Résumé of a Full Time Mother

I passed my test!  Halleluiah!  Now, in order to apply to an aid program, I have to develop my résumé.  How do you write a resume when you haven’t had paying work in over 2 decades?  What have I done that would demonstrate my fitness for a position?  I’m raising three wonderful sons; does that count?  How do you quantify that? 

It would be nice if anyone reading a résumé would know how much of the experience of parenting can be translated to success in the working world.  My mother-in-law, a champion of full-time mothers, is fond of listing all the job titles of motherhood:  director of consumer affairs, secretary of education, chief of health care, financial affairs minister, judge, mediator, and advocate, and, I would add, kisser of booboos, instiller of values and keeper of the peace.  Yes, all of those come into play as mothers juggle the endless needs of their children with everything else that goes into creating a loving and functional home.

But just in case, I guess I’ll have to throw in some of those extra things that show my leadership or managerial skills, like sitting on boards and heading up fundraising efforts that raised about $100,000 (twice) for my kids’ school, or coaching recreational soccer.  Or I could list things like the fact that I'm good at communication, can speak French, and can operate a computer.

Toby offered to be listed as a reference:  “Yes, she raised us very well,” he’d attest.  He recently reminded me that I somehow managed to let them get away with two desserts when they were little, calling the milkshake right after dinner “dessert” and the one right before bed “bedtime snack,” for which I seem to have become a sort of folk hero mom to them.

I introduced them to Bob Dylan and Dire Straits.  I let them choose the music while riding in the car and even came to enjoy most of it, even if I did often hit the dial to change from Live 105 to acoustic 92 as soon as they got out at school.  I probably let them watch too much TV, but always insisted on appropriate content.  We held back on movie ratings, often not letting them see certain movies even if they had attained the designated age, while many of their friends were allowed to watch movies rated well beyond their ages.  The years as the boys grew from PG to PG-13 to R were a constant refrain of “But Mom, all the other kids’ parents let them watch those movies!”  We were pretty lame for that, but we held firm, much to their disgruntlement.

When video and computer games started becoming popular, we let them have them only at Bill’s office, so that we wouldn’t have to police their use of them at home, and to give them something exclusive to do when they hung out with Dad while he was working.  A decade later, with electronics so thoroughly permeating their lives, we still try to limit content and time.  But recently Toby and Reed have taken off with Starcraft, playing until the wee hours of the morning. I see this as a good thing, though, a fun means of brotherly bonding, bridging the 6 years between the eldest and youngest before Toby heads back to college:  Toby and Reed against the world.

My sons have spent a fair amount of time in the kitchen. I taught them to bake cookies and exposed them to the delicious pleasure of tasting the dough.  I ensured that they committed to memory the recipe for real rice krispy treats, the original Chocolate Scotcheroos from the Rice Krispy box made with peanut butter and corn syrup, not marshmallow cream, and the exquisite topping of chocolate and butterscotch chips melted together.

Sean and his high school friends, instead of going out and getting in trouble, have bake-offs, vying for the honor of the most delectable apple pie, or the best use of fresh blackberries from the back yard.

I have produced a trio of creative and enthusiastic chefs, capable turning out delicious entrées, barbeque, and baked goods. However, this is the result not of tireless instruction in the kitchen, but rather my frequent failure to get dinner on the table at all, causing them to fend for themselves.  If only I had known what a favor I was doing all those years, what a clever strategy I was putting into play, I wouldn’t have felt so guilty.  These days, however, I can revel in the sweetest phrase to come from a child’s lips:  “Mom, dinner’s ready!”

The Board Exam Looms

I take the NPTE in a couple of days, and I am not as confident as I would like to be.  I’ve learned a lot and taken four practice exams, but each exam throws out things I haven’t studied.  I guess they can’t cover every scenario in the big review book.  I just hope these practice exams have exposed me to enough to pass the real thing.

I’ve been a little surprised at myself all along for “going public” with my dream from the beginning.  Usually, if I have a goal and I don’t know if I can accomplish it, I keep it quiet as I work toward it, so that I won’t be embarrassed if I don’t succeed, or change my mind and decide not to go for it.  This time, though, as soon as I was seized by the notion of reviving my license and going to Haiti, I put it out there.  I’m not sure why, but I think it is because the idea seemed so fitting that I saw it as a foregone conclusion.  I also wanted to pressure myself to keep at it, in case my resolve wavered.  Plus, I am getting lots of support from all of you!

So, here I am at the brink of the Big Test.  Will I pass?  I think I will, but I might not.  I have no buffer zone, as my results so far are just passing.  And if I don’t pass?  I will be seriously bummed.  But I will carry on, because Haiti needs me anyway.  And I can try again.

My Heroes

This patient population is a dream clientele.  They are pre-selected, by temperament, choice, and training, to be hardworking, compliant, and respectful.  They don’t complain.  They are determined to get on with their lives, whether that means returning to their posts or moving on.  These qualities, along with the fact that they were willing to sacrifice for our freedom, makes it an honor to work with them.

The sailor who was injured on his Harley was telling a comrade that the main problem he’d have getting back on his ship is pain management, because no one can be on narcotic pain meds while serving.  But he said that, from his commander to his therapist, everyone was willing to facilitate his return to duty, and that seems to be his goal.

A soldier, who lost his right leg below the knee and had severe fractures with external fixation on the left leg, had been an Army corpsman, or medic.  As for returning to duty, he told me he was “closing that chapter.”  He just signed up for classes through the GI Bill to start working towards a psychology degree, because he likes to talk and listen to people and wants to “help people who have been through what I’ve been through.”

Another young man, “Benton,” is from Belize but was injured serving in the American military.  He has an above knee amputation on the left and a large area of skin grafting on his right foot.  For him, as for many with IED injuries, the rehab for the salvaged leg will be more complex and long-term than the adjustment to the prosthesis.  Still, it is usually more functional and less energy-consuming to walk with a rehabilitated, intact limb than with a prosthesis, so that's why they work so hard to save them.

Benton charmed with his quiet manner, wide smile, and mischevious humor.  He had been a teacher, working with children from first to eighth grades, before joining the service.  He is also very determined.  When he had only done a couple of days of walking in the parallel bars with his new leg, he really, really wanted to take it with him overnight (most of the clients live in rooms in another building on the base during their rehab).  He managed to cajole his therapist to allow this, insisting that he wouldn’t wear it for too long and would be careful to note any pressure areas on his skin.  He left the PT department that day with his prosthetic limb tucked beside him in his wheelchair, the above-knee socket draped over his shoulder and a big smile on his face.

At one point when I told Benton what I was hoping to do in Haiti, he responded in his quiet Caribbean lilt, “You’ll do it.  I can see it in your face.”  Imagine, this young man encouraging me!  Benton, you’ll do it too, whatever it is.  I can see it in your heart.

The Admiral Visits

On July 1, the 5C PT department received a visit from a VIP, an admiral with an entourage that included his wife and half a dozen uniformed personnel.  The admiral was there to show his concern for injured military members, whether or not their injuries were sustained in battle.  His demeanor was equally sincere with the sailor who suffered an incomplete spinal cord injury from a rocket propelled grenade as with the one who got his foot mangled when, as he explained to the admiral, “I was T-boned on my Harley, sir.”  And if the admiral noticed this sailor’s t-shirt touting the Chicken Ranch brothel in Las Vegas, he didn’t show it, pressing a medallion in the man’s palm as he shook his hand.

Afterwards, I Googled Admiral Robert Willard, and learned from Wikipedia that he is Commander of the US Pacific Command. “He is responsible for the world’s largest fleet command, encompassing 100 million square miles and more than 170 ships and submarines, 1,300 aircraft, and 122,000 Sailors, Reservists and civilians…he is the supreme military authority for the various branches of the Armed Forces of the United States serving within its area of responsibility… only the President of the United States, who is Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, and the Secretary of Defense advised by the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) have greater authority.”  Well, OK, then! 

First Day at NMCSD

My first day went fine - I jumped through all the hoops to get on base, cleared through security, briefed on regulations, and photo-badged, all on time.

In Casualty Care PT, I saw several young men with unilateral and bilateral amputations.  In most cases, there is major involvement of both limbs due to the mechanism of injury.  The first person I saw was injured at the end of April in Afghanistan by an IED, resulting in bilateral trans-tibial amputations - unfortunately, a seemingly classic scenario.  He was a very nice guy.  I started by asking him about his workout (he was doing mat exercises on his own) and he just started talking - he has 3 sons, he can't wait to see them, as he hasn't since he deployed in February, and the military is working on getting his family transferred out here.  He was at Walter Reed earlier and was treated like royalty - lots of celebrity visits (military bigwigs, including General McChrystal, visited him).  His wife is with him, and he's pretty independent with a wheelchair, but is just getting started with his prostheses.  I hope to see him each day.

There's lots of new, computerized equipment that I've never seen before, and I got to observe a gait evaluation in the Gait Lab.  There are 12 cameras mounted around the ceiling perimeter of a large room, in which the volume has been calibrated.  Small reflective balls are placed over all the significant joints of the person, just like the motion capture technique you've probably seen on TV.  There are force plates in the floor that capture step forces.  The images are converted to a complex stick figure and graphs to analyze different motions.  Very cool.  Plus, this particular individual, a young woman who is a dependent of a military member (hence able to be seen at this facility) with a congenital deformity and a new prosthesis, had her 8-month-old baby girl with her who needed feeding, and guess who had open arms?  Yay, baby fix!

I'm pretty independent - there is no hand-holding or leading me around, but they welcome me to observe and ask questions.  It will be up to me to seek out opportunities, so I have to be bold and speak up!

Because I Asked

Book-learning and practice tests are one thing; actually knowing what to do in a PT setting is another.  I needed a way to get some hands-on review and training, but I couldn’t find courses by searching online that might serve my needs.

When I took the review course last February for the PT board exam, the instructor, Ed Kane, saw that I had graduated from the same program from which he had, at Duke, and we had a nice chat about people we both knew.  He had just seen my favorite professor and mentor from Duke, Pam Duncan, the previous weekend at a conference in San Diego.  That was a fun connection.

After the course concluded, I thought I’d ask him if he knew of any programs or courses that would help me get some amputee training.  I approached him and thanked him for the excellent course, and he acknowledged me, then moved on to the next person.  Darn.  Opportunity lost.  Or not… as I collected my things, I resolved to make myself approach him again with my question.  I knew I had to put myself out there to get to Haiti, and as a shy person, that isn’t that easy for me to do.  But I did go back and ask him.

He answered that he didn’t know of any courses, but “what you really need is a clinical experience.”  As a retired Navy captain, he mentioned that he knew “everyone” at the PT department at the Naval Medical Center in San Diego.  He told me to send him an email and he would get me hooked up.

Wow!  That would be awesome!  He had told the class that, because of advances in field trauma care, Combat Support Hospitals, and evacuation to the US Army and DOD-run Landsduhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, soldiers survive injuries today that would have killed them in earlier wars.  Consequently, the military hospitals have the most advanced amputee centers in the U.S., and one of the major such hospitals is the Naval Medical Center in San Diego.

If I could do some hands-on work in a setting like that, it would be a great learning experience.  Plus, I would have a chance to work with our injured soldiers, something that would be certain to be profound.

I did send Dr. Kane a message, and he did forward it to the then-chair of the PT department at NMCSD.  About 10 days later I heard from her that she had forwarded my note to the new director, with an optimistic mention that she thought we could work out some hours for me.  I didn’t hear any more for about a month and was about to write back when I heard from the director, asking me if I was “still interested” in an amputee clinical experience.  I assured him that I was!

His message included a string of emails to various other people to see if they could accommodate me.  It was humbling to see the communication that took place:  questions about how to handle my unique non-student status, about medico-legal concerns, about what needs to happen from a volunteer standpoint in order for me to be there.  They mentioned ideas about what experiences they could offer, such as prosthetics, gait lab, and even pediatrics.

Even the Director of Volunteer Services made special arrangements for me, guiding me to complete the volunteer requirements from afar and seeing me on my own for the orientation.  The process for becoming a volunteer at a military facility was almost as complex as my application for PT licensure.  I had to apply to the Armed Services YMCA, provide proof of a negative TB test, fill out a lengthy background check document, get fingerprinted, and finally get a photo ID badge from the office of the Military Police.

And now, here I am, in the midst of a cutting edge rehab department called Comprehensive Combat and Complex Casualty Care, or 5C PT for short, observing and helping hardworking soldiers overcome devastating injuries, a process that they are enduring for their country, for us, for me.

I am here because of the generosity of many people willing to help me get ready to help people in Haiti, but ultimately I am here for one remarkably simple reason:  because I asked.

One Family’s Devotion to Haiti

Guilaine Salomon and her brother Philippe were born in Haiti and are of Haitian heritage.  The children of diplomats, they lived there until Guilaine was 8, when the family moved to Latin America where their parents continued their diplomatic work.  Eventually they came to the U.S., and Philippe later returned to Haiti while Guilaine settled in Sonoma. 

With Haiti’s grinding poverty and social and political upheaval, Philippe was disheartened to witness the neglect of children in Port-au-Prince.  But one occurrence shook him to the core. Seven years ago, he saw a man leading a group of children, perhaps 7 to 13 years old, down the street.  They stopped at a car, where another man opened the trunk, and Philippe saw that it was full of guns.  Big guns.  These the men proceeded to hand out to the children.

At that moment, Philippe knew that if this was the destiny of Haiti’s children, he had to act.  So he did something he never dreamed he would do:  He started an orphanage.  “I had to get these children off of the street,” he said.  He had raised his own 10 children in a sturdy old one-story house in a large mango grove in Port-au-Prince.  It was quietly empty now, and Philippe thought, why not fill it with children again?  And so La Maison des Petits de Diquini (House of the Young Children of Diquini) was born.

* * *

In December, 2009, Guilaine, her husband, and her two teenaged daughters headed to Haiti after Christmas, loaded down with supplies from Costco ranging from toys to turkeys to take to the orphanage.  Guilaine worried about the frozen turkeys in their carry-on bags, as hard and heavy as bowling balls, getting detained by security or falling on someone’s head from the overhead bins, but the turkeys, and the passengers, made it safely to Port-au-Prince along with the family.

Guilaine and her daughters were gathered with the children and staff of the orphanage watching a James Bond movie on TV when the earthquake struck.  First came a distant thunder, then a massive shaking, then silence, then screams.  While those at the orphanage were not physically hurt and the building remained standing, it was only when Guilaine went outside and across the street towards the nearby Hôpital Adventiste de Diquini that the magnitude of the disaster began to set in.

Tumbled buildings, shocked and injured people, and devastation were all around.  And Guilaine did not know the fate of her husband, who had gone downtown before the earthquake.  Determined to maintain a calm demeanor for her daughters and the children, she hurried back to the orphanage and told staff to gather as many mangoes as they could from the grove out back to give to the people she knew would descend seeking help.

Thankfully, Guilaine’s husband showed up the next day, having walked back to the orphanage.  Philippe’s girlfriend and her 7-year-old daughter were pulled from the rubble of their apartment the next day as well, due only to the determination of a friend who insisted that people keep digging for them.

Haitian citizen rescuers assumed that officials would soon arrive to help with rescues and dispose of bodies, but there was no help forthcoming.  Philippe was among those who said, “We have to take them to the cemetery and bury them.”  Haitians anxiously awaited word over the radio from their government leaders, but there was silence.  There was no leadership at all from the devastated government, even though some of its members had survived.

* * *

Philippe came to Sonoma in April to attend a fundraiser for the orphanage and for another school sponsored by Sonoma’s Patty Westerbeke.  La Maison, with a capacity for 22 children, had only 11 in residence at the time of the earthquake.  Several months later, they are stretched with 35 children and counting.

Philippe shakes his head at his own audacity for even starting the orphanage, something for which he had no formal background and no particular forethought until that day with the guns.  Yet he has found his calling.  The children call him “Papa,” run to greet him with hugs, and follow him around the grounds like little ducks.  He is as determined as ever to give these children a home, an education, love, and a future of hope.

To learn more about La Maison des Petits de Diquini, and to help, visit http://www.wix.com/slim_839/diquini

The Leg Bone’s Connected to the…

I opened up my big Study Guide to the first page of review information and the first thing I found was Levers:  1^st Class, 2^nd Class, 3^rd Class.  OK, I get that.  Then the review quickly descended into minutia:  the bones of the wrist:  scaphoid, lunate, triquetrum, pisiform, trapezium, trapezoid, capitate, hamate.  Tendons that make up the rotator cuff of the shoulder:  supraspinatus, infaspinatus, teres minor, subscapularis.  What movements do these muscles cause?  Abduction, internal rotation, and external rotation, depending on the muscle.  I turned to my trusty Anatomy Coloring Book and started coloring, using my eyes, my hands, and prolonged attention to try to internalize these details.

I recently attended an excellent NPTE review course taught by, it turns out, a fellow Duke alum.  Ed Kane, PT, PhD, ECS, SCS, ATC (yes, he’s highly qualified) gave us not only factual information, but test-taking strategies and insight into the layers of knowledge and reasoning being tested.  The 5-hour, 250-question test is meant to ensure entry-level competence in PT, and requires roughly 75% correct answers to pass.  In the sample tests given during the seminar, I had about a 50% correct rate.  I think that’s not too bad for being 22 years out of practice!

Back home, I reached the review of special tests to distinguish certain musculoskeletal deficiencies, such as Yergason’s, Adson’s, and McMurray’s tests.  Surely they don’t expect one to know these tests by these random person names, do they?  Um, yep, they do.  Why can’t they call Yergason’s test the Bicipital Tendon Test, Adson’s the Shoulder Extension Thoracic Outlet Test, and McMurray’s the Meniscal Tear Test?  And disease names are worse:  Osgood-Schlatter’s disease?  Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease?  Come on!

I find it really annoying that I have to memorize a whole layer of irrelevant terms.  Yeah, it was great that you discovered these maladies, Messrs. Osgood, Schlatter, Charcot, Marie and Tooth (Tooth?), but I’m renaming your diseases to suit my limited memory capacity.  Osgood-Schlatter’s disease, a rupture of the growth plate at the tibial tubercle, is henceforth dubbed Not-good Tatters of the tibial epiphysis.  I’m calling Charcot-Marie-Tooth, an atrophy of the peroneal muscles of the lateral calf, “My leg, not my Tooth,” not to be confused with Legg-Calvé-Perth’s disease, the avascular necrosis of the femoral head (so I’d better be careful with my names).

Looking ahead in the 437 pages of densely organized outlines in my review guide is risky.  Realizing that I’ve got to learn about the endocrine and metabolic systems, or name all the cranial and spinal nerves and know what effect a lesion at any location will have, or know about descriptive and inferential statistics, is intimidating, and seeing the sheer volume of information can be overwhelming.  How can I possibly relearn all this stuff?  If I step back and fathom what I’m trying to do, I might abandon it all, deciding it’s too much.

And yet, after hours, days, and weeks of looking up terms (love my laptop!), hand-drawing or coloring anatomical structures, reviewing videos, and creating charts, I see that I am relearning it.  I get it!  I remember why I went into this field in the first place:  because I find it fascinating.  And I find something unexpected about studying it again:  it’s fun!  I rediscover amusing PT terms like “ipsilateral” and "homonymous hemianopsia" and muscles like the tenor fascia latae, that cute muscle at the upper outer thigh that you see in elite athletes like runners and gymnasts.

So now, when I look ahead to the remaining 300 or so pages in my guide, still feeling somewhat daunted, I also think, “Cool!  I’m going to know all this stuff when I’m done!”  (Or maybe 75% of it, anyway!)

A Sonoma Nurse's Experience in Haiti

I recently had the privilege of interviewing a Sonoma RN about his experience in Haiti just after the earthquake, and writing about it for the Sonoma Valley Sun.  The story ran on February 11, 2010 (http://3hmm.com/thesun/?p=15718) and is reprinted with permission.


Local RN Finds Vast Devastation in Haiti

When Steve Lombardi, a member of the San Francisco Bay Area Disaster Medical Assistance Team (DMAT), watched the news unfold of the disastrous earthquake in Haiti, he assured his fellow RNs in the ICU at Sonoma Valley Hospital that his team would not be going to Haiti because “the DMAT only responds to disasters in the U.S. and its territories.”

Yet, indicative of the unprecedented magnitude of the catastrophe, Lombardi received the automated call for a two-week deployment the next day, the first time his team has responded to an international emergency.

Lombardi, 57, has worked as an RN in the Intensive Care Unit and Emergency Room at Sonoma Valley Hospital for 15 years, and has been a member of the Bay Area’s DMAT CA-6 (being team #6 out of 11 in California) for 2 years. The DMAT is “a team of intermittent federal employees organized under the National Disaster Medical System (NDMS) to provide emergency medical care and to augment local medical capabilities during times of disaster,” according to its Web site, dmatca6.org.

Once on the ground in Haiti, smacked by the heat and humidity, Lombardi found that television coverage did not do justice to the vastness of the devastation. “The rubble of collapsed buildings extended as far as the eye could see,” he said.

Lombardi’s medical facility – a sort of Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (MASH) unit – consisted of a tent erected on the grounds of a golf club in Pétionville, near the helicopter landing zone where supplies were continually flown in. His unit was associated with the 82^nd Airborne, working alongside DMATs from New Jersey and Massachusetts.

Medical treatment primarily involved dressing changes and treating infections. Thankfully, there were two births and no fatalities. The type of care practiced was referred to as “treat and street,” where patients were treated, given food and water, and a note telling them when to return for further care. More serious cases were stabilized and evacuated. On their final day in Haiti the team treated its highest number of patients – 640.

Occasionally, strike teams would go out in Humvees and treat people literally on the street. While the strike teams were accompanied by members of the 82^nd Airborne for protection, “what they were mainly doing was crowd control,” Lombardi said. “At no time did we feel threatened.”

Despite the inevitable cries of pain, Lombardi found the Haitian people to be very calm and dignified. Children are used to being held, so “they would snuggle right into you – that was relaxing,” he said. Still, it was heart wrenching to witness the stoicism of a three-year-old boy who had lost two fingers hold up his little hand, ready for the painful dressing change that he knew he must endure.

As for accommodations, at night Lombardi and his colleagues would find a spot on the tennis court, unroll a sleeping bag, and cover up with mosquito netting. The millipedes crawling all over the sleeping bags went unnoticed by the second night. There were flush toilets and cold showers available at the American Embassy, but these always had lines. “Sometimes that meant taking your shower at 3 in the morning,” said Lombardi. Wet wipes were put to good use instead.

Lombardi’s workday began at 7 a.m. and continued to sundown, when the Haitians would return to their makeshift shelters. Trying to maintain some sense of normalcy in the midst of chaos, people could be found sweeping and cleaning their immediate surroundings, bathing in a bit of water flowing in the gutters, maintaining their dignity and attempting to carry on. “People who had nothing were very generous with what they had,” said Lombardi. “And they were very appreciative of our help.”

Lombardi made a heartening observation as he witnessed all of the international military support equipment from nations that may have been in conflict with each other, now stripped of their weapons of war and outfitted for humanitarian aid. “If we could have more of that, maybe we’ll be okay.”

Back to "School"

When I tell people I have a background in physical therapy, I mean it’s way in the background. I haven’t practiced in 22 years, having put my career on hold to answer a higher calling: raising my family. Furthermore, I let my license lapse over a decade ago. I wasn’t even sure if I’d ever go back into PT, feeling that writing, art and design, hobbies I’ve picked up over the years, would be more “fun.”

The disaster in Haiti, however, somehow brought the planets into alignment for me, not only with PT and French, and the timing in my life. Also coincident is the fact that I have developed my faith in the past few years, and I feel really excited about finding a way to do God’s work. I feel no hesitation in my potential to do something useful in this regard.

With my newfound inspiration, I got on the Internet to learn what it would take to get re-licensed. I quickly learned that I will need to sit for the physical therapy board exam again. No surprise there. The process to regain my license is a bit convoluted. It goes something like this:

• Study. A lot.

• Obtain proof of completion of an accredited PT program, Form P1E, from Duke

• Apply for license to the Physical Therapy Board of California (PTBC). Fee: $415

• Obtain from the PTBC authorization to sit for the PT Board Exam. This gives me a 60-day window in which to take the exam, so I need to time this application so that I’ll be ready for the exam within that window.

• Register with the Federation of State Boards of Physical Therapy (FSBPT) to take
a) The National Physical Therapy Exam (NPTE). Fee: $370
b) The California Law Exam, covering laws and regulations related to the practice of physical therapy in California (CLE). Fee: $30

• Schedule the exams through Pro Metric

• Obtain clearance through the Department of Justice and the FBI to be licensed, through Live Scan fingerprinting and criminal record check. This clearance is also only valid for 60 days, so the timing needs to fit with my PTBC license processing.  Fee: $51

• Pass the NPTE (!)

More Internet searching found a review course for the NPTE just a few weeks hence, taking place near my sister Shelly’s home near San Diego. I cleared timing with Shelly, registered for the class, and booked the air travel. First step done. Class fee: $350. Airfare: $147. I’m on my way.

Today is the First Day...

That familiar phrase “Today is the first day of the rest of your life” came true for me towards the end of January 2010. At my Small Group Bible Study on January 25, we were asked to identify our gifts. I came up with a desire to help people and the ability to write. But the catastrophic earthquake had hit Haiti on January 12, and I was consumed with the situation there.

I learned that the official language of Haiti is French. I read that, while there were at the time a lot of doctors converging on Haiti, there would be a continuing need for nurses and physical therapists. Hmm. French. Physical Therapy. Two skills I have that could be put to use as gifts to help in Haiti. My children are old enough to do without me for a few weeks at a time. I’m 50, a halfway point in a good, long life. So, is this the proverbial new beginning? I think it is.