind of activity was going on over on the other side. For one thing, the place was full of dead people. Dead kids were romping and playing like there was no tomorrow. Dead adults were milling around, talking, laughing and enjoying their “retirement”.
It was, quite simply, overwhelming. When I found myself there, I was instantly surrounded by crowds, everyone checking out the “newbie” to see if I was someone they needed to welcome. I was miraculously calm; not my normal self at all.
I searched the crowd for what seemed a good five minutes, and much to my delight, my grandmother emerged from the throng, a huge smile on her face. She gave me a bear hug…the kind she always doled out when she came to visit us long ago.
“Grandma!” I said and I started to cry.
“Good Lord, you haven’t changed a bit, Deenie…still weeping at the drop of a hat! You’re certainly not ready to be here, so stop your sniveling and go back where you came from!”
“Grandma?”
She pushed me backward until I tripped over my own feet. So much for a warm and welcoming reception! As I struggled to regain my footing, someone tapped me on the back. I whirled around to find my 8th grade English teacher?
“Mrs. Handeyville?” I asked, my voice dripping with incredulity.
“Deena dear,” she said and handed me a term paper with a big red “F” scrawled across the top. “That was a very nice try, but you’re just not working up to your potential. Now you go back home and do it right this time.”
She turned and walked back into the crowd; I stood there with my mouth hanging open, the F-laden term paper dangling from my hand.
The next and most unlikely surprise was Mac. From the time I was started kindergarten until we moved out of the city right after third grade, Mac was the beat cop with the kindly face that manned the crosswalk as I walked to school. I hadn’t seen him or thought of him in more than 30 years. Although he only looked vaguely familiar to me, I knew who he was the moment he firmly grabbed me by the arm.
“Go that way, Deena” he said, pointing me away from the light. “You’re not finished there and lives depend on you.”
“Lives depend on me? What do you mean ‘Lives depend on me’? What are you talking about?”
A little more information would have been helpful, but all he did was give me a hard shove back into the darkness.
Suddenly I was gasping for air.
I opened my eyes. Everything was white. I reached out and found a sheet over my face. As I pulled it away, the sterile hospital-room environment came swirling into view. What the hell happened? And what was I doing here?
Gingerly, I felt my arms, head and upper torso. Convinced I was still intact, I pushed myself into a sitting position. Were my legs working? Yes, I could feel the sheet on my toes. I swung my legs over the edge of the table before I realized I was buck-naked. Then my eyes and stomach began to swim and I lowered my head between my knees and took slow, deep breaths, hoping to regain my faculties. After a few very long minutes, I inched my way up until I was sitting normally again. Where were my clothes? I slid off the edge of the table and touched my feet to the floor, tentatively, wrapping myself in the sheet as I tested my ability to stand.
I walked forward a few halting steps, using the cold tile wall as my crutch. When I turned around, I saw a telltale, blue plastic hospital bag under the table.
“Thank God!” I said, aloud.
I opened the bag and extracted the remains of my clothing. My running shoes and jeans were intact, but my brand new L. L. Bean T-shirt, my favorite Victoria Secret bra and the matching panties were cut to ribbons.
“Damn! I only wore that shirt once. And my undies! Don’t these people believe in unfastening?”
I slipped into the jeans, sans the underpinnings. It was my first, and hopefully last, experience with rough seams rubbing and chafing in places unmentionable. I was over 40; it was hardly the time to start going panty-less, and although I wasn’t sagging as much as most of the over 40 crowd, going bra-less was not very appealing either.
With the sheet draped over my form like some kind of oddly huge sarong, I made my way to the wall of storage bins and cupboards. I flung open all the doors and drawers until I came across a stash of clean hospital gowns. After fastening all the appropriate arm snaps, I put one of the cursed things on backward, rolled it up above my waist and tied it under my unfettered bosoms, sort of a large hospital-gown dam, keeping the twins at bay. Dumping the remaining contents of the plastic bag on the table, I retrieved my cell phone, my purse (which amazingly appeared to be untouched) and my car keys. Then I slipped into my shoes and bravely stepped forth into the hallway.
“Excuse me,” I said to the only other human I could see…a nurse with her nose in some charts. “Could you tell me where I am?”
She didn’t even look up. “Metro.”
I guess I hadn’t yet made an impression.
“Would you mind telling me what happened, how I got here and who cut up my L.L. Bean T-shirt and my Victoria Secret undies?”
She looked up. The sarcastic retort she intended was choked off by a blood curdling scream. Then she hit some kind of button that set off a security siren.
Policemen and security guards came running, guns drawn. They found the nurse cowering in a corner and me, clad in jeans and my makeshift bustier, purse slung over my shoulder, leaning on the chest-high counter at the nurse’s station.
“She’s dead, she’s dead!” screamed the quivering mass of supposed medical knowledge.
“What’s going on here?” one policeman demanded.
“That’s exactly what I was asking. Then she started screaming and pushing buttons,” I said.
“You must have done something,” he said.
“Well I did. I woke up naked and covered with a sheet in a room down the hall. I found my shoes and jeans and what was left of my brand new L.L. Bean T-shirt and my gorgeous matching Victoria Secret bra and panties in a plastic hospital bag under the table. I got dressed as best I could and came out here to ask what happened, how I got here and especially who cut up my clothes. She took one look at me and went ballistic. I think the guys in white coats need to come take her to a safe place.”
“She’s dead, she’s dead!” the nurse continued to scream.
“Give it a break, lady,” I said. “You’re not the one who just woke up naked and covered from head to toe like a cadaver.”
Drawn guns followed me as I walked to the other side of the hall and sat down in a chair.
“I’m not leaving until someone tells me how I got here and who destroyed my clothing.”
The rest of the day will live in infamy, at least in my mind. I was detained for hours as the hospital administrator grilled me. I was re-examined at considerable length by the doctor who had declared me dead only hours before, as well as by his superiors and multiple other colleagues.
Upwards of 95% of the medical staff wandered in and out of the room gawking at the ‘miracle woman’ who had awakened from the dead. I was poked and prodded, quite literally, up one end and down the other. Finally, I was told that I was brought in by ambulance after suffering a severe allergic reaction…to crab cakes.
After about 8 hours of insanity, they put their collective medical degrees to work and came up with two conclusions that no lay person could ever possibly have figured out:
1) I was most definitely not dead and
2) I should avoid eating crab cakes…duh.
I never did find out the name of the culprit that slashed my clothing…and no offer of reimbursement was forthcoming. I wondered if I could claim the pricey undies on my insurance.
Eventually, I was released on my own recognizance. In other words, I refused to stay any longer. They had no legal right to keep me there. As I climbed into the cab that would take me back to the restaurant where the fatal crab-cake incident had occurred, I saw the screaming nurse, strapped to a gurney, being loaded into an ambulance marked Haverford Sanitorium. How fitting, I thought…and smiled.
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Life's Uncertain...
Someone of exceptional vision once said “There are only three certainties in life: birth, death and taxes.” We tend to celebrate births; we all complain about taxes; and we ignore death until it walks up and stares us in the face. Death is so foreign a concept to our conscious minds, that we not only ignore thinking about our own passing, we also avoid dealing with anyone we know whose time here is limited.
Consider this scenario. One of your co-workers has been ill of late. After a series of tests, he is told that he has Stage 4 colon cancer. He continues to work as much as possible, but more and more he is missing from the work environment as he submits to chemo, radiation, and whatever experimental treatments and clinical trials are available. Eventually, he is home bound, only getting out to go to treatments and doctor’s appointments.
At first, it was hard and stressful working with him, because you didn’t want to watch him in his misery. When he stopped coming to work you were conflicted. You missed him, but you were relieved that the stress you were feeling while he was around left with him. You sent a card or some flowers at first. You even stopped by once or twice to visit at the beginning of his “confinement” but as time moved on, you found more and more excuses to be “busy” and you avoided going back.
Then you got the call that your co-worker died…and the guilt set in. You began to question your own ethics. What kind of person am I, anyway? Why didn’t I go back and see him? Why didn’t I call more? I thought I was a good person, but I’m just like everyone else. To assuage that guilt, you promised yourself you’d never do it again…until the next person of your acquaintance was diagnosed with a terminal illness.
There isn’t anything wrong with you. You’re just human. We all are. I faced this question many years ago, and I finally figured out that you don’t have to do much to make a difference, but you do have to do something. I figured out what to do, something that worked for me, and I’ve been doing it for terminally ill friends, acquaintances and even for perfect strangers for 20 years. The key is taking them on only one at a time.
A friend urged me to write a book about my 20 years of experience with my “project” and I’m now shopping that book to agents and publishers alike. I’m not going to ruin the plot for you or tell you how it ends…but I’ll let you know when it is due to be distributed! Keep a good thought for me, because this book could make a significant impact on those who read it, those who take it to heart, and those terminally ill friends and acquaintances who end up on the receiving end of the project.
Stay tuned!
Consider this scenario. One of your co-workers has been ill of late. After a series of tests, he is told that he has Stage 4 colon cancer. He continues to work as much as possible, but more and more he is missing from the work environment as he submits to chemo, radiation, and whatever experimental treatments and clinical trials are available. Eventually, he is home bound, only getting out to go to treatments and doctor’s appointments.
At first, it was hard and stressful working with him, because you didn’t want to watch him in his misery. When he stopped coming to work you were conflicted. You missed him, but you were relieved that the stress you were feeling while he was around left with him. You sent a card or some flowers at first. You even stopped by once or twice to visit at the beginning of his “confinement” but as time moved on, you found more and more excuses to be “busy” and you avoided going back.
Then you got the call that your co-worker died…and the guilt set in. You began to question your own ethics. What kind of person am I, anyway? Why didn’t I go back and see him? Why didn’t I call more? I thought I was a good person, but I’m just like everyone else. To assuage that guilt, you promised yourself you’d never do it again…until the next person of your acquaintance was diagnosed with a terminal illness.
There isn’t anything wrong with you. You’re just human. We all are. I faced this question many years ago, and I finally figured out that you don’t have to do much to make a difference, but you do have to do something. I figured out what to do, something that worked for me, and I’ve been doing it for terminally ill friends, acquaintances and even for perfect strangers for 20 years. The key is taking them on only one at a time.
A friend urged me to write a book about my 20 years of experience with my “project” and I’m now shopping that book to agents and publishers alike. I’m not going to ruin the plot for you or tell you how it ends…but I’ll let you know when it is due to be distributed! Keep a good thought for me, because this book could make a significant impact on those who read it, those who take it to heart, and those terminally ill friends and acquaintances who end up on the receiving end of the project.
Stay tuned!
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