Country Joe: Forget the F. Gimme a N-U-R-S-E!

Thank the nurse that’s nursing you

For saving your life.

For saving your life.

For saving your life.

That’s the end of “Thank the Nurse,” a song by Country Joe McDonald.

Yes, that Country Joe. “Give me an F.” That’s him. He was a hit at the original Woodstock, which, apparently, millions attended, and of the film that followed, which millions saw. Joe supported nurses but especially those who served in war zones, especially Vietnam. He was considered an expert on Florence Nightingale whom he also sang about.

He died on March 7 at his home in Berkeley, Calif. He was 84.

He was reaching retirement age when he toured Wyoming in June 2002 with poet and Musician M.L. Liebler of Detroit. They met in 1997 when M.L. was teaching poetry to Vietnam vets through the Detroit Y Writer’s Voice Project. The two were touring the country promoting their CD "Crossing Borders" that combines music and poetry. They performed in a Cheyenne park and dropped in on the “Smokin’ Poets” reading at Zen’s Bistro in Cheyenne.

"This place has a nice vibe to it,” Joe told a reporter from the Cheyenne paper. “The people who come here are intelligent, sophisticated and not yuppie."

At a later reception, Joe was OK with revisiting Woodstock but really lit up when talking about nurses. He knew a lot and I told him about my grandmother, an army nurse in France during World War 1. At that time, I was only thinking about writing about her experiences. And now I have done it.

Listen to “Thank the Nurse” on Spotify or over at YouTube. I’d provide links but links don’t last. But Joe’s F-I-S-H Cheer lives on. So does this:

When the orderly is sleeping

and the physician can’t be found

no need for apprehension

the nurse is making rounds.

Thank the nurse that’s nursing you

The one that nursed you through

A good time to ponder "The Adventures of a Bad Catholic at a Time Near the End of the World"

I am rereading "Love in the Ruins or The Adventures of a Bad Catholic at a Time Near the End of the World" by Walker Percy. He will always be a favorite of mine for his mournful yet witty 1961 novel of depression "The Moviegoer," winner of the National Book Award and considered a classic. It's well known that Percy assisted John Kennedy Toole's mother get "A Confederacy of Dunces" published. Toole left the manuscript behind when he committed suicide. Percy had many suicides in his family: his  grandfather, father, and (probably) mother. As a teen, he and his two brothers were taken in by his uncle, a poet in Mississippi. The die was cast.

"Love in the Ruins" is set in a future Paradise, Louisiana. Percy, a trained physician and one-time mental patient, spent much of his life in New Orleans, the setting of many of his novels. 

Love in the Ruins" (Open Road Media 2011 version on Kindle) was introduced to me via a reading list for a contemporary literature class taught by Phil Drimmel at Daytona Beach Community College in 1973-74 At the time, I was returning to college after two years as a college dropout and survivor of the 1969 Selective Service Draft Lottery (#128). A 1969 high school grad, I had failures  behind me as a biology major and as a Navy midshipman. I traveled some and lived in an educated northern city where I thought I might be a nursing student like my girlfriend but decided to break with the girlfriend and return to Florida and pursue the lucrative career as a fiction writer. The joke was on me, of course, but along the way I read plenty of good books. 

Percy's dark humor was a good match for the time as I also was entranced with the books of Vonnegut, Heller, and Kesey. I read Rolling Stone mainly for its gonzo journalism and National Lampoon for its wicked humor. And, like Percy's character, I was also a bad Catholic, renouncing the title of Mr. Catholic conferred on me by the Knights of Columbus in Daytona Beach at our Catholic high school graduation awards ceremony. A 50-dollar U.S. Savings Bond came with it, a little something to help with my education or writing career or maybe even some bad choices.

"Love in the Ruins" 1973 was a different read that "Love in the Ruins" 2025. I didn't really get it when I was 22. I liked the satire of this imagined future and psychiatrist Dr. Tom More's journey. I was entranced by his Qualitative Quantitative Ontological Lapsometer which reads the state of a person's soul and later is fine-tuned to read a person's mental imbalances. I was a bit creeped out by More's middle-ager's sex drive, my prudish Mr. Catholic eclipsing my own yearning for community college women. 

So I didn't get it all then. But now, I decided to pay attention to "another person's voice." That's what Borges told his students when they asked why they should read the books of others. 

This Bad Catholic is still reading this 1971 novel about an imagined Bad Catholic. I've been thinking a lot about this subject especially since Pope Francis's death. Just what is a Bad Catholic these days? Is it someone who religiously obeys every tenet of Catholic doctrine? Or all those questioners like Tom More, all those I knew from the 10:30 Catholic Community in Denver. Dutiful questioners all. 

Percy needs my attention, especially now. I am a bad Catholic living near the end of the world. A pope with the heart of St. Francis has died. The Antichrist is in the White House. Books from my past speak to me.

The book's July 3 section recounts a day in The Pit, the slang for the hospital's weekly Q&A among physicians and students. Dr. More speaks of his lapsometer. Meanwhile, a rival has arrived and hands out copies of the doctor's new lapsometer which disturbs its creator. 

As Dr. More says: "This device is not a toy. It could produce the most serious psychic disturbances... If it were focused over certain frontal areas or region of the pineal body, which is the seat of selfhood, it could lead to severe Angelism, an abstraction of the self from itself, and what I call the Lucifer Syndrome: that is, envy of the incarnate condition and a resulting caricature of the bodily appetites."

All hell breaks loose in The Pit. Male and female students glom on to each other. A professor admires the beauty in a male student's face. Fistfights break out. 

Human appetites are unleashed with the predictable results. As one of the doctors tells More: "Your device has triggered a mass hysteria. Like the St. Vitus's Dance in the Middle Ages. These are strange times." 

Indeed. Maybe it takes a Bad Catholic to write about strange times.

I am at the 71% mark on Kindle. I will finish this book. 

Did I really need that ambulance on the September night in question?

Most Americans, it seems, have been following the hunt for the murderer of United Healthcare exec Brian Thompson. But it’s not the manhunt that has received most of the attention. Instead, it’s the deeply flawed American healthcare system which, to most people, represents the American Healthcare Denial System beholden to Wall Street. Valid medical claims are turned down because they hurt Healthcare United’s bottom line. I shall throw my insurer in there, too, as my family has been denied payment by CIGNA for medical claims. Much of that is related to mental healthcare for my children. I could write a book on our experiences with various insurers as we worked to save our children. I will not write a book -- what’s the point? Inequalities of our system have been going on for decades and will continue.

My experiences with my healthcare claims and those of my wife have been great. Heart attacks, it seems, ring a bell with insurers. Near-death experiences with septicemia also resonate in the corridors of both CIGNA and Medicare. Those were claims made by me, the Widowmaker in 2014 and the septicemia in 2024. Seems as if I have a major malfunction every ten years.

The latest issue took me by surprise. I got a bill from Volusia County Emergency Medical Services for an ambulance transport to Advent Health Hospital in Daytona. They write that Medicare has turned me down for the $894.80 ride and said it was a “ ‘non-covered service’ because it does not meet Medicare’s medical necessity requirements.”

This seems quite odd to me as Medicare has partially covered at least one ambulance ride. In January in Cheyenne, Wyoming, I caught Covid and one cold January night I couldn’t breathe from the congestion and an ambulance took me to the local hospital where they got me breathing again and sent me home five hours later. That met Medicare’s medical necessity requirements.

At the ER on the night of Sept. 9, the Code Blue team was called out as my heart stopped twice  after I had two seizures. Chris said it was quite a sight to see as medical personnel rushed into the room and saved me. My vitals were wacko (medical term) and staff guessed I had a massive infection of some kind and they placed me in a coma for four days.

Pause here to let readers know that my dear wife took a photo of the comatose me and I will share it if you ask nicely and agree to publish my next novel. 

When I came to in ICU, I didn’t know where I was and what had happened. To read the full experience, go to my previous posts here and here. Turns out I had septicemia from an unknown source and it blasted my bodily functions such as walking and talking, eating and defecating. I was moved from ICU to a medical floor and then the twelfth floor which Advent devotes to physical therapy for stroke victims, the partially paralyzed, and mystery cases like me. I made enough progress by Oct. 4 that Advent released me back into the Florida Wilds and that’s where I’ve been ever since.

I am a lucky man. I am blessed more than I should be blessed. There is one thing I will not be and that is almost $900 poorer because I didn’t meet Medicare’s requirements for sick people. Twenty-five days in the hospital? A quick survey of my hospital history: I spent five days after my heart attack, three days after knee-replacement surgery, and two days following a spinal fusion. I am so glad I wasn’t sick enough in September and decided to take an Advent Health cruise.

Volusia County Emergency Medical Services sent me a list of items I must file for an appeal. They include all of my medical records from the hospital (“you may be required to pay a fee") and “a letter from any physicians you may have followed up with in regards to your ambulance transport.” I can see how daunting this might be for someone, possibly a retired someone recovering at home from a near-death experience.

There is some irony here. It wasn’t the bad guys at CIGNA that turned me down. That mega-insurer is my secondary and they haven’t had a crack at me yet. I pay too much of my pension for that coverage. I also paid for Medicare which is a government program. I should be railing against the stinkin’ gubment, right. Old Joe Biden let me down.

But during my recovery, I’ve noticed that Medicare is concerned about higher costs and wants all of us to use its new reporting system. This addresses higher costs and the millions, maybe billions, of fraud claims by people who should be strung up on the highest yardarm (archaic Navy term). One of the highest costs for patients and Medicare is the abuse/overuse of ambulance services.

Trump’s Project 2025 may be behind Medicare’s new cost-saving initiative. But wait – Trump is busy enlisting nincompoops to head government agencies and getting his ass kissed at Paris’s Notre Dame Cathedral and hasn’t yet assumed the mantles of power.

The only thing left to blame is the USA’s antiquated and rapacious healthcare system. The death of a healthcare executive is a tragedy. And it is tragic that some find humor in it.

Delighting in the suffering of others is a MAGA trait, is it not? What in the hell are we doing?

We Young, at Hospital

We young orderlies, CNAs, techs, nurses fresh from graduation. Voices blared from loudspeakers: code blue ortho, code red ER, code pink nursery. We razzed each other, lunched on cafeteria burgers, one fragment of attention listening for our color, our next emergency. The call came. Chairs abandoned, lunches half-eaten. We reveled in the action. Legs flexed in sprint, adrenaline pumped. We ran the corridors, took the steps two at a time, spurned the vators those were for old people like the ones in trauma. We aged as we ran, furrows formed on faces, arms and legs, brains. By the time we reached the coded sites, we were the elders in crisis who needed rescue by the summoned helpers, who ran to us, strangers who helped strangers. They ran, abandoned lunches, wondered will I ever stop running?  It awaits you around the next corner.

Even cyborgs need periodic battery replacements

I’ve been recovering from heart surgery since Feb. 16. It was Valentine’s Day Week and it seemed like a good time for it. Heart surgery has an ominous sound. Thoughts go to quadruple bypasses and aortic valve replacement. I just needed a replacement generator in my chest to stop any signs of ventricular fibrillation which can lead to death. The gadget is filled with microchips and wires that connect to leads that snake down into my heart. I got my first one ten years ago after a widowmaker heart attack that almost did me in. Because it took too long to get help for my stopped-up heart, it sustained some muscle damage which in turn made my heart less effective. Up until January 2013, my heart had been very good to me. In high school, it pumped like a champ as I ran down the basketball court or when a girl looked at me in a certain way. Got me through my adult years until I hit 62 then BAM! Damn…

So the first one wore out and I needed a new one. I am on Medicare and have secondary insurance that pay for the $23,000 gizmo and attendant expenses such as doctor’s fees, OR fees, nursing services, etc. I am lucky to have health care insurance that keeps me ticking. Health insurance is a right and should not be optional. I see that our esteemed GOP state legislators have once again torpedoed Medicaid expansion that would insure thousands of Wyomingites. A widowmaker strikes and you need help? Tough luck, buddy. For the GOP it’s all about the cruelty. They didn’t used to announce their cruelties for all the world to see and hear. Now they shout it from the rooftops.

Back to my trip to the operating room. It’s called the CRMC Cath Lab and it’s where the electrophysiologists work their magic. I was under conscious sedation, like the kind you get for your colonoscopy. In this case, the surgeon applied a topical anesthesia and then pumped me with Fentanyl but not too much. He then cut into my chest, removed the old battery and in with the new. Then he sealed me back up. Before you know what’s going on, I'm being whisked off to recovery.

So how does my electrophysiologist keep track of the signals beamed from my Abbott Laboratories ICD? I used to have a Merlin Home Transmitter the size of the big black phones you used to see in 1940s movies. It sat by the side of my bed and beamed my readings to the CRMC Device Clinic. My new monitor is a Samsung device, smaller than a smart phone, that I can take anywhere. Pretty slick.

My new machine should last 5-7 years, according to the pamphlet that accompanied it. I plan on lasting at least that long. Seven days post-op and I’m doing fine.

Thank you, modern technology and surgical expertise. 

Two years ago I reviewed a nonfiction book about ICDs on WyoFile. It's "Lightning Flowers" and written by Wyoming author Katherine E. Standefer. She needed a device while still in her 20s and then set out to find the its origins. A great tale, whether you're a cyborg or not. 

Night of the Widowmaker, ten years on

Ten years ago on these pages, I regaled my readers with stories of my heart attack. It was an exciting misadventure. Nobody in my family had heart issues and neither did I. I was struck down in the middle of a working day. The scientific name for my affliction is anterior ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction or STEMI. It’s commonly known as “The Widowmaker.”

I didn’t hear the term from a cardiologist until I was recovering in my hospital room. Such finality. It seemed so 19th century. "Night of the Widowmaker" could easily be the title of a thriller novel. Its shock value was too tempting for a storyteller to ignore. I used it hundreds of times in place of heart attack. When I took the time to describe it in detail, tossing in an encyclopedia of medical terms, I could see my listener’s attention begin to wane. Simply described, the left anterior descending (LAD) artery gets blocked by a clot or plaque and the heart reacts.

The signs are there should you pay attention. Chest pain, shortness of breath, excessive sweating, jaw pain. Mine was a belly ache. Since it happened during norovirus season, I figured I was getting ready to blow chunks and/or get the runs. I got neither. It was Dec, 17, 2012, and the eve of my birthday number 62. I might have to lay off the cake and ice cream. I was off work for two weeks so I could lie around and see what happened. After a week, I went to my GP and he thought I might have pneumonia so sent me for an X-ray. He had a perfectly good EKG machine out in the hall but that never entered into the conversation. The X-ray showed congestion and the doc prescribed an antibiotic and bed rest.

On Jan. 2, I headed to work but only made it as far as my front door. I couldn’t open it. I called my wife. She decided to come home and take me to the ER. When she arrived, she saw I was in pain so called 911. The EMTs got there quick, took my vitals, and said I was having heart failure. They bundled me onto a gurney and sped, sirens blaring, to the hospital. Tests and X-rays showed the heart attack and also congestive heart failure. Dr. Khan wanted to get me to surgery right away but held off because I couldn’t breathe. So he stashed me on the telemetry floor and prescribed Lasik to rid my body of fluids. The next day, I had an oblation which opened the LAD and I began to recover.

Then I started telling my story. My heart, left to its own devices for two weeks, lost some of its pumping power. They filled me full of drugs, sent me home with orders for several rounds of cardiotherapy. Six months later, I got the bad news that my heart had only partially recovered and that I was a prime candidate for Catastrophic heart failure. To avoid further drama, I needed an Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillator or ICD. So I got one. Its battery eventually ran down, so this last Thursday, I got a new one.

The ICD lasts from 7-10 years. I pushed mine to the end so Medicare and my insurance company would agree to foot the bill. Medicare reimbursement for an ICD is 23 thousand and change. That doesn’t include hospital and physician and other associated fees. That will quickly eat up my deductible so my out-of-pocket costs will be manageable.

Someone with a heart condition shouldn’t have to worry about affordability. Someone with breast cancer – my wife – shouldn’t have to worry about treatment costs. My son and daughter, both with mental health and medical needs, shouldn’t have to up their angst to find affordable treatments. Alas, that’s where we are in 2023 in the United States of America.

Next time, I'll explore the status of my heart ten years on.

For some of my ruminations on the widowmaker, put "heart" in the blog's search bar.

When your hope shrinks, do a small thing to let the sunshine in

I tried to write a piece about the massacre of 10 innocents at the King Soopers in Boulder. Few subjects make me speechless but mass shootings are one of them. Archivists in 2121 may come across articles about massacres of civilians in the U.S. and thank their lucky stars that sensible gun laws finally were enacted in 20__ and that we would never see headlines like this again. That's as hopeful as I can be, that someday the U.S. will lose its cruel streak and the NRA will be bankrupt and all of our gun nuts will die from natural causes. There's hope in that. I liked these lines from a Naomi Shihab Nye poem I came across on the Poetry Foundation web site: 

When your hope shrinks 

you might feel the hope of 

someone far away lifting you up.

I'll write about the hope of small things. 

I bought a small grow-kit from Amazon. Nothing fancy. Just a metal tray, soil, and three seed packets. The chives and Florence fennel sprouted and are on their way to summer salads and desserts. I stuck some basil seeds in with my pot of Thai basil and still waiting for those. I planted chive seeds from hometownseeds.com but got nothing. I’m going to plant again today in a new pot and see if they do better. I like chives and you can put it in all sorts of dishes. But I can’t get it to grow. Best thing to do is buy some chives that already are far along and try not to kill them.

My herbs have taken over the end of the dining room table up against a south-facing kitchen window. The table is Formica laminate and is a remnant of 1950s kitchens. It’s in the mid-century modern (Mid-Mod) school of furniture. We had tables just like it when I was growing up. A perfect match for mac and cheese and meatloaf. I look at the table and see my mother and all of the many Susie Homemaker mothers of the era. My mom also was Anna the Nurse and knew when and when not to patch up our many wounds. When I was 7, our exchanges went something like this:

Me: Mom, I’m hurt! 

Mom: Are you bleeding?

Me: No but… 

Mom (kisses my head): Go outside and play – you’ll be all right.

Sometimes I was bleeding. She applied Mercurochrome to the wound and sent me outside to play. Writing about “Mercurochrome Memories” in ScienceBlogs, dblum writes that the bright-red antiseptic is a mercury derivative of a red dye discovered in 1889. The antiseptic version was developed 20 years later by researchers at Johns Hopkins, source of many of our magic potions and miracle meds. The FDA declared mercury a neurotoxin and it’s no longer made in the U.S. But never fear:

Science tells us that if once you were painted with Mercurochrome, your body has probably stored at least a trace for you. Nothing apparently too dangerous, just a reminder of your chemical past.

My chemical past. As a Downwinder from Colorado and Washington state, I already have some bomb-blast radiation in my body. And traces of lead paint – can’t forget that. I also have mercury in my dental fillings. And then there’s DDT. Damn, if I had known all this, I wouldn’t have lived to be 70 and (I hope) much longer.

I gave up ground gardening a few years ago when a spinal injury prevented bending and stooping. I grow my veggies in containers now. I’ve been successful although gardening at 6,200 feet in a semi-arid region continues to be a work in progress. My seedlings don’t go outside until mid-May. Most insects aren’t a problem but hail and wind and drought are. I keep growing things because it brings joy and I like the challenge of the cherry tomato harvest in August. You can get good ones at the store or farmer’s market. But I like to pick and eat them when they are still warm from the sun. It’s like eating sunshine. We all could use more of the simple act of nurturing a small thing to "let the sunshine in..."

Snowbound and Covidbound all in the same week

We received 31 or 36 inches of snow in our weekend blizzard, depending on who's doing the reporting. Anything more than 30 inches is a lot so I won't quibble. What I can say is that I haven't been out of my house since last Friday when I ran a couple of errands on a cloudy day with all the weatherpeople saying that you bastards are really in for it with this Snowmageddon. Pshaw, said I. But they were right. 

Our governor announced on March 12 that most Covid restrictions will expire on March 16. On that day, residents from Cheyenne to Casper were practicing weather-enforced social distancing. Cheyenne doctors and nurses were shuttled to work on a snowmobile belonging to a 17-year-old high school student. You can still get around our neighborhood on snowmobile.

By the time the snow abated on Monday, I could not open our front door. Snow on the porch was piled at least two feet of hard-packed snow. A winter snow is usually what they call "champagne powder" at Jackson Hole Ski Resort. It's light and airy enough to blow into a ground blizzard when the wind blows. When stacked up, it's great to ski in. You can glide and carve into it, blowing up white clouds as you make your way downhill. 

Snowmageddon snow is like concrete. I say "is" because it's almost a week later and our neighborhood is a snowscape. A plow made its first appearance yesterday afternoon. It made one pass down the street and then was gone. It created a path wide enough for one vehicle flanked by four-foot walls of snow. The mounds block our driveways so we're still stuck. Not sure what comes next. Melting is going to take a long time. Our food is running out. We are going stir crazy. 

In days gone by, I would have been out there with the shovel as I was in so many other storms. After the Christmas Eve Blizzard of 1982 in Denver, I was outside with my shovel on Christmas Day, shoveling my walks and those of my neighbors in City Park South. Chris and I lived on the top floor of a 100-year-old two-story house. We shared it with a lesbian couple who were our son's first babysitters three years later. We sometimes barbecued together on the tiny front porch. I never knew our neighbors in the basement apartment. 

Our landlord was the one-man Danish counsel for Colorado who owned a tie store downtown. His lavish City Park home had a security gate and was surrounded with cameras just in case the Swedes decided to invade. We sometimes drove over to pay our rent just to see how the other half lived. We wondered how working for Denmark in a remote outpost and selling ties led to such opulence. We imagined that a tie shop on a side street might be a perfect cover for a drug dealer or arms smuggler. We wondered what they made in Denmark that might find a black market in Denver. Cheese danishes? Fjord photos? Reindeer antlers? We didn't know much about Denmark.

So here it is Thursday and maybe I will get out of my driveway and maybe I won't. I haven't shoveled snow since my heart attack in 2013. I rely on a walker (a.k.a. personal mobility device) now. It's possible there exists a walker equipped with a snow blower but I haven't yet looked that up on Amazon. Even if I get in my car and get out of my driveway, I'm not sure about the condition in the rest of my neighborhood. I'm really stuck if I get stuck. 

Our neighbor Mike sent over a couple of teens to clear our walks. They did a good job and we paid them $20. We wanted to make way for the mail delivery person but we haven't got any mail since Saturday. I've been missing those fliers for vinyl windows and life insurance. I might have received a St. Patrick's Day card or two but won't find out for a couple more days. Over the years, I have seen USPS vehicles chained up and struggling through the snow. But chains won't help them get through big drifts of concrete snow.

Daughter Annie has been staying with us during spring break. She has many assignments due next week so we don't see much of her. She ordered a grocery delivery yesterday but didn't tell us. The Instacart person drove up in a massive SUV. She dropped off three 12-packs of Diet Pepsi and packages of toilet paper and paper towels. For edibles, she delivered a family pack of Chips Ahoy cookies, a bag of Cadbury mini-eggs, and a carton of eggs. We quizzed Annie about why she had paid a person to collect Cadbury mini-eggs and Diet Pepsi and drive these crucial, life-giving items through snow clogged streets to our house. We wondered why she hadn't asked us if we needed anything from the store such as bread or peanut butter or soup or spaghetti. You know, necessities for the snowbound.

We're still waiting for an answer.

What does it cost to save a life?

I am pleased that WyoFile published my review of Katherine Standefer's nonfiction book, "Lightning Flowers: My Journey to Uncover the Cost of Saving a Life." In it, the author recounts her diagnosis of Long QT Cardiac Syndrome and how the cure can sometimes be as daunting as the ailment.

Standefer walks Planet Earth with an implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD). It's a high-tech device about the size of a Zippo lighter (remember those?) that surgeons implant in a cardiac patient's chest. If that person's heart experiences irregular rhythms or stops, it shocks it back to life. As one research center noted: "It is like having paramedics with you at all times." 

Tiny paramedics.

Standefer playfully calls this intricate medical device her "titanium can." When we met online in November, she said, "Welcome, Cyborg." 

Surgeons installed my ICD in July 2013 when I was 62. Read my blogs about it here and here. 

Standefer is at least a generation younger than me. However, her cardiac problem is genetic and is a killer. 

In 2009, she was a 24-year-old college grad living in Jackson. She busily balanced outdoor jaunts, a budding relationship, several jobs, and performing in a local band. In what Standefer calls "the last morning of my first life," she passed out in a parking lot and was rushed to the hospital. After tests, a cardiologist said she had Long QT Syndrome and needed a defibrillator implant. If she didn't get one, she was vulnerable to Sudden Cardiac Death which is as final as it sounds. Problem is, she had no catastrophic health insurance for a procedure that could cost as much as $200,000.

This is when Standefer's saga began. 

“Lightning Flowers” explores two questions, Standefer told an audience during a Nov. 18 Zoom reading co-sponsored by Jackson Hole Writers Conference and Jackson Hole Book Trader. The first is: What happens to a 24-year-old who passes out in a parking lot and tries to access proper medical care? And the second: What does it cost to save a life?

First things first. Wyoming residents without means have few options for procedures like this. She found out that Colorado had an indigent care program for state residents. She made the decision to leave her life in Jackson behind and move back to Colorado so she could get the life-saving operation. She did, but there were complications. Once in recovery, she wondered about the second thing: what is the true cost of modern medicine? Her journey takes her to the California lab that made her device and the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. She traveled to Madagascar and Rwanda. She interviewed miners and the impoverished people who lived with the poisonous byproducts of modern medical engineering. And then it was time to write the book.

The U.S medical establishment does one thing very well: research and development. New life-saving gizmos come online all of the time. I have an ICD and artificial knees. My diabetic wife is equipped with an insulin pump. During the Covid crisis, Moderna and Pfizer and others used new technology to develop a vaccine in record time. I received my first injection two weeks ago. I had a passing thought about all the materials the nurses used at the hospital. Syringes, vials, the medicine itself. Where does it all come from and where will it go? 

"Lightning Flowers" prompted me to ponder this question. Last night, the nightly news reported that people in developing countries are less likely than those in developed countries to get vaccinated against Covid. Some countries are raising holy hell about it and I don't blame them. It doesn't take much imagination to conjure a world war caused by lack of access to a cure for a plague. Countries that have vaccine supplies (looking at you, U.S.) are having a difficult time getting it into people's arms. One-percenters fly to places to get vaccine intended for the 99 percent, as in the recent case where a white couple traveled to the Yukon to get vaccine intended for elderly indigenous people. Capitalism at its worst. 

I am a First Worlder with insurance and access to miracle drugs. Millions of others do not have such an advantage. I aim to find out why and report what I find.

Meanwhile, read Standefer's book to trace her journey of discovery. Order a copy from your local indie store. Click the JH Book Trader link above. 

Life in the Time of Distancing

My sister-in-law, Ellen Berry, died last week in Florida after a three-year bout with lung cancer. She was 61.

She was a wonderful person and I will miss her. My wife Chris, her only sibling, was with her at home for five days before she passed. Chris was lucky to get a flight out at a decent price. She was in shock when Ellen’s husband Chuck called with bad news on Saturday morning, June 20. He came home from work on Friday evening and found her on the floor. She was rushed to the hospital and put in ICU.

Chris and I scrambled to get her on a plane from Cheyenne to Daytona Beach. She flew Delta on June 23 on a bereavement fare. She was thankful to be with her sister in the final days.

Chris stayed in Ormond Beach for the planned celebration of life. This morning, she called and said that it had been cancelled due to the coronavirus. In case you haven’t heard, Florida is one of the states where Covid-19 has spiked. Chris’s family decided that gathering for a wake was too risky for all, not just for the over-60 high-risk crowd but for everyone. Many young people have been admitted to hospitals in the last few weeks. They have also acted as disease spreaders, the Typhoid Marys of their generation.

It’s a sad thing when you can’t get together to send off a loved one. This is happening all over the world. We need these farewells just as we need the welcoming ceremonies for newborns. Joy and sorrow must be shared. It leaves a hole when it is not. Weddings, reunions, graduations all need to be shared. For those who can’t attend, the photos are gifts to be shared. They also provide mysteries for future generations. Who is that guy with Aunt Mary?

I feel that lack of togetherness today. Chris and I have been hunkered down at home since mid-March. No St. Patrick’s Day parties and now there will be no Fourth of July parties. I miss human contact. I grew up in a big family and we thrived on human contact. I’m also a writer and spend a lot of time by myself, just me and my imagination and my laptop. When I emerge from my den after composing a few pages of prose, I seek out people to bother. These days, most of that bothering is done by phone, e-mail, Zoom. My family members get together almost every Sunday on Skype. It’s a welcome connection. My siblings and their kids are mostly in Florida, a few hours’ drive from each other. I live in Wyoming, a few days drive or a day-long airplane ride away. We have family clusters in Georgia and North Carolina. A niece works in New Zealand and my sister and her husband live in Lyon, France.

While it is wonderful to see and hear relatives via laptop, I miss the in-person gatherings. In December, I attended my niece Meghan’s wedding in Atlanta. It was such a pleasure to shake hands and hug, so much of it in the four days I was there. It’s a small thing, this contact with another human, but now I miss it when it can’t be done. 

A pleasure center activates when we touch. It’s a rush. Sometimes, it’s scary or sad, as when a family member jets off to take a job a half-world away. Our rushed farewells are now at airport curbside. Maybe we get in a quick farewell as we hustle to the security line-up. Back in the day, you could see your wife all of the way to departure gate. You could hold hands and kiss right up until the final call. You could stand by the plate-glass window and see the plane back up and taxi out to the runway. If you were lucky, you could watch as it took off and disappeared over the horizon. Maybe it was worse to linger at the airport instead of being shooed away from the unloading zone by a robotic voice. 

My grandmother Florence, born a decade before the Wright Brothers flight, took my brother and me to lunch at the old Denver airport, Sky Chef I think it was called. We ate and watched the planes. There even was a balcony where you could stand outside and watch all of the comings-and-goings. I was fond of airports. I wasn’t always fond of flying, especially when I jetted away from loved ones, or jetted toward a loved one’s funeral.

Sadness has crept into everything. Hunkering down has had a price. People have lost friends and lost jobs. Police have killed people just for being black. We have a president and an entire political party that thrive on cruelty. We can’t go out to the brewpub and have a beer with an old friend. I wear a mask and I expect you to wear one even though I can’t see your smile.

During all of this, we have discovered humanity in unexpected places. Creativity, too. Let’s let those thrive as we figure a way out of this.

Still sort-of hunkered down somewhere in Wyoming

Listening to "Dear Prudence" on WPR's Throwback Thursday. Song from the Beatles White Album. Not sure if I bought the White Album but listened to it a thousand times. Many of the songs were in the movie "Across the Universe," a movie that tugged at the nostalgia that comes with the 1960s.

Beautiful morning here in the High Plains. Heard some good news yesterday. The Cheyenne Botanic Gardens Conservatory opens for business on June 2. Only the ground floor will be open. Each group gets an hour to tour so more people can visit. Not sure how we're supposed to time them. "All right, people. Scram. Your hour's up. Vamoose!" Still, it shows a slight return to normalcy. I've been in touch with the staff over the shutdown. Talked to Amelia to see if we could arrange an August literary reading at the Conservatory. Amelia said that she's not booking anything new for the summer. They are going to rent out rooms for paying customers but nothing new until fall. Rick Kempa of Rock Springs asked me to schedule a summer reading for his new book and mine. I will try the library.

Masked up yesterday and ventured out to Lowe's to buy some plants and replace a window screen. I got the plants but no screen. I did get my money back. I had to wait in line six feet behind the first customer. Two people behind me. My cart was filled with plants, herbs and a few veggies, and some potting soil. The clerk, not happy, gave me my money back and pointed out the aisle where I could find screens if there were any. There weren't. Did find some twine to make a trellis for my herb rack. Trying to do everything on the cheap in this pandemic year. I planted herb seeds in egg cartons and then into pots. But two weeks later and no sprouts. The egg carton approach does not work for me. The soil and the egg carton gets soggy and I think it damages the seeds. Anyway, as I dug up the transplants yesterday there were no seedlings there, nothing of anything. I replaced the nothing with something. I had requested the free seeds from the library seed bank and thought I would be growing my garden from scratch this year. The other day I did plant seeds for cukes, pea pods, and pole beans and am waiting for them to sprout. I have two growing racks on the back porch that get full morning and early afternoon sunshine. I'll be doing more transplanting today.

Local business are opening up. A new downtown craft brewery opened on Monday. Black Tooth Brewery's second location -- its first in downtown Sheridan. During my work travels I visited the Sheridan site and liked it. Sheridan has a neat downtown with lots of indie businesses. Great coffee shop that I frequented when I was at the Jentel Foundation writing a novel that I am now going to finish. The pandemic has been deadly for indie businesses and reviving downtowns. Trends for the last decade have been toward gathering places most located in downtowns that had seen better days and were trying to come back. Black Tooth is the fourth microbrewery in downtown Cheyenne. They've been closed since March 18 except for takeout and the brewing of hand sanitizer. Chronicles Distillery downtown made lots of hand sanitizer and I bought nine spray bottles since none could be found in the grocery stores. Chronicles donated most of their supply to health workers, hospitals and clinics. Then they started peddling the goods to the citizenry. I ordered online and then pulled up outside for the exchange of the goods. Other customers were ordering some of the locally brewed whiskey and vodka which is a whole different kind of sanitizing..

Chris, Annie and I will attend a concert and drive-in movie Saturday night at the Terry Bison Ranch. Tickets for each car were $25 and we registered online. Must stay in our cars which may be a challenge for those of us of a certain age who need to pee. Not sure how we will manage. Might have to leave mid-way through "Back to the Future."

It's ugly on the national scene. Our ugly president wants to reopen the economy no matter how many people it kills. 93,000-plus have died in the U.S., and there are probably many more that went uncounted. The U.S. leads the world in confirmed cases. There's been no direction from the federal government and that's a crime that Trump and the G.O.P. will have to answer for it at the ballot box. Trump is trying to prevent people from voting by mail but this is a state responsibility and not a federal one. Democratic Party-led states are having none of the president's blather and neither am I. I ordered a mail-in ballot and plan to use it. The better the turnout the more likely it is that we can get rid of the criminal element in D.C.

Chris, Annie and I continue to take safety precautions. Annie wears a mask during her shifts at Big Lots. Chris and I wear masks going out and if someone needs to come in the house.

Wyoming reports 11 deaths statewide with more than 500 confirmed cases. The worst hot spot is on the Wind River Reservation in Fremont County. The Navajo Nation in Arizona has more per capita cases than New York and New Jersey, the epicenters of the virus. Very sad. Minority communities in urban centers are being hit hard. All of this points out the many holes that exist in our slapdash health care system. And did I mention that the GOP-led feds are clueless in the face of a national emergency?

Pandemic Days: Wyoming Legislature convenes and experts try to get a handle on virus death count

Our legislature gathers for a short special session tomorrow to decide how to divvy up the federal pandemic stimulus funds. I’d vote to give it all to hospitals and health care workers especially those in smaller communities. These small hospitals have been hit hard by lack of elective surgical procedures which pay most of the bills. They could also be helped by Medicaid expansion. Unfortunately, the majority-GOP lege has decided to once again study the issue until the Obamacare-related program rides off into the sunset just like Obama.

Governor Gordon has stipulated that the opening of the state shall proceed in a step-by-step plan that most seem to be ignoring. Social distancing and mask-wearing have been crucial in stemming the COVID-19 tide. The state has registered 600-some cases and only seven deaths. We see numbers similar to those in neighboring Montana and South Dakota, other places where social distancing is the norm. Populous Colorado, on the other hand, has more than 20,000 cases and 1,009 deaths. Neighboring Weld County on our southern border shows 2,190 cases, the fourth-highest tally in the state – the top three are in the Denver metro area.

Whenever my wife and I go out, we wear masks and carry hand sanitizer. We had a dryer delivered yesterday because our old one conked out. The delivery guys showed up with no masks so we happily lent them some. They put them on once we explained our high-risk status. Chris and I are both Democrats and are much more open to COVID-19 due to our Godless status and opposition to Donald Trump. Governors of hard-hit urban states have been labeled “blue-state whiners” when they complain about lots of death and no testing or PPE for health care workers. Apparently health care workers in red states just quietly get sick and die. Especially vulnerable are staff members in nursing homes and long-term health facilities. One-third of U.S. fatalities come out of those places. Since retirees congregate in warm places such as Florida, Arizona, and Texas, many of the casualties are from those states. My stepmother was one of them (see previous post).

Other visitors to our house have included Instacart delivery people. They don’t come in but leave the groceries on the porch. We had the crew from Skyline Solar here ten days ago to install the wiring and panels for going solar. They wore masks to the job at our request and were very nice. One young worker was tasked with adding support beams in our attic. It couldn’t have been easy working in our hot attic while wearing a mask and work gloves. When he reappeared, he was drenched in sweat. The electricians were in and out and wore masks. 

Our house was built in the middle of the previous century so needed some upgrading to join the 21^st century. They installed a new breaker box on the patio wall and tackled the interior breaker box with a mixture of awe and frustration. We have one of those punchbox types so popular in the 1950s and woefully inadequate in 2020. The electrician said he could replace it with a new breaker box but it was a bit expensive for our current budget. So we had to make do.

Annie is a Millennial so she orders food via Door Dash and all of the rest. A few days ago she ordered a chocolate pie. I like pie but the only kind I’ve had delivered is a pizza pie, a name that’s fallen out of favor. Chris and I now are used to the doorbell ringing and opening the door to find a sandwich or wings or burger in a bag on the porch. We wipe them down when we bring them in. All of us have to trust in the cleanliness of the purveyor when it comes to the making and bagging of the food. It would be so much easier if stainless steel bots did all of the work but we’re not there yet. Before the pandemic, most fast-food outlets took pride in assembling your order while you watched. Subway is a prime example. So is Chipotle. Not sure how that will change when bistros return to some sort of normalcy.

One thing about COVID-19 deaths. This morning’s New York Times carried a Nicholas Kristof op-ed about the virus’s true death count. It’s not a number that Trump will like but it’s more in keeping with what experts such as Dr. Fauci say. Taking into account “excess deaths” during the first seven weeks of the pandemic ending April 25, the U.S. has already passed the 100,000 casualties mark. In the early weeks of the plague, people were dying of COVID-19 but because they had other maladies and they were elderly, their deaths were logged in as heart failure, respiratory failure, acute dementia, etc.

I know at least one example of this in my own family. My stepmother bore a litany of health issues before the virus snuck into her nursing home and killed her. But the cause of death wasn’t listed as such until she was swabbed for COVID-19 at the medical examiner’s office because she came from a nursing home experiencing an outbreak. The test came back positive. So, her death was not recorded properly by the State of Florida. That state’s excess death count is estimated by the NYT as 1,800. In Wyoming, its 100 which puts our tally at 107 instead of 7.

We don’t really know what we’re dealing with. Coronavirus causes strange sicknesses in children. It applies the coup de grace to old people in nursing homes and the younger workers who take care of them. So many outbreaks have occurred in these facilities from Florida to Colorado. A tragedy and a travesty. In the nurturing industries, the people we pay least work with our young children and our old people. It’s almost like we didn’t care about our future and our past. Our present isn’t doing so well either.

Hospital stories on Nurse Appreciation Day

On the one side, you have Trump and his narcissistic minions.

On the other, you have nurses.

I align myself with nurses. They are on the front lines of the fight against coronavirus. They run toward the danger and, thanks to the Trump administration's incompetence, lack the necessary PPE to keep COVID-19 at bay.

Today is Nurse Appreciation Day and it launches National Nurses Week which ends on Florence Nightingale's birthday on May 12. They should be celebrated everywhere and every time. Mostly nurses are taken for granted until we are gasping for breath with COVID-19 or, in my case, from a heart attack.

I lie in the hospital bed in the ER. I am hooked up to oxygen and poked and prodded by doctors and nurses and techs. Chris is with me so she holds my hand when she can. When she can't and the nurses are tending to me, I feel a strange sense of calm.

I see my mother's face in theirs. She was a nurse from 21 to her early death at 59. Tomorrow, May 7, is her birthday. Happy 95th birthday, Mom. She took care of strangers and she nursed her family. I was born in December of 1950 at Denver's Mercy Hospital. Mom trained there at the tail end of the war thanks to the U.S. Navy and the Sisters of Mercy. She worked there when I was born. Later she joked that she was working the night I was born and took off a few minutes to deliver me and then was back at her job. The truth is that Mom took a week off to chill in the hospital after each birth. It was important the first time out with me. It was even more crucial in the 1960s when she had 5-6 kids at home and needed a break as the new ones arrived.

She could have been the poster child for nurses' week. We came to her for our miseries. As a nursing supervisor at a Florida hospital, staff members came to her to unburden themselves. For awhile, I was both -- son and employee. A university dropout with a low draft lottery number, I figured that I would surf and work as I waited for the inevitable. I worked an as orderly or nursing assistant, now known as Certified Nurse Assistants (CNA). People actually go to school for this now and I'm glad of it. Me and my coworkers got OJT. The nurses were patient and, at times, stern. There were a couple nurses we didn't challenge. We didn't mess with Mom, either, although her management style was more encouragement than stern lectures.

I do admit here and now that sometimes, taking temps and inserting catheters, I was a bit stoned. When my coworkers Jim and Sharon picked me up at  6:45 a.m., a smoke cloud greeted me when I opened the car door. When we abandoned the car for work ten minutes later, the cloud followed us inside. It's a wonder we never were caught. We tried to cover up our shenanigans with after-shave and perfume. One day I heard a nurse proclaim that she always liked Jim to work at her station because he always smelled so good. A blend of Jamaican herb and Hai Karate. I can still smell it 49 years later.

My youthful indiscretions faded at my next job as orderly. I worked the graveyard shift at Shriners' Burns Institute in Boston. It was a serious place. All patients were children under 18 who had sustained bad burns. House fires, electrocutions, accidents, and, yes, child abuse. The staff of nurses and nursing assistants were all young and energetic even at 3 a.m. Some of the NAs were enrolled in nursing school. My girlfriend Sharon (the same Sharon) was making plans to return to school, this time for a nursing degree. I was thrilled when the nursing supervisor brought me into her office one day and offered me a nursing school scholarship paid for by the hospital. I was doing good work, she said. I thanked her and said I would think about it. It felt good to be noticed. I talked about it with Sharon and on long-distance calls with Mom from the corner pizza parlor (we didn't have a phone). But I already knew my answer. My practical side urged me to do it. But I was just beginning to explore my creative side.

I blame it on the Boston Phoenix and The Real Paper. Both were distributed weekly on Boston streets I always snagged both of them and read them from cover to cover before I settled into my daytime sleep. The writing, at turns, was spectacular and sloppy. The subjects tended to revolve around the counterculture which is where I placed myself. Music, books, politics, wacko cults and conspiracy theories. I also liked reading Boston's daily papers. They were in their heyday in 1972 and 1973. Dynamic political coverage and great sports sections. But they ignored most of the topics the Phoenix reveled in.

The alternative press ruined me. I wanted to be a writer. Nursing was a great calling and would provide a steady income. Maybe my girlfriend and I could attend the same nursing school and work at the same Boston hospital..

But I wanted something else. I quit my job, returned to Florida, and went back to school as an English major. Write and teach, teach and write. That was what I wanted to do and that is mainly what I did.

Mom is just one generation of nurses in the family. My grandmother, Florence Green Shay, was an army nurse in World War I and two of my sisters are nurses. Another sister works at a Florida hospice center. I am so glad that nurses are getting their due during this plague. Let's keep them safe and pay them what they deserve. .

Baseball in the time of Coronavirus w/u

So many good causes in this time of COVID-19. Health professionals need PPE. Local small businesses need us to buy their wares so they can survive the pandemic. Elderly and disabled need neighbors to bring food and meds.

Speaking of food, there are those who have none and rely on food banks to survive. Food Bank of the Rockies serves those facilities in Colorado and Wyoming.

On Friday. The Colorado Rockies Baseball Club Foundation joined with Food Bank of the Rockies for the Stay at Home Opener. On what was supposed to be opening day 2020, the Rockies broadcast nine innings of opening day highlights dating back to the team's first game in April 1993. Highlights included the first inning of the first match-up at the old Mile High Stadium vs. the now defunct Montreal Expos (now the Washington Nationals). Attendance was 80,000-plus, an MLB record that still stands. There was rookie Trevor Story's two home runs in 2016 and some fine pitching in 2018 by Denverite Kyle Freeland. On opening day 2014, Charlie Blackmon tied a hitting record held by Hall-of-Famers Ty Cobb and Jimmie Fox.

While the highlights played, donations rolled in for FBOR, the first $300,000 matched by the foundation. During commercial breaks, players urged us to stay at home and stay well.

Opening day in Denver is a holiday. Its absence, due to the Coronavirus, created a void that the Rockies tried to fill. Baseball seems insignificant when compared to a pandemic from a virus unknown on opening day 2019. That really sunk in when Friday's broadcast featured the player intro from last April. So much is promised when baseball starts. Dreams of a World Series, home-run records shattered, some 9th inning nailbiters.

But the big thing is sitting in the stadium on a warm summer night. You are with family and friends who may love baseball as you do or at least pretend they do. Added bonuses include beer and hot dogs, pricey but necessary.

Opening day begins the possibilities. It also gives me something to dwell on beside COVID-19. Baseball highlights took Chris and I away from bad news for awhile. We all need that. It also gave us an opportunity to make modest donation to FBOR.

We need food for the body and food for the soul. And a home run or two.

Updated 4/8/20: A Colorado Rockies press release:

Over 1,100 individuals made donations during a “Stay at Home Opener” broadcast and “Feed the Rockies” fundraiser, as the Rockies Foundation provides funds for two million meals. 

The Colorado Rockies Baseball Club Foundation announced today that a total of $502,425 was raised for food banks in Colorado and Wyoming during the “Stay at Home Opener: Feed the Rockies” event that aired on AT&T SportsNet and on Rockies.com on Friday, April 3 at 2 p.m. MDT – the date and time of the originally scheduled Rockies home opener.  

A total of 1,134 Rockies fans and players made online donations throughout the weekend, totaling $102,425. Additionally, it was announced Friday that the family of Rockies first baseman Daniel Murphy had donated $100,000 to the effort. The Rockies Foundation, which had pledged to match all donations up to $300,000, donated the entire $300,000 pledge, bringing the grand total to $502,425.

My sporty new rollator walker is safe at any speed

I own a  Drive Nitro Euro-Style Tall Aluminum Four Wheel Rollator. It's one of the new breed of assistive devices that allow people like me to get from one place to another. Commonly known as a walker. A device to help this injured biped walker walk.

On the last snowy day in May 2018, I fell on my rear end in a Fort Collins parking lot. I got up and brushed the wet snow off of my butt and continued the day's routine, which included moving my daughter into an apartment. My wife noticed my wet jeans. "Your butt's wet," she said. "And so is yours," I said in a playful retort. We laughed, our daughter looking on in bemusement and a little bit of love, although impatient to get on with the task.

You think that there are days that don't matter, They all matter.

Four days later, I awoke with a terrible backache. I don't believe in backaches. I've had them after long backpacks up steep slopes, many miles on my racing bike, a series of pickup b-ball games on the asphalt. But this was a raging backache, one beyond my ken. A few days later, I began to limp. A few days later still, I had trouble walking and I dug out my knee-replacement cane for balance. I grew worried. I consulted my knee guy. He x-rayed my knees and hips and said all was well with those parts. I was relieved as I didn't want to revisit the pain of another knee replacement. The doc prescribed PT. Ten days later, the PT guys saw me limping into the center using a walker, me dragging my left foot. They grew alarmed.

"We sent you out of here two years ago and you were walking just fine," they asked. "What happened?"

"Fell on my keister."

They conducted a few exercises and pronounced that something was wrong that they couldn't address. "We have to talk to the doc," they said.

The doc called me at home the next day. He had made an appointment with a neurologist and urged me to go. I went. The neurologist conducted some tests. She thought my brain was fine but my spine may be injured. She sent me to a spinal surgeon in Fort Collins who operated on Aug. 1. A few days later, I felt more mobile, especially mu upper body. That was the part I was most worried about. I had nightmares about lifeless arms with fingers that couldn't type. That was not to be the case. Read my post about the surgery at https://hummingbirdminds.blogspot.com/2018/08/a-return-trip-to-mind-eraser-may-help.html

Eight and one half months later, I still use a walker. I started with a standard aluminum walker with four rubber-tipped legs. You could always hear me coming. I lifted the walker, smacked the floor a couple feet ahead, and then moved to catch up with the device. You could hear me coming from one end of the house to the other. I stooped over because we borrowed the walker from a short person. My arms and shoulders hurt. I looked like one of those old guys slouching across the retirement home cafeteria. I located a taller walker at a retirement center, this one with two wheels on the front axles. I could stand tall and move faster. I thought I had reached the pinnacle, walker-wise.

I had seen four-wheeled walkers and thought this was the next step. I wanted my next step to be on two feet with any assist coming from my cane. That wasn't to be. I tried the cane for a few days and abandoned it when I fell getting into my car. I tried to get up but couldn't. A young couple driving by saw me sprawled in the street and guessed I was having a problem. They rescued me, guided me into the car, probably wondering "this old guy drives?" If asked, I would have told them that my right leg is fine but it's just the left leg and back and upper spine that torment me.

The world looks a little different when looking at it from a walker. Back when I was fully abled, I remember resting my eye upon someone in a walker as they passed. I walked, my legs perfectly fine. I barely noticed people using assistive devices. Now that I've joined the club, I see them everywhere. They were there all along but I looked through them or over them, barely giving them a thought. As a bleeding heart liberal, I feel empathy. But the dirty truth is this: you don't know the pain of disabilities until you're disabled. We don't want to admit that it can happen to us. And then it does, and you get a glimpse of what some people face their entire lives.

War, disease, accidents all leave damaged bodies in their wake. I read recently that 5 percent of adults in the U.S. use helper devices such as canes, walkers, and wheelchairs. Our town has an older population. We also are home to a major military base and a V.A. Hospital. Back when I swam laps at the YMCA, I would encounter the disabled vets from the V.A. doing their water exercises. Some of them had to be plucked from their wheelchairs and lowered into the water using a crane bolted to the side of the pool. I would watch without really watching, as I was sure these men got their share of stares when they were out in public. The other day as I rode one of the Y's stationery bikes, the swimming pool director told me that I could use the crane in the pool if I wanted to get back in the water. I thanked her but cringed inwardly. Is that why I had been avoiding the pool? I didn't want to be one of those disabled guys who needed the crane?

People do stop me to admire my colorful ride. I was putting Nitro in my trunk at Olive Garden the other day when a middle-aged woman stopped and admired it. She said she wanted to upgrade her mother's walker. I told her how to order and she left. The humor in my situation is pretty obvious. My Nitro walker is fire-engine red and vampire black. People admire it as they would a cherry '57 Chevy or bucket-T roadster. In some future place, old people will stage races that pits Nitro against Lightning. These are short-track races, sprints. A Daytona 500-style race would go on for months. We could fill in gaps in NASCAR's off-season schedule.

This reminds me of a story from my first collection, "Safe at Any Speed." In it, Florida retirees soup up their golf carts and stage races at an abandoned airstrip near Ormond Beach. Lest you think this complete fantasy, golf carts are now called golf cars. And for good reasons. You can spend $9,500 on one designed like a sky-blue 1957 Chevy Bel Air. This is a couple steps up from my Nitro, I can see myself tooling around in something similar when I retreat to a retirement village.

My disability is short-term, or so I tell myself. It has taught me one thing: people go out of their way to offer me assistance. This is especially true as I haul groceries to the car. One woman, possibly older than me, didn't ask as she edged me aside to load groceries in my trunk. I thanked her as she buzzed off. I got the impression that she is not a person who waits around for permission. Airmen, elderly, mothers with kids -- all have offered help. I usually refuse as I stubbornly avoid accepting assistance.  Humility is at risk. Humility can be dangerous. It  can lead to empathy and, God knows, we could use more of that in these cruel times.

That old guy peeing in the chair still has stories to tell

The certified nursing assistant (CNA) named Ashley pulls me out of my chair and leads me to the walker so I can get to the handicapped accessible bathroom. It's 4 a.m. on an August Friday and she and the nurse make their rounds. The staff has pumped fluids into me all day and dosed me with diuretics. I fell asleep in the chair so I could be close to the john. The joke was on me. I pissed into my Depends and my gown and into the chair.  I had spinal surgery and have trouble walking. I am as helpless as the baby I hear crying over on the pediatric side of this surgical floor.

"Sorry," I mumble.

"It's OK," the CNA says. "It happens."

Not to me it doesn't. That's what I wanted to say. I am a 20-year-old CNA -- we were called orderlies then -- working in a Florida hospital. I peel 67-year-old old men out of chairs they have peed in. I clean them up, help them dress, sop up the mess, and get them back into bed.

"Sorry " they say.

"It's OK," I say. "It happens."

I am a 20-year-old college dropout. I'm not old enough to drink or vote. As I do my chores, I think of the cute blond 20-year-old CNA named Sharon whom I helped earlier in the day. We laughed as we made the bed in an elderly woman's room. The woman sat slumped in the corner as we talked about movies we liked. I wished that this co-worker was not dating my good friend Jim. I sure would like to take her out to one of the movies we talked about. Maybe a drive on the beach. Maybe the surf would be jazzed after work. Maybe I would take some time to think about what to do with the rest of my life.

I'm 67 again. The hospital staff has put me back in my chair, turned off the lights and left. The young CNA is thinking about Friday night, just 12 hours away. The nurse with the braids could be contemplating a weekend with her family camped by a mountain stream. You can see the jagged outline of the Rockies from my fifth floor room.

I am a 20-year-old in a 67-year-old body that is failing. My wife sleeps in the pull-out bed near the window. Some of us suffer in silence. Some of us like company. I wonder what the other young people who keep this hospital working are thinking about tonight. I wonder who other old men are remembering tonight.

I remember this. That cute nurse's aide from that hospital long ago broke up with my friend and I took her to a movie. We spent the next 18 months together. In the summer of 1972, we hitchhiked 10,000 miles around the U.S. we ended up living in Boston where we both found hospital jobs we liked and decided to become nurses together. She became a nurse and I decided to pursue my love of writing. End of our story.

Thursday morning, about 3 a.m., I found myself awake and still a little buzzed from Wednesday evening's surgery. A nurse named Dusty asked if I was ready to pee.

"Need to urinate eight hours after surgery or..."

"Or what?"

"You know what a catheter is, right?"

Dusty accompanied me and my walker around the quiet halls, thinking that might shake up my system. She took me by the veranda that looked over the sleeping town. We chatted. When we got back to the room, she ran water in the sink and I voided. Dusty took a look at my bladder through a scope and found I had urine in there just looking for an excuse to come out. I eventually squeezed out enough to keep the catheters away.

The next night, I turn into Niagara Falls.

At one point, I thought about spending my working life in hospitals. Not peeing in chairs but taking care of those peeing in chairs. In an alternate universe, that is Mike's life. There are many alternate universes. My reality is now.

This won't finish me off. I will be older and incontinent somewhere else. My wife of many years will be gone. My friends will be gone. My grown kids will live far away. I once asked a hospice nurse if people died with their loved ones around them.  "Most people die alone," she said.

I leave stories.

Do odd things happen to writers, or are writers just odd?

A question for my writer friends: Do odd things happen to you, or are you the odd thing?

The answer is important. The world is odd, filled with strange happenings that call out to be translated into poems and stories. But I may be the odd one for noticing and then spending hours/days/months on writing a story to make some sense of this odd occurrence. Maybe it doesn't have to make sense, it just has to be entertaining or thought-provoking. It may never be published, never. read by more than a few blog fans. 

To get on with the story...

I had a weird experience Tuesday at a Colorado hospital that will remain nameless. I was the subject of a Cervical CT Myelogram procedure. The docs and nurses in Radiology were supposed to start in on me at 1 p.m.. And then it was 2 and then 3. Finally, the head tech explained to me that the computer had hijacked the hospital. It mistakenly booked me in the fancy Radiology room next door and wouldn't acknowledge that I was waiting in the plain vanilla Radiology Room. I said why don't you put me in the fancy room. He said it was expensive, only used for the difficult cases. I was glad that I wasn't a difficult case. 

The IT guys stormed the premises. They were not like the "IT Crowd" technos who told frantic operators this: "Have you tried turning off  the computer ans turning it back on?" They came to rescue. The problem seemed to be a tough one. The IT guys figured out they had to discharge me from the hospital and admit me all over again, trick the computer into thinking I was a new patient suited only for the cheap room. 

They did that and thought they had it licked when the computer changed its mind and put me back in the fancy room. There must have been ten people in the room, some working frantically on the computer, others preparing the room for the medical procedure that was sure to start any time now. I talked about books with a nice nurse who was writing a children's book in her spare time. Earlier, as she checked me in, she found out I was a writer and said that she thought that I looked like the creative type. I was flattered, as people usually think I look like Colonel Sanders. 

After two hours, they tricked the computer for good and the Radiology team jumped into action. The doc pumped me full of contrast, which one of the techs described as a "sticky oil" which, when scanned, highlights the details of my cervical spine. Once they pumped me full of sticky oil, one of the techs got on with tilting me at various angles on the table while another tech shot images on the scope. They tilted me head first and then prone. They tilted me forward for a second time to make sure the contrast reached into the furthest reaches of my upper vertebrae. I didn't object. I only wanted to do this once. They took some other pictures with me on each side and one of my neck and shoulders. Satisfied, they sent me over to the CT room where another tech scanned me. 

When I got back to the recovery room, a new nurse turned on her computer and looked for my chart. "You don't exist," she said. 

Odd, but I was lying right there. A few minutes later she found me.

"Looks like the computer discharged you" 

Of course. 

The nurse got me readmitted and discharged me again, because that was part of her job. 

As my wife Chris drove me back to Cheyenne, a few things occurred to me. It wasn't a bad way to spend five hours. It was 95 hot degrees outside, cool inside. Chris had taken the day off so we spent some quality time together. The staff was kind and patient. It made me wonder if they were this nice to all patients. The nurses admitted that many who come through their doors are very sick and usually older than me. Some of the procedures involve a lot of physical pain. Pain, as always, turns your attention inward and you are not always aware of others feelings. Me, well, I was in a little bit of pain but didn't want to be a pain. So, after lying around two hours waiting for the multimillion-dollar computer system to recognize me, I decided that resistance was futile. I could have told them to forget it and make me another appointment. But I didn't want to come back another day.  

It was very entertaining. The staff gave me a handful of cafeteria food coupons to make up for the delays. I hope I'm not back at that hospital any time soon, not even for chicken-fried steak night.

Next time you survive a heart attack, try to fine-tune the description

What action verb best describes a heart attack?

Most times, the past tense of have serves the purpose. Dad had a heart attack. That's so bland. You can "have" a heart attack, just as you can have a cup of coffee or a bad day. But it doesn't really get to the heart of the matter.  Something happens when you have a heart attack, something profound. The muscle that keeps you human stops working. It is an experience of a lifetime and, often, the last experience, your deathtime. It deserves a better description.

The heart attack should be the subject of the sentence. A heart attack killed father. A heart attack claimed his life. You can add an adverb: A heart attack almost killed father. Most of us survivors are fond of adverbs such as almost or nearly, Our lives depended on those adverbs. You could also stay with the action verbs and say something like this: Dad beat the reaper. Or, if you prefer, "Don't Fear the Reaper" with jangly guitars and cowbell, always more cowbell.

Heart attacks deserve better treatment, language-wise. They define what comes after, whether that be finality or life's new chapter. I was lucky and got the latter. I paid a price for neglecting the telltale signs. I wear an ICD in my chest wall that sends signals to a hospital monitoring station. I remain confident that Russian hackers will never find the frequency. But please alert me if I ever start saying nice things about Donald Trump.

My widowmaker heart attack on Jan. 2, 2013, nearly killed me. I lived. During my year of recovery, I went through rehab and ate right and exercised and continued not smoking (I quit in 1985). Some things I did not do. I did not read and entire novel. I wrote very little, although I blogged a bit about the widowmaker (links here and here). The experience took a piece of my heart, my soul. I never thought I would write fiction again. I told my wife Chris that I would never write another book, not even in retirement. She was having none of that. I started a novel the day after I retired in January 2016. I'm 30,000-some words into it. Hard work, this novel-writing biz. Better suited for a young man. Now I have experience but not the stamina. Life plays mean tricks. It entertains us with surprises.

How did the term "heart attack" get started? The heart does not attack. It protests. Dad ate too many Big Macs and his heart is mad as hell and is not going to take it anymore. Bam -- your heart seizes up like an engine low on life-giving 10W-40. My original diagnosis was Acute Myocardial Infarction accompanied by Congestive Heart Failure. I could also call it a Coronary Thrombosis. These terms aren't nearly as colorful as Heart Attack. That's what I will continue to say. And will continue to find better ways to describe that thing that disrupted but didn't end my life.

Strong mind, strong body -- take your pick

Just added to my reading list: "Blue Dreams: The science and the story of the drugs that changed our minds" by Lauren Slater. I will tackle it once I finish "Lincoln in the Bardo" by George Saunders.

"Blue Dreams" is a non-fiction account of psychiatric drugs and their effects by someone who is both a patient and a psychologist.

"Lincoln in the Bardo" is a novel that explores something that seems a lot like severe depression and PTSD in Abraham Lincoln, who is mourning the death of his 11-year-old son, Willie, in 1862.

Would Lincoln have benefited from a regimen of Prozac or other SSRIs? Perhaps. Maybe he would have recovered from his dark moods more quickly with a couple hits of Molly or LSD.

We'll never know. But psychedlics figure into Slater's book. Party drug MDMA (Molly) has been tested on those with PTSD. It has shown some remarkable and lasting results. As Slater recently described it on NPR's "Fresh Air:" those who take Molly and relive their trauma are able to shift that experience into another section of the brain, possibly the prefrontal cortex, helping remove it from the "fight or flight" amygdala. They can then get a handle on a horrible memory without degenerating into bouts of anxiety or self-harm, even suicide.

Slater wonders if this experimentation may lead to another golden age of drug therapy. The previous golden age brought on by lithium and Prozac may be nearing its end. Slater testifies that medications have helped her stay sane, raise a family and write books. They also have shortened her life.

That's the trade-off. So goes the old witticism: "Sound mind. Sound body. Take your pick." After five stays in psychiatric facilities between the ages of 13 to 24, Slater's doctors discovered Prozac. In a rush of Seratonin-laced good will, she finsihed finished her education, married, had two children and embarked on a writing career.

Then came trouble, in the form of the return of depression  and the start of her use of Zyprexa, which caused her to gain weight and lose her libido.

We patients are guinea pigs. Researcher still don't know the inner workings of these drugs. And their long-term effects. If you are in the midst of a severe depression, you want immediate help. Doesn't happen. Prozac or Zoloft may alleviate the symptoms eventually. Studies have shown that two-thirds  of those with depression would recover just as well with a placebo. That's depressing enough. Add side-effects into the mix and you have to wonder what in the hell we are doing.

I have been taking antidepressants for almost 30 years. I feel better, go off them, and crash. One of my psychiatrists once lectured me: "You have to stay on these the rest of your life. You have depression."

That made an impression. Unfortunately, I don't always listen. I went off my Zoloft six years ago and the walls came crashing down. I was out of work for a month. My psychiatrist at the time, who fled Wyoming for Hawaii one winter and never came back, tried a return to Zoloft and then several other meds. We finally went back to Prozac with a nighttime dose of Remeron. Several months later, I felt better but also was back exercising on a regular basis and eating right, which helped. Also, I was in talk therapy with a therapist and regularly saw my psychiatrist. Still, that summer I was still experiencing bouts of depression interspersed with anxiety. It probably took a good six months for my moods to stabilize.

Six months later, on Jan. 2, 2013, I had a heart attack. I recovered quicker from a "widow maker" than I did from depression. Got more help, too. Add an inept mental health care system to the fact that the docs know so little about the drugs and the human mind. That makes for a killer cocktail of ignorance. At least I have both Medicare and private insurance which enables me to navigate the system without going broke.

But I am not only here to complain. I am here to critique books. "Lincoln in the Bardo" is a wild ride and I'm only on page 98. This is how an award-winning short story writer writes a novel. Truly unique. I am a short story writer working on a novel. I find encouragement in Saunders work.

I have ordered Slater's book. I, too, would like to know what happens with long-term use of these drugs. My life depends on it.