The Personal Epiphany of Health Care

The Merriam Webster online dictionary defines "epiphany," besides the obvious Judeo-Christian meaning, as a moment of sudden understand in a new or clear way.

Sitting at the pharmacy drive-through window, hearing that the doctor's office had failed to call back to confirm a refill request on my blood pressure pill, I came to a moment of sudden understanding in a new and clear way.  I had ceded responsibility for my own health.

At 46 years old, I'm about 5-10 and right at 190 pounds.  That's a little heavier than I like.  In fact, it's a lot heavier than I like because I can remember being much younger, a shade taller and about fifty pounds lighter.  Granted this height at 140 is pretty skinny, but this height at 170 felt great.  I could run, jump, lift heavy things, all that stuff.  I could fit into 34-inch-waist pants.  There haven't been any 34" pants in my bureau for a while now.

Now that I'm in 36" pants and sometimes sucking in a bit to get them snapped, I have been feeling a bit depressed.  It takes extra effort to get off the couch and walk around the block, it takes a certain amount of will to say "no" to the second bowl of chili that is just so good but I don't actually need it.  It takes a certain combination of pessimism and optimism, pessimism that even though I am happy in the moment of the second bowl, in the morning I will be unhappy when I cannot get the pants snapped, optimism that nothing is irreversible.  I don't have to be stuck at 190, I may have trouble snapping the pants now but that doesn't have to be permanent.

One day, I can get back into 34" jeans.

I am certain that a fair portion of my need for a prescription medication to control my blood pressure is, at least in part, my weight.  And there I was, fuming at the back of my mind that for whatever reason, my doctor hadn't called in the refill.  Now, I know that weight isn't everything and that skinny people have high blood pressure, too.  But I also know that weight is a contributing factor in a lot of cases, and it's a factor over which I have complete control.  But I wasn't controlling it, and harboring a quiet anger toward my doctor when, in fact, I could actually take positive steps to eliminate my doctor's influence on my health and, by extension, my peace of mind.  It doesn't feel good to have something so basic held in control by someone else.

So here I am now, stating these facts:

Day 1 (Monday 05/05/14)
Weight: 189 pounds.  I had a ham-egg-cheese sandwich for breakfast, missed lunch, cold cut sandwich for dinner.  Spicy pickle relish on the sandwich, big flavor, small calories.

Walked around the block, lifted a few modest weights.  15-lb dumbbells, 3x10.  Sit-ups and push-ups.  I hate push-ups.  But I'm not keen on man-boobs either, so push-ups it is.

Day 2 (Tuesday 05/06/2014)
No weight.  Scrambled eggs for breakfast, large hoagie at lunch.  Green beans, onion, corn on the cob and smoked sausage for dinner.  Tasty!  Went easy on the butter, counter to my instincts.  My big thing about the butter is the salty taste, so I salted the corn instead.  That worked great.  Walked around the block.  No workout at all.

Day 3 (Wednesday 05/07/2014)
Weight 188.  We're on our way!  Breakfast at Chick-Fil-A.  Skipped the fries.  Lunch was leftover from dinner, no corn.  Delicious.

That's it for the moment.  It's the middle of my workday so I'll follow up.  I'm determined to actually beat this thing.  I'm not grossly obese or in terrible condition, but I can feel myself becoming more complacent.  More than anything else, that complacency is the most dangerous part.  I don't think it's good to be comfortable with having surrendered so much of my own life to the control of others, and I intend to take it back.

Regarding the Death Penalty: An Open Letter to the US Government

I've said it before: the death penalty is bad.

There are people who really shouldn't be walking the earth with good, law-abiding citizens.  Those bad people cannot be trusted to respects the rights of others: they kill, they terrorize, they place their own wants - not needs, wants - above the needs of others.  This last sounds trite but I'm talking about killers.  Invariably, killers.

And possibly rapists.  It's hard to get around rape, too.

And while I don't think people like that should be permitted to live around other, non-criminal people, I don't think it should be up to the law-abiding citizens to kill them.  I'm not as concerned about the criminal as I am about the person who is supposed to carry out the death penalty upon that criminal.

When a condemned man is put to death, the medical examiner of the governing body where the execution took place lists the cause of death as "homicide."  Which is to say, some other person killed this one.  Through careful phrasing, those other people are absolved of the title that usually goes with committing homicide: murderer.

Clayton Lockett of MacAlester, Oklahoma was on the slab last night with a tube in his arm when something went wrong.  Lockett was being executed for a terrible murder in 1999.  I won't argue with the decision to rid the world of him, he was a terrible person.  The sedative flowing into him failed, but the paralytic and respiratory suppressant drugs he was receiving continued.  Those last two are known to be agonizing without adequate sedation.

Lockett died anyway of a heart attack, after about a half-hour.  A properly performed lethal injection execution gets the job done in just a few minutes.  The victim falls asleep and dies.  This was not as simple as that.

When officials noticed things going wrong - Lockett struggling to rise from the table, regaining consciousness and mumbling - they pulled a curtain to block witnesses from seeing.  That's a bit ironic, that it's okay to watch the man die but not to watch him suffer.  It's obvious why it's not okay, of course.  Seeing other people suffer hurts the watcher, too - usually.  Certain pathologies react differently.

So, suddenly, it was NOT okay to watch the man die.  And now, in the wake of what has happened, another execution scheduled for the same night has been put on hold.  It would be unacceptable to kill a man in the wrong way, evidently.  As technology and American culture has progressed, we have sought more and more humane ways to put people to death, to end their lives as gently as possible.  We don't want to hurt the condemned, just get rid of them without causing them pain.

If we are a nation that holds life so dear, to spend billions of dollars on health care, to command assorted manufacturers to make their products safer for users, to acquiesce to other manufacturers that demand we not use their products to put condemned prisoners to death, then why do we kill condemned prisoners at all?  In this one small pocket of cognitive dissonance we are bloodthirsty and unforgiving.

As he laying gasping, one wonders what the instincts are.  Mr. Lockett was condemned to die, but now with the procedure going awry, were the attending medical personnel inclined to save him?  The execution was supposed to happen in a certain way, a way that wouldn't unnecessary hurt him - his terrible crime was dreadful and all the fires of Hell may not be punishment enough, but that isn't for us to decide, so we're supposed to be as gentle as possible even as we hasten the heart's final beat.  But he suffered, absolutely.  He isn't even the first.

I submit to the entire United States government that our penchant for killing our own nation's criminals, however bad their crimes, makes us all party to systemic murder, adherents to a policy of death-dealing.  The associated costs of keeping a condemned man in prison until his execution are already well known, much, much higher than for a non-condemned man.  Looking at the situation from a coldly economic standpoint, on that basis alone killing condemned prisoners is unsupportable.

And worse yet, innocent men get executed too.  Even one is too many.  The only way to be absolutely certain that the United States, and by extension, all Americans, is innocent of unnecessarily killing an innocent person is to never kill another prisoner again.  Stop now and forever. 

These deaths that are carried out, ostensibly in my name as well as the name of every other upstanding citizen, weigh upon me.  They bear down with a load that I do not want.  Don't kill for me.

Stuff Worth Owning: Trü Pickles (mostly)

I found these bad boys just a few weeks ago.

Once again, I happened upon them while wandering the aisles at Ace Hardware.  I don't know if any of you have noticed, but it looks to me like Ace Hardware is on a tear lately.  It may not seem that way nationwide but it sure looks like that in East Tennessee.

Near me are three Ace Hardware stores.  One replaced a failed unit in downtown Clinton.  I'm not surprised it failed; if you don't sell antiques from your store in downtown Clinton, well, you're in the wrong place.  Another landed in Halls, nicely coinciding with the Walmart upping stakes and moving out of its former location.  Walmart didn't go far, it is almost literally within sight of its former location, but it's just a wee bit further up the road.  Why they went there, I can't fathom.  But it's farther out of Halls, leaving folks in that little suburb that much more hard up for retail options.  And another sprang up in the void left by the eventual dissolution of what had been the indefatigable Parker Brothers Hardware in Knoxville.  Each one is compact, dense, and covers a pretty broad range of products.  I love 'em.

So I was shopping for some wood stove door gaskets and cement.  No problemo, I knew without even asking that Ace would have it.  And on my way toward the door, I saw...

this

Being a fan of pickles I naturally snatched one up and plunked it on the counter beside my coil of fiberglass gasket and high temperature cement.  I got 'em home, chilled 'em for an hour or three in the fridge, cracked 'em open.

They are amazing.  These are some seriously good pickles.  They're too spicy for some folks, Sweetie doesn't care for them on that basis alone, allowing that they are very tasty but far too spicy to suit her.  That means they're all for me!  No, wait, it doesn't.  Son #1 also enjoys a mean pickle and we shared the jar.  That didn't take long.

They're pricey, but they are so worth it.

Then, a couple days ago, I found these:

Smoked Black Pepper Pickles! Even spicier! So they're going to be great, right?

Wrong. There's a distinct black pepper flavor all right, but the most prevalent flavor coming out of this is mulch.

I'm not kidding.  It took me a bite or three to figure it out, but this tastes more like compost than anything else.  Wondering if I'd chanced upon one that just hadn't been quite right, I tried another.  I think it must be the smoke flavor that's added, but they're dreadful.  Maybe it's like cilantro with some people: most people have no trouble with cilantro but some say it tastes just like Palmolive. I hate to say it, but I've actually happened across a food item that I refuse to finish.  I'm throwing them out.

I'm one of those people who says cilantro tastes like dish detergent.  Maybe the problem is me?

But be not dismayed, Trü!  I'm coming back.  Those first pickles were fabulous.  Sweetie may love the bread and butter pickles.  I know I won't but that's just me - I can't stand sweet pickles.  Can't please everybody.

A little sweet pickle relish in my deviled eggs, however, is crucial to a full and happy life.  So even I can find use for sweet pickles.

I could dig into the question of whether you're going to "own" food.  You take it in, take it apart for nutrients, and a fair portion - all of it, pretty much - eventually gets excreted back out.  Anyway.  Those kosher dills are fantastic and I highly recommend them.

Irony in the News

"Human Barbie" thinks interracial couples make ugly babies.

...and this individual is a good judge of beauty?

For comparison, a "composite woman" from the cover of Time Magazine:

As a typical, heterosexual male with more-or-less middle class standards, I find the second woman extremely appealing on many levels.  The fact that that woman doesn't actually exist is beside the point, my point is that the image is the result of combining hundreds of faces.  Those faces are from many different races, many colors, many shapes, and we can clearly see that when you put all those things together, what you get looks pretty good.  And the first woman, Valeria Lukyanova, is freakish.  Ms. Lukyanova claims to come from a place where "only joy and love exist," and I, for one, recommend she go back to that place and stay there.

She also says she has only had her boobs enhanced.  Yeah.  Not falling for that, either.

Russia is in Ukraine to assure peace

Sure thing, Vlad.  We're all buying that.  We're totally convinced the 90+% "yea" vote on Russian annexation of Crimea was on the up-and-up, too.

Click that link.  Look at those happy faces.  How many of them do you think were paid to look that happy?

 

Archie Andrews Must Die!

 

For those who might wonder at how that might be ironic, consider this: the publishing company is called Archie Comics.  Killing off the title character could be considered shooting oneself in the foot, or perhaps the head.

 

It's not quite as apocalyptic as it seems.  "Life with Archie" has been a what-if kind of title, like DC Comics' own "Elseworlds" line wherein familiar characters are dropped into environments and storylines far different from the mainstream, regular comics.  The infant Kal-El of Krypton, for instance, raised as the son of the Wayne family and growing up to become a Super Batman.

 

Usually comics move along in a sort of timeless purgatory, living years over and over but the as the years move forward, the characters stay put.  Lately that has required a string of "reboots" in the DC panoply in particular and I, for one, am well and truly sick of it.  I am suffering from reboot fatigue and divesting myself of my large comic collection.  But Life With Archie was different, Archie and the gang got older, became adults and had to deal with adult problems.

 

So this will bring an end to the what-if side of things.  Archie Andrews, perennial teenager, icon who moves through the years without being entirely affected by them, will go on.

RE: MH370 and US Lawmakers

SHUT UP.

Regardless of whether the Malaysian government is actually "bungling" the search, it is not the place of US personnel to comment on practice, policy or execution.  Shut up.

The citizens of Malaysia are embarrassed enough without ugly Americans wading into the already-roiled waters.  They have enough angry people shouting at them, why add to that?  This is yet another example of the hand being offered is a clenched fist instead of a helping grip.

When Steve Fossett's plane crashed in 2007, a gigantic array of seachers were fielded, including satellite coverage from Google, and they even had a good idea where to look.  Fossett's plane wasn't found for over a year.  Not only that but they were searching on land - none of the bits were likely to have sunk under the surface of the ground.  Searching the ocean is a whole different kettle of wide-open featureless space.

American deputy national security advisor Tony Blinken, however, went on record stating that the various countries working together for the search was praiseworthy.  Good!  At least somebody is finding something positive to say.

Can't we all do that?  How hard would it be for American Congressmen to say, "Hard luck, gents.  It happens to all of us!  How can we help?"  That's all that needs to be said.  I'm quite certain Malaysia in general and Malaysian air traffic officials in particular are feeling a bit under the gun right now, let's not be jerks and pile on in their time of crisis, okay?

I'm going to sound awfully cold and calculating in the next few lines, so just roll with it: The US could come out of this, an air disaster in which we have virtually no stake at all (three Americans out of over 230 people aboard) smelling like a rose with just a little careful management.  It goes like this:

1) No critical commentary from US at all unless specifically asked for by Malaysian authorities, and then only in private.  Malaysia discloses criticism at their own discretion.

2) Bend over backward, sideways and inside out with assistance.  Rally every vessel we have to search and recovery efforts, everything within a week's sailing.

3) Commit search submersibles now.  Send their support fleets steaming to the nearest port for immediate dispatch once the crash site has been determined.

4) Shut up about all of it.  Be humble, be gracious, be self-deprecating.  The very best marketing is the marketing that is believed, and shouting your own merits tends to sound hollow.  When some other nation, however, has nice things to say, words like that have a lot more merit.  It sounds expensive to send half the Pacific fleet churning toward the Indian Ocean, but we wouldn't be firing any guns.  This is how a nation wins hearts and minds, and we're missing the opportunity.

Death of a Hatemonger

When I heard that Fred Phelps, pastor of the infamous Westboro Baptist Church, had died a small, uncharitable part of me said, "Good.  It's about time."

I'm not proud of that.  I like to think that I don't actively hate anyone.  I don't preach hate, certainly not the way Phelps and his church did.  But I've thought more than once that Phelps is was one of those people the world would probably be better off without.  I didn't necessarily wish him dead, I just wished him gone.

I'm aware of how immature that is, how fantastical.  If the person is there, for him to be gone he has to die.  But can you believe me when I say there was no malice in that?

So now we have a world that is short one Fred Phelps, Sr.  Is the world a better place with Phelps gone?  I suspect it probably is.  It is only incrementally better, a very small increment.  But sometimes you have an incremental hurt like an ingrown hair or an infected eyelash.  Minor things, tiny things.  And yet they can be highly irritating and the instant they are gone you feel so much better.

Phelps' history is checkered.  As a Kansas lawyer he successfully fought for civil rights in many cases, but he also took on a personal vendetta against a court reporter, haranguing and defaming for his own reasons.  He was ultimately banned from practicing in Kansas courts but continued to represent cases in Federal courts, until another vendetta - against judges this time - got him disbarred from any kind of court.  That pretty much put an end to his legal career.

It's not really clear exactly what led him down this path of vitriol.  Several members of his family have quit both the church and the family.  Most of them cite both physical and emotional abuse.  Well, can't blame them for leaving.  The church's history of protesting military funerals and political activities in order to draw attention to "God's hatred of America" is pretty well known, unfortunately not just here in the US.  The church's reputation got Phelps and his wife placed on a permanent persona non grata list in the UK.

Ironically, in the last year or so Fred backed off his extremist views.  That put him on the outs with the WBC which, believe it or not, got him excommunicated from the church where he was the founding pastor.  Wow.  If you thought Phelps was intolerant, look at the intolerance he's inspired.

And now he's dead.  Ostensibly because members of the WBC do not "worship the dead" but possibly because they'd rather avoid any loud and unpleasant protests, there will be no funeral for Fred Phelps, Sr.

Rest in peace, Fred.  It isn't up to you to tell us who God hates, but for your own sake you'd better hope He forgives.

The View From Above...

...my shoes, that is.

Here they are:

Sexy, not really.  Just tall.

My few regular readers will probably remember that I do a little acting in community theater from time to time.  I have been fortunate enough to win the part of Aunt Augusta in "The Importance of Being Earnest," it was really the only part I was auditioning for.  I wanted it.

I'm a guy.  I'm about 5' 10", which isn't especially big for a guy.  For a woman however it's pretty large, and when set atop 3" heels (and under a foot-high hat) Aunt Augusta is downright imposing.  That was the plan.  She's an imposing character.  I have dreamed of taking Aunt Augusta right over the officious, blustering top in high style ever since I first saw the play.

It's a peculiar quest to find heels of any height for a guy - any guy - let alone one my size.  Get online and Google "women's shoes for men" and your popup banner ads start to get a little weird.  I won't get too graphic, but let's just say it wandered into alternate lifestyles of which I do not take part.

I found shoes that fit.  I normally wear a men's 12 to 13, which we guessed would translate to a women's 15W.  They're a little big but that's good, I think men's feet tend to be a bit wider than women's, certainly men's shoes tend to be wider than women's.  So I have nearly sufficient width for my feet and a bit more length than is strictly necessary.  Padding takes care of that.

But my toes are under terrific pressure from my own body weight.  They are bent into an odd angle that hurts after a while.  The heel of the shoe begins to bear up against my own heel in a way that my usual everyday shoes never, ever do.

So now we come to the point of this post: high heels hurt.  I have always told my wife that she is never prettier than when she is comfortable; if she is wearing something that doesn't feel good then by all means she should take it off and throw it away.  Life is too short.

Heels hurt.  They hurt all the time and then when I take them off my feet continue to hurt for hours afterward.  I understand that my limited experience means that my feet haven't become accustomed to them and they would probably get better if I had both better-fitting shoes and gave them more time to acclimatize.

But they hurt.  Why in the world would I want to acclimatize to that?

Take your high heels off and throw them away.  It may sound terribly hypocritical to say that, after 4 decades of having never said anything about women's shoes, but that was because I had no experience.  I have that experience and now can say, from a much more sympathetic viewpoint, that high heels have no saving grace at all.  Besides being flimsy and subject to structural failure, they can and do cause permanent injury over time besides being highly uncomfortable in the moment.

And don't start me on bras.  Holy cow.  Between the shoes and the bra my back feels like I've been splitting wood and raking leaves since September.  The ache won't go away.

As part of the gender that has somehow encouraged or even required all you ladies to put yourselves into this state, I apologize.  I assure you, I did not actively take part.  And for my part, I say set it all aside as soon as you can.  Like I said, life is too short.