Forgotten Memories

What is it about broken, lonely places that strike such a cord in our hearts?

Today my neighbor and I were talking about our dream homes.  He wants to renovate an old dairy barn into the house of his dreams.  I would love to get an old church or school and make it into my dream home.  In the process of our talking, we started looking at old abandoned buildings of any kind ~ schools, churches, barns, etc.
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A church in France.

It got me thinking.  We found some eerily beautiful and haunting buildings.   What would it take to rebuild or refurbish some of these places?  I decided to see what else we have left behind.  Empty, lost looking cars or moss covered train tracks.
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Then I found the saddest abandoned places of all, amusement parks.  Have you ever looked at pictures of these forgotten places?  Knowing that they were probably lived with laughter and joy makes the pictures of broken carousals and vine covered Ferris wheels that much harder to look at.  These pictures were gut wrenching.  Some of the pictures I looked at came with the story behind the reason the park was closed.  Others I actually looked up.  Here are a couple of pictures from the abandoned parks.
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This picture is of an amusement park that never had its chance at laughter and fun.  It is in Chernobyl.  It was supposed to open 5 days after the nuclear meltdown.
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A roller coaster in Germany.

Beautiful aren't they?

I looked for pictures of my home town's abandoned places.  I grew up in Gary, Indiana.  I went to school at Nobel Elementary (now closed) and Emerson Visual and Performing Arts (again, now closed.)  Emerson was one of the very first high schools built in Gary.  It showcased the fight for equal rights in schools and became an actual Fame type school in its waning days.  I remember where my classrooms were and what they looked like.  I remember friends I made then and all the fun we had.  It was built in 1908 and was open until 1981.  It reopened in 1982 as a visual and performing arts magnet school.  It stayed open at the original building until 2008.  Now you would never know that it was open as recently as 2008.  It is kind of sad.
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I also found incredible pictures of the Methodist Church that has been featured in many movies including Transformers 3.
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These places and spaces would have such stories to tell if only they could.  Can you imagine the history most of these buildings have seen?  Emerson was 100 years old when it was finally closed in 2008.  Both World Wars, the Great Depression, 9/11, the building was around for all of that history.  These events were discussed and survived in this building.  Most of the other buildings are as old, some even older.  You can find much older buildings in Europe that have been around of centuries.  What could we learn from these buildings?  They show us the architecture and style of time period they were built.  They mirror the tastes of the people that lived then.  Even as buildings, they have so much they could teach us.  That brings me back to my original question.  What is it about broken, lonely places that strike such a cord in our hearts?  I do not know that I will ever be able to answer that, but I do know that I have found a new interest.  I want to see what these builds and places can teach me.  I never would have thought about an amusement park in Chernobyl, not that it particularly matters, but I never really thought about the lives that were interrupted.  I learned about the accident, but only that it happened and everyone had to leave, but as a child I did not think about the actual cost.  Can you think to what it would be like if you were a child in Chernobyl and you knew the park was opening soon?  I would have been so excited and then to have that gone, man it would have been very hard leaving everything behind.

Anyway enough rambling, I just had to get my thoughts down.  They may not make a lot of sense to everyone else, but they do to me.  :)

By the way, old forgotten cemeteries are just as interesting.

Here are the sights I found the pictures:

1.  http://www.flickriver.com/photos/genbug/tags/barn/
2.  http://photorator.com/photo/15346/a-famous-spot-in-france-st-etienne-abandoned-church-
3.  http://blogof.francescomugnai.com/2013/03/33-more-breathtaking-and-incredible-photos-of-abandoned-places/
4.  http://500px.com/photo/17857761
5.  http://www.pixellica.com/inspiration/urban-decay-derelict-amusemen-park
6.  http://sometimes-interesting.com/2013/06/12/emerson-school-of-gary-indiana/
7.  http://www.flickr.com/photos/slworking/5914990794/in/photostream/lightbox/

Asthma Sucks! It Really, Really Does!!

WOW!!  I know most everyone knows that asthma is super common and more and more people are diagnosed with it all the time, but what most people do not know (unless they have asthma or a loved one with asthma) is that it sucks big time!  I grew up with a brother who had asthma, so I thought it was no big deal.  We dealt with it and he is a wonderful brother.  He still has asthma, but he knows his triggers and how to deal with them.  Then I had kids.  What a difference that makes!  Christopher was diagnosed with asthma and severe allergies when he was about a year old.  Never fun and hard to watch your child struggle to breathe.  However, we started to figure out what his triggers were and now he does pretty well.  My child is much like my brother, allergic to everything under the sun.  Chris is allergic to dogs and cats, Christmas trees, tree nuts, peanuts, the list goes on.  Again, now that we know, we can avoid or prepare for any issues.

Then along came Cassidy and Barry.  Neither one of my youngest kids had any breathing issues until Cassidy got pneumonia in second grade.  (She is in sixth grade now.)  She was diagnosed with asthma that May.  I have Christopher.  I know how to deal with asthma in a kid.  Boy was I wrong!  Cassidy is so different than Chris.  I still do not know what her triggers are.  She has been in the hospital eleven times since third grade.  She misses lots of school and hates that she does.  She cries and apologizes to me because she is always sick.  How do you help your child with that one?

This school year has been rough.  We are in the last week of the first quarter and she has missed about 20 days of school.  She has been to our primary care doctor repeatedly and to her asthma specialist at least once a week.  She ended up in the hospital last week because of her asthma.  She is finally back in school, but she is not allowed to go out for recess or participate in gym because of her wheezing.  She is still on oral steroids.  She has been on the steroids for pretty much the whole months of September and October (at least what we have gotten through.)

Here is a list of what we have done the past month to try to help Cassidy:

1.   Urgent Care with her primary care doctor on a Monday.
2.   Appointment with her asthma specialist on Thursday.
3.   Follow up with her primary care doctor on Tuesday.  He put her on an antibiotic.
4.   Appointment with her asthma specialist on Thursday.  He has me call him that afternoon so he could check up on her.
5.   Appointment with her asthma specialist on Friday. (The following day to see how she was.)
6.   A bad weekend.  She started coughing so badly, she was throwing up.
7.   Back to her asthma specialist on Monday.  He put her in the hospital.
8.   Hospital visit from Monday through Wednesday.  On O2, but no IV much to Cassidy's delight.
9.   Appointment with asthma specialist on Thursday.
10. Back to school on Monday.
11. Appointment with her primary care doctor on Tuesday.
12. Appointment with her asthma specialist Thursday (today).

Nine doctor's appointments in 3 weeks.  No child should have to do that!  During her hospital stay, her asthma specialist decided that she would have to be put on a different medication.  A shot, twice a month that costs $800 a shot.  He is going to fight with our insurance to make sure she gets approved.

Here is the way he let me know she needed this medication:  "We need this medication.  It will change her life.  She will not need oral steroids as much and will feel better.  We want her to survive her childhood."

Never something a parent wants to hear!  Wait, you mean my daughter's asthma is so bad it might kill her with out this medicine!!  You better get it approved, the quicker the better.  I want her around for a long time.

I have always known that asthma can be deadly, but in my experience it is treatable and the people I love will be okay.  I call Cassidy a brittle asthmatic.  Just like with brittle diabetics, her asthma is very hard to control and we have no idea what really triggers it.  Now I am praying this medicine is approved quickly and she really does improve!