When It Rains, It Pours

Morton Salt’s label displays a little girl holding an umbrella. The tag line on the label reads “when it rains, it pours” which was adapted from the old proverb, “it never rains, but it pours.” The clever ad campaign and branding came about as a result of Morton’s innovation of adding magnesium carbonate (anti-caking agent) to salt, creating a table salt that flowed freely. (That is, even when it rains, it (the salt) pours!)

The real meaning of the proverb is that something doesn’t happen for a long time, and then it seems to happen all at once. Swarms and clusters happen in life. Life events are rarely evenly spaced.

Remember the year Hurricane Charley hit? Storms were coming at us one after the other that year. I was in Japan attending Yoko’s mother’s funeral when Charley hit. Our home was destroyed by the storm. We had to gut the house and rebuild. Since then we’ve been pretty lucky. Let’s hope our luck continues.

It’s been six years since Charley and five years since we moved back into our house. We haven’t had to do much around the house for the last few years, but suddenly we’ve had a rash of things that need to be repaired or replaced. It’s as though things know that, after five years, it’s time to break.

Our household repairs this summer included, the air conditioner in my daughter’s car, a replacement set of tires for Yoko’s car, a repair job on the freezer and ice machine, a new sewer line from the house to the street, repairs to the pool pump, the cruise control on my car, and replacing our home entertainment system. Oh well, the good news is it’s nothing that can’t be fixed and we are fortunate enough to be able to afford to fix the things that break!

When it comes to the human body, repairs are not so easy and the cost is not so cheap. As we age, physical problems also seem to swarm. Have you ever noticed that when you are not well, it’s not just one thing?

Many people I know have had a hip or knee replacement, surgery for a bad rotator cuff, surgery to correct a bad back or other ailing parts. Many of these people are back to living an active life, without the previous pain and discomfort. Many say that, in retrospect, they wonder why they waited so long to take corrective measures. Unquestionably, medicine has made fantastic progress in my lifetime when it comes to replacing failing body parts.

A friend of mine has a 20-something year old son who developed ameloblastoma, which is a rare benign tumor that appears in the mandible. The symptoms were a “toothache” which his son ignored for some time. The tumor in his jaw was discovered after he finally visited a dentist. His son was treated last month by excising the tumor with surgery (removing all of the affected bone) and replacing a large piece of his jaw with a graft from his leg. The procedure took a team of surgeons 14 hours to complete. His son was in post-surgical intensive care for several days and is now, thankfully, on the mend. Rehabilitation will take months but he has a good prognosis for leading a completely normal life. Praise God!

In January of this year the Virginia B Andes Volunteer Community Clinic arranged for a bilateral hip replacement for a disabled patient who was wheelchair bound by bone on bone hip pain in both joints. The hospital operating room, surgeon, anesthetist, nurses, hip prosthetics, transportation, and rehabilitation services were all donated by our caring medical community. This patient is not only walking again, but he’s going back to work!

All things break in time, but what can be better than fixing an injured body and repairing a broken life.