The Curmudgeonly Professor

Learning Through Cancer: Guest Post by Heather

I received a request from a woman named Heather who is battling mesothelioma cancer and is working to raise awareness of this lethal cancer.  I invited her to submit a post, and following is what she wrote.  Cancer is an everyday fact of life on our short street in our retirement community.  In just our little corner, we have the following cases of cancer:

• multiple myeloma
• malignant melanoma
• stage IV pancreatic cancer
• leukemia
• bladder cancer

Thus, I was touched by Heather's story and I am only too happy to share it with you.  Following is her post:

Learning Thanks Through Cancer

I've heard it a thousand times, and maybe you have as well: It takes a village to raise a child.  My own child, my daughter Lily, was born on August 4, 2005.  When she arrived, my husband and I found our home was always full of our friends and family, all of whom wanted to meet Lily and love her.  At that moment, life couldn't get any better.  Unfortunately, we had no idea of the pain and fear that lay ahead.

I returned to work full time after a short while, and I began to feel less than perfect.  I was breathless, tired, and I had zero energy.  I might have assumed that it was just a result of being a new mom, but my doctor had other ideas.  When Lily was three and a half months old, on November 21, he diagnosed me with mesothelioma cancer.  To be exact, he diagnosed me with malignant pleural mesothelioma; being exposed to asbestos during my childhood caused it.  My doctor told me that if I did nothing, I would have about fifteen months to live.  That wasn't enough for me.  We had to act fast.

I decided to go to Boston and see Dr. David Sugarbaker, one of the world's best mesothelioma doctors.  I let him perform surgery to remove one of my lungs on February 2 2006.  For the next 18 days, I recovered in the hospital, making new friends with the people there for the same reason.  These amazing people helped me so much to take things one day at a time.  From there, I had another two months  of recovery to handle.  After that, I'd go through treatments that included both radiation and chemotherapy.

During this time, Lily was with my parents in my childhood home in South Dakota.  Their friends and family were so supportive of them.  This is really where our "village" came into play.  The people I babysat for as a child were adults with their own families now, and they were helping to care for Lily while my parents were at work during the day.  Their church friends, people I had always looked up to growing up were always around to provide comfort and support.  We both had our own little villages to help us make it through.  My mom always sent pictures of Lily, which is the only way I was able to see so many of her firsts, like rolling over and eating solid foods.  I missed her so much; however, I knew I was doing what I needed to do in order to be there for the rest of her life, and on top of that, cancer taught me so much.

What I learned is that cancer is obviously bad, but surprisingly, with it comes some good.  As a family, we appreciate every single day together, and we live each day to the absolute fullest.  We always remember to laugh, and we truly don't take anything for granted.  Cancer gave us that gift and, for that, I am grateful.

Note:  Heather wrote me that she is now cancer free, but she is trying to "turn her pain into purpose and become someone other people can look to for guidance, inspiration, and hope in situations like my own."  Heather's blog is:  www.mesothelioma.com/blog/authors/heather

When I get another moment or two, I'll try to provide a live link to her blog.  For all of us who are dealing with cancer with someone in our families, or our own cancer, Heather's message is one of hope and compassion.  I hope you were as touched by it as I was.  We spend a lot of time on sarcastic remarks and nonsense on my blog, but I receive letters and comments all the time about how a particular photo brought a moment of hope and peace and joy, and I feel that we are at least doing some good.

 

 

 

 

The Snowbirds are Fleeing St. George: The Perils, Blessings, and Adventures of Being Snow Birds

One phase of growing older is that of becoming a snow bird if you originally live in a cold, snowy, icy, dreary winter climate.  Like the geese and the real snow birds, people snow birds fly south in the winter as soon as it turns cold "up north", and then fly north as soon as it turns hot "down south." Sooner or later, of course, snow birds grow older if they can stay alive, and then making the transition becomes more difficult.  But as long as we can figure out some way to get back and forth, we love to continue our snow bird existence.

Some problems exist in being a snow bird.  To spend six months here and six months there, you have to have virtually two of everything that you need for daily existence--two frying pans, four tv remotes (two each for two people), two sets of everything else.  Such existence also means two repair bills for everything that stops working, two homeowner's fees, two bills for about everything.  We have had our south snowbird condo home now for sixteen years, buying it on impulse one hot day in August when the St. George temp was about 116 degrees.  I have made a lot of impulsive decisions, but this decision was one of the best ones we ever made.  We love St. George.  The red rock country of southern Utah is among the most beautiful places on earth.  St. George is an uncomplicated town that has continually upgraded its facilities until it now has about every fast food place known to man.  Plus the medical and health facilties here are unequaled, even in larger cities.  The caliber of medical specialties in cardiovascular, nephrology, oncology, dermatology, and about every other specialty is simply outstanding, making it unnecessary to return to doctors "up north" for medical care.  In fact, we prefer most of our doctors and care facilities in St. George to those elsewhere.  The St. George hospital, Dixie Regional Medical Center is outstanding, serving as a regional facility drawing patients from the entire area of southern Utah, northern Arizona, and the corner of Nevada.  As we meet people who have driven long distances to get to St. George for regular medical care, we are reminded that choice of a retirement destination has all too often avoided the issue of potential necessary medical care and we are grateful to be in St. George just minutes away from our medical care givers.

Grocery and gas prices tend to run a tad higher in St. George than they are in Salt Lake and other snowbird destination places farther north.  Getting used to such prices always is a bit of a jolt after returning from a six months' absence.  About every other restaurant is a Mexican restaurant, with a smattering of everything else.  More than a couple of decades ago, K-Mart was the only "big-box" store in St. George, but we now have two WalMarts, a Costco, BigLots, and other large chain specialty stores which again draw from a large regional geographic area.  I am told that the one St. George WalMart has one of the highest volumes in the WalMart chain, augmented by the large bulk quantity sales to polygamous families from Colorado City and Hildale on the Colorado-Arizona border (not members of the LDS Church).  Women in long pioneer dresses and long plaited braids are often shopping in clusters, trailed some times by groups of children in identical dresses or shirts and jeans.  They rarely speak to anyone else, so it doesn't do much good to try and be friendly to them. 

Proximity to Zion's National Park, Bryce Canyon, and a multitude of over scenic spots of breathtaking beauty is a huge draw for southwestern Utah, as well as a more salubrious winter climate.  Unfortunately, the winter St. George climate is not as balmy as in the Phoenix area, but getting to Phoenix from the north is a real pain, as there is no really convenient north-south route to get there.  St. George, on the other hand, is only a few hours away from Salt Lake on I-15.

Now our streets are becoming abandoned in our condo community in St. George as everyone is packing up their pickup trucks, SUVs, cars, and whatever else to flee north once more for family, familiar haunts, and to escape the summer furnace of St. George heat.  Our Michigan neighbor just left this morning.  We miss this couple because they always do a lot of the work when we have community functions at the club house.  Our Chicago neighbor, a retired Northwestern U professor, is leaving in a couple of days.  Our neighbor across the street for 16 years sadly sold his place to a new couple who aren't quite retired yet, so they are rarely here.  Our orthopedic surgeon friend down the street is leaving in a couple of weeks.  Our North Carolina friends left a couple of weeks ago. (You may ask, how did someone from North Carolina end up in St. George UT for the winters?)  The Montana folks have hied themselves back to Montana.  The artery through Utah, I-15, is clogged some days with huge pickup trucks pulling "fifth wheels", mobile homes, camper pickups, and about everything you could sleep and live in for a few months to come to Arizona, Nevada, and southwestern Utah to get away from the miseries of cold winter and their effects on arthritis and aching and aging joints and bodies.  The presence of Canadian license plates on I-15 is especially noticeable, as Canadians hurry back to make sure they keep the required residency requirement for Canadian health insurance.

Soon my wife and I will join the northward throng, the geese, the birds, and the remaining snow birds on this northern trek.  We always look forward to returning north as long as the snowy and cold season is over, and we always look forward to coming back south when the first cold day of winter returns.  But one day, we all have to decide, stay north and freeze, or stay south and fry, if we are still hanging around this mortal earth and mobility has creaked to an end.  What then?  We don't quite know yet.

What Do You Do When Your Doctor Retires?

When I last reported my doings, I was on my way to see my cardiologist.  Dr. M has been my cardiologist for about 12 or 13 years.  We have traded book reading lists and discussed the books we have read. We discussed our mutual and hopeless problems with stuffy noses. We shared our mutual fear of having our blood pressure checked since we both have hypertension, and she said "We're afraid to get it taken because it may be high." Several years ago, I gave her a framed enlarged photo of white blooming saguaro cactus. We have traded life stories.

 I told her this story the other day: "When I went to have my pre-induction physical at Fitzsimmons Army Hospital in Denver after being drafted out of school during my senior year at the University of Wyoming in 1953, I was held back by the main examining physician and sent to see a cardiologist. The cardiologist diagnosed me with 'psychoneurosis with psychogenic cardiovascular reaction'.  When I returned back to Laramie, I was thankful not be drafted into the army because I was newly married with a baby on the way but, at the same time, felt a tinge of guilt as all of my buddies were on their way to training and then Korea.  I went up to the University infirmary to see the kindly lady physician who mothered the UW students to find out what my diagnosis meant.  I asked her, 'does this mean I'm nuts?' "  At this point in my current exam, Dr. M. burst out into hilarious loud and sustained laughter. She said, "If only I had learned that diagnosis before.  I can use that on a half dozen of my patients."

But then the bad news came.  I learned Dr. M., who has been threatening to retire for several years, was actually going to do so on July 1.  When she semi-retired several years ago, cutting back to a couple of days a week, she got rid of many of her patients.  I had told her a couple of times that she was really mean, after which she just told me "shut up and take your pills."  I thought I would be a logical person to dump.  But she kept me.

What made Dr. M. so exceptional was that she was more than a physician.  True, she had a gruff exterior and could be blunt and a tad grouchy if the occasion warranted.  But underneath she had a heart of mush, and it took me a while to learn that.  When I went in the other day, the first thing she asked me was "How is your wife doing?", since she knew from the time before that my wife was battling critical and serious health issues.  When we were finished, she accompanied me out to the waiting room to speak to my wife, something she had done before.  My wife was touched by her caring.

Some doctors I had in the past weren't much of a doctor.  One physician never listened to my heart in about ten years of occasional visits despite my high blood pressure.  He would take my blood pressure and say, "Hm, a bit high, we'll just watch it."  Dr. M., on the other hand, when I first went to see her, started me on a rigid and uncompromising regimen of medications and tests to make sure I was all right.  There was no fooling around.  It took several years to find the right combinations, control excess fluid weight, control A-fib, and straighten out a few things.  While I was being put through the ringer, I was seeing her once a week.  During this period, she sent me to a GE for a colonoscopy, discovering diverticulitis.  She sent me to a heart surgeon to do an angiogram.  The surgeon told me he was disappointed I didn't need a stent, he was hoping to put in a couple of them to make a payment on his boat.  She sent me for nuclear stress tests, which makes you feel like having a heart attack.  I called her Mean Dr. M.  She never suggested you go do this or that, she went out of the examining room, made the appointment, and told you to be there at 8:00 o'clock the next morning.  You got the idea you had better be there.

The point is, I strongly believe Dr. M. at least prolonged my life, and perhaps even saved it.  She is easily one of the most influential and important people I have known in my entire life.  And now she is retiring. What am I supposed to do?  I know there are other competent cardiologists and, in fact, Dr. M. referred me to one of her colleagues  in the same office.  But how do I know that will work out? The problem is, there has been, and is, only one Dr. M.  And now she is gone.

 

The Curmudgeonly Professor Acquires Hearing Aids

One of the multitude of things people don't want to admit and face up to is loss of hearing.  My wife got eternally sick and tired of me saying "What? What?" every five seconds.  Finally, I was forced to go get my hearing checked.  I first went to Costco since I thought this task would be a simple one: I would walk in, the tech would stick something in my ear, and I would walk out with hearing aids so I could hear every golden word my spouse uttered from then on.  Not so.  Hold on, the tech said, the hearing in your left ear is worse than the hearing in your right ear.  You need to go see an ENT (ear-nose-throat) specialist.  So that was the next step

I went to a wonderful ENT guy who used the latest electronic gizmos to measure my hearing loss.  He turned me over to a charming audiologist who decided which of dozens of possible hearing aids she would recommend for me and settled on a pair that cost only $2,000, of course, not covered by insurance.  

I have now had my hearing aids for about three months.  As I talked to other "wearers" of hearing aids, I have learned that most of those I have talked to don't bother to put in their hearing aids.  Their wives gripe continuously about this level of incompetence after spending thousands of $$$ to solve their hearing problems.  My wife's favorite question now is, "Did you put in your hearing aids?"  Once in awhile I have done so.  Most of the time I have not.  Meanwhile, experts advise that once you get hearing aids you must wear them all the time for them to be effective and for your own hearing levels to adjust to the stuff stuck in your ear.  More frightening, one is warned that failure to wear your hearing aids can lead to senility and all manner of egregious stuff.

My reasons for not wearing my hearing aids are: (1) I forget to put them in. (2) I don't like to wear them, (3) the left one is hard to put in, (4) they are little bitty things and they are hard to clean with my big broad clumsy fingers without losing the little itsy bitsy white end cup; (5) they some times make my ears itch or feel uncomfortable, (6) I am forced to go get a haircut every six or seven weeks and I am afraid the Great Clips barber will nick my hearing aid wire, and (7) the blankety-blank batteries are always sounding warning beeps, like in church, telling you that the batteries are now deceased.  So you can either sit there listening to them beep, or take them out and hope you don't lose one of the thousands of dollars of little bitty parts of which they are ingeniously made..

Meanwhile, the hearing aid industry seems to be booming.  Several times a week full page or even page and a half inserts appear in all the newspapers wherein some celebrity opines that he has tried each and every hearing aid and that the one he is being paid to advertise is the one and only good one on the market.  Hearing aid ads tout free steak dinners, seminars, happy hours, or whatever, to draw one in to their hearing aid world and convince you there version is the one and only.  However, I quickly ascertained that a good audiologist has access to every model on the market anyway and can capably recommend the one that he/she feels is best for your situation.

As my wife and I talk to people about hearing aids, the most frequent comment we get is from wives who opine that they wish their hard-of-hearing husbands would go to the ENT or an audiologist because they are tired of them saying "What? What?" 24 hours per day.  My audiologist confirmed that, indeed, the psychological issue of facing up to and admitting that one needs a hearing aid is a difficult hurdle for many to pass through.  However, I am now committed to being good and trying to get my hearing aids in each day.  It is now 11:15 a.m. and I just remembered I have to go clean them, replace the batteries, and then try to get them stuck in my ears.

The wonder of hearing aids today is that they are an electronic marvel.  Before computer software, hearing aids had to be manually adjusted in a tedious and imperfect fashion.  Now the hearing aid is stuck in one gizmo, the audiologist turns on the software which has registered the technical details of your personal hearing levels in each ear, separately, and so the hearing aids are automatically adjusted.

And so, in conclusion, the Curmudgeonly Professor advises you to go get hearing aids if you are getting hard of hearing, if background noise drives you nuts, if you want to hear the continuing advice and words of affection from your dear spouse.  There's a whole new world out there once you realize what you have been missing with poor hearing.  Have a nice day.

Confronting Multiple Myeloma

Last October, just after my wife and I returned to St. George for what we thought would be a normal winter out of the cold, snow, and icy roads of northern Utah, we received an urgent call from her internist's nurse telling us we needed to see a nephrologist immediately.  A routine blood test taken just before we left Salt Lake showed an abnormal level of protein and creatinine, among other markers.  We made an appointment with a kidney specialist and a week later sat in his office as he looked at her lab numbers and told us that these numbers were consistent with a diagnosis of kidney failure and multiple myeloma.  My wife's face fell in shock, and I reeled from the news.  She had just had blood tests a few months before and all results from that test were normal.  How could these abnormal markers come up out of nowhere?

I thought about blogging about our experience with this disease, but my wife asked me not to do so and the effort was just too much, just too heavy for me.  Now that nearly six months have gone by, my wife is in remission from the myeloma and is about to be taken off dialysis.  Her main problem now is that she has had excruciating sciatic pain from her hip down her leg and is basically immobile from that pain.  I have had to learn to do the cooking, laundry, cleaning, vacuuming, grocery shopping, and any and all other household tasks to keep our home going in some kind of rational order.  We are trying to schedule an appointment with another pain specialist to see if any relief is in sight.

Most of us have mixed feelings about going public with our personal illnesses, trials, and tribulations.  Yet, any time we confront a crisis, we find that we are members of the select fraternity of people suffering from whatever malady we have.  And there always seems to be some comfort in sharing experiences and bolstering each other's spirits.  We have learned that the key is hope, the route is through countless prayers from countless friends and family, and that, somehow, we must keep going from day to day.

Throughout the coming days, I will recount the highlights of this six month odyssey into the spiraling darkness of multiple myeloma and our moment of sunshine, at least for the moment, from a remission, however temporary, in the hope that someone else may relate to this story and find some hope in their own situation.

Things I Learned During the Week My Wife Spent in the Hospital

Once again we called 911, bringing the ambulance to take my wife to the ER with an annoying health issue.  We have been there three times in the past month.  You're never quite sure whether to call 911 and bring the ambulance with all the flashing lights and sirens, but I have learned to opt for the side of caution.  After a night in the ER, my wife was admitted to the hospital where she remained for a week.  Here are a few observations from that week.

• Health care professionals are truly our guardian angels when we are in need of urgent care.  Nurses, student nurses, hospital staff, doctors, physician's assistants are generally and incredibly dedicated to kindness, encouragement, and compassionate care.
• I can't even begin to count the numbers of health care professionals needed to staff a hospital.
• The elderly lady at the reception desk had been volunteering at that desk for ten years.
• A young man had dropped out of college a year and a half ago to earn money to support his ailing mother and then to have time to take care of her.
• A nurse with a bachelor's degree in finance and economics wondered why politicians were so ignorant about basic principles of finance and economics.  Imagine.
• The initial surgeon (my wife did not require surgery) had been operating until 6:00 a.m. on the first day he visited my wife just a couple of hours later and then worked the remainder of that day.
• After a week on only IV's, the hospital staff brought my wife her first "real" food: clam chowder.  My wife hates clam chowder.
• The hours are long, long, long in the hospital. Pacing the corridors, sitting for hours in uncomfortable chairs, waiting for my wife to recover, the time ticks slowly, slowly off the clock.
• Hospital beds remain torture chambers, uncomfortable, making your seat sore.  When connected to a half dozen hoses, tubes, etc., you just lie there and endure.
• Nurses who smile and spread sunshine make people well faster than those coldly efficient ones who lack a human touch so critical to help people get well.
• Neighbors, friends, family and even people we don't even know performed incredible acts of kindness and support.  We would never make it without them and our gratitude is boundless.  Learning to accept help after being independent "doing it ourselves" all of our lives is a lesson in both humility and thankfulness.
• You can quickly adjust from an occasional random prayer to more prayers than you have offered in decades.  You just hope someone is listening.  And answering. And is willing in a pinch to overlook your years of slothfulness and answer your prayers anyway. 
• Hope remains the guiding light in a health crisis.

Now my wife is home again and we are back to our regular routine.  We remain thankful for hospitals and EMTs and ambulance personnel and nurses and doctors and the entire cast of people who help make us well.  But we hope we don't have to see them again for awhile.

The Curmudgeonly Professor's Concise Weight Loss Guide Chapter 3

By now my chubby readers should have digested, so to speak, Chapters 1 (Don't eat so dang much) and Chapter 2 (No seconds).  Even a slow reader could have managed those two chapters with ease.  If you paid any attention, you have lost a pound or two.  I've lost about 12. 

So here is Chapter 3:  Take smaller helpings.

The Curmudgeonly Professor Visits His Cardiologist and a Phlebotomist

I went to pay my six-month visit to my cardiologist the other day.  I have told her before that she is really mean and that I absolutely hate her.  I reminded her during my visit that she had made me go to the bathroom 24 times an hour for several months just to see if her pills worked, so why wouldn't I hate her?  She just laughed.  Doesn't anyone take me seriously?  Before going in to see her, I asked the receptionist if she (the doctor) was in a good mood that day, and the receptionist merely said "Good luck," whatever that meant.  I forgot to take my list of recommended books for her to read, since she usually reads all of the book list I give her every six months.  So I'll have to email the list.

So then I went for my blood draw.  After the phlebotomist expertly extracted about a half gallon of blood, I congratulated her for not coming up with a lame joke about my name (Blood) in connection with her profession, since most phelebotomists cannot resist the temptation.  Then I asked her if anyone ever passed out during the blood draw.  She replied that the ones who pass out aren't the ones you would expect: the most likely to pass out, she said, are big, muscular, he-men with lots of tattoos and not petite little frail women, the ones you would expect to conk out.  She said they are scared and they just forget to breathe, and then, bingo, out cold.

The Curmudgeonly Professor's Concise Weight Loss Guide: Chapter 2

If you missed Chapter 1, scroll down or enter in the search box to the right:  To save you looking, Chapter 1 read thusly: Stop eating so dang much.

Now on to Chapter 2: No more seconds.  What part of that don't you understand?

Let me know if you are having success.

A Book to Read: In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan

Michael Pollan has written a 200 page book about the virtues of food and the perils of industrialized food that could save your life, help you avoid the perils of obesity and Type 2 diabetes, and help you improve your life and the lives of your family.  Best known up to publishing this book for his illuminating book "The Omnivore's Dilemma," Pollan in this book reduces what is known about nutritionism, food science (or lack thereof), and the effects of what we eat on our lives down to an understandable no-nonsense essay on how we have been duped and the price we have paid for following the clarion call of industrial food.

The first sentence of the book says it all: "Eat food.  Not too much.  Mostly plants."  The problem is, many of us need a brief essay and perhaps even a reprimand about what "food" actually is.  Here are a few gems from his book:

• p. 2  ". . . avoid products that make health claims.  Why? Because a health claim on a food product is a strong indication it's not really food, and food is what you want to eat."
• p. 4: Pollan identifies two culprits as, first, "a thirty-two-billion-dollar food marketing machine that thrives on change for its own sake," and, two, "the constantly shifting ground of nutrition science that, depending on your point of view, is steadily advancing the frontiers of our knowledge about diet and health or just changing its mind a lot because it is a flawed science that knows much less than it cares to admit."
• p. 7: "most of the nutritional advice we've received over the last half century (and in particular the advice to replace the fats in our diets with carbohydrates) has actually made us less healthy and considerably fatter."
• Pollan argues that food has gradually and continually disappeared from grocery shelves and that "nutrients began to push food aside in the popular imagination of what it means to eat." (p. 22).
• Challenges to the American diet are highly politically charged, with mammoth agribusiness firms and government agencies with vested interests challenging every word and idea in attempts to institute sound dietary guidelines.
• Looking at food one nutrient at a time, rather than whole foods and the interaction of whole foods, has led to flawed science and flawed nutritional guidelines.
• The shift from whole foods to "refined" foods marks one of the most critical shifts in our diets and health.
• Industrial food and poor food choices have led to new health industries for obesity and diabetes, among other illnesses attributable to eating and diet.
• Many of us gave up oleomargarine after we realized we had been duped into shifting from one kind of fat to another more dangerous kind (trans-fat), but how many of us have stopped drinking skim milk because we haven't known the additives to skim milk are even more dangerous than cholesterol in whole milk? (p. 153)

Much of what Pollan writes about comes from other food experts such as Gary Taubes (Good Calories, Bad Calories, which I reviewed on this blog some time ago), Marion Nestle's authoritative works, and Pollan's earlier and more length treatise (The Omnivore's Dilemma).  Surely this book is worth the paltry five or six bucks that might give you a new lease on life.  I'm going to go through my collection of books on diet and food I've collected over the past two or three decades and throw most of them away.  How gullible we have been!  But then, aren't we supposed to believe "science"?  Pollan suggests we go back a couple of generations and eat the food our forebears ate. If we had followed great grandma's eating patterns, we might all be better off.

Aging and Illness and Health Insurance

Last night my wife and I attended a dinner for a couple from our neighborhood who are moving to a new home.  She was operated on two years ago for a knee replacement and somehow the nerves in other knee were destroyed and she has been in a wheelchair ever since.  Just in the little circle at our end of the table our friends were dealing with the following health issues: Passing 12 kidney stones and related surgery; carpal tunnel surgery; side effects of statins following artery stents that ruined legs; colonoscopies; endoscopies; duodenal inflammation; ulcers; skin cancer;  general undiagnosed fatigue and illness; gall bladder surgery; hip replacement surgery; spinal stenosis; atrial fibrillation; dental implants; hearing loss; asthma; hitting the doughnut hole on drugs.  And there are probably other unknown ailments and many financial health-related financial issues.

Words that come to mind are: compassion. concern. help. life. endurance. health insurance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Aren't we supposed to be our brother's, and our sister's, keeper?  Aren't we supposed to seek the public good?

A Bouquet of Flowers to Cheer You Up

For some reason, known only to 15 year old kids who rule the computer world and text 200 words a minute with their thumbs, I could upload these photos.  This bouquet was sent by my five siblings to my wife while recovering from surgery, and I am sending it along to all of you who need a moment of cheer to brighten your day.  Be sure to double click.

Images copyrighted by Dwight M. Blood, please do not copy or use for other purposes without my written permission.  Thank you.
 

The Blessings and Curses of the Common Cold

My wife had a cold that lingered for more than a week and I thought I had escaped getting it.  Then my son gave me an LA Lakers tie on Father's Day and I have been deathly ill ever since.  An omen that turned out to be a curse, besides causing deep emotional scars conjuring up images of dreaded Laker players every time I see the tie.  I have hidden it but it's like the old Shakespearean dilemma of "out, damned spot."

The following commentary has not been approved by the American Medical Association.  I happen to be a doctor of philosophy, but apparently I know nothing about either economics or medicine.  The problem with a cold is that it doesn't seem too bad for a couple of days, then, inexorably, incrementally, and exponentially, the hateful malady takes over your body and your system.  Here are some of the blessings (none) and curses (many) of the common cold:

• You never know when a cold will turn into bronchitis, pneumonia, lung congestion, hearing loss, speech loss, strepthroat, whooping cough, or many other maladies, some of them fatal.
• A cold makes me so unspeakably miserable that I find it necessary to update my spouse about every 15 minutes or so on just how miserable I feel, even though she's not much better.
• After coughing and sneezing non-stop and going through 5 boxes of Kleenex, then you start wheezing after every breath, sounding like you have a built in tracheotomy.
• Since my nose is all stuffed up, I have probably suffered oxygen deprivation.
• Even after the main symptoms of the cold have disappeared, the hangover effect lasts another three weeks during which time you feel even more miserable, dejected, discouraged, and angry at the moron whose germs ultimately led to your suffering, whoever that was and wherever you picked it up.
• I miss my Mother, but I do not miss the fate worse than death of having a mustard plaster slung onto my chest like a mass of wet concrete, burning the hide off my body and frightening the living heck out of whatever ails me.

But folks, this is July.  Terrible colds don't happen on July 4.  What kind of insanity is this?  I don't think I'm ever going to get any better.  Woe, woe, woe is me (from the Book of Lamentations.)

The Curse of the Common Cold

The Curmudgeonly Professor has had a multitude of ailments over his lifetime, some due to psychoneuroses, many due to hypochondria, some real, some induced by aging beyond the age of 21.  However, for utter and consuming misery, few ailments match the common cold.  The common cold, as we all know, works this way:  First, we may have a throat tickle, which we ignore.  Then we may have a little cough, which we attribute to swallowing a McDonalds's french fry whole.  Then we sneeze, and then are blessed by all around us who know that a sneeze can actually bring one's demise if one mis-sneezes in an inappropriate way.  Then we get a headache.  Meanwhile, we earnestly avow, "I never get colds.  This malady is not a true cold because I am immune to getting colds."

Alas, dear reader, at this stage of preliminary misery, we begin pointing the finger, blaming someone for giving us the cold that we never get.  Perhaps we picked it up at the grocery store, at the gas station, at the doctor's office.  Being well trained, we have washed our hands every fifteen minutes and never, never touch our fingers to our nose, mouth, and eyes.  Thus, the cold was brought on by supernatural powers beyond our ability to understand.  We are beginning to think, "Yes, I must be getting a cold.  I don't know how I ever got this cold.  I do not deserve it.  I mailed in my census card and even told them my nationality without feeling that my freedoms under all articles of the U.S. Constitution were being grossly violated.  Even though I am in favor of the health care reform program, I am not on record anywhere as having voted for it, and, therefore, this cold could not be in retaliation for wanting to help sick people get well."

We now enter phase three of the cold.  We begin coughing incessantly.  "Where are the cough drops?" we say. Our spousal unit says, "We don't have any but I'll go to the store and get you some."  Which she does.  I begin sucking on a whole bag of Ricoh Lemon with Echinacea which is supposed to be a wonder drug, curing all manner of ills.  I notice no difference whatsoever.  My coughing has not lessened and my throat clearing has increased.  Then I begin sneezing almost continuously.  I am spewing cold germs throughout the house.  I complain more frequently, more loudly about how miserable I feel.  I can't sleep because my nose is plugged up.  I fill waste basket after waste basket with rumpled Kleenex. I think of Meg Ryan in the nose-blowing episode from I've Got Mail when Tom Hanks shows up at her doorstep.  My only entertainment is watching the Senate and House vote on the health care bill and watching 5200 annoying amendments go down to defeat before the bill could be passed, and then watching the bile being spewed by the losers after the bill passed. 

I lay awake most of the night, coughing, hacking, sneezing, and saying things like, "Oh, dang it, oh my heck" and stuff like that.  I have a few moments of sleep in which I have a nightmare that I am back teaching college once more and can't find my classroom.  I get up and make hot chocolate, eat a couple of spoonfulls of the hottest chili salsa known to the entire country of Mexico, spray with saline solution, check my blog to see if any mentally challenged people are up in the night sneeking a peek at it, and finally go to sleep for awhile in my recliner.

I awake, and my wife asks me how I feel.  "Just peachy," I say.  Now, three days after cessation of coughing, sneezing, and hacking, I am in Phase 4, which is the lovely Cold Hangover phase.  In this phase, one feels like crud, like swalling a prickly cactus, like cancelling internet, satellite TV.  One wonders why one was willing to accede to one's spousal unit's wishes and go to the chickflick tearjerker "Dear John."  Well, the title of the movie gives the thing away, so all you need to know is when it happens.  Never trust a woman in matters of romance.  Don't take offense.

Now I am in Phase 5: the semi-recovery phase, where one realizes one did not contract H1N1, pneumonia, a variety of exotic flue strains, and did not have to call 911 and be hauled to the emergency room.  One is fortunate if one's spousal unit did not evict one while going through all of the vocal whines and complaints for days and days.  Yes, dear reader, there are many ailments more serious and even fatal, but for sheer joy of being extremely miserable, few ailments can trump the common cold.  Achoo! I thought I was over the blasted thing.  Achoo! again.  Dang.

Two Examples of Health Care Insurance Issues

A member of our family had a long career with a company and got laid off several years ago.  She is now in her early 60s, her Cobra is exhausted, and the best health insurance she has found would cost her $500=$600 per month.  Since she has been unemployed for several years, she cannot afford to buy health insurance.

Our granddaughter delivered premature twin boys last year.  The boys required extensive medical care before they could come home, and had some medical issues later.  My granddaughter wanted to vaccinate them for RSV, the dangerous respiratory disease, but her insurance company denied payment.  Both boys contracted RSV, now requiring another round of medical expense and worry to care for them.  Go figure.

I don't think any of us can comprehend the breadth and depth of issues involved in dealing with the problems of health care.  Meanwhile, daily, hourly, minute by minute, countless people face heartbreaking crises in their personal lives and the lives of their families because of inadequate health care or none at all.  And meanwhile, the dithering goes on.  And on.  And on.