It’s Monday. Oh joy. I am tired. I ache. Most of my ache remains from a fall I took more than a week ago into the bathtub while taking a shower. Yeah, don’t. My neck on the right side has hurt more in the past few weeks than I can recall in several years. X-rays were taken on my ribs and a CT scan on my neck. This was last week when I went to the VA emergency room while staying in Houston. Nothing was broken, they said. But I still hurt.
No one really cares about my aches, I know. I just think I owe those who still read my blog an excuse. On second thought, I really don’t.
But I will say this. That damned Donald Trump! I know some people like him, or see him the only alternative to Hillary Clinton. But there really is no alternative, that is, if you want your vote to represent something — like not losing.
I hope the Trump chump will not go all litigious on the political system. There is much that I hope. What’s that saying? Hope in one hand, s**t in the other?
Just a quick missive from the nation’s 3rd largest city. Sandwiched between light flooding and goofy health issues I have tried my best to learn in our annual steward’s meeting. But the last 1 1/2 days were a bit daunting.
On Sunday, I did a stupid thing that could have ended with serious consequences. I was showering in my tub when my soap disappeared. I couldn’t actively grab it because I didn’t see it. Too late, I slipped on the bar of soap and went down like a big sack of Sakrete. As is the case with these types of injuries it is difficult to feel its full wrath until, usually, the next morning.
I drove to Houston on Monday even though it was a very uncomfortable drive, to say the least. The next day I went to class and our head honcho, who appointed me as a steward as well as regional vice president and who lives pretty close to me, saw how I was hurting. He also knew my ongoing health issues, so he told me I should see somebody medical.
Since my home is almost 90 miles away, I went to the ER at the Michael E. DeBakey VA Medical Center. I won’t waste time with the ridiculous conversation I had with a VA Police officer, except he needs more attention to the fact that people who come by themselves to the emergency room might just be sick or injured.
I was glad to find out I had no broken rib or fractured neck after an X-ray and Cat scans. I was given a shot of Toradol for pain, as well as Robaxin, and left the hospital wearing a light cervical collar.
This morning I felt a good bit better. I ordered a seemingly healthy, and well over-priced, breakfast. I had a poached egg white and tasso hash. I ordered some sausage which turned out to be four breakfast-type sausages. I didn’t care for any of it although I ate the egg, garnished with some type of greenery, and the sausage. I was running late, so I quickly signed the hotel guest ticket and walked to my class.
When I went to class I chatted with someone while drinking some cold water and waiting to get a cup of coffee. With no notice — well, I did have some mild nausea early — I began puking before there was anything I could do. I opened a door which I thought might quickly exit. In reality, it was the floor’s catering kitchen. I began upchucking every bit of my food this morning until way after there was nothing to vomit. It didn’t escape me that the cooks and waitstaff probably would have wanted me to hurl somewhere else. But they treated me with kindness, gave me a large waste container and some napkins, as did a classmate who only stuck her hand from behind the door.
After resting an hour or so, in between some unpleasant stomach pain, I felt better. I don’t know if all of what happened is gone because I had some other digestive issues this afternoon. The problem could have been from medicine — both medicines I had orally and had been injected at the VA hospital — both list nausea and diarrhea — and are listed as possible side effects of both drugs.
I may have had some bad food although I doubt the food I ate in the hotel this morning prompted my stomach problems because I had just finished eating 30 minutes before. The only other food that could have set me off was some fast food I had before leaving the VA. That would be quite ironic if that was the cause.
On returning to my hotel room I spotted a couple of the wait staff preparing to serve a dinner for some function. I felt kind of peevish seeing the ladies but I smiled broadly. One of the two Hispanic women asked me how I was feeling. I said “Fine.
“I’m sorry for barging in this morning,” and proceeded onward.
Hopefully, I will survive the next day and head home on Friday.
Eight Feet Deep has been on annual leave, vacation, this week. Next week EFD will undergo annual training for stewards of the union to which I belong.
I have hoped to use part of this week to figure out in a more precise manner how I should go about my feature after and before retiring from my part-time job that provides me a full-time income. But no, one of my college friends from North Central Texas — that’s not the college, it is the region from which so many of my college friends hailed and now remain — and I have been traipsing around the South and Mideastern U.S. areas of our nation.
Right now I am in a Bowling Green, Kentucky, motel room enjoying not riding for hours on end in a Corvette. I mean Corvettes are a feat of great engineering, but I don’t own one and I have some mobility troubles from a a variety of neuro and arthritic issues which make it a little difficult to get in and out of a Corvette. Also, riding in one for hours is not as fun for old men passengers like me as opposed to old men driving “Vettes.”
Old man take a look at my neck it’s a lot like your’s. That is if your neck looks anything like mine. (It actually is my MRI neck picture) MRI image. Copyright 2016. Dick at EFD. Oh, and Fair Use paraphrasing Neil Young’s “Old Man” which is a hell of a good song.
All of this took place today as I sat in the Parkinson’s Disease clinic at the Houston VA waiting to see my neurologist. Oh, I don’t have Parkinson’s, at least I don’t think so.
I began reading an interesting article on one major problem I do have, that is maintaining balance. The article was in “Neurology Now,” a title I previously didn’t know. But this magazine had an attractive cover layout that pictured the former California first lady, who also was once an NBC television news correspondent, and a member of the famous Camelot clan from which came a murdered, young U.S. president. That lady shouldn’t be former anything and proves she isn’t by speaking out on Alzheimer’s Disease.
The article, which I have yet to finish, suggests Tai Chi and other methods can help older folks to maintain balance. You, the reader reading this blog, may read this article before I do. I have had concerns over the last couple of years, since my balance had gone awry, that I might get stopped by police and asked me to perform a field sobriety test. I don’t drink and drive, anymore at least. Buy my balance is way out of whack and that would be the first thing I would tell police. Well, I would tell them right after saying: “No,” I would not perform any tests.
Before I finished the article my neurologist, a very nice lady who came from India to help veterans, gave me about 10 shots of Botox. The Botox shots — I have received about four or five sets — have been in my head, neck and face to attempt helping the great pain I suffer from my cervical spine and the osteoarthritis that has savaged my neck over the years.
The shots today were in the back of my neck in a peripheral area of my spine.
My neck felt better, for the first time since I have received the shots, although after the drive back from Houston the neck is back to its painful ways. My lower back has, in the interim, become much more painful among standing and walking. That has been attributed to the diagnosis I was given of a rare disease called “Arachnoiditis.” And as I must always point out, the disorder has nothing to do with spiders.
I will be checking in my self-examination mirror to determine if the Botox has made the back of my neck appear any younger. In the meantime, my doctor said she will say what, if anything, she will do about my lower back.
This was what happened in my day, another day in America.
Earlier I received multiple posts from my friend, Paul, in Tokyo. We were, not really discussing, but giving sort of a stream-of-consciousness communication concerning all that has taken place in the U.S. during the past 48 hours.
Chicago police drag student protesters away during the 1968 melee during the Democratic Party convention. Govt. and Fair Use of photo.
Sterling and Castile were both black and were killed by white officers. The five officers killed in Dallas were white. The suspect in the mass shooting, who was killed by a robot-delivered bomb blast, was black. Police said the shooter wanted to kill whites.
I haven’t seen all that took place in the encounters in which the two separate victims were killed by police. I wasn’t able to make out much of the Baton Rouge killing. Hopefully, the place where Sterling was outside of and was killed will have surveillance cameras.
The fallout from these killings led to a number of peaceful protests around the country, including one in Dallas that was ending and was interrupted by the sniper.
Only a bit ago I talked by a video message with Paul, some 6,700 miles across the globe. We spoke of how this bloodshed seems to be intersecting at many different lines. These lines are black and white, police, guns, terrorism. Perhaps even religion may be thrown into these intersections: Christians, Muslims or rather in some minds, Christian versus Muslims and Muslim versus Christian. Such a wide net is, of course stupidity.
The question, the billion-dollar one, is that where do we go from here? The same questions were asked nearly 45 years ago as the Vietnam War was on the downward slide. Listen to the link, sung and written by Peter Cetera, bass player for the venerable band Chicago on its second LP.
“Until we get justice, we’re going to call on all of the people … any person who loves justice to stand with us in this selective buying campaign and hurt them where it hurts the most, get their attention where it gets their attention the most,” The Rev. Reginald Pitcher, leader of the SCLC, said.
“And I declare that if we do that, the Chamber of Commerce will say this, ‘If we got to sacrifice those two to keep the peace, then so be it.’”
Of course, Donald Trump will make his hard line with little knowledge of people who either are police officers or the black people of America.
By the way, I have owned and shot guns since an early age. Two of my late brothers were cops. One retired after more than 35 years as a police officer. My nephew is a police officer. One niece is a police dispatcher. That same niece and her sister are both officers in their local volunteer fire department. I was a firefighter and Emergency Medical Technician and had many friends, some of whom I still communicate, who are or were law enforcement officers. Several of my police friends are black. I have had white friends who were outlaws.
I say that because I am not trying to take any particular side. I don’t know what it is like being black and being stopped by police for no reason other than their skin color. I know some of the stories my black friends told me about being stopped by white police officers in East Texas. One black friend talked about this former local cop, known as a hard ass and more, who would stop my friend’s car and he would take a micrometer and see how much tread was on my friend’s tires. Interestingly enough, a guy I knew who owned a gun store told me this cop had been discovered by hunters, as this policeman was seen wearing full Nazi SS regalia. At one point, this cop even had a life-sized replica of a Nazi tank.
Yes, I’ve seen fire and I’ve seen rain, to be metaphorical. Are we going back to the 60s? Might as well break out the reefer if we have to put up with such crap. I have no idea where do we go from here. I hope someone does know. If so, will you let us know?
