The "Las Vegas is my Home", edition.

Good Tuesday morning. I'm having a disconnect and a strong connection. What does that mean?  Let's start with Sunday night. Brian and I are just lazing around watching the 10:00 news. About 15 minutes in, the newscaster mentions there was a shooting on Las Vegas Blvd. Not to be disinterested, but every now and then there are acts of violence on the strip. They are not random acts, but targeted acts. I hate to hear about the acts of violence, but it happens. Well about 5 minutes later, the newscaster looks a little spooked and another guy joins her at the desk mentioning something is happening, but they don't have confirmed information. However Twitter is blowing up. I start looking at the various news stations Facebook pages. I'm getting a sense that this is something different. I could see the panic in the posts. Before the newscast was over all the on air personalities were on screen, including the weather guy, all trying to get a handle on what's going on. 

At 11:00 I changed channels. The new channel has more info and are now broadcasting Twitter feeds. And the weekday evening anchor has shown up. Uh oh. We stayed with it until just before 1:00 AM. At that time the death toll was less than 10 and less than 50 (!) injured. And we were being told that the numbers would rise.  And the station insisted on playing and playing the sounds of the automatic weapons.  During the night our phones were getting random notifications. Brian sent a text to Shawn to let her know we were ok and we did the we are safe thing on Facebook. 

We wake early most days and on MWF I do deep water fitness and Brian has his gardening class. I check my phone. I exclaim "holy shit!"  Brian asks me what's wrong. The death toll jumped to over 50 and the injured jumped to 500. It took a few seconds to process that. It also seemed important to continue on with our day. I had responses to my Facebook check in. I also had a message from a friend who is a radio host in Detroit requesting an interview(!). We watch the news. And go about getting our day started. I wanted to see the national coverage. Well that didn't happen. All of the local stations had nonstop coverage until late last night. You know we had to turn of the TV or watch other shows just for a break. It was just too overwhelming. 

Oh, for the record, we live about 7 miles from the hotel. Anyway. I head out. Traffic is the same. People heading to work. Kids heading to school. Landscapers headed to wherever. I arrive at the pool. Parking lot was full, people were swimming laps and people showed up for class. We were all trying to maintain normalcy. And the odd thing was no on really talked about what had happened. 

I watched as much coverage as I could. The weeping would come and go. Yes, I did the radio interview. Apparently because we had the nonstop local coverage I ended up having information that hadn't hit the national news or just random facts. Like we knew there more weapons that had been originally reported. 

We got through the day. I ordered my meds. And was resigned to pay the $1,100 for th refill. And life has to go on. We planned chili for dinner and Brian did not disappoint. He's moved from ground beef. He used sirloin for the chili. Ok ok. The steaks were on sale...buy one get two free. We have sales like that out here. Whoo hoo!  I did treatment Monday night and here we are now this morning. 

So here are some tidbits for you. Las Vegas has one trauma 1 hospital. It has one trauma 2 hospital. That's it. Yes, here are other hospitals here, but they are not trauma hospitals. Look. The hospital that Brian was in last week did  not have personnel at the main desk on the week end. Same thing at the hospital dad was in when had the hip replacement surgery. At these lesser hospitals, the emergency rooms are rather laid back...because they are not trauma hospitals. Las Vegas Blvd is still closed. People started lining up for blood donations around 2AM Monday morning.  People waited in line to donate blood for up to 8 hours. So much food and water was delivered to the blood donation lines that they had to be turned away. We had a food truck festival over the weekend. Several trucks showed up to feed people in line for blood donations. Tents and chairs were supplied to people waiting in line, in addition to umbrellas to protect them from the sun. Air traffic was stopped for several hours. Officials were concerned that the airplanes could be targeted by the high powered rifles. Yes, the hotel is very near to the airport. 

There are real people getting out there doings things. Helping others. Those people donating time and resources. Doctors and nurses showing up off shift to assist. Counsellors showing up when the call went out. People Donating blood. So much so that the donations had to stop. Getting out pertinent information. Did you know several hotels are offering free rooms to relatives of victims?  Southwest and Allegiant Airlines are flying victims and relatives out of Las Vegas for little or reduced fares.  

Finally, I am a resident of Las Vegas...well Henderson, but it is the Las Vegas metropolitan area. My disconnect is the living through the horriffic event. The connect is I am a resident of Las Vegas. And I hurt for my home. But the city will survive. The residents care. And so now you know. There is so much more to Las Vegas than the strip. The residents have come through during this horrible episode. And we always will. 

#LasVegasStrong. 

People waiting to donate blood.