Bill's Views on Most Everything

Recently I wrote about a family member who was diagnosed with stage four cancer.  After two surgeries, chemotherapy, and some, ahem, alternative treatment, she is apparently cancer free.  The most recent surgery involved removing a large number of mucinous tumors from her abdomen.  After examining about forty tumors by the pathologists, they found no cancer. 

What went on?  This process started several years ago when she had her gallbladder out.  As they lifted it out, it ruptured and bile sprayed throughout her abdomen.  Our bodies protect themselves from nasty stuff like bile by producing mucus. Mucus protects the cell walls from digestive fluids like bile, whose purpose is breaking cell walls down.  My guess is that her body created new mucus producing cells to protect tissues from bile. Those were the mucinous tumors.  The initial surgeons ruled the tumors cancerous, this latest surgery, non-cancerous.   

What changed?  Did the initial surgery, chemo, and the alternative stuff do the job along with her own immune system?  Was the initial diagnosis wrong and she did not have stage four cancer?  Stage four cancer is bad news.  Some people survive, but the prognosis is usually grave.  Is cancer still lurking somewhere?  Should she stay scared?   

What a bizarre situation.  My experiences with the health care system have been mostly positive.  It has not been fun, but I am alive and most everything still works.  Without modern medicine I would be dead.  Did modern medicine save my relative’s life or is the whole ordeal just a succession of errors?  We will know more in a few months when she goes back for more imaging.  Will it be inconclusive and they will have to get core samples of tissue to test?  What is sure is the fear and suspense is not over.   

The scary thing for me with the health care system is the loss of control.  I like to think of myself as having some degree of control of my life.  I have watched parents, in-laws, friends, and now my relative fall into the medical abyss.  Doctors, hospitals, health care professionals, drug companies, insurance companies, and others we are not aware of make their money.  We endure pain, suspense, uncertainty, and loss.  The system continues to grow.   

John Maynard Keynes said that economic growth can happen simply by digging holes and filling them in.  People get paid, money gets spent, the hole digging industry grows, and everybody is happy.  It sometimes seems to me that the health care system is much the same.  Right now the health care holes being dug are patient portals.  The intent is to give patients access to their medical records and facilitate the exchange of information between medical entities.  The VA does it (sort of) Kaiser does it if you can work the system, so now everyone is trying it.  

The result? Missing records, inability to access records, many hours consumed inputting data, and careers for a new generation of IT people writing software and trying to fix the software.  What will it be like if a giant magnetic pulse from the sun converts all those zeros and ones documenting our lives turn into nothing?  Maybe we will be back to pen, ink, and the abacus.

I have fallen four times, fallen off the ladder twice, and bounced down the stairs twice in less than a year.  OK, so I am 73 years old, left-handed, have ADD, and balance problems.  This still should not be happening.  I still think of myself as younger than 73, even though the DOF in the name of this site stands for Doddering Old Fart.

After our snowstorm I was out shoveling (I can still do that), came into the house in my wet boots, headed downstairs, and slipped on a stair.  I bounced down about four steps thinking this should not be happening.  I bruised my thigh and reinjured the ribs I broke last summer falling down the stairs.

The first night was rough, I couldn’t find a position that didn’t hurt.  Now I am sleeping OK and am almost fully mobile, just sore.  This has to stop.  After the four falls I got a referral to physical therapy.  That PT has made a big difference.  It seems that as we age, we rely more on vision for balance than the proprioceptors in our feet and the inner ear for balance.  That is not enough.

I had a top notch PT.  I did a lot of exercises to improve my balance that actually worked.  There is a remaining problem.  I have a significant hearing loss and wear hearing aids.  I also have constant tinnitus.  It seems that the Army likes to make loud noises.  Often when noises damage the auditory nerve the vestibular nerve sending information from the semi-circular canals is also damaged.  My balance is weak in the dark, especially when turning.  I have an appointment with the ENT clinic at the VA to see if anything can be done.

This balance thing goes way back, probably because of the inner ear problem.  I have always fallen more than most people, but I always attributed it to general clumsiness and ADD.  I am somewhat skilled at falling because I do it so often, but the last year has not gone well.

I managed to avoid injury with the falls and the two events with the stepladder, but no luck with the stairs.  The first time I was going down in the dark and missed the bottom step.  I did my tuck and roll, but the stool was in the way.  I broke two ribs in my back.  OW OW OW.  Don’t break ribs.  It took about two months to heal.  We now have two motion activated lights in the stairwell.

The fall the other day was entirely my fault.  My boots were wet and my mind was elsewhere.  I slipped on the front of the stair tread and went down.  Bouncing down stairs is no fun.  My thigh Is doing well, but those same ribs hurt.  So what is going on?

Some of it is the aging process, and my refusal to acknowledge I am not the young whippersnapper I used to be.  I am now restricted to the bottom two steps on the ladder.  Some of it is obviously balance related.  Some of it is my distractibility and inattention.

I think the real meaning goes deeper.  Carol and I are in to Jungian Psychology, which pays a lot of attention to dream images and symbols to examine the unconscious part of the psyche.  When a series of waking events occurs, our question is, ” If this was a dream, what would it mean?”.  The Universe is trying to tell me something, and I am not paying attention.

When I don’t pay attention, things tend to escalate until I get the message.  This happens to a lot of people.  It sometimes takes a life-changing event before we pay attention.  I am paying attention, but I am not sure of all the meaning.  Part of it is Slow Down, Dude!  Part of it is to stop trying to do it all, despite the risk.  I am not very good at doing it all, and we can afford to have someone else do it.

There is a spiritual meaning here, and I am not clear what it is.  I think some of it is to write more than three hours per week and spend less time looking at junk on the iPad.  I also need to do more spiritual work.  I have a block in this area, with times that are spiritual and other times, like now, when all I can do is pray and try to meditate.  I get too distracted in meditation.  I keep forgetting to go to my Sunday evening meeting.  I do not get out in nature enough.  Is there more?  I’ll tell you when I know.

Here in the big, rich USA we are slaves to the automobile.  Cars give us the illusion of freedom.  We can go where we want to, when we want to, without asking anyone but the banker.  You pay for the privilege.  In New York, cars are too expensive, so people use mass transit.  It works well in New York, Boston, and Chicago. Other cities have transit systems, but they are not as comprehensive as the big three.  A person can get around, but it is not very easy.  Here in Denver it is getting better, but still a hassle.  We are waiting for the rail line to open to DIA.  Our light rail station is just a few blocks away. 

What if you live in Denver and want to go to Dinosaur?  Live in Fruita and want to go to Grand Junction?  It means riding in cars.  There used to be more public transit systems in our country.  General Motors bought many of them and shut them down.  The financial and environmental impact threatens to overwhelm the planet.  What logic is there for millions of people to get into. Three thousand pound car with a life of about fifteen years to drive to work alone on streets clogged with hordes of other cars.  The whole thing must change. 

In the meantime, I am like most people in rich nations.  I love cars.  We are a two person household with three cars.  One of them, a BMW with rear wheel drive is currently sitting in the garage because it is helpless in snow.  In addition, if Carol rides in it for any distance the sexy leather covered seat with seven means of adjustment throws her back out and I am doing massage on her for weeks.  What are we?  Crazy?  You bet.  

That stupid car is the coolest car I have ever driven.  Driving it almost makes up for not having a motorcycle.  It is fantastic in the mountains.  It’s fast, handles like a Formula One car, and growls.  It is even fun going from one red light to another at 10 mph on Colorado Boulevard, Denver’s busiest street.   

My main ride is a four wheel drive Toyota pickup.  I can go four wheeling and camping in it.  It takes me to Lowe’s to get the stuff to replace the stuff I tore up or wore out.  It is reliable, gets decent mileage, takes me most anywhere I want to go in the back country and has a seat one step removed from a church pew bench.  A fella needs a truck.  Carol’s car is a Toyota Matrix.  Cheap to buy, plenty of room for big people, cheap to run, and doesn’t need fixing.  Why can’t Chevrolet do that? 

Cars became important to me at an early age.  We had a 1939 Chevy I loved.  I fell off the back and gashed my leg from my crotch to my knee on the license plate.  I still liked it.  Then, disaster.  My father started buying  Nashes.  The horror.  The first one was a bathtub Nash, named for its shape.  Ugly, slow, outdated, and a laughing stock.  He didn’t learn.  The next one was just as ugly and stupid.  My dad liked the salesman.  He then went to Ramblers, still awful but a little better.  Why not a Chevrolet?  One of the prettiest girls in school rode in a yellow and black 1957 Chevy that made my knees shake.   

One of the reasons I turned out the way I have is because I had to ride in Nashes.  I even had to take girls on dates in a Nash. I didn’t date much.  The only thing that salvaged my childhood was the 1953 Chevrolet pickup dad bought for hunting and fishing trips.  In those days it was only two wheel drive, because 4×4’s were scarce.  It was short, narrow, and with some rocks in the back, it would chug along into places that were supposed to be for Jeeps only.  I learned to drive in it, and drove around town for more than a year before I had a driver’s license.   

Later on when I had my own cars, Dad had a succession of International Scouts (same salesman) and Jeeps he used to explore the Colorado Mountains.  By the time he died, he had been over almost every mountain pass in the state.  He especially loved the San Juans and the Utah red rock country. 

My cars?  The first one was a 1957 Ford that wasn’t very cool, but got me around just fine.  And, it was not a Nash.  When in the Army in Germany I bought a new Volkswagen.  $1389 in 1963.  I paid for it with a paper bag of 20 Mark bills, the largest denomination American Express had.  They were the equivalent of a five dollar bill.  I brought it home and drove it all over.  Boy, it was cold in the winter. 

I then went through a sports car phase.  Everyone I knew was into hot rods, so of course I had to have sports cars.  The first one was an MG.  Fun, but completely unreliable, made when the British car industry was in decline.  The next one was a Sunbeam Tiger, another Brit, but with an American Ford V8 under the hood.  That one was really fun and fast.  I almost killed myself in Poudre Canyon rolling it.  Drunk. 

Back to a Volkswagen.  Cool, but slow enough to lower the risk of killing myself.  It was still too cold in winter.  From then, it was a motley assortment of pickups.  Nissan, Dodge, Toyota, both two wheel and four wheel drive.  I prefer smaller trucks, going back to my sports car phase.  My current Toyota is a midsize and too big.  I have always wanted a Jeep, but you can’t haul stuff in them and they break.  Toyotas just keep running.   

The problem is what to do with that BMW.  I feel like I am hot shit driving it.  No Mercedes, Audi, or Japanese sports sedan has anywhere the panache of a BMW.  Also Bavaria is my favorite German state.  BMW does make all wheel drive cars and Carol’s car is getting old.  Would a newer BMW not kill her back?  Do we need to be that cool?  The things are expensive.  They are not as reliable.  Parts cost a fortune.  But, “Bayern Uber Alles”.  We’ll see.