2020: Pick your poison

It’s been awhile.

I’ve been staying mostly in the great indoors due to the Coronavirus Pandemic. Texas was mostly okay during the “stay-at-home” phase. But our s***head of a governor followed Trumpster’s lead, boot-licking all the way, opening most businesses so the president can look as if he was actually helping the economy.

Also, I have spent time in three hospitals in the last three months. This included one night at St. Luke’s at the Texas Medical Center for esophageal surgery.. Best hospital experience ever.

Back in July I had a two-fer. I noticed a big hole in my left foot and had to go to the ER at Beaumont’s Baptist Hospital. The ER had me admitted. I had debridement surgery the next day. This was a procedure in which the doctor ream the wound and clean in up good. The wound extended from my instep to the side of my foot. I had a bit of infection in my fifth toe bone so the doc shaved off the bottom of my toe. I was knocked out, thankfully.

I stayed nearly a week where I was given massive doses of IV antibiotics which would come back to haunt me. I was out of the hospital two days and I started having problems standing up. Since my weight had ballooned up to 325, I had difficulty getting off the floor. I had to call 911. Three firefighters from the local fire station came to help me but the door was locked and the firefighters had a hell of a time just getting to me. They finally got in and helped me up.

The next night I had a similar problem. I called the VA tele-nurse who told me, assessing my symptoms of difficulty standing up and remaining up, said I needed to call for an ambulance. Beaumont EMS took me to Baptist where the doctors said I needed to go to my own hospital, meaning the Michael E. DeBakey Veterans Hospital in Houston. So I took a ride in an Acadian Ambulance Service unit for the 90-mile drive to Houston.

It turns out, I was having acute kidney failure, no doubt caused by the massive IV antibiotics I spoke of as well as the dye from a CT Scan back at Baptist.

Almost a month later, I still have a hole in my foot. I do receive a nurse visit three times a week. She wraps my foot after cleaning the wound and applying a collagen-type medicine. I supposedly will see a wound specialist here in Beaumont through the Choice program for which Trump claims for his own, even though it was passed and signed by President Obama.

Meanwhile, here on the Uppermost Texas Coast we stand to feel the effects of not one, but two tropical weather system.

When Tropical Depression 14 first sprung up it’s “warning cone” had a dead-center path to Sabine Pass which is in my county and partly in Cameron Parish, Louisiana. As meteorologists are quick to point out, those warning cones means the storm might go anywhere on one side or the other.

Tropical Depression 14, named Marco, is actually forecast to hit before Tropical Depression 13, which is Laura. Marco is now a hurricane while Laura is a tropical storm. You got that?

At one point the forecast track for Marco was to make landfall in the Central to Eastern Louisiana parishes. The storm is tracking on a western turn forecast to hit Central and Southwest Louisiana. That track puts us in the middle of the cone once again.

And Laura? It is predicted to land between Southwest Louisiana and Southeast Texas. Which is where I live.

Weather two tropical storms or one TS and one hurricane? That’s insane. However, there is a hope that Marco may stall out after hitting wind shear, CNN weather guy Tom Sater just said. Of course it could also meander off the coast as Tropical Storm Harvey did. Imelda, a former tropical storm, was stuck in a holding pattern in my area that produced flooding. I know I didn’t expect flooding where I live. I know it was raining like hell. But I woke up and stepped in about ankle-deep water. That wasn’t a good feeling.

I was on what was like an island during Harvey. Everywhere *flooded. But Imelda was even more insane.

So far the U.S. has had 5.6 million cases of Covid-19 which has caused more than 170,000 deaths. What more than hurricanes do we need?

Well it seems there is this asteroid that is supposed to come near the earth the day before the General Election. https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/22/us/asteroid-earth-november-2020-scn-trnd/index.html

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