A swim in the Y pool may not be a walk in the park

I am training myself to walk again. It's no walk in the park.

I looked up "walk meaning" and found some leisurely reading.

It's a verb (I walked to school) and a noun (It was a leisurely walk). It's a word you hear on almost of every episode of "Law & Order:" "We can't just let this perp walk!" If he does, I'm certain he will walk quickly from the building most likely in the company of his attorney.

Walk is quite popular. A chart on Google Ngram Viewer shows that the popularity of walk is at an all-time high in the 2020s. It may not remain there judging by our unfit population, all in need of a good walk or even a not-so-good one.

This brings this post to me. I cannot walk. My body revolted and, judging by a photo taken in a hospital ICU, I was revolting afterward. "That's not me" I said when my wife showed me the photo of the old man on the gurney. He was obviously out of it. IV tubes snaked from his arm. He had been intubated and fitted with a feeding tube. You couldn't see the Foley catheter or the heart monitor but they were there amongst the jumble of sheets and blankets.

That was Sept. 9. I can walk now, sort of. I get around with a standard walker complete with tennis-ball feet and I also have a rollator walker with four wheels. I sometimes scoot around on an electric scooter labeled Buzz Around XL. When Chris and I go for a walk on the bike path, she walks and I scoot. Still, we call it a walk. I do. 

But I can't walk, not yet anyway. Over the past five years, I hurt myself in ways that blunted my walking mechanism. That's a silly way to put it. I sometimes tell people I am partially disabled. I did that the other day. Jeff escorted Chris and me on an introductory tour of the Ormond Beach YMCA. We joined and wanted to see what we were getting into. A lifeguard about my age but looking 20 years younger, showed me the chair they use for hefting people like me into the pool's shallow end. I explained that I was partially disabled and that I could walk down the five steps into the pool to join each morning's water-ex class.. I plan to walk unaided or maybe with a cane in the near future. I aim to be a walker again. It will not be a walk in the park and it hasn't been. Still...

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.

Wyoming asks that darn federal gubment for disaster relief

Tonight, Wyomingites along creeks and rivers in Crook, Carbon, Albany, Lincoln and Sheridan counties are thanking their lucky stars and Gov. Mead that there is federal government assistance available in their time of need. If U.S. House Republicans (and presidential candidate Mitt Romney) have their way, federal disaster assistance will dry up and blow away -- or maybe be washed away in a tide of hypocrisy. From the Casper Star-Tribune:

Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead has signed a disaster declaration for damages around the state caused by the ongoing flooding.

The state estimates more than $3 million in damages so far. That includes the cost of preventative efforts, mainly Mead's decision to deploy Wyoming National Guard members.

Rain and snowmelt have flooded several areas of the state, including Crook, Carbon, Albany, Lincoln and Sheridan counties. Many other rivers and streams are running high or near flood stage.

The governor's office says the state Transportation Department has responded to or is monitoring 37 landslides across the state.

Mead says the disaster declaration is needed for Wyoming to qualify for assistance from the federal government.

A river of depression runs through it

During today's Super Bowl, I'm going to think a bit about depression. I know how debilitating depression can be. But rarely do I give any thought to professional athletes struggling with the very same malady. Brendan McLean wrote a fine post for the NAMI blog, "Football: A Mind Game." In it, he tells the tales of two NFL players: Terry Bradshaw and Ricky Williams. The jocular Bradshaw doesn't show it on air, but he experienced bouts of depression throughout his career. He treated it himself with alcohol. As we know from novelist William Styron ("Darkness Visible") and TV news commentator Mike Wallace, there comes a time when alcohol no longer works and you have to face the beast. Here's how Wallace described it:

At first I couldn't sleep, then I couldn't eat. I felt hopeless and I just couldn't cope and then I just lost all perspective on things. You know, you become crazy. I had done a story for 60 Minutes on depression but I had no idea that I was now experiencing it. Finally, I collapsed and just went to bed.

Brendan quotes these stats: men are four times more likely than women to commit suicide and half as likely to seek help. So, when the breakdown comes, it can have a Hemingway end or something better. Bradshaw found help in therapy and antidepressants. The taciturn Ricky Williams smoked pot and got busted out of the NFL. He finally found some relief in yoga and meditation. The Denver Broncos' Kenny McKinley committed suicide before the 2010 season.

So, spend a few minutes thinking about the mental health of the athletes out on the field. Forget about pity. Empathy is what's called for. Just think, "It can happen to anybody..."  

Read Brendan's column at http://blog.nami.org/2011/02/football-mind-game.html

Poem as eulogy and celebration of family ties

My Tucson son, Kevin Michael Patrick Shay, the poet and theatre guy, wrote the following poem for his godfather, Patrick Kevin Shay. I read it as part of the memorial service for my brother on Dec. 13.

[Untitled]

We are Shay
We are surfers and fishermen
Captains and sand flea enthusiasts
We are collegiate
We are Navy
We are doctors and nurses
We are bandages in one hand
That covers the wound made by the knife in the other
Sometimes

We aren't always the best
At saying no or goodbye
Pushing whatever it may be
Back across the table and into
The back of our minds
Away with us never means forgotten
Shimmering delicately on the edges
Of our overactive subconscious minds

But we remain warriors
Women and men with blood thick
Like hot pitch cascading over the sides
Of castles
Onto enemies mostly defeated
Some remain
Edging their way in and laying siege
They seem overly capable of finding
The most sensitive parts
And sword-plunging through tearing

We are multitude
Thousands of bright candles floating
Across a crystal pond
Water moccasins shivering away from the heat
Gators meandering to some safer bank
Manatees gliding soft
Edging and urging along our lights
With silent swoops of blue-grey tails

We are singular and stand out
Bellowing pride
In politics and sports and intellect
The young and old cohesive
In family's stalwart and commanding glue

We are one

Dear Wyoming Reps: Don't waiver on mental health legislation

Here's the text of a letter I e-mailed to Rep. Keith Gingery, R-Jackson, supporting his stance on increased funding for mental health care and substance abuse treatment. I copied it to my representative, Lori Millin, D-Cheyenne, in the hopes that they can work together and keep Wyoming from backsliding on this issue. While the Legislature commences Tuesday, there's still time to contact your rep on this issue. For background info, see my previous posts on this issue.

Here's the letter:

Dear Rep. Gingery:

Thank you for your outspoken stance on increasing support for mental health and substance abuse programs in Wyoming.

I speak as a parent whose son Kevin spent a year in a drug treatment center 2,000 miles away because there was no place to send him in Wyoming. He was 17 at the time, and now is 23 with six years of sobriety in A.A. He goes to school in Arizona.

Our daughter Annie just finished a five-month stay at Wyoming Behavioral Institute in Casper. She was being treated for bipolar disorder. Before WBI, she spent six months at Mountain Crest Hospital in Fort Collins, Colo. Treatment costs were very high, and we would not have been able to afford it with my State of Wyoming health insurance. The Great West plan paid for approximately six weeks of in-patient mental health care. It's possible that the Mental Health Parity Legislation that passed Congress late in 2008 will provide some relief to families with mental health care challenges.

How did we afford our daughter's treatment? The Children's Mental Health Waiver funded by Medicaid through the Wyoming Department of Health. It also helps pay for an after-care program. It took some research and a bit of paperwork to get into this program, but it was well worth it.

Let's keep funding these programs. And find ways to keep our kids closer to home when they need treatment.

Thanks for all you do on behalf of Wyoming families.

Sincerely,
Michael Shay, Cheyenne

P.S.: I'm forwarding a copy of this e-mail to my state representative, Lori Millin, who's been very supportive of health-care legislation.

The (election) party's over -- time to get to work

This is a good day to remember that Americans can do great things when we work together. Here are some good suggestions from numero uno populist Jim Hightower:

Here’s an idea: Instead of wasting our tax money on Wall Street slicks who don’t use it to help anyone but themselves, why don’t we use our public funds to build something in America? Like what? Like bridges that are in disrepair, schools and libraries that need upgrades and expansion, high-speed rail networks to connect our population centers, energy-saving technologies for every home and building, public transportation for all of our cities, state-of-the-art internet systems everywhere, and public park repairs and expansions. America has important work that needs to be done. America also has millions of workers who need good jobs. Let’s combine the two needs so we can lift our country up and move forward together.

Meditations in Green, May 4-10, 2008

Green is the color of insanity. Not sure why, but that’s what it said in the handout distributed today at the Children's Mental Health Awareness Week luncheon in Cheyenne.

In the 1800s, the color green was used to brand people who were labeled "insane." The children’s mental health community decided to continue using the color green, but with a different focus. Green signifies new life, new growth and new beginnings.

We wore green ribbons. Green balloons flanked the entrance to the luncheon. Green flowers graced the tables. Most of us – or our children – have struggled with mental illness. I never related green to my own depression – or vice versa. My son had teen bouts with drugs and alcohol and spent a year in a treatment center. My teen daughter battles depression and has also done time in a treatment center. My wife Chris and I used to wonder "why us?" – until we met all kinds of people with the same problems. Mental health problems are as ubiquitous as health problems. Families are just as likely to experience depression or bipolar disorder or schizophrenia as they are diabetes and cancer. Thing is, you can talk about your skin cancer, but it’s hard to openly discuss how hard it is living inside your own skin.

Wyoming Governor Dave Freudenthal spoke at the luncheon. Life is difficult and complicated in the 21st century, he said, even in the least populous state in the union. Growing up outside post-war Thermopolis was idyllic, even with seven siblings and the limited budget of a farm family. People took care of one another. Ministers and teachers and the local sheriff could step into bad situations and make a difference. But there was at least one bad thing about the good old days -- people didn't discuss their deranged Uncle Bill or the kid in sixth grade who rocked back and forth all day. These days, we talk about the mentally ill amongst us, and we take strides to assist them. We have the dragon on the run, he said, but we can't beat the dragon until we all start working together. That was a message for all the nonprofits and government entities in the room. Share your resources and pull in the same direction. This is one of our toughest tasks. Too often we guard our territory at the expense of those who need help.

I work in the arts world, but volunteer as a board member for UPLIFT of Wyoming (sponsor of the luncheon) and serve on the Governor's Mental Health Council. Arts organizations fall prey to the same territoriality. None of us are the better for it.

So, here's some background on this huge issue:

The National Federation of Families for Children’s Mental Health again declares the first full week in May, May 4-10, 2008 as National Children’s Mental Health Awareness Week. The National Federation would like to invite all of its local chapters and statewide organizations to use this week to promote awareness about children’s mental health. Join the national office in sending the following messages:

Mental Health is essential to overall health and well being; serious emotional and mental health disorders in children and youth are real and treatable; children and youth with mental health challenges and their families deserve access to services and supports that are family driven, youth guided and culturally appropriate; stigma associated with mental illness should no longer exist.

EDITOR'S NOTE: For my header, I borrowed the title of Stephen Wright's excellent 1983 novel, "Meditations in Green," once out of print but recently reissued by Vintage Contemporaries. It has a lot to say about sanity and insanity as it relates to drug abuse, the Vietnam War, and over-the-top human behavior. One of my favorite authors, Don DeLillo, described the book this way: "Precisely that brutal hallucination we desperately wanted to end."

Tale of one city, two citizens

I only caught the tail end of the Spike Lee and Soledad O’Brien special, "Children of the Storm." It looked good, but it came on here at 5 p.m. I wasn’t even off of work. That's what happens when you're living on Mountain Daylight Time.

I did see CNBC’s special on the post-Katrina hurricane recovery in New Orleans, "Against the Tide: The Battle for New Orleans." The most amazing segment came at the end. It was the tale of two corporate titans. One, a V.P. for Shell Oil who refused to let his company abandon New Orleans and its 1,000 employees. Frank Glaviano grew up in the Ninth Ward and came back to his native city after traveling the world for Shell. He thought of his employees first, rebuilding the offshore oil platforms and corporate HQ, second. Shell sponsored Habitat for Humanity homes and several big New Orleans events that helped spur a return to semi-normalcy.

And then there’s Mr. Benson, the owner of the New Orleans Saints, one of those fat-cat owners who’s trying to blackmail the taxpayers into building him a new stadium. After the Superdome was destroyed, he couldn’t wait to get the Saints to San Antonio. He had to be coaxed back to New Orleans by city and state officials who sunk almost $200 million into the Superdome. You know the story of the Saints last season. They came within one game of going to the Super Bowl. Their success jazzed up the citizenry. Probably won’t happen this year. And because big corporate sponsors have probably fled N.O. for good, and a new stadium with luxury skyboxes for the fat cats will never be built, the Saints will be gone by 2011, or shortly thereafter.

It’s just business, as the mobsters said so often in "The Godfather." But where’s the Saints’ owner’s dedication to the people of the city? It’s a hell of a deal when an oil company shows the rest of us what it means to be a good citizen.

In a crisis, words are crucial

Last week, poetry and prose were sources of healing at Virginia Tech. Nikki Giovanni, Lucinda Roy, Edward Falco – these writers in the school’s creative writing program brought a healthy dose of reality (and comfort) to endless numbing hours of TV babble and cliche. The shooter was an English major who took writing classes. That brought the media stampede to the gates of the Ivory Tower. Instead of finding a gaggle of monk-like scribes hunched over their writing tables (or PCs), we saw a feisty group of real people who care deeply about their students, their school, their world.

Nikki Giovanni read poetry at the campus convocation following the shootings. Her We are Virginia Tech was a rousing anthem of a poem, one that drew equal doses of tears and cheers. I saw her interviewed on TV several times. A gracious, beautiful, tough human being. She had been disturbed by Mr. Cho’s attitude and his writing. She had complained to the administration, finally demanding that either Mr. Cho goes or she goes.

I also saw Paula Zahn of CNN interview Lucinda Roy. Cho’s writing had disturbed her so much that she reported him to the administration. Zahn asked Roy if the university did enough to address Cho’s problems. Roy said she wasn’t interested in causing more pain at Va. Tech by assigning blame. Zahn told Roy that she didn’t answer her question. Roy told her, very graciously, to go ask someone who wasn’t grieving so much. In other words: Go jump in the lake, you cold-hearted ditz!

Ed Falco wrote an e-mail to his students in which he comforted and advised them. Falco is a pioneer in hypertext writing and e-books. I saw him speak at the University of Wyoming in fall 2005. First and foremost a writer, he’s enjoyed experimenting online with the interplay of text, music, photos, and video. While he said that "in the future...we’ll be doing our reading on screens," he also acknowledged abandoning the world of hypertext to return to print.

"I was spending a lot of time alone in dark rooms with a computer," he said during his UW visit. "That seems unhealthy."

Obviously Prof. Falco’s sense of empathy didn’t disappear into cyberspace. Cho was his student in a script-writing class. After the shootings, he wrote this to his students:

"Cho's behavior was disturbing to all of us -- and the English Department tried, with the best of intentions, to both get him help and to make the appropriate authorities aware of his disturbing behavior. We did all that we thought it was reasonable to do.

"There was violence in Cho's writing -- but there is a huge difference between writing about violence and behaving violently. We could not have known what he would do. We treated him like a fellow student, which is what he was. I believe the English Department behaved responsibly in response to him. And please hear me when I say this: it was our responsibility, not yours. All you could have done was come to me, or some other administration or faculty member, with your concerns -- and you would have been told that we were aware of Seung Cho, we were concerned about him, and we were doing what we believed was appropriate.

"Look, all our hearts are broken. There's no need to add to the pain with guilt."

Sure, some of this could be seen as self-serving. Maybe the professors and the English Department and the VT administration did not do enough. Zahn did ask Roy a great question: "How did Cho get to be a senior?" The faculty reported him in 2005. Two years passed and he was about to graduate this May. It doesn’t take a writer to look at that and say: "What’s the story inside the story?"

Still, I look at the writing faculty at Va. Tech and see people that I could trust in a crisis. The university president, in his convocation speech, said that words were inadequate at times like these. I disagree. Words are crucial, as demonstrated last week by Giovanni, Roy, and Falco.

Doctors turn to World War I for answers

Roger Boyes wrote an excellent article in the 4/20/07 London Times Online about the treatment of war wounded in Landstuhl, Germany, which he describes as "a sprawling clinical compound close to the French border that was designed as a Hitler Youth campus. Landstuhl, nestled in a lush valley, is as verdant and as sleepy as Fallujah is dusty and noisy; the chokepoint of a controversial war."

He notes many details about the wounded and their caregivers. Arriving injured soldiers still have the sand of Iraq stuck to their boots. He notes that Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) is common among wounded, as many are hurt in bomb blasts. It’s a return to the days of World War I, when TBI also was a common injury of troops who crouched in trenches while shells burst around them.

Writes Boyes: "There is no collective memory in the U.S., as there is in the British Army, of soldierly experience in previous wars: of trench warfare in 1915, of desert campaigning in the Second World War, of the long Northern Ireland operations. The American textbooks are written by Vietnam veterans. The mental health experts have, however, been mugging up on the First World War: the overlapping symptoms of TBI and post-traumatic stress disorder bear a remarkable resemblance to the shell shock suffered, sometimes for decades, by survivors of the Somme. The combination of noise, fear and pain overloads the brain."

Boyes ends the article with some sobering statistics gleaned from a variety of sources, including the Journal of the American Medical Association, icasualties.org, and Sen. Christopher Dodd’s office. Here they are:

3,312 US military personnel have died in Iraq since March 20, 2003

26,188 have been injured up to February 3 this year

19.1% of troops returning from Iraq report mental health problems, compared with 11.3% from Afghanistan and 8.5% from other theatres

27,886 of the 146,000 US troops serving in Iraq would eventually require psychological help if that rate continued

4% of troops suffer post-traumatic stress disorder after a month in Iraq, rising to 12% after seven months [what about 15 months?]

4.4% are depressed after a month, rising to 9% at seven months

90% of casualties in Iraq survive, compared with 69.7% in the Second World War and 76.4% in Vietnam

20% of survivors have serious head or spinal injuries, and another 6% are amputees

How you can help: The New York City-based nonprofit organization "10 in 10 Project" sponsors the "Ticket of Hope" campaign to raise money to provide support for TBI patients after they are discharged from the hospital. The group has put together Brain Injury Recovery Kits, designed to aid recovery for soldiers (and others) with brain injuries. Each kit costs $600. For more information visit 10in10project.org or call the free hotline at (877) 989-1010.