After banking

When I quit my Loan Clerk job at First National Bank in Creston, I was a 33 year old mother of 2 with a puppy. Paul had a good full time job with the federal government, so I didn't realy need benefits. But I did need a sanity keeping job.

What do I mean by that? I needed a job to get me away from the kids in order to keep my sanity. Not that I didn't love the little bastards to death, but I needed "away time". My friend Denis Ritzman worked for an oxygen delivery company called Central Medical Supply. They needed someone to work about 10 hours a week, plus take some "on call" time with a beeper. So I took that job.

Working in the medical field was something I'd never strived for, but hey, the hours and pay were okay. My territory stretched from northern Missouri up to Elk Horn. I spent a lot of time on the road and visited homes and nursing homes of people who needed oxygen concentrators and supplies like tanks for mobility and nose tubes (cannula's). I had a tool that allowed me to measure the oxygen output of the machine to make sure it was working okay. If it wasn't, I switched it out.

Sometimes it was a little creepy. Nursing homes smell and are often sad places. People in nursing homes were sometimes comatose and I was supposed to switch out their cannula. Ick - touching a near dead person's nose? Double ick! Sometimes I just pretended - after all they had nurses on staff to do that stuff right?

Other people were still in their homes. Sometimes I got quite attached to them. Then I'd see an obituary in the paper, or get a call to pick up their equipment. Not a good sign. In my experience, unless the oxygen is only used at night, most people using it don't survive real long.

It was during a drive while delivery O2 equipment that I had an epiphany. I should have another baby! I sure don't know what came over me - popping out another kid wasn't ever in my plans before that. Amazingly, Paul was not hard to talk into it! He was (is) always up for that activity. So before I knew it, I was with child - baby due in December 1991.

Central Medical went through some changes, and I was laid off. I kinda thought they didn't want someone who was preggers on staff. So it was the one and only time in my life that I received jobless benefits. I even had to do a phone hearing on it as CMS tried to deny my claim - and I kick their asses. So I was off work for the last 3 months until Patrick George was born December 2, 1991 via C-Section as he was breech.

He made quite an entry into the world, and then, due to hypoplastic left ventricle he left way to soon - after only 6 days of life. It was a life-changing experience for Paul and me, and Amy too was much affected. Jud was not yet 3, and he doesn't remember much about it. Despite the sadness and sense of loss, I'm glad we had Patrick. I wouldn't take back that epiphany for anything.