Tag: MLabout

10 years

A good friend of mine totaled his car today, thankfully both him and his passenger are fine.

I then weirdly realized that today is the 10 year anniversary of my car accident in high school. It was devastating. I had had my license for 3 months and had been making payments on a NEW CAR THAT I WORKED ALL THROUGH HIGH SCHOOL TO BUY. This day back in 2000 was the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. We didn’t have classes, but we had mass (I went to a private catholic high school). I usually skipped days that were just mass, but since it was my senior year I figured I would go. I was making a left to park behind my high school and was hit by a mini van. I NEVER saw the mini van. Thankfully the front of my car took the damage and me and my passenger were fine. The car wasn’t totaled, but it had A LOT OF DAMAGE. After I got it back my mom wouldn’t let me drive to HS the rest of the year. I eventually had to sell my nice “new” (aka had the whole front of the car fixed) and ended up getting an older Jeep my sophomore year of college. I loved that Jeep and only cracked a tail light on it over 5 years! 

November was a shitty month this past decade. 2000 – Car Accident, 2001 – Grandma passes away, 2007 – Dad passes away.

THANKFULLY 2010 as a whole is a new slate and has been very good to me. I have high hopes for this decade. Big things are gonna happen.

Military Bingo

imagewbaw replied to your post: Compliments Like Whoa

you ARE hot though :O There, now you’ve gotten compliments from a marine and an army soldier guy 😛

Apparently I am popular with military men. I had Mr. Navy Lawyer in my grill last week, and compliments from a Marine and Army Soldier today. Oh and I once dated a guy in the Air Force. All I need is a guy in the Coast Guard to hit on me and I could win Military Bingo 😛

Missing you everyday Daddy: April 25, 1949 – November 18, 2007

My Dad was awesome. He is pretty much the reason why I am as awesome as I am. My Dad was born in Brooklyn and raised on Long Island in the same town I grew up in. He was the first in his family to graduate college (with a Art degree) and after being a hippie in Southern California he went back for a Masters in Education.

My Dad was an art teacher in a low income, minority school district and he LOVED IT. He spent his ENTIRE career there (33 years). After teaching for 20ish years he went on to administration. He was a middle school assistant principal for a number of years and a high school assistant principal for a number of years. They wanted him to be principal, but he didn’t want to deal with politics.

When I was in first grade my Dad started a Saturday enrichment program for K-12 students, he ran the program for 12 years. Some of my favorite childhood memories were from that program. My Dad also piloted a night school program within the school district so people could get their HS diplomas.

My Dad was a pretty big deal in the K-12 Education world. Even after he retired he couldn’t stay away. The last year of his life he was teaching in an education certificate program at a Dallas Community College.

My Dad was great at what he did. He was loved, feared and respected. I see so much of him in myself.

I should also mention that my Dad was and probably will forever be the funniest person I ever knew. He was witty, sarcastic, smart, quick, etc. Freakin’ hilarious. I thank him for my stellar sense of humor.

We both loved the beach, margarita swirls, Broadway musicals, slot machines, Law & Order: SVU, etc.

The last 3-4 years of his life I pretty much talked to him everyday, even multiple times a day. Since he was retired he was available to talk whenever. I generally would call him when I was walking to and from class in grad school. Even if it was just a few minutes we’d have a great chat. I can honestly say we were best friends.

When I think of my Dad the first thing that comes to mind is the laughter. It makes me sad that so many people in my life didn’t get to meet him or will never have the chance. He would have been such an awesome Grandfather, awesome.

I do still plan on dancing to “On the Street Where You Live” from My Fair Lady at my wedding one day. It was a song he always sang to me when I was little and we always talked about dancing to it at my wedding. I’m not quite sure who I’ll dance with, maybe my sister.

To close one of the readings at his funeral was from Ecclesistes 3:1 and I find this part so fitting:

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven…A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance…

Today is a time laugh and celebrate.

Love you Daddy!

***I need to scan these pictures, but for the sake of getting them on here I took pictures of the hard copy. Terrible I know

Dad’s gift to me

Warning: My Opinion on/Experience with Gastric Bypass

This week there has been some buzz about gastric bypass on here and I guess picking up where I left off last week when I was blogging about my dad.

He had the surgery at a private, outpatient hospital that pretty much only did gastric bypass and lapband surgery in Dallas. The surgery itself was OK, but the aftercare or LACK THERE OF was what lead to his death. His surgery was on Thursday, November 15, 2007 and he died Sunday, November 18, 2007 – there was ample time to save him. He essentially slowly bled internally to death.

He had the surgery Thursday morning and was supposed to be released Friday. I should mention I wasn’t at the hospital until after he died. He didn’t think I needed to be down there for the surgery, he had his friends that were going to take care of him after surgery. He downplayed everything and I truly regret not going to the hospital at any point in time and making demands – however I was naive to so much of the situation and blaming myself isn’t going to solve anything.

Anyway surgery was Thursday, he was supposed to be released Friday. Well his stats were low/not as strong as they should have been (medical jargon is not my strong suit). So the hospital decided to keep him another day. Well Saturday they were about to RELEASE HIM when one of his friends noticed that his incisions were STILL bleeding through the gauze and that my dad really shouldn’t go home like that. So they re-admitted/didn’t finish releasing him and he stayed in the hospital on Saturday. I talked to him both Thursday and Saturday and there was a MAJOR difference. It was scary, but he said it was just the meds that were making him sound so tired and weak. I will never forgot how his voice sounded. We talked briefly and told each other that we loved one another and how I was excited to come down on Tuesday and see him (I had been planning to come all along on Tuesday night to hang out with him before flying to NY on Wednesday for Thanksgiving that year). I had A LOT of trouble sleeping that night.

Sunday morning 6:30am my phone rings. I knew before I answered the phone that he was dead. I was devastated, I still am. My whole entire world forever changed.

A friend drives me the 2.5 hours to Dallas because I am in no condition to drive – I didn’t cry much, I was tooo in shock. I was just numb. I get to the hospital and meet up with my dad’s friends about 11am and to my HORROR he was still in his room (I did not see him, I didn’t want to see him like that). This JOKE of a hospital didn’t have a morgue or anything. They just left him there. :::BLIND RAGE:::

Here I am 24 years old and in charge. I am talking with all my family 1,000 miles away in NY and being the person making decisions about how to proceed. And I’m just SCREAMING at hospital staff. His “cause of death” from the coroner (WHO CALLS IN CAUSES OF DEATH OVER THE PHONE – IN TEXAS AT LEAST) was heart failure. UMMMMM yes generally EVERYONE’s cause of death is literally heart failure. You’re heart stops = you die. BUT WHAT LED TO THE HEART FAILURE. The Dallas coroner office refuses to do an autopsy so we decided to do our own private one in New York. FYI – an autopsy in the state of New York is about $18,000.

The funeral home in New York that we used (WHO WERE WONDERFUL) worked with another Dallas funeral home to get my dad to a morgue and get him flown to New York.

We come to find out that my dad’s true cause of death, was that he bled to death. He lost 2 LITERS OF BLOOD – that’s a whole soda bottle. He died slowly and to my understanding felt no pain, but it was COMPLETELY preventable. The sutures from the surgery weren’t properly closed up and initially all that needed to be done was go in and fix the problem. Even just a few hours before his death he could have been saved with a blood transfusion. BAYLOR FREAKIN HOSPITAL was less than a mile away. This joke of a private hospital that doesn’t have that type of equipment could have easily transferred him there. NEGLIGENCE in his aftercare.

Before you ask. Yes we tried to sue. However the state of Texas is a corrupt bag of shit thanks mostly to George W. Bush. I really don’t want to get started on lawsuit stuff. It was a terrible 2 year ordeal that honestly just left me extra angry with hospitals, doctors, lawyers and Texas.

My daddy didn’t need that surgery. My daddy didn’t need to die. Sadly he did, but I refuse to let my weight control my life. To quote a message I got from @milfitude a while back and saved:

Sometimes it takes the death of a loved one to wake us up. I consider that a lasting gift from my mother.

I found such comfort and hope in those words. And here I am 3 years later and in the best place in my life thus far. I thank my father for that lasting gift no matter how painful it’s been. I only wish he was here to see me now and the wonderful all-around person I am today.

Tomorrow I plan on celebrating my dad’s life on here. Today I will cry, but tomorrow I will celebrate and smile.

Picture from this game this weekend. I must say this is probably my new favorite picture of myself (especially how awesome my clavicle looks).

Seriously this weekend was great and I’ll blog about it more later, but in short I have never felt more desirable than I did this weekend.

Innnnnterestingly enough I wasn’t feeling Mr. Navy Lawyer despite his advances. However the gentleman I went out with yesterday from OKC I was feeling and he was digging me too.

I’m pretty much high on life right now.