Author: docthink

no one of consequence

Just Dessert

Let me tell you what it’s like eating through a tube in your nose.

Wait. Backing up a minute.

As the surgeon was telling me about my upcoming procedure, he had my full attention until he got to the part where I would be eating through my nose for a few weeks.

My brain hit the brakes for a hard stop. The doctor said other stuff–I know because I saw his mouth moving–but I don’t remember anything else he said. (Fortunately the Spouse was there to collect the data I missed.) I was stuck on eating dinner through a tube in my nose.

Most interesting was the nonchalance of the surgeon. As if he was telling someone with a new cast to be sure to keep it dry in the shower. Or reminding you not to eat after 11 p.m. the day before the procedure. Or that you could be reimbursed for parking the day of surgery if you got your ticket from the garage stamped by someone at the information desk.

After the surgery, I woke up to hear the surgeon talking to Spouse, telling him that I would probably be out for a while and that I would likely be unable to speak for a few days. I asked why that was, and neither could hold their surprise. Spouse because I was awake, and Dr. that I spoke. Spouse expected the latter.

I had an IV for the morphine, antibiotics and whatever else they were giving me, so we weren’t using the tube right away. And then it was hooked to the IV stand. It would be 30 hours before my nurse briefed me on how to feed myself.

The tube was thinner than I expected and kept in place by two stitches on the side of my nose. It was in my left nostril, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. The big deal was ensuring that it went properly into my stomach. I guess the food passed wouldn’t do much good otherwise. Fortunately the surgeon took care of that. It had some length, almost like a long strand of hair weave. It was a hint of when I had long hair–or any hair. I could flip it over my shoulder. The tube, that is.

After I got unhooked from the autofeed, I needed my training. The nurse poured this thick muddy colored liquid into a plastic hospital measuring cup. She pulled out this massive (to me) syringe with a long nozzle that she dipped into the slurry and drew the plunger back to fill it. The syringe screwed into my tube and she slowly pushed the plunger in and the liquid was delivered into my stomach.

It didn’t taste like anything, since going through my nose it bypassed my tongue and tastebuds. It was room temperature, so I couldn’t feel in passing through. I bet if if was hot or cold the change in temperature would register through my throat or in my stomach. The only clue I was left with was the syringe emptying.

It was my turn. It took 3 or 4 syringe fulls to finish the bottle. It was weird, but I slowly emptied the measuring cup. After emptying the tube, I had to “drink” some water to flush it out. I also would use the syringe and tube to take my meds, but in the hospital I was still taking them by IV.

When I was released, I had my supply of Ensure, liquid tylenol and my hospital laboratory kit. I placed it all on this red square melamine holiday plate with a poinsettia design that I got from Target.

Three times a day I pulled the plate off of the server and onto the dining room table. I’d lay out my supplies and completely and absolutely feed myself and take my medicine.  And the surgeon was right. It wasn’t such a big deal. The weirdness wore off and the family began to take it in stride.

I even got outside and took a walk with my alien-like tube hanging off my face freaking out at least one neighbor who was too polite to ask what the hell was going on. He just stood there talking with us. It was kinda sweet because I really didn’t want to talk about it and he gave me a bye. I don’t care if it was a happy accident. I’m still grateful.

I am a super fast healer–no doubt abetted by my slavish adherence to all rules by my health care team. [Others in my life get no such obedience and at least one would like me to occasionally be more compliant.] I was able to go back to mouth feeding after eight days, and damn were those mashed potatoes good. As was the cottage cheese.

Thinking of this on the occasion of the two-year anniversary of my tube-feeding (I know, an odd celebration), my mind started playing Thru The Wire.

I drink a Boost for breakfast, an Ensure for dessert.
Somebody ordered pancakes, I just sip the sizzurp.
That right there could drive a sane man berserk.

I’m all better now. So I ate a steak.
<

Posted on by docthink 0

Tea Time

hydrangea. blue ones. from my yard.

I started writing a post this morning. It was shaping up well. I was working on descriptive writing.

I had an intellectually full day today and came home to warm up leftovers. I was planning on finishing that post.

I looked for tonite’s debate. And then I got a headache. It’s too hard to be creative. So this is all I’m writing today. This meta post about writing. Or more like about not writing. It is still a post. It still counts.

I’m going to have some chamomile tea. And an Advil.

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Fairy Tail

sleeping dog

The dog is such a princess.

An eighty-five pound, 38 inches tall, deer-legged, red, short-haired, long-eared princess.

The past few days have been exhausting in the “doing his business” category. He needs to find just the right spot.

The ground’s been covered in snow, outside of a path in the center of the sidewalk and the plowed strip in the street. Somehow he knows that under those twenty-three inches of snow is sidewalk and not grass. He is obviously very picky about going only on organic matter. He’s like the princess, and the pee.

Sorry, dad joke.

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Post 26-2016: Harry Potter Is Dead

Daniel Radcliffe playing ping pong and answering 73 questions

Okay, Harry Potter is not dead, especially in that is a fictional character. The actor that was Harry Potter, though, is a corpse in a new movie at Sundance.

There was some noise made about people walking out because of the noise made by the corpse, whom Daniel Radcliffe (nee Harry Potter) played, made.

So making a long story short (and I did not see the film but the Spouse did), the actor who many of us know as Harry Potter played a slightly animated dead man who performed as a jet ski propelled by his dead man farts and steered by his erection.

Yes. Just what I said.

I am so delighted that Mr. Radcliffe, formerly of Harry Potter fame, stretches his fans (and likely turns away fans) by playing difficult to understand roles. Frankly, he could just pull in the residuals from his childhood fame. He could do a reality TV show. He could go to Harry Potter conventions. But he does not.

Instead he is working on his craft. He is an actor. And he has said he has done poor work  And he challenged himself and audiences working totally exposed on stage.

Now, it seems, he is doing what he wants to do to be a better actor. I think all of us can learn from him–to not sit on your best early work but to challenge ourselves and make fools of ourselves and do good work and not such good work.

I like this reincarnated Harry Potter.

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"Reality" Show?

It’s not funny anymore.

It used to be very funny. But not anymore. Not to me, anyway.

Many (including the Doc) were anticipating a glorious return of Tina Fey as the garbled, grammar-impaired former governor of Alaska after Palin’s (at times incoherent) endorsement of a presidential candidate blew up the Internet with flurries of “no she didn’t,” and “what the hell did she say?” and a bunch of snark about her and her family’s fortunes.

And deliver Tina Fey did. Down to the Liberace Vegas cardigan, Tina Fey continues to do a spot-on Palin spoof.

Ha! Ha! How goofy is she. Ha! Ha! What a pair. Ha! Ha! Is this real? Ha! Ha! What are the voters thinking? Ha! Ha! What a joke this entire election process is.

But it’s not funny anymore.

It’s very very serious.  We are so busy having out-of-the-body-politics-experiences, mocking people–candidates and voters alike–we aren’t seeing that we risk the very existence of our democracy.

WHOA, you say. Aren’t you going a little overboard? Maybe this political season is pushing you too much to a docu-drama.

Hear me out.

It’s not like the right to vote is guaranteed. There are plenty of places where people can’t vote. Or places in which people vote in sham elections. Despite high voter-registration rates, too few people vote in U.S. elections. Too few people know how our government works, even folks purportedly defending it. Our 240 year grand experiment in democracy is not a sure thing. And the way our Constitution is structured, it’s up to us to make it so.

It’s not enough to be entertained by politics and our presidential process. That’s not participation, that’s observation. Take this seriously, learn about the issues and the candidates and vote.

Let’s use political satire as a motivation. Okay?

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Head to Head

helmet to helmet hit

Watching the AFC and NFC championship games and wondering, how much longer will we watch football?

Will a future civilized society look back at today’s Sundays (and Mondays and Thursdays) of watching super humans in pads and helmets running into each other, bones cracking, brains shaking inside skulls and shake their own heads at our barbarism?

Today I watched a receiver grab the football and bring it close to his body, tucking in and cradling it by bringing his head closer to his chest. As he contracted himself, a defender running at full speed–which is very fast in the NFL–hit him. The defender was trying to get to him before the ball, or even better, to hit him just as the ball came in and cause a drop.

As the receiver lowered his head, the defender crashed into him, helmet meeting helmet. Flags flew. The defender somehow had to be able to stop himself to avoid hitting on the defenseless receiver.

That is an important rule. A rule pushing even the most agile and aware athletes at the top of their ability. Then there’s the conflict between pulling up and doing your job. Can it be enforced? When it’s enforced it’s 15 yards and a first down.

The rules to protect the gladiators are important. They likely are making a difference. But as we watch this crazy game, I wonder how long until it just isn’t the same game. More pads, more rules, more whistles.

Moms and dads don’t want their kids to play anymore. Young, promising players are walking away. And the issue is increasingly, and finally, becoming an issue. I’ve known people who loved playing football. I’ve loved watching it. But as the athletes become bigger and faster and stronger, maybe the game has run it’s course.

But don’t worry more civilized people of the future. Football is nothing compared to brutality as entertainment of the UFC. Maybe that’s football with the pads off.

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Words Describe

shoveled walk with 2 feet of snow

The only thing that anyone is talking about today (and yesterday, and yesterday’s yesterday and, very likely, tomorrow and tomorrow’s tomorrow) is the snow.

There is a lot of it, to be sure.

It is a big event. Much discussion has been had about the naming of this event.

People were a little concerned about originality–we’ve had Snowmageddon in 2010,  and The Snowpocalypse in 2009. So you can’t go there. Some weather media conglomerate decided to make it a named storm, a la a hurricane. That didn’t catch on. [hmmm, nobody mentioned snowicane]. I’ve decided to use the Blizzard of 2016–kind of old skool.

Other words that we use to describe this snow include snow storm, blizzard, packing snow, powder, drifts, avalanche, moguls, glacier, flakes and flurries.

But people hunkered down since the snow started in earnest yesterday afternoon have many other words that they are using for it. Some of these names are not appropriate for your eyes, my Loyal Reader.

The words come out in inches and then feet. They speak of closings and delays. Words to describe back breaking shoveling and the schadenfreude of seeing the city plow itself stuck in the snow.

We have many words to share our experience, giving lie to the myth of the great Eskimo snow hoax. You know, when some amatuer linguist spawned

…the familiar claim about the wondrous richness of the Eskimo conceptual scheme: hundreds of words for different grades and types of snow, a lexicographical winter wonderland, the quintessential demonstration of how primitive minds categorize the world so differently from us. — Geoffrey Pullum, Professor of General Linguistics

See, it isn’t true that indigenous people of the north have hundreds of words to describe snow. Turns out that, in fact, people who speak English have the same or more words.

Dr. Pullum is quite critical of the full scale and uncritical adoption of this myth.

The prevalence of the great Eskimo snow hoax is testimony to falling standards in academia, but also to a wider tendency (particularly in the United States, I’m afraid) toward fundamentally anti-intellectual “gee-whiz” modes of discourse and increasing ignorance of scientific thought. 

How we describe things matter. Science matters. Critically and objectively looking at data matters. Making things up because they are more interesting or make you look better is fiction. Not truth. Okay Iowa?

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SnowThing 2016

19e0a-screen2bshot2b2016-01-212bat2b10-53-292bpm

Here’s my report.

Brought in the cushions and the umbrella. I don’t anticipate coffee on the back porch in the next few days.

Made chili. Took dog out for a walk at 1:30 pm with no sign of snow. Dog did his business and, while not “news,” it was an important happening. For those of you who care, he did country AND western.

Sheltered The Spouse’s rose experiment by taking the broken Ikea picnic bench and turning it upside down to tent the miracle propagation. Cleared the front porch and dumped the butts and hid the hidden pipe beneath the basket. Also, moved the shovels closer to the door. I read those Little House books. I know that a few feet can be insurmountable.

After 3 pm, did my duty and walked the streets. Snow falling. The sidewalks were starting to fill, except for the stretch from Miss Alice’s house and around the corner of the apartment building. Good that the apartment building people are paying homage to Alice. She rocks. Also, it behooves you to not mess with her.

Found myself around the block at my neighborhood watering hole. Partook of local beers and infused whiskey spiked hot cider. I did this to be neighborly. It seemed to be appreciated.

Left as the snow was increasing. Was accompanied by a steadfast young man from the pub who may have served my beverages. Came home to eat the chili noted earlier herein. Snow falling, still. Drinking hot tea. Inside. Maybe 2 1/2″ on the ground. Waiting for the thunder snow.

Believe we’ll be fine.

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Snow Drift

43ee4-img_4840

The snow. It’s coming. And it will cover us all with feet of whiteness.

Like my covers.

I don’t want to stir. When I move, I switch from warm to cold.

The Spouse is in the Wasatch Mountains and, I am sure, with his own snow issues. Me? I’m home. In that big bed. With the somewhat ugly sheets.

On top of those percales is a heavy woven cotton blanket. It’s a super neutral beige. If the somewhat ugly sheets were white, the contrast would be pretty. The sheets are somewhat ugly, though.

I used to have duvets to add color to the bedroom. A big bed is such a vista suck, so the topper makes the difference. The last duvet was a rust paisley print that lost it’s charm very quickly. The rust was oxidized–like it took the air out of the room.

Today’s duvet is a pure white with a white ric rac border. Very subtle, and very good with that beige. It’s odd–and awesome–that it makes that neutral cotton blanket a colorful contrast versus a background.

On the foot of the bed is a quilt that my mother-in-law stitched. It’s primary color is a dusty rose and it has some creamy white. It functions perfectly as a foot warmer on top of the comforting fluff of white duvet that hides the feather comforter that lays across the beige tightly knitted blanket on the somewhat ugly sheet.

The house is old and almost drafty. During storms I hear the winds ripping under the roof, making a noise that makes me dig deeper under my pile of linens. In the morning, I dig even deeper.

When it’s cold, the air in the bedroom is cold, too. Shielded by layers of covers, my body heat is cached and reflected back. I wake up underneath the pile of bedding. The tip of my nose is cold. I pull the sheets up and tuck my face in. I move my right hand to stretch, and I feel the cold mattress. I pull my hand back close to me, where it was before, where it warmed up that spot.

I wonder how long until the alarm rings. I don’t turn to see the clock. It would disturb the temperature balance. I slide down the pillow a little, burrowing deeper into the sheets. I open one eye and see that it’s still dark, but on it’s way to light. I pull my knees up, closer to my body. I tilt closer to deep breathing and try to push my creeping to-do list out of my head.

Posted on by docthink 2

Insanity Switch

Insane button on a TeslaS

The big guy bought one of those Powerball tickets last week. The one with the guaranteed $1.2 billion that someone might win.

Him: When I win I’m going to buy you that Tesla.
Me: That would be GREAT! The one with the Insane button?

He stopped. He looked at me and slowly shook his head side to side.

Him: No. There is nothing about that that is a good idea.
Me: What? I drive good.

Today, during lunch, I stopped by the Tesla dealership. They don’t have the coupe anymore, just the four-door. I hate sedans.

A reporter from Bloomberg walked in and asked me if the falling stock market influenced my decision on buying the car.

I told her, “No.” Then I gave her a fake name for her story.

Insane.

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