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Hitting myself up with a needle gives me the incentive to stay healthy

These days I try my best to keep from a regular routine of insulin shots. My PCP, or primary care provider, said a half-dozen months ago that I was on the edge of requiring insulin. I didn’t like that idea too much so I worked and dropped my weight by about 15 pounds and lowered what is known as my A1C level. The A1C is the HbA1c, or glycohemoglobin, test. Says the Nation Institutes for Health:

 “The A1C test is a blood test that provides information about a person’s average levels of blood glucose, also called blood sugar, over the past 3 months … The A1C test is the primary test used for diabetes management and diabetes research.”

The normal level is below 5.7%. Over 6.5 percent is diabetes. My level during my last check was 7.1, which was down from 7.4%. My goal is to get it to normal. You got to have a goal.

What really drives me to keep my A1C at sane levels isn’t all the really bad things that can happen to you from diabetes. I have peripheral neuropathy, caused by diabetes, which makes it difficult to feel my feet. My feet can also hurt like hell, feeling as if someone is shooting you in the foot with a nail gun. I have the pain in my feet controlled pretty well with medications. That is good because I have a lot of other pain to deal with. There are much worse actions diabetes can cause: blindness, gangrenous skin tissue requiring amputations, death, to name a few. But it is the desire to not have insulin shots several times daily the rest of my life that drives most of my activities designed to keep my diabetic numbers in check.

I don’t fear the shots or the pain. I have been giving myself monthly B12 shots for about five months. My doctor says she wants me to take B12 the rest of my life. The injections are not painful or if they are the pain is like a nanosecond long or shorter. Usually it is pain free cause I jab it in my arm and cannot feel the needle. The shots are a pain in another way.

The juice in the vial always wants to come out real-ll-ll-y slow.  It could give Heinz ketchup a run for its money. I always worry about getting bubbles in my syringe and hitting some pathway through my blood stream that would cause an aneurysm. Of course, you have to sanitize with alcohol wipes beforehand. Wipe the top of the vial. Create a sterile field on your arm. Then I have to go check to see if my arm is bleeding after I give myself a shot. So far it has usually taken about 10 minutes from start to finish to self-inject with B12. It was longer that that when I first started “hitting up.”

The reasons I take B12 is more complicated than taking the injections. The easiest way to explain the need for the shots is that I have a B12 deficiency, supposedly.

Naturally, I want to be as healthy as possible for as long as possible so I give myself the B12 injections and watch my diet and blood sugar levels as well as the old A1C. But shots are what give me the incentive to try and stay healthy. Getting older requires higher maintenance, just like your classic car. I don’t know if I would say that I am a classic though. I know some folks who would say that. And I know some people who would argue like hell with you about such a statement.

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A sign from above

Today I have been having all kinds of computer trouble. Actually, it’s all kind of tech services trouble with Verizon Wireless. How many Verizon Wireless customer service techs does it take to fix your Internet problem? Well, today it was three.

Or “tree” as they say down here in the bayou country. Which reminds me:

I went into this little convenience store they have a few of here in the Cajun part of Southeast “a.k.a. Cajun” Texas. It is a place they call Crawdad’s. Why they call it Crawdad’s instead of Crawfish’s, which is what we call the possessive of mudbugs when we don’t call ’em mudbugs that we don’t necessarily possess, I am not certain.

Anyway, I go into the store and there is a sign that says:

“Fish for Lent.”

Along comes this ol’ boy who I think has been working way, way back in the swamps. I think he might have had about 14 beer too many before lunch and was headed on the way toward another dozen before it was time to knock off work.

He stared at the sign and stopped a minute.

“Tell you what boss,” he said looking at me with a mixture of seriousness and confusion, “I’ll eat any kind of ol’ fish: catfish, redfish, tuna fish, grouper fish or even gar they got. But I don’t think I can go with that fish that be lent. I ‘spec I’m just gonna have to convince those folks to sell me up a mess.”

“Amen, to that.”

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Colorado-Texas crime spree may have even more links

Some connections I made yesterday between the murder of the Colorado prison system director and a Texas prosecutor apparently are not so far-fetched. Read some links I have gathered today. I feel they better tell the story than I will so attempt.

Links between Kaufman and Colorado murders?

Shell casings the same in Texas shootout and Colorado Springs killing.

Pizza driver body found.

Prison gang connections?

Black Caddy search warrant.

This is a tragic, violent story. It is also an interesting one for those who follow crime sagas. It would be something if they could tie all of these crimes neatly. When I say neatly, I mean accurately.

 

 

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Could “basically legally deceased” suspect solve Colorado prison director’s murder?

Law enforcement officers in North Texas captured someone who may be of interest in the murder of the Colorado Prison system director. Unfortunately, or not to some, the suspect who was also shot during his capture is reportedly brain dead.

A man driving a black Cadillac at a high speed crashed his car into a rock truck in Wise County, Texas, and began firing on police. The area in which the incident happened is about 35 miles northwest of Fort Worth. The unidentified man driving the car was shot in the head by police. He is believed to have also shot a Montague County, Texas, deputy sheriff in the head and chest after being stopped for a traffic violation. The Star-Telegram in Fort Worth is reporting police are checking the suspect’s fingerprints to identify him since, as a police official said, the man was “basically legally deceased.”

The deputy who was shot earlier was said to be in “stable condition” which tells the lay person “basically medically nothing.” It just says that the individual has stable vital signs. The person can be stable and in good condition or stable and in improving condition or even stable in serious or critical condition. I once worked for a newspaper that told us to not accept “stable” by itself as a condition. Luckily, the head nurse at our local trauma hospital was a very sharp lady and could readily give us that information. Hopefully, the deputy is in a “stable and expected to pull through just fine condition.”

Colorado and in Texas authorities have not indicated how they might have connected the possibly “basically legally deceased” suspect with the person who fatally shot Colorado prison director Tom Clements in the chest. The car involved in the Texas crime spree had Colorado plates and supposedly matched the black “boxy” description of the car reportedly seen speeding away from the neighborhood about the time Clements was shot.

There are so many angles to investigate in a crime such as the Clements murder which could likely turn out an assassination. I think of a crime which happened awhile back just east of Dallas in which an assistant prosecutor was gunned down as he approached his office in the Kaufman County Courthouse. Mark Hasse was killed was on his way to work when he was mortally wounded by gunfire.

Hasse was known to have prosecuted and investigated a number of cases involving the notorious white supremacist gang the Aryan Brotherhood, an brutal outfit that grew out of Texas prisons. While Hasse was not directly cited, a Justice Department news release went out the morning the 57-year-old prosecutor was killed that announced two Aryan members plead guilty to federal racketeering charges. Among the numerous law enforcement agencies cited by Justice as providing assistance in the arrests was the Kaufman County D.A.’s Office. Hasse was not specifically singled out in that release.

When I heard of the “in your face” fatal shooting of Clements this week, I immediately thought of the assassination of Hasse. The obvious links one thinks about there include prison gangs and the brutal racists who belong to them.

Hopefully, the links to the Clements murder and the Texas suspect just now described by “NBC” as “brain dead” will prove fruitful in solving the Colorado killing. If such mystery is solved, who knows if the Hasse murder will likewise find a conclusion.

 

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Thoughts of Spring in the land of the “real” Margaritaville

Happy Spring everyone.

For no particular reason on this beautiful first day of Spring I was thinking of a Margarita. If you touch adult beverages, whether sometime or damn near all the time you probably have your mouth set for something or other every now or then. That isn’t to say you don’t have your favorite — a shot of vodka, diet tonic and splash of lemon — but there are days in which excellence is rewarded. That isn’t to say anyone can make a decent Margarita nor may one find such a tasty reward just anywhere.

The secret to the best Margarita isn’t the ingredients, although you sure as hell don’t want to pour some unknown store-bought mixture on top of a shot Jose Cuervo and leave it at that. No, you want the mixture concocted with love or else a sense of purpose. Some of the best Margaritas I’ve tasted were in small settings of friends with the barman who takes pride in the mixture of frosty green paradise in a glass.

I hope some day to return to the site of the best Margarita to pass between my lips. It has been awhile.

Some say the Kentucky Club in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico, is the site where the first Margarita was mixed and served.

Chance are, a place that served drinks back in the day and is still tending bar has to be a place to find a drink or two.
The Kentucky Club in Juarez, paradise!

Outside, the Kentucky appears as just another hole-in-the-wall not far from the pedestrian bridge at the border of El Paso and Juarez. Inside, however, is living history. The bar itself is made of magnificent hardwoods. There is no telling how old the trees themselves were when brought down to build the long bar in perhaps in the 1920s. American celebrities from Clark Gable to Elvis to Marilyn were said to have drank here. A number of photos of the famed customers used to line the walls, I don’t know if they still do as it has been about 10 years since I last visited both Juarez and the Kentucky.

That isn’t to say I haven’t been near Juarez during the past decade. I have a close friend who lives in El Paso and, for many years, my visits to El Paso ultimately included a visit across the border. But all that changed when the immense violence from rival drug gangs commenced. It pushed the death toll in Ciudad Juarez to almost 9,000 people between 2007 and 2011.

It looked a few years ago that a shutdown might be in store for the “birthplace” of the Margarita. That might have meant the end of careers for people whose lives were spent working behind those rich hardwood bars, for those who went to work at the Kentucky Club usually ended up staying for the long haul.

But changes seem to be slowly taking place. Last year, “only” 750 homicides were recorded in Juarez. We speak of a city with a population of some 1 million less than Chicago. The Windy City which is notorious for murders saw slightly more than 500 homicides last year.

Only the slightest resemblance may be seen between “that frozen concoction” Jimmy Buffett made famous in the 1970s and the straight-up chilled, salt-rimmed drink or on the rocks that is the real taste of Margarita found at the “Kentucky Bar.” While a tequila-filled ice slush is a sweltering-day’s treat, it is the simple non-frozen drink that rekindles the romance of gringo’s discovery of another world.

Hopefully, the violence will end sometime soon and Ciudad Juarez will once again be the enjoyable trek to Mexico we once knew, and the home of the Margarita we once loved.

Cheers to Spring!