DEAR DR. FORBES, IN CASE I NEVER TOLD YOU.....

i currently live in the BIG city of savannah, ga, home to 3 large hospitals. one being the trauma center for southeast ga, and of which i am a casual employee. we have literally hundreds of doctors in private practices. some of these practices are so large, that you will see a different dr. each time you make a visit. i don't like that part. i do, though, like the part where we have alot of choices as to which practice will house our "primary care physician." in helping to care for my parents these last seven years, i have had the pleasure, (and i am being VERY sarcastic here) of meeting some, who can be compared to stale crackers...dry, lacking taste, void of any "goodness." some, who are so intimidating that you would sooner spend 4 hours of research looking up the disease you've just been diagnosed with, than to actually ask the DR. to explain it to you, for fear you may receive a good tongue lashing for having the audacity to question him and take up MORE of his precious time. and i have met some whose bedside manner i would liken to sharing space with a snarling pit bull. we are also home to many, many "walk-in" clinics (i tread lightly here, because my casual employment with the trauma hospital is with one of these clinics...but i work on the workers comp. side, and then, not even in the office.) where you can sometimes literally pass your next birthday while sitting in the waiting room, waiting. and waiting. and contracting another disease while doing the waiting. from all the other sick people who are also waiting. and breathing on you.

in 1980 i didn't live here. my home was located in a small town in south fl, called clewiston. home of 2 of the world's sugar corporations. one, united states sugar corporation, and the other everglades sugar refinery, a subsidiary of dixie crystals sugar refinery, located in savannah. it was at everglades that my father was the manager and my first husband worked in the office.. (james, father of my two oldest sons, landon and christian.) we had only one hospital. and we had very few doctors in private practice at that time. i was a very fortunate girl back then, as i had married into a family where my sister-in-law, mary, worked as a nurse for the towns "best" doctor, Dr. James D. Forbes. i did not know in 1980 that he was the "best" doctor in town. but i would learn that very quickly, when in 1981 my oldest child, landon was born, followed in 1982 by christian.


Dr. Forbes' office was located in the center of town, down a little side street. from the main street in town you could look down Bond street and see his office, sitting down at the far corner. there were two doors on that side of the office. one, for patients, and one for employees. and it was a busy place, all the time. when landon became sick for the very first time, (which as a new mother i believed he had contracted a deadly strain of some rare disease) i called mary to make an appt.. and guess what she told me? she said, "come on in NOW, and come in the employees door when you get here." then i REALLY thought he had this deadly thing. scared me to death. but i got down there and went in and was immediately taken to a room in the back and there, already waiting, was Dr. James D. Forbes, the "best" doctor in town. he had made it to the room before i did and was all ready to examine my baby boy. (he had a cold. a simple little cold. he wasn't dying.) he gave me sample antibiotics and sent us on our way. and this became the "norm" for me and my two boys, who seemed to always be picking up one germ or another.

when landon was 18 months old, christian was 2 months. both boys had been sick for a few days, again with colds, and were getting better. one particular day they were both taking naps. landon was lying on the couch, beside me, while i folded laundry or something, and suddenly he began twitching. just a little bit. i thought he was just having a dream. then, that little twitch became a big twitch and he started flopping around and gagging . he was burning up with a fever and trying to swallow his tongue and i was freaking out. i had never been a witness to anything like that before and didn't really understand what was happening. or what i was supposed to do. i grabbed the phone and called james. he worked at the refinery, which was about a mile and a half down the road from our house. i figured that he could get there faster and get us to the hospital quicker than an ambulance. he in turn, called his sister, patti, who flew out to the house so she could be the one driving to the hospital while james held him. i then, called my mother, who lived on the refinery property. james and patti arrived first, grabbed landon and took off for the er. shortly after that, my mother arrived to take me and christian. by the time we got to the er, they had been there already for maybe ten or fifteen minutes. we didn't have cell phones back then, so there was no way for me to know what was happening. i was still freaking out. when we walked into the er, there was no noise that day. no one at the front desk. we walked down the hallway, searching out rooms, when we got to the one where landon had been taken. he was laying on his back on the table and he was literally surrounded by people. Dr. Forbes was there, and gary, his PA, and mary and other hospital personnel. and landon was not moving. at all. and he was not crying. or whimpering. and my mother and i thought that he had died. and i was quickly on my way to dying with him. Dr. Forbes came over and told us that he had had a convulsion, probably brought on by the high fever and that he wanted to admit him for a couple of days. they put him in a room and Dr. Forbes and mary and gary went back to the office. during the course of the day, they had been trying, unsuccessfully, to hook up an iv to give him fluids. they repeatedly stuck him with needles and had him strapped to a papoose board so he couldn't move, and he was just screaming and screaming and getting more and more dehydrated by the minute. by 8:00 p.m., they had still not been able to get the needle in a vein. so we demanded they call Dr. Forbes. and do you know, he was at a formal dinner, probably honoring Him for something, and got up and left that dinner and came straight to the hospital, in his tuxedo and boy howdy did he do some berating of the hospital staff when he got there! under his direction, they were finally able to administer the iv through a vein in his foot. it was a terrible ordeal for such a little boy and his mama and daddy. and Dr. Forbes became my hero that night.

when christian turned 3 yrs. old, he and landon were playing in the back yard. we lived on a small man-made rock pit and we had a fence up between the property and the water. i had taken our only car to the grocery store and when i left, james was outside mowing the lawn and the boys were on the swingset. i came home maybe 45 minutes later and when i pulled up i noticed several things at once. the lawn mower was sitting there, running...james and the boys were nowhere in site, my back door was wide open and my neighbor next door was running towards me hollering, "christian got hurt and her husband had taken them all to the hospital and it was really bad and i needed to get up there asap. i can not remember if i drove myself or if she drove me. but what i CAN remember, was that when the car pulled up to the er parking lot i could hear christian screaming at the top of his lungs..."MAMA, MAMA, I WANT MY MAMA" oooooh....my heart fell to my feet and i was paralyzed with fear. i somehow (or rather, GOD, did) managed to move and get inside the er where james met me at the door. he was trying to prepare me before i went into the operating room. but NOTHING could have prepared this young mother for what i saw. my little boy was sitting in his aunt mary's lap with a blood soaked towel wrapped around his upper arm and they had sedated him, but he was fighting it with everything he had in him. because he wanted his MAMA. they finally laid him on the table and waited for him to fall asleep, his little hand holding onto mine. then they told me what had happened. landon had been pushing christian on the swingset and he went a little too high and the swingset tumped over and trapped christian between it and an old boat trailer that was sitting a little bit too close. it pinned his arm and cut it wide open. he began screaming, landon took off running and hid in the bushes, because he was 4 yrs. old and thought he was in serious trouble. james was mowing behind the fence and couldn't hear because of the sound of the lawn mower. finally, as he moved closer to where the boys were, he saw that the swing set was lying on the ground and underneath it, was christian. the neighbor, heard all the screaming and ran over and that part is history.

they then removed the blood-soaked towel from christian's arm and i about passed out. i had never in my life seen what a "gaping" wound looked like. how far it spreads open. and this wound was in the upper, fatty part of the arm. to my eyes, it looked as though his arm was hanging by a thread. and the word that was uppermost in my mind was "amputation." i, not being in the medical field, and seeing things like this up close every day, saw no way possible way that his arm could be saved. but Dr. Forbes said that it would require alot of stitches, but that, of course the arm could be saved. it had been cut almost clear to the bone. at this time, Dr. Forbes was no longer performing surgeries. but i insisted that he be the one to sew up christian's arm. i was not in the least bit concerned with whether or not there would be a scar, i just wanted my baby to be "fixed." and i wanted Dr. Forbes to be the one to do the "fixing." This is christian, the next day, sporting his "gauze" and  landon, showing his brother some love...

and this is christians "scar" some 21 yrs. later...a great job of stitching from a great doctor i know...

fast forward a few years. i was driving home from work one afternoon. on main street, when for some unknown reason, i just happened to glance down Bond street and there in front of Dr. Forbes office, i saw mama and daddys car and the two of them, with their arms around each other, walking into the employee entrance. this was one of those instant moments where you KNOW that something is not right with this picture. i went home and called my sister, who was still living at home with them, and asked her what they were doing at the dr.'s office. for some reason, i thought that my mother must have gotten sick. she said she didn't know anything about it and would call me when they got back home. An hour or so later she called and said that daddy had had a little chest pain and mama had taken him up to Dr. Forbes office, just to have him checked. just a short while later, mama called to tell me that they had run some test, and that it showed that daddy had experienced a heart attack. and they were going to take him to the hospital just for the night for observation. we dropped the kids off at James' mothers house and went on up to the er. within minutes of arriving there, the waiting room was filled with people from our church, there just to pray. a testament to the fact that so many people loved my daddy. besides us. they allowed each of us family members to go back for just a few minutes at the time. he was in no pain. he couldn't even believe he was in the hospital. he said he had actually been feeling really good all day at work and when he came home and laid back in his recliner he felt just a slight tightness in his chest. he had no idea it was anything as serious as a heart attack. had it not been for my mother MAKING him go to the doctor, he would never have given it another thought. and he would not be here today.


after a little while at the hospital they talked all of us into going home. so the waiting room cleared out and we all went home. mama had only about a ten minute drive home and when she got there the phone was ringing. it was the hospital, saying that daddy had actually died just minutes of her leaving him and had to be shocked back with the paddles. we all flew back up there, and so did all the friends from church. he had been taken to the ICU when he had first arrived and he was sitting up in the bed talking to the person in the bed next to him and telling them that he felt foolish tying up a bed in the ICU when he wasn't even sick! and then BOOM! just like that, he fell back on the bed and had to be brought back to life. this time, we were scared. really, really scared. We stayed up at the hospital all night long, and called family members and other friends and had this ginormous prayer chain going around. and Dr. Forbes was right there the whole time. taking care of my daddy. saving his life. the next day they took him by ambulance to Miami, where he received one of the first few angioplastys that had ever been performed. (i will be posting another seperate story on this visit to the hospital, as it was an adventure in inself.)



I tell you all this because i want people to know not only what a great doctor Dr. James D. Forbes was, but what a great man of God. i recently saw posted on his daughters facebook wall that her father was finally retiring. the whole town honored him with parties and a breakfast and i don't know what all else, because i moved away from that town 13 yrs. ago. Dr. and Mrs. Forbes, as well as their two daughters, attended the same church that i did. all those years ago. my years at that church were some of my most favorite memories. i met some lifelong friends while attending there. the town of clewiston, i know, will miss Dr. Forbes greatly, but now his wife and children, as well as his grandchildren will finally be able to stop sharing him with so many people that love him, and be able to love on him alot more themselves.



Dr. James D. Forbes is one of my heroes. he saved not only the life of my daddy, but took such great care of myself and my children, all those years they were growing up. He is a MUCH LOVED man and if i never told you, Dr. Forbes....THANK YOU SOOOOOO MUCH for all that you did. and do. and to Mrs. Forbes and Mary and Jenny and Davis...enjoy your dad and cherish every single moment with him. consider yourselves so very lucky to call him your HUSBAND and DAD!

Dr. & Mrs. James D. Forbes