- Mar 6, 2018
Data Vault
I am a bit of an organization freak with very little memory. I have used a "password book" for years that I would keep hidden and have to pull out frequently to log in to various websites etc.
Not only was this extremely risky, leaving ALL of my personal info lying around all of the time, but if that little black book was ever lost, I was in big trouble!
Thanks to wisdom of a good friend, I started using the password manager called “Data Vault”. It is extremely secure and it will sync between devices. It has been a lifesaver! I don’t know about you, but I can’t tell you the number of times that I went to the Apple store because I had a problem with my phone and I couldn’t remember my apple ID password to back my phone up. I would have to go home, get the password and come back or lose my info. Now, I can look on any device and find all of my passwords neatly organized in one location! Thank you to my friend and thank you Data Vault.
The best $10 I have ever spent! Available at the app store.
- Mar 2, 2018
Loving Your Family
I have read so many articles and posts that begin with “every parent’s nightmare” and I often felt empathy and sympathy for them, but I lived my life in the happy bubble that nothing like that would ever happen to me. It made me that much more unprepared the day that I joined the nightmare club. I had just gotten home from work and was watching TV while discussing various ideas for dinner with my oldest child when the doorbell rang. I was faced with two female police officers whose faces told me they had bad news to tell me. The words “son” combined with “collapse” and being transported to the nearest trauma center via ambulance made my blood run cold. I called to my daughter to come with me and went out to my car, without shoes, intent upon getting to the hospital as quickly as possible. She followed after me (having picked up a pair of shoes on her way) and we were off. My compact car easily made the 115 mph I felt prudent to get down the freeway as fast as possible. We arrived at the ER and were greeted by more grave faces and quickly placed in the separate waiting area. What followed was the longest 24 hours I have ever lived through. My perfectly healthy 18-year-old son, who had graduated high school just 3 days earlier, had suffered a cardiac arrest event. We were in the hospital with him for 36 hours before he had been stabilized enough to have his breathing tube removed. Phrases like “brain damage” “oxygen deprivation” and “neurological assessment” were being thrown around everywhere. I had slept 30 minutes in the last day and a half and my brain was sluggish when I was first asked if I had power of attorney to make decisions on my son's behalf. My son, who arrived a 10lb 10z smiling and contented baby just 10 days before my 30th birthday, was 18 and therefore an adult.
We were fortunate that the hospital accepted me as his mother who shared the same address, and therefore allowed me to be involved in his care. I was told in no uncertain terms however, that if decisions were to be made, we would need to speak with the hospital’s legal counsel. From seven months after this event, I am constantly aware of how lucky my family is. We were lucky that the supervisor my son worked with knew CPR, we were lucky that the EMTs responded within 2 minutes and were able to shock my son’s heart back into a regular rhythm, we were lucky that our failure to plan for this “worst case scenario” hadn’t become a huge problem. My son is in the 3% of people who survive a full cardiac arrest episode – he has a high-tech defibrillator implanted in his chest so that he is safe if it should ever happen again. After a whole battery of tests and scans, none of the 26 doctors he saw were able to give us an answer as to why it had happened. We were lucky in every possible way. We were lucky that my ignorance about having an advance directive for my barely 18-year-old son didn’t make our situation a million times worse.
We are not attorneys but after my experience and what I was told by the hospital, my advice to everyone who still lives in the happy bubble where bad things don’t happen to their children is to have an advance directive done the day your child turns 18. Before they leave for college, before they graduate, before you make or buy them that big fancy birthday cake. Get it done and have it ready and hope and pray that you never need it. There are many sites that provide the basic template free of charge. The easiest one I’ve found is www.caringinfo.org. It takes just a few minutes and the peace of mind it provides is priceless.
- Feb 21, 2018
Having a birthday falling anywhere within a month of a holiday, most men will try and co-opt it so they can buy one gift, one dinner out etc. rather than having to keep track of multiple dates and events. For me, this meant generally celebrating Valentine’s Day and my birthday together. Not having close friends to celebrate with, we would often travel to other areas of Southern California with acquaintances from work or neighbor friends. On this particular year, we decided to travel to Las Vegas to see a comedian I particularly liked. My husband bought the airline tickets and planned the whole trip. I was a little surprised but happy to have warranted this positive attention.
I made sure my sitter was available for the children and off we went. The night started off well with drinks and dinner with the former neighbors who had made the trip with us. We were seated and had watched the opening act when my husband whispered in my ear, “I’ll be right back, going to the restroom.” The show continued, the headliner came out and was as great as I had anticipated, still my husband had not returned. After about 30 minutes I realized he wasn’t coming back, the other gentleman asked me if I was concerned and I laughed and told him no, but that it was just the 3 of us for the remainder of the night. He looked at me in disbelief, but soon found out I was correct. We left the show, the other couple returned to their room and I went to my empty one. I was hurt and a bit sad, but I wasn’t surprised. My husband had used my birthday / Valentine’s Day to come to Las Vegas to see another woman, so I ordered myself a piece of cake from room service then went to sleep. He returned sometime in the very early hours of the morning with a story about taking a taxi and not being able to find one to get back, but I knew what had happened. He took me to a jewelry store that day and bought me a beautiful heart necklace. This was my reward for not fighting with him about his absence. I was numb inside and thanked him for the necklace. It was just another day for him, an awful day for me. But that was the thing – it was never about me, only about him.
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