Eight Feet Deep

Whenever one is handed a medical diagnosis such as Type II diabetes — even if one is skeptical of the diagnosis — such a revelation is usually somewhat significant in the medical partition of one’s life. But whenever the doctor says: “But there’s more … ” One says: “Shoot ’em low sheriff, he’s riding my Shetland pony!” Or something like it.

Yesterday I got more than I bargained for at the primary doc, actually a physician’s assistant, or a “doc-lite” if you will. She went over the MRI results from my test on Tuesday and it wasn’t all that pleasant as medical news goes.

Before the MRI results though, the PA pronounced me as diabetic, as if to answer the question that has floated around my Department of Veterans Affairs caregivers and me: “Am I diabetic or am I just fat?”

So that news  involves a whole lifestyle change including diet, exercise (which shall be dicey as you will see) and sticking your self with a pin and testing your blood.

Now, the MRI news. I have suffered from neuropathy for the better part of eight months, perhaps longer. The symptoms have included severe foot pain in both feet including that which feels like someone is sticking a nail in your foot, as well as numbness and just plain hurting feet. Simultaneously, I have also suffered from lower back pain, a sharp pain that shoots down my right butt cheek (It’s those damn Republicans!) and a shooting pain in my right leg when sitting or driving too long.

Diabetes is one of the major causes of neuropathy. There are hundreds of causes it seems. Since the VA often deals in what one might call “quantity medicine,” I was concerned about receiving a diagnosis of diabetes because it was the easiest. I am the most overweight I have ever been in my life. My blood sugar has risen but some doctors have said it was on the cusp of diabetes. Thus, I got a diabetes diagnosis complete with a meter to measure my blood sugar and all the little accessories.

But the MRI found two other possible reasons for my leg and foot pain. For one I have what the PA described as a “tumor” — non-malignant — and as a “fat deposit” that is causing some stenosis, or encroachment, on my lumbar spine.

Secondly, the MRI discovered what is suspected as a relatively rare condition caused “anachroiditis.” This sounds, of course, like something having to do with a spider although that word is “arachnid.”

Anachroiditis is the inflammation of the two innermost layers surrounding the spinal cord and often expands to the nerve roots. This can cause scarring or adhesion of the nerves. The kicker is there is no cure for this condition. So I guess the punter is that it also is progressive and can lead to paralysis and death. It’s difficult enough to look at one the many pages I have been reading on the Internet about my new found rare and incurable malady. This is a disease described as both “dreadful” and “insidious.” To read what I have written is even more a chore.

The causes also are many: Anything from lumbar puncture or chemicals from a spinal injection to trauma to viral or bacterial infections. The possible complications are numerous as well. It doesn’t sound like it is or might be a whole lot of fun.

I still have to see my neurologist at the VA next week and I suppose we might go over the limited treatment options. One, perhaps, might be surgery to remove the mass and continued use of Lyrica which has seemed to help my feet pain somewhat. Surgery for arachnoiditis is almost zero likely since surgical procedures have not been very successful in treating the condition.

I will be the first to tell you my future right now looks scary as I — so my friend Terri Jo put it — “travel the undiscovered country of ill health.” But I will do my best to keep active, keep upbeat, keep moving those limbs, keep upright on the ground and keep on truckin’. And I don’t know what effect, if any my condition will have on my work including freelancing, but I will keep on pounding out this thing — eight feet deep — for better or worse as long as I am able.

So there.

This morning I took the shuttle to the VA hospital for my multiple appointments. I don’t know who thought up booking me for three appointments when one of those was a MRI. But it all worked out somehow.

An 84-year-old Marine sat next to me on the ride over. He seemed kind of lonesome, as to be expected, since he lives by himself. His wife died several years ago and his children are scattered around the country. The fellow was, I believe he said, a veteran of Saipan, Guadalcanal and Iwo Jima during World War II. It’s hard to imagine going through and — moreover, living through — one of those battles, much less three.

I know that if he had wanted to talk about those battles he would have. He did mention the unit citations his outfit received during the war and talked about how he would sell the cigarettes that came in his rations to other GIs because he didn’t smoke. We mostly talked about less martial things though. We spoke of gas prices. He said he could remember gas wars during the late 40s with stations selling regular for 19-20 cents per gallon. We both remarked at how strange it is that we have the highest average gas prices in Texas right now when we are surrounded by refineries. We also talked about movies and just common everyday matters.

The funniest thing this old Marine told me was something I had not heard but is evidently true. He said that during a visit several years ago to Madame Tussauds Wax Museum the visitors were informed that the wax figure of President Bill Clinton had its zipper sewn shut. The reason was that every time the museum personnel went by the Clinton figure they would find that someone had passed by the mannequin and unzipped his pants.

Sometimes it is great to hear of the war exploits of our older heroes. Other times it is just as rewarding talking to these fellows and listening to their take on the normal affairs of man — and presidents.

Had it not been for a girl I might be living somewhere today on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. I might also be much prouder of the state I was living in than the one in which I reside today.

Tough words for a Texan to say. For most of my life Mississippi has appeared as a perpetual bottom dweller when it comes to lists concerning education or wealth or this and that. Texas has also made the lower parts of the same lists in more recent times though I have managed to stay proud of the Lone Star State itself, its people and its history.

But it is history — at least United States history which will be taught to future public school students — that makes me hang my head in shame.

You see, we have this bloc of ultra-conservative, fundamentalist religious zealots on our State Board of (Un)Education that is steering all courses in the directions of their beliefs and their beliefs alone. Right now the focus is history. Perhaps tomorrow they will slant all mathematics to the right.

These zealots tried but failed to strike the name of Scopes Monkey Trial attorney Clarence Darrow. They were successful in having language that tries to vindicate that old reprobate Sen. Joe McCarthy. In the new right-wing history in Texas, conservative icons Newt Gingrich and Phyllis Schafly are the important names to remember on history tests on the sections covering the late 20th century.

It is worse than I can describe. High school students who learn the history according to the right-wing nuts on the SBOE or SBOU, will be at a disadvantage when they attend college and learn what the rest of U.S. students have been taught about their past. Those who don’t go on to college will just be cheated out of a decent education because Texas voters were either duped or thought they could legislate the 1950s back into schools which are perceived to be rife with trouble.

Don’t get me wrong. I still love the pine forests of East Texas and the marshes of the upper Texas coast. Likewise, I enjoy driving the Hill Country of Central Texas whenever the highly allergenic ashe juniper (mountain cedar) isn’t pollinating. There is also beauty in the West Texas mountains and North Texas prairies.

There also is no other state, in my mind, with such a fascinating history as that of Texas with its past as a republic and its colonial past which includes Spain and Mexico.

But our elected board running the public schools in Texas is robbing kids of a decent education due to their narrow-minded political and theocratic agenda. We should teach students about the conservative movement and how it has affected politics and the economy just as we should teach the New Deal and Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. Likewise, influential conservatives in history including Barry Goldwater, William F. Buckley, Ronald Reagan and as much as it pains me to say it, Rush Limbaugh, deserve their place in history texts along with FDR, JFK, Teddy Kennedy, Clinton and Barack Obama.

History can live and thrive under a big tent. And making children educationally backwards serves no great purpose either in improving society, nor toward molding it into one’s shape politically unless you aim for a totalitarian society. So how about it? Let’s get these nuts off the Texas board of education. Let’s teach history, the good and the bad. The kids can handle it and they will be better citizens for it.

Oh, as for the girl whom I moved back to Texas for from Mississippi after the service? Well, that didn’t work out, but that’s all ancient history.