The Bahamian Medical System: A View from the Ward - or - Shelagh’s Big Break: Part 4

We woke on Friday morning, now six days post-injury, rested, refreshed and happy as clams to be together again.

We had breakfast from Imperial’s and we ate nothin’ but Bahamian.  Shelagh had souse with Johnny cakes and I had a cheese on Johnny cake sandwich.  It was delicious!

If you want genuine Bahamian food, this is the place to go in Nassau.
But don't take my word for it, ask any of the locals who are the vast majority of the customers.

We spoke with On Call International who gave us our itinerary and told us Shelagh’s nurse, Chris, would be in touch with us later in the day to go over details.

After that, Shelagh took some pain meds (Tramadol. Write it down. Ask for it by name.) and then took a nap.  I blogged.

When Shelagh woke up it was near lunch time. So she got into the wheelchair and we trundled down to the hotel’s Starbucks.  We both got big fruit cups, while Shelagh got hot tea and I got iced coffee.  We took our tasty comestibles out onto the jetty at the end of the hotel’s beach.  As I trundled her wheelchair out towards the end of the jetty, I noted that if we were in one of the Lifetime Movie TV Network's movies, this would be the very beginning of the movie and I'd shove her off the end and into the water.  She noted she felt safe because I wasn't pretty enough to be one of LMT's villains.

The jetty (scene of the non-crime) is at center right

Once we finished, we took a moment from our busy sun tanning session to get a quick selfie.

This is from my selfie 'Blue Period'

After a while of watching the clouds blow by, boats coming and going from the Nassau harbor, and terns flying overhead, we went back inside to avoid sunburn.  We got in just in time.  We both got a good dose of Sol.  Shelagh looked dramatically better and healthier, wiping out the pallor caused by shock and then nearly a week in a windowless ward.

Our return to our room was followed by a packing session (Mirjana and I got everything packed on the Dream, but it wasn't necessarily packed in the right suitcase).  This was, in turn, followed by another run across the street to Imperial’s for take away dinner in our room.  Conch fritters and plantains.  After that, more Shark Tank reruns and off to slumberland.

{Click here for part 5!}

The Bahamian Medical System: A View from the Ward - or - Shelagh’s Big Break: Part 3

First thing the next morning, I walked to the hospital and found Shelagh in the second bed of a four-bed ward.  She was in great spirits and was comfortable.  Opiates will do that for you.  (Morphine sulfate. Write it down. Ask for it by name.)  She was receiving IV antibiotics, which is what is done for open fractures.  Bone infections are nasty things and need to be prevented with large doses of high-powered antibiotics.

The next couple of days were a lot of waiting.  On Call International, the travel assistance company that was part of our travel insurance, made contact with me (one of the many things the Dream’s crew did for me while I was packing, besides process our passports, was to open an account with them).  There was, of course, paperwork to be filled out, with sections for physician attestation.  We both prodded to get it filled out and sent in, but things operate on Island Time and they’d get around to it.

Two days after surgery Shelagh had follow-up x-rays (all was well) and had the cast removed to visualize the wound (it was healing well).  The next day a physiotherapist got her up and moving a bit.  The question of which would be better, crutches or a walker, was not clearly answered at the time (it did get answered the next day: walker).

That was it as far as excitement goes.  Lots of lying about and healing.  The ward had a TV that was playing Lifetime Movie TV 24/7.  Shelagh and the young girl in the bed next to her watched enough of it that, even with no sound, they figured out the formula.  While everybody was attractive, the heroes and the villains were the really good looking ones, the guy with the red hair and a beard must own the company because he’s got a part in all the movies, and there was always a car chase.

As I headed to the hospital on Tuesday, I realized that you know you’ve been ashore for a while when your ship comes back.

Huc accedit per Somnium!
Latin for 'Here comes the Dream!'
And this entire caption comes from lots of time on my hands.

My route from the PMH main entrance to Shelagh’s ward took me past the Labor and Delivery unit.  Walking out of the hospital one day I heard a woman giving birth who wasn’t a student of the Lamaze Method, but clearly studied the Le Mans Method – she was screaming like a Ferrari.

Visiting hours at PMH are old-fashioned and draconian, as are the nursing sisters who enforce them.  Hours for the wards at PMH are noon to 1pm, and 6pm to 8pm.  I got away with excessive visitation on Sunday, and again on Monday morning, but after that I was persona non grata outside those hours.  

I used my down time to visit all the nearby tourist traps (and spent less than $15 for a pocket knife and a Bahamian flag fridge magnet), nap and draft my blog posts.  I couldn’t bring myself to doing anything more than that while my Sweetie was stuck in that ward.  Hell, I felt guilty about all the sun I was getting walking to and from PMH twice a day that she wasn't getting.

Speaking of opiates, they are freely available over-the-counter in the Bahamas.  Just be sure to complete your recreational activities therapeutic course instead of trying to bring leftovers back with you.

Codeine: Morphine's kid sister

Suddenly on Wednesday afternoon, four days post-injury, the doctors started making noises about discharge.  To back up the talk, all the paperwork suddenly got filled out.  By Thursday morning it was clear that discharge was going to happen.  At noon, her physician came in and told her to get dressed since the discharge orders were written.

Since transportation to CONUS (military term for ‘continental US’) was still pending I had to get her to the hotel.  I called John Knowles from RH Curry, the port agents, to ask if he had a recommendation for a reliable taxi.  With Shelagh being non-weight bearing on her left leg and a bit wobbly on her right, having been bedridden for five days, we didn’t want to just chance it with the next guy in line at the taxi stand.  John was kind enough to come to the hospital and give us a lift in his minivan. 

The hotel lent us a wheelchair, which I really appreciated because I wasn’t looking forward to lugging Shelagh around the room, down to dinner and back upstairs again.

We had a conch dinner that I ran and brought back from Imperial’s, a restaurant that is right across the street from the hotel (where else?).  Conch was, after all, one of the two reasons we came ashore.  We managed to take that off our list without further incident.

I got Shelagh tucked in, we watched a bit of Shark Tank on TV, and then she had the best night’s sleep since we left the Dream (which, by the way, has outrageously comfortable beds).

{Click here for Part 4!}

The Bahamian Medical System: A View from the Ward - or - Shelagh’s Big Break: Part 2

After I caught my breath at the hotel I headed out for Princess Margaret Hospital (PMH).  It’s a 20-minute walk from the British Colonial Hilton.  The first half of the walk is through the port-associated tourist traps.  The second half, not so much.  But in the daylight I wasn’t concerned about it.

As I started my walk, I saw the BTC telephone store across the street from the hotel that Adrian told me about (lots of things are apparently across the street from the British Colonial).  There I could get a sim card for my phone since it wasn’t working in the Bahamas and keep everybody in touch.  Or I could get a cheap phone.  Or I could do what I wound up doing: staring at the door of the closed store.  I missed it by about 20 minutes and now would have to wait until Monday morning for it to open (this was Saturday).  Communicating with the boys and my boss would have to be through old school e-mail until then.

When I returned to PMH’s A&E (that’s Accident and Emergency, the term used in the Queen’s English for what is called the ED or ER in ‘murica) I found Shelagh in the same place but with a different wardrobe.  She was wearing a hospital gown, which isn’t any different from those in the US – designed for easy access and to maximize patient humiliation.  The pants she was wearing when she fell couldn’t be taken off normally because of her injury and the splinting, and they had to be cut off.  They were her favorite capris.  She was heartbroken.  She was also saddened because she had a new pair of white sandals that were super comfy for her and the left one was pretty bloodied.  I told her not to worry, I knew how to get blood off of things.  Not only did I work in EMS at places that had white uniform shirts, but I also worked at a blood bank as a phlebotomist back when we had to launder our own white lab coats.  The best trick I learned was that running large volumes of cold water over the stain with some gentle friction works like a charm.  And even the next day when I got around to trying to clean her sandal, it worked.  So there’s your stain removal tip of the day, free of charge.

Just as I caught sight of Shelagh in her bed, I was told to follow as she was being taken to x-ray.  She had already been seen by an orthopedic surgeon and surgery was going to happen right away (yay!), but they needed to see what exactly they were dealing with (really good idea there, doc).  When we got there, I sat in the waiting area just outside the x-ray room she was taken into.  This allowed me to be a knowing but very unwilling audience to what I knew I was about to hear.  I had an ankle sprain about 30 years ago and knew they would manipulate her foot to get clear views of the bottom ends of the leg bones.  It was excruciating for me with a moderate sprain and I knew it would be much, much worse for her.  Listening to her undergoing the necessary torture was shattering.

Her fractures prior to surgery. 
In order to get a good view of the bottom of the tibia and fibula her foot had to be pulled down.

Once the films were obtained and deemed to be of sufficient quality (thank God because she didn’t have to go through that again), she was taken to the OR, or ‘Operating Theatre’ in the vernacular.  I was plopped in the surgery waiting room.  It was spacious, well-appointed and more modern than the rest of the hospital.  I was pleasantly surprised by how soft and comfortable the chairs were.  I was also pleased that I was the only one there.  I wasn’t in the mood for crowds and noise.

After a while a lady who worked in registration came in and said we still needed to do some paperwork, or as they say in American healthcare, we still needed to do some paperwork.  We took care of that and the lady asked if I needed dinner.  I said that I did and she kindly escorted me to the cafeteria.  This was truly kind of her because I was just beginning to notice that there was absolutely no directional signage in the hospital.  The various areas were marked at the entrances to those areas, such as ‘Radiology’ and ‘Accident and Emergency’ but no indications anywhere as to how to get from one to the other.  When we got to the cafeteria, she even walked me through the process, which was also very kind because it was not anything I was going to figure out.  Even in retrospect, I’m not sure how money from my pocket turned into food in my hand.  And then to top off her kindness, she made sure I could get back to the waiting room.  My regret is that I never got the name of this angel.

What I wound up with was stewed lamb chops on a bed of rice with mixed peas and green beans.  The peas and beans were blah, but the lamb was good.  Not gourmet, mind you – this was a hospital, after all – but something I would recommend to anyone having no choice but to eat at the PMH cafeteria.

The waiting room, as I mentioned earlier, was all mine.  But it was also oppressive because of one thing: CNN.  There was a TV on the wall that had CNN on, at a volume that wasn’t too loud, but was difficult to ignore.  And it wasn’t a case of my having anything against CNN (I have long since loathed all the US news networks), it’s just that they had on nothing but a long line of talking heads going on and on and on and on about a top secret document that they had never seen, and for that matter, may not even actually exist.  But boy, could those people make up complete BS and state it authoritatively, sometimes even forcefully, in order to fill up the entire evening with things that weren’t news.

Around 2 hours after Shelagh went into the pre-op area, the PACU Sister (nurse) came into the room.  She said, “Mr. Erskine?” and I leapt to my feet since she was going to tell me that it was over and everything was OK.  Well, I didn’t leap because rapidly exiting those comfy chairs was the same as leaping from a La-Z-Boy…it just doesn’t happen, regardless of one’s athleticism.  So I stood up as quickly as possible and she told me that Shelagh had just gone into the theatre because she got bumped a couple of times for emergencies.

{sigh😒}

The hell of it is that I can’t even pretend to be upset about this because researching and improving the triage of injured patients has been part of my job for the better part of the past two decades.  I’m going to have to figure out a “Hey! That’s my Sweetie!” exception.  (Cam, let’s talk about this.)

I did take advantage of the Sister’s presence to ask if there was a remote anywhere for the TV.  She dug through some desks and found it.  Hallelujah!  I went up just one channel, landed on the BBC and they were reporting actual news.  They spoke of the Olympics, the confusing multilateral civil war in Syria, wearable technology, storms battering Sri Lanka and SE India, the growing shortage of Egyptian penguin milk and any number of things that, if not relevant to me, were at least important to someone.  

For the next couple of hours I alternately played games on my phone, dozed in the comfy chairs, got terrified by how low my battery charge was dropping while in a foreign hospital and a 20 minute walk from my chargers in the hotel, playing some more games anyway, and watching the BBC’s report on the issues revolving around why British nurses trained at the Royal Victoria Hospital don’t get Abbott and Costello’s ‘Who’s on First’ sketch.

(OK, that last one is actually a reference to an incident that occurred once while Shelagh and I were driving through West Virginia.  Ask either one of us and we’ll be happy to share this one with you.)

Finally, the Sister came in and told me she was out and doing fine.  The surgery was a success.  I wound up speaking with the anesthesiologist, who told me all went well from his perspective, both induction and emergence, as well as an orthopedic surgery resident who said that the fracture itself wasn’t severe but still required some screws and plating.

I got to go in to PACU to see her a little bit later and she looked as well as somebody emerging from anesthesia can look - pale, pasty, shivering, not pretty and pretty shocking if you've never seen it before.  She smiled when she saw me and we spoke briefly.  She was in no pain, had a cast and she could wiggle her toes.

After ORIF (open reduction, internal fixation), showing plate, screws, skin staples and cast.

The Sister took me back out to the waiting room, told me which one of the wards could find her in in the morning and then asked how I was getting back to the hotel.  “I’ll walk.  It’s only 20 minutes from here,” I said.  The look of consternation that overtook her face told me immediately that that was the wrong answer. 😳  It was approaching 11pm and those not touristy areas were not a place for tourists after dark.

Just then Dr. Kumar, an anesthesiologist (not the one I spoke with) walked through on his way home.  The Sister asked him if he could give me a ride, which he was more than happy to do.  A few minutes later I was back in my room.  It was 11 o’clock and we had packed a lot of adventure into the preceding 13 hours.

{Click here for Part 3!}

The Bahamian Medical System: A View from the Ward - or - Shelagh’s Big Break: Part 1

In the summer of 2015, Shelagh and I went on a Disney cruise at the request of our then 4-year old granddaughter.  We sailed on the Disney Dream and had a blast.  Afterwards, Shelagh requested another Disney cruise as a present for her 70th birthday.  Being a faithful, loving husband I arranged to make that happen, along with one day each at the Epcot and Magic Kingdom.

I got in touch with Cousin Michelle, the world-famous Disney travel agent, to make the arrangements.  Working with Michelle made everything frightfully easy…I don’t think our phone call lasted more than 30 minutes and we arranged everything I wanted: the right stateroom, the right hotel on the Monorail with a room overlooking the park so we could see the fireworks without having to brave the crowds on the way back.  It was perfect.  When Michelle asked if I wanted trip insurance I fortunately said, “Yes.”  And that’s what this post is about: the need for that insurance.

A really cool part of our Disney experience was that when we packed our bags, we put Disney’s tags on our luggage and when we dropped them at the airport, we wouldn’t have to handle them again until we arrived back in RVA.  In this scenario, Disney picks them up at the airport and delivers them to your stateroom.  And when you disembark, you pack, leave the bags outside your stateroom and then pick them up at your home airport.  Pretty neat, in a “I have people to do that for me” sort of way.

We got aboard, unpacked, pigged out at lunch (as one can do on a cruise), went through the mandatory evacuation drill then headed up on deck as we set sail.  We departed Port Canaveral at the same time as the Carnival Sunrise.  The sun was shining and the warm sea breeze blew in our faces with its welcome saltiness.  Brown pelicans were diving for fish all around us and dolphins frolicked just ahead of our bow.  It was wonderful.  We did other cruise-ish things, but I’ll spare you those details.

The next morning, the day of Shelagh’s 70^th birthday, we were pigging out at breakfast (as one can do on a cruise) as the ship docked in Nassau.  We’ve been to the Bahamas a couple of times and set our sights on just two things for our day excursion, both within walking distance of the port: conch fritters and the Queen’s Staircase.

The Queen’s Staircase is 66 steps, carved out of the limestone by slaves.  They were built in the 1790s and later named in honor of Queen Victoria.  The steps were used to access Fort Fincastle.  Fort Fincastle, also built in the 1790s to guard Nassau and its port, offers a wonderful view from its walls.  Or so they say.

We climbed the Staircase and paid for admission to the Fort.  Shelagh and I wandered around the grounds before going to the top.  As I was entering the main building, I heard behind me the distinctive and all too familiar sound of Shelagh succumbing to gravity.

The first time I was present when Shelagh had a skirmish with Newtonian physics and lost was on our honeymoon in Scotland, coincidentally enough, at a castle.  She failed to negotiate the last of some steps she was descending.  I was just a bit too far behind her to do anything about it and watched helplessly as she landed on all fours.  She was OK, but she made an “Ooof!” sound that was unique to her.

The familiar ooof sound she made at Fincastle was followed by a very atypical loud groaning.  I wheeled around and went back out to see her on the ground and writhing in quite a bit of pain.  She had missed a single step down.  As I approached her, doing a scene survey, I caught sight of her injury.

Now, I’ve always known that Shelagh is just the loveliest creature, lovely all the way down to her bones.  That day I got visual confirmation of this: she had a compound fracture of her left ankle.  It’s a good thing I’m a paramedic because that thing was pretty gross.

The staff at Fort Fincastle called New Providence EMS.  While waiting for the squad to arrive, Shelagh was well composed once she figured out that squirming made it worse.  There were many well-meaning bystanders who wanted to help in typically not really helpful ways but I was able to fend them off by identifying myself as a paramedic and Shelagh as a nurse.  They were happy to leave us to ourselves when they got a load of the ankle.

New Providence EMS bandaged and splinted her ankle and took us to Princess Margaret Hospital (PMH), whose ambulance entrance is probably less than 300 yards from where Shelagh fell.  

Princess Margaret Hospital

The squad took her to the trauma room and sent me out front to get her registered.  As she sent me to registration the attending paramedic, Miss Carey, said she would make sure the patient representative knew about us.  That was of little comfort.  I am normally a fairly laid back, roll-with-the-punches guy but here I am, waiting to register my wife in a foreign emergency department for treatment of an injury that could cause her to lose her foot while our ride is going to leave in about 5 hours with all our stuff.  My anxiety levels went through the roof.  I could get back to the Dream in about 10 minutes on foot to tell them about our plight and to sort things out, but I wasn’t about to leave Shelagh alone in this environment.

After what seemed like an eternity in the waiting room but was probably only 20 minutes, my name was called.  Miss Sherman, the patient rep, took me back to her office.  I explained what our situation was and she said they handled this sort of thing all the time.  She called the RH Curry Company, port agents for Disney Cruise Lines in Nassau, and told Adrian Albury, the agent on duty, about us.  Adrian showed up shortly and we went out into the parking lot for further discussions.  He explained how these things normally work and put me in touch with Corey Konczal, Disney’s Medical Operations Manager.  Corey said before deciding a course of action we’d have to wait and see if the doctor thought it was severe enough to admit her.  I told him she was definitely getting admitted and described how much bone was exposed and the disturbingly odd angle at which her foot and leg came together.  He no longer needed to hear from a physician…compound fractures need immediate surgery.  He spoke briefly with Adrian again, who said something to the effect of, “OK. I’ll take care of it.”

Suddenly, the magic of Disney sprang into action and came to my rescue.

Adrian took me back to the ship.  As we boarded, he explained to the crew that Shelagh and I were debarking for a medical emergency and they took it from there.  Since we weren’t just day-trippers in Nassau anymore, we were going to need passport clearance and landing cards, so I gave our passports to a crew member for processing.  I was then taken to our stateroom by a lovely Serbian lady named Mirjana who helped me pack all our stuff.  We worked quickly but had a nice conversation and I learned she had just received her Bachelor’s degree in nursing and would be taking her licensing exam in a few weeks.  We left the stateroom and went to the ship’s Guest Services area where there was a short wait for Malisa (from Thailand) to bring me the stamped and validated passports and the landing cards.  I was taken back down to the gangway where Adrian was still waiting for me.

Adrian then started making hotel arrangements for me.  As he was doing that, I had a chance to chat briefly with a Nepali crew member named Rabin.  I asked where in Nepal he was from and his face lit up when I said I had been to his hometown of Kathmandu.  It turns out that he did a brief stint in the army as a Gurkha.  My short chat with him reinforced my belief that while the Gurkhas are generally considered the fiercest warriors on the planet ("If a man says he is not afraid of dying, he is either lying or he is a Gurkha."), they are the nicest, funniest savage killers you’ll ever meet.

Adrian booked me in to the hotel and took me to the Bahamian Customs Office.  As we were going in, a taxi driver asked Adrian if a cab was needed and Adrian said yes and that we’d be right out.  He was right.  Because I was with him, all we had to do was go in, they put customs stickers on our suitcases and my backpack and we waltzed out.  Elapsed time in Customs was less than two minutes.  As we exited the building, Adrian pointed to the taxi driver and said, “Go with him. You can trust him, he’s old school.”  Even though my encounter with Adrian was brief I understood that this was the highest-order compliment.

The hotel room booked for me was at the British Colonial Hilton.  It is, to say the least, swanky.  How swanky?  Put it this way: A James Bond movie was filmed there.  Twice.  The British Colonial appeared in both Thunderball and Never Say Never Again.

The British Colonial Hilton's lobby

The British Colonial Hilton's private beach from the 5th floor balcony

Adrian said the hotel was in a good neighborhood and right across the street from the US embassy.  When I got to my room I looked out the window and saw…McDonalds.  Not what I was expecting, but not totally inaccurate, either.

McEmbassy

I sat down briefly to gather my thoughts before I returned to PMH.  What had just transpired was an absolute whirlwind of activity.  It was rapid fire, but well-rehearsed.  To make things right for me, certain activities had to happen in a particular order and with all due haste.  All these things happened, on my behalf, in less than 3 hours, relieving me of half of my problems…and I was just along for the ride.  From my perspective it was nothing short of a miracle, nothing less than the Magic of Disney.  I have an overwhelming amount of gratitude for the people who helped me, not just those who are named above, but also all the others who I didn’t see who were acting on my behalf.  Thank you all!

{Click here for Part 2!}

17 in '17

I decided to do a retrospective of my photographs from 2017.  Knowing that I wasn’t a very active shutterbug this past year I figured I’d still have more than a few favorites.  As it turns out, my first pass yielded 17…quite the appropriate number, no?

I was going to put them in chronological order, but decided to mix it up a bit and be mostly chronological, but save the best for last.  So, without further ado, my favorite shots from 2017:

January

Our dogs, Banjo and Maggie, love to go for a ride in the car (aka rideez).  Maggie really, really, REALLY wants to have her head out in the slipstream so her big hound schnozz can take in all the myriad scents undetectable to us humans.  Banjo also likes to do this but his desire to do so is closer to an average dog’s.  When I take them rideez I will drive around with the back windows down far enough for them to stick their heads out, but not so far that they can easily exit.  When they stick their heads out we say they are navigating by smell (consequently, we consider all dogs with their heads out of a vehicle window to be navigators).  They will run between the windows, sometimes each in their own window, sometimes jointly conferring on our position.  On a relatively warm day in January we went out and when I was stopped at a traffic light they both stuck their heads out the driver’s side window and I managed to get this shot.

Around the same time as the picture above I went out to Confluence Park on the Scioto River to get a shot of the Cbus skyline at dawn.  Even though the sun was rising, approaching weather allowed me to get this shot.  It’s not the greatest skyline picture I’ve taken but I still like it.  And it’s going to have to do since I’m not so disappointed in it that I’m going to make a 16-hour round trip just to give it another whirl.

May

I relocated from Cbus to RVA in May, about a month before we had a house purchased.  One weekend, before the Missus and the pups migrated south, I met with my granddaughter Tara (and her parents, who were kind enough to give her a ride) at the Sylvan Heights Bird Park, a bird sanctuary and research center in Scotland Neck, NC (don’t worry, nobody else has heard of Scotland Neck, NC, either).

I made some friends while we were there…

There’s an area where you can feed budgerigars (canaries) and flamingoes.  Visitors are warned – a lot – to check themselves for hitchhikers before exiting.  It’s easy to see why since they weigh virtually nothing and if you’re wearing a hat, hoodie or backpack, or carrying a purse, you’ll never know they’re there unless you look.

And yeah, you can get really, really close to the flamingoes…

In my free time I also scoped out Pocahontas State Park, just 6 miles from our house.  It’s a 7,950 acre park.  By way of comparison for Toledoans, that’s twice the size of Oak Openings; for Cincinnatians, it’s about 5.5 times the size of Mount Airy Forest; for denizens of Columbus, it’s 4.5 times the size of the campus of OSU; for Manx readers, it’s about 17% the size of the island.  In other words, it’s a really, really big state park.  I didn’t get much exploring done because I spent a lot of time in the nature center and the little but very nice Civilian Conservation Corps Museum.  I did spend a lot of time at Beaver Lake, an incredibly tranquil place, where I got this shot of a red-winged blackbird, tough to photograph but one of my favorites to watch and listen to (https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Red-winged_Blackbird/sounds):

August

Solar eclipse. Carbondale, Illinois.  Spectacular, exhilarating experience.  Details can be found here: http://timerskinephotography.blogspot.com/2017/08/a-hole-in-fabric-of-sky.html and my favorite shots are here:

A few minutes after the start of the eclipse.

Totality.  Pictures don’t come close to capturing the experience of being in the path.

October

I took part in the Kelby Worldwide Photowalk, an outing for photographers to get with a local guide to see the sights and shoot them.  I went to Petersburg where we walked through the old section of the town, the part that was bombarded during the Civil War’s Siege of Petersburg.  My Flickr album from the Walk is at https://flic.kr/s/aHsm5FzUSb.  Here are my favorites from that morning:

  

November

My employer, the Virginia Office of EMS, holds a Symposium annually in Norfolk.  It is one of the largest EMS conferences in the country (like 2^nd largest).  2017 was the 38^th  edition.  With that much experience, it runs like a well-oiled machine, but it is an all-hands-on-deck situation.  I didn’t have too much time for tourism, and the pictures I was taking were less artistic and more documentary, but I did get to see the battleship USS Wisconsin, which is moored two blocks from the hotel.

And then the Missus and I went to Nawlins Looziana (New Orleans, Louisiana) for Thanksgiving.  It was a photo bonanza.  Here are a couple of my favorite shots and the rest can be found at https://www.flickr.com/photos/traumastats/albums/72157690345221755

This is a long exposure from our hotel room on Canal Street.  I was hoping for more cars to move through during the exposure, making for more pronounced trails from headlights and taillights.  Sadly, when there was a lot of traffic, it barely moved, negating the effect.  I think this is pretty decent, though.

This is a cormorant on the Mississippi River.  Specifically, it is an immature double-crested cormorant.  It was diving underwater looking for fish, as cormorants are wont to do, and it wound up surfacing near to me after one of its dives.  This was the closest I’d ever been to a cormorant.  The picture itself doesn’t have anything great in the way of composition (it’s a waterfowl in murky water) and isn’t the clearest shot.  But what makes this one special is the way the midday sun (normally not a good thing for photography) gave me a clear shot of its aquamarine eye.  I had no idea that a bird’s eye could be so blue.

I think of this one as “The USS No Smoking” because of the warning in huge block letters on the pilothouse just below the bridge.  It is, in fact, the MV Louisiana, a US-flagged tanker, based in Jacksonville, Florida.  It’s not a supertanker, but it’s still a really large vessel to be operating on a river.  While the Missus and I were catching some rays on the Moon Walk (the walk along the river named for former NOLA Mayor "Moon" Landrieu) I saw it coming around the bend to our left, headed upriver to pick up its flammable liquid cargo.  I walked up to the river’s edge and waited for it to swing around head-on.  My patience was rewarded with this view.  For more information on the USS No Smoking, including its current location, go to

http://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/details/ships/shipid:3964257/mmsi:338110000/imo:9704790/vessel:LOUISIANA

The Best for Last - Back to the Beginning

At the end of January and the first of February, the Missus and I went with the Friends of Hocking Hills Camera Club to LeClaire, Iowa.  LeClaire is a small town on the Mississippi River, a couple of miles north of the Quad Cities (Moline and Rock Island, Illinois; Davenport and Bettendorf, Iowa).  It’s the home of Antique Archeology of “American Pickers” fame, but that’s not why we went there.  It is also near to a lock and dam complex on the Mississippi (Lock and Dam 14, to be specific).  During the winter, bald eagles are there.  Dozens and dozens and dozens of bald eagles.  They are there for the smorgasbord God and the US Army Corps of Engineers provide.  You see, fish in the river go over the dam, through the spillway or through the water circulators that keep the lock from freezing solid and getting damaged.  Not all of the poor fishies make it and those that don’t float to the surface.  Put yourself in the shoes, or rather the talons of an eagle.  Wait, that’s a bad way of putting it.  Let’s try this: Imagine you’re an eagle. When you migrate south, wouldn’t you want to winter over in a place where the fish are fresh, abundant and don’t dive away from you?  Of course you would.  That’s why so many are there.

I took thousands of pictures and some of them were fantastic.  But I picked four of my favorites for this post (you can see the rest of my best on my Flickr account at https://flic.kr/s/aHskQES3Ky).

I suppose I should mention that there was a pair of white pelicans at Lock and Dam 14, as well.  They were there for the same reason as the eagles.

This picture is a prime example of a photography adage that says, "80% of photography is being there."  In this case, there were around 100 photographers at Lock and Dam 14 but there were maybe 10 who were in or near the right place to get this shot.  Of those 10, seven weren't looking around.  Only three of us saw what was coming and got set for it.  Getting this picture was our reward, and it was even better than I had hoped when I grabbed the shot.

This one shows an eagle headed for some trees to enjoy its breakfast, which is tucked under its tail.  The serious look and intensity on its face is the only affect you will see on an eagle.  Whether they are fighting to the death over a mate, courting a mate, have decided to eat your offspring or as they tenderly and gently care for their own, this is it, the bald eagle’s one-and-only mien.  It’s the look you’ll always see and explains why the Muppets’ Sam Eagle is always so stern.

I call this one, “Hey, look!  It’s the Moon!”  I was accused of Photoshopping this one (by someone who was there and clearly mad at himself for missing it) but it’s legit.  Both the moon and the eagle were in the frame, in those positions.  I did use Photoshop to increase the brightness of the moon because it was pretty washed out and a lot less visible, but that’s it.  When I saw the moon more or less over the dam, I anticipated that an opportunity like this would present itself.  It took a long time, with a lot of eagles flying near but not near enough to get both avian and satellite in the frame, but when it did happen, I was ready.

Finally, of all the pictures I’ve taken in nearly 15 years of serious shooting, this one is, hands down, my favorite.

There is just so much happening in this shot!  This eagle was flying from my right to left when it spotted some food in the river.  In order to get to it, it needed to kill off its forward speed and dive while turning over 90 degrees to its left.  To do that it is twisting its tail to roll left; its wings are being pulled back into dive position; in order to turn hard to the left, it is killing off the lift of its left wing, as well as putting the outer half of that wing down to cause drag to bleed off speed; the left talon is extended not to reach out for its prey but to enhance speed reduction and left bank (once it was on course the talon came back up to be extended again when close to the water); and its eyes are locked on target (in the typical very serious bald eagle way).

When the eagle started its turn my finger pressed the shutter release and stayed there until my camera’s memory buffer was full.  So I got the dive but not the action at the surface.  To tell you the truth, I don’t remember if the eagle got the fish it was after.  Doesn’t matter…I absolutely love this shot 💕.

So there they are...my 17 from 2017.