Monthly Archives: January 2010

Overheard at the Nursing Home

Getting Old, Health, Life

Yesterday I visited my friend and neighbor who is recuperating from surgery at a nearby rehab center. It’s the same place that I spent a week in after I broke my hip. If you have to be in a place like that, it’s a pretty good place to be. The people were really great and my therapist Kari set me on the road to an amazing recovery. I not only had a broken hip, but at the time I was minus a knee. They had to remove my first artificial one for about six weeks because of an infection. I fell while on crutches and broke my hip. At that point I wasn’t sure if I would ever walk straight again.

Visiting my neighbor was sobering, he’s in pretty bad shape. That’s another blog. I was feeling pretty down as I left him, but between his room and the front door of the center, I had an encounter that left me laughing to myself the rest of the day.

In order to get from the rehab area of the building to the exit, you have to pass through the common area of the nursing home section. As I entered two women in wheelchairs were meeting in the hallway, one was being pushed by an attendant ant the other was in a motorized chair. They looked to be well into their eighties at least. As they passed I couldn’t help overhearing their conversation. For the sake of the story I’ll call them Mabel and Alice.

Mabel, in a teasing tone, “What’s this I hear about you….”  I didn’t catch the end of the sentence.

Alice replies, loudly, “Oh that’s bullshit!”

I proceed to the elevator and press the down button, not realizing that it had a security code so the inmates couldn’t escape. Fortunately one of the nurses came along and let me out, I was beginning to think they were going to keep me. But the delay was a good thing because it resulted in my standing there long enough to hear another exchange with Alice. She had been motoring along right behind me and stopped at the nurse’s desk, where an elderly gent we’ll call George was standing, conversing with the pretty young aid who was holding down the fort. Speaking to George she cracked, “Are you paying her by the hour to sit there and listen to you talk?

“What?”

“Are you paying this poor girl by the hour to listen to your dumb stories?”

“Who put a nickel in you?”

“You did.”

George must have been at a loss for a good comeback, because as I entered the elevator, he was grumbling away in German.

The Secret of Social Media Marketing

Weirdness

Yesterday HorizontalAmbition.com received the second most hits ever, which just goes to show you that all you have to do to market yourself in the world of social networking is to post a teaser on twitter and facebook that includes the word “naked.”

Holy Moley

Life

This is another dementia check.

Last year my sister and I flew down to Pensacola to visit my brother. One thing that came up while we were down there was a family history of melanoma. I think my brother Bill first mentioned it on a previous visit, “Have you had a melanoma yet?” I didn’t think much of it, but when I found out that both of them had been diagnosed with that particularly nasty form of skin cancer, I thought it might be a good idea to get checked out. When I mentioned it to one of my doc friends, she told me I definitely should get checked because there was a strong genetic predisposition for the disease. That doesn’t mean that you necessarily have the genetic marker, but you’re more likely to, and thus more likely to have a killer mole. I’ve always had lots of moles and I have one in particular that pretty much constantly itches and it’s positioned just inside of my right shoulder blade, in the most unreachable place on my body. So I made an appointment with a dermatologist.

I made the appointment months ago, probably long enough ago for any existing melanoma to have spread and killed me already. Then about a month ago, the called me and canceled the appointment. We rescheduled. I have to tell you, things like doctor appointments end up on the bottom of one of the piles stacked up in the messy desk of my mind. So late last night when I crawled into bed my darling wife Rebecca, half asleep, asked if I had an appointment in the morning. “I don’t know, do I?”

“It’s on the calendar.”

“Yeah but I thought it was rescheduled.”

“It’s on the calendar.”

“Did I forget to move the date?”

“It’s on the calendar.”

So I got out of bed, stumbled down to my office and checked the calendar on my computer and saw it right there, Dr. Olson, 8:45, January 25. “Wow, thanks Beck, glad you reminded me.” Something I find myself saying disturbingly often. In my mind, 8:45 am is not early, I rarely sleep past 6, so I didn’t set the alarm. Naturally, I slept until 6:30, but I wasn’t concerned, that should be plenty of time. I made a pot of coffee, poured myself a cup, and went through my morning routine, skimming the sports section and checking my email, to see what advances have been made in the science of penis enlargement. No panic, even though the weather was looking bad. We were getting a light dusting of snow on top of yesterday’s thaw and rain, which makes things very slippery. I came out of my morning haze and glanced at the clock. 7:30. Knowing that I would be baring all very soon, I had to get a shower in. Now I was starting to get concerned. I told myself not to worry it was past rush hour and Highway 100 which is pretty much a straight shot to the clinic, shouldn’t be backed up.

Highway 100 was a parking lot. It was now 8:20. There was no way I was going to make it, particularly if I stayed on the highway. I don’t know if it’s the same everywhere, or just in the Twin Cities, but commuters tend to stick to their routes no matter what, so when traffic is bad on a main artery, you can often make better time on the back roads. I jumped off at the next exit, not entirely sure of the route I needed to take. B likes to say I have a lousy sense of direction. I disagree, but that’s another blog. Combining dead reckoning, hazy memory and luck, I slipped into the clinic using a backdoor route, without a single wrong turn. And I was only 15 minutes late.

Or 30 days early, depending on how you look at it. That’s right, I hadn’t moved the appointment on my calendar, and I wasn’t scheduled to show up until next month. My doc wasn’t there but the waiting room was empty, probably because all the other patients were still sitting on Hwy. 100, so they would squeeze me in with another doctor.

So they put me in a room and I stripped down to my shorts and put on the requisite ridiculous gown and waited for the doc. The doctor I was originally scheduled to see is, if I remember correctly, a very attractive woman and naturally I was just a little bit nervous about that whole I’m naked and you’re not thing. There was a knock on the door and the new doc popped in. She looked liked she was about 20. She could have been one of my daughter’s friends. Now I’m not that modest of a person, but there’s a certain awkwardness to being closely examined by a member of the opposite sex, particularly a much younger one. The awkwardness was mixed with a little bit of a smirk. Her manner was reassuring as she carefully checked out the landscape, explaining what the various irregularities on my surface were and that none of them of the dangerous variety. She had covered all the territory that wasn’t covered by my shorts.

“I’m going to look at your buttocks now, is it OK if I take a look?”

“Sure.” Down came the boxers and then almost instantly back up.

“Is there anything you want me to look at in front?”

I literally had to clench my teeth to keep the inner class clown from jumping out of my mouth. “Ummm, no.” was my snappy comeback. I’m sure she was quite relieved. It was bad enough that she had to look at my feet, the poor thing is probably scarred for life.

In the course of the examination, we talked about the itching mole and another weird protrusion, and decided, although they were harmless she would remove them by freezing them with liquid nitrogen. Now, we all know that medical personnel like to prepare you for sticks and pokes and jabs by saying things like, “This might cause some discomfort” or “This might sting a bit” So when she came right out and said, “This is going to hurt,” it got my attention. And she wasn’t lying. I asked how long it would hurt, “Just while I’m doing the procedure, it kind of burns.” She was lying. I tell people that the Year of the Knee greatly increased my capacity to ignore pain, but lets just say that I feel a new bond with animals that have experienced branding irons. Driving home it felt like the cowboy was still poking me with a red hot Lazy S. Fortunately my knee doctor has me pretty well armed in the pain killer department.

Which explains this long, rambling post.

Sports!

Recreation, Sport and Fitness

Big sports day today. Starting off with a trip down to Williams Arena to watch the women’s basketball team take on Michigan State. I’ve subleasing one season ticket for a few years now, great seat, eight row just past mid-court opposite the benches on the same side as the Gopher bench. The raised floor at Williams arena gives those seats a fabulous angle on the action. Pretty close to player eye level. It’s a great place to be sitting when the Gophers are playing a sideline trap as well.  I really enjoy watching teams that play good aggressive defense and that’s the signature of a Pam Borton coached team. I love to see it when they turn up the pressure and the other team gets those rattled looks on their faces as the shot clock runs down. Or start trying to run there offense too fast and throw it out of bounds. They like to create turnovers and score off them, they do a really nice job in transition with Kiara Buford, China Antoine and Brittany McCoy leading the way, blazingly fast, excellent ball handlers and passers. Half court offense, another story. It’s always an adventure, but it helps if the other team makes the mistake of not double teaming Ashley Ellis-Milan, which rhymes with Ashley’s always smilin’.

And then the Vikings game.

Note to self… Start a hoops category

Weak Link

Life, Rants

In my last post I promised that, in the near future, I would cogitate on planned obsolescence, or why the manufacturers of my garage door opener chose to put in a plastic drive gear that would certainly wear out long before the other components of the machine. First of all “cogitate” is not, as you might think, defined as the mental ramblings of a codger. But in this case they may be analogous.

When I was informed by Dean, the neighborhood handyman, that it was a worn out nylon gear drive that had rendered my garage door opener non-functional, my first conclusion was that this was a design flaw. It seems that this part is the weak link in the operating system of this machine. Dean knew right where to look for the problem. He said he’d already replaced them for most of the neighborhood.

What do you think would have happened if I’d called a garage door repair specialist? Would he have replaced the gear or sold me a new opener? I’m thinking new opener. Was there some design requirement that mandated the use of a nylon gear? Like functioning under specific conditions. Or did Sears specify the use of the gear so the opener would fail after 10 years instead of 20, so they could sell more units over time? Or would a more reliable (metal?) part add enough cost so that the Craftsman 1/2 hp unit couldn’t compete in the market with similar products?

You might think that I’m going to answer those questions. I’m not. I’m hoping you can. I will observe that this kind of design is part of the price we pay in the world of mass production and part of why we’ve turned into a throw away society.

What do you think?

Role Reversal

Family, Life

Saturday night we were heading out to dinner when the garage door stopped about two-thirds of the way down. Wouldn’t go down wouldn’t go up. We were a bit late getting started to make our reservations already, I went in and popped the door loose and shut it manually, intending to deal with it in the morning.

In the morning, after charging up with coffee, a banana and cheetos we set out on a DIY adventure. Our first idea was to observe the machine in action in order to diagnose the problem. In order to do that it was, of course, necessary to reconnect the door to the opener, by sliding the runner back over the bolt protruding from the rail that holds it to the moving chain. So I grabbed the handle on the release chord and pulled it forward expecting to pop it over the bolt. First time, didn’t go. Second time, fail. Third time, not the charm. So relying on the bigger hammer  theory of mechanical repair, I grabbed the door and gave it a healthy upward push. The runner popped over the bolt and beyond, breaking the translucent housing that protected the light bulb and becoming hopelessly jammed on the other side. I wanted to call a garage repair guy, Beck wanted to call Dean the handy neighbor. She prevailed, which was a good thing. I should always yield to her better judgement. As if I have a choice.

Dean is in his seventies and I would say that I hoped to be in that good shape when I get that old, except that would mean I’d have to be in better shape than I am now. After struggling for about an hour to undo the damage that I had done, he took about thirty seconds to find the problem. Apparently the drive gear, made out of nylon, had worn down to the point of failure. A common flaw, it seems, because Dean’s replaced this component for pretty much the entire neighborhood. The parts guy a Sears knew what we’d come in for as soon as he saw that we were carrying the manual for the opener. We grabbed lunch at the 50s Grill on Brooklyn Blvd. returned with the part and everything was back together in an hour. Including the service door from the garage to the house, which also broke at some point during the repair process.

I stood out in the garage and watched for a little while, but it was apparent that I was useless in that situation. Beck stayed out to watch and learn. She’s much more mechanically adept than me and I usually defer to her when it comes to fixing stuff around the house. I know, the man card is in danger again.

Thinking about the events of the day and the fact that I do most of the cooking, we decided that I make a pretty good housewife. And she loves a man in an apron.

Next post: I’m going to cogitate on the plastic part that wears out before the machine is any where near the end of it’s life. Design flaw?

Close Call

Family, Life, Sport and Fitness

Dodged a bullet. I almost committed an act that would put me in jeopardy of having my man card revoked. Our younger daughter who works at the Guthrie, gets two free tickets to each performance. She called last week and offered us her tickets to Romeo and Juliet. I’ve often said that we don’t take good advantage to the cultural opportunities offered here in the Twin Cities and this sounded like an chance to increase our highbrow credentials. Rebecca was on the phone with her relaying the info while I was in the middle of something important like reading Facebook entries. A range of dates was offered. I replied that Sunday would work.

Now I’m not a huge football fan. I have never once painted my face purple or maroon, or even cornflower and maise (not Michigan, Carleton.) But I have jumped on the Vikings bandwagon this year. It’s so much fun to watch Brett Favre when he’s playing for your team rather than picking it apart. I was also kind of distracted. I know there’s really no excuse for not realizing that the play conflicted with the Vikings playoff game against Dallas. Dallas. Playoff. It’s enough to boil the blood of guy my age. Not to mention the fact that I would definitely bring my guyhood into question if I spent an afternoon listening to iambic pentameter. Besides I already know the ending of the play.

I know this identifies me as obtuse, but the conflict didn’t hit my radar screen until yesterday morning. My stomach did a backflip and I broke into a cold sweat thinking about what I would say to the first guy who said, “Did you see the catch Rice made in the back of the end zone?!?” And, if I were to be honest, I’d have to reply, “No, I missed it, I was watching Shakespeare.” I couldn’t bear the shame. I also fully understand the repercussions of backing out on a date with my wife. Things could get icy at casa Keller if I didn’t approach this with utmost delicacy.

“Hey Beck… Do you think one of your fiends might want to go to the play tomorrow.”

“Why?”

I explained my predicament. She said that she was sure that she could find someone and she’d call around. All of a sudden I felt like I was the one being ditched.

So I’m off the hook. But knowing the Vikings, I’ll still be watching a tragedy.

Dementia Check

Health, Life, Sport and Fitness

Yesterday I went to the club this morning and put in 45 minutes on the treadmill, at a pretty good pace for me. Between 3 and 4 miles per hour most of the way. That’s a huge improvement over where I was two years ago, or even three months ago. But the workout left me questioning my sanity a bit. I was working out to Rock’n’Roll on the iPod and when Los Lobos live version of Marie Marie came on I pumped the speed up to 4 mph, which is a pretty good walking clip. When it was over a slow Bonnie Raitt song came on and I slowed down to it’s tempo. I was getting into Bonnie’s slide work and kind of closed my eyes. When I opened the up again, the treadmill’s control panel was running away from me. I had obviously slowed down too much and didn’t realize it. I was about to go off the back end, not able to reach the shutoff and too little time to catch up, and a concrete wall right behind me. I surprised myself by thinking fast enough to kick my legs out from under me, get my feet on the floor behind me and stop my fall with hands on either side of the moving pathway, on the edges of the treadmill. Thank God I’ve been working out, I never thought I’d attain that level of agility again after the year of the knee.

So I get plus marks for the physical realm for the 45 minutes of walking that endless highway and having the agility to to fall down without injury. I’ll even give myself a point in the mental column for realizing, in that split second before I went flying into the concrete block wall behind me, what I had to do in order to make a safe landing. But I’m a little concerned with the mental process that put me in that situation in the first place.

The Worm Turns (My Stomach)

Health, Weirdness

I first heard about this experimental treatment for Crohn’s disease several years ago when the University of Iowa was doing research on it. The treatment consists of exposing the patient to infestations with worms, specifically N. americanus and A. duodenale. Hookworms to me. This radio broadcast from WNYC Radio Lab contains a fascinating interview with Jasper Lawrence, the founder of Helminthic Therapies. The pertinent stuff comes in at about 30 minutes.

Jasper, a transplant from England, living in Santa Clara, suffered from severe allergies and asthma. He was hospitalized twice a year, suffered from a nagging cough, he had the dark, sunken eyed, pale complected look of a severely allergic person. While visiting his Aunt on a vacation to England, she asked if he had heard about new breakthroughs in the study of allergies and the immune system that she had heard about on a documentary on the BBC. It seems that it had been discovered that people with hookworm infections were 50% less likely to have asthma, and that other diseases like Crohn’s disease and Multiple Sclerosis were virtually non-existent in the developing world, where sanitation was, to say the least, less than optimal, and hookworm, spread by contact with human feces was prevalent. The explanation for this is that somehow the presence of hookworms in a person’s system has a dampening effect on the overactive immune systems that are bent on attacking the cells of their own body.

This sounded like a pretty good deal to Jasper so he immediately went about trying to purchase hookworms so he could infect himself. No one was selling any. It wasn’t an approved treatment and there weren’t any to be had. So, taking the matter into his own hands he spent two weeks in Cameroon on the west coast of Africa, which he describes as “the armpit of Africa,” traveling about in the bush looking for latrines to walk through barefooted. After 30 or 40 such treatments he returned home with a pretty good hookworm infestation as a souvenir. When the next allergy season rolled around, he found that his symptoms were gone.

In the early twentieth century, backed by a million dollar gift from John D. Rockefeller a commission was formed to eradicate hookworm from the U.S. The five year program had great success in wiping out the parasites and reducing the anemia and other health problems they cause. And so, isolated from hookworms in my youth, never getting the chance to dance through human shit as a lad, my immune system went nuts and started attacking my digestive system.

Jasper Lawrence decided that he would form a business treating auto-immune diseases by selling patients hookworms and the means to infect themselves. I’m not sure what those means are but I’m sure they’re fun. The treatment is still not approved by the Department of Health or the DEA or for that matter any government agency, but Jasper’s pretty upfront about that fact and his site is loaded with caveats and disclaimers, but also a number of endorsements from satisfied customers. “Thanks for  the infestation, Jasper.” The price tag for a good worm infestation: $2900. And where does Autoimmune Therapies get it’s raw material. Jasper provides all the worms needed in his own poop. Talk about pulling a business out of your butt.

I have to ask myself the question. Given the severity of my Crohn’s (not particularly severe, but certainly not pleasant) and given the cost and side effects of supporting a colony of parasitic worms in my guts, would I try this treatment? When I first heard about it, I thought, “hell yes” dish me up a platter of worm eggs! I’ll do anything to get rid of this curse. But after reading these articles, and hearing what the cost is and thinking about those squiggling little buggers sucking blood from my intestinal walls, well, maybe not. I’ve had low hemoglobin before and it’s not a fun thing, and although I get a little anemic during a long flare up, I guess I can deal with that, knowing it eventually will pass and I’ll get a nice period of remission. There’s just something about the ideal of having blood sucking worms in me that sends a shiver down my spine. So the answer is, no freakin’ way.

I’d love to hear what you think about worm therapy, autoimmune disease and bloodsucking, please leave a comment.

Moore, Moore and Less

Art, Movies, Music

We watched Far from Heaven last night. Very good film, the evocation of the mid fifties is evident in the art direction, script and direction. I loved the way that the couple played by Julianne Moore and Dennis Quaid simply would not pay attention to their children, it was always, we’re busy now, later. In contrast the plot focused on racial and homophobe tension, under the Leave it to Beaver facade there’s a dark side to the perfect family.

This afternoon we’re going to see Sanford Moore and friends at the Capri Theater. Luckily we’re experiencing a heat wave, it’s up to 13 right now.

I know I promised not to write about Crohn’s disease. But I’m going to throw it out there that after four months of flare up I’m happy to say that I seem to have gotten my shit together. I’ll be breaking this promise again tomorrow with a post about some interesting developments in the treatment of auto-immune diseases like Chroh’ns and Asthma. Seems like when we pretty much eradicated hookworms in the US back when I was a kid, we made ourselves more vulnerable to attacks from our own immune systems. hmmmmm.