Monday, January 12, 2009

Some through the water, some through the fire, but God gives a song

I received such an interesting and scary e-mail from my daughter Penny that I decided to post it. Enjoy, and be warned about allergies.




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"Last Friday I hopped in a 15 passenger van with two other moms, 9 teenagers and 2 younger kids. We set off for Winston Salem, NC where we spent the weekend at the Mid Year Invitational Bible Quizzing meet. It was quite a weekend. Sheldon and Christopher quizzed 11 times! over three days. I coached them along with another mom.
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They did awesome. Our team which was called"Woe To You," placed first. (Woe to You comes from the book of Matthew which is what they were quizzing from..) Sheldon placed 5th individually and Christopher placed 1st individually. So we took home a lot of blue ribbons.

On Sunday afternoon about 5:00pm we left to return home. Somewhere along the way we stopped for dinner and an hour later we stopped for a bathroom break. Our driver, one of the moms, forgot about her allergy to some soaps and washed her hands in the bathroom. She began to have some allergy symptoms right away as we got back on the road. Within about 20 to 30 minutes she began to have an asthma attack. She had her inhaler and took a couple of puffs but that didn't seem to do anything for her. We began to worry about her and made her switch with the other mom that was authorized to drive.
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My job was to make sure that she didn't get too bad. When the asthma mom had stopped talking for some time and seemed agitated I called a doctor I know in Toccoa and he went through what we should look for as far as the seriousness of her condition. While I was talking to him she lost consciousness. At that point we pulled the car over onto the side of the road on I85 and I called an ambulance.
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It took at least 20 minutes to get there during which time she never regained consciousness but continued to breath, thankfully. She is home now and doing better but not completely recovered. It was quite a long weekend. I got to sleep somewhere around 1 in the morning and woke up at 7am this morning when the phone started to ring next to my bed. It was a professor from Gunther's department with the news which follows below.

Gate Cottage which I think is the oldest building on campus burned to the ground in the middle of the night last night. Gunther got the day off today but spent it at school anyway backing up all his folders on his computer. The entire counseling department had offices in Gate Cottage and everything was a total loss. Gate cottage is the building you go through to get to the Falls.

You can no longer really tell but there was a second story which is where all the offices were. Both the first floor and second collapsed into the basement. There were five different fire departments involved in trying to put it out. (
Picture by Robin Dake of independentmail.com)

And finally, I followed all this by jumping in the shower this morning, looking down at my engagement ring and realizing some where the day before my diamond had fallen out. (Some where between Winston Salem and the shower)

Maybe tomorrow will be a better day!"


The lady on your left is my daughter Penny, the two guys, toward the right, are my grandsons, Christopher a great musician, and Sheldon a great chess player.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Thanks for posting that. I hadn't heard from Penny for a few days, and now I know what she was up to. WOW! What a harrowing story to tell. God protected all!!! (except the diamond!) What I know of David with his asthma and allergies, it is nothing short of a miracle that woman did not die in the van waiting for the ambulance. And even though that building held significance both historically and currently, glory be that it burned at night when no one was there to be harmed!

Viola Larson said...

Yeah, I know about those allergies too. I remember once praying that the doctor I got at Urgent care would know about allergies and being relieved when I heard the doctor outside the door say, "oh yes, the Feldine (sp) syndrome." He then told me that my problem was that when the sun hit my skin after taking the medicine my skin cells would start turning over.(what ever that means. But you remember monster mom, I think: )

Unknown said...

actually I do. Didn't they make you take steroids to counteract it? I remember that being my first dealings with the word steroids other than in health class in school teaching about drug abuse. I kept waiting for you to sprout big muscles.

Viola Larson said...

Yes, I have taken steroids three times now, twice for allergies and once for the shingles I just had a few months a go. They do make you feel out of sorts but this last time I didn't notice because the pain pills kept me from feeling much at all!