Whom do you owe a major "thank you" to?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
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Is there anyone in your past you owe a major-league thank you to? Maybe you’ve never had the chance; maybe you have, but the scope of the good deed they did you is so great that you feel the standard “Thanks, Dude,” is simply inadequate. In either case, this thread is for you.

I’ll begin. As I’ve mentioned a few times before, I have type-2 diabetes. I was diagnosed with this, oddly enough, not by my GP but my optometrist. You see, in the weeks before my diagnosis, I’d suffered a sudden and swift decline in visual acuity; this concerned me, because the previous year my optometrist had warned me that she saw the hints of glaucoma in one eye and wanted me to be screened for it once a year. When, one Monday morning, I went in to her office. She wasn’t there, so I saw her partner, who did a perfunctory test, said he saw no glaucoma, and wrote me a new prescription.

Within a week my vision was bad again. More irritated than anything else, I went back to the office and this time saw my usual optometrist. Rather than write out a new scrip, though, she asked me a long series of questions-- “Are you urirnating a lot, Skald? Feeling more tired than in the past? Moody?” then insisted I go to my GP because she thought I might have diabetes. I told her I would go the following Monday, but she insisted that I go that day, if possible, to any GP I could get an apointment with.

Luckily I was able to get into my doctor that day. During the initial workup, the nurse checked my blood sugar and started; then she tested it again, turned white, and ran out for the doctor. A moment later my doctor came in and told me my blood sugar was in the 700s; I needed an insulin shot right away and would probably have to be in the hospital unless the shot was immediately effective.

I was in the middle of protesting when I passed out. I woke up in the hospital and got out after about 2 days.

I figure I owe the optometrist such a big thank you because this all happened on a Friday. I lived alone and was apt not to call family and friends, or pick up the phone, for days at a time when I was working on a story. Thus, if she hadn’t nagged me into going to the GP, I’d likely have been home alone when I passed out, and no one would have thought anything amiss until Monday when I didn’t show up for work. I’m pretty sure she saved my life, in other words, and so for that I owe her my thanks.

Anybody else?

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I’ve got a few people that I’ve owed huge debts to over the years, but one came to mind in particular when I read the OP. I think I’ve mention this before on here, but anyway… I used to be suicidal… a lot. I’m not anymore, and haven’t been for a long time. On one particular occasion, I was living alone and washed several bottles of over the counter sleeping pills and Benadryl, (same thing, really) and a large bottle of Tylenol and washed down with Gatorade and vodka.

My friend was worried about me, and grew very concerned when I wasn’t returning her calls. She drove up from south of Atlanta to the north side. There she encountered the guard at the gate to my apartment who would not let her pass. At her instance he let her go to the leasing office. There she met a very skeptical leasing agent who wasn’t about to let her into someone apartment because he wasn’t answering his phone.

After suggesting that the apartment complex could be liable if they refused to aid her and I was passed out somewhere in my apartment, (a claim I’m not quite sure would actually have been true) she bullied a manager into going to my apartment and opening the door. I was passed out and severely dehydrated. Luckily, my liver didn’t shut down. I likely would have not have ever woken up. She saved my life as surely as if she had pulled me from a burning building.

Of course her trust, empathy and faith in my (along with that of her husband and some other of my friends) helped my find what I needed to get through that (and finally find the right diagnosis as well) and so I feel I owe a debt for that as well, but it doesn’t boil down to a single act like her rescuing me.

I

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Amazing stories from the both of you. Glad you are still with us.

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My son’s respite worker.

She is essentially a babysitter paid for by the state because he is a special-needs child. Okay, he’s not really anymore, at this point he’s a pretty normal 8 year-old, but he used to have major problems and he still has a couple small health issues, and so remains eligible for this and other services. She has been with us since he was about 1, so they are very close and we consider her part of our family. He’s at her house two nights a week, which really helps me to get the alone time I so desperately need, and helps him because they have a great relationship.

We clash at times- she’s one of those hardcare church people that can’t wear pants or cut their hair, while I’m an atheist, and we both have dominant personalities, and we have gone our rounds over a few things, but I’m very grateful to have had her all this time and I look forward to visiting with her at his wedding many years from now. She’s almost been like a grandmother to him.

Many times she has kept to the schedule when I’m out of hours (like the last month of the fiscal year) and she does it for free because she loves spending time with him. She’s often flexible with her time and has saved my butt more than once in an emergency.

Thanks, Patricia!

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I work in an ophthalmologist’s office, and I’m not surprised it was an eye specialist that first suspected diabetes. Diabetes has very characteristic and quite significant effects on the eyes, especially the retinas. I do most of my work doing retinal scans and photos, and diabetic retinopathy is quite easy to pick out as abnormal even for a layman. We catch a fair number of undiagnosed diabetics through circumstances similar to yours.

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Mom got diagnosed with diabetes last week. Apparently her sugar wasn’t showing as high (it had been higish a couple times) because she already did a diet that’s good for, among other things, diabetes. And now there’s some other test which isn’t run routinely but which did come out positive. Diabetes also explains other stuff that had been higish for years.

Her GP happens to be my SiL and one of the things that tipped her to a possible diabetes was that Mom drinks a lot. My reaction: “heck, if that’s diabetes tell me the diet, cos when I’m not drinking I’m peeing.” So it’s yet another thing I have to get checked for, blah.

The ones I thought of were several teachers who, through the years, managed to motivate me or at least to treat me like an inquiring mind isn’t a bad thing but I’d appreciate it if you let me work at the speed of the rest, so please ask me your questions after class. I’ve been able to tell most if not all of them, though. One of them (through a conversation that for him was so casual he doesn’t remember it) managed to break my father out of the “your grades suck” sessions that had been my bane for years.

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How odd this thread should come up. Just last Saturday I wrote a long overdue thank you letter to the Parent Child Center of Tulsa, who about fifteen years ago assisted me through their Nurturing classes and taught me how to parent.

I grew up in a household that was physically abusive and was an emotional hell. No surprise that when I had kids, I parented pretty much in the same way, even though everything in me wanted to do it differently. I just didn’t know how, and didn’t have a clue at the time that parenting skills are just like any other skill and one uses the skills one has. Unfortunately, mine sucked.

I went through the Nurturing classes and became a completely different parent. I was able to raise my kids in a nurturing, loving and healthy environment. I was able to establish realistic boundaries and encourage and support my children. I shudder to think how our lives would have been if I had not taken the time and effort to take advantage of the program offered. It was a lot of hard work and took a lot of effort on my part, but for those at the PCCT, they literally saved my life and that of my kids. They started me on along a trail that morphed over time to me not only become a decent parent, but also included me going to college, getting my degree and so on.

If they hadn’t offered the classes, and stuck by me when I needed it the most, then I’d probably be the same person I was many years ago, and my kids would definately not be the wonderful, healthy people they are today.

Saved my life? You bet. Saved the life of my kids as well. Parent Child Center of Tulsa, thank you.

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Oddly enough, I should thank MY optometrist, too!

When I was 14 I was getting really bad headaches. I’d fall asleep in school and then come home and fall asleep some more because my head hurt so bad. My GP was convinced it was a sinus infection, which is what he treated me for.

I started seeing floaters and was pretty sure my vision was getting wonky, so I went to my eye doctor. He took one look and said I was to go directly to the hospital, do not pass go.

Turns out he saw that my optic nerve was splintered and my retinas were messed up. He said I either had wildly high blood pressure, was about to have a stroke, or something else. He just did not like what he saw behind my eyes.

So I did go the next day to my GP, told him what my optometrist saw, and my GP sent me right to the Children’s Hospital post-haste where they hooked me up with my own neurologist and I spent the rest of the day having interns come look into my eyes (it’s a teaching hospital).

Turns out I had pseudotumorcerebri, meaning I had way too much spinal fluid and it was crushing my brain and my eye parts. I had to have a spinal tap and get off some of my meds, and I was all good.

Who knows what would have happened if it went un-treated. Temporary blindness? Explosion of the skull? Whatever it was, I am extremely grateful for my optometrist catching it and making a big scary fuss out of it because I feel like he saved my life.

I’m not sure if I have thanked him…but he’s continued to be my optometrist even though I’ve changed health insurance a few times and have had to pay full price to see him. I also recommend him to others.

Oddly enough, my GP (actually, my pediatrician) is about to become my brother’s father-in-law. He’s a wonderful man and I’m sure he kept me out of a lot of medical trouble in the 18 years I saw him, but I still get a little grumbly over his mis-diagnosis of my near-fatal head explosion.

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Hmmm - mine is my eye doctor too!

My son needed to update his school physical recently - so we went to the pediatrician. He noted my son’s height and weight, and immediately asked him to see the eye doctor for a complete exam and also have an ultrasound kind of thing done of his heart - his doctor said he may have Marfan’s syndrome. Doctor then left, after not saying much of ANYTHING and I went home with my son freaking out.

I had no idea what in the hell it was - I had no way at that time to look anything up on line - and I immediately called Dr. Z (the eye doctor) and told him what was going on. He’d been our eye doctor for years so he knows us - and could tell how freaked out I was. He said to come in right away - which we did - and he had a ton of research that HE had printed off of the internet for me explaining what it was, what they were looking for, etc. I had known nothing and he made me feel so much better about everything and gave me so much good information - now I knew something! (That is an incredible feeling especially when you’re talking about the health of your child.)

So, Dr., thanks - you made a really really scared mom feel better than you’ll ever know!

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I’ve got several, but one that is up at the head of the line is my rheumatologist.

I have rheumatoid arthritis. When I moved back to Houston, I picked Dr. W’s name out of the phone book because he was close to where I worked at the time. I wish I could pick lottery tickets half as well.

He is aggressive in treatment, and seven years ago, he got me into the human study for the new drug Humira, and I will tell you with no hesitation that it is a miracle drug IMNSHO. After 13 years of pain and suffering when I went on the drug, within 3 months my symptoms started to abate and I am virtually symptom free today.