Crazy in Cheboygan

 I haven't been online much the last couple of weeks because we are in the middle of a health care crisis here in Beaglesonia.  My wife, who no longer wants to be referred to as hypothetical, has had a bum knee for some time.  On April 30, it finally gave out on her and I had to call the paramedics to get her off the floor and haul her away to the emergency room.  We used to have a regular hospital here in Cheboygan, but a big conglomerate bought it at a bankruptcy sale and changed it into an out-patient clinic some years ago.  They still have an emergency room but if you need to be admitted to a regular hospital, they ship you off to Petoskey. This is what I thought they would do to my wife but, instead, they called me an hour later and told me to come get her.  When I arrived, she couldn't get into our truck with the help of three nurses, so they sent her home in an ambulance and told her to follow up with her primary physician.  

When they got her home, they had to carry her in with a gurney because she couldn't hardly walk, much less climb the three steps to our front door.  One of the paramedics taught her how to walk using her umbrella as a cane, which sufficed until I could buy her a regular cane later that day.  She went to see her primary physician a couple days later with the help of another ambulance crew, which cost us over $900 because it was not deemed an emergency transport under Medicare rules.  Since then, we've had people coming in from a home health care outfit which, surprisingly, Medicare does pay for 100%.  They are working on getting her ambulatory enough to go to her medical appointments in a regular car, but she's not there yet.  Meanwhile, I'm charged with looking after an invalid when I'm not in a whole lot better shape myself. 

Like I said, they took away our regular hospital some years ago, and they recently closed our local hospice house as well.  On the bright side, they have also opened a new in-patient mental health facility.  So, the bottom line is you can't be born in Cheboygan, and you can't die in Cheboygan, but you can go crazy in Cheboygan.

I seem to remember reading about the origin of the "sundae" spelling, but I don't remember where or I read it.  A long time ago, some town or county passed a law prohibiting the sale of soda on Sundays.  One enterprising soda fountain operator got around this by putting a scoop of ice cream in a glass of soda and calling it a "sundae" instead of a soda.  I don't remember why he spelled it differently than Sunday, maybe so the local ecclesiastics couldn't condemn him for taking the name of the Lord's Day in vain.