The Daze of Our Lives

It's 10:45 p.m. “Hey sweetie, a patient has a ruptured ectopic pregnancy and is in shock. I'm going to do surgery with Ryan. Don't wait up for me.” I won't, and I'm so glad we have a puppy.

Saturday morning we awoke to see an empty porch. What? Our porch furniture is all gone! And to add insult to injury, they took our perfectly ripe stalk of bananas! A rude awakening indeed.

Two weeks ago Jamie said, “Hmm, I thought we had $700 more than we have. Where did it go? Am I going crazy?” We calculated it and realized that the money was gone. We still had some doubts, though, which influenced what we did next.

We decided to go to the lake on Monday. Late Sunday night before we left, Jamie counted the money and wrote down the amount. We bid our gardener farewell Monday morning and told him that we would return Thursday. I saw a light turn on in his eyes. As we left we prayed that God would reveal to us if he was the thief.

The lake was windy and restful. It was so nice to get away. All was normal until four hours from home, Jamie saw some sheep. “I'm going to find the owner of those sheep!” We waited for one and a half hours, and finally a deal was reached. Our car was completely stuffed with stuff, besides two adults, two children, one dog, and now one ewe with two lambs. The sheep stunk! Every time the ewe needed to defecate, she kicked up a storm in the back floorboard under our son, who yelled, “It stinks! It stinks!” I remained speechless for a long time then looked at my smirking husband. I began to think that maybe he is going crazy. “This is not normal, you know,” I informed him. “You're going insane, and you're going make me insane. I need to take you home while there still may be a chance to rehab you to normalcy.” He said it was fun.

Immediately upon returning home, I put the children in a warm bath, unlocked the cabinet, retrieved the money bag, and sat on the toilet seat lid to count it.

“Jamie, didn't you say that one envelope had $2000 in it? I don't see anything like that here. Will you look at it? Maybe I missed something.”

“No, Shallena, it's gone. $1800 is missing.”

“Then it had to be the gardener. He is the only one with a key,” I responded.

We talked to the CEO of the hospital, who spoke sternly to the gardener the next morning. He completely denied anything.

Right after they left my house, Jamie called me. “I went to measure a patient. It took five minutes and when I returned, by computer was not in my office.” Are you kidding? This is unreal.

After talking with the police about the computer, they told him to return on Monday regarding our stolen money.

The next morning we were late for church, so I decided to drive down the hill. We ran around looking for the children's classes but couldn't find them. We hopped back in the car and began to drive. Suddenly the hazard lights began flashing and I heard a gurgling, boiling sound. The heat gauge started to rise. “Get out, Jedidiah! Hop out!” I slammed on the brakes, grabbed Abigail, opened the door for Jedidiah and habitually locked the truck. We ran into the hospital to find Jamie. While walking back to the truck, we heard the alarm blaring. Someone must have tried to open the door. Jamie drove it down the hill and back up and said it was fine. Okay, no it's not, but this all is starting to get to me.

That evening we took our little farm to the backyard: sheep, chicks, dog, cat, and people. It was cute. As sundown approached, we took the sheep to the front yard and put two big rocks on the rope tied around the ewe's neck. It took us about five minutes to round up the chicks in the backyard. Upon approaching the front yard with my box of chicks,--oh! Where are my sheep? This is unbelievable! “Our sheep are gone! Someone stole our sheep!” I shouted repeatedly. After about five more minutes, an American man and wife drive up. She was walking beside the truck leading our sheep. “They were about a kilometer down the road, but we heard that you bought sheep so figured they must be yours.” We thanked them and God, and I laughed about my overreaction.

They next morning, I stood on the doorstep with my little girl, when suddenly she started gagging and drooling. She looked at me with pain in her eyes and kept rubbing her tongue. I took her in the house and was going to give her charcoal because I thought she swallowed something. Watching her gag some more, it seemed better to not have her swallow anything and I flipped her over and pounded her back a couple of times. “Don't spank me,” she deplored. She obviously wasn't choking since she spoke to me, but her face was funny colored, she was in obvious pain and she was drooling a lot. So I did what any wife of a doctor would do, I raced to the hospital, horn blaring.

We jumped out—a little girl wearing an overfilled diaper and a shirt and me in my pjs and house slippers, little boy following behind. “What's wrong?” A lady at the steps asked. “I don't know!” I yelled. “Jamie, Jamie!” “He's in the main ward,” she said.

Jamie took Abigail to the OR and laid her on the exam table. Fearful tears ran down her little cheeks while Daddy and a medicial assistant looked in her mouth. Her tiny voice said, “My tongue hurts.” Suddenly I saw something small and orange in her fist. “What's in your hand?” I asked as I pried open her fingers. “Oh!!” we said in unison and laughed, relieved. She clutched tightly four spicy birds-eye peppers. We went home and gave her some ice.

That was yesterday, today is Monday. It's a strange feeling to have no employees working outside, but I really can't dwell on it. It's time to put out the sheep and feed the chicks.