Solstice 2006

Solstice 2006



Dear Ones,
Hard to know where to start to tell you about this year. Perhaps you’d be better off laboring under the social illusion that all is well. Or perhaps not. No comedy in that.
We have had a year of anxiety and sadness for the state of the world, but with a little ray of light let in by our retraction from the hard right-ward course we have caromed into of late. Perhaps a little moderation will be a good thing. Perhaps the Dems won’t blow the opportunity. But they have that unique way of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, so I remain in an unsettled and uncertain state. But as long as we are a two blue-star family, any trend toward peace and away from hard-headed bellicosity is a good trend.
Anyway, just after our last edition, THINGS CHANGED for me. I fell ice skating, and slid over my outstretched right wrist, which caught on a gouge in the ice and was carried under my oncoming weight, and I levered over it, oh-so-slowly, and broke it. No big deal, we all say. A broken wrist...what can that amount to, but a painful inconvenience? I felt it go, and knew immediately what had happened, and what it meant... I would have to take a rain check on that scheduled quail hunting trip with Dick Cheney. My arm looked like a bayonet, so I pulled it into line without much thought, and dropped it into a shin-guard for a splint. Never mind that I nearly fainted twice after that, and had to fend off a host of do-gooders who wanted to call an ambulance, from flat on my back. A month in a cast was pure torture to no useful end, and when it came off and the damn thing was still as floppy as on day one, so I went to the OR for a plate and screw job. That was fine, but because the nerve was damaged by the fracture, I developed the dreaded Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy. Which is a long way of saying pain. Inconceivable, inexplicable pain. A month of rehabilitation led to another operation, for Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, and then more rehab. And more pain. My hand swelled up like a catcher’s mitt, and my mobility was nil. Then it fibrosed in that position. I was “The Craw”. The muscles in my arm shriveled up until it became a bent stick with a blob of sweaty gray dough hanging off the end. I looked and felt like Huey the Cripple-Boy I staggered through work on no sleep, elevating my bloated hand over my head constantly, and deferring pain meds ‘til the end of the shift, with helpful colleagues doing all the procedural work, while I saw the colds and sore throats. They were pretty decent about it, because I was pretty useless, except as comic relief. The patients felt sorry for me for a change, and a couple of patients actually looked at me, considered their troubles and decided to leave without treatment. I missed a couple of weeks of work only, if you count the showing up I did in between surgeries and after as work. But the overwhelming nature of this RSD pain removed any illusion I formerly had that I was a healthy, durable fellow. So as busy and full as my previous year was, this one has been the diametric opposite. It was busy and full, I guess, but busy just trying to get back to minimal competence at my job, and trying to get a useable hand back. I toyed with the notion of selling everything and going back to residency in Radiology, and that was an exciting notion, but as events have turned out, I am slowly getting better, and can again do my job, with some minor adaptations, and so the trauma of shedding all worldly goods to be a poor resident again has been avoided.
The rehab/PT people were very helpful. Barb, my Certified Hand Therapist, looked at my concrete hand and just dove in head first, starting with heating and beating, wrapping, twisting, bending and stretching in the many dimensions a hand can ordinarily move. I might mention as a side bar that all that shit HURTS. She knows that. It is part of the job. Maybe even a perk. We had a few good laughs about it, but she did most of the laughing. I learned quickly that you don’t piss off your therapist, and you don’t wear cotton underwear to PT. After the first couple of thrice weekly sessions, I came staggering out of there drenched in sweat, with my Hanes® in a wet knot wedged all the way in, armpit circles meeting in the middle of my chest like a Venn diagram, and cold prickles on my back, where my t-shirt was clinging. Black UnderArmor® is the stuff. The other patients joked we were seeing so much of each other, and always holding hands, so we must be having an affair. They didn’t have a clue. I came out of there every day looking like a Ken Doll®, and reproduction was not even physically possible. I know now that I could endure torture by Iranian agents. No, Barb isn’t Iranian, as far as I could tell. What she did to me with my consent would clearly have violated the Geneva Convention, at least until the recent reinterpretation by the Commander-in-Chief. So if the PT thing ever fell through, the CIA could use her, as long as she could fly to Romania on short notice. After weeks of effort, I got to where I could briefly make a circle with my thumb and index finger, but I still couldn’t touch my thumb to my third finger, or close my hand at all. I dropped a lot of change at cash registers, just forgetting that I couldn’t rotate my palm up, or close on the coins. Toileting left-handed under pressure is an acquired skill. It ain’t easy getting the old soldier out of his tent on the double with only the left hand to assist and salute. Sitting on the pot like a toddler and hollering “Come wipe me!” is not an option in a public rest room. Neither can you count on a stranger to help you get your fly up. I caused a couple of restroom-clearing stampedes before I figured that one out. I became the sultan of stretch pants, the king of the cord-lock, the suleiman of slip-on shoes. I considered mounting a couple of eye-bolts in the bathroom, and using them to string up a loofah on a rope, so I could just throw a leg over, but I got vetoed on that one. So I have learned to be a lot more left handed these days. I still can’t touch thumb to fifth finger, or extend my wrist at all, and it takes twenty minutes each morning to make my fingers reach my palm to make a fist. I can’t rotate the hand to flat, so I type like a Pimp driving his Pimpmobile, bent way over to the left to get my hand flat enough to type. I be Stylin’! And I still can’t wipe right handed. That remains a distant future therapeutic goal.
The experience of pain is an interesting one. Not that I recommend it, but if it falls to you, there is learning to be had. First was the idea that you can imagine pain, and ‘scale’ it from not too bad to worse. You can’t. Fuggeddaboudit. I am here to tell you that despite a way-better than average imagination, my ability to imagine this pain was somewhere between zippedy do-dah and doodley squat. I had searing, lancinating crescendos of pain where it just kept getting worse, like an endless roller coaster at Six Flags Over Hell, where you can’t see the top, and don’t even know if there is one. I was gabbling, crying, sweating, slobbering, keening, pacing about in aimless quick random loops, elevating, massaging, squeezing, supporting, warming, cooling, wrapping and unwrapping my arm. I took drug doses which would stun (and terminally constipate) a Sumatran Rhinoceros, and was never out of pain, except when unconscious. I would wake up gasping, almost forgetting to breathe, and my next sensation after suffocation, was grinding, grunting miserable, unquantifiable pain. I slept only 15-20 minutes at a time at first, and startled awake as white hot bolts sent by tiny devils with electric pitchforks ran through my arm intermittently. That frequency declined slowly, over months, to where I got an hour or two at a time. The lightning bolt tweaks finally stopped about 3 months ago, and this month, I finally slept six hours uninterrupted. Once. Mostly I still sleep in two hour segments. Sleep is absolutely essential to rational life. I didn’t have any real sleep for months, and nothing is more disorienting debilitating and depressing. I had always slept well, and never knew what a gift that was, until it was lost. But I was not a rational creature for 6 months. How my poor wife remained married to me is a mystery to this day. I reckon the only benefit was that Percocet removes all interest in sex, so she got a vacation from “the chore” out of it, anyway. I am now taking no drugs at all, and having only stiffness with attempts to expand the very limited ranges of motion I now have. So I cannot complain. I have translated this experience to work, where I am now very aggressive with pain meds, when the decision is that there is an acute injury and pain relief is required. I have scared the hell out of the nurses giving escalating doses in short periods of time, but when you come to the hospital with bone sticking out of your leg, you need some relief. I ‘get it’. Some of them don’t ‘get it’ yet, but I am working on them.
Well enough about me. Things on the home front revolve around Quilts of Valor®, and the Quilts of Valor Foundation. Catherine is working full time, running her foundation as a certified 503-c charity, running a website, and distributing quilts to the wounded. She has caused over 7,500 quilts to be awarded, and is expanding into the PTSD sufferers as well. Most estimates place the wounded at above 48,000, even without counting the PTSD sufferers, so there is a lot left to do. Check her out at www.qovf.org . She is still making occasional quilts, but mostly is going to hospitals to secure contacts with chaplains and to make presentations. She also does a good bit of fund raising, traveling the circuit of Rotary and Kiwanis Clubs, Quilt shows, and so on. You might have caught her national TV News appearance on CBS in a brief human interest filler feature aired last spring. We are kidless at the moment with everyone either launched or in college, so all available horizontal space in the house is being taken over for the cause. I have been beaten back to a few square feet which are unequivocally mine. After all the over-hyped anticipation of an empty nest and adult freedom, I do miss having the kids around, just for their companionship. (so I guess that means they came out ok.)
Michele (30!) is in Columbus with Eric, who is Hawker Assistant Chief Pilot with NetJets. She is great with child, due in January, with a girl-child, tentatively named Lily. We can only smile knowingly at the fact that she has a girl coming at her. Karma is a grinning bitch sometimes. She is enjoying being mommy to Jack, who is now 18 months old, and lots of fun to I-chat with. His little world is about to change...
Nat (28) is almost done with the Army, currently at Ft. Detrick, in MD, and close enough to visit on an occasional weekend. His plans after are not clear. The three year inactive reserve requirement looms over him, but some sanity seems to be dawning over Washington, now that we have some division of power between the parties, and perhaps we will be out of Iraq (and not into Korea, via Iran) before long. He has made great progress sorting through his feelings on his return, and may get into helping other soldiers do the same. He has some contacts in the VA system, and would be great at that.
Hannah (20) is in year two at the Naval Academy, learning Arabic, and Oceanography. It seems a little less grinding this year than last, and she seems happy enough with it. Passing swimming test requirements seems to loom excessively large in her life. She rated her first passing test as on par with graduating college and the birth of her first child. She gets a lot out of helping her plebes get by in one piece, and in minor acts of resistance. She has designed a t-shirt which reads “Fight the Man—Pee in the Pool!” Apparently it is all the rage there.
Everett (18) is in year one at St. John’s College, in Annapolis, right across the street from the Academy. He gets to visit with his sis a good bit. Meanwhile, they are whipping him through ancient Greek, Euclidian math, and all the classics, read from original sources. Johnnies don’t use text books, only original sources, so they get through over 400 books before it is all over. He has discovered that there is a REASON ancient Greek is a dead language. The courses are all seminars, and you have to turn up and actually say something sensible. Very 19th C. Our first report was a hoot. “We are pleased to tell you that your son is at least satisfactory in all his subjects.” So now I can introduce him as my ‘at least satisfactory son’ without fear of contradiction. He likes it there, at least. Meanwhile I am discovering you can actually finance an entire college education on credit cards, and get some dandy frequent flyer miles in the bargain. I am looking for non-stops to the poorhouse on line today.
My parental units are hanging in, each having lost a sibling over this past year. I was in Baton Rouge LA for a funeral for Mary Lou, Dad’s only sib and big sis. A month later I was in Buffalo for farewells to Aunt B.A., Mom’s middle sis. We probably should throw those gatherings BEFORE the person dies, so they can enjoy them also. The parents continue to commute between the Canadian shore of Lake Erie and South Buffalo, and go to scads of plays, movies, concerts and the like with a lively social set of retired professors. The only big news in my nuclear family is the adoption of a little newborn Guatemalan boy named Rafael by Elizabeth and Craig. He is the sweetest little cholito you ever want to see. Liz is 50, bless her heart, and they are at long last rearin’ a young-un’, after years of searching. She really looks 10 years younger, all of a sudden—it is great to see. But myst-a-crighty, I couldn’t do that at this stage of my life, not even for a new trophy wife.
Work grinds on more or less the same. A few of my standout patients mentioned in previous letters have died, but they are like shark’s teeth...one falls out and another rotates into place in no time, and it is all the same. People still crash after “two drinks”, with alcohol levels of .300, unrestrained and uninjured, while all around them are laid waste, simultaneously violating all known laws of chemistry, physics, and the Delaware State Code. My fave quote from a drunk who rear-ended a line of traffic--”They was all stopped, but the light said ‘Go’, so I went!” People still alternate between their home oxygen hose and their Camel no-filters, until we can’t jump-start them anymore, try as we might. And girls who have never had sex and never missed a period still deliver babies with surprising regularity. Then the grandmas who raised the new mommies have their second shot at screwing up a whole new generation, bless their hearts. People who have never done drugs show up seizing their brains out, with gads of cocaine in their urine, and maintain forever we mixed up the sample, or the lab made an error, or it must have been sidestream smoke. And bad boys keep believing they can run faster than a police dog, and try to prove it. (They can’t.) They all hate needles though. The badder the boy, the more phobic of needles, without exception.
Well another year has passed, thankfully. I could have wished this one gone from the start, but you need to be careful, wishing your life away. What lessons can I take from my halting and crooked path on this whirling orb? Just the glimpse of mortality I had this year was worth the pain and work. Just the humbling that a moment’s gravity lesson laid on me was a worthy part of my journey. I am back on a path a little more of my own choosing, trying to rehab my hand, trying to return to running and some modicum of physical fitness. It will be a long road back to being the sleek greyhound I once was. But I am even more insecure about the future, and yet worry less, because worrying doesn’t matter. Shit will happen if it does, and though Fortune favors the prepared mind, she doesn’t give any money back guarantees.
I pause, as usual to note the passing of a few notables. We mourn 748 sons and daughters lost to the war so far this year, including two from Seaford, and 2928 thus far in total. So long and farewell to Coretta Scott King, Al Lewis (Grandpa on The Munsters), Dana Reeve (wife of Christopher Reeve), Wilson Pickett, Lou Rawls, Don Knotts (Deputy Barney Fife), Ed Bradley, Jack Palance, Glenn Ford, and Robert Altman. And a hearty Crikey and G’Day Mate to Steve Irwin. Good bye and good riddance to Slobodan Milosevic, Augusto Pinochet, and Kenneth Lay.
And so, faithful readers, let not another notch in the ratchet toward doom, nor another season of South Park daunt us. Let us regroup and reform our lines against the madness, secure in the trust we must place in those fellow soldiers of the Army of Reason, standing with us at each of our shoulders and our back. “This I will defend.” I wish for each of you a patch of ground you can stand on unmolested, and for a moment’s acknowledgement of the many great things you have done and continue to do. Take a moment to acknowledge another’s moments of glory, and particularly your kids’ moments, for they remember and cherish those acknowledgements long after you are gone. Watch less TV, or turn the damn thing off altogether, stay fit and frisky, lively and interested in whatever life throws at us. I will continue to struggle back from my nadir, and I thank everyone for their kind words and forbearance, and all the help and encouragement sent my way in this past year.

Warmest regards, hearty handshakes, hugs, wet kisses, cheers, best, love, peace and WHATEVER...