Help Send Katy to Uganda!

Help send Katy to Uganda!

"Here I am. Send me out. Let me shine for Your glory..."

Hello friends and family!

Over the past few years, I've really felt God calling me to do mission work in Africa, and I am so blessed to have the opportunity to finally travel there this summer. I will be volunteering for approximately 5 weeks this summer at New Hope Orphanage and Primary School in Kampala, Uganda, which is home to about 1000 kids.

Over the past several months, I have been in contact with the pastor who founded this orphanage and am very excited about the work they have in store for me. I will be assisting medically in their clinic, helping teach the children in a number of subjects, and hopefully working on the establishment of a secondary school for the orphanage, as well as however else I can help them. I will also be conducting a number of interviews, doing research, and taking photos for the novel I'll be writing that will tell the fascinating story of the orphanage and the people involved with it. Once the novel is completed, we hope to publish it and use the proceeds to support the orphanage.

This is an incredible opportunity that is exactly what I've been praying for over the past few years, but as with any mission trip, it is not free. My estimated costs are sitting between $3400 and $3500, which (although expensive for a college student) I feel will be completely worth the experience and opportunity to serve these people. If you would like to support me in this effort, that would be amazing!

Aside from monetary support, I'm going to be in great need of your prayers! This trip is going to be challenging physically, emotionally, and spiritually, and although I am completely willing to embrace this, your prayers and encouragement will always be greatly appreciated.

While on the trip, I plan to write a blog to keep all of you updated on my work in Uganda. I may also have email updates, so be sure to sign up on the list if I do.

Thanks so much for all of your support in helping me serve the Lord in Uganda. I'm looking forward to seeing how He'll use me to serve this community!

God Bless!
Katy Britten

If you would like to support me financially, you can mail any donations, made out to Katy Britten, to the address below.

A. Granger
3180 Cane Rd. #164
College Station, Texas 77845

With God All Things are Possible!

Who Will Care for The Caregiver?

If your life is suddenly turned upside down by a loved one that is brought low by sudden illness, disease, injury or depression, will you survive?
Caring for a loved one can turn into the very essence of our being. All so often the family caregiver is forgotten when the total emphasis is placed on the loved one.
So, who will care for the caregiver?
If we neglect our own health to care for another, we are not giving our loved one our full love. It is just as important to care for you as it is to care for your family member. If we lack in this responsibility then everyone will lack.
My caregiver book, "Upside Down and Back Again: Hope for the Caregiver" is about Love, Hope, and Care for the family thrown into a difficult role caring for a family member brought low. It will also answer the question, who will care for the caregiver.

Deacon Luis Doriocourt, Diocese of Austin, Texas writes:

Let Barbara share with you her experience in caring for those we love in both ordinary and extraordinary times. This book is a work of love, love that Barbara wishes to share with others caught up in the heart wrenching plight of caring for a loved one brought low by illness, disease, injury or depression.
Let Barbara guide you to the well of strength, the well of prayer and love. These tools will empower you the caregiver to be a true healer.

Donna- Marie O'Boyle, writes:

Barbara J. Cooper's Upside Down and Back Again: Hope for the Caregiver is just exactly what the title states. This must read for caregiver families offers tremendous hope and inspiration for all caregivers who may be struggling with the lack of help and information available to them and who are seeking direction and a deeper meaning in their work and care for the ill, injured, and depressed. This insightful and inspirational book comes from one who knows, because she has been there herself as a caregiver to a brain injured husband.

Donna-Marie O'Boyle, author of Catholic Prayer Book for Mothers, The Heart of Motherhood:Finding Holiness in the Catholic Home, Prayerfully Expecting:A Nine-Month Novena for Pregnant Mothers, Catholic Saints Prayer Book:Moments of Inspiration from Your Favorite Saints, Grace Cafe': Serving Up Recipes for Faithful Mothering, and The Domestic Church: Room By Room

A portion of the proceeds from both of my caregiver books will be donated to the Franciscan Poor Clare Nuns.

If you wish to order a signed copy, you may do so by scrolling down to the pay pal button on the left.

My Caregiver Book

This is what Eugene J. Cooper, Doctor of Theology, had to say about my book; The Other Survivor: Head Injury from a Wife's Perspective-

From one moment to the next an accident changed their lives, and Barbara became a victim's caregiver. Totally unprepared for her new role-who is?
The author plunged into the abyss of sadness and resentment at being a victim herself. She slowly learned to cope with the seemingly superhuman task of caring for the new stranger in the house she once knew as another person.
The chapters of this book reveal the source of Barbara's strength not only to survive but to become a loving caregiver. In these pages she shares her insights and experiences and faith with readers who themselves have encountered similar challenges or know someone who has. I am certain those readers will find Barbara's thoughts both helpful and encouraging.
Eugene J. Cooper

Doctor Deirdre Cooper-Mahkorn: Neurologist, Bonn University Hospital, Germany said:

This very personal report of a shattering biographic milestone will be a valuable help to family members and loved ones as well as medical staff and self-help groups as it demonstrates the need for more in-hospital support given by social workers, priest, doctors and the infirm and the families: the other survivors.

The Other Survivor: Head Injury from a Wife's Perspective with a foreword by Doctor Deirdre Cooper-Mahkorn is on sale now!
If you wish to order a signed copy please scroll down on the left and there you will find the pay pal button.

Nurses save life of boy with rare sporting injury

Baseball to the chest stops heart

By Lela Garlington

Wednesday, April 8, 2009

It was as if lightning had struck the baseball player in the chest and shorted his heart's electrical circuit, medical staff say.

Instead, a catcher throwing a ball to third base last weekend hit Kyle McCammon in the chest. The impact, which hit Kyle between the second and fourth rib, stopped his heart from beating.

Luckily for 12-year-old Kyle, who plays competitive baseball as a Southaven Panther, his mother is a nurse, and she and two other nurses ran to his aid.

The freakish incident happened at 5:35 p.m. Saturday during the Rumble on the River tournament between the Southaven Panthers and the Arkansas Rattlers at First Tennessee Fields in Cordova.

When his mother, Mary McCammon, rushed on the field, she saw that her son was still breathing, but it was shallow and labored. His eyes had glazed over and he couldn't respond.

Her husband, assistant coach David McCammon initially thought the breath had been knocked out of him -- a typical baseball injury. But Mary McCammon, a home health nurse, realized it was much more serious.

Taking her middle and index fingers she placed them against her son's neck: "I couldn't feel a pulse. It was like I was in a tunnel. It was just me and Kyle."

Another nurse and mom, Cyndi Herrington of Olive Branch tried the other side. She couldn't feel a pulse either.

Color was draining from Kyle's face. His lips were turning blue.

"I think we all said in unison, 'He's not breathing. We need to do CPR,'" the child's mother recalled.

That's when another nurse from the opposing team, Deanna Gilbert of Marked Tree, Ark., stepped in and offered to help. "I got this Mom," Gilbert told Mary McCammon.

Twenty compressions to the chest. A single breath. Twenty more compressions to the chest. Another breath.

For seven minutes, the two nurses did what they had been trained to do. Because of them, Kyle survived.

As tears streamed down her face that day, Herrington said all she could think about was, "I can't let this child die."

By the time the ambulance arrived, Kyle had regained consciousness. He stayed overnight at Le Bonheur Children's Medical Center, and Mary McCammon said doctors gave her son a clean bill of health.

Kyle was diagnosed with "commotio cordis," which means commotion or concussion of the heart.

"It's very rare," explained Dr. Barry Gilmore, Le Bonheur's medical director for Emergency Services. When it happens, it is often with boys playing sports -- particularly baseball. "We don't even see one a year. The overall survival rate is 15 percent," he said. "The ones who have immediate CPR or a defibrillator -- within the first one to three minutes -- survive."

From 1996 to 2007, just 188 cases have been reported to the U.S. Commotio Cordis Registry.

That is why the Southaven Panther coaches are now getting CPR training.

Kyle remembers being hit and trying to get up but nothing after that.

His mother is hoping her son's brush with death will convince others to get cardiopulmonary resuscitation or CPR training. Even better, she said, "These defibrillators are under $1,000. They should be really anywhere people are.

"Never in a million years would you think a ball would stop his heart. But it did," Mary McCammon said. "Those nurses saved his life."

-- Lela Garlington: 529-2349

© 2009 Scripps Newspaper Group — Online

Happy Easter!

Peace Prayer by St. Francis of Assisi

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace, where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.
Grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved, as to love; for it is in giving that we receive, it is in pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

From One Moment to the Next

"From one moment to the next an accident changed their lives, and Barbara became a victim's care giver." Eugene J. Cooper, Dr.,Theology

TBI

Following a traumatic brain injury, a large percentage of survivors are discharged directly to their homes after receiving trauma or emergency care and put into the hands of a family caregiver. According to the national Brain Injury Association, 1.5 million Americans will sustain TBI annually. When fifty to seventy thousand people are left with intellectual and/or behavioral deficits, that is fifty to seventy thousand caregiver families that are in need of being informed to care for the survivor in their life. The saving grace for many TBI survivors is a loving caregiver.