After much prodding the past year or so, I was able to talk my wife Annie into actually starting her own blog. I’ve had a Wordpress blog set up for her since early last year, but she had never done anything with it, and nary a post was made.

Until this week, that is.

After watching my Google Adsense income take flight this spring, after doing some testing, retesting, and tweaking, I had a thought…and a very good one at that. I thought, wow…what a wonderful time for Annie to share HER wisdom with the world, and with that great Adsense tool, make some income for our family to continue thriving, based on her wonderful and caring perspective on life, from her point of view.

You see, Annie is disabled…and has been in a wheelchair for several years now, due to an injury received in a car accident in Alabama (where we lived before moving to Wyoming), nearly 14 years ago. Her injury came about when we were rear ended on a county highway overpass, at Exit 100 on Interstate 20 in Bucksville, Alabama, waiting to turn into a gas station. Her hip was injured, and diagnosis was not fully made until about five years later, by a very good bone doctor. During this same accident, I earned a broken back (compression fractures in the vertebrae between the shoulder blades), my daughter a broken arm, and both my boys suffered with cuts and contusions.

By the time the damage was actually proven with good xrays, the top of the femur at the hip joint was dying, and the hip socket itself was grossly pocked with extreme calcium buildup, making any movement of the hip very painful.

This was in 1999.

Now, 7 years later, Annie has been in a wheelchair full time for almost 4 years. During this time, she has also earned TWO college degrees, helping our kids move into the adult phases of their life, kept ME fed and clothed, and helped us keep working towards our own home based business, with growing success each month. And, she is now a grandmother of two adorable kids.

Also during this time, we have moved 4 times ( once across the country in 2000 ), been homeless for a few weeks (Spring of 2001), and started over again…twice. And throughout it all, she has been the key to us making it to the next phase of our lives.

She has been through a lot, yet has a LOT to share for others who may be going through the same things we have gone through. With my background of prep and survival skills, learning self reliance the hard way, and my extreme research skills, I’ve brought a lot of new found knowledge into the family.

She’s had to come to a lot of it the hard way, from the point of being disabled, taking care of meds and doctor needs on a very small income, and learning to let go of a lot of things…and grabbing the horns of bigger issues, and wrestling with them on a grand scale…i.e. dealing with the administration of Central Wyoming College, and getting their attention regarding the very disturbing lack of awareness about accessibility issues all over this campus.

She puts a lot of effort into helping others (much like I try to do on a daily basis) and doesn’t notice so much some things that she needs to focus on for herself…others first is her thing sometimes…

I love my wife dearly, and in a few short weeks, we’ll be celebrating our 25th anniversary of marriage.

I hope that you will support her in her blogging career, and that she will be able to reach out to folks the world over, and help them become more self sufficient, personally enriched, and successful individuals….disabled or not.

You can visit her blog here…

..and well they should be. To kill ill and dying patients, because YOU have no hope in the face of catastrophe….makes YOU a murderer…not a caretaker.

I hope they lose their jobs…as high up the hospital chain as they can go….

Source

Dozens subpoenaed in hospital deaths
Louisiana attorney general investigates fatalities after Katrina
By Drew Griffin and Kathleen Johnston
CNNWednesday, October 26, 2005; Posted: 11:59 p.m. EDT (03:59 GMT)

(CNN) — Louisiana Attorney General Charles Foti Jr. has issued 73 subpoenas in an investigation into allegations that euthanasia may have taken place at one of the hospitals flooded by Hurricane Katrina, he told CNN Wednesday night.

The subpoenas were served on employees of all levels at Memorial Medical Center, which is owned by Tenet Healthcare, because “cooperation, lately, has not been as good as I had hoped,” Foti said.

The subpoenas require that people appear before investigators for questioning.

“Some people were not coming forward. We learned Tenet sent out a letter that had a chilling effect,” Foti said. “We had no choice but to issue these subpoenas.”

“They [Tenet] seem to be in a position of protecting themselves, while we are just trying to get to the facts of what happened at the hospital,” the attorney general said.

CNN obtained the memo — dated October 14 — to which Foti was referring.

In it, Tenet’s assistant general counsel, Audrey Andrews, advised staff members that “in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, you may be contacted by a government representative or a representative of the media.”

“In fairness to you, if you are contacted by a representative of a state or federal agency, or if you are contacted by the media, you may wish to first confer with legal counsel. You have certain legal rights about which you should be aware.

“First, you have the right to decide whether or not you wish to be interviewed. You can consent or decline. The decision as to whether or not you consent to be interviewed is yours alone,” Andrews said.

However, she added that if anyone spoke to investigators, they were obliged to “provide truthful information in response to questioning.”

Three days after Katrina flooded most of New Orleans, staff members at Memorial had repeated discussions about euthanizing patients they thought might not survive the ordeal, according to a doctor and nurse manager who were in the hospital at the time. Katrina came ashore August 29. (Full story)

After allegations of mercy killings surfaced, Foti’s office asked that autopsies be performed on all 45 bodies taken from the hospital after the storm.

Tenet has told CNN that most of the 45 patients who died were critically ill, and about 11 patients died the weekend before the hurricane struck and were placed in the morgue.

“We have asked for certain records from Tenet 15 days ago, and we have yet to receive them,” Foti said. “We have also asked for the location and address of every employee working at the hospital at the time of the hurricane, and they have not provided that either.”

A spokesman for Memorial denied that the hospital has been uncooperative.

“We have never discouraged any employee from working with the Louisiana attorney general’s office. In fact, we know that some have already spoken to his representatives. We’ve been cooperating with the attorney general’s office, and have spoken regularly about employee interviews,” the spokesman said.