She's Sherrie

I voted in every election.  I have paid taxes most of my life. I have given money to the needy over the years. My family members have participated in every war since the Civil War.  I raised my children to become responsible and sensitive to others. I took care of my son and my mother when they were dying. Now I am retired, living on one small income. I am in reasonably good health, but I worry about how I will pay the co-pays and out of pocket expenses when I'm not.  I do not go to the doctor when I should. I see the middle-class people and poor, disabled, and elderly struggling every day.  I see people lined up at churches waiting for a small monthly amount of food from the food bank.  Not enough food for a month, but maybe a week. I see elderly, sickly people in front of me in the grocery line paying for whatever tiny amount of food they can get from their 16.00 food stamp allotment,  which seems to be the standard amount for a single person. I see people sl

Let's talk about the elephant in the room, the classroom.  The elephant's name is Sales.  The most difficult part of training is learning about all of the equipment.  Not just the official name and official color, but the USOC, the Universal Service Order Code.   Every item and color and style, shape, or size had a specific code recognized universally in any of the Bell System and AT&T systems. Before we could add any equipment to any customer request, we had to learn all the codes.  Remember, we had a form that we wrote everything on during a conversation.  We had to order it in technical language for time constraints and getting the order transmitted from our hands to the customer's home.  An old ugly yellow dial desk phone was an EXTYC, translation; a yellow extension rotary dial desk phone.  We had to remember all of the codes and the features and benefits of each item.  We practiced over and over, writing fake orders, on fake phone calls, with fake people. On

That picture of the phone over there to the left is a modern version of the phones on every desk in the business office.  A dinosaur even for that period.  Rotary dial.  Olive green.  Old as PA Bell.  I had touchtone phones in my apartment in 1965 in the Washington DC area.  Maybe Dallas was just a little slow to get the technology. Also, notice there is no headset attached to it.  We were on the phones eight hours a day, holding the phone on our necks crooked to one side to keep our hands free to write and file documents while we talked.  Only one person in the office had a headset.  That was Jane, a Liza Mannelli look-alike who had obtained special medical permission from The Surgeon General or Dr. Nick or Doctor Bell, some special doctor.  The rest of us had to suffer a few years until someone decided they could get more work out of us if we had headsets.  Oh, and maybe we wouldn't need so many green pills for our headaches and sore necks. I have already described how we

Training, training, training.  We really had to keep a positive outlook.  It was grueling, and we had to stick together and keep our spirits up collectively.  One had to maintain a certain level of self-confidence.  If you didn't, if you doubt yourself, you might not have enough confidence to make it to the end of the training and graduate.  We were all determined to get our full-fledged service rep ears.  None of the four of us wanted to be sent back to our old jobs because we flunked out of class.  That was the only option, either that or quit.  We were not biting into that failure sandwich. Obviously, we started our training with the easy stuff and added more difficult pieces of the puzzle as we went along.  That meant that our time taking real phone calls from real customers increased as our skill level widened.  One of the more difficult parts of our training was dealing with customers who had delinquent bills or customers who passed the late phase and whose phones had now

So much heartache, how do you watch your strong, vibrant child fade away under the control of cancer?  How do you, as a mom, live over it?  Where do you get the strength to move past it?  What can you do to get past it?  I'm afraid that I don't have the answers to any of those questions.  It has been ten years since Jeff died, and I have not recovered from his loss.  It is insurmountable grief and sadness that follows you like a constant shadow, always present.  A noise, a smell, a thought can trigger an emotional avalanche that buries you.  I will never get past the horror, the sadness, the loss, or the "what ifs."  I have post-traumatic stress from the ordeal, yes absolutely diagnosed with PTSD.  The first two years after Jeff died, my head became a VCR, and vivid pictures and scenes from events that happened would kick on for no reason and play.  Sometimes, the same scene would play over and over.  It still happens but is usually triggered by an external event.

It was now time for Jeff to come home and be placed in Hospice care.  He wasn't aware of the significance of the change; in fact, he had been pretty much out of it for about a week.  I needed to go home and wait for the hospital equipment to be delivered. It was like moving the hospital to my house.  There was so much equipment.  There was an electric hospital bed, oxygen machine, wheelchair, IV poles, safety rails, and pretty much everything in the hospital room.  I had the young man set it up in Jeff's bedroom so he could be in a quiet location. Next, the hospice people showed up to set up his care plan.  This was unnerving for me, I guess, because it was the reality of accepting the end of his life smacking me in the face.  Part of the meeting was to brief me on what to expect regarding the deterioration of Jeff's health, the type of care he would get, and scheduling.  The medication was brought along, and they instructed me on the technicalities of each one.  I wa

After the chemo treatment, Jeff watched TV, converse, talk on the phone and even play games on the Playstation with his brother Kevin.  That was a vast improvement.  His pain was tolerable with low dose pills, not IV infused.  He was much better, but still could not eat. During the week of my visits with him after work, he continued to have a much better attitude.  I did notice that his energy level was lower every day.  He would switch back and forth between knowing how sick he was and forgetting that he had a terminal illness.  That was very disturbing to me, but I didn't correct him.  As long as he seemed to be improved, I would not do or say anything to make him feel hopeless. By the time Friday arrived, his pain level was starting to increase, and the doctor ordered him back on the pain injections of morphine.  He had started sleeping more again and talking less.  I was grateful for the few days that he had felt better and knew that it was just temporary.  When I would