Library Notes
August 15, 2003
I’m going to update you all on our one-kidney husband and one-kidney wife and how they are faring. They are both doing marvelous. They have both been allowed to go home, even though the doctors thought that David would have to stay longer. But they told him he is showing no signs of any rejection. He says he feels better than he has felt in five years.
Right after their surgery, when Lisa was able to go visit David for the first time, here’s what she told him: "You owe me big time now --- diamonds!"
Of course, the kids were so tickled to see Mama and Daddy and have them home again. A whole new beginning for this little family.
So, with that little happy tear in our eye, at something that has turned out so well, let me inform you that I almost bled to death last week. Yep!
I have this little x-acto knife that I call my "Deadly Weapon". I use it for all sorts of things, opening boxes, removing old labels and stamps on book bags, etc., etc. I have always been very careful with it, as it is almost like a razor blade. Never have I cut myself with it until last week. First time for everything though.
I was cleaning clumps of glue off a book to reglue it when that deadly weapon went wild. It attacked me and cut me on the hand below my thumb. It hurt like everything. I looked down and blood was pouring out of that cut. I do not exaggerate – pouring out. I grabbed paper towels, which were saturated quickly, and headed for the bathroom. At least I was bleeding in the sink then. I ran cold water over my hand. All cold water did was wash the blood on down.
I tried putting pressure on the cut and the blood kept pouring. I was beginning to get concerned, but didn’t know what to do if I kept bleeding at that rate.
I thought "I can’t call an ambulance for a bleeding hand, even if it’s pouring." I thought about a policeman, but didn’t know what he could do. A volunteer fireman did not even occur to me. BUT, I have now been instructed by a bonified fireman that I told about this, to call him immediately should anything like this happen again.
I tried pressure again. Boy, that thing was hurting and I was beginning to feel sick. Pressure finally started to work, and the blood finally started to stop. I went to get a band-aid and put it on tight. I was very careful not to hit it and the bleeding did not start again.
Evidently I nicked a blood vessel. It was not a very big cut. But I probably lost half a pint of blood.
I had an appointment with my Dr. Smith this week. I mentioned the cut and how much it bled. File this away for future reference, ya’ll, as I’m doing. My Dr. Smith says the only way to stop bleeding is to put pressure directly on the spot bleeding, no matter how severe the cut or whatever is.
I shall treat my deadly weapon with even more respect than I did before. And hope it won’t attack me again.
Since I won’t get blood all over it, let’s talk about a new book by J.A. Jance, entitled "Exit Wounds". Well, that’s an interesting title considering my wound, huh?
"The heat is a killer in Cochise County, Arizona, with temperatures over 100 degrees. In the suffocating stillness of an airless trailer, a woman is lying dead, a bullet hole in her chest. Why someone would murder a harmless loner with a soft spot for stray dogs is only one of the questions nagging at the local police; another is why the killer used an 85-year-old bullet, fired from the same weapon that slaughtered two other women who were discovered bound, naked, and gruesomely posed on the remote edge of a rancher’s land.
The slayings are as oppressive as the blistering heat for Sheriff Joanna Brady, who must shoulder the added double burden of a brutal reelection campaign and major developments on the home front. With suddenly more on her plate than many big-city law officers have to contend with, Joanna must put marital distractions and an opponent’s dirty tricks in the back ground and deal with the terrifying reality that now threatens everyone in her jurisdiction: a serial killer in their midst.
A twisted and lethal drama is unfolding in this small corner of the southwestern desert as fear, hatred and the evil at the core of one family’s history come to a rapid boil beneath a merciless Arizona sun. Pressure mounts for Sheriff Brady personally and professionally while she pursues a sadistic murderer into the shadows of the past to get to the roots of a monstrous obsession….and expose the permanent wounds of a crime far worse than homicide."