Its first appearance was on Monday when we went to see my pain doc in Puerto Rico. My hubby forgot to call our regular taxi driver Joe Castro (no relation) in advance. So when he called Joe on the morning of the trip to see if he would be able to drive us to and from the airport (we know his taxi can accommodate my wheelchair, and we pay him a pit beyond standard fare to hang near the doctor's office while I'm there), we were disheartened but not surprised when he told us he couldn't do it because he wasn't working that day. But just as we were heading out of the terminal to try our luck at the taxi stand, the hubby's phone rang. It was Joe, who said if we still needed a ride he could be there in 10 minutes. We jumped on the offer, and tipped him an extra $10 for rescuing us on his day off.
I had been dreading this visit with the doctor for weeks because I needed to ask for bumps up for both my oral pain meds and my pump dosage of anti-spasticity drugs. The doctor has been pushing me hard to try getting pain meds through the pump so I can get off the brain-fogging, addictive, and expensive oral pain medications, something I am utterly opposed to for many reasons, and I dreaded having to do battle with him again over this issue -- and potentially over increasing my oral medications too. But he accepted my requests for increases without batting an eye, and didn't say a word about switching over to morphine delivered through the implanted pump. I got my refill for the pump, my new higher dosage programmed, and four months worth of prescription refill orders for the new levels of pain drugs in plenty of time to make it back to the airport for our late afternoon flight home.
Luck found me at the airport, too. I landed in San Juan and transferred into the aisle chair only to discover that the lift used to get me on and off the plane had broken right before my flight landed. This meant I had to be carried down the steps of the plane, which I usually will not tolerate because it's unsafe for everyone involved (especially me). Fortunately, they did a really good job of it. Even better was learning that the lift had been repaired before our departure time, so I wouldn't have to go through the risk and indignity that goes with being manually transported onto the plane. Way to go, fates.
And finally, it was two straight nights of kitty luck. The night we returned from Puerto Rico, we set out the cat traps near the kitty nest in our bushes. In less than 30 minutes, we had trapped Ohel (who is now renamed Kindle, which is the correct term for a collective of kittens). And less than an hour later, Ono had wandered into the other trap. After moving them onto our porch so they would be protected from any overnight rain, we entered into a long debate as to whether they would go directly to the shelter or go to our vet so they could come live with us. Even though we had been reassured that a trip to the shelter wasn't an automatic death sentence if these kitties didn't get adopted, we were still leery of the reality that the shelter's pre-adoption screening was pretty weak and did not require a promise that the adopted cats remain indoor animals only. So suckers that we are, Kindle (a boy) and Ono (a girl) went to the vet the next morning to get spayed/neutered and their first round of vaccinations, and then came home to live with us. They're both out on our small screened in porch right now, curled up together in their kitty bunk bed, starting the process of adapting to human contact and life as pampered indoor members of our family.
Not to be outdone, we managed to trap Mama the very next night! So after a full year of trying to catch Mama, she's finally been spayed and vaccinated, and released back outside to live a long, happy life in our yard under our care. And we will be done being adoptive parents to Mama's kittens once we capture Omai and bring her in with her brother and sister.
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