The Last Tango in Albuquerque. For now, anyway.
Well, kids, there you have it: Stay the (You Know What) Home.
Archive for the ‘Health care’ Category
STFH
March 23, 2020Little feat
March 16, 2020
I’m not jumping for joy yet, but spring seems to have sprung nicely.
My new sailin’ shoe.
Tootsie Voodoo said I could lose the Darth Gimp boot and crutches, so I traded up for a lace-up brace that I can wear with socks and shoes.
I may have limped in just under the wire, too. Management was said to be mulling whether to reschedule all non-acute cases.
“Sorry, bub. Here’s a hacksaw. You’ll have to find your own peg and parrot. Next!”
Sounds like a great excuse to do the “Old Folks’ Boogie.”
So you know that you’re over the hill
When your mind makes a promise that your body can’t fill
Try and get a rise from an atrophied muscle,
And the nerves in your thigh just quivers and fizzles
Year of the Plague
March 13, 2020
Everyone’s world is getting just a little bit smaller.
Has everyone settled in to The New Normal yet?
Herself had to make a supply run to Herself the Elder’s assisted-living home yesterday, but since she forgot her biohazard gear and breathing apparatus, she had to leave the goodies on the porch. The joint is on lockdown, with the drawbridge up and the moat full of gators, piranha fish, and plugged-in toasters.
She managed to snap a selfie at mom’s bedroom window, though. And of course, when you can’t get actual facetime, there’s FaceTime.
Elsewhere, the noobs are trying to figure out how to work from home. Lucky for me, I have a black belt in social distancing, which I have been practicing since 1991, when after 15 years in the Petri dish of daily journalism it was suddenly just me, my Mac SE, and a Hayes modem, in a spare bedroom.
Also, as a geezer with a broken ankle and the Socialist Insecurity due to start rolling in next month, I don’t have much to do or a pressing need to go somewhere to do it.
So I got that going for me, which is nice.
The hard part, for me and for thee, is the temptation to go all COVID-19, all the time. Don’t do it. Send a daily hate mail to the White House and then call it a day.
Watching this lame reboot of “A Day at the Races” ain’t doing it for me. There are more horses’ asses than horses in this one, and I don’t think the fat fuck playing Dr. Hackenbush is even a vet, much less an MD.
And now, today’s musical selection:
Have a nice trip? See you next fall
February 26, 2020
Waiting on the “provider” at urgent care. Is it just me, or does
“The Provider” sound like some sort of third-tier Marvel superhero?
One of the sad things about modern medicine is the questions you get asked.
It used to be, “Where does it hurt?” Or, “What brings you to see us today?”
Now it’s “Do you feel safe in your home?”
As long as I can see the wife in my peripheral vision, and both of her hands are empty, sure.
Or, “Are you depressed?”
Not until you asked me that question.
Another popular one seems to be, “Have you had any other falls recently?”
I didn’t fall this time. I broke my ankle running and then hopped around on the good leg, screaming all of George Carlin’s “Seven Words” in no particular order. Then I limped home, got in the car, and drove a few blocks to visit some people who seem to enjoy probing strangers for weakness and financial information.
While we’re discussing modern medicine, here’s another observation about crutches. Not only do they still not come equipped with cup holders, shocks, or hydraulic disc brakes as standard equipment, but no matter where or how you park them, like Doc Sarvis’s bicycle, they still slide immediately to the floor.
And finally, if like me you suddenly seem to have some time on your hands that desperately needs filling, scope out this fine interview with Sonny Rollins. He’s had to give up the sax due to illness, but he hasn’t given up, y’feel me?
Writer on the storm
September 29, 2019
Smilin’ Jack isn’t the only fella in there, y’know.
My man Padraig at Red Kite Prayer is having a rough go of it lately — so much so that he has turned to ketamine therapy in his ongoing struggle with depression.
In a word, this takes huevos. In my misspent youth I dabbled with various psychedelics — mostly psilocybin, mescaline and LSD — and I don’t mind telling you that any or all of these can really pop the top off your Jack-in-the-box.
Thing is, Smilin’ Jack isn’t the only fella in there. And he isn’t always the first one to hit the door running.
It’s one thing to hitch a ride on the Magic Bus when you’re young and sprightly, with your script largely unwritten. I’m not certain I’d have the guts to screen my personal in-flight movie a half-century further on up the road. A lot of that footage is on the cranial cutting-room floor for a reason.
So chapeau to Padraig for having the courage to lift the lid (or rip off the Band-Aid) and face what’s underneath. And for inviting us to join him on the trip. I wish him health and happiness.
If you’ve enjoyed his work, why not pop round to his place to say so? I think he’d like to hear from you.
• Extra-credit reading: Scientific American on ketamine therapy. And William Styron’s “Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness.”
Stone free
January 15, 2019
His Excellency recovers from the tortures of the damned, a.k.a. a visit to the vet.
While the shit-mist continues to blot out Old Sol in DeeCee, we’ve had a little sunshine in our back door today.
Field Marshal Turkish von Turkenstein (commander, 1st Feline Home Defense Regiment) had been under the weather about a month back, and so I chauffeured him to his personal physician, who diagnosed a bit of arthritis in the hips and (of all things) a pair of stones in his bladder, an affliction with which we are all too familiar.
The vet recommended that we replace his dry kibble with a canned prescription diet and a side of nutriceutical antiinflammatory, then come back in 30 days to see whether the change in cuisine would solve the issue without more heroic measures.
If It didn’t — well, as I noted, we’ve been down this stony road before with the late, lamented Mister Boo. And we were not looking forward to approving yet another round of surgery on yet another of our comrades.
Today was the day for His Excellency’s followup visit, and not only did the Turk pass with flying colors (and without knifework), he’s actually shed a few ounces on the new diet.
Since his rock has apparently rolled, I played him a little Jimi to celebrate.
Be Worst
May 8, 2018
Remember, kids, cutting and pasting other people’s work
is for bloggers only.
From Steve Benen at the Maddow Blog:
• Melania Trump’s “Be Best” blather was apparently another cut-and-paste job, liberating the content of a document released by the previous administration’s Federal Trade Commission in 2014. The writing, it is hard. I know, believe me, I know.
• While Ms. Trump was Being Best, her husband and his pals were being the other thing. Jeffy Bob Jimmie Joe Sessions plans to separate immigrant parents and children because, you know, “the best people,” etc., et al., and so on and so forth. The Big Orange Cheese, meanwhile, wants to slash more than $15 billion in previously approved spending, more than half of it to come from the Children’s Health Insurance Program, because children can’t vote, buy real estate, or suck a golf ball through a garden hose.
• And finally, according to The New Yorker, Eric T. Schneiderman has resigned as New York attorney general to spend more time with his family and work on a memoir entitled, “Shut the Fuck Up And Get Me Another Drink, You Whore (Before I Slap You Again).”
The long run
February 25, 2018
Harrison Walter (#575) competes on his school’s
cross-country and track teams. Photo | Hal Walter
The Walter family’s struggle with autism came in for a little attention in the press over the weekend.
My friends Hal and Mary and their son Harrison have been enduring the tender mercies of the Medical-Industrial Complex as mom and dad strive to get their teenager the expensive behavioral therapy that may help him with the impulse-control issues common among the neurodiverse.
Harrison focused on his schoolwork. Photo | Rebekah Cravens
Regan Foster of The Pueblo Chieftain — where Hal and I first met back in the Eighties — wrote about the Walters’ difficulties in a straight news piece and a more personal sidebar; both made the newspaper’s home page this morning.
The details of this particular tale of woe may be new to you, but the overarching theme is all too familiar: What happens when circumstances upend a hard-working American family that earns a bit too much to qualify for public assistance, but not enough to cover the out-of-pocket costs associated with private insurance?
“A $3,000 deductible plus a 30 percent co-pay is the same as not having insurance, except you have to pay for the insurance,” said Hal.
Harrison is designated as disabled, but does not qualify for a Children’s Extended Services waiver for Medicaid because his sleep habits, “while not great, are not entirely horrible,” according to Hal.
The amount of paperwork required in raising a neurodiverse kid (like appealing a Medicaid waiver denial) would be enough to put anyone to sleep.
That this is a stumbling block instead of a side note seems absurd; Harrison’s abilities as a student and athlete can be offset by his impulsive, occasionally violent behavior, which seems a greater concern for society than how many Z’s the family bags nightly. Someone is definitely on the nod here, and it’s not the Walters, who are appealing the decision to deny a CES waiver.
Hal and Mary are both long-distance runners, with all the stamina that requires and then some, but theirs is a race against time. Harrison is 13 going on 14, and as special-ed teacher Carrie Driver notes: “We have four and a half years to get him ready for life and to give him skills that are appropriate for him to be independent.”
• Editor’s note: You can read more at Hal’s blog, Hardscrabble Times (which is updated irregularly), and in his column at Colorado Central.
Crack me up
November 2, 2017
Have you noticed that cats rarely require chiropractic adjustment? Me too.
Bang, pow, zoom: To the moon, O’Grady!
OK, so it wasn’t quite that dramatic. But it wasn’t no honeymoon, neither.
What it was: I test-drove a new chiropractor today and after some exertion on his part (and some unseemly screeching on mine) I am feeling a bit more like myself. A barely upright lesser primate, in other words.
In professional parlance, I am “a mess,” which is no surprise to anyone.
But mess though I may be, at least I have not been caught lying to the press and to Congress. Now that’s a mess.
Whether anyone has the spine to treat this ailment, of course, is another matter entirely.
Don’t forget to put roses on my grave
October 28, 2017
This may be the last rose of the season. But this being Albuquerque, quién sabe?
Some of you may be secretly pleased to learn that after I got all smug about our lovely fall weather I managed to tweak my back just enough to curtail my enjoyment of the extended cycling season.
It’s an old problem that makes an occasional painful comeback, like herpes, malaria or the Republican Party. And it taught me the only thing I really learned in college: When delivering refrigerators for beer money, lift with your legs.
Anyway, from time to time some small movement not involving the relocation of refrigerators triggers a back spasm, and while this one is not as bad as some, it’s bad enough to keep me off the bike this afternoon.
I’m not in my basement room, with a needle and a spoon. But I did munch a little Advil to take my pain away.
