“It rained and it rained and it rained.” That’s the beginning of the ninth chapter of A.A. Milne’s “The House at Pooh Corner.” Piglet tells himself that he’d never seen so much rain in his life. I felt a lot like Piglet when I went home in Sentani, Papua, Indonesia,…
Waking groggily, the patient stretched his arm out from under the covers. Hitting the “stop” button on his phone, he groaned. It was time to eat and take his next dose of anti-nausea medicine. After giving it 20 minutes to start working, he took his malaria medicine. To get the…
My breath was short and quick. Pokey, my dog, jumped up on the bed and licked my face. It didn’t help. Thoughts continued to swirl through my brain, not settling down into one focus. I was developing a panic attack. Focusing my gaze on one spot on the far wall,…
My husband and I went through our checklist. “Do you have a week’s supply of your inhaler?” We try to keep supplies on hand, just in case. We have contingency plans for disasters, such as an earthquake. We’re ready to shelter in place or “bug out,” depending on the circumstances.
Pokey was nudging my hand, forcing me into consciousness. He was rolling his eyes, dancing around, and almost crossing his legs. “Get up, Mom! I have to go out.” Pokey is my dog. I wish he understood that on Saturdays humans don’t have to get up as early as on…
“You’ve reached 911. What’s your emergency?” My daughter Beth answered the call, ready to direct the correct emergency department to the scene. Nothing in that job is routine, but she didn’t expect the situation that unfolded. “Please send animal control to my house. There is a Komodo dragon in…
Give ear, me hearties, and listen to my tale. It’s a story of riding the high waves and plunging into the troughs between. Me tale begins many a night ago as the kraken rose up to assail me ship o’ life. Ye find me many a day befuddled…
I looked about in wonder. The prairie — the vast, great American prairie, which reputedly had vistas so wide that the horizon was far off in the distance — filled my vision. But the vistas I saw were not wide, and the horizon was not far off. This place had…
“Toto, I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.” Dorothy Gale in L. Frank Baum’s “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” was quite disoriented when a tornado whisked her and her dog, Toto, out of their home in Kansas. Everything was different, and she had to find her…
Usually, I can pinpoint a cause for the challenges I face. I know exactly when, why, and how I broke my nose and ended up looking like a raccoon for more than two weeks. I wish I’d asked a responsible person to monitor the pool when I attempted a back…
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