We have punched out. We’ve shaken the dust off our sandals and scraped the mud off our boots. We have thrown our last pinkie in the alligator’s habitat, taken the trash and recyclables to the transfer station for the last time, mopped the floors and cleaned our last bathroom at a SC NWR, and we punched in the gate code to close it for the final time. This was our last work day, and we are finished. Kaput. Done. It’s over. We’ve said our goodbyes to the staff in absentia not that they heard the goodbyes but then they didn’t seem to care anyway. We’re outta here.

But to where? And a more immediate question, will we ever get out of South Carolina? On the morning of December 30, we knew our schedule exactly. We would head out of here on the 4^th of January, spend 3 days at a state park near Myrtle Beach watching the sun rise over the Atlantic, and then head to Big Bend National Park to volunteer there until May. But that was the morning of December 30 and Plan A. By the afternoon of December 30, we were no longer functioning under Plan A or B or C, and in fact had no plan at all.

Shannon had been bothered with an irregular heart beat since the day after Christmas. And she has a history of heart beat “issues.” She has had two ablations to correct ventricular tachycardia, and is on a drug to regulate her heart rate. But the usual response to anything going on with the body out of the ordinary is to deny that anything out of the ordinary is going on with the body. She was in deep denial. On the morning of December 30, she got out of bed and felt pretty good. However, as she increased her physical activity, her heart acted up again, and she finally said we have to go see someone. Being on the road, the only someone to see was the Emergency Department of the local medical center. Fortunately we are close to Myrtle Beach and had a number of facilities to choose from.

When she got to Emergency, she said the two phrases that got her immediate attention and a ticket to stay awhile in the medical center. And those two phrases were, “shortness of breath” and “pain in the chest.” She was monitored and tested and consulted with by several doctors. The tests reveal that physically her heart is in good shape but she was suffering from atrial fibrillation. She was released from the medical center New Year’s Eve with an increase in the dosage of medication she was already taking, instructions to make a follow up appointment with the cardiologist, and a stern talking to about not gallivanting around the country without having her condition and medication monitored on a regular basis.

So, we’re in South Carolina a little longer than we had planned. But I can’t blame it all on Shannon. On December 31 I went to see the eye guy who did surgery on my eyes. He removed the final stitch from my right eye, wanted to have it heal for another 2 to 4 weeks, and then a decision will be made for glasses, additional surgery, or Lasik surgery. It looks like we may be watching many sunrises over the Atlantic before we can get out of here.

And then there was Big Bend. I called Big Bend to alert them to our situation and the fact that we will likely show up later than expected. The immediate response was, “Alan, who?” No one was expecting us, and there was a very thin paper trail regarding us. There was a change in personnel in September, and the person we had been dealing with never told the new person who was on the other end of the phone. I had sent an email in the fall and received no response. Trusting that we were expected because we provided finger prints in July for a background check and talked several times on the phone with the volunteer coordinator and knew she was expecting us, and knowing she was scheduled to be out on maternity leave sometime this fall, I didn’t wake up at night worrying about not going to Big Bend because of no email response. Color me naiveté. How trusting I was. How stupid I am. And I’m still waiting on the guy from Nigeria to get back to me about all that money coming my way. So, we had a very cordial phone chat, are out of Big Bend because we were never expected there in the first place, have no pressure to be anywhere at any time during the next 5 months, and now we have time to work on Plan F.