Double traffic tickets

Peggy and I got simultaneous traffic tickets last week for running the same stop sign on our bikes. All we could figure was that the cops were inspired by the recent death of a bicyclist two blocks away. Since then, I have diligently stopped at every stop sign. I am the only bicyclist who I have seen do this, and the others look at me strangely as they go around. I resented the $257 (each) tickets. There are two sets of laws. One set is written in the books. The other set is the ones that are actually enforced. For example, Eugene has a law against car camping on public streets, but the cops won’t enforce it. Instead, they advise complainants to ask St. Vincent DePaul to come out and help the campers (St. Vincent’s has a city contract to do this). Personally, I don’t want to help street campers—I just want them gone.

Justified tickets are easier to accept than are tickets based upon the arbitrary power of the issuing officer. When I asked our cop why we were being singled out, he assured me that the traffic laws are always applied equally. I hold that lie against him infinitely more than I do the ticket, because I could see where the ticket might have come out of his desire to protect the public, but I couldn’t see how the lie came out of anything but his knowledge that he could bullshit me all he wanted, and I would have to stand there and take it for as long as he wanted. Being constrained under threat of violence to wait passively on the curb while a cop writes you a ticket is a mini jail sentence.

I set about trying to get our tickets reduced (by writing a letter to the judge) as soon as I got home. Peggy and I were supposed to sign below one of four paragraphs on the back of our tickets before I took them—along with my letter—downtown. These paragraphs were badly written to the point of having numerous grammatical errors, and neither of us could figure out whether we were supposed to sign below paragraph two or below paragraph three as they seemed to say pretty much the same thing. Two days and numerous tries later, we still hadn’t figured it out, so Peggy signed both paragraphs on the back of her ticket the morning she flew to Mississippi. Our plan was that I would find out which one she was supposed to have signed, and cross the other out.

When I asked the lady behind the counter at the municipal court which paragraph was the right paragraph, she said she was not qualified to offer legal advice and advised me to “seek the services of an attorney.” Of course, it was an attorney who wrote the stuff in the first place. Lawyers make money by making the law as incomprehensible as possible. Since they can’t agree among themselves what it says, still more lawyers have to be hired to take matters to court where lawyer-judges decide. Sometimes many lawyer-judges in many courts over many years are needed but the lawyers are okay with it since they are all making hundreds of dollars an hour. As I read on the back of a pre-folks t-shirt, “A lot of people are alive simply because killing them would land you in jail.”

Mom nearing death

Peggy’s mother is dying. She is sometimes rational for brief periods during the day, but at night she forgets where she is and who her family are. She then becomes frantic and pleads for help, sometimes all night long. In the daytime, she is apt to become stuck on the same sentence which she repeats without pause hour after hour. One day, it was “Like sands through the hourglass, so go the days of our lives.” Other times, her mantra is a continuation of her pleading from the previous night.

Peggy is in Mississippi standing vigil. My parents being dead, I tend to focus on what a relief it is to have that kind of thing out of the way, and to wish that it could be out of Peggy’s way too. “Mom” is miserable. The lives of her loved ones are stuck while they await her passing, and, at 78, her husband won’t live long enough to pay off the medical bills.

Like, have a nice day, folks.

(This entry contains several instances of the F-word.)

I don’t remember the last time I heard the word people. I grew up thinking of folks as a low class word for family—something Jed Clampett would have used. After 9/11, I was shocked to hear George Bush refer to al-Qaeda as “folks,” but I remembered that George Bush was the very person who had caused me to lose all respect for a Harvard education. Next, I noticed that black people on a NPR program aimed at a black audience only used the word folks to refer to two or more people. I was disappointed, but observed that it was, after all, not a program that targeted the educated. Now, everyone on NPR—interviewers and interviewees alike—uses the word folks exclusively. Nobel Laureates are folks. Neo-Nazis are folks. The Founding Fathers are folks. Polygamists, entomologists, and Arctic explorers are folks.

It is both a blessing and a curse of aging to realize that things are not as they used to be, and to further realize that people who don’t remember how they used to be are probably unaware of the changes (an observation that keeps me from taking historians too seriously). Yesterday, a store clerk told me, “Have a fabulous day.” She flashed a toothy smile, which caused me to wonder how many times a shift she was able to carry off the performance. I speculated that she must be, like, so totally bored with “Have a nice day” that she was simply trying to come up with an alternative. As I turned to leave, I said, “Thank you,” “No problem,” she answered. “At least there’s that,” I muttered as I wondered when “you’re welcome” became passé.

I first heard “Have a nice day” in 1974. The teacher in the classroom next to mine said it to each of the thirty students in each of her five classes as they walked out the door. She never personalized it with a name; never said “Study hard,” “See you tomorrow,” “Don’t forget to bring the homework that you claim to have forgotten,” or even “Later Gator.” “Have a nice day” it was, 150 times a day, 750 times a week. Her students behaved exactly as they would had she said nothing, had she not even been there.

Editorialists opposed the nice day mantra on grounds of inanity, and because it was worded as an imperative. I waited in vain for the fad to pass. Thirty years later, I’m still waiting. I never observe language moving uphill. New words are added at an astonishing rate, but the overall effect is to express the same sentiments with ever more of the same imprecise words, which means that a great deal of what is said is meaningless.

“Me and him, like, you know, like, fucking think that not being able to smoke in a fucking bar is, like, totally fucked—you know.” When I eavesdrop on conversations among the young (to whom one my age is invisible), this is often the level of discourse that I hear. “We despise the new law against smoking in bars” would do, so why the excess? I would have supposed that the ever-increasing volume of words that comes at us everyday would have inspired us to speak more succinctly, but I’ve concluded that it is this very volume that causes individuals to hold the floor as long as possible. So, what do you do when you want to keep talking, but you have nothing more to say? Of course! You, like, uh, you know, like, fucking drag it out.

We are also under-educated. A Russian penpal wrote that she learned to speak English better in a few years than most Americans do in a lifetime. She had met a great many of us, and concluded that we are fat, boorish, spoiled, ignorant, and would have already gone down the toilet were it not for our inherited wealth. I wanted to defend us, but I had no defense. All I could think to do was to ask her why, if America is so bad, thousands of Russians are trying to move here whereas no one from here is trying to move there, but such a talk-radio tactic would have been an evasion rather than an answer.

Illogic in sermons

I sometimes attend Sunday school at various liberal churches. The service itself is another matter because I usually take issue with the sermon. From last Sunday at the United Church of Christ.

Says Jesus:
“Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on…. Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?”

Thinks Lowell:
“What is the basis for this comparison? I might be better than birds in some ways, yet I lack the ability to fly, and I have no internal compass to guide me across oceans and continents? Besides, Jesus, isn’t it a little self-serving to choose birds for your analogy—why not beavers or squirrels, animals that are obliged to make provision for tomorrow? Finally, what happens to the bird that becomes unable to catch fish or insects—does the Heavenly Father still feed him? I think not.”

Says the preacher from the preceding Sunday:
“My friend the atheist says, ‘Show me God,’ and I respond, ‘Come to my church, and you will see him in the people there.’”

Thinks Lowell:
“Huh?! How do you know it’s God that makes people act differently in church. Would it not make just as much sense to attribute their behavior to space aliens or formaldehyde emissions from the carpet? Or how about this; how about they act differently because they’re in a controlled environment in which niceness comes easily, is socially obligatory, and can be dropped before lunchtime?” Lowell then looks around to see if anyone wags his head or smiles wryly at the preacher’s blatant example of begging the question. No one does, and he wonders if they were listening.

The service moves on. Near the end comes a ceremony for those members who died since last Memorial Day. Their family and friends light candles as their names are called, and then “Shall We Gather At the River” is sung. Lowell gets misty-eyed. As he tries with limited success to pull himself together, he asks himself why he was touched? Did he catch a glimpse of THE truth that must elude any preacher’s faltering logic, or was he simply reminded of those many people he sang this song with a half century ago, people he cared about who are now dead? Occam’s Razor (the simpler explanation is more likely to be true) would favor the latter, but he cannot be sure. The mystery is ever before him.

Windfall

We just took our first camping trip of the year, a two-nighter to the Old Cascades. Windfall had the road to our destination—Windy Pass—blocked, so I got out my new Gerber backpacking saw and my old Boy Scout handaxe, and went at it. After clearing a few blockages, we began to suspect that the problem wasn’t so minor as we had hoped. We unfolded our bikes and set out to see how far the windfall continued. After a half-mile, we gave up.

We camped in the road, right at the spot where we had stopped our clearing efforts, and tried another road the next day. It too was blocked, so we tried a third. It had a few blockages, but nothing we couldn’t handle. After finding a congenial campsite on an abandoned logging spur, we set-off up a jeep road on our bikes, but ran into snow at 3,500 feet. We can bike over firm snow, but this was so mushy that we found it hard to even push our bikes through. Soon the snow grew deeper, and the areas with snow became more numerous than the areas without snow, but we persisted for two miles.

The third day, we descended to 2,500 feet, and found a biking route that was idyllic. Warm but not too warm; sunny, but with just the right amount of shade; a singing brook every quarter mile; myriad wildflowers; tender new leaves; and, of course, the company of my young bride. I never had a better day. The only downside was that I drug the blade of my saw across the back of my fingers and hit an artery. I was dreadfully embarrassed, the more so because I had drug the same saw across the same hand the day before but with less effect. The bleeder made me pretty much worthless for purposes other than holding my tightly bound hand in the air, but I had been in the process of cutting the last downed tree that lay between us and home anyway. Peggy will now be doing dishes for a few days.

I often think of living in the woods, not in a house, but in my van. I would camp at the end of abandoned logging roads, and hide their entrances with brush. When I tired of one spot, I would move to another. I know this is a fantasy that probably looks better in my imagination than in reality, but it’s an old fantasy, and one that I might try someday.

Lilies and Car Tags

We are having our first warm days since last fall. I bike amid greenery, my wheels afloat, winter’s gray defeated by color.

I’m selling my car tag collection on Ebay. Between Ebay and Craig’s List, I’ve sold seventy items this year—two air purifiers, some tap dance shoes, a $450 backpack, a Champion Juicer, a climbing helmet; all stuff that weighed on me. But then all that I own weighs on me; it’s just a matter of what I’m ready to let go of. Right now, my father’s potted lily is in the driveway waiting for a passerby to give it a new home. If he had bequeathed me a compact cactus, I would have been okay, but his lily has all the exuberance of a Walt Whitman poem, and I never wanted it. For the fourteen years since he died, it has resided on a table in the den making it impossible for Peggy and me to see one another when we watch TV. A thousand times, I’ve wanted to get rid of it. Now I am. Maybe. My father’s lily defines my relationship with the things I own.

Louisiana car tags from the fifties and sixties bring up to $80. Alabama does well too, but Mississippi tags often fall short of Ebay’s 99¢ minimum. I’ve written a couple of times to a man in my hometown of Brookhaven, a man I met on Ebay. He collects Mississippi tags, and I tell him he’s lucky, because he can get them cheap. It’s better to treasure things that no one else wants. When I was a boy, I collected model horses, and would look through store shelves for any that had broken legs. I wasn’t trying to save money—I didn’t even know I could save money—I just knew that no one else would want them.

I have a molasses jar full of Pacific Ocean beach sand that I bought at an estate sale in Minnesota. The jar was filled on Friday, July 25, 1952 (according to the writing), and I bought it because I knew that it would be thrown out. I verified this by returning to the sale when it was closing.

I once thought that I would be happier if I didn’t own so much. Now, I’m not sure; I just know I feel lighter, because ownership—at least of the nonessentials—represents slavery. Peggy and I spent a summer in Fresno where she worked as a traveling nurse. We only took with us the things that would fit inside our Ford Tempo. One of my fondest memories of that summer is of only owning one kitchen knife (a Buck hunting knife that a brother-in-law had given me). Since it was only one knife, I kept it on the countertop, and, since it was our only knife, I kept it sharp. That was a tough summer in that we had no idea which direction our lives were about to take, us so I can’t say that it was a happy summer overall, but I smile when I remember the joy of owning so little.

Peggy loves to own things, and the only thing that tortures her about them is the fear that someone might steal them. I worry about this too. I even hate to leave on vacation, because I worry about something happening to Peggy’s button collection. I worry about Peggy’s buttons more than Peggy does, because protecting Peggy and her stuff is my responsibility. Also, she uses her button hobby to shield herself somewhat from the evil of the world, and I don’t know how she would fare if that evil stole them. I don’t even know if a thief would want her buttons. I’ve gone back and forth about the matter, and my conclusion is that I can’t say he would want them, but then again I can’t say he wouldn’t.

Dad’s lily is gone. I was happy when I noticed it missing, but then I saw it on the porch next door. I don’t think it will be happy there because of the dry summer winds, so I don’t feel like I have gotten rid of it after all. I might ask for it back.

Coffee at Slocum, The Cooler

I had my surgical follow-up yesterday, and, my other errands having gone smoothly, arrived 45 minutes early. I wanted a cup of coffee, but Slocum Clinic (which, despite its name, doesn’t treat sex disorders) no longer gives away coffee—they sell it. I already resented the change, but after I woke up in post-op, and was told that I couldn’t have a cup of coffee unless I could find someone to go downstairs and buy me one, I really resented it; and resolved that I would never drink another cup before I would buy it from Slocum. So, there I was, riding my bike around the block looking for another place to buy coffee. The only establishment I saw was a bar called The Cooler.

I haven’t been to a bar in maybe twenty years, but, remembering that Eugene bars are smoke free, I decided to take a chance. I intended to buy my coffee and drink it at Slocum (figuring on an act of civil disobedience if challenged), but the atmosphere under The Cooler’s gambrel ceiling suited me. I found a deeply stuffed chair and got out a couple of books (I always take books to appointments). Then it struck me that I frequent bars so seldom that I should take inventory. These are my findings: soft fifties music was playing at a respectable volume; the floor, walls, and ceiling were all natural wood; and there were only four other customers. Two were middle-aged men who were drinking alone, and the other two were a man my age and his companion—a good-looking blond two-thirds my age. I also counted one marlin (stuffed), one moose head (also stuffed), three pool tables, ten mute TVs (on nine channels), a variety of neon liquor signs, and a fair amount of college football regalia.

I enjoyed myself so much that I fantasized becoming a regular, but, right away, I hit upon a problem. The coffee was $1.25, and I tipped the barmaid a quarter. If I went to The Cooler five days a week, fifty weeks a year, that would come to $375. Considerations like this are why I drink my beer and coffee at home. If everyone held my values, a lot of businesses would go out of business.

My doctor’s appointment went well. I’m doing fine he assured me, and I agreed. Then I raised hell about the coffee situation, saying that the nurses hate it too (they can’t even have a coffee pot in their break room) and that one of them told me about the patients who wake up with headaches (having been NPO all day) and mad because they can’t have their coffee. He explained the situation thoroughly to his satisfaction, and concluded by saying that he is on the committee in charge of the coffee cartel, and will see that, “A free cup of coffee comes with every surgery.” We left on good terms.

Sleep Apnea

Obstructive sleep apnea is caused by loose tissue (turbinates, tonsils, uvula, soft palate, etc.) blocking the airway. The problem appears during sleep because that’s when everything relaxes, and it gets worse with age because that’s when everything relaxes more. There are five treatments: tracheostomy, surgery, dental devices, weight loss (if the patient is fat), and a breathing machine called the CPAP. Trachestomies are for when nothing else works. Surgery and dental devices aren’t terribly effective, and surgery also has some curious side effects like making the patient talk like a duck and drop food from his nose. With another surgical method, the patient’s jaw is broken and pulled forward throwing his teeth out of alignment. I’ve already had two sleep-related surgeries. One was for a deviated septum, the other for the same thing plus chiseling bone from my sinuses and tissue from my turbinates. Without the second surgery, I couldn’t have gone as long as I have without a CPAP.

The CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure) does pretty much what it sounds like it does: it pumps air down one’s throat continuously so the airway remains open. How much air varies. Most machines pump a steady amount, but I have a “smart-PAP” that adjusts from a low of ten (cm H2O) to a high of sixteen. Sixteen is one shit-load of air.

The patient wears either a mask or a fat cannula. The first mask I tried created a pressure sore on my nose, and the next three leaked, so I’m using a cannula. The problem with both masks and cannulas—even when they fit—is that they occasionally allow air to escape, especially when the patient turns over. This requires a certain delicacy of movement and considerable adjustment and readjustment throughout the night. Otherwise, the wind that is supposed to go down my throat is blowing loudly across my face or into my eyes, creating the risk of an eye infection.

I try to think of my CPAP affectionately, but that is like thinking of a wheelchair affectionately. On the one hand, I am glad I have it, but on the other, it is noisy, bulky, ugly, bothersome, expensive, requires daily cleaning, and makes it impossible for me to wander from an electrical outlet. This last part is the worst of all because I don’t trust technology to always be there, and because I have a powerful need to escape it occasionally.

I often lie in bed listening to my CPAP, and trying to understand why it behaves as it does. Last night, just as I was getting to sleep, the pressure started going up and down at regular intervals, as if the machine was a large beast breathing on its own. The trouble was that its breath didn’t match mine. It would force me to inhale for too long, but not allow me enough time to exhale, so I felt like I was suffocating. I tried to breath normally in the hope of forcing it to breath with me, but this required that I work really hard, and I soon lost sense of what a normal breath felt like.

I didn’t know what else to do, so I took the same ineffective steps over and over, things like rerouting the six-foot hose, readjusting the cannula, resetting the switch, and even repositioning the machine. I also wondered if I was imagining the problem. After all, it takes some people weeks to work up to using a CPAP for one whole night, yet I’ve used mine all night every night, so maybe the strain was getting to me. I thought and thought about it—which wasn’t easy while struggling to breathe. After awhile, either the machine or I settled down, and the rest of the night passed peacefully.

The main difference I notice with the CPAP is that I dream A LOT. This was even evident in the sleep lab. Without the machine, I dreamed little (and those dreams were often about suffocating). With the machine, I have one colorful and richly detailed dream after another. Maybe I had built up a dream deficit. My theory is that apneas would end whatever dream I was having, and it would take me awhile to settle back into REM sleep, only to be hit by more apneas as soon as I did.

I’ve also noticed that I don’t wake up headachy and exhausted. Instead, I wake up with my nose raw and achy due to the cannula pushing upward against my nostrils. I also wake up with a devilishly itchy throat if I don’t sleep with a harness that keeps my mouth closed. Since I also use a toothguard to prevent me from grinding my teeth to powder, getting ready for bed is tedious, although it’s not the work I mind, but the thought that I will have to do it for the rest of my life.

My father preferred death to pills because—along with his belief that the pharmaceutical industry was ripping him off—he felt that a life that had to be permanently preserved out of a pill bottle was beneath his dignity. I understand his point, and a CPAP strikes me as worse than a whole boatload of pills, but dignity is subjective and death extreme. I don’t know how Dad felt about the indignity of snot, shit, and the bizarre appearance of human genitals, but he survived all of them. This leads me to suspect that—in his mind—the indignity of pills consisted of the dependency he felt upon the despised industry that provided them.

Food for life, he could, and usually did, grow for himself, but pills for life were from an alien source and made of alien materials. They made him feel powerless in a way that congestive heart failure did not, and by choosing death, he regained his power. It was his choice, and I respect it. Most of us never acknowledge that there comes a right time to die. We say we long for heaven, but we will spend any amount of money and put others to any amount of trouble just so our sorry carcasses can breathe for one more day. Like my father, I believe there comes a time when dignity demands that a person say “no more.” I am closer to being there than I was even five years ago, but I hope to tarry a while longer.

Where was my responsible adult?

When you’ve been anesthetized for surgery, you’re advised to spend the rest of the day with a responsible adult, and warned not to make any important decisions. So why, then, is there a ten-pound bag of Costco chocolate chips draped over my kitchen table like a dead moose? Where was my responsible adult, and what was she thinking to let me buy that?

I woke up this morning—following my first night with a CPAP—rested and refreshed for the first time in memory. By contrast, I usually wake up headachy and exhausted after a succession of nightmares, my mattress wet with sweat. According to my polysomnograms, I awaken seven times an hour, and I stop breathing 43 times per hour—during which my oxygen level drops to 83%. I also grind my teeth and jerk my limbs. People die from such sleep. Nobody wants to pass the night with a noisy air pump and a mask that either feels too tight or leaks, but it sure beats the hell out of hardly sleeping at all.

My hand is greatly swollen, my wrist feels like someone drove a spike halfway through it (which is, actually, pretty much what happened), but I feel terrific. Maybe I will soon have the freedom to think more of things other than my health.

Surgery day

The anesthesiologist had said he would knock me out just long enough to get the primary painkiller started, leaving me awake for the surgery. The next thing I knew, I was waking up in another room. I looked at my wrist, saw that it was bandaged, and tried to wiggle my fingers. To my utter joy, they moved. Two hours and fifteen minutes after Peggy and I arrived at the clinic, we left. The doctor said I could do anything I felt well enough to do, so I shopped at Costco, then came home and helped my neighbor dig dandelions. Then Peggy and I went to pick-up a CPAP machine (continuous positive airway pressure) for my sleep apnea, came home, and took a nap. She vociferously opposed biking with the dogs, so we took them for a walk around the neighborhood. Now, she’s cooking supper.
Typing hurts, so I will stop doing it.

Thoughts before carpel tunnel surgery

Not long ago, the anesthesiologist called about my surgery tomorrow. “You’ll be given two painkillers,” he said, “the first to kill the pain of the second until the second takes effect.” Drugs are funny. One doctor wrote me a prescription for Ambien recently. “This medication has been known, in rare cases, to cause violent behavior,” the packaging warned. A few days later another doctor gave me a prescription for Requip. “This drug has been known, in rare cases, to lead to compulsive gambling,” the packaging advised. “Oh, great,” I thought, “I’m going to be a violent gambler.”

Last night, I was too manic to sleep, so today I took a Vivarin. Since I don’t do caffeine anymore, an occasional Vivarin makes me really manic. I was that way when the anesthesiologist called, and was consequently so bubbly that I wondered whether I sounded drunk. After we hung-up, I went back to my yard work. As I crossed the backyard, I passed Bonnie walking the other way. “Hello, Bonnie,” I said. Then I remembered that Bonnie was in the front yard, and that the gate was latched. I thought that, well, maybe I just thought the gate was latched, so I went to check. It was latched. Things could be worse, I suppose. I could be hallucinating a dog that is dead or never existed.

I’ve spent days doing all the work around the house that I won’t be able to do during my convalescence. Last night, I baked crackers, biscuits, and cornbread. I actually started baking crackers two weeks ago because each batch takes two hours, and that’s if I don’t double it. I was raised on store-bought loaf bread, but my mother kept the larder stocked with homemade biscuits and cornbread. Of course, they were inferior to what I bake. I never use shortening—much less lard—or sugar, and all my breads contain several whole grain meals or flours. There are only two things that I love to cook. One is soup and the other bread; and of the two, I prefer bread. My father believed that whole grains were for hogs (he claimed that bleached flour was purer because it was white), so he was challenged to eat my bread when he came to live with us.

I am more nervous about this surgery than any I’ve had, because the ligament that the surgeon will cut is directly above the nerve that makes my hand function. I’ve thought about what it would be like to go through life with a purely decorative right hand, and whether the odds of that happening are small enough to justify the risk of surgery. I dealt with the issue by opting to stick with the decision I’ve already made, my thought being that I would need new information to back out with any integrity.

My hernia surgery (in January) was hours late, so I had a lot of time to lie on my stretcher and think. I really wanted to walk out of that place while I still could. I remembered my friend, Hulene (a woman after my own heart, her last act before surgery was to write me a letter), who died during hernia surgery five years ago. I also thought about my surgeon, and how I didn’t entirely trust him because he always seemed so harried. I finally reconciled myself to the fact that, having made the best decision I could, and having no new information that would justify a change of heart, I needed to trust the thinking I had done when I was less emotional. Even if it was wrong, it was the best I could do. This is what will make it possible for me to lie down upon yet another stretcher tomorrow. Meanwhile, I do dread the long night ahead.

Thoughts about supporting private and governmental evil

My neighbor, Ellie, also has carpal tunnel problems. Hers is advanced, so a return to normalcy is unlikely even with surgery, but Ellie is obliged to sell plasma just to get by, so surgery is out of the question.

One of my Masonic brethren, Nathan, changed jobs recently, and his new insurance wouldn’t take effect for ninety days. During that time, Nathan came down with an undiagnosed illness that caused his fever to hit 104º. He couldn’t afford a doctor, so he rode his illness out at home.

Linda, the technician who hooked me up to the monitors for my recent polysomnogram, was injured in an accident and unable to work for seven months. Her insurance ran out after six, leaving her $30,000 in debt.
I don’t look for such stories, but now that I have become so dependent upon insurance and so aware of how different my life would be without it, they leap out at me. It’s like never noticing a certain make of car until you buy one.

There is really no way around the fact that, as individuals and as a nation, we spend money on that which we value. I value financial security, so I save money. My sister-in-law values foreign travel, so she spends money on that even though she has to borrow against her house. As a country, we value the War in Iraq. We also value health care for poor people in other countries, although the money has to come partially from the taxes paid by the poor people in our own country, people who cannot afford health care. We say to our own poor that their lives are of less importance than countless other things that we spend money on. If Nathan should die or Ellie should become permanently disabled, well, that’s very sad to be sure, but Africans with AIDS need our help more, even if we are obliged to borrow the money from China.

I am amazed that we Americans put up with as much as we do, but then I am one of those by whom I am amazed. But what to do about it… I met a man last week who was going door-to-door to gather support for Barack Obama, and I wished mightily that there was a candidate who I believed in that much. Hell, I just wish I believed in the goodness of our democratic system that much.

“All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or backgammon, with a slight moral tinge…. I cast my vote, perchance, as I think right; but I am not vitally concerned that right should prevail. I am willing to leave it to the majority…. Even voting for the right is doing nothing for it. It is only expressing to men feebly your desire that it should prevail.” Thoreau

I have long admired Thoreau because he writes as if he were beside me, contemplating the same problem that I am contemplating. No matter that the steam engine was cutting edge technology in his day, his issues then are my issues now. Ah, but he knew what to do about them. He avoided marriage partially because marriage would make moral compromise easier, but I embraced marriage because I had yet to meet the issues, and because I naively thought I could have it all. Still, I would not choose to live alone. But what would I do differently if I were alone? I would bury my money in a hole in the ground (figuratively or literally), so the IRS couldn’t find it, and I would stay in Oregon most of the year so I wouldn’t have to pay a sales tax. I feel little compunction to eradicate evil, but a great compunction to abstain from supporting it.

Yesterday, I received a bill for $465 for the carpal tunnel surgery that I haven’t had yet. The letter explained that this should cover my portion—after insurance—of the clinic’s operating room. This means that the clinic is going to charge $2,325 for the half hour that I will spend in that room. If not for the insurance company’s required write-off, the charge would be closer to $3,000. The letter also explained that the surgeon and anesthesiologist will bill me separately.

Last night, I could scarcely sleep for knowing that I am supporting a merciless and avaricious health care system. During one of the short lulls in my wakefulness, I dreamed that I was required, before surgery on Friday, to pay $499.99 in advance for a bath in a stainless steel tub. The tub turned out to be a thin vinyl mattress that was painted to look like stainless steel, and the bath was a damp washcloth with which I was told to wipe myself off.

My father died partially because he was unwilling to support what he considered a greedy healthcare system. People generally thought he was a nutty eccentric, but, for what it’s worth, Thoreau would have made the same choice. Of course, people in Thoreau’s day thought he was a nutty eccentric too. People who won’t support evil no matter what the cost to themselves are ever seen in such a light.

I look at things this way. My wrist hurts and my hand tingles. I sleep in a brace. I avoid certain activities. I am guardedly optimistic that surgery will change all this. On the other hand, if I refuse the surgery, what good will I have accomplished? None, externally. But would I respect myself more? Maybe, but I am still going to put my money into surgery, because I value my health more than I value my own moral approval, especially in regard to a decision that won’t make the world better or worse anyway. How do I live with this choice? I tell myself that the surgery will soon be over, and that I will move on. I usually prize expediency above principal, and I feel bad about this at times, and not so bad at other times. Mostly, I try not to think about it. In fairness to myself, those around me seem to knuckle under more than I do. They just ponder it less.

practically a doctor a day

This has been a doctor week. Yesterday, I saw an orthopedist whose specializes in hands, wrists, and elbows; today, an orthopedist who works on shoulders. Before them, a sleep specialist. I resist being the kind of person who runs to the doctor for every little thing, and I indeed considered canceling at least one of my appointments on that basis alone. But, the thing is, I don’t run to doctors for every little thing. I’ve had sleep problems for ten years, carpel tunnel for twenty, shoulder pains for eighteen months. I’ve put in my time studying—and sometimes trying—self-treatments and alternative treatments, yet I have only gotten worse.

I usually have a tentative diagnosis for a problem, and know everything medicine can do for it before I even see a doctor. I try to keep emotion out of doctor visits, because doctors are at their best when they feel they have something to offer, and few have much to offer in the way of emotional support.

The longer the appointment, the more of a challenge emotional neutrality becomes, and I might not know I’ve lost it until I realize I missed several sentences or failed to understand simple statements. Peggy and I try to go with one another to the doctor to compensate for such deficiencies.

I originally went with her—at her request—to offer moral support, and I usually didn’t ask her go with me because I didn’t think I needed moral support. I’ve discovered, though, that what I do need is another clear head in the room. She takes me with her for an additional reason. She is convinced that doctors—both male and female—treat her better when she’s with a man.

She and I both hold doctors in low esteem until they give us reason to think otherwise. Her nursing experiences have soured her, whereas I react more to the deference they expect and to the exorbitant fees they charge. They’re also typically rushed and, to many of them, medicine is simply a way to earn money. Then there are the limitations of medicine itself.

If a doctor comes into the room and says, “Mr. Thomas, I am Doctor Boneshaker,” he or she loses five points. If he shook hands as he said it, he only loses two points. If he gives his full name (giving me the option of what to call him), he gains five points.

I am often tempted to say, “I don’t do deference. I can call you Bill, or I can call you Mr. Boneshaker, or I can not call you anything. You choose.” I don’t say this because it might arouse hostility, and hostility would inhibit the doctor’s ability to help me. It’s one of those predicaments for which I can find no good solution.

I often run into more interesting problems with doctors. Both my hernia surgeon and the hand surgeon I saw yesterday (for carpel tunnel surgery) proposed the last surgical option that I had expected based upon my research. Every website I visited recommended endoscopic surgery over an open incision for hernia surgery, yet my doctor recommended an open incision based upon my thin build. The hand surgeon had even more treatment options—four in all—yet he chose one-hole endoscopic, the very surgery that has the highest failure rate.

How is a patient to respond? I fall back upon my overall impression of the doctor. Does he seem to care? Did he take the time to explain his reasoning? Is his resume impressive? The hand surgeon explained the discrepancy between my reading and his own approach this way. (1) Less qualified surgeons negatively skew the results. (2) Many websites lean toward conservatism because they are collectively produced across many disciplines, and because a wide range of surgical candidates look to them for advice. His patience in addressing my concern impressed me and that, along with his reasoning and his other qualifications, made me decide to go with his recommendation.

His description of the level of care my wrist I would need after surgery was far more optimistic than what I had read. For example, the Mayo Clinic advised that I not even lift a jug of milk for the first two weeks, whereas he told me to let my comfort level be my guide. When I asked about the discrepancy, he said that Mayo’s advice was based partly upon what he considered outmoded surgical techniques, and that tissue damage from a single puncture would be much less than that from a four-inch incision. That made sense. Whether it’s true, I don’t know. I could consult one or two more surgeons and go with the consensus, but I waited ten weeks to see this one, and this is an extremely common surgery, and it is also his bread and butter.

The amount of caution that is warranted in a surgical undertaking becomes much clearer in retrospect. My knee surgery was a mistake, but I undertook what I considered a prudent amount of research going into it, and I didn’t learn until later that the surgery plus physical therapy is no better than physical therapy alone. But that was two years ago, and I have come far in the amount of trouble I am willing to go to on my own behalf.

I can see how doctors would come to resent all the hours they spend explaining why they disagree with Web MD, but I should think that a patient would have to be pretty naïve to want to remain ignorant. Of course, I might be leaning too far in the other direction. I took complete control of my discussion with the hand surgeon yesterday, and, after I had gotten all of my questions answered and verified the Peggy had gotten all her questions answered, we left without either of us asking the surgeon if he had anything to say. In an ideal world, we wouldn’t need to ask, but I try to look at things from the doctor’s viewpoint.

Yesterday, for example, the doctor tried to take the initiative, but sensing that I knew where I wanted to go—and that I needed to feel in control—he backed off. I later wondered if he didn’t go so far as to stop thinking proactively, allowing himself to become simply a resource for answering questions. I quickly consoled myself with my observation that I have never found surgeons to be a timid species who readily allow themselves to be trodden upon.

My shoulder appointment this morning did not have a happy outcome. I thought I had lingering tendon inflammation from yoga exercises two years ago, but the x-rays showed jagged arthritic damage in both shoulders. The doctor advised that I avoid weight-bearing activities if I want the joints to last. When I asked how she was able to rule out soft tissue injuries, she said she wasn’t, but that there isn’t much she can do about them short of surgery, and I’m hardly ready for that. The best she could offer was an appointment with a physical therapist, and I took her up on it.

Sleeplessness

Last week, I repeatedly mistook the same chair for Bonnie, and I heard voices coming from a radio that was unplugged; both no doubt due to a lack of REM sleep. When the insomnia first hit me, I lay in bed longer to catch-up on my sleep. My back soon hurt so bad that I couldn’t lie on it, yet I couldn’t lie on my sides or my stomach either due to the tendonitis in both shoulders. What sleep I did get was interrupted by dreams of suffocating in airless rooms, suffering cyanide related seizures in a Nazi death chamber, or vomiting due to exhaust fumes. I have never faced a more dismal prospect than that of finding sleep and wakefulness equally impossible. I realized that there was a limit to how long I could hold up either psychologically or physically, yet the prospect of leaving Peggy by my own hand seemed equally cheerless.

I have gone to a lot of trouble and expense (including two surgeries) over the past ten years in an effort to remedy my sleep problems, yet they have grown increasingly worse. The only advantage I have found in such things is that they allow me to make a more accurate appraisal of human frailty. People who have not known sickness cannot know how tenuous health is, yet it is knowledge worth having. I read the thoughts of the benefactors of my species, and I contemplate the extent upon which their thoughts were based upon such things as trace minerals and sleep, things that they so often despised. How ungrateful the man who loathes that upon which his every thought depends.

I bike to get Wittgenstein, his misery contrasted with Hume's happiness

I biked to the library in the rain this morning just to get Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations. I had avoided Wittgenstein because I knew enough about him to know that he dismissed most of the questions that are asked by philosophers as nonsensical, and I didn’t want this to be the case because, nonsensical or not, they are questions I cannot avoid. He wrote:

“People say again and again that philosophy doesn’t really progress, that we are still occupied with the same philosophical questions as were the Greeks. But the people who say that don’t understand why this has to be so. It is because our language has remained the same and keeps seducing us into asking the same questions.”

Okay, great. I can even imagine him to be right, but—and this is another reason I avoided Wittgenstein—the man was suicidal. When he finally learned that he had terminal cancer—at about the same age I am now—he didn’t even care, because as he put it: “I have no desire to live.”

But the skeptic in me might well ask: “But how do you know that his despair was the necessary outcome of his philosophy?” Well, I don’t. David Hume was the most renowned skeptic of all time. He could abolish claims to knowledge as adroitly as a man with a machine gun could abolish chickens, yet he was a happy man, and as he approached death, he remained that way. He even wrote that he had no idea why one with such a dismal philosophy could be so happy, and concluded that it must simply be congenital. Go figure. Surely, nothing is good or bad unless what our thinking makes it so, but what makes our thinking make it so? Optimists say that we are free to choose, but I think they give themselves too much credit. They say “Be like us” in the easy certainty that they too could be jaded, cynical, and pessimistic if they so pleased.

insomnia, thoughts about philosophical skepticism

Sleep? Not much. Maybe four hours a night—five if I’m lucky—and it interrupted every hour or two by nightmares and headaches. I arise several times a night and read—Francis Parkman’s The Oregon Trail of late, but mostly the Britannica’s section on philosophy. I find much that I can’t make sense of, so I reread and rethink. Often, I still make no sense of it, and I wonder if anyone can. Examples are numerous, but I will offer one that is brief, ancient, and famous. In the 11th century St. Anselm made the following argument in favor of the existence of a deity.

“…a being conceived to be perfect must necessarily exist, for otherwise he would lack one of the essentials of perfection.”

Isn’t this the same as saying: “A rabbit that is conceived to be omnipresent exist must necessarily exist, for otherwise he would lack the qualification for omnipresence”? Why has Anselm’s argument survived for 1,000 years rather than being dismissed the day it was made? Much of philosophy strikes me as equally meritless.

The only philosophical stance that has ever appealed to me consistently has been skepticism, because it is the only one that is logically unassailable. To every inductively-based knowledge claim, the skeptic responds: how do you know this to be true?; and the claim is quickly shown to rest upon a train of assumptions that are themselves improvable. The problem with skepticism is that it often defies common sense, which greatly reduces the number of thoroughgoing skeptics. If I say that a given bachelor is single, I might be redundant, yet I will be right 100% of the time, based upon the definition of the terms. On the other hand, I might truthfully argue that there is no absolute proof that pressing my face to a red-hot griddle for ten minutes will damage it (a knowledge of past events justifies, at most, predictions of probability), yet I have no intention of holding pressing my face to a red hot griddle for even ten seconds.

Skepticism is a cure for illogical proofs rather than a source of logical ones, and hence it is of small comfort when one is wide awake at 4:00 a.m., almost panicked by his inability to sleep, and twitching and trembling while struggling to coordinate his movements—all while wondering what in the hell life is about. (I personally delivered a friend to the asylum when he became stuck on the question and would say nothing else all day long.)

Of course, I err logically in assuming that life is about anything. I even err in assuming that insomnia is a problem. After all, I can’t prove either, and I can’t even define my terms since words like meaning, purpose, and problem are among those words that we think we have a clear grasp of until we are called upon to define them. As do most words. Table, for example, or even red; words that are either umbrella words or that define a quality of perception as opposed to a quality of measurability (as in the water is hot, versus the water is 110. 246841º). Only is there, really and truly, such a thing as objective measurability? After all, words and numbers are a human creation, a way of describing reality in terms that we can understand and communicate. We impose an artificial construct over that which our senses can detect and our minds can comprehend, so we can never know that we have experienced reality as it is as opposed to how it seems to us. There is my perception of my dog, and there is my dog, and I cannot know how closely the two coincide.

Peggy in Paris

I just talked with Peggy. It was ten p.m. Paris time, and she was on a busy street. Spotlights highlighted Notre Dame; the Eiffel Tower twinkled; and searchlights crossed the sky. A continual din of sirens made me nostalgic for Inspector Clouseau. The César Awards were commencing across the street, and the press of the crowd was threatening to push her off the sidewalk. Peggy didn’t know what the César Awards were, so I did a web search, and told her they are France’s version of the Academy Awards.

I haven’t heard Peggy more excited in years than she has been every time I’ve spoken to her on this trip. It is the excitement of youth, and I miss that in her. When a boy marries a girl, he expects her to remain a girl (all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding) and, as the years past, and she moves ever further from girlhood, he grieves for the loss of his young love. I have often wished during these thirty-six years that I could protect Peggy, not so much from the ravages of physical aging as from the ravages of disillusionment (some of it, alas, caused by me). Disillusionment makes discernment possible, but we pay for discernment with reduced joy. It is the difference between puppyhood and dogdom, and is as sad as it is necessary.

I would have my young bride back if I could, but, to keep her love, I would have to go back too. Only, I was never so young as she, at least in my capacity for joy, because joy requires absorption in the moment, and I could never escape the thought that the moment must end. The frailty of life loomed ever before me, and its poignancy was always by my side.

When I heard her today, I wished so much that I could be there on that noisy, crowded sidewalk, not so I could see France, but so I could see Peggy. Beside her face, a million twinkling Eiffel Towers would be as dim as the cold darkness of space.

the joys of solitude are diminished by the needs of the dogs

What a pleasant morning. I remained in bed a sinfully long time; the sun is shining yet again; I’m listening to happy harpsichord music; and I have absolutely nothing that I must do.

Yesterday was a day of phone calls as a surprising number of people checked-in on me. I was delighted to hear from them, but was perfectly happy to be alone. Sometimes, when Peggy is away, I worry that I will come to enjoy solitude so much that I will dread her return, but, by the time she does return, I am always glad to see her. Meanwhile, it is grand, not having to adjust in the least to anyone else’s needs, schedules, preferences, moods, or requests. Furthermore, I have no meetings this week except for my nerve conduction study, and I am dreading even that. Oh, but if only I could be fully alone—what a joy.

Ah, but my joy was just interrupted in mid sentence. I was on a cancellation list for my sleep study, and someone cancelled, so I will spend the night at Sacred Heart Hospital with wires glued to my head.

Yet again, the dogs are a burden. They will be miserable tonight. They are already miserable. They are miserable because Peggy is gone. They are miserable because it’s pretty weather, and I can’t take them on an outing. They spend their days unhappily dozing except when they’re staring at me accusingly. Three weeks ago, they stared pleadingly, but quickly realized that something was seriously wrong with me. They still know that something is seriously wrong, but they don’t like it. They wonder why I don’t go to the vet and get it fixed, and I can’t convince them that the vet is of no use. A cat in heat could help as much as a vet, and a cat in heat couldn’t help me at all, although it would greatly entertain them. If only a cat would step through their doggie door and be unable to find its way out, they would be happy dogs indeed. Baxter enjoys looking out the window for a few hours each day, but Bonnie has no life apart from her walks and her tennis balls, and she needs me for those.

Yesterday the temperature reached into the fifties, so I put one of my three remaining houseplants out by the curb, and it quickly disappeared. It was a snake plant that I had had for years, so putting it out felt treacherous, the more so because I realized that whoever took it might not want the plant but just the pot. But I had grown tired of caring for it. Now that I can do so little for myself, the more desperate I am to reduce the number of things that require my nurturance. I don’t want to be depended upon by dog, wife, plant, friend, or lodge brother. I don’t even want a book on a shelf to be awaiting dusting unless it is a book with which I truly cannot part.

my recovery continues

Peggy made it to France on only three tranquilizers. I knew she had taken one in Eugene, so when waited to take the other two in Atlanta, I asked her if she was more afraid of crash-landing in the Atlantic Ocean than in the Rocky Mountains. She said NO in a tone that implied it was a silly question.

My Friday doctor’s appointment was actually with his physician’s assistant, and he gave me to the go-ahead to bike and to do pretty much anything that caused me no pain. I therefore took the dogs for an hour’s ride Saturday, and was so swollen and sore afterwards that I’m back on narcotics. Several people called today to ask if I needed anything, but the one thing that I am unable to do for myself is to exercise the dogs; and it is a task for which there are few volunteers. I certainly can’t take them biking again, and even short walks are an ordeal for a man who feels like he has been kicked in the groin.

My moods range from despair to guarded cheerfulness. I spend my time reading, watching old Westerns, and editing old journals. I just started on 2006, the year I had the arthroscopic knee surgery that left me worse off than I had been. I can but wonder if this surgery won’t turn out the same. I know it is unlikely, but then I felt the same way about my knee.

Despite my surgical fears, I made an appointment for a nerve conduction study in preparation for carpal tunnel surgery. The last thing I want right now is even more forced inactivity, yet the higher my medical expenses during a given year, the greater the portion that insurance will pay, and I had planned to have the surgery this year anyway. I am also scheduled for another sleep study (the last one was five years ago). This is something else that was on my list of things-to-do, but now that I having to sleep entirely on my back, I literally wake up more tired than I went to bed.

I still entertain the hope that there is a silvery lining to all these gray health clouds. After all, I am but 58 (at least for a few more days), and am greatly motivated to regain as much vigor as possible. The worst challenge is that I feel forced to turn my surgical care over to people without any certainty that they know what the hell they are doing. If I were rich, I would get four second opinions for every one procedure, and I would fly to the foremost surgeons at the foremost medical centers, but I’m not rich so I must make do.

I managed to limp behind the dogs to the end of the block today, and we passed a string of maybe ten teenagers, each with multiple piercings and all black clothing. Two of them asked me for money for cigarettes, and I wished I could somehow convey to them how few years they can take their good health for granted. In truth, no one can ever take good health for granted, but most of us have thought we could, and decades passed during which it seemed that we were right.

how I pass my days, the joys of Percocet, thoughts on disability and euthanasia

The ultrasound showed the source of my abdominal pain and swelling to be a hematoma. It is large enough to be visible through my clothes, and will have to be excised if it doesn’t dissolve on its own. I was sent home with Percocet and told to alternate between ice and heat. I can neither take walks nor bike rides, and the Percocet makes me unsafe to drive; so I am as housebound as I have ever been. I nap, read, eat, watch squirrels, listen to Baroque music, and, once these many labors have been completed, I beging them again. I’ve read Silas Marner, two books on logic, the 1882 novel John Eax, and parts of other books.

This is not such a terrible way to live when one gets used to it. Friends are solicitous, painkillers make the days run together dreamily, and even a recent sunny day scarcely tempted my thoughts outward. The sun emits a pleasant glow through the window, but the air is chilly, and I am too lethargic to venture out even if I could.

Josh took Bonnie out on Sunday, over did it with her ball-throwing stick, and had to carry her home. He is unable to understand the limitations of a ten-year-old dog, and she is unable to understand that she can no longer run, jump, and make u-turns at full speed. Bonnie and Baxter have both gained two pounds now that I am unable to take them for their daily bike rides.

I ponder the lot of those whom we used to call “shut-ins,” and of what it must be like to lead a life devoid of all ambition aside from passing one’s days in warmth and comfort with plenty to eat. Imagine, no one looking to you to do anything, of no longer having the ability to do anything—at least not anything much. Maybe a hobble down the hallway for stretching exercises, or else a wheelchair ride to the common room to hear a community volunteer play the piano. Then, every other Thursday, another volunteer would arrive with her golden retriever for the residents to pat with the paper-thin skin of their perpetually bruised hands. With the illumination of Percocet, I can see how such an existence might not be so bad—assuming the ability to afford a “nice home” rather than a warehouse where manacled residents with open bedsores slump in odiferous corridors atop squished feces.

But does anyone ever really come to want nothing more than that? With enough drugs, maybe. The power of a pill to alter one’s life is remarkable. Percocet is like a comforting hand, like a voice that says, “Doesn’t it feel beyond heavenly just to lie here, just to read ten pages, nap for two hours, read ten more pages, and then nap for another two hours? How could anyone ask for more? Yes, the world is out there, somewhere, but it’s a crazy and frenetic world—as you yourself have often observed—so why not just let it chase its tail while you lie here in warmth, and peace, and a joy that is as real as it is mysterious?”

Such feelings are one reason I hold back on the Percocet. My prescription calls for a maximum of twelve a day. When I found that I was becoming unable to remember how many I had taken or when I had taken them, I began keeping a record. Most days, I take no more than five, and only then if I really need them to keep the pain from reaching a fever-pitch.

Peggy leaves in two days, and I will miss her dreadfully. I miss her badly enough when I am well and have projects to occupy my thoughts, so how much more will I miss her if the zenith of my capacity is to sit at a desk doing paperwork. She departs on Valentines, and returns two days after my birthday. It is a bitter pill to swallow, but it would be even more bitter if she stayed home to nurse me—as she is even now tempted to do. As much as we love our dogs, we have come to think of them as more a burden than a joy; and I want to do everything I can to prevent Peggy from seeing me in the same light.

I question the wisdom of a person devoting their own life to the deteriorating life of another. Peggy’s father has cared for her mother in such a way for years with no end in sight. I can but wonder at my society’s many contradictions regarding our so-called reverence for life. On the one hand, we are determined to keep every frail, damaged, deformed, demented, and aging human being alive as long as possible no matter what the financial or emotional burden. On the other, we have shown the consistent willingness to send our youngest and healthiest adults to die in foreign lands for reasons that seem nonsensical a decade later. And is it not the epitome of irony that we “put our pets to sleep” because “it would be cruel to make them suffer” even while we denounce human euthanasia and imprison those who help make it possible? So many of the values that are commonly esteemed by my society appear so damnable in my eyes that I don’t feel that I am a part of society, but am instead like one who was caught in a current too powerful to resist.