Vacations From Vacations

Vacations are wonderful things - up to a point. Planning and looking forward to going on vacation can be exciting. The anticipation of the day coming for departure can be agonizing to wait for. Finally the day arrives, and you're off!

Vacation this year had been planned for Maggie Valley in the western mountains of North Carolina. Elaine and I were going to leave on September 29 and meander around until Monday, October 2. On that day we would move into the cabin we had rented (prepaid, non-refundable!) for 10 days. This was to be a sit and write and take short day trips vacation. No moving in and out of motels every day or so for us this year.

Before we could leave my house we got a phone call from my sister's boss - she had fallen and hurt her knee. They were on the way home from the hospital. I picked up her truck, and Elaine arrived. We cautioned Krissy to be careful, loaded Elaine's Trail Blazer with my stuff and headed out.

My mother was developing bronchitis, so I asked my two sisters to get her to the doctor for antibiotics - they didn't. Everything else seemed to be going smoothly. We stopped at Pigeon Forge for a couple of nights and checked into the cabin on Monday. Tuesday the 3rd I got a phone call from home. My mother's brother had died. The funeral was planned for Friday. I offered to fly home, but my mother said for me to stay put. Tuesday night Elaine got a phone call from home. Her mother had fallen on her face and given herself black eyes and a broken nose. Also on Tuesday another one of my sisters (there are 3 others besides me) had carpal tunnel surgery on her right hand. She did fine.

Enough, right? But no, it didn't stop there. Another phone call from my house on Thursday. My mother's youngest sister had been sent to the hospital. Saturday morning brought yet another phone call. A teacher friend I had worked with for 18 years was letting me know that her husband had just died.

The object had been to write. We were managing to work on a new book and a new food product we're developing during all this mess. I didn't get a chance to work on my individual work in progress, but that was okay.

Sunday came and went without any new tragedies. The rain came down steadily from Saturday night through Sunday. We attended church at the Maggie Valley United Methodist Church on Sunday, and then decided to try Mexican food in North Carolina. Bad idea. It usually is when Texans try to find Mexican food out of state. We eat Tex-Mex, and most other people cook true Mexican food. It is usually much more bland and doesn't fit the taste buds of Texans.

Oh, by the way, don't try barbecued beef brisket outside of Texas either. It's not a good thing. Pork and chicken might be alright, but not brisket. Too dry - too tough, and the sauce requires finagaling with in order to get the correct taste. We managed to mix a decent sauce when we ate at Butts on the Creek in Maggie Valley. It took combining the molasses version with a good bit of the honey mustard version and adding a big dash of the spicy vinegar sauce they had on the table in order to bring it to Texas standards.

Our plan for Monday was to drive up the Blue Ridge Parkway toward Deep Gap, North Carolina. The mission for the day - see the trees along the parkway, take lots of pictures and buy cheese curd (pounds of it) and fresh apples. The first part of our mission we would accomplish along the parkway, and the second (and most important part) was to get to Deep Gap and buy the cheese curd and apples. Those items alone would be worth the 300 mile round trip.

Elaine had gotten up, dressed and then woke me up. I showered and dressed as she cooked a little breakfast and packed the ice chest for the day. I ate quickly and grabbed the jelly, butter, etc., to put back in the refrigerator. She picked up the ice chest and started to the car. Before I could make it across the room with the stuff in my arms I heard the crash of the ice chest hitting the ground. I winced and asked, "You didn't fall, did you?" Elaine has a tendency to be just a little klutzy from time to time. Ask her sometime about falling down the side of the mountain in Arkansas when she was a teen.

As you can surmise, she slipped on a step and sat down really hard. Her right foot slipped forward, but her left foot hung behind her, knee bent completely back and a little twisted. She answered, "Uh, yeah," to my question. I dropped the food and went out the door. She had straightened out her knee and was rubbing her left ankle and trying to stand up. She managed to get to her feet and walked around for a few steps. She thought she might have sprained her ankle. Back up the stairs she went (there are about seven steps from ground to porch) into the cabin to take off her shoe, sock, and brace (yes, she already had a brace on her left foot/ankle). She rubbed some Aspercreme on her ankle and various other spots on her body that were smarting from the fall and put her shoe back on along with the brace. We got to the car to get gas and decide whether to go ahead with our trip or rest for the remainder of the day. Once in the Trail Blazer, me at the wheel since she was a little shaky, Elaine decided she'd better get her ankle checked out.

We had been on vacation in the area a couple of times before and stayed in the town of Waynesville about 6 - 7 miles from Maggie Valley. We knew where the hospital was, so we headed there. Elaine is an R.N. and the last place she wanted to visit on vacation was a hospital, but check it out we did. Nice people, but we'd rather not have met them, if you know what I mean. The doctor was cute but much too young for us. The nurse-tech turned out to be a retired nurse who had lived in Dallas for 20 years working in the area. The final diagnosis - hairline fracture of the outer leg bone just above the ankle!

The prescription - a "boot" up to her knee, crutches and no weight on the broken leg until she could get back to Texas and a doctor here. As I mentioned before, Elaine is not a ballerina and Grace is not her middle name (mine either!). I could see her trying to "hop" up the stairs to the cabin for the next three days and falling backward to the ground when trying to use the crutches. We talked it over, and I suggested a walker instead. We conferred with the nurses when they arrived; they agreed and supplied her with a walker.

After being released came the flurry of activity to fill pain meds and call work to let them know what had happened to her and to find the number of a doctor back home who accepted her insurance and had an open appointment for the next week. We did this while away from the cabin because we didn't have much "tower" for the cell phones in the cabin. Finally we got back to the cabin about 3:30. We started out at 9:15 that morning.

It is extremely difficult to carry things while using a walker. I was experienced. Oh, not for myself but by watching my mother on hers. Elaine had to use her walker as crutches and hop instead which increases the difficulty of carrying things. So the retired teacher, untrained except in minor first aid becomes the nurse to the nurse. Not a pretty sight, let me tell you.

Then the thought struck me. Elaine couldn't load the car. I'm slow due to being very overweight and out of shape. I commented on that and figured it would take a long time for me to get it all done. Elaine is much faster at packing the car. I did work out a plan so that she could help, but she just laughed at my suggestion. I had my backpack with me. I could move everything to the porch, drive the car to the edge of the porch, Elaine could get down the stairs to the ground and put on the empty backpack. I would fill up the backpack and she could hop over to the car and unload the backpack before coming back to the porch for another load. She laughed and refused. Can you believe it?

On Tuesday, after the broken leg incident, we tried once more for the Blue Ridge. It was gorgeous and cold. We took many rolls of pictures and made it to Deep Gap for cheese curd and apples. Along the way there was another phone call from my home. My mother's bronchitis had turned into pneumonia and the ambulance had taken her away to the hospital. In a way it was a relief. I had been more worried about her being at home and suffering. In the hospital she would get the medications and breathing treatments she needed to get well.

Wednesday brought more rain and packing. We had lots of dirty clothes, so I loaded them up and went to wash in the afternoon. On the way into Waynesville I passed a gasoline station we had been watching for over a week. The price kept going lower and lower. A few days before it dropped to $1.99 9/10! That day it had dipped to an all-time low (in recent history) of $1.97 9/10. I pulled in and filled up. I wasn't risking a rise while I was at the laundramat, no sir. I knew it might drop a bit lower, but I refused to wait. When I drove back by it was still at the same price, thank goodness.

I packed as much as I could Wednesday night and finished up Thursday morning. On the way out of town we took pictures of Maggie Valley and stopped to drop off the keys to the cabin and tell them to clean off the stairs before the next renters moved in and apply that slip resistant gritty "stuff" to the steps to keep someone else from slipping when the steps get wet. We hadn't reported the accident because a clause in the contract prevented Elaine from filing a claim for the cost of her injury. There is a little gray area in the contract, but we let it drop. Someone with a really good lawyer might win the point though.

The trip home was uneventful except for traffic delays in getting through Knoxville, due to construction, and again (same reason) in getting through Memphis the next morning. There was a positive point at the end of the day on Thursday. We checked into a motel, The Old English Inn in Jackson, TN and there were two, yes two, wheelchairs in the lobby for use by customers! A surprise for Elaine after a tiring day. She could ride to our room instead of hop. Oh, she could do some of the driving since it was her left leg that was broken, and that was a great help. And she made a record of NOT stopping to take bathroom breaks - too far to hop to the facilities often. McDonald's holds the record for being about the shortest distance from car to restroom in case you're interested.

All in all it was a good vacation. The weather was beautiful most of the time. The trees were blooming glorious shades of red, yellow, and orange. We got to see an expanding herd of elk near Maggie Valley. There was a quilt show the first week we were in Maggie Valley - perfect scheduling in my opinion. I found $115 in the cabin the first night we were there, but, sigh, turned it into the rental agency and never heard about it again. Someone had hidden it beneath the base of a pole lamp in my bedroom. I moved the lamp that night to place it beside the bed so I could read at night and not have to get out of bed to turn off the light. There was a wad of money staring up at me from the floor. I thought it was fake at first. We laughed a lot at the weird situations cropping up almost daily. We made it home with 8 1/2 pounds of cheese curd and about 20 pounds of fresh apples and 10 pounds of fresh oranges.

My mother got home from the hospital on Monday of this week and is doing well. Elaine saw her doctor on Tuesday and was fitted with a hard cast so she could finally WALK again and go back to work next week. The film hasn't been developed yet because I forgot to take it with me to Wal-Mart when I picked up medicine for Moma on Monday, and I haven't been back since. My sister with the torn knee has an appointment next week with a specialist in Shreveport, so things are settling down.

Still, it has been a busy week since we got back. I haven't had time to take a vacation to get over my vacation, though. Maybe I can have some time to myself next week. Maybe.

kmparis