Paying It Forward

I’m not sure when I met Ray Getzinger. But at some point in the years we’ve had our blog, he wrote and said he’d read everything I’d written since I published my first novel, In Shadow, in 1985.   That’s a lot of books and I’m grateful he has made his way through the reading list!

Over the years, we have become virtual friends and recently, Ray emailed me that his wife of many years, Millie, had recently suffered a stroke and was going into a rehab facility once she left the hospital. This was around the same time that I’d started Pam Grout’s book, E-Cubed, and had been doing some of the pay it forward experiments with $1 bills. I told Ray I would leave some bills scattered around town in the next few days that would be specifically for Millie’s rapid recuperation and full recovery.

My first bill for Millie was left on a restroom door in a pubic park. Rob was playing Frisbee Golf and Noah, our dog, and I, were accompanying him around the course. The second bill was left in a restroom in a local Mexican restaurant where Rob and I met some friends for dinner the other night.

After I left the first bill, Ray wrote:

Now I know Millie is going to get better. 

She was transferred to the rehab center closest to home. It is less than two miles away. I was called saying she was there before she even got to her room. She was still being wheeled to her bed.

We both have My Chart that gives lab and X-ray results 48 hours after the test. I have been checking since she was admitted. Up to two days ago everything kept getting better. I didn’t know she was leaving the hospital until I got a call late this afternoon.

I wrote Ray that a friend had sent me some Yankee candles and that I had lit one for Millie. The one that is burning is called crackling peach mango! Beautiful scent.

He replied: Interesting. Her favorite food is peach yogurt and she loves Yankee candles. Maybe that’s part of the way it works.

After I left the second bill in the Mexican restaurant, he wrote: Millie was awake more today than any day since being in the hospital. One of her favorite games is Sudoku. I got her a new book and she is working on the puzzles. One thing though, she was reading the “First” magazine I brought. She pulled the subscription card out and said she sure would like to read the magazine. I told her she was and she acted surprised. She will be carrying on a perfectly normal conversation and come up with something like that. She is making progress. Her speech doesn’t seem to be affected, only her thought patterns since the first couple of days. 

She has been out of breath when just going to the bathroom for years. She tried to get her doctor to order supplemental O2. Now at least she is getting the oxygen she needs. I hope there is now proof enough for insurance to pay for it when she comes home. 

On my end, a couple of great things have occurred:

I finally finished my revisions to my new novel and it went off to my agent

I got a lead for a new health app from the people we had dinner with at the Mexican restaurant and passed it on to my sister, a nurse in the elder care field who is looking to expand her venue. She is excited about the app and plans to present it to a friend who is also in the same field, and hopes it translates into a new job for her.

I received an email from a friend who gifted me a psychic reading with a woman in New Orleans who was remarkable in detecting patterns in my life. It was exactly what I needed at this point in time. I can’t prove that any of this is directly related to the dollar gifts for Millie, but it feels to me that it’s all interconnected.

An unexpected royalty check arrived.

This technique of Grout’s really is about paying it forward.