Tribulations in Quarantine

At the not so tender age of 73, I find myself becoming a sort of journalist. Not that my writings will ever be posted in a newspaper, or elsewhere, but because I feel the need to document many of the things that I encounter in life. To wit, the 2020 coronavirus quarantine in the USA. While my experiences may not be as dramatic nor as timeless as Anne Frank’s tribulations hiding from the Nazis in that attic, they are still tribulations and deserve documentation.

This particular tale begins in about the 8^th week of quarantine in early May, 2020. My grandson, Nick, had just bought a house in Springfield, Ohio and it fell to me to purchase and deliver an aluminum extension ladder to his new address. Since Nick had my Toyota pickup truck, I had to use my Toyota FJ Cruiser SUV to accomplish the mission. 

Anticipating some difficulty getting the ladder into the FJ, I decided to empty out the rear of the vehicle in preparation. The principal object that required removal was my 2-ball bowling bag.

So, on that Tuesday morning, I went out the front door with my car keys to accomplish the task. I was wearing shorts and my Crocs (yes, with socks), and it was spitting light rain.

I opened the rear door of the SUV and dragged the roughly 40-pound ball bag out and commenced to lugging it, in my left hand, to the front door of the house.

Entering my house means, not only getting into the house through the storm door, but keeping the cat and/or dog from exiting the house. This requires a quick observation as to which, if either, is behind the storm door. I made this requisite observation and assured myself that neither animal was waiting for me to open the storm door, so he could make a mad dash for freedom between my legs.

At this point a couple of things happened. Somehow, I lost my balance in my Crocs, and slipped out of both shoes on the rain-damp porch. At this precise moment, the 40-pound bowling bag in my left hand began pulling my off-balance body toward the edge of the front porch. I don’t recall the next event – I must have dropped the bowling bag – but I recall the event after that. I fell off my front porch – about 8 inches tall – and landed with a great THUD! on the cement sidewalk in front of my house. I landed on my right side, right shoulder, right hip, elbow and acres of my right-side torso. I was aware that the back of my head lightly tapped the concrete.

I laid there moaning for a few seconds – taking inventory of my poor old body – and decided I had not  injured my head or neck, and got up, completed my errand with the bowling bag by carrying it into the house.

Shaken, I explained to my wife what had happened, and she inspected me for injury. No blood, no abrasions.  No bones jutting out. No big lumps on my head.  No loss of consciousness. No obvious bruises but I expected those to show up soon.

Overall, we pronounced me lucky to have survived my fall with no obvious injuries. I downed a couple of Ibuprofen in anticipation of pain, and continued on with my day.

I did some physical labor the rest of that day, buying and hauling the extension ladder to my grandson’s house. The next day I began construction of a display stand for my daughter’s artwork, working in my basement shop.

My injury was barely noticeable during those two days of activity. However, on the afternoon of the third day, Thursday, I was napping on the couch in my living room. When I tried to get up. I became twisted in my blanket and somehow initiated a muscle spasm in my right side. It was intense. I can describe the pain – it was if a major league baseball home run hitter had teed off on the right side of my back and was trying to hit it out of the park!

I could move, and the pain would retreat. But if I rotated my torso even slightly in the wrong direction, it came back. Every time the spasm struck me, I would yell. I couldn’t stop myself.

I won’t say I actually screamed, my noise was manlier than that. But I think I screamed within my ability to scream. And I did so every time the spasm hit.

I immediately rooted though the medicine chest and found some Percocets left over from my wife’s recent shoulder replacement. These didn’t do much to minimize the pain, but they did make me sleepy.

I then wrote a note to my family doctor, described the situation, and solicited some muscle relaxers. He obliged with a script and gave me a treatment plan: heat, 20-minutes of ice at night, Percosets (3 per day), muscle relaxer (2 per day). Keep moving and stretch the spasming muscles.

So that was my regimen until Saturday. The pain was slowly subsiding and I was able to creep around the house with a cane. Getting into or out of a chair was a major challenge. The same for getting into and out of bed, or trying to turn over in bed. Each movement was accompanied by my manly screams of pain. I didn't drive, and I didn't walk my dog - who was very understanding under the circumstances. 

My wife noted that I must be getting better since my scream-per-hour rate had substantially decreased.

On Saturday, I became aware that I had not had a bowel movement for several days. So I commenced to dose myself with Dulcolax and Metamucil. And stopped eating. I went to the bathroom, feeling the need to go, a half-dozen times on Saturday. Unsuccessfully until the end, when I finally had a “break through.”

The process was so difficult and prolonged because I couldn't push. Pushing would exacerbate the spasm pain in my back.

Sometime during the torment of Saturday I beseeched my wife to go to the drug store and get me some suppositories. I felt such an errand was well within the bounds of her marriage vows. She didn’t agree and called me names.

The constipation was caused by the Percosets. So I promptly took the pain pill off my list. It hadn’t eased the pain much anyway. I decided whatever good the opioid did, the constipation far outweighed any benefit. From here on, I’ll stick with just the muscle relaxer.

I rode in a car Sunday for the first time since the spasms began. I rode with my wife to the Taco Bell drive-thru in Fairborn, to add some variety to our quarantine menu. Coming home, I was hungry and fished out a soft Taco Supreme from the paper bag and commenced to eat it in the car.

My wife decelerated and changed lanes at a traffic light, and at that point I sneezed, forcing my body to endure a spasm. I screamed and inadvertently squeezed my soft taco, the mushy insides of which extruded themselves out the end of the roll-up onto my blue shirt.

The best policy would have been to go to an ER and have an x-ray to see if I had cracked a rib. In hindsight, I think I probably did crack a rib, or perhaps tear an intercostal muscle. I would have had to spend a whole day in an ER, probably, exposing myself and my wife to COVID-19, just to get a diagnosis that would not have made any difference anyway. They could only see a muscle tear on an MRI, so x-rays alone would not have been enough.

I know that there is no real treatment for a cracked rib, nor a minor muscle tear.  They would have sent me home, hours later, with the same heat, ice, pain pill, muscle relaxant self-treatment anyway. They would have billed my insurance $1600 or more for all that.

When you’re young, you have confidence that the doctors can “fix it.” When you’re old, you’ve learned about the things they can’t fix.

Shawn Bucy

Coronavirus Prep

Been a while since I posted - doesn't make any difference, though, since nobody reads these posts. The blog concept seems to be a non-starter.

As long as I have the floor, though, thought I'd bring the blog up to date with regard to the coronavirus epidemic and its impact on us old folks in central Ohio.

Like everyone else, we're worried. About getting the virus and getting sick, or even dying! We're in that demographic - old  people. And like everyone else. we'v e been buying stuff to stockpile in case we have to be quarantined, or chose to quarantine ourselves.

We weren't quite fast enough to buy up everything we 'd need for an extended period early on. But we have managed to stash away a lot of hand sanitizer, antibacterial soap, sterilizing wipes, etc. I tried to get some face masks, but the good ones were back-ordered and probably won't get here until the crisis is over! I ended up with a bunch of probably useless one-time masks.

We went shopping and bought up a whole bunch of canned beans and pre-packaged rice, Figure we could live a while on rice and  beans. And taco chips. We also bought a couple weeks worth of frozen TV dinners.

The whole idea is to minimize the number of times one of us would have to go out for food during the peak of the thing.

The greatest concern turned out to be TOILET PAPER! We couldn't find toilet paper anywhere. All the brick and mortar stores (Kroger, IGA, etc) were sold out, Even Amazon had NOTHING!

I was faced with the stark realization of the end of civilization as we know it - no fuckin' toilet paper!

Luckily my wife found out that the local drug store was expecting a shipment and I timed my visit correctly to score a couple of 12-roll packs (rationed). Right now we have toilet paper bundles stacked up in the living room.

We've also got packages of antibacterial wipes stacked up in the corner and maybe a gallon of hand sanitizer. I've got a half-gallon of  surgical scrub on order and am expecting, eventually, to the get the N95 face masks I ordered early on.

I'm trying to train myself to wash my hands frequently, use the hand sanitizer, and disinfect my beard often.

About all we can do is avoid crowds, and wash our hands.

But - you've got to live your life. I have to go bowling on Wednesday night, we've got to go to doctor's appointments, and we have to got shopping for food, etc.

My latest ETSY post - a new knife

My latest post on my ETSY site - a new knife

Been working through my stash of  knife blade blanks this winter. Trying to balance my ETSY store between chests and knives. Haven't made knives in a couple of years, so I'm catching up.

This Bowie's got a Bocote handle

This dagger is Cocobolo

This pseudo-Bowie is Satinwood

I've got a couple more "on the hoof."  Got lots of blank blades and oodles of fancy hardwoods. Also have two entire tooling leather shoulders for sheaths. I over-bought. - sgb

More "What It's Like to Get Old"

Another post in my series "What It's like to get Old:"

Arthritis

It is an unfortunate fact that, as we age, almost all of us develop an acquaintanceship with arthritis – or “Uncle Arthur” as my family orthopedic surgeon calls it. My wife began her relationship early and by age 70 has had both knees replaced and arthroscopic surgery in her shoulder. The arthritis in her feet and ankles has been pronounced inoperable and she now walks only with the help of a walker.

My personal relationship with Uncle Arthur began with MRI and x-ray examinations of my knees which showed that my right knee was “bone-on-bone” and the left knee wasn’t much better. Since my wife had already had two successful knee replacements, I decided (age 66) to have a knee replacement - my right knee.

I had the knee replacement surgery, recovered well and did some intense physical therapy. But the pain in the knee didn’t improve beyond a certain point. I returned to my surgeon and had more knee x-rays. The images showed that the upper end of the tibia, below the artificial knee, was crumbling. The diagnosis: I needed a second knee replacement. A partial replacement to replace the fitment on the tibia with a different type of fitment.

I had to repeat the entire replacement process a second time within the same year. I missed essentially a whole bowling season.

As earlier, I recovered from the surgery and had intensive physical therapy. But as time went on, the pain did not go away. It’s been 7 years now and I’ve not taken a step without pain in my right knee.

I’ve returned to the surgeon, of course, several times and had more x-rays. They cannot do an MRI any more on my knee since it’s full of Tantalum metal components.

So, once again I’m stuck with a diagnosis:

·       We don’t know why it still hurts

·       Everything looks fine

·       We don’t know any way to fix it

My personal belief is that the surgeon somehow upset the natural leverage angles by which my tendons pull on the various bones, and I am stuck with chronic tendonitis in my right knee. The metal parts seem to be perfect but the soft tissue still hurts 7 years later. Despite having two knee replacements on the same knee.

So, of my wife and my four total knee replacements, we have two successful (hers) and two failures (mine).

Needless to say, I’m babying my left arthritic knee to avoid the necessity for another knee replacement. 

My wife (age 73) had her left shoulder joint replaced this week. Appreciate your natural joints while you still have them. As we age, most of us are in for cut-and-paste, cut-and-paste. 

I've been a league bowler my whole life, and I've kept statistics on my scores. For the six years before my knee surgery, I averaged 190. For the six years since the surgery, my average is a depressing 177 - 13 pins poorer. My knee doesn't hurt me especially when I'm bowling, but something is surely different that seems to be beyond my control. 

Bursitis

Like arthritis, as we age we almost universally develop bursitis. A bursa is a sac filled with lubricating fluid, located between tissues such as bone, muscle, tendons, and skin, which decreases rubbing, friction, and irritation. As we age, these bursa can become damaged or irritated. The result is pain.

My wife has had various bursitis treatments including cortisone injections and even surgery to remove a chronically damaged bursa.

My first experience with bursitis was when I tried to clean our deck by brushing on a cleaning solution with a push broom. I felt a tightening in my right elbow – not a pain, but a tight feeling. I looked down, and I had a swelling on the back of my elbow about the size and shape of a baseball!  I‘d never even heard of anything like that. Off to urgent care. Diagnosis – bursitis. Treatment: elastic bandage and rest.

My second experience was the time (age 70) I dumped my motorcycle while stopped on uneven pavement and strained my left knee (the “good” one). Back to the orthopod. Diagnosis: bursitis. Treatment: cortisone injection and exercise.

Peripheral Neuropathy

Beginning in my sixties, I began experiencing vicious itching attacks in my feet. My wife experiences the same thing. In her case the attacks occur mostly at night. Mine can happen any time.

My mother, in her seventies, also had this problem.

In my case, I’ve also lost a great deal of the feeling in my toes. As best I can tell, we’re both suffering from peripheral neuropathy, a type of nerve damage.

While peripheral neuropathy can be caused by a variety of things, including diabetes, it often occurs with no known cause. From my blood tests, there is no known cause for my neuropathy – except age.

Another of those: We don’t know what causes it, and we can’t fix it. But we do know what to call it.

About all we can do is use counter-irritants to suppress the itching, and local anesthetics. I’m also using a foot roller as a counter-irritant. My doc says that Vitamin B12 might help. Research on the web says that the Methylcobolamin formulation of B12 is recommended – so now I take that daily. Haven't noticed any improvement.

My wife also experiences the loss of sensation in her fingers. So far I'm no affected by that (knock on wood). 

If you're afflicted by peripheral neuropathy, you begin to think of it as the beginning of a slow death, creeping up from your finger tips and toes. 

Dental Issues

It’s an unfortunate fact of life that, if we live long enough, most us will outlive our teeth. I’ve always had good dental care, but I’ve also not been blessed with the best teeth. So, in my early years I had lots of fillings in my permanent teeth. But as I aged, I started breaking my molars and needing crowns. By my 50’s, all my molars were crowned. Then I started developing problems in the root structures and needed root canals – even in some teeth already crowned.

Then I developed problems with cracked roots – problems that crowns and root canals couldn’t fix. I’ve had two molars removed. After the first one was removed, I began biting my tongue, especially in my sleep. Had to get a mouth guard made.

In my 50’s I developed Temporal Mandibular Joint Syndrome – from a highly unnatural bite from all those crowns. I suffered bad headaches. I saw a specialist who eventually solved the TMJ problem.

Two years ago I had the second molar removed, and decided to get an artificial implant to replace it. A year and thousands of dollars later, I now have the implant. While that has solved the tongue-biting problem, it still hurts a little to chew hard foods with the implant.

Lacking any dental insurance, all this dental work has cost me a small fortune. But so far, I still have all but two of my original teeth (not counting my wisdom teeth). Knowing the problems my dad and grandparents had with false teeth, I vowed long ago to hang onto my own teeth as long as I possibly could. So far, so good.

The best advice I can give you? Take care of your teeth and get dental insurance.

De Quervain’s Syndrome

This past year (age 72) I developed a chronic pain in my right thumb. Back to the orthopedic surgeon, more x-rays and an MRI of my hand.

Seems I developed a problem whereby a tendon at the base of my thumb no longer slides smoothly through a sheath of tissue like it’s supposed to: De Quervain Syndrome. I guess it’s a form of tendonitis. Treatment: cortisone injection, ibuprofen, exercise and ice. And try to avoid whatever it is I’m doing to exacerbate the problem.

So I stopped using the thumbwheel roller mouse I’d been using. I think that bowling might also be partly responsible – although not bowling all summer didn’t make it go away. I’ve got a thumb brace, but it doesn’t help much (and my dog keeps chewing it!).

How can you stop using your right thumb, for chrissake?  So, De Quervain’s Syndrome has become another one of the things I’m having to live with.

Hurray for the Civil Service!!

As a retired Civil Servant (38 years working for USAF intelligence) I am much gratified to see how Civil Service professionals (not politically-appointed, and profit-motivated) are standing up and "speaking truth to power" in the House impeachment inquiry. I've done that a time or two myself, albeit on much smaller stages.

As the cartoon shows, the professional Civil Service is definitely on the high ground with respect to the hypocritical and criminal scum thrashing around in Trump's self-made swamp. 

If that's what Trump means by "Deep State," then I'm a very proud to have been a member of that noble brotherhood of professionals for nigh on 4 decades. Way to go, guys! Keep it up.The truth will out!

- sgb

Weird Tuesday afternoon

Didja ever have a nonsense question pop into your mind for no reason at all? Just happened to me. The question: “What was the name of the old Chinese guy’s cat in the 1969 release of the movie “True Grit?” Rooster (John Wayne) introduced him as his nephew.

Was something I used to know, but had forgotten. 

So I looked it up on the web. Only took me maybe 10 seconds to get the answer: General Sterling Price. Named for a Confederate general in the Civil War.

Thank god for the internet. Without that, these absurd questions might haunt my old age in increasing numbers. Could drive me (further) crazy.

-----

Just had a  close experience of the weird kind. Was walking Tommy – still daylight, mid-afternoon.

He was attracted by something he saw under a big old fir tree. Big deep bed of brown needles piled around its base. He stopped. Came to a point, stared, then approached on tip-toes and poked at something with his snout.

I didn’t see it at first, but kept tension on the leash and maneuvered so I could pull him away from whatever it was. I suspected a rabbit, or maybe a dead animal.

As I got in position to haul him away, his target stirred and roused up from its bed in the needles. At first I thought it was a cat – but then I caught a glimpse of long black and white hair and my mind screamed, “SKUNK!!!”  I pulled Tom away post haste, despite his continued interest in poking at the thing. Got him away unscathed, thankfully.

The thing must have been sleeping soundly in his pine needle bed and didn’t spring to his own defense as fast as he could have. Sleepy skunk.

Had never occurred to me to be wary of sleeping skunks under fir trees in broad daylight. I’ll be aware from now on! 

Certainly don't want a repeat of the joint skunk/dog experience I had a few years ago. That was one life lesson you only need to learn once. 

An except from my unpublished autobiography

1950-1952 Shelby, Ohio

The Scrappy House

In 1950, Daddy was transferred to Ohio. You might wonder what the USAF had to do with Shelby, Ohio. During WWII, a large number of equipment and supply depots were built, scattered all over the country. The idea, I guess, was to decentralize the military supply system so that it was less vulnerable to attack. Anyway, after the war there was a large supply depot in the middle of the cornfields outside Shelby, Ohio.

We lived in two houses in Shelby. The first house, the “Scrappy House,” was really substandard accommodations. It was out in the country, at a rural corner in the corn fields. The place was really rundown and drafty, cold in the winter – there was no insulation.

Daddy says the house was built by a local entrepreneur from GI surplus plywood glider crates from WWII. We had a big snow in the winter of 1950/51, and the snow would blow through the gaps in the walls and doors and pile up inside the house.

I remember a surprising number of things from that time:

·                Watching the corn harvest across the road, with the harvester sucking up the corn stalks and shooting the corn into a following wagon.

·                My mother making cranberry sauce from scratch in the kitchen. I remember listening to the berries pop in the boiling water.

·                Christmas morning, 1950. I slept in the living room because there wasn’t any other place for me to sleep. I awoke way early on Christmas morning and could see a giant teddy bear by the tree that wasn’t there the night before. I remember lying there for an eternity before everybody else woke up. That Christmas, Daddy wasn’t home with us. I have no recollection of that, but he says he spent Christmas week in a hospital alcoholic ward going through detox. Right after he got home, we moved to Earl Avenue.

·                Snow Cream. This was a confection made from freshly fallen snow, sugar and vanilla flavoring. I remember Mama going out the back door with a saucepan and bringing it back full of clean snow.

·                Getting my mouth actually washed out with soap for something I’d said. I don’t remember what I said, but I sure remember the taste of that soap.

·                Lying in bed at night, in the living room, watching the passing car headlight beams shine through the seam between the walls and ceiling of the house. I was sleeping in a glider box, for chrissakes!

·                Visiting the military police station on the depot where Daddy worked and getting a genuine military police badge. I wonder what ever happened to my badge.

·                Mice in the house. I remember a dinner being interrupted by the snap of a trap behind the refrigerator.

14 Earl Avenue

The second house was downtown in Shelby. We moved there right after Christmas 1950. It was a big old two-story wood-sided town house, with a sort of tower in one corner. It was painted yellow. We lived in only a part of the house. 

Things I remember from this time:

·                Halloween – I was a clown and Daddy was a hobo and we went to a costume party at the church and we won a prize. Mama had done drama in college and she made the costumes and made us up. She’d taken a hatchet to a pair of Daddy’s old shoes. She made him up with burnt cork.

·                Daddy working in the detached garage, in the rain, building Sheila a dollhouse. Was something dad’s do for daughters – I did it myself some 20 years later.

·                Pissing off the next-door neighbor when I sprayed his freshly waxed car with the hose. Hey – I was only trying to help.

·                Getting my first dog - Homer. He wandered up one day, and we kept him for a while. I got to name him. Mama wondered if the name derived from the Greek mythology stories she had read me – I said no. “Homer” got the name because he had found a home. He didn’t get to keep him long, though. Our landlord didn’t want us to have a pet, so we had to give Homer away. That broke my heart. I can still see that landlord – a short, fat man with a round face and a little mustache, always wore a hat. To a four-year-old, he was evil personified. My folks didn’t care for him either – he actually gave me a snare drum for Christmas. I have no idea why he did that – the most obvious conclusion was to drive my parents crazy, I suppose.

·                Mice in the house. We had mice in the house. I could hear them scurrying around at night – in the walls and ceilings and on the hardwood floors. Even in the drawers of the chests. I remember them getting into bed with me at night and feeling them scamper across my blanket. Once I awoke to see a whiskery little pink nose close to mine. I remember being afraid and covering my head with the blankets to keep the mice away from me. When my parents tucked me in at night, they really tucked me in. I was trussed up like a mummy.

·                Daddy going off somewhere for a long period of time. They told me Daddy was going to “school.”  

·                Mama pulling me down the sidewalk on my sled. We were going to the little neighborhood grocery. I remember that it was the wrong kind of sled – it had metal runners for use on ice. We were trying to use it on snow and it wasn’t very satisfactory.

·                Mama pouring a bottle of whisky down the kitchen sink.

 14 Earl Avenue, circa 1992

Daddy was an alcoholic, but he stopped drinking when we were in Shelby. He joined AA, there, and has been active in AA – and sober – ever since. He joined AA right after that Christmas week in a detox ward in 1950.

I don’t remember anything specifically about Daddy’s drinking. I do remember some drama between my parents in Shelby, and I remember Mama pouring a bottle down the drain. I learned about Daddy’s drinking from him and Mama over the years since then, but I actually have no specific recollection of Daddy’s drinking.

I remember one night, sitting in a parked car with Mama – Sheila must have been there too. We were waiting for Daddy to come out of a bar – I think he was in there on AA business. I remember a Cat’s Paw neon sign over a shoe repair shop. I remember reading the sign, perhaps with Mama’s help (I was only about four). I remember Mama telling me to look away when we saw a derelict begin to urinate in an alley.

Daddy says he came home drunk from work the last time on Dec 22, 1950. The next day he joined AA, and has been sober since.  There are lots of reasons that I am proud of my father, but none bigger than his courage facing, and beating, alcoholism.

[My wife and I made a trip through Shelby on our 25^th anniversary, in 1993. With no help, I actually drove right to the house on Earl Avenue. Shelby’s not a big town, but finding a house in a town by dead-reaconing when you had last been there as a five-year-old, 41 years earlier, is some miraculous experience, I think. I just had a feeling where it was, you know? And I recognized it immediately. I didn’t know the street address at the time, but I confirmed it with Daddy; I found the right house.

The house was still there, and it was still yellow! It was old-looking in 1952, but it didn’t look like it had aged any in the intervening 41 years. The street was not as wooded as I remembered, and of course, everything looked smaller.

I think I even found the remains of the old scrappy house too, while heading north out of town. It was then just a farmer’s dilapidated storage shed. Of course, it hadn’t been much more than that when we lived in it nearly a half-century earlier. But – I guess they built those glider boxes to last, huh?]

We left Shelby in June 1952; Daddy had his orders to go to the Korean War. He took the rest of us to Murray, Kentucky where my maternal grandmother lived.