Lorraine Miller:
CLASS OF 1955
Ocala High SchoolClass of 1955
Ocala, FL
University of Alabama - College of NursingClass of 1979
Huntsville, AL
Florida State UniversityClass of 1959
Tallahassee, FL
Belleview High SchoolClass of 1951
Belleview, FL
Berry CollegeClass of 1951
Mt. berry, GA
Lorraine's Story
Workplace , it never ends...no boundaries to work!
This is some compressed work history...In what way do you account for the REALLY hard work in life of being mother (to 3 girls and a boy) and keeping house and a home...being right hand to a wonderful husband who made my stay-at-home role comfortably possible!?? From working in the Capitol building photographing Confederate pension records for the Mormon geneaology records while studying at FSU, to re-entering the workforce at an electronics company keeping time-studies while earning a pilot's license, to going through University of Alabama/Huntsville, School of Nursing, working as accountkeeper and lab instructor, finally becoming a Registered Nurse (in surgery, Cardiac care and private duty/ICU.)..a path which led into a government jobs program and tech school classroom teaching, while doing ICU/CCU fill-in as a traveling nurse (some real stories there!)and finally, before quitting nursing to take care of family health in 1989, worked the local low-income clinic as its RN. In between helping care for grandkids during the health crisis years, I helped out in my husband's research/development business, not much free time there! My youngest daughter, now 46, has come far from having had a kidney transplant in 1989 and subsequent problems...she created a drama school in 2000 and until 2005 I taught art there on a regular basis, having originally quit nursing to be available for her and my grandaughter and over the years acting the chauffeur until her eyesight problems were resolved in 2003. These days she bops around in her mini-SUV tending to her school, and I work with Gill as needed, for the following reason: In 2006 Gill was diagnosed with stomach cancer, shortly after I had returned from a Classmates get-together in FL. A quick late-evening check-up prior to a business trip led to an accidental find while in the ER for c/o abdominal discomfort. That wonderful spry tiny woman who read the Xray was "unhappy" with a thickening, and so the wheels began turning for a very eventful ride...we are still on the roller coaster. Six months of chemo here at the Univ of Alabama 's Kirklin Clinic was in April followed by a complete gastrectomy/splenectomy, and then by another short course of chemo to end up the summer. While we had to deal with post-op complications they resolved quickly. However, the gastrectomy itself presents major problems of nutrition and so this winter we struggle with the food regimen, which means finding what all can be eaten and tolerated and yet provide sufficient calories/nutrition. It has not been easy, but 100% to be chosen over our alternative, which back in that awful summer was a declaration of "6 m0nths" by the Mayo doctors. Luckily the UAB doctors don't choose to act as gods, and promptly took us on board. It has been a rewarding time, and Gill has continued his work. We live in Birmingham now. with just visits back to Madison. It is for peace of mind that we stay: even though there is now no reason for Gill to be seeing a doctor frequently, there is always some possibility of a medical emergency , and all our doctors are here. As all know, time is of the essence when a bad medical problem appears suddenly, and a trip from Madison is 55 minutes longer than the 5 minutes from our condo here. Our son lives close by.
This is a quiet village , wooded and quaint, a good place to be if it can't be "home". We are content.
Our daughters in Texas and the grandkids have been visiting more often, so something can be said for getting in a bad way!! For those who wonder why such personal history is written, it is for sharing and to offer hope for future calamity: don't take a diagnosis at face value....today the medical communities struggle to contain costs and one way is to measure the probability of useful life when a bad condition can be treated or not. Mayo is much like an HMO in MN...we were bluntly told half the people Gill's age go home to die in hospice "with a better quality of life"...and I asked if that meant we were to go home and let Gill starve to death. So we were told we could find an oncologist at home...We did that, and we went to UAB because it is a star medical center...we were welcomed here. It turned out that Gill was not on Mayo's probability curve for wasted medical dollars. Lesson: don't give up fighting until the time comes when you know you can stop, but let it be your own moment. Carry on!!
ADDENDUM July 20 2015
The old life ended April 6 2008 when Gill passed away having struggled against a massive infection given him thru the cheerful effort of an RN who effectively killed him in front of me by using her filthy unwashed fingers to reposition an indwelling blood cath...when I burst out "my god you have just contaminated him" she turned with a laugh and said " don't worry...they coat these catheters with silver now and bacteria can't grow on them"....he spiked fevers within one day and then 2 months of a 5-antibiotics regimen could not save him. The only...Expand for more
thing to bear in mind is that nurses are likely to be stupid regardless of manual skills. And those cannot be removed from caregiving anymore than incompetent classroom educators can be removed...in fact that may be why there are so many incompetent nurses now ! And just over 7 years later I mourn the death on May 4, 2015 of my baby girl Kate who struggled with Juvenile Diabetes for over 43 of her 53 years of life on this earth. Yet she too died from massive hospital gained infection, toxic shock syndrome undiagnosed and untreated for a week, after a minor routine surgery in our local hospital, which is known as a cesspool of infection but much admired for cost containment. The multi organ destruction led to 3 years of a bedridden life , subject to in home daily dialysis, oxygen dependence...periodic hospital stays until the last event of pulmonary embolism...a 24 hour struggle to live with minimal intervention because the hospital must consider cost containment...except when Druggies come in overdosed or when they drop preterm no daddy babies for $M saves
in the NICU....these years have had a major effect on my view of medical care in America ( indeed in many western countries). Like the 150+ year old education system's approach to schooling, not much changed, just substituting computers for pencils...medicine is using the same old scrambled inefficient format for providing care...it is still the same old basic pattern....but that is the result of the continuous Parasite Bureaucracy which is the format for our society's maintainance. I hope the next couple of generations will evolve a useful humane design for our America, bolstering our Constitution and restoring value to human life.
BTW I wonder why our workforce is not a contributing value to the GDP, meaning if the workforce is mostly skilled and educated the GDP would be worth more than if the workforce , despite its great number of workers, if it has poor skills and education would bring the GDP down. ...which is realistic!!
2018...June 15 : Am currently in Atlanta Georgia , in a historic district cslled Iinman Park but kind of Hippietown...lots of young cool folk...every one has a dog to walk...I have three but we do not go walk...the backyard of my house is good enough !! It has been now exactly a year , being invited to move here by son Kurt who saw how complicated things can get when a single aging parent lives 4 hours away and undergoes emergency surgery....I had such, a cholecystectomy due to one giant gall stone which locked within the bile duct , the back up finally causing me to turn into a golden girl...my son in law dropped by , looked at me and exclaimed "you are yellow!! "...and took me to ER since there was some pain under the right shoulder blade...very surprising to get the diagnosis...at age 80!! Surgery was a breeze , 4 small snips into the belly , but weakness persisted post op for at least 4 months...it has been diet changes on top of having to work around a discovered awful carrageenan reaction all that previous year...those symptoms of wheezing, shakiness , an hours-long doubled heart rate and a few bouts of watery stools during those hours ...those had been called "panic attacks"...the troublesome hesrt rste resolved after the 3rd or 4th stool , which was odd....but the overnite ER visit after 12 hours at home of unremitting symptoms brought out the cause....Texas daughter , surgeon's wife told me on my drive home from ER to eat a white diet...rice, milk, eggs, boiled chicken , starch veggies , no gluten or caffeine...and add food one item at a time....I had no more such attacks for an entire week , after several years of attacks of increasing frequency and duration , into that last 24 hour event ending at the ER...they gave zero treatment , only a monitor EKG...no med , NO diagnosis !! It is my daughter who has saved my life....at the end of that week of freedom I shopped and bought some gluten-free rice crackers....one handful and 2 hours later a12 hour bout of all symptoms began...nothing having been different all day , I checked ingredients and a strange one , carrageenan , was there....so I figured that may be it after reading the blogs about severe reaction to that nonsoluble fiber.. I found reading labels is no safe way ..the next month having cooked Kroger chicken , another long bad reaction...turns out Kroger uses carrageenan in a raw chicken soak for packaging....now I call the makers of a new food first !! Why? Because the FDA has a rule set that allows not mentioning ingredients which do not affect our body but only make the food look or feel better , hold its consistency etc. And all nutrition shakes have it , even for kids...juices , milk prodicts , gluten free items , cheese products , on and on...bad gut problems ? I push for this white diet , minimum for a week to a month...no one need starve in a week , but a food allergy may be discovered....I hope this sad long tale can help some one...I am now on a soapbox...
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