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(What’s the Story?) Morning Glory – New Book Out

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To Read, Or Not To Read…Not Even a Question.

With a Foreword by Lauren Sisler and Edits by Wendy Welch, Executive Director of the Graduate Medical Education Consortium of Southwest Virginia – From the Front Lines of the Appalachian Addiction Crisis: Healthcare Providers Discuss Opioids, Meth and Recovery is a collection of stories from doctors, nurses, and therapists dealing on a daily basis with the opioid crisis in Appalachia should be heartbreaking. Yet those told here also inspire with practical advice on how to assist those in addiction, from a grass-roots to a policy level. Readers looking for ways to combat the crisis will find suggestions alongside laughter, tears, and sometimes rage. Each author brings the passion of their profession and the personal losses they have experienced from addiction, and posits solutions and harm reduction with positivity, grace, and even humor. Authors representing seven states from northern, Coalfields, and southern Appalachia relate personal encounters with patients or providers who changed them forever. This is a history document, showing how we got here; an evidenced indictment of current policies failing those who need them most; an affirmation that Appalachia solves its own problems; and a collection of suggestions for best practice moving forward.

Part of the McFarland and Company, Inc.’s “50 Contributions to Southern Appalachian Studies” Collection. You can get your copy directly from their site: https://mcfarlandbooks.com/product/from-the-front-lines-of-the-appalachian-addiction-crisis/

What’s your story?

Wait, What Just Happened?

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First of all, hello everyone, I am glad to be back. The COVID CONSPIRACIES book is with the publisher and I have a respite before the medical professionals anthology from rural COVID experiences goes off in October.

So I come up for air and realize my house is a tip and the garden doesn’t so much look like we planted things as tripped with a tray of seeds. There’s a cat in here I don’t recognize and two days ago my husband (at least, he said he was; I hadn’t seen him in awhile and wasn’t sure) came in holding up a bleeding hand.

“A turtle bit me,” he said.

Okay…….

It turns out, he was sitting in his front porch man-cave where he hangs out to watch the world pass by and talk to the neighbors, and, well, a turtle crossed the road. Slowly. Too slowly for my animal-loving husband, who went out to help the little creature along his or her way.

In gratitude for which, the turtle turned its long neck around over its shell and took a triangular chunk out of the fleshy part of Jack’s palm. The police sketch artist who worked with Jack after the incident suggests it mighta been a snapper.

My husband did not let go and neither did the turtle, until both were safely across the street. When Jack came in bleeding, I did what any good wife would do: took a photo for Facebook, and then spread the wound with peroxide followed by antibiotic cream. Then I got on the horn to a doctor friend. Once she stopped laughing, she said, yes, maybe Jack should get a tetanus shot as turtles, ehm, carry things.

Our good Dr. Ashley Blevins called in a shot, and after a wee bit of fankle with the pharmacy –“No, really a turtle, yes, today, sure we can come down there after supper”–we both got tetanus shots. It was a couples thing, like a pandemic date.

This eased my mind, because of all that I wasn’t prepared to deal with, trying to get the book in, my husband dying of a turtle bite during a global health crisis wasn’t on the list. Can you imagine trying to write that obituary? People would try so hard to be respectful of my loss, but end up giggling. “A turtle? Really? Did anyone see the rabbit?” “Why did the turtle cross the road, anyway?” Etc.

Thanks to a couple of doctor pals and our friendly neighborhood pharmacist (who did snort behind his mask but kept the laughter in) all is well at Chez JacknWendy. For the next ten years, because that’s how long tetanus shots last. Come at us, turtles.