Category Archives: Family

Checking Out And Heading Out, Part 5

Posted on by
3

Img1654

(photo courtesy Leon Hammack)

Well Friday night,“the night from hell”, ended and transitioned into Saturday morning, the day I hoped to be checking out of this facility!

As the Sun started coming up over the horizon, the room activity increased with every minute.  First up on the agenda was take my blood pressure, pulse, temperature, and of course whip those sheets back and check out the ol groin and pubic region for a bruising check!  Everything must have delighted the new morning nurse, ’cause she too busted out into some tee-hee-hee’s and giggles!  I didn’t know that looking a bruise could be so humorous.

Once the new nurse gathered up her composure, she left my room and returned with breakfast.  I had forgotten just how unappealing hospital food could be until my tray was presented to me for my edification.  I will attempt to adequately describe the culinary delight to the best of my ability.

First off, the centerpiece of this breakfast was a heaping mound of egg-like material.  It appeared that the eggs were just barely cooked enough to coagulate into this mound.  Now my family will attest that I don’t eat eggs unless they are cooked for a while, like well done…PERIOD! Looking at this yellowish globular mound almost turned my stomach!  The sidekicks to the eggs was a bowl of cream of rice, which was very tasty, toast, orange juice, and two sausage links that were the consistency of glue when eaten.  Those two little dudes stuck to the enamel of my teeth, and hugged the base of my tongue like criminals avoiding a police manhunt!  Yummy was not the words that came to my mind after attempting to eat my breakfast!

The next few hours were spent awaiting the doctor’s arrival for a last minute check over and a release to go home.  That waiting period took until approximately 1:30pm.  At that time my surgeon, the Electro-Physiologist, strolled into my room totally apologetic about not getting to my room much earlier in the morning.  He said that he was filling in for 53 doctors in Fresno that day!

Once he gave me the “once over”, he signed the release orders.  Now all that was left was to get to get the IV needle out of my left forearm, go over all the releasing documents, and oh yeah removing that pesky little catheter that is still up into my bladder!  I can only imagine how thrilling this procedure is going to be for me!!  Yippe yo ki yeah get along little doggy!!

Now my nurse was a very nice young women, about the age of my two sons.  I am thinking to myself, this is not going to be a huge ball of fun.  More importantly, I am not sure what the procedure for my catheter removal is going to include, but I am reasonably sure it involves “hands on” maneuvers here!!

Now I must digress.  Just as a side note here, the only women that have ever touched me where this nurse was about to grab on to, drunk or sober, were women with which I have had an intimate relationship.  However my friends, I have now entered into an area whereby I have become totally unnerved, and completely uncomfortable!  Can someone please help me!  Can I have an AMEN?

Now that the time has come for that catheter to be removed, I am very nervous and extremely uncomfortable.  I ask her a couple of questions and I am feeling like it is time to “fish or cut the bait.” So she soothes my anxiety with some small talk, she says to take a  big breath in and then exhale, she will remove the catheter on the exhalation.  So I follow her instructions and out comes the catheter with a burning sensation! Yoweee!

Following the catheter removal, my nurse departs my room and gives me some “privacy” to get dressed.  I am thinking that this is a very odd situation.  She just was in a position to not only see all of me, but to grab a “handful”, in my case that Saturday morning was a very little handful, and remove the catheter.  Now she gives me some privacy to get dressed.  I am thinking that there has to be some irony in that scene!!

I get dressed and the hop into my classic, low tech, hallway cruiser and transporter.  Some of you may know it by its name in the previous century, the wheelchair.  Down the halls, into the elevator and out the front door to my waiting transportation to my sister’s house for some badly need sleep and recuperation!

I am checking out and heading out of here!

As the Sun sets in the west, I am taking off to new destinations.  Happy trails to you, until we meet again!

Cardiac Ablation, Part 4

Posted on by
2

The Friday night from Hell!

In Part 3, I left you with this thought; “You can NEVER rest in the hospital.”

Let me explore and expound upon this thought.

From the moment that I arrived back into my room, there were nurses coming and going about every 20 minutes,  They would come in and take my temperature, take my pulse, check my left groin, monitor the bruising that occurred there, check my catheter, and dump the fluid out of it as needed.

Now most of those activities are ok.   However, when the nurses check your catheter tube and its connections, that is somewhat degrading.  More emphatically, when they pull down the sheets and check the bruising that is in you left groin and pubic region, embarrassment doesn’t really cover the feeling very well.  Moreover, when the nurse is trying very hard not “to bust a gut” and break out laughing, demoralized comes close to how you feel! I know it is only the hospital, it shouldn’t bother you.  Oh yeah, right I forgot!

Anyway, I digress.  After four hours in surgery and three hours in the recovery room, I get to my room and all I want to do is grab some much needed sleep.  My family leaves my room about 9 pm, I am thinking that now I can get some rest and sleep this long day off.  I am not prescribed any pain medication everything in my mind tells me that with the door closed I can really get some good sleep!

Oh contrare my friend!

From 9 pm Friday night  until 1:20 am Saturday morning the nurses were in my room every 20 minutes taking my blood pressure, temperature, and checking right left groin and pubic region, keeping a close watch on the spreading bruise that I have there!  From 1:20 am until 3 am I was able to sleep uninterrupted, one whole hour and forty minutes!

The calm and quietness of my room ended at 3 am when the phlebotomist comes into my room, flips on the light switch, and announces that she has to draw some blood.  At 3 am they have to draw some of my blood, you really got to be sh#%!ing me? “Why 3 am, couldn’t this wait for a more civilized time, like say 7 or 8 am”, I inquired?  “No doctor’s orders,” was the response!   Dude!!! So out comes the foot long needle and she drew out, what seemed to be, a gallon of my beloved blood!

Now that this ordeal is over, surely I can sleep the rest of the morning?  Yeah right!  As the “Dracula Nurse” was leaving, in came the morning nurse to take my blood pressure, pulse, temperature, and she pulls back the covers to get a better look at the old groin and pubic area to check the status of my bruising again.  Dude !!

It is now about 3:30 am and this old boy is getting very tired of my hospital care!  I hoping that this is the last interruption so that I can at least get a couple of hours sleep before the sun rises.  Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, I was oh so wrong!  At 5 am the nurse once again enters the room and turns on the high intensity lights for another round of……..blood pressure, pulse, temperature,  additionally she gave me a pneumonia shot, and of course checking out my groin and pubic region for bruising!!

I was starting to feel paranoid. I think that the word was out and all the nursing staff had to cop a view!!  For sure I knew something was up when the nurses started bringing a magnifying glass with them when they entered my room!  Dude!!

Well so much for sleeping at night in the hospital.  There was nonstop interruptions throughout the night in my room! The high intensity lights in my room felt like searchlights each and every time the light switch was turned on!

It was truly the “Night From Hell”!

Stay tuned for checking out and going to my sister’s house in Part 5.

The Elecrto-Physiologist and My Heart, Part 3

Posted on by
4

Img3176

(photo courtesy Leon Hammack)

It was with Lynard Skynard’s “Free Bird” and this last thought that I ended the last article, Part 2:

The last thing that I remember were these words from the stereo system:

If I leave here tomorrow
Would you still remember me?
For I must be traveling on, now
‘Cause there’s too many places
I’ve got to see……….

Off to Happy Valley, USA I went……………………

“Mr. Hammack, wake up, wake up, the surgery is over!”

As rum-dumb and as groggy from all the anesthesia as I was, that was even better music to me ears than Lynard Skynard was to me some 4 1/2 hours previously!  The unknown was over.  None of the possible “side affects” seemed to have happened to me!  I can hear, I think that I can somehow slur an answer out.  So maybe no heart attack, looks like no stroke happened, and I am definitely alive!  YIPPEE!

As they rolled me out of that daunting surgery room, one of the surgical nurses told me that we will be rolling by my family and that they would stop briefly so I could say “hi” to them.  Yeah, right, like I could be coherent after being under the influence of  “the good stuff” for more than 4 hours!  However, I do remember stopping briefly at the waiting room, seeing adults that closely resembled my family, muttering brilliant verbiage that probably was totally undecipherable, but nevertheless undeniably brilliant!

Once in the recovery room, I could tell that there was some concern over my lack of recovery.  The recovery room nurse was hovering over my left leg, applying pressure to my groin area, and expressing concern that the bleeding will not stop there!  He was also making calls to the surgery room or the cardiac floor for assistance.  It was slow in coming, in fact I was in the recovery room for over three hours.  The normal recovery time is about an hour.

Needless to say, the stress that my family and friends were feeling was tremendous.  There were starting to be some frayed nerves precipitated from the lack of communication between the recovery room and the family waiting room.  Among my family and friends, there was this overwhelming felling that something was something definitely wrong, because I was so long in the recovery room.

On the other hand, I was horizontal in recovery kind of stuck in a holding pattern, like was arriving at JFK, ATL, SFO, or ORD (Chicago)!  And on top of it all, I didn’t really didn’t give a dang!  After all, I was still rocking in my head to some goooood Lynard Skynard that led me down the path to Happy Valley, USA!  Surely nothing could be going wrong.  Nevertheless, there was concern in the recovery room over my left groin bleeding.

After more than three hours in the recovery room, the nurses were able to get the bleeding in my left groin stopped, and with that accomplished I got to go to my hospital room.  Now the time is about 8pm Friday evening, 12 hours after I first signed into the hospital!  To say that this has turned into a very long day is a gross understatement to say the least!

As my family and friends assembled one at a time into my room there was noticed a collective sigh of relief that this procedure was now over for them, as well. They could see for themselves that I had made it through a very long, arduous, and intricate surgery, in turn making their Friday a very long and anxious ordeal!

From my standpoint, it was a welcomed relief to be back in my hospital room, seeing my family and friends, knowing that all of worst was behind me.  However, for those of you who have stays in the hospital for any length of time, arriving back in your room is only the beginning of what is in store for the patient!  You can NEVER rest in the hospital.

Stay tuned for the “Friday night from Hell”, and Part 4!

The Electro-Physiologist, Part 2

Posted on by
6

When I last left you at the end of “My Date With The Electro-Physiologist, Part 1″, I had thrown out the idea that I was having a “helmet fire” as they were rolling me out of my cubicle and down the L-O-N-G hallway to the elevator.

For those of you who are have a difficult time comprehending the concept of having a “helmet fire”, I will try to help you understand that concept of feeling.  A “helmet fire” has no conscience or internal clock, it can happen at any time, at any place!  But my “helmet fire” was occurring on the gurney, on the L-O-N-G hallway to the elevators.  It was happening as I was leaving my family and friends for, what I perceived, could be the very last time!  The fear of the unknown that lay ahead of me at the end of the gurney ride, the thought that something could happen during the four hour procedure of probing my heart, a heart attack, a stroke, and the worse side effect of this procedure……death, was causing my emotions and my intellectual thoughts to call each other out and begin an “old fashioned, blue collar, bar fight” inside my head!  It was  totally out of control!  That my friends, is just one example of what a “helmet fire” might be or feel like inside your brain!

However, by the time I had gotten into the surgery room, the “helmet fire police” had arrived inside my heard and arrested all those involved in the “helmet fire” and carted them off in the “paddywagon”!   But now the fear of the unknown had taken over and things got real serious.  The surgery nurses, both men, had arrived in the room.  Their first point of business was to gather up all the patches, probes, and the electrical connectors that was going to be used in this highly computerized and electrical exploration expedition into the sanctuary I call my heart.

It took them more than 30 minutes to put the required patches on my chest and back in the appropriate places, place the probes in the designated areas fore and aft, and then attach all the wires that would provide the vital information to the many computer screens that were above the surgery table.  During this “hook up” process  the nurses obviously noticed that I was shaking in my boots, even though the only thing that I had on was that “designer gown” I described in Part 1.

One of them asked me what kind of music that I like.  I replied that my music runs the gamut from Alabama, ZZ Top, Merle Haggard, The Beatles, The Eagles, Lynard Skynard, Brad Paisley, and many points in between!  “My music tastes might be called eclectic”, I added!  He replied that I would most likely enjoy what he was cranking up.  Well he was right, over the speakers came a little southern rock band from Jacksonville, FL that you all may have heard over the years…….Lynard Skynard singing “Sweet Home Alabama” followed up by “What’s Your Name, Little Girl”!

As this long, painstaking pre-surgery procedure was culminating and the team was ready to rock and roll, my doctor strolled in and greeted me with this phrase, “Good morning Captain how are you doing?  We are ready, how about you? ” I replied, obviously in a apprehensive sort of way, that I was indeed ready to get this over.  The anaesthetist had taken up his position next to my right arm, briefed me on what to expect, and set a mask on my face with the consoling words that this will start to relax you now, Captain.  He was right I could feel the soothing affects of the anesthesia, along with Lynard Skynard’s tune “Free Byrd” I was fading.

The last thing that I remember were these words from the stereo system:

If I leave here tomorrow
Would you still remember me?
For I must be traveling on, now
‘Cause there’s too many places
I’ve got to see

Off to Happy Valley, USA I went!

Stay tuned there is more to come in Part 3!

My Date With The Electro-Physiologist, Part 1

Posted on by
3

P1050305

(photo courtesy Leon Hammack)

July 9th, that was the day, and for many reasons a day that I will never forget!

What started out to be a typical summer Friday turned into anything but that.  I was told to report to the second floor, outpatient surgery, at 8am for pre-op and processing.

I make sure that I am at the hospital with about 15 minutes to spare so that I can find my designated place to register.  I got through the registration process reasonably quickly.  However, there were a few things that I found quite puzzling.  When I first get to the registration window and tell them who I am, they gave me a slip of paper. I look down at this piece of paper and I notice that I have been designated and relegated to known a patient N.  That is a little unnerving to know that I have been reduced to just one letter, “N”, until I finish registering.  So there you have it, I am now patient “N”!

Really is there that much concern that my privacy would be compromised or stolen at a hospital?  After all, in just a few hours I am going to “Butt Naked and Spread Eagle” up on surgery table for the whole world to see!!  Additionally, I am going to have TV cameras, work tools, and wires threaded up and into places that have never been open to any one or anything!  Having myself “Butt Naked”up on the surgery table is the kind of privacy I am really much more concerned about, rather than exposing my identity to others around me!  To me that was an exercise in nonsense.

Anyway, off I go now into my little cubicle for the finer part of this pre-op adventure.  To start with, I am instructed to get out of clothing and slip into that fine hospital floral patterned, backless, knee length, and I might add, with ties and snaps, designer gown! Man did I look great in this hospital contraption!

Next in this process is the part where you get the IV  inserted into your arm for the impending surgical process.  Sometimes it can feel like she/he is inserting a telephone pole into your veins.  However my “needle girl” was obviously skilled at searching out and inserting that seemingly footlong IV into my left forearm.  It was almost pain free!

It is approximately 8:45 am and now all the pre-op items have been accomplished!  It appears that I only now I only have about 1:15 to wait for the procedure to actually start.  Which, in my head, I am thinking that in about 30-45 minutes they will be rolling me out of this location and heading me towards my destiny meeting with the Electro-physiologist, the surgery room, and the medical technicians that will be assisting him in this 4 hour, inter-artery invasion into my beloved heart.

Now the clock is ticking.  I am keeping a very close watch on the clock that I can barely see at the nurse’s station through the skinny slit in the curtain dividers.  Ten o’clock  comes and goes, no gurney coming for me. Odd, I am thinking, the procedure was scheduled to begin promptly at 10 am!  Oh well they will be rolling into my small confines shortly, so I just hang out with the family.

It was 11:15 am before the bell rung for me!  It wasn’t a sense of panic that I felt, but there was some sembelence of “this could be more serious than I originally thought” running through my brain.  The NASCAR boys might equate this thought to, “he’s having a helmet fire” right now!!

Stay tuned for Part 2!

Father’s Day

Posted on by
Reply

2009 Daytona 500 073

(Working on my redneck at Daytona, 2010!)

The last few weeks have caused me to take pause and reflect on my 59 plus years.  We all do this from time to time, depending on the circumstances that revolve around our lives.

This past February I celebrated my last birthday that started with the number 5.  Since that birthday there have been some really significant twists and turns in my life.  ( The flight of UAL 27 on May 16, 2010 I will write about in a few days!)

It is the bumps, the dead-ends, and the turns of fate intertwined our lives take that will, from time to time, make us analyze where we have been and where we think that we are going in our life.  Additionally the birthdays, the Father’s Days, the anniversaries, and the birthdays of our children and grandchildren cause reflection as well.

So it is this Father’s day that has my twisted mind’s attention.

It didn’t seem too long ago that I was full of pride when my first born son came into this world.  Then in just four short years my second son came bouncing into the family.  Times were good and there was a long road that lay ahead of this, then, young Air Force pilot.

Back in those days the mirror reflected, what I perceived, to be the truth.  There in front of me in the mirror, staring back at me, was always this baby-faced, barely needed to shave, very lucky young man.  I would ponder what the future would hold for me and my family.  In my twenties and bullet-proof, I didn’t fully comprehend that the long road of life that lay before me really is a journey, not a “guided tour”!

The bumps, the grinds, divorce, the bankruptcy of my employer Eastern Air Lines, the loss of my job because of that bankruptcy, a few bad decisions along the way, and at least one very good decision (Karen), have guided me to this point in my life’s journey.  It is those experiences, like them or not, that make up part of “my life”. I took the cards that were dealt me, added a hit or two, then placed my wager, and played the hand!

Now that I have been on my life’s journey, and quite frankly most of it is behind me now, I can reflect back on many things.  Some of my journey I take great pride in, my two boys, finally having a good partner in life, being an Air Force  and airline pilot, and some things that I would just as soon forget!  Nevertheless, sometimes I still feel like I need to make a name for my self, even though nothing is going to change who I am!  But those times are far and few between these days.

Notwithstanding, when I look into that mirror these days, I realized the trouble with that mirror is that it doesn’t always tell the whole truth.  It doesn’t show what is deep inside or read between the lines!  It is only a reflection of the surface, not a true indication of who I am.  I have found out that there is a lot more to life than just meets the eye!  I must say that I have learned that lesson the hard way!

So with much self introspection, I have one thing to say to everyone that has followed along with me.  To all my friends, and most especially my family, I would like to thank you for riding along on my life’s journey!  It has not always been a smooth road, but nonetheless, it has been exciting and interesting!

I was a young pilot when I flew in on my wings, and I will be an old pilot when I am gone!

This video says it all!

…..And Then There Was Two!

Posted on by
4

Monday evening my sister and I had dinner with Steve Detjen and his lovely bride, Jennifer.  I was back in Fresno for my periodic cardiology appointment, also it was a time to visit with my friends and family.

It was just two weeks ago that I met with Steve Detjen, one of my old college buddies, to celebrate the life of our other good college buddy, Jerry Noblett, who had lost his battle to heart disease.  After the memorial service, we had decided to stay closer in contact with each other.

So I notified Steve that I would be in town at this time, it was agreed to meet for dinner at P.F. Chang’s on Monday at 6pm..

As my sister and I walked into the restaurant, the unmistaken profile of one Steve Detjen was observed at the bar waiting for our entrance, and I might add, sipping a cool beverage!  It had been since Jerry Noblett’s retirement party, 8 years previous, that my sister had seen Steve.

As we three sat at the bar sipping a cool one, waiting for Steve’s wife to join us, we caught up on things.  My sister and Steve caught up on old mutual friends that they both knew from the Madera P.D. and Fresno County Sheriffs Dept.  Within a few minutes Jennifer arrived and we adjourned to the restaurant for some food.

Once we all slipped into our booth, and the pleasantries and re-introductions were over, the four of us exchanged stories.  For me, being a Criminolgy major and a veteran of 1 1/2 years of law school, I was/am quite interested in what is like to hold court.  So I had, and still have, many questions for “her honor”!  Some of her responses and stories were quite enlightening, to say the least.  Jennifer is really a very nice, down to earth woman, quite funny, and a great conversationalist!  Obviously she is way too good for my old buddy, no offense Steve!!!!!!   LOL

Additionally Steve and I re-hashed a few of our most memorable “good times at California State University, Fresno” stories.  Some of them were still live-like in our minds  and conjured up deep laughs and giggles!  One in particular story would be the keystone of my college career, and I still have a very vivid picture in my mind of that event.  Unfortunately, now both my sister and my oldest son also have that same picture of their brother and father!!!  Can we say embarrassing?  Oh well it was the late 60′ and early 70′s, what can I say?

I had a really great evening telling stories about the old days, asking questions and catching up on all those years.  The realization that right before our very eyes we have gone from  a “wide eye innocent teenager ” to a senior citizen still boggles my mind!

Those were the good old days!

For those that really know me will know that I am forever linking life to music.  With the events of the last 3 weeks, it has made me re-live and old song by Bob Seger and The Silver Bullet Band , “Like A Rock”.  There is some lyrics that occur in the middle of the song that really hits close to home and goes like this:

Twenty years now, where’d they go?

Twenty years, I don’t know.

I sit and I wonder sometimes where they’ve gone.

And sometimes late at night,

oh, when I’m bathed in the firelight,

the moon comes calling in ghostly way and I recall,

I RECALL!

Like a rock

So there we were reminiscing over 40 years of lost time, I was wondering “where did the time go”?  Then, I RECALLED!!!

And then there was two!

So Long And Farewell, My Friend

Posted on by
12

(Jerry Dean Noblett)

It was the “summer of 1969″ that I met you in the that unforgettably hot gymnasium at Fresno State.  However, it was a cool late spring morning on May 24, 2010, that I said my final farewell to you, my friend.

Jerry, I know that you were watching from above and wondering what all the fuss was about?  Well, my friend, you touched many people during your visit here on Earth.  Your honesty, kindness, and sincerity was always evident.  Your presence cast a huge shadow among friends and family that can not erased.

You know I once heard a saying that has always stuck with me. It goes like this:

“It is not what you take with you when you leave this Earth, rather, it is what you leave on this Earth when you are gone.”

Jerry what you have left on this Earth as your legacy is your honesty, integrity, and courage.  Those three traits embodied what Jerry Dean Noblett was all about.  The courage was most definitely personified in the last few months of your life, battling heart and kidney disease.  Only your family know just how courageous you were.

For those of us that have had the privilege of knowing you and calling you their friend, we will forever miss you!

So I say, with a very empty and heavy heart, so long and farewell my friend.  I will miss you!

PS  Keep the pinnacle game ready for Detjen, Bomprezzi, and me, ok!

It Was The Summer Of 1969

Posted on by
23
Former Madera Chief of Police Jerry Dean Noblett
It was the summer of peace, love, and harmony, the year of Woodstock, it was the end of the summer of 1969.  I had just graduated from high school and I was moving on to start my college education at my home town college, Fresno State College later renamed California State University, Fresno.
I was busy scrambling trying to enroll into my very first semester of classes.  The freshmen were all in the school gym running between the different desks trying to get into the classes that they needed.  I was no different than the rest, a young uninformed 18 year old trying desperately to get my required classes.
As the frustrations mounted I was feeling hopelessly lost.  I felt this tap on my shoulder and when I turned around it was a fellow student to my dismay.  He starting joking about this registration fiasco and we both began to laugh.  He told me his name, Jerry Noblett, and introduced me to one of his friends, Steve Detjen.  They both went to school together in Madera, CA.
As it turned out all three of us were going to be Criminology majors.  Wow, what are the chances of meeting new friends and all three were going to study Criminology?
Through the four years at Fresno State, we were like “The Three Musketeers”!  We scheduled all our classes together, had lunch together, played pinnacle together,bowled together, and played pool together.  In 1971 I got married and both Jerry and Steve were groomsmen in my wedding.  The friendship was solid.
In June of 1973 I graduated and went into the US Air force to become a pilot.  Jerry went into law enforcement with the Madera Count Sheriffs Department, then on to the Madera Police Department.
Jerry spent more than 20 years with the Madera Police Department.  My buddy was a special person, it showed in the way his career unfolded and the way that he rose up through the ranks at the police department.  He ultimately rose to the position of Madera Chief of Police, quite a prestigious and honorable position.
Last month I got notification from Steve that Jerry had developed serious heart and kidney problems and was being transported to the University of San Francisco Medical facilities to await a heart transplant.  As recently as last week it looked like Jerry was going to be the recipient of a heart transplant, however that did not happen.
Monday morning I was notified by Steve Detjen that our friend, Jerry, had lost his battle with heart and kidney disease.  Jerry Dean Noblett, husband, father, grandfather, former Chief of Police, and my oldest friend, had pasted from this life!
Jerry was a very humble, very honest, and very a hard working man.  I feel very proud and honored to have been able to call Jerry Dean Noblett one of my oldest, and long-time friends.
Go rest high on that mountain, Jerry, your work on Earth is done.
Farewell my friend, your legacy will always be remembered by those of us that are left here!
It was the summer of 1969!
Click on this video!

A Real Surprise Birthday Party!

Posted on by
Reply

Editor’s note:
How many times have we either planned a surprise birthday party or been the intended recipient of a surprise birthday party?  It almost never works!  Well, Karen was involved in planning and pulling off a perfect surprise party for her sister, Kathy aka KK, who celebrated her 60th birthday on April 14th.  Here is Karen’s story of just how the party went!

So, last summer while visiting my family in Atlanta, my son’s girlfriend, Ginger, suggested that we plan a surprise 60th birthday party the following April for my sister Kathy.   I was all onboard with the idea, as Kathy is the one person that we have all leaned on for many, many years and no one was more deserving of a “surprise” birthday than her…
Around the first of March, 2010, Ginger calls me and says that she has booked the venue for K.K.’s party (a really cool log cabin) and we need to get the ball rolling on the other plans, etc.. Being that I live in AZ and the party is going to be in Peachtree City, GA, I knew that I had to be there at least a week ahead of time, but that was going to work out perfectly, since the Grands were going to be out of school for Spring Break.. I could kill two birds with one stone… Kathy’s friend, Daleen, who lives in Huntsville, AL, said that her daughter would make the invitations, so that was one less problem that I had to worry about being so far away and ShiAnne, the invites were beautiful.  She handmade each one differently using her scrapbooking skills and they were unique, to say the least.
I get to Atlanta a week before the party, actually the day before Easter, and spent a wonderful Easter weekend with my son Mark and his family, my sister and all of Ginger’s family !!!  Now, all I have to do is sharpen up my “party” skills and it should be a piece of cake for the following weekend…  It has been a long time since I threw a big party, but an extremely longggggg time since I threw a surprise party and keep it a secret, especially when you are with that person every day…  I totally lost count of how many times I ALMOST slipped up and spilled the beans ~~~ how easy it was to be telling Kathy something and before I knew it, I was tying it right into the party …..I don’t know if I covered myself well or if she just wasn’t paying attention to what I was saying, but the cat never got out of the bag by some miracle..!
Ginger concocted a reason for getting K.K. to the party, but the first obstacle that I had to work around was the out-of-town guests who were coming… Linda, Daleen and ShiAnne were planning on coming up on Sat., from Huntsville, get a hotel room in Peachtree City and be at the party when Kathy got there.. On Thursday Daleen called me and said that she couldn’t stand the idea of driving all the way there and have to “hide out”, when they could come on Friday and we could be together all weekend… Now, all I had to do was come up with a reason for why they were coming and start the house cleaning without being too obvious.. especially since Kathy telecommutes from home on Fridays.
I went back and forth in my mind about whether I should tell her that they were coming up for the weekend, under the guise that we were going to take her out to dinner for her birthday, or just let that be a surprise, too…Well, a surprise it was when they arrived around 10:00 PM on Friday !!!  She was almost asleep in her recliner and when the door bell rang and me thinking it was them, I opened the door ~ only to have my sister-in-law standing there… Hmmmm, well I invited her in and shut the door and before I could turn around and walk into the family room, in come the Huntsville girls screaming “surprise”….They had pulled into the driveway at the same time Tammy did, so Tammy came in first, while they hid where I couldn’t see them…  Kathy looked as if she had just seen a ghost and it took several seconds for it to sink in, since she had almost been asleep… Loved the look on her face  :) ……..
We told Kathy that they had come up for all of us to take her out to dinner the following evening (Sat.), since her birthday actually fell on the following Wednesday and they had to work…  Well, she fell for the story and I had that first hurdle covered.   Kathy and her friend Linda decided to do yard work all day on Sat., so that gave Daleen and me a chance to do the last minute “stuff”…. Errand, errands, errands… At 4:00 we could get into the venue to start decorating, setting things up and at 5:00 I had to pick up all of the BBQ stuff that I had ordered..  We arrived back at Kathy’s around 5:30, to find her and Linda still outside working in the yard… I told her that they had to quit and get in the shower, because our dinner reservation was at 7:00…
I had told Mark that he should call me between 6:30 and 6:45, so that we could put our plan into action.   The plan was for me to tell Kathy that they had been at a poker tournament and had been drinking beer and didn’t want to drive to the restaurant, so they would need for someone to come pick them up.. My sister who never gets ready in a hurry was suddenly ready at 6:30 !!!  There she is, standing in the middle of her great room, purse on her shoulder saying that she is ready to head out…. Quick thinking on my part I say that I have to go potty and give Leon a quick call.   Well, I actually called Mark and said that he had to call in the next couple of minutes !!!  Panic….. this is going faster than I had thought it would….
Three minutes later Mark calls and puts the ball totally in my court, as he just sits on the phone and makes me carry the whole conversation ~~ both sides of it… Little turd… Anyway I hold the phone away from my ear and say “Mark and Ginger have been drinking at the poker tournament and need a ride”….
WELL, that just set Miss Kathy off !!!  “How could they do such a stupid thing when they knew perfectly well that we had dinner reservations” ..  Blah, blah, blah….  : )   ….. I said, “Well, someone has to go get them and I’m not sure where this place is, so you talk to him”…  (Uh, I knew perfectly well where it was, as I had made a half dozen trips there all afternoon, but couldn’t tell her that.)
So at this point I suggest that she go get them and Daleen chirped in and said that she would ride with Kathy and the rest of us would ahead to the restaurant and be there for the reservation.  Do I have to tell you how livid my sister was at this point….well, livid hardly describes her mood, she was totally P/Oed….  I had already told Daleen when I got the phone call from Mark, that she had to suddenly say that she wasn’t feeling well and had to go to the ladies room, so that we could get a head start…  She did good, because she stayed in there for over 5 minutes, looking at her watch…lol…. Also, she had decided that she would make Kathy stop at  Wendy’s to get her a soda to help “settle her stomach”…LOL….   We knew perfectly well that there was a Wendy’s on the way, because we had stopped there earlier to get a burger !!!
Ginger’s brother, Eric, had gone upstairs in the log cabin ,where we were having the party, to be on the watch-out for Kathy’s arrival from a window…Once he announced that she had pulled up,well, “pulled up” is not real fitting ~~ she came squealing into the parking lot on two smoking tires and the first thing she did was call Mark’s cell phone… Of course he had been instructed not to answer it and when he didn’t, she called Ginger’s phone…  Still no answer, so the next thing she did was lay on the horn for what seemed forever…. By now my sister is BEYOND seeing red, so Daleen said “just go to the door and get them” ~~~ all of this time you have to imagine the language coming out of my sweet sisters mouth ~ to which she replied she wasn’t going to the *$@* door, how inconsiderate they were for doing this and I think was ready to pull away when Daleen said that she would go to the door with her….and opened the door and started getting out, before Kathy could throw it in drive and peel rubber once again !!!  ha ha ha
All I can say is that I saw red, as in F-I-R-E, smoke coming out of her ears, nose and mouth when she threw the door open ~~~only to be greeted with “SURPRISE”………….Had my face not been the first one that she saw, she might not have immediately put it all together, but she was as shocked and surprised as I’ve ever seen her.   This hardly describes all of the frustration she suffered before getting there and in the parking lot, but it was one of those “priceless” moments that I’ll remember forever..!!!
Leon has his 60th coming up in Feb. and honey, I’ll be happy to give you a big party, but it will be a long time before I want to do the surprise route again.  It is just too hard for me to keep a secret and I don’t know if I could pull another one off again…
It was all worth it for the worlds most wonderful sister, but once is enough…..We had a great time, good food and the best friends there ~~~ what more could you ask for…?