Eight Feet Deep

Sometimes I get the photos mixed up. Right caption. Wrong picture. Thank goodness this isn’t a newspaper where it might end up on the page for the ages. And then you have to write a correction and listen to some old retired engineer rant about the mistake over the phone. Here on the blog I can go back and correct the mistake. It’s not like real life. That’s what I like about blogging: It’s not like real life.

Wuss Dog stops barking long enough to pose for a pic.
It’s a typical yo-yo weather December day in Southeast Texas. I was in a meeting all morning and decided to go for a walk after returning home. It was time to dress in my walking shorts because it was almost 70 degrees outside. Not too shabby. But there is no telling what the temperature will be tomorrow so “putting away” clothes from one season or another just doesn’t apply here.

I did hear one of our local TV weather gods say things might really be cold next week. It kind of figures. For whatever reason it tends to get well-digger’s-ass cold in these parts just before Christmas. Some of the coldest winter weather I’ve seen in Texas happened the week of or a week before Christmas. I don’t know if any particular meteorological reason exists to explain the timing or that I just happen to remember these freezing spells because they occur near Christmas. The coldest I can remember was the week of Christmas 1983. I was staying in Dallas with my friend, Bruce. I recall him plodding down his apartment stairs to go to work one morning only to end up bouncing down those stairs due to ice. And he was carrying a charged-up battery for his GTO. Amazing the things you commit to memory.

The view down Long Avenue. Why? Because it’s there.
I like this stretch of Long Avenue in Beaumont. Some really fabulous houses are on this street with its nice red-brick sidewalks. The sidewalks do get a little slippery when the sprinklers go on.

Oh, I completely forgot about Wuss Dog. I had my camera with me so I decided to take Wuss Dog’s picture. It started barking at me and finally it trotted off indignantly behind a house. It’s a rather indignant animal. It sees me almost every day. Some days it barks some days it just looks at me. I think Wuss Dog needs therapy.

“Yes, you may kneel and kiss my hand AFTER I further emasculate you.”

Left woman: “Can you imagine that skank saying that I look like a cheap floozy?
Right woman: “Well darling, that comes with the territory when you have a price tag stuck to your neck.”

Oh how my beauty SCARES me sometimes. And to think people say I am so plastic.

If you are bored out of your mind, want to watch something gross and have about 22 minutes to kill go here, scroll down a skosh and select either broadband or modem connection for an entertaining video.

Actually I can image the video would probably entertaining to someone on drugs. The video is all about performing a surgical procedure called “anterior cervical discectomy with fusion.” I strongly suggest that you be on drugs — a general anesthetic at least — when you have this surgery performed. You also will want to take drugs for quite awhile after the surgery is done.

I had this surgery four years ago. Basically, a surgeon makes a small incision in your neck, pushes your vocal apparatus to one side and starts doing something akin to an engine overhaul on your cervical spine. The neurosurgeon cuts out discs, or parts of discs, as well as bone spurs, cactus, mesquite, wheat, chaff or whatever other flora or fauna that happens to be taking up residence in your spinal column. What happens next varies with surgeon and patient. They may take a piece of bone from a dead person or they may snatch a chunk of bone from your iliac crest because your hip wasn’t doing anything with it anyway. That’s what the surgeon did to me. Then the doctor took a titanium plate and fastened the hip bone and plate to my spine with screws. You think I’m kidding? He literally screwed up my spine. Yet interestingly enough, no one has ever called me “Old Ass Neck.”

This is a fairly routine surgery these days, but although it’s not brain surgery it’s only a few inches away from it. I found myself mesmerized looking at how the surgery was done in the video and the narrative given sounds something like a cross between a talk with your local mechanic and someone on Star Trek.

The first thing I remembered waking up in recovery was that I hurt way too much to be dead so I figured that was a positive sign. Actually, the hip incision is what hurts the most and endures for quite sometime.

The surgery was successful in that it corrected some neurological problems I was having such as my left hand being almost completely numb. It gave me some relief from pain although pain doesn’t really stray too far with an arthritic spine. My neck pain has worsened recently although I don’t want to dwell on it because I don’t write this blog to remind myself of my aches and pain.

It was actually kind of hard for me to watch the surgical video, truth be told. It is rather unsettling to see someone do something downright unpleasant to someone else that has been done to you. At least that’s my opinion. And to paraphrase Leslie Gore: It’s my blog and I’ll opine if I want to, opine if I want to, opine if I want to. You’d opine too if it happened to you. Or maybe you wouldn’t.

Eugene Joseph “Gene” McCarthy (March 29, 1916 – December 10, 2005) Politician, writer, poet, World War II Army veteran, Democratic peace candidate for president.
“One thing about a pig, he thinks he’s warm if his nose is warm. I saw a bunch of pigs one time that had frozen together in a rosette, each one’s nose tucked under the rump of the one in front. We have a lot of pigs in politics.”

Richard Franklin Lenox Thomas Pryor (December 1, 1940 – December 10, 2005)Edgy black comic, actor, insightful though sometimes tragic figure. Army veteran. A very funny guy.
“It’s been a struggle for me because I had a chance to be white and refused”