Welcome back to the show for caregivers about caregivers hosted by caregiver.
I am Peter Rosenberger. This is the nation's number one show for the family caregiver. We are live on Sirius XM Channel 131 Family Talk.
If you want to be a part of it, 877-655-6755. And that was my beautiful wife Gracie singing Rejoice Evermore. You can get that record right now. It's on Amazon, iTunes, wherever all the stuff is downloaded. And you can also go to our website hopeforthecaregiver.com and see all the music she's put out there, which is rather extensive. And she's got a new record coming out here next month.
If her producer can get it together. Oh, that would be me. I was going to say, is this a dig?
Is this a dig? Who do I need to talk to? Oh, I guess I know who I need to talk to. Yes, you do. And by the way, did I say Channel 131? You did.
You said Channel 131. Yeah. Okay.
I just want to make sure. No, no, no. I was just being silly and texting you.
Why are you doing that? Well, because I'm a silly person. You have to be a little bit silly in the midst of being a caregiver or, you know, we have to laugh. We talk about this all the time. You know, you do. And that brings me to a story.
Go ahead. Brings me to a story. My wife and we have learned to laugh quite extensively.
This month, last Monday was Labor Day. And I went out riding horses. And she went out on a four-wheeler this time. And our friend Kathy was with us. We got some horses out here belonging to her brother-in-law. And we're trying to kind of whip them into shape a little bit.
They're a little bit green. And I love to ride. And Kathy's a real no kidding Montana cow woman.
And she really knows her business. And so we're out there riding. But I was reminded that one of the last times we were out here riding some years ago with Gracie.
And Gracie has these prosthetic legs that have little buttons on the side. And that when you press the button, that's when the leg comes off. Now don't get ahead of me, John. I'm waiting patiently. And I'm not going to spoil your punchline. Well, no.
And it will go in a direction you can't even imagine anyway. So we were out riding. And sure enough, the button got pressed on both legs as her legs kind of flopped against the saddle. And so the legs popped off.
Okay. That's bad. But what happened was she was wearing straight leg jeans. The legs didn't come off. They got stuck in the bottom of the jeans. So it looked like she had like six foot long legs.
It was a little bit freaky looking. Well, imagine what it did to the horse because these legs were beating against the horse. And so what did the horse do, John?
Oh, no. And yes, he did. And the horse took off. And Gracie's really extra long legs down these lines were just hanging down in her jeans, were flapping the horse and beating the horse. And the horse was just terrified because, I mean, in reality- This is not how a human is shaped.
Well, and yeah, in equestrian school, the horse never learned how to deal with prosthetic legs flapping from a pair of jeans. And so Parker, our oldest son Parker, and I chased her down on our horses. We got her. We caught the horse. And Gracie's screaming and hollering and everything else and holding on for dear life.
And it was rather serious, but it was also, well, it was rather serious, but we can look back at it and laugh now. And then we took her legs off. Well, we're out there outside and she doesn't have her legs on.
She can't get off the horse very easily because she didn't have legs now. And I couldn't put them back on because we needed to be able to take the jeans off. Well, Parker's there and she's not going to take the jeans off there.
So we kind of pulled them all the way through the jeans. And then I carried one and led her horse back and Parker put the other one in the rifle boot of a scabbard of his saddle. So he's got a leg in the scabbard. And he's fuming all the way back.
I mean, he's just fuming. He's like, this is just, this is mom, mom, mom. And I'm carrying a leg and leading the horse and we finally got her back, got her off the horse.
And she was able to effectively put her legs back on. And the horse is still going to the horse psychiatrist. I imagine so. You want to lay down in the stall here, tell me all about it.
I hate Parker's mother. So that's, you know, that's just, that's our life. And speaking of prosthetic, oh, go ahead. I was going to say, well, this is, I've heard you tell stories about, you know, like, God help me if I, God help the police officer that ever pulls me over. I got a trunk full of legs.
Well, I do. And I, we have a lot of legs that we have. Our house looks sometimes like a horror movie, but we do, we go through a lot of prosthetic legs.
What do you do with the legs when you're done with them? Because sometimes Gracie will outgrow legs. She's gone through lots of legs over. She's been an amputee now for 28 years.
She goes through a lot of legs. There's a song in that somewhere. I want you to think, I want you to think about that sentence and then write me a paragraph apologizing for what you've done here. But we want, we want people to understand that you can see humor in this. I mean, there are funny things that happen along the journey as a caregiver. And if you don't see the humor in it, stick with us on this show long enough and we'll help you because it's so important for you as a caregiver to laugh. It is really important for you to laugh. Yeah. And if you don't see the humor, you will burn out. Wait. Yes, you will. We'll be making a joke about you later.
You know, that's how it's going to work out. But when Gracie's done with the legs that she no longer needs, we have a place for those legs to go. And if you know somebody who's an amputee, please, please, please write this down, standingwithhope.com, standingwithhope.com. Some years ago, 15, 16 years ago, we launched this whole program of providing prosthetic limbs to Gracie's fellow amputees in West Africa. And part of that is we can recycle used limbs. Maybe you have a loved one who passed away and you don't know what to do with the leg.
Maybe you have somebody who, a child that has outgrown it or in Gracie's case, she's gone, you know, she's had to change legs over the years many times. Whatever the issue is, please don't throw those things away. Please don't throw the prosthetic socks away.
The liners, the sleeves, the belts, all that kind of stuff. We can recycle that. It goes to a local prison in Tennessee run by CoreCivic. And it's one of their many faith-based programs where inmates volunteer to disassemble used prosthetic limbs.
It's amazing. We call it Operation Footloose, as in Turn That Footloose So We Can Recycle. And we don't have footloose cued up, do we?
No, I'm not expecting it. But we take these limbs and we take them all the way down sometimes to the screw level, but the foot, the knee, the pylon, the adapters, connectors, all that stuff can be reused again. And then we'll build a custom fit socket that fits that patient's amputated limb and use those recycled parts.
And then they can go and have a better quality of life walking. They literally, we literally lift them up. I love in Acts 3, it says, when Peter and John were going to the temple and that beggar was sitting there, you know, I just thought about this Peter and John here on the show. And Peter and John were going to the temple at the gate called Beautiful. There was that young, I mean, that man had been there since, you know, forever.
He was born lame and he was just begging for money. And Peter looked at him and said, hey, look at me. And he said, silver and gold have I none, but such as I have I give. In the name of Jesus of Nazareth, stand up and walk. And he grabbed his hand and took him by the hand and lifted him up. And the guy started walking and leaping and praising God. We've done that. We have literally done that with folks. We have taken him by the hand and lift him up and say, just, you know, stand up and walk. And they do. And they go walking and leaping and praising God. It's an extraordinary ministry from an extraordinary life. Gracie envisioned this many years ago.
And this Stadium with Hope is the presenting sponsor of this show. And the fact that we have inmates at a prison that does this with Core Civic, it's an amazing program. They let us do that. And inmates volunteer to do it. They love doing it. It gives them something positive to do with their hands. And they've told me that. I remember one inmate that when we first started, he said, look at me and said, I've never done anything positive with my hands. And another one said, I've never even thought about crippled people. And here we are doing this. So anyway, it's a great program, standingwithhope.com. Would you take advantage of it?
Whisper: medium.en / 2024-01-22 14:51:41 / 2024-01-22 14:56:01 / 4
