LDSW #9
When I was living at Fort Devens, MA as a young bride, we belonged to a Servicemen’s Group of our church and attended Sunday meetings at a non-denominal chapel on the base. Two missionaries from our church also attended there and about 15 service families. One Sunday after the meetings several of us were standing in a small group, just chatting. The missionaries approached the group and one, an Elder Keith S. from Brigham City, UT, whom I had never known before he came to Massachusetts, shook my hand and asked, “How are you today, Sister Gustaveson? “ ”I looked at him in surprise and asked, “Where did you hear that name?” Startled, he replied, “That is your name isn’t it?” I answered, “That’s my maiden name, nobody here knows it. Where did you hear it?” He replied, “I just knew it.” We concluded that he must have known me in our pre-existant lives.
LDSW #10
My father passed away in February, 1989 and my grandson Scott was born March 12, 1990. When he was about four years old he pointed to a photograph of my parents in his home. He asked who the man in the photo was and was told he was his father’s Grandpa Gustaveson. He then told his mother, “He brought me to you.”
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
Thursday, February 9, 2012
Getting a Prescription Refilled
I have been through a hoop--so to speak, which took me two months and $80 to jump through. I have taken Avandia since 1999, when it first became available on the market. Despite its bad press, it has kept my type 2 diabetes under excellent control with few or no side effects.
A year ago we had to go onto a new health plan. After begging and pleading I was allowed to have a one-year prescription. About December 9th I began the process of renewal. The renewal was due for the first of this year. Thanks to three three-day mail holidays and an ice storm in the Northwest, plus an intern pharmacist who tried to call me, and did't know I don't text or answer voice mail messages, and he only worked weekends so that was another delay in getting vitally needed information to me. I finally learned that the manufacturer had stopped manufacturing the prescription. I called several well-known pharmacies and none of them had any Avandia to dispense,
Well that was only partially true. I contacted the company involved and was told I had to apply to be admitted to their access program. I spent more time finding the web site without help, and finally downloaded an application form, but that wasn't all, and my meager supply of pills was dwindling. I cut them in half to make them last longer, even though my blood sugar readings went somewhat higher. I had to send the application to my doctor because I am spending the winter in Arizona and he is in a northwestern state --more delays and waiting for phone calls. Everyone I talked to knew I was running out of the pills. Finally the doctor decided to send another kind of prescription to the mail order pharmacy for me to try. I made the online order but stopped short when I was charged $646.50 for the substitute. (Avandia only cost about $240 for 90 days supply and I was already in the prescription doughnut hole). My credit card could not stand such an increase that month. I cancelled the order.
I went without any Avandia for the next 10 days, controlling the blood sugar with smaller amounts of a companion drug and watching my diet. Except for episodes of diaharrea from the companion medication being too strong, I did fairly well. I guess I had weaned myself off Avandia when I was taking the half pills.
So finally, on Feb. 7th I got a phone call telling me I was accepted into the access program and my doctor's correct prescription was entered with the only pharmacy that dispenses Avandia, who contacted my regular mail order pharmacy to set up my account, and by the miracle of next day mail, a 30-day supply with 11 refills available arrived at my door on Feb. 9th. If this is part of the O'Bama/Medicare Part D plan what happens next January 1st?
A year ago we had to go onto a new health plan. After begging and pleading I was allowed to have a one-year prescription. About December 9th I began the process of renewal. The renewal was due for the first of this year. Thanks to three three-day mail holidays and an ice storm in the Northwest, plus an intern pharmacist who tried to call me, and did't know I don't text or answer voice mail messages, and he only worked weekends so that was another delay in getting vitally needed information to me. I finally learned that the manufacturer had stopped manufacturing the prescription. I called several well-known pharmacies and none of them had any Avandia to dispense,
Well that was only partially true. I contacted the company involved and was told I had to apply to be admitted to their access program. I spent more time finding the web site without help, and finally downloaded an application form, but that wasn't all, and my meager supply of pills was dwindling. I cut them in half to make them last longer, even though my blood sugar readings went somewhat higher. I had to send the application to my doctor because I am spending the winter in Arizona and he is in a northwestern state --more delays and waiting for phone calls. Everyone I talked to knew I was running out of the pills. Finally the doctor decided to send another kind of prescription to the mail order pharmacy for me to try. I made the online order but stopped short when I was charged $646.50 for the substitute. (Avandia only cost about $240 for 90 days supply and I was already in the prescription doughnut hole). My credit card could not stand such an increase that month. I cancelled the order.
I went without any Avandia for the next 10 days, controlling the blood sugar with smaller amounts of a companion drug and watching my diet. Except for episodes of diaharrea from the companion medication being too strong, I did fairly well. I guess I had weaned myself off Avandia when I was taking the half pills.
So finally, on Feb. 7th I got a phone call telling me I was accepted into the access program and my doctor's correct prescription was entered with the only pharmacy that dispenses Avandia, who contacted my regular mail order pharmacy to set up my account, and by the miracle of next day mail, a 30-day supply with 11 refills available arrived at my door on Feb. 9th. If this is part of the O'Bama/Medicare Part D plan what happens next January 1st?
Friday, January 6, 2012
LDSW #8 Finding Uncle Jay Brown
LDSW #8 - Finding Uncle Jay Brown
My Grandmother, Leila, had two brothers and two sisters. Over the years I have collected a lot of family history along with names and dates. One of our “dead ends” concerned Grandma’s brother, Jay. All she could tell us was that he had married a woman from their hometown of Cardston, Alberta named Fern Caldwell. They had three children and lived somewhere near the Alberta-British Columbia border at Blairmore, AB, a mining town. In the late 1940s Uncle Jay turned up living in Vanport, Oregon, next to Portland, where my parents lived. He had a wife called Belle. He came to visit my parents and dad took a picture of him. He got a loan from my dad, left his fine carpenter tools and toolbox with dad for collateral, and moved to San Francisco.
He later sent dad the money he had borrowed and dad mailed the toolbox and tools to him. That was the last anyone in the family heard of him for many years.
There was a mystery no one could solve which complicated the search for him. My grandmother owned a picture postcard Jay sent to their mother. It showed Jay dressed as an Indian brave standing next to a young Indian woman. The inscription said “Mother, how do you like my new Indian wife?” signed Jay. We wondered if he had actually married her.
In the 1980s, my two widowed Aunts while serving a mission at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City had an opportunity to work on their own families while there. They found a death certificate for Jay Brown, who died 13 Feb 1973 in San Francisco, CA. It was the right Jay Brown.
In 1993, mom’s sister-in-law, Edna Fisher Duce (married to mom’s brother Ken) made a trip to Oregon and she visited with mom. During the visit Aunt Edna said, “Guess who I met at my high school class reunion last week when I was in Kelowna, BC ? Mom had no idea. “It was Jay’s son, Max Brown, who still lives in Kelowna.” Strangely, Aunt Edna was killed in a car accident just a week later in Saskatchewan. After mom told me about Max Brown I got on the phone and called Information to see if a number was listed for him in Kelowna. It was, so I called him and asked for more family information.
He wrote me a letter telling the circumstances of why Jay left his family, and they were very poor during The Depression. He told me about his brother and sister, and how well they liked their stepfather, who raised them. In his letter he mentioned that after they were grown, he and his sister and their spouses, made a trip to Bakersfield, CA to meet him. They were introduced to Ida, as Jay's third wife. He wrote that they had no feeling for him and supposed the feeling was mutual.
Fast forward to August 2011. I had entered many names into my family trees registered in Ancestry.com. This is a database of family names that helps distant relatives working on the same lines find each other. Actually Ancestry sent me a message that a picture of an Ida Benn had been added to another person’s tree on the Brown family. I wrote to Rosemary Reeves, who was the granddaughter of Jay Brown’s third wife, Ida
I learned that Rosemary’s mother died when she was young and she had been raised by Ida. In our correspondence by emails, I was able to share Jay’s history about his first family in Canada, and she filled me in on Jay’s life in California.
There is still one question to be resolved about Jay’s life. Grandma Leila said that Jay worked for a relative she called H. D. Brown, who had something to do with owning or managing the Santa Anita racetrack. These are the memories of two kids around six to ten years old (Rosemary and myself):
A Wikipedia history of Sanita Anita did not mention H.D. Brown. My family tree contains several names that could be H.D. Brown born in the 1890s up to 1908, which could fit the criteria, but none in California. Perhaps a clue can yet be found, as Rosemary Reeves said her Aunt Mercy married a Weir “Blackie” Chadwick about the same time as Ida and Jay were married in the 1960s, and she thinks Jay and Blackie knew each other before their marriages while working on construction projects for the government in Nevada and California. She wrote that Blackie’s brother drove in the sulky races at Santa Anita and his sister was an exercise girl there. I also think when Jay lived at Vanport, that he went to dog races with my dad, so he probably gambled too. This might explain what happened to his first family living in poor conditions or why he didn’t go back for them.
I do not think all of these clues just came to me by coincidence, and I hope I can learn the rest of Jay’s story.
In 1974 I made a trip to Cardston and researched what I could glean on my relatives from the town library and looked at some old issues of the Alberta Star from the early 1900s. After I returned home I sent, through inter-library loan, for a role of microfilm from the paper. I came across a picture of an Indian couple and learned that mom’s Uncle Jay and the young woman had won prizes for having the best costumes at a costume party. That solved that mystery. He did not have an Indian wife.
My Grandmother, Leila, had two brothers and two sisters. Over the years I have collected a lot of family history along with names and dates. One of our “dead ends” concerned Grandma’s brother, Jay. All she could tell us was that he had married a woman from their hometown of Cardston, Alberta named Fern Caldwell. They had three children and lived somewhere near the Alberta-British Columbia border at Blairmore, AB, a mining town. In the late 1940s Uncle Jay turned up living in Vanport, Oregon, next to Portland, where my parents lived. He had a wife called Belle. He came to visit my parents and dad took a picture of him. He got a loan from my dad, left his fine carpenter tools and toolbox with dad for collateral, and moved to San Francisco.
He later sent dad the money he had borrowed and dad mailed the toolbox and tools to him. That was the last anyone in the family heard of him for many years.
There was a mystery no one could solve which complicated the search for him. My grandmother owned a picture postcard Jay sent to their mother. It showed Jay dressed as an Indian brave standing next to a young Indian woman. The inscription said “Mother, how do you like my new Indian wife?” signed Jay. We wondered if he had actually married her.
In the 1980s, my two widowed Aunts while serving a mission at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City had an opportunity to work on their own families while there. They found a death certificate for Jay Brown, who died 13 Feb 1973 in San Francisco, CA. It was the right Jay Brown.
In 1993, mom’s sister-in-law, Edna Fisher Duce (married to mom’s brother Ken) made a trip to Oregon and she visited with mom. During the visit Aunt Edna said, “Guess who I met at my high school class reunion last week when I was in Kelowna, BC ? Mom had no idea. “It was Jay’s son, Max Brown, who still lives in Kelowna.” Strangely, Aunt Edna was killed in a car accident just a week later in Saskatchewan. After mom told me about Max Brown I got on the phone and called Information to see if a number was listed for him in Kelowna. It was, so I called him and asked for more family information.
He wrote me a letter telling the circumstances of why Jay left his family, and they were very poor during The Depression. He told me about his brother and sister, and how well they liked their stepfather, who raised them. In his letter he mentioned that after they were grown, he and his sister and their spouses, made a trip to Bakersfield, CA to meet him. They were introduced to Ida, as Jay's third wife. He wrote that they had no feeling for him and supposed the feeling was mutual.
Fast forward to August 2011. I had entered many names into my family trees registered in Ancestry.com. This is a database of family names that helps distant relatives working on the same lines find each other. Actually Ancestry sent me a message that a picture of an Ida Benn had been added to another person’s tree on the Brown family. I wrote to Rosemary Reeves, who was the granddaughter of Jay Brown’s third wife, Ida
I learned that Rosemary’s mother died when she was young and she had been raised by Ida. In our correspondence by emails, I was able to share Jay’s history about his first family in Canada, and she filled me in on Jay’s life in California.
There is still one question to be resolved about Jay’s life. Grandma Leila said that Jay worked for a relative she called H. D. Brown, who had something to do with owning or managing the Santa Anita racetrack. These are the memories of two kids around six to ten years old (Rosemary and myself):
A Wikipedia history of Sanita Anita did not mention H.D. Brown. My family tree contains several names that could be H.D. Brown born in the 1890s up to 1908, which could fit the criteria, but none in California. Perhaps a clue can yet be found, as Rosemary Reeves said her Aunt Mercy married a Weir “Blackie” Chadwick about the same time as Ida and Jay were married in the 1960s, and she thinks Jay and Blackie knew each other before their marriages while working on construction projects for the government in Nevada and California. She wrote that Blackie’s brother drove in the sulky races at Santa Anita and his sister was an exercise girl there. I also think when Jay lived at Vanport, that he went to dog races with my dad, so he probably gambled too. This might explain what happened to his first family living in poor conditions or why he didn’t go back for them.
I do not think all of these clues just came to me by coincidence, and I hope I can learn the rest of Jay’s story.
In 1974 I made a trip to Cardston and researched what I could glean on my relatives from the town library and looked at some old issues of the Alberta Star from the early 1900s. After I returned home I sent, through inter-library loan, for a role of microfilm from the paper. I came across a picture of an Indian couple and learned that mom’s Uncle Jay and the young woman had won prizes for having the best costumes at a costume party. That solved that mystery. He did not have an Indian wife.
Monday, January 2, 2012
My First Answered Prayer LDSW #7
LDSW #7 - My First Answered Prayer
I was about 18 years old and had been dating Ben for about a year and a half. He became interested in my church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and he attended meetings with me frequently. We reached the point where we wanted to take the missionary discussions. I had been raised in an inactive family and learned along with Ben. He reached the point of wanting to get baptized but his parents did not want him to do this. The missionary couple, Brother and Sister Cornilles, suggested that we fast for 24 hours and get back together for a prayer, which we did.
It was a very spiritual experience. After the prayer, we ate a simple meal and Ben took me home, then returned to his home. When he got there his father was waiting up for him. It was about 11:30 p.m. They talked for a long time and the result was that if Ben would go away to college in the fall–away from my influence–and if he still desired to get baptized after waiting a year, that Ben had his dad’s permission to get baptized. The next day when I heard about their discussion, I recall walking down a street in Oak Grove when it dawned on me that our prayer had been answered. I looked up into the sky and said aloud, “There really is Someone up there who hears and answers prayers!”
As it turned out, he was not totally away from my influence, and came back home after Fall semester as he ran out of money, but he waited a year before getting baptized. And a year after his baptism we were married civilly in Oregon, but had the stake president’s permission to be sealed in the Salt Lake Temple soon after. His father, knowing that he would have to have been ordained to the Melchezidek Priesthood then realized his baptism had taken place the year before, but he did not have any further objections.
I was about 18 years old and had been dating Ben for about a year and a half. He became interested in my church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and he attended meetings with me frequently. We reached the point where we wanted to take the missionary discussions. I had been raised in an inactive family and learned along with Ben. He reached the point of wanting to get baptized but his parents did not want him to do this. The missionary couple, Brother and Sister Cornilles, suggested that we fast for 24 hours and get back together for a prayer, which we did.
It was a very spiritual experience. After the prayer, we ate a simple meal and Ben took me home, then returned to his home. When he got there his father was waiting up for him. It was about 11:30 p.m. They talked for a long time and the result was that if Ben would go away to college in the fall–away from my influence–and if he still desired to get baptized after waiting a year, that Ben had his dad’s permission to get baptized. The next day when I heard about their discussion, I recall walking down a street in Oak Grove when it dawned on me that our prayer had been answered. I looked up into the sky and said aloud, “There really is Someone up there who hears and answers prayers!”
As it turned out, he was not totally away from my influence, and came back home after Fall semester as he ran out of money, but he waited a year before getting baptized. And a year after his baptism we were married civilly in Oregon, but had the stake president’s permission to be sealed in the Salt Lake Temple soon after. His father, knowing that he would have to have been ordained to the Melchezidek Priesthood then realized his baptism had taken place the year before, but he did not have any further objections.
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
Arizona Christmas
I wasn’t sure what kind of a Christmas we would celebrate in Arizona. Here’s some highlights we enjoyed:
Favorite desert decoration: a many-headed cactus sporting a Santa hat on each of its separate
heads (like a hydra).
Favorite Foods: Ham in mustard/brown sugar sauce, cheese potatoes, peas, salad, rolls, fresh pineapple, COOKIES and ice cream.
Favorite Charity: [not in AZ] Options 360 of Battle Ground, WA, a pregnancy clinic which helps young women choose not to abort their babies.
Arizona Culture: I didn’t get an opportunity to taste the tamales but I’m told they are a special treat with Arizona families. A cultural aspect of the Christmas tradition here are the luminaries (paper sacks) lining front yards with a soft candle glowing inside each paper sack.
Favorite desert decoration: a many-headed cactus sporting a Santa hat on each of its separate
heads (like a hydra).
Favorite lighting display: Downtown Tempe with a London Bridge appearance as you enter the town, quaint shops with outdoor tables at the restaurants and large imperfectly shaped white lighted stars hanging randomly in the trees lining the sidewalks. Glendale also had nice lighting and offered outdoor hayrides around the town park.
Favorite Fun Activity: Attending a live performance of The Forgotten Carols on stage at Arizona State University.
Favorite respectfully reverent activity: Bringing 6-year old Emma and her mom to Remembering Christ at Christmas. It was more than an exhibit of nativities. There were live animals–3 burros, a couple of lambs, baby chicks and rabbits and a huge turtle. Hot cocoa and elephant ears were served for refreshments, and singing groups entertained. 2nd favorite activity was attending the Mesa Temple grounds to view millions of beautiful colored lights and hear a short outdoor concert performed by the Mesa AZ missionaries. [It was pretty cold outside or it might have been first on my favorite list.]
Favorite family activities: Hearing grandson Tom’s talk before he left for his mission to Argentina; going to a ward Christmas party with Mike and Ayesha’s family, and having friends from Utah stay at our place for a couple of days.
Favorite ways to interact with others: We filled eight goodie baskets and took them to people we know. We bought some school clothes for Emma. Mike's family came to our home for Christmas dinner then serenaded several of our neighbors by singing Christmas Carols to them.
Favorite Charity: [not in AZ] Options 360 of Battle Ground, WA, a pregnancy clinic which helps young women choose not to abort their babies.
Arizona Culture: I didn’t get an opportunity to taste the tamales but I’m told they are a special treat with Arizona families. A cultural aspect of the Christmas tradition here are the luminaries (paper sacks) lining front yards with a soft candle glowing inside each paper sack.
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