February Photos

Monday, March 16, 2020

Journal: Surgery, Coronavirus, and Quilting


We have a sugar maple in our back yard.  The tiny sapling came to our place out here in the country from our house in town when I dug up some of my irises to bring along; it was a sprig from my sister’s sugar maple next door.  Now, 17 years later, it’s about 60-65 feet tall, from a wee two-leaf sprig.  It’s just starting to leaf out, and all the tiny leaflets are brilliant burgundy.
A friend has been telling of the troubles and trials of trying to get her 94-year-old father into a nursing home.  He was diagnosed with dementia not too long ago, and her 87-year-old mother cannot cope with his care.
Because of the coronavirus and the probability of an imminent lockdown, the nursing home allowed her mother to move in with him at no extra cost.  The place was indeed locked down the very next day.  Unfortunately, shortly after that her mother asked to go home.  She has Trigeminal neuralgia and was in pain, and wanted to rest at home.  The family took her home... but now no one can visit her father.
Sad and unfortunate happenings. 
I’ve told some of my kids, “If I ever need a nursing home, don’t worry; I’ll be fine with that.  Just be sure to find one with a big enough room for my grand piano, sewing machine, serger, and quilting machine!”  (Reckon any nursing home would approve a 6’ 3” grand piano?  haha!)
My friend told me that there was a grand piano in the foyer of her father’s nursing home.
Who can play it, I wonder?  And what happens if a resident decides to play it in the middle of the night? 
That’s probably what I’ll do someday when I have dementia:  play a piano in the middle of the night.  Well, actually, I do that now, if Larry is gone, or if he isn’t sleeping... but there’s nobody near enough to be disturbed.
By Tuesday night, the majority of the second-to-the-last row of hexagons was done. 
More pictures here.
Wednesday, I headed up to my studio, hoping to get a whole lot of quilting done. 
I quilted a little while... ran out of bobbin thread... refilled the bobbin... cleaned out the bobbin case and race... and then hunted all over the place for the little brass lid to the long-necked, telescoping oil bottle.  I finally found it – already screwed onto the spout tip.  🙄
That’s like looking around for your glasses – when they’re right smack-dab on the front of your face.  Or searching for your phone – whilst you’re a-talkin’ on it.
I’d been quilting for just an hour when I hit a ruler with the Avanté.  The needle got plumb stuck on that ruler, with the motor whining piteously, still trying to go.  I had to break the needle to get the ruler out quickly, before the motor got damaged.
The impact threw the timing off.  The machine would have to be timed before I could continue.  The timing has been a bit off throughout this quilt, but I’d hoped I could finish it.  Bah, humbug!  Just when I was going strong.
The hopping foot hasn’t worked quite right, making it slightly hard to push, for over a year.  Larry fixed it as well as he can, but it needs a new part – and that part is $180.  One of these days, I’ll order it.
My neck and shoulders are back to normal, not hurting as much as they did last week.  I’ve had arthritis since I was about 12 years old – probably earlier, since I remember the vertebra at the base of my neck hurting and burning like fire when I was six years old and practicing my piano lesson.  But perhaps my neck hurt because of injuries from bicycle accidents, and not arthritis. 
Once, a little girl with whom I was bike riding decided to use hand signals, flung out a hand to show her intention of turning – and karate-chopped me right across the throat.  Knocked me flat.  I hit my head on a curb and was out like a light.  The neighbor kids carried me home with a goose egg on my head and a sprained ankle.
Another time, a little girl was riding her mother’s or big sister’s bicycle.  It was too big for her to sit on the seat; she had to stand and pedal or coast.  Her foot slipped off a pedal, making her swerve into me.  Same song, second verse.  Down I went, and I was out cold for the second time in just a few short months.
Anyway, I rub on Pain-A-Trate or Soothanol or IcyHot, and keep a-goin’.  Exercising and keeping my weight down helps.
Instead of quilting, I edited photos and washed clothes.  I have no shortage of things to do; it’s just that the one thing I wanted to do had to wait!
Larry fixed my Avanté after church that night, and I was back in business.
A lady on one of my online quilting groups has family in Italy.  She told us that everything is locked down now, and there are police in the streets.  Her family, living in Milan, Pescara, and Naples, are all staying in their homes.
I always wonder how people manage, when things like this happen.  How do they get supplies?  If they can’t work, how do they make the money they need to survive?
And yikes, what do we do, when there is no toilet paper?!  Or baby wipes??  Who has Sears catalogs these days??!!!!!
Anyway, we here in Middle Cornland have no worries; we have cornhusks.  😲
Thinking of various contagious viruses, here’s a little ditty from years gone by (24 years ago, to be precise):
One time when Lydia was about four years old, she got some sort of virus or flu bug.  She told my mother sorrowfully, “And nobody else got sick except me!”  ((...pause...))  ((...shaking her head sadly...))  “I must’ve gotten it from my dolly.”
Last week, I saw several robins in our yard, and within days, there were starlings filling the cedar tree and splashing around in a big puddle on our front walk.  Thursday, I suddenly took note of the birdsong I was hearing:  the redwing blackbirds were back!
That afternoon, I cooked a big roast (from Bobby and Hannah for Christmas) for supper.  We cut up what was left and froze it; that’ll make several suppers.
After reports of no toilet paper in various stores (I didn’t know about Columbus stores; hadn’t checked), I decided to place an order for some. 
They were out of stock online at Wal-Mart and Target, and household brands were out of stock on Amazon; but I ordered a couple packs of a commercial brand that’ll probably be rather nasty.  Furthermore, it said shipping would be in 2 or 3 days ----- and it wasn’t until the order was placed that I was informed that shipping would be anywhere from April 9, 2020, to April 30, 2020. 
So... I ordered a couple of large packs of Puffs tissues from Wal-Mart.  And then, after the order was placed, I was informed that shipping was unavailable, and they credited my account.  However, we could pick them up at the store the next day.  🙄 
That order would later be canceled and marked ‘Out of Stock’. 
Ah, well... we have enough, for now.
We’re all going to look like Howard Hughes, using tissues to turn handles and whatnot!  😂  Be sure to save the tissue boxes after you empty them, too, if you wish to be even more like Howard Hughes:  he wore them on his feet as protection from germs!
Why are people doing that???  Buying up all the toilet paper, I mean.  Good grief.  We’ll have to go to the ER just to use the restroom! 
It’s like we’re in wartime Europe, back in the 30s.
I always wonder why people don’t get themselves better informed before they go off the deep end.  They create so many problems for everyone else.  Pandemaniacs, they are. 
(If you go off the deep end after you’re informed, well, ... all righty, then.)
My Avanté worked wonderfully that day as I tried to make up for lost time, and I got the second-to-the-last row of hexagons, along with the neighboring borders, complete.  Pictures here.
The usual suspects napped in the Thermabed under my frame or on the rug right where I needed to walk.
Friday morning, Larry and I, along with Kenny, Larry’s brother, went to Methodist Hospital in Omaha to be with Loren and Norma, my brother and Larry’s mother – they married a couple of years ago after both of their mates had died of cancer; you can see their story and the wedding album I made them here:
Norma was to have a cancerous spot in her mouth removed.  She has been unable to eat much for months because of the pain, and her dentist didn’t recognize the sore for what it was.  Truthfully, he didn’t try nearly hard enough to help her.  She went to him several times... to her family doctor a couple of times... and finally to another dentist, who saw the problem and referred her to a specialist.
My mother-in-law is a sweet and dear lady.  We love her so very much. This is hard for my brother, too, as I know it brings back memories of his wife Janice, whom he took care of when she had stomach cancer.  Loren and Norma are both 81.
On our way to Omaha, we saw many ducks and geese on the rivers and lakes.  A pond west of North Bend was covered with scaups. 
(This is not my picture; it’s from All About Birds .com.)
When we walked into the hospital (entering the wrong door, first), we’d come from the parking garage, walking in the cold wind quite a distance.  So wouldn’t you know, I had a red, runny nose, and my eyes were streaming, too.  I had to blow my nose right while standing near receptionists’ desk.  (I did back up first.)  One woman had a mask on.  The other, I’m sure, wished she did.
Not to worry, ladies; I’m just thawing out, is all.
When we got to the Surgery Waiting Lounge, we learned that Norma’s surgeon was running at least an hour late.  Originally, her surgery had been scheduled for 2:00 p.m.  Then the hospital called to tell her the time had been changed to 11:45 p.m. 
As it happened, it didn’t start until about 2:15 p.m.
The five of us sat for a time around a small round table in the lounge, sliding three extra chairs up to it.  I had brought my computer, and I spent the time editing the photos I’d taken on our trip to Texas.  Note this shot, with all the Christmas lights still hanging around the house:
They certainly can’t say they couldn’t get them down on account of the weather, could they?!  Just look at the summer greenery – in February. 

After Norma was taken into surgery, I suggested to Larry, “You could put one of these chairs back where we got it.”
“Yep,” he agreed, and made as though to pull my chair out from under me.  😅
We went to the hospital cafeteria to eat while we waited.  They have a nice salad bar, and a lot of other good food.  The salads are paid for by weight.  I’ve never seen it done like that before.
The surgery took longer than expected.  Norma didn’t get out of surgery until a quarter ’til five.  The doctor believes he got all of the tumor, though it was a lot bigger than expected.  He removed what he could see... sent it to the lab... and when it took them over an hour to check it, he knew it probably wasn’t clear... and it wasn’t.  So he removed more, including a fairly large piece of bone, and now he’s almost certain he got it all.  The tissue showed clear, but it takes a week to perform a biopsy on bone.
There is a bit of pre-cancerous area on her lip, but he will just monitor that.  It has not spread to lymph nodes.
He packed the area with gauze soaked with antibiotic, and screwed her denture into the hard palate.  (Eek.)  The dentist there will remove that denture and the gauze and make dentures to fit in about five days.
We were finally able to see Norma a little after 6:00 p.m., after they had moved her to a private room.  She was in quite a bit of pain, but her vitals were all good, and she looked better than one might expect, after major surgery like that.
A little while later, Kenny went with Loren to check into the nearby Hope Lodge.  They would not let Kenny go in with Loren, on account of the coronavirus. 
Here’s an online description of the Lodge:

The American Cancer Society Hope Lodge program provides a free home away from home for cancer patients and their caregivers. More than just a roof over their heads, it's a nurturing community that helps patients access the care they need. Each Hope Lodge community offers a supportive, homelike environment where guests can share a meal, join in the evening's activities, or unwind in their own private room. Patients staying at a Hope Lodge must be in active cancer treatment and permanently reside more than 40 miles away from their cancer treatment center.

Though the doctor had once said that Norma might need speech therapy after such an extensive operation, she was speaking quite well already, though it hurt when she did so.  She’ll have to have soft foods for a while.  It was quite an ordeal for her, but she was in good spirits.  The doctors believe she will recover all right.
They gave her intravenous morphine for the pain.  It wore off before time for the next dose.  But one of the medications they gave her helped the cramps in her leg, and she was glad for that.  The dear lady tried to us money (and Kenny, too), for food or gas or whatever, and for staying there with her all day. 
My mother used to do the same thing, when she was in the hospital. 
“Now you’re acting like Mama did!” I told her, which made Loren laugh, and pleased Norma, because she always loved and admired my mother.
We left Omaha a little after 9:00 p.m.  It was raining, with a few snowflakes mixed in.
Kenny took Loren back to the Hope Lodge.  He was worn to a frizzle-frazzle; we were worried about him.  He was so tired from the long day and the worry about Norma, he kept getting a bit confused about this and that. 
I was starved, so we stopped and ate an omelet at a Subway on the far west side of Omaha.  By the time we got a little past Fremont, it was snowing hard.
The Jeep got hot a few miles east of Columbus, and spewed antifreeze all over the engine, while the heater blew cold air (and it was only 32°).  Kenny, who’d already made it home, came back and rescued us, bringing water for the radiator.
Just before Kenny arrived, Larry discovered the radiator cap resting loose atop the radiator.  And then he remembered:  he had planned to top it off with antifreeze before we left home that morning.  He’d taken off the cap, gone to get the antifreeze, discovered he didn’t have any — and forgot to replace the cap.
Well, after pouring in some water (it wouldn’t take much, for some reason, making Larry wonder if the pump had failed), we managed to limp it to Wal-Mart, about five miles away, with one stop to let it cool again.  By then, the alternator wasn’t working right.  Just about the time I said, “What’s that high-pitched noise?” the battery icon on the dash blinked on, with a warning bell to go along with it.
We went in Wal-Mart to buy antifreeze.  It was after midnight.  There were few people there, and all the departments (food and otherwise) that we walked by (trying to find a restroom without a janitor in it, heh) were fully stocked.  I didn’t see the TP aisle; should’ve taken a look.  Larry managed to get the last two packages at Hy-Vee a couple of days ago.
The restrooms at the back of the store were padlocked shut, so we had to wait for the janitor to finish cleaning.
Larry filled the radiator, and we headed toward home – but had to stop at Super Saver, three miles farther on, when the Jeep got hot again.
Kenny returned, collected us in his van, and, leaving the Jeep in the grocery store parking lot, took us home.  The snow was getting deep on the road, and the ride made my hair stand straight up on end all the way home – quite a feat, considering the fact that my hair-sprayed hair had snow all over it, and by rights should have turned into a motorcycle helmet plastered to my head.
By the time we went to bed an hour or so later, we had concluded that Kenny had made it home safely.  At least, we had not received any “SOS!” texts, nor had we heard any sirens.

And that was our day, better than it could have been, and a little worse than we’d hoped.
Saturday revealed that the weatherman had been right:  we had about 4” of snow.
I love snow.  I even like to drive in it (providing a large truck isn’t sliding sideways in the road directly at me and entirely out of control).  I like driving in it a whole lot better than I like being driven in it.
I love the beautiful old hymn, ♫ ♪ Whiter than snow, ♪ ♫ yes, whiter than snow! ♫ ♪ Now wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow! ♫ ♪
I was discussing hymn keys and keys we like to play in with a friend.  One of the first keys I played in was E Major (four sharps), soon to be followed by B Major and G Sharp (five and six sharps, respectively), just because I liked the sound of those keys best.  Still do.  Plus, I found it fun to play in those keys.  The key of C has no landmarks for my fingers.
No one had realized I knew how to play, because I had this little toy grand piano that sounded like ‘Tink-tink-tinka-tinka-tink’, but I had learned chords and runs and played by ear.
Then my parents got me a piano – it was a tall upright, used to be a player – when I was six.  I came home from school at noon one day and there was a moving van out in front of our house.  I went running in, starting to ask why that truck was there – and there were strange men in the living room, just positioning the piano against the far wall!
I was timid.  (Really!)  I backed up and tried to blend in with the woodwork on the other side of the room until they departed. 

Then Daddy said, “Well, what do you think of your piano?”
I’ll bet my eyes were as big as saucers.  I walked over, sat down, opened the key cover – and played Something For Thee.  With both hands.  Simple little chords, but chords, nonetheless.
My parents were astonished. 
“How did she know how to do that?!” my father asked my mother. 
What they had not noticed was that all those ‘tinka-tinks’ on the toy grand were actually tunes.  That toy piano was a little thing with a tiny bench that worked on the order of a music box, but with keys and hammers that hit little metal pipes.  I imagine it sounded like spoons on metal glasses filled with different levels of water, and was probably pretty ear-clanging, if I was playing with both hands.  But I could hear the separate notes and the chords… and without anyone realizing it, I was learning to play.
Here’s some Music Terminology for you (and believe me, I know this feeling, after playing for a congregation):
Alleregretto:  When you’re 16 measures into the piece and suddenly realize you set too fast (or too slow) a tempo.
Larry collected the Jeep from Super Saver’s parking that morning and fixed it (or so he thought).  He took a plug out of the manifold that the antifreeze runs through.  If there’s an air pocket in the upper hose and if the thermostat is closed when the radiator is filled, the water doesn’t circulate.  He poured antifreeze in until it finally came up to the radiator cap, filled up the overflow bottle, put radiator cap on and the plug back in, started it — and soon the heater was blowing hot air.  He drove it, and it didn’t get hot.
So he brought it home and then headed somewhere off west with pickup and trailer to get some parts he bought for the wrecked pickup, along with some other items.
I quilted for several hours that day.
I talked to Loren on the phone that evening.  He told me he’d gone out to the car garage (there are 7 levels, and there are many rows on each level), and couldn’t find his car.  Thinking someone had stolen it, he called 911.  A deputy came, had him get into the cruiser, and then they drove around the garage until they found the car.
By bedtime, the gold and blue borders of the Atlantic Beach Path quilt were done.  There are only a few more hexagons to do before I can roll the quilt forward and work on the final borders.  More photos here.
Somebody commented on this photo, “I notice your handy seam ripper! 😳
I replied, “Oh!  Oops.  That wasn’t supposed to be in the picture.  You know I never use such a thing, right???”  😂
As we were turning the corner onto 43rd Avenue Sunday morning, heading toward the church parking lot, we heard the alternator making that strange high-pitched noise, like it was working way too hard.  When we got out of church, the battery was deader’n a doornail.  It didn’t even make a ‘click’ when Larry turned the key.
Kurt and Victoria took us home.  I sat in the middle seat beside Violet, with Carolyn on the other side of Violet.  Victoria drove, Larry sat beside her – and poor Kurt had to clamber in the back and sit in one of the seats back there, where there’s not really enough room for a 5’ 10” person.  But he elected himself as the one most able to clamber in without removing the little girls’ car seats in order to fold the middle seats down.
Carolyn and Violet thought this was crackerjack, and immediately went to giggling.  Then Larry peered in his visor mirror at Carolyn and growled, making her guffaw.  Violet, facing backwards and thus unable to see the mirror, looked at the rest of us laughing, and abruptly shrieked in delight.
So that was a more entertaining ride home from church than usual, proving that dead batteries can indeed be silver-lined clouds.
Well, we got home, ate, drove the pickup back to the church, and tried to jumpstart the Jeep – but that battery was dead.  Deader’n a mackerel.  The kind of dead that’s liable to explode, if one stubbornly keeps trying to charge it.
Larry removed the battery, and we went to O’Reilly’s for a new one.  He’d hoped to get a partial refund on the old battery, but they said it was 6 years old.  Now, we have had the Jeep for 4 ½ years.  We put that battery in new a year after we got it.  Therefore, that battery evidently sat on O’Reilly’s shelf for 2 ½ years before we bought it.
We returned to the church, Larry installed the new battery, and it started right up.  But the alternator kept whining.
We headed to the shop, where we would leave either the Jeep or the pickup before heading to Omaha to see Loren and Norma.  By the time we got there and opened the hood, after just 1 ½ miles of driving, it smelled like burning electrical wires.  So... we left the Jeep at the shop and drove the pickup, after unhooking the new battery so the vehicle wouldn’t catch on fire while we were gone and take the entire Walker Foundation complex down with it.
After all that monkey business, we didn’t get to the hospital until about 6:00 p.m.
Loren and Norma didn’t seem to think they could do anything about it.  As Loren said, “You have to take what you can get.”
We told them to be sure and tell the nurses she needs SOFT food!  It was just a mistake. 
It even said right on her dry-erase board under Menu, “Clears”.
So when a nurse came in and asked if she needed anything, she asked for chicken broth.  It took a while; I think there was a change of shift about then.  When a different nurse came in later and asked if Norma needed anything, she asked for cream of wheat, having decided that might be better than broth.
Before long, they brought her a bowl of chicken broth, a bowl of beef broth, mashed potatoes and gravy, and cream of wheat – so she wound up with a bigger supper than expected.
They had taken her off morphine that afternoon and given her pain pills instead – but that immediately made her sick to her stomach, which put her in all the more pain.
She got a short nap before we arrived, and was then feeling a little better.
We had a nice visit, and ate supper with  Loren in the hospital cafeteria while Norma ate in her room (she shooed  Loren off with us – I think she thought he needed it).
He had checked out of the Hope Lodge Saturday, and slept in a recliner in Norma’s room that night.  He didn’t like being all by himself in a motel room – while Norma was all by herself in her hospital room.  Sunday night the nursing staff brought him a cot.
On our way home, we stopped at their house to take in the mail and water the houseplants.
Earlier today, Loren and Norma moved from the hospital to the Hope Lodge nearby.
Larry and I needed to go to United Auto Recyclers in Omaha to get the front end for the wrecked pickup so he can get started rebuilding it.
We like to say that all Larry needs is a paper clip, a garbage disposal, and a bit of hair tonic, and with that he’ll build a truck. 😂  It turns out, though, that he needs large chunks of metal, too.
On our way out of town, we stopped at the Wal-Mart gas station to get diesel (it’s only $2.25/gallon).  I trotted over to the station to use the restroom – and found the door locked, with a sign on it reading, “For your protection, our restrooms are temporarily closed to the public.” 
That’s for our protection, huh?  Do they think we’ll all be better off if travelers just use the ditch?
We drove the pickup, pulling a flatbed trailer.  The Jeep is not yet fixed; it’s still sitting forlornly at Walker’s shop.  Larry took a look at it, but didn’t have long enough to discover the trouble.
I hope he gets it fixed tomorrow; we will be wanting it Wednesday to go to church (unless church is canceled).  Imagine me embarking and disembarking from a tall pickup in a pencil-skirted suit.  😲
We barely made it to the salvage yard before they closed; Larry went skinning into the office mere minutes before 5:00 p.m.  Once you get into the office and pay for your stuff, you’re In Like Flynn, and can head right back into the yard to collect your belongings.  It took a good 45 minutes to get everything loaded and strapped down.
Next, we stopped at Aldi’s to get Loren and Norma some food.  Aldi is a grocery store where things are generally priced lower than other grocery stores.  The store was running low on a lot of things.  No toilet paper, for instance.  But we got a bunch of Campbell’s soups, cream of corn, peaches, crushed pineapple, pears, oatmeal, almond milk, juice, and some lemon-lime twist, because Norma had Sprite in the hospital and said it made her feel better.  And the lemon-lime twist was the only soda they had, except for root beer, I think.
We also got them heavy-duty paper bowls, plastic cups, plastic silverware, napkins, and paper towels.  At the Hope Lodge where they are staying, they are not to prepare food in their room, but there’s a kitchen where they can fix it.  People donate food there for the residents.
We donate for specific residents, heh.
Aldi’s was all out of paper bags – except for two.  And there were a few used, wadded plastic bags... so we managed to fit our groceries in those, and left the place totally bare of any bags at all.  People coming into the store were carrying their own bags.  We didn’t even realize this might be a problem, until we’d already paid for our things.
They didn’t have a blender there, so we went to Walgreens, where we got a ‘personal’ blender – a little smaller than the regular-sized blenders.  Also, we got Norma some extra-strength Tylenol.  The doctor had prescribed Codeine, but she had them send the prescription to Bob’s U-Save Pharmacy ... in Columbus.  We told her she could have that prescription re-sent to a pharmacy in Omaha, and any pharmacy would deliver it to her in the morning.
Now, when one makes things in a blender, one needs a rubber spatula to scrape it out, right?  Wouldn’t you know, Walgreens had no spatulas.  All sort of other less-necessary kitchen utensils; but no spatula.  So... we had to go to Wal-Mart to get a spatula. 
In the meanwhile, someone brought a food donation to Hope Lodge, Norma and Loren thought it must’ve been us, and ‘flew upon the spoil’.  But Norma started wondering if it really had been from us, and called Larry to ask.
We were still at Walgreens when that happened.  🤣 
Larry assured her, “We’ll call you when we get there!”
When we got to Hope Lodge, Loren came out to meet us, and Norma held the door for us while we brought them the stuff, and Loren carried it in.
We then went to the Olive Garden.  Restaurants in Omaha are only doing take-out or drive-through service.  So we ordered, and took our food out to the pickup to eat. 
You know, that’s not going to keep germs from spreading.  We touched menus, money, door handles... 🙄  And the very moment I hear someone say (or read a sign that says), “Do NOT touch your face!” my nose itches, my eyes itch, and I feel a fuzzy fluttering around on one of my lips.
In fact, just typing that made my chin itch.
We got dessert on the western outskirts of Omaha – Royal Cheesecake Blizzards from Dairy Queen.  You how they always turn them upside down as they’re handing them to you, to prove they’re nice and thick?  Well, guess what Larry does when he hands it over to me? 
Uh-huh.  Upside down, right over my lap.
(No, the cup didn’t empty itself, amazingly enough.)
When we got home, the cats come running to greet us, as usual.  Whenever we get home from somewhere, never mind whether we were gone half an hour or half a day, they come rushing to politely (or otherwise) demand their Fancy Feast canned food.  They’re well trained for this, you see, because I use the soft food to crush Teensy’s thyroid medication into (and of course I have to prove I love Tiger, too, by giving him a small spoonful, fat though he is).
This was in the news today:

A 16-year-old Northeast Nebraska boy who was previously in serious condition at UNMC after testing positive for COVID-19 has been released after numerous negative tests.
According to an update by UNMC, the 16-year-old from Crofton was discharged after three negative tests.
He previously tested positive for COVID-19 and was in serious condition.
Four others who were at UNMC who came from the Diamond Princess cruise ship have also been released. One passenger still remains at UNMC.
A 36-year-old woman from Omaha who tested positive is still in critical condition at the medical center.

So... was this 16-year-old boy in serious condition after the false positive test just because he was half skeert half to death, or what???
When articles don’t tell me these necessary details, I figure they expect me to ‘finish the story’, which was one of my favorite exercises in grade school.  Thus, I do so, with aplomb.
This is from LiveScience.com:

Nebraska is currently reporting 18 cases of COVID-19 as of March 15, according to the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS). Nebraska's governor, Pete Ricketts, declared a state of emergency on Friday, March. 13, allowing the state to mobilize across agencies to fight the spread of the virus.
Health officials recently identified several events and locations near Omaha and in Sarpy County that may have exposed large numbers of people to COVID-19 infection from March 2 through March 12. This could potentially affect Nebraskans across the state, the DHHS reported.
Reckon I’ll get WuFlu from that really yummy Zuppa Toscana soup I got from the Olive Garden tonight?

Now it’s midnight, and Teensy is unhappy that Larry went to bed already.  He’s lying on the floor in the hallway (Teensy, not Larry), sticking his paws under the bedroom door and batting at anything he can reach – namely, a roll of wrapping paper behind the door, which makes a satisfying crinkly whap-whap noise. 
“Teensy!” I admonished, “You’ll wake up Larry!”

He stared at me a moment, then suddenly sprang to his feet and galloped pell-mell into the living room.  As soon as he thought I wasn’t looking, there he was again, back in the hallway with his feet under the bedroom door.  I hissed at him and sent him scampering.
Lancaster Downtown AQS quilt show has been canceled.  I just got an email asking how I wished to receive my entry fee refund.  So that tells me the quilts will not be judged (or if they have been, they are now unjudged), nor will any awards be given.

Cancer, coronavirus...  It’s a comfort to know that all the trials and afflictions we go through are in God’s hands, and all things are for our ultimate benefit, one way or another, whether it seems so or not, isn’t it?  Our troubles should make us rely more heavily on a merciful heavenly Father, continue to pray for that mercy, and cause us to be kinder, sweeter, and more compassionate and understanding.  I am always in need of more of those traits! 


,,,>^..^<,,,    Sarah Lynn, always learning to be more patient and less critical 😏




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