Roy does a pretty good job of nailing the decline timeline, tho for me it was in 2 stages: about 6 months of 2017 where during which almost everything in my life changed EXCEPT physical ; and the last 2 years during which I went from spinning with the lads at 22mph for a couple hours to struggling put my damn socks on.
All the therapy and healing will get me back to somewhere, but it's unlikely to get me back to 2020...
Nurses are among the professionals who do not get paid nearly what they're worth. The doctor may save your life, but the nurses are usually the ones who help you get back to what your life was before. They're the ones who help you get out of bed, encourage you to move around, counsel you on seemingly minor things that will have big import later, and set you up so folks like the physical therapist can actually work with you.
A soldier of the Legion lay dying in Algiers
There was a lack of woman's nursing, there was a dearth of woman's tears.
Hey! You’ve been on the back burner of my mind. You’re here now and it would be good, (for me at least), if you could stick around for a while.
This particular piece is sorely needed from within our house at the moment (pun intended). I’ve passed it on. Kind of like the patient in the next room tapping out needed messages on adjoining walls. Such sentiments are not new here. Thanks.
Buck up Buddy, there are a few more trails to mosey on down.
The regular workers (non-doctors/surgeons) in hospitals are rarely appreciated enough. Another reason why it was so very galling when they were taking added shit from Covid-19 deniers during the height of the pandemic, in addition to taking on possible deadly risk themselves.
And yeah, that fast-forward into old age when you are post-op or really, really sick is pretty jarring and depressing--must be why nature brings it on gradually. I'm not quite old yet, but I tell myself I haven't missed a step from 10 years ago. I think that's probably bullshit and if 10-years-ago me were suddenly transported to now, the difference would be apparent. Such is life.
Keep on keeping on, slow and steady, etc., etc. Glad you are taking it easy. Now is the time to start streaming all those multi-season shows you've been glancing at for years on HBOMAX, Netflix, and Prime while thinking "well...maybe."
Last February and into March, I had an attack of sciatica that crippled me for just about 4 weeks. Got so bad I had to use a walker to get around the house! It's a real eye-opener to get that kind of preview into debility.
It was also a real eye-opener to get the fucking bills for the whole thing. After shelling out $12,000 a year for health insurance with a $6,000 deductible, it was not great getting the Explanation Of Benefits letter that said "cough up your $6,000 because we're only covering $1,000 of this bill for two MRIs." Ah! America!
Spouse lives with sciatica, for which she had surgery (and will go see a specialist for followup), and similar about the insurance. (Resigned to living with it we gave her a name-Sciatica Johnson-Jenkins.)
I feel extremely lucky that I recognized what movements I make that trigger my sciatica. I will always have it, and it will slowly get worse (as in, requiring less and less "abuse" to trigger), but for now I can lead a normal life, continue to work, and remain pain free.
If your spouse has had it bad enough to require surgery, you both have way more than my sympathy! Sciatica is by far the worst pain I have ever experienced, and so I do not wish it on anyone.
To state the obvious, what passes for health insurance in this country is an absolute disgrace. Whether they know it or not 95% of people are paying for what amounts to "catastrophic" insurance -- so you don't lose your house in the event of severe and/or prolonged illness -- not anything that would pass muster as true health insurance.
Twenty years ago, I sat next to Marco Rubio at a Republican fundraiser in Florida. He was just a little political twerp back then, but eager to impress anyone he thought could further his ambitions. We ended up discussing healthcare, and I mentioned to him that I was paying $12,000 a year with a $6,000 deductible to cover Mrs. Derelict and myself. Today I'm paying exactly the same amount to cover only myself. (Mrs. Derelict is on Medicare--I have two more years to go before I get to that paradise. Provided, of course, that Republicans don't repeal Medicare before then.)
LOL. I always enjoy the anecdotes from your days as an operative in the arena. I'll observe that Rubio is still a "little political twerp" to this day. All hat (Senator) and no cattle (any true accomplishments or impact).
Rubio has too had impact and been a leader! For example, he was the first Republican to fumble a water bottle and nearly drown himself on live national TV while giving the SOTU response to Obama. He was also a pioneer in getting repeatedly publicly humiliated by Donald Trump and then vying to insert his tongue deepest in Donald's taint. So don't sell Marco short--he'll do that all by himself.
I wonder if this might be a general phenomenon, politicians who are successful in Florida politics find only humiliation and defeat when they try to take their act to a national audience. Really hoping this is true, anyways.
The entire exchange was about single-payer healthcare and why we don't have it when every other industrialized country does. Rubio said if the government provided health insurance, my taxes would go up. That's when I said I was already paying $12,000 a year with a $6,000 deductible, so my taxes could go up $18,000 a year and I'd still break even.
You could almost see the little trolley in his head as it came tumbling off the tracks. He looked at me for a full second and a half, and then blurted out "Yes, but your taxes would go up!" As though that was the only thing that mattered. And it was, because to him that absolute worst possible thing anyone could do was to be forced to pay taxes.
The rest of the evening was just a parade of inanities. Marco Rubio is dumb. Incredibly dumb. Pathetically dumb. Far more dumb than you can imagine. When Chris Christie squashed Rubio flat on national TV by accusing Rubio of robotically repeating talking points only for Rubio to pause for a second . . . and then robotically repeat what he'd just said, it was my dinner experience with him reproduced live for all to see.
This is a lovely piece, Roy -- you are enacting the gratitude here you noticeed having the time for. Just marking the import of a big moment like this shows that gratitude. It's much appreciated.
I'm recovering from a bad bout of Covid, and I'm with you about noticing the sudden limits of my physical self. 50 years I've been able to turn her key & go [for the metaphor, think more riding mower than Bugiatti] — all to find out there's a moment it's not possible.
Oh, also -- inside every jaded habitué is a sentimental muppet desperate for shelter.
I fell from 30 ft up. Landed on the chainsaw with my arm. Broke my back in three places, knocked some teeth out.My wrist was shattered.
My elbow was really fucked up. There was a serious auto accident that happened at the same time that I had my accident. I was lying in the room in the emergency ward, way jacked up on IV painkillers. A State Highway patrolmen came into my room and asked me if I was driving. I told him I fell out of a tree and I didn't have any idea what he was going on about. He left and never came back.
Eventually I made it into a room and sometime in the middle of my first night I woke up and hurt like a motherfucker. I hit the call button and shortly a nurse showed up. I told her I need something for pain. She said we'll see what we can give you and checked my chart. She does and says "Oh my goodness, looks like we can give you whatever you need to to make you comfortable. Got any preferences?" I asked her what she recommended. She thought for a moment then said
"We'll get you some IV Dilaudid and and top it off with 50 mg of Valium to take the edge off."
Nurse Feelgood knew her stuff. I was in her unit for over a week and I looked forward to her middle of the night consultations.
I’ve only overnighted in a hospital once, in my mid-sixties, about seven years ago, following a “procedure” in the course of which my cardiac plumbing was reamed out. My wife, bless her, had smuggled my phone up to the room (this becomes relevant in a moment). At about four that morning one among the battery of instruments to which I was wired woke up and started a-whoopin’ and a-hollerin’: the sort of sound effect that in a television drama is accompanied by burly medics pounding on the patient’s chest and shouting “Code blue!” and “Stay with me, goddamnit!” Got 𝘮𝘺 attention.
Well, all that had happened was that a battery had failed, and after five or ten minutes of the racket a nice man arrived to make the noise go away. I found it for some reason difficult to go back to sleep, and so checked the headlines on my contraband phone, which is how I learned that Bob Dylan had scored a Nobel. This I mentioned to the Sweet Young Thang RN who came in to check on me at seven. “I don’t know who that is,” she replied. Set my convalescence back a good twenty minutes, I tell you.
I once spent four days in the ICU. I was in my 40s and pretty fit from taking care my property (12 acres of lawn mowing twice a week). My first night in, I was awakened every half hour or so because when I fell into deep sleep, my heart rate would drop below 60 and set off the cardiac monitors. The next day, when I'd lie still for more than 10 minutes or so, the same thing would happen--heart rate would drop below 60 and set off alarms. By lunch time, they gave up and just unplugged the monitor.
Like John Mellencamp says, growing old, it ain’t for cowards. Don’t picture you as a Mellencamp fan, but in your current state you might appreciate the album Life, Death, Love and Freedom.
I’ve had good experiences with the medical professionals around here, but the luxury of the hospitals seriously pisses me off. The most egregious example is that they have multiple giant saltwater fish tanks whose yearly maintenance is no doubt several multiples of my salary. Our ridiculous insurance premiums pay for that shit, and so much more excremental excess in design.
I saw John Mellencamp 10 years ago. (More like 15.) He opened for Bob Dylan along with Willie Nelson.
Wille has the best live voice I've ever heard. The show was in the minor league ballpark down by the river in Dayton. It was a perfect summer night. My daughter and I went.
I really liked JC! Him and his band have been together since high school and we're they ever tight! It was so good I forgave him for " sucking on a Chilli dog
outside the Tastee Freeze"
Bob was Bob. Ageless. Unless you've been you don't realize just
how raw and punk rock his live shows are. Larry Campbell was on guitar.
There’s a Mellencamp movie from that tour made by friends. Interesting in that he was mostly uncooperative and didn’t allow them to film Dylan or Nelson at all. Still, a good little film. “It’s About You.”
His more mature work is well beyond the Johnny Cougar era. Commonly described as Americana, but he still has some pop songwriting sensibility with much deeper lyrics.
Not much of a tribute, but when I see a news story about an 85 year old white man shooting a black sixteen-year-old for the crime of ringing his doorbell, I do mutter under my breath, "Ain't that America."
Beautiful reporting. I haven't had much of a problem about thinking of myself as old or knowing others see me that way. But the physical change is a gut punch. And cheers, Roy, for saluting the nurses.
Thoughts and prayers for your continued smooth recovery from the procedure. Becoming elderly, OTOH, well...
Roy does a pretty good job of nailing the decline timeline, tho for me it was in 2 stages: about 6 months of 2017 where during which almost everything in my life changed EXCEPT physical ; and the last 2 years during which I went from spinning with the lads at 22mph for a couple hours to struggling put my damn socks on.
All the therapy and healing will get me back to somewhere, but it's unlikely to get me back to 2020...
Socks! Remember when you just "got dressed"? There was no thinking, no conscious effort. Now I have to follow a process to put my socks on.
1) lie on bed
2) place left ankle on right knee
3) roll up sock
4) place sock over toes
5) roll down sock over leg
6-9) repeat 2-5 -for right foot
I presume the problem’s Medicare-fueled old age?
Well, If I had not got old I woulda skipped the 3rd hip and the subsequent sock-installation gizmo training, that's certain.
Good lord! *choke!*
Not certain I should heart this one...
Most people stop at 2 hips, one for the left, one for the right, you overachiever.
Unless you have skin in the game, free healthcare just makes people run around collecting extra hips to show up the other retirees.
I am SOOOO hip!
It's true, Medicare makes people old, just look at the data! Thanks a lot Biden!
We accept our roue´s jaded or otherwise.
"We accept our roue´s jaded or otherwise."
Got to keep stirring the flour or he'll get really jaded...
Ms. Oxford L. Anguages says:
jade2
ARCHAIC
noun: jade; plural noun: jades
1. a bad-tempered or disreputable woman.
2. an inferior or worn-out horse.
Origin: late Middle English: of unknown origin.
So I don't see where the flour comes in.
Me, ARCHAIC, I'll stick with jade1, my favorite colors.
Teehee -- this old jade was more interested in the roue / roux pun.
Thanks GR, I didn’t get it.
With puns like these, we're on the rue to roue´...
But not, one hopes, on the Rue Morgue.
Slowly, one hopes, but surely...
Sounds like a very Whitmanian vision of America’s potential.
We pay their salaries, and cover their retirement, with gratitude.
That Ed Roso fellow can write like nobody's business...
I hope somehow your caregivers get a chance to see what a wonderful tribute they've inspired.
Nurses are among the professionals who do not get paid nearly what they're worth. The doctor may save your life, but the nurses are usually the ones who help you get back to what your life was before. They're the ones who help you get out of bed, encourage you to move around, counsel you on seemingly minor things that will have big import later, and set you up so folks like the physical therapist can actually work with you.
A soldier of the Legion lay dying in Algiers
There was a lack of woman's nursing, there was a dearth of woman's tears.
Whoa.
Norton nailed that one.
For I was born at Bingen ... at Bingen on the Rhine.
Damn it, there's something in my eye now ....
Hey! You’ve been on the back burner of my mind. You’re here now and it would be good, (for me at least), if you could stick around for a while.
This particular piece is sorely needed from within our house at the moment (pun intended). I’ve passed it on. Kind of like the patient in the next room tapping out needed messages on adjoining walls. Such sentiments are not new here. Thanks.
Buck up Buddy, there are a few more trails to mosey on down.
Love, J.
Oh God, buddy, hope it's all all right
Great piece! Feel better soon, Roy!
The regular workers (non-doctors/surgeons) in hospitals are rarely appreciated enough. Another reason why it was so very galling when they were taking added shit from Covid-19 deniers during the height of the pandemic, in addition to taking on possible deadly risk themselves.
And yeah, that fast-forward into old age when you are post-op or really, really sick is pretty jarring and depressing--must be why nature brings it on gradually. I'm not quite old yet, but I tell myself I haven't missed a step from 10 years ago. I think that's probably bullshit and if 10-years-ago me were suddenly transported to now, the difference would be apparent. Such is life.
Keep on keeping on, slow and steady, etc., etc. Glad you are taking it easy. Now is the time to start streaming all those multi-season shows you've been glancing at for years on HBOMAX, Netflix, and Prime while thinking "well...maybe."
Last February and into March, I had an attack of sciatica that crippled me for just about 4 weeks. Got so bad I had to use a walker to get around the house! It's a real eye-opener to get that kind of preview into debility.
It was also a real eye-opener to get the fucking bills for the whole thing. After shelling out $12,000 a year for health insurance with a $6,000 deductible, it was not great getting the Explanation Of Benefits letter that said "cough up your $6,000 because we're only covering $1,000 of this bill for two MRIs." Ah! America!
Spouse lives with sciatica, for which she had surgery (and will go see a specialist for followup), and similar about the insurance. (Resigned to living with it we gave her a name-Sciatica Johnson-Jenkins.)
I feel extremely lucky that I recognized what movements I make that trigger my sciatica. I will always have it, and it will slowly get worse (as in, requiring less and less "abuse" to trigger), but for now I can lead a normal life, continue to work, and remain pain free.
If your spouse has had it bad enough to require surgery, you both have way more than my sympathy! Sciatica is by far the worst pain I have ever experienced, and so I do not wish it on anyone.
To state the obvious, what passes for health insurance in this country is an absolute disgrace. Whether they know it or not 95% of people are paying for what amounts to "catastrophic" insurance -- so you don't lose your house in the event of severe and/or prolonged illness -- not anything that would pass muster as true health insurance.
Twenty years ago, I sat next to Marco Rubio at a Republican fundraiser in Florida. He was just a little political twerp back then, but eager to impress anyone he thought could further his ambitions. We ended up discussing healthcare, and I mentioned to him that I was paying $12,000 a year with a $6,000 deductible to cover Mrs. Derelict and myself. Today I'm paying exactly the same amount to cover only myself. (Mrs. Derelict is on Medicare--I have two more years to go before I get to that paradise. Provided, of course, that Republicans don't repeal Medicare before then.)
LOL. I always enjoy the anecdotes from your days as an operative in the arena. I'll observe that Rubio is still a "little political twerp" to this day. All hat (Senator) and no cattle (any true accomplishments or impact).
Rubio has too had impact and been a leader! For example, he was the first Republican to fumble a water bottle and nearly drown himself on live national TV while giving the SOTU response to Obama. He was also a pioneer in getting repeatedly publicly humiliated by Donald Trump and then vying to insert his tongue deepest in Donald's taint. So don't sell Marco short--he'll do that all by himself.
I wonder if this might be a general phenomenon, politicians who are successful in Florida politics find only humiliation and defeat when they try to take their act to a national audience. Really hoping this is true, anyways.
What did the little shit say to you?
The entire exchange was about single-payer healthcare and why we don't have it when every other industrialized country does. Rubio said if the government provided health insurance, my taxes would go up. That's when I said I was already paying $12,000 a year with a $6,000 deductible, so my taxes could go up $18,000 a year and I'd still break even.
You could almost see the little trolley in his head as it came tumbling off the tracks. He looked at me for a full second and a half, and then blurted out "Yes, but your taxes would go up!" As though that was the only thing that mattered. And it was, because to him that absolute worst possible thing anyone could do was to be forced to pay taxes.
The rest of the evening was just a parade of inanities. Marco Rubio is dumb. Incredibly dumb. Pathetically dumb. Far more dumb than you can imagine. When Chris Christie squashed Rubio flat on national TV by accusing Rubio of robotically repeating talking points only for Rubio to pause for a second . . . and then robotically repeat what he'd just said, it was my dinner experience with him reproduced live for all to see.
Only four weeks? Lucky you. No, sorry Horrible, terrible, excruciatingly agonizing luck, oh I know, but lucky it didn’t go on much longer.
If I could have hobbled out to the garage, I would have cut my leg off with a chain saw just to make the pain go away.
Wonderful entry.
I’m glad that you are on the mend. Take care…
We’re ok. Both headed in the right direction. Thanks.
This is a lovely piece, Roy -- you are enacting the gratitude here you noticeed having the time for. Just marking the import of a big moment like this shows that gratitude. It's much appreciated.
I'm recovering from a bad bout of Covid, and I'm with you about noticing the sudden limits of my physical self. 50 years I've been able to turn her key & go [for the metaphor, think more riding mower than Bugiatti] — all to find out there's a moment it's not possible.
Oh, also -- inside every jaded habitué is a sentimental muppet desperate for shelter.
It isn't easy being green...
I had a tree trimming accident a dozen years ago.
I fell from 30 ft up. Landed on the chainsaw with my arm. Broke my back in three places, knocked some teeth out.My wrist was shattered.
My elbow was really fucked up. There was a serious auto accident that happened at the same time that I had my accident. I was lying in the room in the emergency ward, way jacked up on IV painkillers. A State Highway patrolmen came into my room and asked me if I was driving. I told him I fell out of a tree and I didn't have any idea what he was going on about. He left and never came back.
Eventually I made it into a room and sometime in the middle of my first night I woke up and hurt like a motherfucker. I hit the call button and shortly a nurse showed up. I told her I need something for pain. She said we'll see what we can give you and checked my chart. She does and says "Oh my goodness, looks like we can give you whatever you need to to make you comfortable. Got any preferences?" I asked her what she recommended. She thought for a moment then said
"We'll get you some IV Dilaudid and and top it off with 50 mg of Valium to take the edge off."
Nurse Feelgood knew her stuff. I was in her unit for over a week and I looked forward to her middle of the night consultations.
I too wanted to marry her.
Nurse Feelgood
2 marks!
I’ve only overnighted in a hospital once, in my mid-sixties, about seven years ago, following a “procedure” in the course of which my cardiac plumbing was reamed out. My wife, bless her, had smuggled my phone up to the room (this becomes relevant in a moment). At about four that morning one among the battery of instruments to which I was wired woke up and started a-whoopin’ and a-hollerin’: the sort of sound effect that in a television drama is accompanied by burly medics pounding on the patient’s chest and shouting “Code blue!” and “Stay with me, goddamnit!” Got 𝘮𝘺 attention.
Well, all that had happened was that a battery had failed, and after five or ten minutes of the racket a nice man arrived to make the noise go away. I found it for some reason difficult to go back to sleep, and so checked the headlines on my contraband phone, which is how I learned that Bob Dylan had scored a Nobel. This I mentioned to the Sweet Young Thang RN who came in to check on me at seven. “I don’t know who that is,” she replied. Set my convalescence back a good twenty minutes, I tell you.
I once spent four days in the ICU. I was in my 40s and pretty fit from taking care my property (12 acres of lawn mowing twice a week). My first night in, I was awakened every half hour or so because when I fell into deep sleep, my heart rate would drop below 60 and set off the cardiac monitors. The next day, when I'd lie still for more than 10 minutes or so, the same thing would happen--heart rate would drop below 60 and set off alarms. By lunch time, they gave up and just unplugged the monitor.
I have 2 brothers that are doctors, a nurse mother and sister. She broke out the Good Stuff for you. I'd want to marry her too.
Like John Mellencamp says, growing old, it ain’t for cowards. Don’t picture you as a Mellencamp fan, but in your current state you might appreciate the album Life, Death, Love and Freedom.
I’ve had good experiences with the medical professionals around here, but the luxury of the hospitals seriously pisses me off. The most egregious example is that they have multiple giant saltwater fish tanks whose yearly maintenance is no doubt several multiples of my salary. Our ridiculous insurance premiums pay for that shit, and so much more excremental excess in design.
I always screw up comments here. That is a reply to Roy, not Worriedman, though I’m sure it will apply to him as well, if not now, someday
I am old AF. Medicare starts May 1.
I saw John Mellencamp 10 years ago. (More like 15.) He opened for Bob Dylan along with Willie Nelson.
Wille has the best live voice I've ever heard. The show was in the minor league ballpark down by the river in Dayton. It was a perfect summer night. My daughter and I went.
I really liked JC! Him and his band have been together since high school and we're they ever tight! It was so good I forgave him for " sucking on a Chilli dog
outside the Tastee Freeze"
Bob was Bob. Ageless. Unless you've been you don't realize just
how raw and punk rock his live shows are. Larry Campbell was on guitar.
There’s a Mellencamp movie from that tour made by friends. Interesting in that he was mostly uncooperative and didn’t allow them to film Dylan or Nelson at all. Still, a good little film. “It’s About You.”
His more mature work is well beyond the Johnny Cougar era. Commonly described as Americana, but he still has some pop songwriting sensibility with much deeper lyrics.
Not much of a tribute, but when I see a news story about an 85 year old white man shooting a black sixteen-year-old for the crime of ringing his doorbell, I do mutter under my breath, "Ain't that America."
And there’s winners, and there’s losers
But that ain’t no big deal
‘Cause the simple man pays for the thrills, the bills
And the pills that kill,
Ah, but ain’t that America
Yep
Dilaudid is fucking WILD. But boy did it give me nightmares!
Beautiful reporting. I haven't had much of a problem about thinking of myself as old or knowing others see me that way. But the physical change is a gut punch. And cheers, Roy, for saluting the nurses.
That was quite a thank-you note!
Roy - is the NIH doing your follow-up care as well?
(I will resist the urge for a sarcastic comment about "the gummint can't do NUTHIN' right" because, obviously, they CAN. If we let them.)
BTW in personal news, my long national nightmare seems to be over...
I've got my fingers crossed for you. And my toes. Ow.
I'm a retired government employee, and yes, "gummint" does a lot right. A lot people don't see, until something major happens.