Gail's Blog

My BIG MEDICAL MESS was about this:  I had my hip replaced in Georgetown Hospital, and they kept me one night, shifting me to I NOVA Fairfax, Telemetry Unit, which was my home hospital. There they found a pulmonary embolism, started pumping me with blood thinners (Heparin, to be specific) and found that my hemoglobin was dropping like a stone. The trick was to thin my blood without driving me into hemorrhagic shock. In spite of their efforts, I fell into it, anyway. INOVA Fairfax they saved my life again. The first time was almost three years ago when they brought me out of cardiogenic shock , something people survive 50% of the time. Both times I was a guest in CICU, or Cardio Intensive Care. The hip was still in "screaming pain", as my friend, Jeanne calls it from experience, but after they allowed me out of bed (I did get really good at bedpans), and I had physical therapy, which is God's gift to all of us, I was finally transferred to a state-of-the-art intensive re

  I am two years, five months out of my heart transplant. My life is far different than it was before. At first I found things to do, driving to have lunch with friends, going to pick up my sweet grandson from child care once a week for a "date". Going to the gym to see my trainer, working hard. Realizing that getting back in shape would be more of a stretch than it was getting there in the first place!  This was pure bliss. Then there was COVID. I could go outside, but couldn't drive anywhere that ended up inside, like the Safeway, Sherwood Hall Library, or to my daughter's house. The only place I went was to the transplant center, and that was a big outing! During that time, I fainted several times, once outside my house. Standing on the driveway, I thought I was at a delightful garden party, until I hit the pavement. A woman was walking past our house. I could see her alarm, then hesitation about coming over to help. She had on a mask, and I didn't. Even when a

Along the two miles of boardwalk along the Atlantic Ocean in Spring Lake, N.J. are visible reminders of the power of government work projects in hard times. The WPA put artists to work as well as construction workers. This tile is one of several still lining the brick walls along the boardwalk near the snack pavillions in Spring Lake, which were carved by artists employed by the Works Projects Administration. The tiles represent the style of the time, simple, strong and direct. It reflects the spirit of the people who worked for WPA. WPA was initiated by Franklyn Delano Roosevelt to put jobless Americans back to work, and its scope was far greater than anything we've seen since. The Federal Theatre Project put playwrites, actors, directors and stagehands back to work. The photographers employed by the WPA fanned out across the nation to document the lives of our people in their struggles and strengths. Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans were just two of the photographers who allowed t