Joe Reeder:
CLASS OF 1983
Southern Columbia Area High SchoolClass of 1983
Catawissa, PA
Catawissa High SchoolClass of 1977
Catawissa, PA
Joe's Story
--------Life in Jackson -------
Hey Guys, I'm down here in the South in a small city of 80,000 people in Jackson TN, which is about 60 miles east of Memphis and 120 miles west of Nashville. My wife Harmony and I have been living here for 3 years and we have some close friends that we worked with in Saipan that live in town. We are members of Northside Assembly, which is a conservative Pentecostal church, compared to some of the other Pentecostal churches in the area. Harmony and I are involved in Children's Ministry at the church and teach 4-5 years old Sunday school class of about 15 children. We bought our first home after moving here which is a brick 3-bedroom ranch style home with a large Magnolia tree in front. At this time, we have no children, but we are God-parents of our best friends' children, and we love and cherish them as if they were our own.
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-----Harmony in Heaven ------
On May 30, 2008 my wife Harmony went home to be with the Lord. About Harmony's passing, the week before we got to spend Memorial Day weekend in San Francisco with some of her Philippino classmates who live there. We had a great time and I will have a lifetime of memories. Harmony had Lupus SLE (worst kind) for ten years and did undergo treatment while living in Buffalo NY. There is no cure, only drugs to slow down the progress of the disease. One of the most commonly used is Methotrexate (a chemotherapy drug) which can cause miscarriages or infertility, so Harmony never tried the drug. Harmony was treated with prednisone, but caused her to swell up and gain some weight. We new that her disease could be fatal (renal failure is common) but not realize it affected her cardiopulmonary system.
After she passed, I did find out that Pulmonary Hypertension (restriction of blood flowing from Pulmonary Artery through the lungs and out the pulmonary veins where 02 & CO2 gas exchange takes place) was also a disease that could result from Lupus SLE. She may have had the PH for several years and not know it. Harmony flew from here in April with some friends to NY City and when they were walking around she got tired easily with shortnesss of breath. Then she flew from NY to Las Vegas to have her 20th class reunion with her Philippino classmates that live here in the States.
About 6 weeks later we flew to San Francisco and she did get short winded walking in Chinatown and was ok on our return until we had a layover in Denver. In Denver she had a hard time breathing, probably respitory failure and was very exhausted upon returning. One of the paramedics here thought she may had a "PE" pumonary emboli which is a clot that breaks lose and goes to the lungs. With her making several flights, the change in cabin pressure may have caused it to break lose and move around and when we got to Denver the clot nearly cutoff her blood supply to her lungs.
The day after returning home Harmony went to the ER with Tachycardia (fast heart rate of 145) which was due to right ventricular failure and the left side of the heart was beating 2x faster to make up for it. The following day the Cardiologist gave her some meds to lower her heart rate and there was no responce. A half hour later she went into Pulmonary & Cardiac arrest and took one hour to bring her back. They put her into CCU and put a temp. pacemaker on her to keep her heart stable. Later they LifeFlighted her to Vanderbilt University Hospital in Nashville for a specialist to see her. After we got to Vandy Hospital, I was informed that she had crashed 2 more times and the Dr. asked me to sign a DNR as they did determine she was brain dead as she never regained consciousness after her first Cardiac arrest. I was with her 2.5 hours before she passed away.
If she had know before that her condition was so bad, she would have never wanted to travel in the past year. With Lupus SLE patients Pulmonary Hypertension is fatal and the only possible treatment is a Heart & Lung transplant. I feel the Lord protected her from knowing that she was dying. She did get to spend a few weeks last summer...Expand for more
with her family when they visited us from the Philippines. Harmony and I got to travel and do alot in our 9 years together :)
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------How we met --------
I met my wife Harmony on a little Island called Saipan in the West Pacific Ocean. Saipan is about 60 miles north of Guam (you may need to ask Mr. Jones where that is) and if you ever saw the movie Wind Talkers staring Nicolas Cage, was about the invasion of Saipan during WWII. Nearby is Tinian (where the Enola Gay took off to drop the A Bomb on Japan). Ten months after finding my wife Harmony Castillo Reeder, who's a beautiful Filipina, we had a beautiful wedding in the Philippines on June 6, 2000. While we lived in Saipan we were Missionaries at Grace Christian Academy, which is a K-12 school. I worked as a Library Assistant and Harmony was a K5 and Elementary Drama Teacher.
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---------My current goals -------
I recently finished my training for Emergency Medical Dispatcher, which is part of the EMT program that I'm taking. I passed the State EMS exam for Dispatcher and got my Tenn. EMD Certification (woohoo!). I have applied for a Dispatcher position with our local EMS at a nearby Medical Center. I'm currently working towards my State Certification of EMT-IV (intravenous, intermediate level), which means I get to stick needles and catheters into people. Ever since I was a teenager (loved watching MASH & Emergency) I wanted to become a Paramedic or EMT and even joined the Army after high school to become a Medic, but due to medical reasons was unable to complete training. Over the years whenever I encountered a Motor Vehicle accident or a pedestrian being hit, I would stop to assist in any way that I could. I just never pursued my dream until a year ago when a Hospital employee was crossing the street in front of our local Medical Center while I was getting gas at a convenience store across the street when he was struck by a SUV. I then ran to assist him by calling EMS and holding him steady until Paramedics arrived. A friend of mine told me I should look into pursuing a career in EMS and then realized that Jackson State offered the program. Now I am pursuing my life dream.
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------Recently ------
This past January I was involved in a car accident when I was going through an intersection of a local By-pass highway when an oncoming truck had made an illegal left turn in front me. Not seeing the truck as it was early dawn and unsure if his headlight were on, I t-boned his passenger side at 60 miles/hr. I was driving a PT Cruiser which was totaled, I must have blacked out on impact because I don't recall the accident. All I remember was entering the intersection and next thing I was sitting on the shoulder of the road with a shattered windshield, airbags deployed, and having chest pain. An ambulance was entering that intersection only minutes after the accident and stopped to assist me. Uniquely the crew on the ambulance I had known from doing my clinicals for my EMT class. I told them after they had extricated me and placed me in C-spine control on a Long Spine Board (EMS jargon) that it's not fair that I'm on the patient's side of the scene and that I should be on their side. They told me that this could help be a better EMT as I have experienced a patient's perspective. Fortunately my only injuries were a torn ACL when my knee hit the steering column, 3 fractured ribs, and severe bruising of the chest from the seatbelt. I was laid up for 2 months for recovery and physical therapy and now I am back to my old self.
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---------Most Recent -----------
I always wanted to be a Paramedic when I grew up. My family and friends thought that was a great idea. As it turns out, they were somewhat right. I am currently licensed as an EMT-IV (intravenous therapy) in Tennessee and employed part-time with Gibson County EMS. I enjoy caring for & treating people in need.
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