CARGO
It makes a great difference if you are being transported as “cargo” rather than as a passenger.
My most recent occasion of being sent from one point to another largely because of someone else's choice was, I recall. my being shipped out on a road-bound ambulance back in l936 to a hospital in Roanoke, Virginia. I spent a month there before getting back on track. At least, I outlasted the hospital itself . It ceased to be at least fifty years ago. Then, I'd have to say the army and the air force shipped me around as unit number 33133235 for the World War II years. I was stowed away with thousands of other such packages. I had the old “Queen Mary” both ways across the Atlantic; numerous styles of wheeled machines and B-24's.
More recently the chopper took over. I had gone to the local hospital for some more-or-less routine X-Ray shots, and I was standing in a waiting room leafing through some old magazines, waiting for the x-rays to be “read. I was summoned to the desk area and it proved to be my doctor on the phone. He asked where I was. He interrupted to say. “Your x-rays have been “evaluated” and I want you to do two things right away. I have told the nurse beside you to get a wheel chair. You are you to sit in it - now.” I did so because one was pushed under me. He added instructions to get someone to wheel me to the Emergency Room “You've got an abdominal aorta that's about ready to pop! Do not walk ! Ride!” Looking back , I would say that I became, at that moment ,”cargo”.
A trio of doctors took over. They had decided to sen d me to C Charlottesville where a “Team” would be av available to deal with my condition. They showed me the X-rays and there was a tornado-like, dark blob at rest in the lower left side. The had always called a ”Pegasus” helicopter and the three man crew was packing me up for transport within the quarter hour.
I proved to be too long for the cargo area. I scrunched my toes up and held my toes back and made it.”You've done this before,” one of the crew member laughed. “No, all beds are too short for me.” The rotors started and we lifted up from the roof top ,heliport. We leaned [over the waters of Newman “Lake”,”Pond”,Lake”,”Pond,”Sinky”,”Puddle”or “Catch-all” on the James Madison University campus and headed East toward intensely blue range of mountains to the East
I remember lots of sunlight shattered by rotor shadows' and the steady thrump-thrump of the rotor blades chomping endlessly at the high, summer air; and then we were scaling slowly down the side of a high rise building seeking the ground level heliport at the University of Virginia hospital in Charlottesville. Moment later I was under the care of a fine team of medical people heeded by heart surgeon Dr. Nancy Harthun.
Working together, we worked some miracles. I say “together” because I was determined to get well and and convinced that Dr. Harthun and her assistants could beat the admittedly poor odds. We had other help, too, which I felt we all knew every step the way. Dr. Harthun fashioned a new abdominal aorta for me of Dacron ® material and her handiwork has been doing a good job every since..
All of that took place three years or so ago, and I just realized yesterday that no one ever told me about this phase of “cargo”: time which comes to us in later age. Since I don't drive, I am ferried about from place to place by friends and family on a regular basis.. I write things such as this keep me out of mischief and in the words of Minnie Pearl- I say: “I am SO glad to be here!”... at all.
A.L.M. April 29, 2004 [c684wds]
