Following is the article that appeared about me and kidney donation in the Cal State Long Beach student newspaper. The reporter told me that 300 words had to be cut from his copy, but still he was given a good amount of space to tell the story.
Not everything here is quite accurate, but all said, I am happy that the article was run. I'm sure it will raise awareness and may inspire students, faculty, and staff who read it to become donors. That is what's most important. I heartily thank David, the reporter, for his efforts toward that end.
Health, happiness and a hell of a spirit
By David Cowan
Published: Wednesday, September 1, 2010
Updated: Thursday, September 2, 2010 02:09
Heidi Nye looks like a picture of health. Sitting in a large brown leather chair, her small dog Rasputin — a pound rescue — sleeps quietly in her lap. She’s smiling. Even on the hot August day, Nye’s mood is high and her spirit is energetic.
Looks can be deceiving. Nye has had Type 1 diabetes for almost 40 years and will need a kidney transplant if she wants to live another 40. Yet Nye remains optimistic and considers herself a romantic.
“Even with the dialysis thing, I would meet the man of my dreams, and he would give me a kidney,” Nye jokes. “I look healthier and lot of that is attitude.”
Nye was an adjunct professor of journalism at Cal State Long Beach from 1987-2009 teaching between one to five classes almost every semester of those 20 years.
“I was given the opportunity to teach by Larry Meyer, so I started and got asked back and asked back and asked back,” Nye said. “Teaching, it’s like being in love, when things are working right.”
To this day, Nye still maintains a close relationship with former students.
Defining the disease
“Type 1 diabetes is the most severe type, the pancreas is not working” Nye explains. “Most people have Type 2 which means that their pancreas is overworking.”
Doctors estimate that there are about 23.6 million people with diabetes in America, but only 18 million have been diagnosed with the condition. Nearly 90 percent of those diabetics are Type 2. With changes to lifestyle and weight loss, Type 2 diabetes can normally be reversed. Nye is not so lucky and, for years, used an insulin pump. An insulin pump is an alternative to multiple daily injections of insulin by insulin syringe or an insulin pen. The pump releases a continuous insulin supply.
“Someone will say on TV that we’ve done wonders for [the treatment of] diabetes, but not for Type 1,” Nye said. “They solve Type 2 by putting people on better diets.”
Nye describes a bad insulin reaction as a near death experience, depending on how far gone you are.
“You get adrenalin sweats and it feels like you’re going to die if you don’t get something to eat,” Nye said. “It’s the adrenaline rush, the fight or flight…that wreaks havoc on the body.”
Dawn of dialysis
Initially, Nye was dead set against the idea of dialysis.
“I’m not going to do it,” Nye said she once claimed. “I’d prefer to die.”
However on Feb. 2, 2009 Nye began dialysis. Dialysis is primarily used to provide an artificial replacement for lost kidney function in people with renal failure. It is an imperfect treatment to replace kidney function because it does not correct the endocrine functions of the kidney.
It was “10 years building up to dialysis,” Nye said. “I don’t know how I got up — getting dressed would exhaust me.”
It was little wonder Nye was exhausted, in the last decade she was basically a workaholic filling her days teaching, working, editing and taking shifts as a massage therapist.
“It’s something to do with your hands and very spiritual,” Nye said.
During this time, Nye was working 7 days a week and also fulfilling her mom duties with her son who was going through junior high and high school. All this time, fluids were building up in her body.
What are sick people?
“People have different ideas of what sick people are, whether they should try avoidance or pity,” Nye said. “You learn to take care of yourself and I developed a positive nature.”
Nye has since been put on a waitlist for a kidney donation. In California, the wait for a type O kidney is 10 years. The lifespan of a person on dialysis is about 5 years. The waitlist for a kidney in Oregon, however, is only three years.
"People talk about moving to Oregon for the weather, I might move there for a kidney,” Nye said.
Even if Nye were to get a kidney, issues within the health care system make it difficult to keep.
“As soon as you’re on dialysis, you go on Medicare, however, you lose Medicare one year after you get a transplant,” Nye said. “You get off Medicare, you get off your immunosuppressants, you get back on dialysis.”
Immunosuppression involves an act that reduces the activation or efficacy of the immune system. Deliberately induced immunosuppression is generally done to prevent the body from rejecting an organ transplant, treating graft-versus-host disease after a bone marrow transplant.
Treatment
To fend off kidney failure, Nye undergoes the nightly process of peritoneal dialysis, where fluid is introduced through a permanent tube in the abdomen and flushed out every night while she sleeps. PD is used as an alternative to hemodialysis though it is far less common. It has comparable risks and expenses, but on the upside, Nye doesn’t have to get treatment from a medical facility. A major complication with PD is a risk of infection due to a permanent tube in the abdomen.
Nye’s dialysis machine is in her bedroom, which contains her bed, her dialysis machine, air purifier and several dozen boxes filled with glucose solution.
Watching Nye prepare her dialysis is as mesmerizing as it is meticulous. Nye begins by taking her blood pressure to “regulate the fluid balance.” After thoroughly scrubbing her hands with an antibacterial soap, she sprays the “cycler” down with Lysol disinfectant to ensure a sterile environment.
Now it’s time for a second round of scrubbing. This time, she also uses disinfectant wipes on each of her fingers. Her mood resembles some sort of deep meditation — focused but serene. She easily lifts two 5-liter bags of dialysis solution and a single liter of primer that will wash the impurities out of her blood later that night. Between the draining of the fluids in her system and the cycling of the new solution, the process takes 9-10 hours.
Finally, Nye puts on latex gloves and a surgical mask to protect against any other possible infection. She turns the machine on and normally waits for 30 minutes to heat the solution.
“When I change my dressing, I have a surgical mask on and I scrub with antibacterial soap and hydrogen peroxide,” Nye says about her permanent abdominal tube. “Having tape on your body 24/7 for 18 months, it itches and has the possibility of fungal or bacterial infection.”
Nye’s bedroom is unique for one other reason.
“I wanted a dog for companionship, but the dog stays away from the bedroom,” Nye said, keeping a close eye on Rasputin. The dog sits by the door, looking longingly into the forbidden room, mildly intimidated by the air purifier.
Incentive to change
Despite her health issues, Nye still leads an active lifestyle and has offers to continue teaching.
"Just the other day, I got a call from Dominguez Hills asking me to teach, with three days before the semester starts,” Nye said.
But Nye is working to raise awareness about organ donation as part of the Alliance for Organ Donor Incentives.
While The Alliance desires incentives for organ donors, they clearly state on their website organdonorincentives.org, “We are not proposing that private wealthy people should be allowed to buy organs or that money be waved in front of people who are desperate for money. For anyone who needs cash in a hurry, donating an organ under this proposal will not satisfy their need.”
Nye is currently the secretary of The Alliance and does several jobs from her home in order to raise awareness.
"I began tweeting as ‘dialysisdoll,’ posting news items, trying to say something significant in 140 characters,” Nye said. Nye also uses Facebook and maintains a blog, heidisheart.blogspot.com, to promote donor incentives.
“We should treat [organ donors] as heroes, we pay firefighters well for public services, that is something society values” Nye says. “[Donors] are saving lives, this is good for society.”
The journey continues
Nye met Robbie Berman, president of The Alliance, at a speaking engagement in Los Angeles, where he thought she’d be a good face for the organization as she is outwardly very healthy looking, despite being on dialysis. Eventually the two became involved in an HBO documentary about organ donation. It was during the filming in New York that Nye broke her hip and was hospitalized.
“The dialysis makes my bones brittle,” Nye explains. “The doctor in New York told me that if I wasn’t on dialysis, I would have fallen and gotten back up again.”
It was during her hospital stay that Nye tripped and broke her hip a second time. Even with the pain, Nye managed to look at the experience in a positive way.
“It was good filmmaking in the life of a dialysis patient,” Nye said. “We may look bright and vibrant, but we’re frail.”
The filming stopped and has been on hold for several months. Nye has heard that several other people who were involved in the documentary have since died waiting for an organ donation.
A Glimmer of Hope
In Phoenix, Arizona, a woman named Cindy has the type O kidney that Nye would need to get off dialysis permanently. Cindy’s brother received a kidney from a donor and now wants to be a donor herself. Nye and Cindy share one more coincidence, Cindy’s friend is a former student of Nye’s at CSULB.
Despite the astronomical odds that connect Cindy to Nye, there’s still much to be done and Nye remains cautious.
“I had a surgery scheduled with a neighbor [for a donation] but we just missed out with the final cross match,” Nye said, undeterred by the narrow miss. “We always say potential donor, people back-out, there are problems with cross matching. We’re asking people to give out of the kindness of their hearts.”
The two are still trading emails and haven’t yet talked on the phone.
Even if Nye gets a kidney, she says she plans to continue being an advocate for donor incentives.
In the end, Nye sums up her philosophy about life simply.
"It’s more about chutzpah than about health.”
For information on becoming a donor go to lifesharers.com or donatelifecalifornia.org.
Friday, September 03, 2010
Kidney Connections
Since Susie's solicitation letter was sent out, several wonderful things have happened:
* Raul, the department chair at the journalism department, suggested that the student paper run a story about me. The reporter came by last week to interview me and the story appeared on Wednesday. Though there are several inaccuracies and made-up quotes, overall it gets the message across. I'll post the story in my next post.
* At a meditation class I attended this past weekend, I met Alon, an Iranian-born, Israeli-raised man in his 40s who told another student in the class and me something he had not told anyone before: He is going to donate a kidney to his cousin. Alon and I both are working with Suzanne, one of the transplant coordinators at UCLA.
* Best of all, Cindy, a 26-year-old from Phoenix, is interested in becoming my donor. Susie's letter was forwarded to her by her friend Julio, who is a former student of mine. Cindy's brother received a kidney from their sister 15 years ago, and both are doing well. Ever since then, Cindy has wanted to become a living donor. She's an O, and so am I, so this just might work. Cindy and I spoke for the first time this past Saturday evening. She seems really interested, and she said, "Where there's a will, there's a way." She struck me as compassionate, mature, and well-informed. Of course a lot of things could happen to prevent her from donating, and we don't even know yet if we're compatible, but it's a beautiful sign. This is the kind of connection that is made possible by the Internet.
So connections are happening. As I have learned at least two times already, one only has a potential donor until the surgery actually takes place. When Janet said she'd be my donor last August, she was a potential donor because we eventually found out that she is an A and I'm an O. Then this summer, I had surgery scheduled for Aug. 11, but two weeks before, I found out that Janet was not compatible with the other recipient, even though I was compatible with the other donor, so the paired donation did not take place.
All I can do is what is the best thing for anyone to do in this kind of situation or any situation: Do my best and then let go. Be unattached to the outcome. If I receive a kidney, that would be such a beautiful gift, such a great blessing. But if it doesn't happen, I understand that I probably will die within the next few years. I prefer the former scenario to the latter, but I cannot get wrapped up in one outcome or the other. Actually, the longer I deal with health problems, the less I focus on outcomes. More and more, I stay in the present, not in some future is always so much different than any I can imagine.
* Raul, the department chair at the journalism department, suggested that the student paper run a story about me. The reporter came by last week to interview me and the story appeared on Wednesday. Though there are several inaccuracies and made-up quotes, overall it gets the message across. I'll post the story in my next post.
* At a meditation class I attended this past weekend, I met Alon, an Iranian-born, Israeli-raised man in his 40s who told another student in the class and me something he had not told anyone before: He is going to donate a kidney to his cousin. Alon and I both are working with Suzanne, one of the transplant coordinators at UCLA.
* Best of all, Cindy, a 26-year-old from Phoenix, is interested in becoming my donor. Susie's letter was forwarded to her by her friend Julio, who is a former student of mine. Cindy's brother received a kidney from their sister 15 years ago, and both are doing well. Ever since then, Cindy has wanted to become a living donor. She's an O, and so am I, so this just might work. Cindy and I spoke for the first time this past Saturday evening. She seems really interested, and she said, "Where there's a will, there's a way." She struck me as compassionate, mature, and well-informed. Of course a lot of things could happen to prevent her from donating, and we don't even know yet if we're compatible, but it's a beautiful sign. This is the kind of connection that is made possible by the Internet.
So connections are happening. As I have learned at least two times already, one only has a potential donor until the surgery actually takes place. When Janet said she'd be my donor last August, she was a potential donor because we eventually found out that she is an A and I'm an O. Then this summer, I had surgery scheduled for Aug. 11, but two weeks before, I found out that Janet was not compatible with the other recipient, even though I was compatible with the other donor, so the paired donation did not take place.
All I can do is what is the best thing for anyone to do in this kind of situation or any situation: Do my best and then let go. Be unattached to the outcome. If I receive a kidney, that would be such a beautiful gift, such a great blessing. But if it doesn't happen, I understand that I probably will die within the next few years. I prefer the former scenario to the latter, but I cannot get wrapped up in one outcome or the other. Actually, the longer I deal with health problems, the less I focus on outcomes. More and more, I stay in the present, not in some future is always so much different than any I can imagine.
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
The Irony and Poignancy of a Novel in my Own Alley
It's awfully hot today, so I only took Rasputin for a short walk this afternoon--down the block and back home via the alley. As we neared the gate off the alley, we came across a young man sitting in the brambles, holding a brown bag from which emerged the top of a large Miller's bottle. He had a full head of wavy, black hair and beautiful dark eyes. His clothes were worn but not shabby. Definitely the most handsome homeless man I'd ever seen and one of the best looking men I've seen of any kind for a long time. There seemed to be a kindness about him. Unlike the chronically homeless I've often met, his consciousness was not solely fixed on survival.
As he and I exchanged friendly glances and I admonished Rasputin to "be nice," I heard young women's voices singing from the porch of the sorority house at the end of the alley and across the street. I continued to walk toward the back gate, but then stopped to listen before passing into the backyard. The sweetness of their song was so incredibly poignant. It was a song of sisterhood and lifelong bonds. It was a song welcoming new girls into the house.
The juxtaposition of the young man whose only friend appeared to be a Miller's bottle and these young girls singing about the emotional bond between them was overwhelmingly clear to me. I glanced down the alley toward the man and saw that he too was looking in the direction of the girls, no doubt feeling the poignancy himself.
I got some juice boxes and four energy bars from my kitchen, walked back to the man, and said that it was so hot today that I was concerned he'd get dehydrated. He motioned to the brown bag and said, "And this isn't helping." I smiled and agreed that it wasn't.
As he and I exchanged friendly glances and I admonished Rasputin to "be nice," I heard young women's voices singing from the porch of the sorority house at the end of the alley and across the street. I continued to walk toward the back gate, but then stopped to listen before passing into the backyard. The sweetness of their song was so incredibly poignant. It was a song of sisterhood and lifelong bonds. It was a song welcoming new girls into the house.
The juxtaposition of the young man whose only friend appeared to be a Miller's bottle and these young girls singing about the emotional bond between them was overwhelmingly clear to me. I glanced down the alley toward the man and saw that he too was looking in the direction of the girls, no doubt feeling the poignancy himself.
I got some juice boxes and four energy bars from my kitchen, walked back to the man, and said that it was so hot today that I was concerned he'd get dehydrated. He motioned to the brown bag and said, "And this isn't helping." I smiled and agreed that it wasn't.
Monday, August 23, 2010
The Blind Leading the Blind
This past Saturday my friend Bev and I participated in a hike with the blind. I had expected to hold the hand of a sightless person and guide him or her along the trail. Boy, was I wrong!
When I arrived at Newport Bay Back, approximately 25 sighted persons from the OC hiking meetup group, a half dozen blind people, and Bev were already assembled. The leader was Brian Bushway, a gregarious, 30s-ish bear of a guy who freely made light of his blindness. He was a true joy. He and the other "mobility coaches" led the sighted on a three-mile hike, over sometimes steep and rough terrain. They were all faster hikers than me.
Halfway through the hike, some of the sighted persons donned blindfolds and canes to see how they would fare without vision. Some did surprisingly well; others were completely lost. I'm sure this disparity had to do with the person's observation skills. Each blindfolded person had a blind guide who kept the sighted from getting into any trouble with their footing.
The blind were associated with World Access for the Blind, an amazing group that travels the world, teaching the blind how to do so much more than get from the bedroom to the kitchen to the bathroom. These folks bicycle, mountain bike, and play soccer. Amazing!
They employ a technique that allows the blind to picture their surroundings through interpreting the sounds that bounce back to them from their tongue clicking, a form of echolocation.
Though of course I do not even entertain the possibility of blindness, I fully realize that diabetes is the leading cause of blindness in the U.S. I always thought that I would do myself in if I went on dialysis, but now I've been on dialysis for almost 19 months. Now, because of these remarkable individuals from World Access for the Blind, I also realize that blindness does not have to be the end of the road.
Thursday, August 19, 2010
My Farting Dialysis Machine
Before I began dialysis, I looked forward to holing myself up in my bedroom at night, pulling the blinds and the curtains, donning my sleeping mask, and dozing in darkness and quiet, the covers pulled high around my neck. My son once said that I'd be happy sleeping in a tomb.
Dialysis has brought a major change in that scenario. Sure, I can still achieve the darkness, but silence is a long-gone pleasure. For the 9 1/2-10 1/2 hours that I am doing therapy, the machine chugs, glugs, squirts, hums, buzzes, slurps, and farts continuously. One 6-litre bag sets on the heater to warm it up before it's injected into my peritoneum. A 5-litre bag and a 2-litre bag set on the therapy table. All 13 litres pass into my body during the night, and 11 pass out and are squirted into the 5-gallon drain jug, which I empty into the bath tub or the toilet in the morning. The remaining 2 litres I carry around with me all day until they're drained out at the beginning of therapy that night. So solution is always moving--into me, out of me, into the bag on the heater, into the drain jug. It's a lot of chug-a-lugging.
I have tried ear plugs and kleenex in my ears and pillows over my head. I've also tried to buffer the noise by putting two lap quilts under the machine so that it doesn't wiggle against the therapy table. I once put quilts over the machine, then thought better of it: The heater could easily burn the quilt and start a fire. All this helps a little, but not nearly enough.
Add to this the alarms. For the first few months I was on dialysis, I'd get up to five alarms a night. Perhaps I had rolled over on the tubing, and the solution could not enter or exit my body. Or the tubing got kinked inside me, something that is usually corrected by shifting position. Or the tubing at the bag became occluded. Or the machine just wanted to disrupt my sleep. Then I'd have to call tech support because the instructions in the manual as to how to correct the problem were always wrong. The techs would always say, "Oh, no, don't do that. Do this," and they'd give me some tip about stroking the back side of the cassette before inserting it into the machine or lifting the bag on the heater and folding it in half. All things that were never mentioned in the manual. Just another frustration in this whole process--a manual full of erroneous information.
Now that I finally have the tricks that I should have been given during my initial training back in February 2009, the alarms do not go off as frequently. But at least once a week, and this past week five times, the alarm goes off. Rarely do I see why. I just scroll down to bypass and then the alarm sounds again, so I bypass again. That usually shuts the thing up.
The only nights since beginning dialysis that I have had silence were the five days I visited Ken in Tucson and did manual exchanges during the day rather than use the machine, the one night I spent at chick cabin weekend last year and again did manuals, and the five days I spent at Kaiser Sunset following my heart surgery as the hospital used a different type of dialysis setup, one that used gravity feed rather than a motor so it was completely silent. These nights were wonderful. I had forgotten how lovely night-time silence is.
The reason why I don't do manual exchanges is because I'd have to do three or four exchanges a day. Upon waking, I'd have to set up my IV pole and let the solution that had been dwelling inside me all night drain out, then let 2 fresh litres drain in. At 1 p.m. and 6 p.m., I'd have to do the same thing. Then before bed I'd do the fourth exchange. Since each manual exchange takes about an hour, when you include setup and cleanup, that means I'm basically doing little else with my day than dialysis. No thanks.
If I were sleeping with someone, then I'd consider manual exchanges. I get caught up in all the tubing myself. I can't imagine the mess that might ensue if I were having sex while doing dialysis. Perhaps the best solution would be hemodialysis. That way I'd just go into a clinic three times a week and be done with it. But hemodialysis is unappealing for other reasons: depressing to see patients at the clinic who aren't taking care of themselves and who are in worse shape than I am, the difficulty of travel, letting someone else be responsible for my health, my distaste of IVs.
Sometimes I close my eyes and remember hearing tree frogs at my cabin in Point Arena or the rush of a river near a place where I was camping or the wind in the trees. These are the sounds I want to experience again just before I fall off to sleep, not the obnoxious farting of a dialysis machine.
Dialysis has brought a major change in that scenario. Sure, I can still achieve the darkness, but silence is a long-gone pleasure. For the 9 1/2-10 1/2 hours that I am doing therapy, the machine chugs, glugs, squirts, hums, buzzes, slurps, and farts continuously. One 6-litre bag sets on the heater to warm it up before it's injected into my peritoneum. A 5-litre bag and a 2-litre bag set on the therapy table. All 13 litres pass into my body during the night, and 11 pass out and are squirted into the 5-gallon drain jug, which I empty into the bath tub or the toilet in the morning. The remaining 2 litres I carry around with me all day until they're drained out at the beginning of therapy that night. So solution is always moving--into me, out of me, into the bag on the heater, into the drain jug. It's a lot of chug-a-lugging.
I have tried ear plugs and kleenex in my ears and pillows over my head. I've also tried to buffer the noise by putting two lap quilts under the machine so that it doesn't wiggle against the therapy table. I once put quilts over the machine, then thought better of it: The heater could easily burn the quilt and start a fire. All this helps a little, but not nearly enough.
Add to this the alarms. For the first few months I was on dialysis, I'd get up to five alarms a night. Perhaps I had rolled over on the tubing, and the solution could not enter or exit my body. Or the tubing got kinked inside me, something that is usually corrected by shifting position. Or the tubing at the bag became occluded. Or the machine just wanted to disrupt my sleep. Then I'd have to call tech support because the instructions in the manual as to how to correct the problem were always wrong. The techs would always say, "Oh, no, don't do that. Do this," and they'd give me some tip about stroking the back side of the cassette before inserting it into the machine or lifting the bag on the heater and folding it in half. All things that were never mentioned in the manual. Just another frustration in this whole process--a manual full of erroneous information.
Now that I finally have the tricks that I should have been given during my initial training back in February 2009, the alarms do not go off as frequently. But at least once a week, and this past week five times, the alarm goes off. Rarely do I see why. I just scroll down to bypass and then the alarm sounds again, so I bypass again. That usually shuts the thing up.
The reason why I don't do manual exchanges is because I'd have to do three or four exchanges a day. Upon waking, I'd have to set up my IV pole and let the solution that had been dwelling inside me all night drain out, then let 2 fresh litres drain in. At 1 p.m. and 6 p.m., I'd have to do the same thing. Then before bed I'd do the fourth exchange. Since each manual exchange takes about an hour, when you include setup and cleanup, that means I'm basically doing little else with my day than dialysis. No thanks.
If I were sleeping with someone, then I'd consider manual exchanges. I get caught up in all the tubing myself. I can't imagine the mess that might ensue if I were having sex while doing dialysis. Perhaps the best solution would be hemodialysis. That way I'd just go into a clinic three times a week and be done with it. But hemodialysis is unappealing for other reasons: depressing to see patients at the clinic who aren't taking care of themselves and who are in worse shape than I am, the difficulty of travel, letting someone else be responsible for my health, my distaste of IVs.
Sometimes I close my eyes and remember hearing tree frogs at my cabin in Point Arena or the rush of a river near a place where I was camping or the wind in the trees. These are the sounds I want to experience again just before I fall off to sleep, not the obnoxious farting of a dialysis machine.
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
My Garden Plot
I had to leave that community garden because a shopping mall was going to be built on the site. Remember the song: Take paradise and put up a parking lot. That's quite literally what happened.
In the years since then, I have often thought how wonderful it would be to have a plot again. Last February, soon after I went on dialysis, I stopped by the Wild Oats Community Garden on 10th and Loma to fill out an application. A year passed, and I figured that they had forgotten about me. Then in May I got an email from the gardens, asking if I'd like a plot. I jumped on the offer.
Aaron cleared and tilled the plot, but since then I've taken care of it, watering and weeding every other day. At first I lost nine plants to racoons who were digging for grub, but recently all has been well. I've harvested green and red bell peppers, two kinds of tomatoes, and one delectable cucumber.
A storm drain project will be coming through the gardens beginning in January, and everything has to be cleared out by December. Supposedly, the garden will be given back to us by next June when the construction is completed. During those six months I'll just have to be satisfied with the four bush beans and radishes I have planted in a flower box on my driveway, as I don't have even a square inch of yard.
Sorry I Wasn't Clear
I wasn't clear with what I wrote yesterday as a intro to Susie's letter (see previous post). I didn't specifically ask people who read her letter to pass the word along. I had meant to imply that, but I didn't explicitly state it. So please post Susie's letter to your blog and forward it to your friends. As Susie wrote to me this morning, "Let's get your story out into the world so that you can meet your donor, the person who wants to help you with your miracle."
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Susie's Beautiful Letter
Twice during the past 18 months of dialysis, I have drafted a letter to friends and family, asking for their help in finding a kidney. Both times I have only sent the letter to Susie, who donated one of her kidneys to her friend Ron last summer. The first letter, Susie said, was too soon, as I wasn't yet on the transplant wait list. The second I sent to her two weeks ago.
Susie read my letter and said it was filled with a lot of facts about kidney disease, but it didn't show the "wonderful" person I am. She offered to rework it. Well, she did much more than an edit. She completely scrapped it and put together the beautiful letter that follows. I am so grateful for Susie's kindness and support.
Please read the letter with an open heart and an open mind. Susie quite literally saved her friend's life, and you never know, someone who reads this--perhaps someone you send it to--may be inspired to save mine. You can contact Susie via this blog. Thanks so much for your time.
************************
Dear Heidi,
I have been thinking a lot about you over the last week. My friend Jim Crumby was killed in a motorcycle crash on August 6th, he was 53 years old. It was shocking that someone so young would just be gone, leaving a son. Yesterday I went to his funeral and spent the day remembering him with his family and friends.
I'm thinking of you lately because your situation is similar. It may not be happening as quickly, but it's still happening.
Truly I don't want to be negative or dramatic, because you know I believe/know that you will get a kidney transplant, but I also wanted to acknowledge the struggle that you are experiencing and tell you that I feel a level of dread when I think about your future if you don't get a kidney. No one wants to watch someone die.
You do a great job of not dwelling in this reality and, in fact, you have been amazing in your tenacity with regard to getting yourself on the transplant list - going through open heart surgery could have killed you, but it didn't. Instead you are doing better and better. The setbacks you experienced earlier this year with the falls and broken bones might have discouraged, or even ended it for someone else in the same situation heath-wise, but you just kept going.
You truly are the unsinkable Heidi Nye.
I think that because Janet has offered to donate it might seem to others that you are out of the woods, but you and I both know the reality is that you need a kidney from a donor with O positive blood type. A paired donation is still available and possible, but it is not a foregone conclusion.
The facts are that you are one of 85,000 people waiting for a kidney in this country and because you have O positive blood your wait will be longer as that is the blood type that can give to anyone.
That puts you at the literal end of the line.
You have been on dialysis for 18 months already and although it may seem that one can live forever on dialysis that is not true, the reality is that dialysis doesn't do much more than clean toxins from the blood, it doesn't provide the hormones or electolyte balance that are necessary for true health. The average survival time on dialysis is about 5 years. This means that you will continue to have health issues, which means that you may be removed from the list if you decline in any way.
Although this reality is grim you continue to live your life to the fullest, traveling to Paris and to your cabin in Nova Scotia. You persevere through the medical system, advocating for yourself in a way that amazes me. You do everything you can to keep yourself healthy and you hold on to hope that the kidney will come. You remain engaged in the world, writing, serving on the board of the Alliance for Organ Donor Incentives, being open to a loving relationship and, as always, you continue to be a great mother and friend to your son, Aaron.
I'm writing this to you because I want you to know that I understand just how dire your situation is. I hear you when you share with me how discouraging all of this is and how alone you feel and you have every reason to feel that way.
I want you to know that when I share with people about donating a kidney to a friend (or as I think of it - participating in a miracle) I also tell them about you. My hope is that you will share this e-mail with your friends and acquaintances so that they can share your story with their friends and acquaintances. My prayer is that there is someone out there who may feel moved to donate, as I was, and that they would donate to you and change your life.
I know this is possible because your neighbor Janet has already stepped up although she was not a match and it didn't happen, it opened the door to possibility.
While living donation may not be something that most people would consider doing, they CAN sign their donor cards. No one likes to think about dying when they are young and healthy, but if it happens becoming a donor can create a blessing out of a tragedy.
I am always available to answer questions about living donation and my experience being a donor so please feel free to send anyone who might be interested my way.
Hang in there - love you,
Susie
Susie read my letter and said it was filled with a lot of facts about kidney disease, but it didn't show the "wonderful" person I am. She offered to rework it. Well, she did much more than an edit. She completely scrapped it and put together the beautiful letter that follows. I am so grateful for Susie's kindness and support.
Please read the letter with an open heart and an open mind. Susie quite literally saved her friend's life, and you never know, someone who reads this--perhaps someone you send it to--may be inspired to save mine. You can contact Susie via this blog. Thanks so much for your time.
************************
Dear Heidi,
I have been thinking a lot about you over the last week. My friend Jim Crumby was killed in a motorcycle crash on August 6th, he was 53 years old. It was shocking that someone so young would just be gone, leaving a son. Yesterday I went to his funeral and spent the day remembering him with his family and friends.
I'm thinking of you lately because your situation is similar. It may not be happening as quickly, but it's still happening.
Truly I don't want to be negative or dramatic, because you know I believe/know that you will get a kidney transplant, but I also wanted to acknowledge the struggle that you are experiencing and tell you that I feel a level of dread when I think about your future if you don't get a kidney. No one wants to watch someone die.
You do a great job of not dwelling in this reality and, in fact, you have been amazing in your tenacity with regard to getting yourself on the transplant list - going through open heart surgery could have killed you, but it didn't. Instead you are doing better and better. The setbacks you experienced earlier this year with the falls and broken bones might have discouraged, or even ended it for someone else in the same situation heath-wise, but you just kept going.
You truly are the unsinkable Heidi Nye.
I think that because Janet has offered to donate it might seem to others that you are out of the woods, but you and I both know the reality is that you need a kidney from a donor with O positive blood type. A paired donation is still available and possible, but it is not a foregone conclusion.
The facts are that you are one of 85,000 people waiting for a kidney in this country and because you have O positive blood your wait will be longer as that is the blood type that can give to anyone.
That puts you at the literal end of the line.
You have been on dialysis for 18 months already and although it may seem that one can live forever on dialysis that is not true, the reality is that dialysis doesn't do much more than clean toxins from the blood, it doesn't provide the hormones or electolyte balance that are necessary for true health. The average survival time on dialysis is about 5 years. This means that you will continue to have health issues, which means that you may be removed from the list if you decline in any way.
Although this reality is grim you continue to live your life to the fullest, traveling to Paris and to your cabin in Nova Scotia. You persevere through the medical system, advocating for yourself in a way that amazes me. You do everything you can to keep yourself healthy and you hold on to hope that the kidney will come. You remain engaged in the world, writing, serving on the board of the Alliance for Organ Donor Incentives, being open to a loving relationship and, as always, you continue to be a great mother and friend to your son, Aaron.
I'm writing this to you because I want you to know that I understand just how dire your situation is. I hear you when you share with me how discouraging all of this is and how alone you feel and you have every reason to feel that way.
I want you to know that when I share with people about donating a kidney to a friend (or as I think of it - participating in a miracle) I also tell them about you. My hope is that you will share this e-mail with your friends and acquaintances so that they can share your story with their friends and acquaintances. My prayer is that there is someone out there who may feel moved to donate, as I was, and that they would donate to you and change your life.
I know this is possible because your neighbor Janet has already stepped up although she was not a match and it didn't happen, it opened the door to possibility.
While living donation may not be something that most people would consider doing, they CAN sign their donor cards. No one likes to think about dying when they are young and healthy, but if it happens becoming a donor can create a blessing out of a tragedy.
I am always available to answer questions about living donation and my experience being a donor so please feel free to send anyone who might be interested my way.
Hang in there - love you,
Susie
Not Another Cold!
For the past few days, I've had a sore throat, sneezing, and now chills. Right now it's the end of a sunny, warm day, and I'm sitting inside with a jacket and a winter coat on--and I'm still cold. I also have been having low-level nausea, fatigue, and weakness. Not sure how I got this cold as I don't recall being around anyone who was sick.
I spent five weeks in June and July with an ongoing cough. Had just gotten over that, and now this hits. UGH!
I spent five weeks in June and July with an ongoing cough. Had just gotten over that, and now this hits. UGH!
Sunday, August 15, 2010
TreePeople Event at Harbor Regional Park
Yesterday morning I participated in a tree-care event at Ken Malloy Harbor Regional Park. About 15 volunteers weeded around the bases of trees that were planted previously by TreePeople, a nonprofit that plants and cares for trees and works toward cleaning LA's air in other sustainable ways. We then watered and mulched.
I was also the official photographer, but unfortunately my photos are stuck inside the camera. My battery gave out, and when I recharged it, the camera still wouldn't turn on. So I guess the battery has bit the dust. I checked online for a replacement, and delivery to my doorstep would cost $79.99. Gee, they don't make it attractive to keep an old model, do they!
I encourage you to check out TreePeople. I often have a tree planted in someone's name instead of giving him or her a gift. As I write on the gift card, we all have too many things, but the world does not have enough trees. I especially like to give a tree to a newborn, planting the seed for a life of giving and community involvement.
I was also the official photographer, but unfortunately my photos are stuck inside the camera. My battery gave out, and when I recharged it, the camera still wouldn't turn on. So I guess the battery has bit the dust. I checked online for a replacement, and delivery to my doorstep would cost $79.99. Gee, they don't make it attractive to keep an old model, do they!
I encourage you to check out TreePeople. I often have a tree planted in someone's name instead of giving him or her a gift. As I write on the gift card, we all have too many things, but the world does not have enough trees. I especially like to give a tree to a newborn, planting the seed for a life of giving and community involvement.
Saturday, August 14, 2010
Three Days Without Rasputin
Aaron has been working seven days a week for months, but this weekend he took off on a camping trip with his new girlfriend. At the last minute, they decided to take Rasputin with them, so I've been sans dog buddy since Thursday afternoon.
Rasputin is so much a part of my life now that it is very strange to be without him. And yet for decades I survived somehow without a cute, little dog. How did I do it!
Yet Another Example of Dehumanizing Corporate Double Speak
Every two weeks I have to call Baxter, the dialysis supply company, to place my next order. About a month ago I noticed that there was a new recorded message that played while I was on hold:
"We want to process your order as efficiently as possible. If you are calling to stop or suspend your dialysis supplies or to request a cycler pickup, you do not need to provide an explanation or reason."
Whenever I'm confronted with such careful language, I wonder, "What is the subtext here?" Clearly, the only reason someone would discontinue supply deliveries and no longer need the dialysis machine (a.k.a. cycler) would be one of the following:
1. She received a transplant.
2. She switched to hemodialysis.
3. She died.
4. She is discontinuing dialysis because she can no longer take living like this anymore. She is in fact ending her life by discontinuing treatment.
So then the question becomes "Why can't the clerk hear this information?" If the patient did in fact receive a transplant, why wouldn't the clerk want to share in the patient's boundless joy? If the patient were switching to hemodialysis (the kind of dialysis that is administered at a clinic by technicians, not at home by the patient), that wouldn't require much more than a sentence of explanation. Hardly something that would thwart efficiency. So, it must be that the order clerks are uncomfortable with hearing reasons 3 and 4.
I asked the clerk who took my order about the new message. At first she talked of efficiency, but then she worked around to saying the same thing as I had thought, only putting the onus on the family of the deceased--they are the ones, not the clerks, who are uncomfortable.
Isn't it too bad that we live in a society in which we buffer ourselves from such basic human interactions! What a much healthier country this might be if we looked at death, not hid it away like it was an unforgiveable social stigma that we might catch! How wonderful if a grieving family or a hopeless dialysis patient could receive a kind word from an order clerk. Who knows, that little interchange of kindness could possibly give the patient a ray of hope and she might reconsider #4.
You never know how you touch people, but you must first touch. More and more we live in a world in which we build walls that prevent connection or make it incredibly awkward. That's why, at every turn, dehumanizing corporate double speak has to be called out, challenged, and recognized for what it is--dehumanizing.
"We want to process your order as efficiently as possible. If you are calling to stop or suspend your dialysis supplies or to request a cycler pickup, you do not need to provide an explanation or reason."
Whenever I'm confronted with such careful language, I wonder, "What is the subtext here?" Clearly, the only reason someone would discontinue supply deliveries and no longer need the dialysis machine (a.k.a. cycler) would be one of the following:
1. She received a transplant.
2. She switched to hemodialysis.
3. She died.
4. She is discontinuing dialysis because she can no longer take living like this anymore. She is in fact ending her life by discontinuing treatment.
So then the question becomes "Why can't the clerk hear this information?" If the patient did in fact receive a transplant, why wouldn't the clerk want to share in the patient's boundless joy? If the patient were switching to hemodialysis (the kind of dialysis that is administered at a clinic by technicians, not at home by the patient), that wouldn't require much more than a sentence of explanation. Hardly something that would thwart efficiency. So, it must be that the order clerks are uncomfortable with hearing reasons 3 and 4.
I asked the clerk who took my order about the new message. At first she talked of efficiency, but then she worked around to saying the same thing as I had thought, only putting the onus on the family of the deceased--they are the ones, not the clerks, who are uncomfortable.
Isn't it too bad that we live in a society in which we buffer ourselves from such basic human interactions! What a much healthier country this might be if we looked at death, not hid it away like it was an unforgiveable social stigma that we might catch! How wonderful if a grieving family or a hopeless dialysis patient could receive a kind word from an order clerk. Who knows, that little interchange of kindness could possibly give the patient a ray of hope and she might reconsider #4.
You never know how you touch people, but you must first touch. More and more we live in a world in which we build walls that prevent connection or make it incredibly awkward. That's why, at every turn, dehumanizing corporate double speak has to be called out, challenged, and recognized for what it is--dehumanizing.
So Much of my Life is Outside the Bounds of Small Talk
Yesterday I had my first date in about six months. Because I go on so few dates and in general have so few opportunities to dress up, I had fun getting cute for this deli date. A fitted black skirt, a robin's-egg-blue top, a diaphonous scarf tied about my waist, dangly abalone earrings, and black heels no less!
Martin is a psychologist working in teen suicide intervention. Before going back to school in the early '90s, he was a successful painting contractor in San Diego. I admire people who follow their heart and make a radical shift to fulfill their dreams. He sure seemed to draw a lot of meaning and satisfaction from his work.
Near the end of lunch, I congratulated him on his conversation skills. I told him that it is rare to meet a person who knows how to ask questions, listen for the answers, and yet reveal something of himself. Usually I meet people who either can't hold up their end of the conversation and I end up interviewing them or they monopolize the conversation and don't ask anything of me. It was refreshing to meet an exception to that rule.
Martin is a psychologist working in teen suicide intervention. Before going back to school in the early '90s, he was a successful painting contractor in San Diego. I admire people who follow their heart and make a radical shift to fulfill their dreams. He sure seemed to draw a lot of meaning and satisfaction from his work.
Near the end of lunch, I congratulated him on his conversation skills. I told him that it is rare to meet a person who knows how to ask questions, listen for the answers, and yet reveal something of himself. Usually I meet people who either can't hold up their end of the conversation and I end up interviewing them or they monopolize the conversation and don't ask anything of me. It was refreshing to meet an exception to that rule.
Throughout lunch, however, I was occasionally aware that I had to clip my answers so as not to reveal too much. Later, as I was driving home, I realized how much of my current life is outside the bounds of small talk. For example, let's start with a big topic of conversation on a first date--career. I can't say that I retired from Cal State last year because that would prompt questions of "Why?" and "Aren't you too young for retirement?" Honest answers to these queries would mean I'd have to say something about dialysis and heart surgery.
And I held back at other junctures too. Martin said he swims several times a week. I love to swim but cannot do so now, as the risk of infection at my dialysis exit site is too great. So I just smiled, nodded my head, and said something like, "That's fantastic."
Martin talked about his family of origin, then asked if my parents were still alive. I said they were not. He asked other questions, and so I told him that I had moved my mother here from Wisconsin to watch over her during the last two years of her life, but that, that had been difficult. I couldn't explain why it had been difficult though because that again would have entailed a discussion of my health. The stress and physical strain of moving her to California prompted a heart attack the very day after I settled her in at her assisted living facility. That was just the first in a series of dozens of medical emergencies I experienced while simultaneously caring for all her needs and her finances, working several jobs, and tending to my household duties. I really don't know how I outlived her.
I didn't get the feeling from Martin's parting comments that he was interested in seeing me again, so I won't have to be concerned about keeping dialysis, diabetes, and heart disease from him. And as I have so few dates, I may not have to face this sort of situation for another six months, maybe longer, maybe never again. I'll just have to find other opportunities to wear heels!
Saturday, August 07, 2010
Diet Soda and the Quick Path to Depression
For many, many years, I was a six-pack-of-Tab-a-day gal. (Tab, for those of you who missed the '80s, was and still is--if you can find it--the precursor of Diet Coke.) I loved the stuff. I was addicted to it.
Starting about two decades ago, my use began to taper off due to a number of events: frequent solo camping trips into remote areas where there were few stores, none of which carried Tab; four years of living in Northern California, again where any kind of soda, diet or not, was rare; and a news report about how a subsidiary of Coke was murdering union leaders at its South American plants. The last one really got to me,even more so than the knowledge of the harm Diet Coke (since Tab was now difficult to find even in large urban areas) was doing to my body: gas bubbles in the intestinal track, dissolution of bones, alteration of the body chemistry, and depression. In fact, aspertame, the sweetening agent in diet drinks, has been linked to at least 92 symptoms and diseases.
Since a small child, I had been depressed, so I can't blame it all on diet sodas, but I often wonder, now that I've almost completely kicked the habit, how much of my adult depression was due to aspertame, more commonly known under its brand name of Nutrasweet. (Tab, for the record, was sweetened with saccharine, which has its own troubles.)
Every once in a while, I will say, "Oh, I can buy just one six pack of Diet Coke. That won't be a problem." This is alcoholic thinking--Oh, sure, I can just have one drink. This week I gave that a try. I bought six 16-ounce bottles of Diet Coke on Tuesday and had one as soon as I got home. The next morning, at cardiac rehab, the Bette Midler song "The Rose" came on the radio, and I began to cry. No one saw my tears, thank God, but I had trouble keeping my act together during my workout. I was very depressed, seemingly for no reason, since, strangely enough, "The Rose" had played during my workout on Monday and it had not affected me. I must admit that during all my years of Tab consumption, many songs made me cry and feel blue. Once again, I was knocked over the head with the message that diet drinks are a killer.
If you're wondering how such a dangerous substance was ever approved by the FDA, well, I've got one word for you--Rumsfeld, who was the CEO of the chemical company Searle Laboratories, which held the patent on aspertame and was taken over by the evil seed company Monsanto, which is attempting to ruin every farmer who refuses to use genetically modified seed. The FDA had previously banned aspertame because studies had linked it to brain tumors, but Donald Rumsfeld, who became the secretary of defense under Bush II, pushed some buttons. The FDA panel that was assembled to investigate aspertame reached a deadlock, whereupon FDA commissioner Arthur Hull Hayes cast the deciding vote. This man went on to take a high-level position with the PR giant Burston-Marsteller, which, oh my gawsh, had Monsanto as a major client.
Please, everyone who reads this, if you didn't know about aspertame prior to this, spread the message, espeically to parents who give their preeschoolers Diet Cokes! They're killing their kids.
Starting about two decades ago, my use began to taper off due to a number of events: frequent solo camping trips into remote areas where there were few stores, none of which carried Tab; four years of living in Northern California, again where any kind of soda, diet or not, was rare; and a news report about how a subsidiary of Coke was murdering union leaders at its South American plants. The last one really got to me,even more so than the knowledge of the harm Diet Coke (since Tab was now difficult to find even in large urban areas) was doing to my body: gas bubbles in the intestinal track, dissolution of bones, alteration of the body chemistry, and depression. In fact, aspertame, the sweetening agent in diet drinks, has been linked to at least 92 symptoms and diseases.
Since a small child, I had been depressed, so I can't blame it all on diet sodas, but I often wonder, now that I've almost completely kicked the habit, how much of my adult depression was due to aspertame, more commonly known under its brand name of Nutrasweet. (Tab, for the record, was sweetened with saccharine, which has its own troubles.)
Every once in a while, I will say, "Oh, I can buy just one six pack of Diet Coke. That won't be a problem." This is alcoholic thinking--Oh, sure, I can just have one drink. This week I gave that a try. I bought six 16-ounce bottles of Diet Coke on Tuesday and had one as soon as I got home. The next morning, at cardiac rehab, the Bette Midler song "The Rose" came on the radio, and I began to cry. No one saw my tears, thank God, but I had trouble keeping my act together during my workout. I was very depressed, seemingly for no reason, since, strangely enough, "The Rose" had played during my workout on Monday and it had not affected me. I must admit that during all my years of Tab consumption, many songs made me cry and feel blue. Once again, I was knocked over the head with the message that diet drinks are a killer.
If you're wondering how such a dangerous substance was ever approved by the FDA, well, I've got one word for you--Rumsfeld, who was the CEO of the chemical company Searle Laboratories, which held the patent on aspertame and was taken over by the evil seed company Monsanto, which is attempting to ruin every farmer who refuses to use genetically modified seed. The FDA had previously banned aspertame because studies had linked it to brain tumors, but Donald Rumsfeld, who became the secretary of defense under Bush II, pushed some buttons. The FDA panel that was assembled to investigate aspertame reached a deadlock, whereupon FDA commissioner Arthur Hull Hayes cast the deciding vote. This man went on to take a high-level position with the PR giant Burston-Marsteller, which, oh my gawsh, had Monsanto as a major client.
Please, everyone who reads this, if you didn't know about aspertame prior to this, spread the message, espeically to parents who give their preeschoolers Diet Cokes! They're killing their kids.
Saturday, July 31, 2010
Spoken Like a Happy Slave of the Totalitarian State
During my recent trip to France, I was questioned, patted down, and searched every time I went through airport security in Los Angeles, Newark, Halifax, Montreal, and Paris. My luggage was opened and thoroughly examined, and my dialysis machine was dusted for drugs. I got so incredibly tired of going into a back room with two butch gals and having to pull up my shirt and pull down my pants so that they could gawk at my dialysis tubing and insulin pump.
Finally, in Halifax, I said something like this to two security gals: "I would almost be OK with this invasion of privacy if the whole terrorist bullshit was real. But it's all made up. The U.S. government was behind 9/11 so that it could control people like this." Without skipping a beat, the more senior of the two said that though that may be true, it has given her and a lot of other people jobs.
Oh, my gawd! Is that what it's really all about! Three wars, tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of lives lost, millions of people maimed or disturbed for life, millions of others grieving or destitute, the wholesale trashing of the Constitution and of truth, the further tightening of the police state, the incarceration of thousands without charge and without trial, the torture of countless others, the waste of $3 trillion--but, hey, I've got a job.
I said nothing in reply. This woman is living on another planet and in a different dimension. We do not have the necessary touchdown points to discuss this matter.
When I told a sympathetic someone about this incident, he said I was lucky, that I could have been whisked away and never heard from again. He's right. I'm sure that would have happened had I said this in the "land of the free" rather than in Canada.
Finally, in Halifax, I said something like this to two security gals: "I would almost be OK with this invasion of privacy if the whole terrorist bullshit was real. But it's all made up. The U.S. government was behind 9/11 so that it could control people like this." Without skipping a beat, the more senior of the two said that though that may be true, it has given her and a lot of other people jobs.
Oh, my gawd! Is that what it's really all about! Three wars, tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of lives lost, millions of people maimed or disturbed for life, millions of others grieving or destitute, the wholesale trashing of the Constitution and of truth, the further tightening of the police state, the incarceration of thousands without charge and without trial, the torture of countless others, the waste of $3 trillion--but, hey, I've got a job.
I said nothing in reply. This woman is living on another planet and in a different dimension. We do not have the necessary touchdown points to discuss this matter.
When I told a sympathetic someone about this incident, he said I was lucky, that I could have been whisked away and never heard from again. He's right. I'm sure that would have happened had I said this in the "land of the free" rather than in Canada.
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
9/11 Deja Vu
The mainstream media are now saying that most of the 3.5-5 million gallons of BP-spilled oil has evaporated. When I heard that on the top of the hour today, I thought, "What! Do they really think we're that stupid!" But of course they do--the American public bought the official 9/11 story hook, line, and sinker, even though it, too, defies physics and logic. (And in the case of 9/11, the logistical capability of Al-Qaeda. The media are now saying that Al-Qaeda has "scaled down" its operations since 9/11, only choosing to do much more modest suicide bombings. Oh my gawd! The reason why they're doing small potatoes jobs is because that's all they've ever been capable of doing!)
But back to the BP oil. BP used dispersants, how much dispersants is not known, to break up the oil. Dispersants are not without their side effects, as wildlife and human swimmers and clean-up personnel have been experiencing internal hemorraging. But of course the government says there's no health problems associated with the oil spill, just like the government said the area around Ground Zero posed no health problems for residents and first responders. But now we know differently. Firefighters, cops, volunteers, and residents of NYC are suffering horrific respiratory problems from breathing in the air following the collapse of three huge buildings. (Yes, folks, remember to count Building 7 of the World Trade Center complex, the one the government doesn't want to talk about because it too pancaked though it was not hit by a plane. Hmmmm...interesting, but not interesting enough for any mainstream journalist to investigate.)
And, folks, oil does not spontaneously evaporate from the ocean. C'mon! Yes, gasoline spilled on a sidewalk will evaporate, but that's not what we're talking about here. Crude oil is so much heavier and more viscous than gasoline. And much of it was below the surface, and things don't evaporate if they're below the surface!
Another government-media lie. They just keep them coming.
Here's another: that the 92,000 or so secret documents leaked to wikileaks and then presented to the New York Times, the Guardian, and der Spiegel put American soldiers in danger and jeopardize national security. Let's take the last one first. Whenever the government is caught with its pants down, it cries national security. It's like a criminal saying that putting him on trial would endanger society. It's the government, after all, that is shown to be guilty of war crimes in these documents. And the reporters who printed stories about some of the documents did so without revealing the names of those who are still in the field.
The young man who leaked the documents, Pfc. Bradley Manning, is being held in a Kuwait prison and is facing up to 52 years for exposing the truth. Obama the candidate said he would make things easier for whistleblowers, that they should not be treated like criminals but like heroes. But Obama the president is singing a much different tune because now he's the one at the helm, responsible for the war crimes that are currently underway in Afghanistan and Iraq.
I have sent a donation to Manning's defense fund, and I urge you to do the same. I have also written him a letter, thanking him for his bravery. The sad thing to me is that in this country we are not hearing about the war crimes. Instead, journalists just keep repeating the government's line that this has endangered national security. The so-called land of the free is so tightly controlled. You'll just have to get your news by reading the Guardian or der Spiegel.
But back to the BP oil. BP used dispersants, how much dispersants is not known, to break up the oil. Dispersants are not without their side effects, as wildlife and human swimmers and clean-up personnel have been experiencing internal hemorraging. But of course the government says there's no health problems associated with the oil spill, just like the government said the area around Ground Zero posed no health problems for residents and first responders. But now we know differently. Firefighters, cops, volunteers, and residents of NYC are suffering horrific respiratory problems from breathing in the air following the collapse of three huge buildings. (Yes, folks, remember to count Building 7 of the World Trade Center complex, the one the government doesn't want to talk about because it too pancaked though it was not hit by a plane. Hmmmm...interesting, but not interesting enough for any mainstream journalist to investigate.)
And, folks, oil does not spontaneously evaporate from the ocean. C'mon! Yes, gasoline spilled on a sidewalk will evaporate, but that's not what we're talking about here. Crude oil is so much heavier and more viscous than gasoline. And much of it was below the surface, and things don't evaporate if they're below the surface!
Another government-media lie. They just keep them coming.
Here's another: that the 92,000 or so secret documents leaked to wikileaks and then presented to the New York Times, the Guardian, and der Spiegel put American soldiers in danger and jeopardize national security. Let's take the last one first. Whenever the government is caught with its pants down, it cries national security. It's like a criminal saying that putting him on trial would endanger society. It's the government, after all, that is shown to be guilty of war crimes in these documents. And the reporters who printed stories about some of the documents did so without revealing the names of those who are still in the field.
The young man who leaked the documents, Pfc. Bradley Manning, is being held in a Kuwait prison and is facing up to 52 years for exposing the truth. Obama the candidate said he would make things easier for whistleblowers, that they should not be treated like criminals but like heroes. But Obama the president is singing a much different tune because now he's the one at the helm, responsible for the war crimes that are currently underway in Afghanistan and Iraq.
I have sent a donation to Manning's defense fund, and I urge you to do the same. I have also written him a letter, thanking him for his bravery. The sad thing to me is that in this country we are not hearing about the war crimes. Instead, journalists just keep repeating the government's line that this has endangered national security. The so-called land of the free is so tightly controlled. You'll just have to get your news by reading the Guardian or der Spiegel.
Monday, July 26, 2010
Getting Things Done
I bought a three-bedroom, 1 3/4 bath ranch house in Yucca Valley in November 2004, just before the housing market went south. Fortunately, I did not pay top dollar, so the value has only gone down about $13K. It took me until June of 2005 to get it ready for a tenant. At the time I evicted her a year later, she was behind six months' rent, plus she left a mess that took more than $1,000 to clean up. And she left all the faucets running for the last month she was in the place, so I was socked with a $500 water bill! But the tenants I have in there now are great.
My first loan payment was in January of 2005, so that means I paid off the loan in just 5 1/2 years. The "personal banker" at B of A said that in six years with the bank, he has only seen two other pay-offs. That sure says something about Americans and their debt.
Add to my very unusual pay-off a credit score of 801 and no credit card or other debt, and you'd think lenders would be fighting over me. But even someone like me can't get a new loan. My income is too low.
I am so happy I no longer have to deal with Bank of America, the evil beast, one of the big robbers of the U.S. Treasury in the bankers' bailout. My loan was originally with some small company that sold it to Countrywide, and then when Countrywide went belly up, B of A took over.
I'm hoping that this roll of accomplishments will continue. There are a lot of things I would love to see finished and done with. On the top of that list put dialysis!
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Question to the U.S. Military: Would You Shoot Americans?
A number of loose ends have come together in my consciousness in the last several hours. Obesity. Poor education. The pharmaceutical industry. TV. Internet. Sports teams. Illegal aliens. The Second Amendment. UN troops on American soil. Prison camps. The granting of U.S. citizenship to illegals if they serve in the military. Substance abuse. Seemingly unrelated subjects, but I'm beginning to see a plan.
First off, let me state that I have never been a gun owner. I have always felt that guns caused more problems than they solved. But I am also a person whose mind is open to new ideas, who enjoys the process of new information coming in and old ideas going out.
The government is afraid of its citizens, primarily because we're armed. In an ideal world, it would be because we were fit, well-informed, assertive, and holding our government accountable, but that unfortunately is not the case. Fast food, obesity, drug and alcohol abuse, passive lifestyles, a dearth of credible news sources, obsession with sports teams and other distractions, and debt and its ensuing stress have made the vast majority of Americans feeble shadows of the proud nation of doers and dreamers they were 60 or more years ago.
The government knows that it does not have enough troops to police the entire country, especially as we're fighting wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, and have more than 170 bases around the world. So the government and corporate media are doing whatever they can to portray gun owners and Second Amendment advocates as dangerous and crazy.
Add to this mix the news I received from a friend whose brother was the captain of a ship in the U.S. Navy and is still working as a Navy consultant. The brother said that a few years back, military personnel were posed with the question: Would you fire upon American citizens if ordered to do so? Eighty percent said "no." First off, why was the government asking this question unless it has plans to do so. And, two, don't breathe easy because 80 percent said they wouldn't. That, in my mind, is why illegals are now granted citizenship after serving in the U.S. military. The government needs to get as many people in its military who have no connection with U.S. history or any kind of feeling for what it means to be an American. I seriously doubt if many recent immigrants, legal or illegal, have a dewdrop in their eyes when they think of Thomas Jefferson or Lewis and Clark. And governments know that soldiers do not want to fire upon their countrymen. Remember Tian an Men Square? The soldiers who mowed down student protesters were not from Beijing. The Chinese government called in troops from distant provinces to do the dirty work. So what's to say foreign-born troops aren't being trained to fire on Americans in the event of social unrest?
Also recall that we are now using more military contractors (aka mercenaries) in Iraq than we are U.S. troops, that the infamous Blackwater, now known as Xe, was used in New Orleans to "police" the populace after Katrina, and that several U.S. cities have already contracted with Blackwater to control citizens in the event of civil unrest. And remember what Blackwater has done in Iraq, shooting civilians for no reason other than it felt good. Also that Blackwater is comprised of work-for-hire gunman from war-torn, impoverished countries in Africa and eastern Europe, people who could care less if they killed Americans.
Of course, there are also other means that could be used: predator drones and UN troops, some of which have been training on U.S. soil. Wouldn't it be ironic if the Americans who didn't give a hoot about the civilians we are murdering with drones in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan--saying that it saves the lives of American troops--would be murdered by drones that are piloted by American troops?
To add still another layer to this evil, more and more is being written about how this economic disaster has been orchestrated, that it was intentional, in order to destroy the American system and issue in a new currency. In fact, the $3 trillion wars we're currently fighting are a fantastic means to bring about our ruin. Bringing down the U.S. is one of the last agenda items in the march toward one world government.
These bastards are so ingenious, getting taxpayers to fund their own enslavement and annhilation. Brilliant!
I'm not rushing out to buy a gun, but I certainly can understand why people are doing so. The government is not to be trusted, I've known that since the mid-1980s, when I began to look into CIA"s cocaine-gun running.
The most important thing is to be informed but not afraid. Fear is what the powers that be want. Fear means control, and I will not be controlled. Now is the time to understand the evil that is at the core of business and government but to keep one's own house in order, delighting in the beauty that surrounds you in every moment and knowing that you are far more than the little body you are currently inhabiting.
First off, let me state that I have never been a gun owner. I have always felt that guns caused more problems than they solved. But I am also a person whose mind is open to new ideas, who enjoys the process of new information coming in and old ideas going out.
The government is afraid of its citizens, primarily because we're armed. In an ideal world, it would be because we were fit, well-informed, assertive, and holding our government accountable, but that unfortunately is not the case. Fast food, obesity, drug and alcohol abuse, passive lifestyles, a dearth of credible news sources, obsession with sports teams and other distractions, and debt and its ensuing stress have made the vast majority of Americans feeble shadows of the proud nation of doers and dreamers they were 60 or more years ago.
The government knows that it does not have enough troops to police the entire country, especially as we're fighting wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, and have more than 170 bases around the world. So the government and corporate media are doing whatever they can to portray gun owners and Second Amendment advocates as dangerous and crazy.
Add to this mix the news I received from a friend whose brother was the captain of a ship in the U.S. Navy and is still working as a Navy consultant. The brother said that a few years back, military personnel were posed with the question: Would you fire upon American citizens if ordered to do so? Eighty percent said "no." First off, why was the government asking this question unless it has plans to do so. And, two, don't breathe easy because 80 percent said they wouldn't. That, in my mind, is why illegals are now granted citizenship after serving in the U.S. military. The government needs to get as many people in its military who have no connection with U.S. history or any kind of feeling for what it means to be an American. I seriously doubt if many recent immigrants, legal or illegal, have a dewdrop in their eyes when they think of Thomas Jefferson or Lewis and Clark. And governments know that soldiers do not want to fire upon their countrymen. Remember Tian an Men Square? The soldiers who mowed down student protesters were not from Beijing. The Chinese government called in troops from distant provinces to do the dirty work. So what's to say foreign-born troops aren't being trained to fire on Americans in the event of social unrest?
Also recall that we are now using more military contractors (aka mercenaries) in Iraq than we are U.S. troops, that the infamous Blackwater, now known as Xe, was used in New Orleans to "police" the populace after Katrina, and that several U.S. cities have already contracted with Blackwater to control citizens in the event of civil unrest. And remember what Blackwater has done in Iraq, shooting civilians for no reason other than it felt good. Also that Blackwater is comprised of work-for-hire gunman from war-torn, impoverished countries in Africa and eastern Europe, people who could care less if they killed Americans.
Of course, there are also other means that could be used: predator drones and UN troops, some of which have been training on U.S. soil. Wouldn't it be ironic if the Americans who didn't give a hoot about the civilians we are murdering with drones in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan--saying that it saves the lives of American troops--would be murdered by drones that are piloted by American troops?
To add still another layer to this evil, more and more is being written about how this economic disaster has been orchestrated, that it was intentional, in order to destroy the American system and issue in a new currency. In fact, the $3 trillion wars we're currently fighting are a fantastic means to bring about our ruin. Bringing down the U.S. is one of the last agenda items in the march toward one world government.
These bastards are so ingenious, getting taxpayers to fund their own enslavement and annhilation. Brilliant!
I'm not rushing out to buy a gun, but I certainly can understand why people are doing so. The government is not to be trusted, I've known that since the mid-1980s, when I began to look into CIA"s cocaine-gun running.
The most important thing is to be informed but not afraid. Fear is what the powers that be want. Fear means control, and I will not be controlled. Now is the time to understand the evil that is at the core of business and government but to keep one's own house in order, delighting in the beauty that surrounds you in every moment and knowing that you are far more than the little body you are currently inhabiting.
Friday, July 16, 2010
Surgery a No-Go
I got a call from UCLA this morning, and the transplant is not going to happen, at least not between Janet and Bob, and Maria and me. As those of you who read my blog know, Janet, my next-door neighbor, volunteered to be a donor over a year ago, after only knowing me two months. It took over a year for me to jump through all the hoops to get on the list (including heart surgery and recovery from hip surgery). Finally, Janet could be tested to see if she was healthy enough to be a donor. She finally passed all her tests. But she's an A and I'm an O. O's can only receive from other O's.
By a beautiful turn of events(see previous posts for full story), I was introduced to another mismatched pair--an O donor and an A recipient. Usually an O can donate to anyone, but Bob has antibodies to Maria because of his previous transplant. So we were going to do a paired donation--Maria would give to me, and Janet would give to Bob.
We had dates set--next Thursday for Janet's and Bob's surgeries,and August 10 for Maria's and my surgeries. But we knew that we were still waiting for the final word on the compatibility of Janet and Bob. We heard this morning that Bob has antibodies to Janet, and the process to make two incompatible donors compatible, known as plasmaferesis, basically a plasma exchange, would be too dangerous for him.
I have the option of undergoing plasmaferesis in order to be compatible with Janet. This would involve surgically putting a shunt in my arterry (as in hemodialysis) and undergoing four weeks of IV plasma exchanges several times a week prior to surgery. On face value, this sounds like a lot of extra strain on the body, so I am attempting to make an appt. with the UCLA surgeon who is in charge of plasmaferesis to weigh the risks.
For right now, Janet and I are in a computerized data base of approx. 113 mismatched pairs in So Cal. Whenever a pair is added, it has the potential to change the dynamics of many people within the pool. I've heard various estimates as to how long it might take to get a match--tomorrow to 18 months, again, because you never know how a new pair could change things.
As with all supposedly "bad" news, I take it exceedingly well. No tears, no hand wringing, no whining, no worries. It's as if I am detached from the outcome. That probably doesn't make sense to a lot of you, but it is a way that works wonderfully for me. To give my all and then let it go. There is at least one advantage to delaying surgery that I can see: It will give me more time in cardiac rehab to get my heart in top shape.
But it does mean continuing to do dialysis every night for the foreseeable future.
By a beautiful turn of events(see previous posts for full story), I was introduced to another mismatched pair--an O donor and an A recipient. Usually an O can donate to anyone, but Bob has antibodies to Maria because of his previous transplant. So we were going to do a paired donation--Maria would give to me, and Janet would give to Bob.
We had dates set--next Thursday for Janet's and Bob's surgeries,and August 10 for Maria's and my surgeries. But we knew that we were still waiting for the final word on the compatibility of Janet and Bob. We heard this morning that Bob has antibodies to Janet, and the process to make two incompatible donors compatible, known as plasmaferesis, basically a plasma exchange, would be too dangerous for him.
I have the option of undergoing plasmaferesis in order to be compatible with Janet. This would involve surgically putting a shunt in my arterry (as in hemodialysis) and undergoing four weeks of IV plasma exchanges several times a week prior to surgery. On face value, this sounds like a lot of extra strain on the body, so I am attempting to make an appt. with the UCLA surgeon who is in charge of plasmaferesis to weigh the risks.
For right now, Janet and I are in a computerized data base of approx. 113 mismatched pairs in So Cal. Whenever a pair is added, it has the potential to change the dynamics of many people within the pool. I've heard various estimates as to how long it might take to get a match--tomorrow to 18 months, again, because you never know how a new pair could change things.
As with all supposedly "bad" news, I take it exceedingly well. No tears, no hand wringing, no whining, no worries. It's as if I am detached from the outcome. That probably doesn't make sense to a lot of you, but it is a way that works wonderfully for me. To give my all and then let it go. There is at least one advantage to delaying surgery that I can see: It will give me more time in cardiac rehab to get my heart in top shape.
But it does mean continuing to do dialysis every night for the foreseeable future.
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Surgery Scheduled
I heard from UCLA today that Janet's and Bob's surgeries are tentatively scheduled for July 23--10 days from today!--and that Maria's and my surgeries are tentatively scheduled for August 10.
Scheduling all four on the same day was not possible. This doesn't concern me as it did even a short time ago. We have been brought all this way. I just can't see Maria bailing. That said, I have asked the UCLA coordinator if she could arrange a meeting for the five of us. It's much more difficult to back out on someone you've met and spent time with than it is to bail on someone you've never met and never even spoken with on the phone.
In an amazing turn of events, before I got this message from UCLA, I was carrying out the recycling and met up with another neighbor, Barbara. She helped me carry the recycling to the alley. Barbara takes care of other people's dogs besides having two of her own. I told her that I would probably be having surgery fairly soon and wondered if I could pay her to watch Rasputin. She was excited about caring for him and said he'd have a good time with her other dogs. She'd keep him from getting lonely. Then she said that she has been thinking of donating one of her kidneys. She's an O and so am I. She said she would be my backup if things didn't work out with the paired donation. Isn't that amazing to have two people willing to donate to a non-family member, both within 100 feet of my front door! I am really being taken care of.
Scheduling all four on the same day was not possible. This doesn't concern me as it did even a short time ago. We have been brought all this way. I just can't see Maria bailing. That said, I have asked the UCLA coordinator if she could arrange a meeting for the five of us. It's much more difficult to back out on someone you've met and spent time with than it is to bail on someone you've never met and never even spoken with on the phone.
In an amazing turn of events, before I got this message from UCLA, I was carrying out the recycling and met up with another neighbor, Barbara. She helped me carry the recycling to the alley. Barbara takes care of other people's dogs besides having two of her own. I told her that I would probably be having surgery fairly soon and wondered if I could pay her to watch Rasputin. She was excited about caring for him and said he'd have a good time with her other dogs. She'd keep him from getting lonely. Then she said that she has been thinking of donating one of her kidneys. She's an O and so am I. She said she would be my backup if things didn't work out with the paired donation. Isn't that amazing to have two people willing to donate to a non-family member, both within 100 feet of my front door! I am really being taken care of.
Friday, July 09, 2010
Movement in the Transplant Process
I just got off the phone with one of the transplant coordinators from UCLA. Finally, someone who took the time to explain the process to me. Thank God!
Suzanne said that all four of us are now medically cleared. Now what has to happen is that Bob's blood needs to be cross-matched with Janet's and mine needs to be cross-matched with Maria's. It's already been established that Maria and I are a go, but the problem may be with Bob and his antibodies from a previous transplant.
If the cross-matching goes well, Janet and Maria will meet with the surgeons for their clearance. If the surgeons say "yes," then it's a matter of scheduling and final blood tests and chest x-rays. Suzanne said that she's now scheduling living donations in mid-September, and ours is complicated by a paired donation. She is trying to get things done before Janet must return to work in the fall, but she's not making any promises.
Suzanne told me that Maria and I are only blood-compatible, not tissue-compatible. There are six points of tissue compatibility, and we do not have one of the six in common. Suzanne said this is no longer considered a factor in the viability of the organ or in the patient's long-term survivability. She also seemed to say that it has little to do with the amount of immune suppressants I will have to take post-op.
I remain optimistic. It's a miracle that I would move in next to a woman who wants to be my donor. And it's a miracle how we got hooked up with Bob and Maria. It sure seems as if the universe has orchestrated things thus far. I'm sure that all will go smoothly and we'll get the transplants done this summer.
I just need to get over this cold! After three full weeks, I'm still congested and coughing. Still having to sit up every night to sleep.
Suzanne said that all four of us are now medically cleared. Now what has to happen is that Bob's blood needs to be cross-matched with Janet's and mine needs to be cross-matched with Maria's. It's already been established that Maria and I are a go, but the problem may be with Bob and his antibodies from a previous transplant.
If the cross-matching goes well, Janet and Maria will meet with the surgeons for their clearance. If the surgeons say "yes," then it's a matter of scheduling and final blood tests and chest x-rays. Suzanne said that she's now scheduling living donations in mid-September, and ours is complicated by a paired donation. She is trying to get things done before Janet must return to work in the fall, but she's not making any promises.
Suzanne told me that Maria and I are only blood-compatible, not tissue-compatible. There are six points of tissue compatibility, and we do not have one of the six in common. Suzanne said this is no longer considered a factor in the viability of the organ or in the patient's long-term survivability. She also seemed to say that it has little to do with the amount of immune suppressants I will have to take post-op.
I remain optimistic. It's a miracle that I would move in next to a woman who wants to be my donor. And it's a miracle how we got hooked up with Bob and Maria. It sure seems as if the universe has orchestrated things thus far. I'm sure that all will go smoothly and we'll get the transplants done this summer.
I just need to get over this cold! After three full weeks, I'm still congested and coughing. Still having to sit up every night to sleep.
Tuesday, July 06, 2010
Where You'll Eventually End Up if You Leave the Forest
A few nights ago, I watched two documentaries that, on first glance, might seem to have no connection points, but the next morning, in a flash of insight, I realized how nicely they dovetail.
The first was "A Certain Kind of Death," which shows the viewer, in sometimes graphic detail, what happens to those who die with no next of kin. We see the initial police investigation of the body, followed by efforts to find family through papers in the deceased's residence, the eventual carting away of possessions and their sale at a monthly auction, the burning of the body in the crematory, and finally, burial of the ashes in a mass grave. The only exception was one man who had about $60,000 in the bank. After the City of Los Angeles deducted expenses for the government workers and the movers, his estate was left with sufficient funds to bury him in a beautiful, old cemetary in Mendocino, which I recall from my days in Pt. Arena. He had left detailed sketches as to where he wished to be placed.
The other documentary, "Keep the River on Your Right: A Modern Cannibal Tale," concerned the late artist-turned-anthrologist Tobias Schneebaum, a life-long New Yorker who, in his early 30s, went to Peru on a Fullbright and ended up deep in the jungle. He was befriended by a tribe that had had little or no contact with outsiders. The men would take Tobias hunting, but one day, what Tobias had thought was a trek to hunt for animals turned out to be a war party. Though he did not participaate in the massacre of the men in the other tribe's village, a spear was placed in his hand after a man had already died and he was pressured into piercing the corpse. What's more, the warriors then began to eat their victims, and Tobias felt that he had to take one bite. This so distubed Tobias that he left the tribe without saying goodbye and headed back to civilization. He did not return for 45 years, pressured to do so by the film crew. (Actually, most of the film takes place in New Guinea, where he had also befriended a tribe and had a very deep connection with a male lover.)
Since Tobias' first visit, the tribe had moved deeper into the forest to get away from the missionaries. Still, their way of life had completely changed. When Tobias arrives, the village is assembled in a common house watching TV. Empty beer bottles are piled up underneath the house, which is raised off the ground on stilts. The people are wearing clothes now, primarily football jerseys and shorts. I often wonder if visiting anthropologists and adventure tourists bring them football jerseys, thinking they will make cool gifts.
To Tobias' surprise, one woman and at least two men whom he knew 45 years ago are still alive. The woman says, rather forlornly it seemed to me, "Now we're wearing clothes. But that's OK." I got the feeling she would much prefer to be nude again and to see the men nude.
In no way am I endorsing cannibalism, but it was so clear to me that these people's power had been so greatly diminished. Previously they had been self-sufficient, deeply in touch with their surroundings, sensual and proud. Now they were sitting around in dirty football jerseys, watching TV and drinking beer.
I saw so profoundly the connection between these Peruvian villagers and the men in LA who had died with no next of kin. Dying alone in a filthy, cockroach-infested apartment in a big city is the end result of leaving the forest.
The first was "A Certain Kind of Death," which shows the viewer, in sometimes graphic detail, what happens to those who die with no next of kin. We see the initial police investigation of the body, followed by efforts to find family through papers in the deceased's residence, the eventual carting away of possessions and their sale at a monthly auction, the burning of the body in the crematory, and finally, burial of the ashes in a mass grave. The only exception was one man who had about $60,000 in the bank. After the City of Los Angeles deducted expenses for the government workers and the movers, his estate was left with sufficient funds to bury him in a beautiful, old cemetary in Mendocino, which I recall from my days in Pt. Arena. He had left detailed sketches as to where he wished to be placed.
The other documentary, "Keep the River on Your Right: A Modern Cannibal Tale," concerned the late artist-turned-anthrologist Tobias Schneebaum, a life-long New Yorker who, in his early 30s, went to Peru on a Fullbright and ended up deep in the jungle. He was befriended by a tribe that had had little or no contact with outsiders. The men would take Tobias hunting, but one day, what Tobias had thought was a trek to hunt for animals turned out to be a war party. Though he did not participaate in the massacre of the men in the other tribe's village, a spear was placed in his hand after a man had already died and he was pressured into piercing the corpse. What's more, the warriors then began to eat their victims, and Tobias felt that he had to take one bite. This so distubed Tobias that he left the tribe without saying goodbye and headed back to civilization. He did not return for 45 years, pressured to do so by the film crew. (Actually, most of the film takes place in New Guinea, where he had also befriended a tribe and had a very deep connection with a male lover.)
Since Tobias' first visit, the tribe had moved deeper into the forest to get away from the missionaries. Still, their way of life had completely changed. When Tobias arrives, the village is assembled in a common house watching TV. Empty beer bottles are piled up underneath the house, which is raised off the ground on stilts. The people are wearing clothes now, primarily football jerseys and shorts. I often wonder if visiting anthropologists and adventure tourists bring them football jerseys, thinking they will make cool gifts.
To Tobias' surprise, one woman and at least two men whom he knew 45 years ago are still alive. The woman says, rather forlornly it seemed to me, "Now we're wearing clothes. But that's OK." I got the feeling she would much prefer to be nude again and to see the men nude.
In no way am I endorsing cannibalism, but it was so clear to me that these people's power had been so greatly diminished. Previously they had been self-sufficient, deeply in touch with their surroundings, sensual and proud. Now they were sitting around in dirty football jerseys, watching TV and drinking beer.
I saw so profoundly the connection between these Peruvian villagers and the men in LA who had died with no next of kin. Dying alone in a filthy, cockroach-infested apartment in a big city is the end result of leaving the forest.
Monday, July 05, 2010
Can Collecting Not Just for the Homeless Anymore
This morning while walking Rasputin, I came across a friendly, young, black couple who were going through the trash, looking for cans. They were definitely not homeless, as their bodies and their clothes were clean. Perhaps they are chronically unemployed or under-employed or working full-time but at low wages. This is a population we're going to see more of in this country, as the number of people who have exhausted their state and federal unemployment benefits is now at 2.5 million. That's a lot of people.
Sunday, July 04, 2010
Blue Skies
Beautiful, blue skies today in Southern California, just as it should be, just as it used to be before chemtrails. I guess even the spooks take Fourth of July off!
For those of you who don't yet know about chemtrails, well, all I can say is that you start to do a little research and if you have any curiosity at all, you'll go down the rabbit hole into the world of government spooky business. Chemtrails will lead to underground bases or secret prisons for political activists on U.S. soil or plans for thinning the population or controlling the masses during epidemics cooked up in government labs. It's a deep hole, so watch out!
I started noticing chemtrails about 25 years ago. This is long before they began to appear in online discussions. I remember pointing them out to my then-husband, and we've been separated and then divorced for almost a quarter century. I noted that they hung around much longer in the sky than jet trails, tended to disperse over a wide area, and crisscrossed, as if created by design by several aircraft.
One of the chief reasons why there isn't a general outcry about chemtrails is that people no longer gaze at the clouds. People are just too gosh darn busy to spend daydream time doing that. If they were taking stock of their surroundings, they would see that there is a clear difference between jet trails and chemtrails. There are all kinds of theories as to what chemtrails are composed of and what their purpose is, and it's much too much to get into here, but like the ridiculous explanations our government gave for 911, the government gives equally ridiculous answers about chemtrails. Basically, the official line is that they are really jet trails, that's all. Well, if that's the case, then they're a radically different kind of jet trail, so that begs the questions, "In what ways are they different? Why are they different? How did these differences come about? What is the chemical composition of these trails? Why do they hang around in the air when regular jet trails don't? Why do they disperse over large areas when regular jet trails don't?" This ridiculous response reminds me of government explanations for UFOs, saying they are merely weather balloons. Sure, weather balloons that change colors, change formation, zip across the sky, disappear and reappear in another part of the heavens. That's some weather balloon! Just like chemtrails are some jet trails!
For those of you who don't yet know about chemtrails, well, all I can say is that you start to do a little research and if you have any curiosity at all, you'll go down the rabbit hole into the world of government spooky business. Chemtrails will lead to underground bases or secret prisons for political activists on U.S. soil or plans for thinning the population or controlling the masses during epidemics cooked up in government labs. It's a deep hole, so watch out!
I started noticing chemtrails about 25 years ago. This is long before they began to appear in online discussions. I remember pointing them out to my then-husband, and we've been separated and then divorced for almost a quarter century. I noted that they hung around much longer in the sky than jet trails, tended to disperse over a wide area, and crisscrossed, as if created by design by several aircraft.
One of the chief reasons why there isn't a general outcry about chemtrails is that people no longer gaze at the clouds. People are just too gosh darn busy to spend daydream time doing that. If they were taking stock of their surroundings, they would see that there is a clear difference between jet trails and chemtrails. There are all kinds of theories as to what chemtrails are composed of and what their purpose is, and it's much too much to get into here, but like the ridiculous explanations our government gave for 911, the government gives equally ridiculous answers about chemtrails. Basically, the official line is that they are really jet trails, that's all. Well, if that's the case, then they're a radically different kind of jet trail, so that begs the questions, "In what ways are they different? Why are they different? How did these differences come about? What is the chemical composition of these trails? Why do they hang around in the air when regular jet trails don't? Why do they disperse over large areas when regular jet trails don't?" This ridiculous response reminds me of government explanations for UFOs, saying they are merely weather balloons. Sure, weather balloons that change colors, change formation, zip across the sky, disappear and reappear in another part of the heavens. That's some weather balloon! Just like chemtrails are some jet trails!
The Role of Denial in Obesity
In yesterday's post, I related the story of an overweight former co-worker. Like an alcoholic before he hits bottom and goes to his first AA meeting, overweight people are so often in denial, not that they have a problem, but that the problem is of their own making. They blame their condition on genetics, lack of time to cook right, or, like this former co-worker, on the struggle she's waged all her life against weight, to no avail. And yet, it's a struggle for me to see the struggle, as any opportunity to indulge in a sweet is never passed up. There doesn't seem to be a struggle at all, just an easy saying "yes" to desserts.
I recall another insightful incident that occurred almost 30 years ago, long before obesity was a matter of public discourse. I was a philosophy student at the time, and an overweight classmate of mine was often telling me how she ate nothing but salads. I found this hard to believe, but I had nothing but her word to go by until the day she gave me a ride home from campus. I glanced in her back seat and saw that it was littered with hundreds of burger wrappers, french fry bags, and empty malted milk containers. Burger King appeared to be the fast-food joint of choice. Rarely does one see such a classic example of denial, someone literally tossing one's garbage behind oneself, out of sight, supposedly out of mind. I realized that the litter in the back seat was something she could not face, and so it might pile up until her husband cleaned it out or paid someone else to do it. But I knew, looking at it, that she would not be able to do it herself. This would bring her face to face with her self-deception, and that confrontation would rock her foundation, the story she had told the world and herself about herself.
Just like in AA, when the recovering alcoholic has to take personal responsibility for his actions, the problem of obesity requires that every overweight person admit that he or she is responsible for the excess pounds. It isn't society's fault or their parents' or their spouse's or their children's fault. It isn't because they were somehow born with a black mark on their foreheads that relegates them to a life of obesity. They have the power to change their lives. But first they must abandon denial and take a good, honest look at themselves. Without such an approach, there will be no lasting change.
I recall another insightful incident that occurred almost 30 years ago, long before obesity was a matter of public discourse. I was a philosophy student at the time, and an overweight classmate of mine was often telling me how she ate nothing but salads. I found this hard to believe, but I had nothing but her word to go by until the day she gave me a ride home from campus. I glanced in her back seat and saw that it was littered with hundreds of burger wrappers, french fry bags, and empty malted milk containers. Burger King appeared to be the fast-food joint of choice. Rarely does one see such a classic example of denial, someone literally tossing one's garbage behind oneself, out of sight, supposedly out of mind. I realized that the litter in the back seat was something she could not face, and so it might pile up until her husband cleaned it out or paid someone else to do it. But I knew, looking at it, that she would not be able to do it herself. This would bring her face to face with her self-deception, and that confrontation would rock her foundation, the story she had told the world and herself about herself.
Just like in AA, when the recovering alcoholic has to take personal responsibility for his actions, the problem of obesity requires that every overweight person admit that he or she is responsible for the excess pounds. It isn't society's fault or their parents' or their spouse's or their children's fault. It isn't because they were somehow born with a black mark on their foreheads that relegates them to a life of obesity. They have the power to change their lives. But first they must abandon denial and take a good, honest look at themselves. Without such an approach, there will be no lasting change.
Saturday, July 03, 2010
Thin People Do Not Have "Special Powers"
I get the feeling from a lot of heavy people that they think thin or healthy-weight persons have "special powers," that somehow they can eat what they want and not gain weight. Sure, I suppose there are a few such individuals, but that's not the norm. Rather, thin people are either disciplined in their eating or they are focused on other interests than food.
One summer I read the many books of Carlos Castenada in which he tells of his experiences with a Mexican shaman named don Juan. Don Juan gives Carlos many lessons, but one that is applicable here is the idea of the assemblage point, the point at which an individual's consciousness is configured in relation to the world. Having a healthy attitude toward food is a matter of shifting one's assemblage point away from an addict's self-destructive focus on food and toward a self-confident, life-affirming, disciplined approach to food in which one eats to live, not lives to eat.
This matter is in the forefront of my mind as I recently had email contact with a former co-worker whom I have not seen for several years. She had been unaware of what is going on with my health, and I gave her a brief run-down, then wrote something that I did with the best intentions, but it seems to have been for naught. She is about 5'6" and at least 300 pounds. I wrote that overweight people seem ungrateful for the great gift of health they've been given; that given all that I know about the ravages of diabetes, I can't see why they don't do everything in their power, including losing weight, in order to prevent its development in their own lives. Then I made a personal appeal and said that it is so important for her to lose weight in order to prevent disease and to be able to enjoy life to the fullest.
She wrote back that she gives thanks every day for her health and that she's been struggling with her weight since she was a baby. It's really sad how steeped in denial this response is, since I have often been with her when we've walked only a few hundred feet and she's been out of breath. Certainly that isn't the sign of a healthy body. And I've never been out with her when she hasn't ordered or bought a dessert.
Five or so years ago, we were both at a baby shower for another co-worker. Everyone had been asked to bring something to share, and we were sitting and standing in the break room, munching. The group had divided into two distinct groups. Around the vegetable trays were the thin gals, who were commenting on how crunchy the carrots and celery were and how juicy the tomotoes. Around the dessert table were the overweight gals, who were orgasming over the cheesecake and encouraging each other to have one more brownie or piece of fudge. This vignette made the thin vs. heavy drama so poignantly clear. The thin girls were really enjoying the vegetables, and the heavy gals didn't want anything but the dessert. Different assemblage points.
The problem of obesity is much more than educating people about healthy food choices. It also involves personal responsibility and honesty with one self. In fact these issues are in many ways far more important to an individual's life journey than losing weight.
One summer I read the many books of Carlos Castenada in which he tells of his experiences with a Mexican shaman named don Juan. Don Juan gives Carlos many lessons, but one that is applicable here is the idea of the assemblage point, the point at which an individual's consciousness is configured in relation to the world. Having a healthy attitude toward food is a matter of shifting one's assemblage point away from an addict's self-destructive focus on food and toward a self-confident, life-affirming, disciplined approach to food in which one eats to live, not lives to eat.
This matter is in the forefront of my mind as I recently had email contact with a former co-worker whom I have not seen for several years. She had been unaware of what is going on with my health, and I gave her a brief run-down, then wrote something that I did with the best intentions, but it seems to have been for naught. She is about 5'6" and at least 300 pounds. I wrote that overweight people seem ungrateful for the great gift of health they've been given; that given all that I know about the ravages of diabetes, I can't see why they don't do everything in their power, including losing weight, in order to prevent its development in their own lives. Then I made a personal appeal and said that it is so important for her to lose weight in order to prevent disease and to be able to enjoy life to the fullest.
She wrote back that she gives thanks every day for her health and that she's been struggling with her weight since she was a baby. It's really sad how steeped in denial this response is, since I have often been with her when we've walked only a few hundred feet and she's been out of breath. Certainly that isn't the sign of a healthy body. And I've never been out with her when she hasn't ordered or bought a dessert.
Five or so years ago, we were both at a baby shower for another co-worker. Everyone had been asked to bring something to share, and we were sitting and standing in the break room, munching. The group had divided into two distinct groups. Around the vegetable trays were the thin gals, who were commenting on how crunchy the carrots and celery were and how juicy the tomotoes. Around the dessert table were the overweight gals, who were orgasming over the cheesecake and encouraging each other to have one more brownie or piece of fudge. This vignette made the thin vs. heavy drama so poignantly clear. The thin girls were really enjoying the vegetables, and the heavy gals didn't want anything but the dessert. Different assemblage points.
The problem of obesity is much more than educating people about healthy food choices. It also involves personal responsibility and honesty with one self. In fact these issues are in many ways far more important to an individual's life journey than losing weight.
Friday, July 02, 2010
Fluid Overload
I saw my nephrologist, Dr. Butman, yesterday for my monthly clinic visit. He felt that fluid overload is the root of my problem. I have been selecting my dialysis solution based on my blood pressure, and my blood pressure has been on target, due to the meds I'm taking, so I've selected a regimen that does not extract a lot of fluid. But my weight has been increasing, even though I haven't been eating very much. Dr. Butman guessed that I'm carrying around 15-20 pounds of water weight.
Last night I used a much stronger dialysate, and this morning I was eight pounds lighter. That's a lot to lose in a few hours. I wouldn't recommend it. I feel a little hung over.
The reason why my cough doesn't go away--it's been with me more than two weeks now--is because there is probably water in my lungs. Stagnant water can turn into phlegm. I'm thinking that this all may have started on my plane trip to Canada and then to France. I was exhausted and weak during my time overseas. I thought I was anemic, but I was probably in fluid overload, which puts a strain on the heart, thereby causing weakness and fatigue.
It's not that I don't also have a cold; it's just that the fluid retention doesn't allow me to easily get over the cold. Finally, a theory about my condition that makes sense. Tonight I'm going to take it easy. Five pounds max. That's enough.
Last night I used a much stronger dialysate, and this morning I was eight pounds lighter. That's a lot to lose in a few hours. I wouldn't recommend it. I feel a little hung over.
The reason why my cough doesn't go away--it's been with me more than two weeks now--is because there is probably water in my lungs. Stagnant water can turn into phlegm. I'm thinking that this all may have started on my plane trip to Canada and then to France. I was exhausted and weak during my time overseas. I thought I was anemic, but I was probably in fluid overload, which puts a strain on the heart, thereby causing weakness and fatigue.
It's not that I don't also have a cold; it's just that the fluid retention doesn't allow me to easily get over the cold. Finally, a theory about my condition that makes sense. Tonight I'm going to take it easy. Five pounds max. That's enough.
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Worn Out
Since returning from France on June 16, I have had a debilitating cough. For the first week and a half, it was a dry cough. I would hack and hack as if I were going to cough up my kidneys, but nothing was expelled.
Last week I saw a GP who prescribed antibiotics. They didn't seem to do anything, so I visited another GP a few days ago. He felt I don't have an infection but rather heartburn. He said that sometimes heartburn manifests as a dry cough. This didn't ring true to me; this sure seemed like an infection.
On Monday I saw my acupuncturist, Dr. Mai, who diagnosed it as a wind-dryness syndrome. He treated me with needles and moxibustion, saying that there was a lot of congestion in my lungs, whereas the GP had said there was none. The acupuncturist made a whole lot more sense to me. He gave me herbs too. By that night, I was already feeling my chest loosen up, as if it might be possible some day to expel some phlegm.
The last few nights have been rough, with a tremendous amount of coughing, but not that violent, wretching-up-my-innards cough. A manageable cough.
I so want to get over this infection so that I can get back to cardiac rehab. I want my heart to be in top shape for transplant surgery, which I am still hoping will take place this summer.
Last week I saw a GP who prescribed antibiotics. They didn't seem to do anything, so I visited another GP a few days ago. He felt I don't have an infection but rather heartburn. He said that sometimes heartburn manifests as a dry cough. This didn't ring true to me; this sure seemed like an infection.
On Monday I saw my acupuncturist, Dr. Mai, who diagnosed it as a wind-dryness syndrome. He treated me with needles and moxibustion, saying that there was a lot of congestion in my lungs, whereas the GP had said there was none. The acupuncturist made a whole lot more sense to me. He gave me herbs too. By that night, I was already feeling my chest loosen up, as if it might be possible some day to expel some phlegm.
The last few nights have been rough, with a tremendous amount of coughing, but not that violent, wretching-up-my-innards cough. A manageable cough.
I so want to get over this infection so that I can get back to cardiac rehab. I want my heart to be in top shape for transplant surgery, which I am still hoping will take place this summer.
Friday, June 25, 2010
Unhappiness, the Unrecognized Component of America's Obesity Problem
So much is being written and pontificated about obesity these days, but something very basic is missing from the discussion. Unhappiness. People who overeat, who know they are damaging their bodies and yet continue to do so, who do not like what they see in the mirror yet can't stop contributing to the problem, must on some level be unhappy. If they felt better about themselves, they wouldn't want to be heavy, just like someone who feels good about herself makes sure she bathes every day and changes her shirt.
If Americans were happy with their lives, they wouldn't overeat. In the heart of every overweight person is someone who is not happy with who he or she is. The only exception I can think of is my friend Carol. She has been struggling with her weight for a long time, and yet she is one of the most well-adjusted people I've ever known. But then Carol is what I think of as German massage therapist heavy, the kind of woman who is solid, big-boned perhaps, but not fat. She plays golf several times a week and is in a walking group. She gets plenty of exercise and so she's toned. And she has one of the best attitudes around.
But besides Carol, I think I'm onto something. Every time I've seen an overweight person interviewed about his or her weight problem, I always get the screaming message of unhappiness. The person talks about ostracization, loneliness, feeling apart from others, and yet these issues are not addressed, only a plan to get the person to eat more sensibly.
I am a case in point. I was a fat kid. I had no friends, and so I isolated myself indoors and ate, which isolated me even more. Kids made fun of me and threw rocks at me, and so I hid away and ate. I didn't get any pleasure from eating, I just did it. Perhaps I knew on some level that this was unhealthy, and I was trying to bring about my end. Life was difficult, and I wanted out. When I was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes at age 13, I was given a dietary plan, but I received no emotional counseling, and so I simply cheated on my diet. Throughout my teens and early adulthood, I cheated, with disasterous effects on my health.
Then about eight years ago, following an extremely challenging and tumultuous time in my life, I decided to be happy. I was so sick and tired of being sad. I simply refocused my attention away from lack and problems and toward what was beautiful about my life. And I began the process by giving up coffee. My son had been working for my favorite coffeehouse, and when he was let go, I stopped going out for coffee. By giving up one harmful substance, my body became cleaner and it no longer craved other unhealthy substances. So my desire for Cheetos and candy bars and ice cream and the occasional slice of coconut cream pie from Coco's also fell away.
Simultaneously, I was finding happiness within, not looking for it outside me. From an outsider's point of view, my life is much more difficult today than it was eight years ago, but from my viewpoint, I am so much happier. Eight years ago, like now, I had no husband or boyfriend, but I perhaps had more than one date a year, as seems to be my average these days. Eight years ago, I was making more money than I am today. And eight years ago, I did not yet have heart disease and I was not on kidney dialysis. Of course, I would love to be in a healthy, passionate, fun-loving relationship with a great guy. Of course, I would love to be making more money. Of course, I would love to have a body that is completely free of disease. But my happiness is not dependent on love or money or health.
And so today I am 5'8", 145 pounds, rather than the 165 or so of eight years ago. I'm not skinny, but remember that I am always carrying about two litres (4.4 pounds) of dialysis solution. If I weren't doing dialysis, I'd probably weigh around 135, since the dialysis solution itself adds between 50 and 65 grams of carbohydrates to my intake each night.
The message I want to give all those who think they can't bear to give up junk food is this: If you quit junk food today, a month from now, after a good four weeks of eating right, you're going to wonder why you ever craved that crap. It'll be like a bad relationship; once you leave it, really leave it, you're going to shake your head, amazed at how stupid you once were. Junk food will no longer taste good. You'll really fall in love with crunchy salads and lean meat and fresh fruit. You'll turn up your nose at Big Macs. You'll no longer need your salt and sugar fix.
So, all that I'm saying is that every time I see a heavy person, I think, "There's another unhappy American." Of course, not all thin or healthy-weight persons are happy; anorexia is a clear counterexample. But except for a few Carols, I venture a guess that most of the overweight have low self-esteem. What they need is emotional counseling, not just a diet plan. Any government or nonprofit efforts to simply get people to eat healthier are doomed to failure, as low self-esteem and unhappiness cannot be cured through diet.
If Americans were happy with their lives, they wouldn't overeat. In the heart of every overweight person is someone who is not happy with who he or she is. The only exception I can think of is my friend Carol. She has been struggling with her weight for a long time, and yet she is one of the most well-adjusted people I've ever known. But then Carol is what I think of as German massage therapist heavy, the kind of woman who is solid, big-boned perhaps, but not fat. She plays golf several times a week and is in a walking group. She gets plenty of exercise and so she's toned. And she has one of the best attitudes around.
But besides Carol, I think I'm onto something. Every time I've seen an overweight person interviewed about his or her weight problem, I always get the screaming message of unhappiness. The person talks about ostracization, loneliness, feeling apart from others, and yet these issues are not addressed, only a plan to get the person to eat more sensibly.
I am a case in point. I was a fat kid. I had no friends, and so I isolated myself indoors and ate, which isolated me even more. Kids made fun of me and threw rocks at me, and so I hid away and ate. I didn't get any pleasure from eating, I just did it. Perhaps I knew on some level that this was unhealthy, and I was trying to bring about my end. Life was difficult, and I wanted out. When I was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes at age 13, I was given a dietary plan, but I received no emotional counseling, and so I simply cheated on my diet. Throughout my teens and early adulthood, I cheated, with disasterous effects on my health.
Then about eight years ago, following an extremely challenging and tumultuous time in my life, I decided to be happy. I was so sick and tired of being sad. I simply refocused my attention away from lack and problems and toward what was beautiful about my life. And I began the process by giving up coffee. My son had been working for my favorite coffeehouse, and when he was let go, I stopped going out for coffee. By giving up one harmful substance, my body became cleaner and it no longer craved other unhealthy substances. So my desire for Cheetos and candy bars and ice cream and the occasional slice of coconut cream pie from Coco's also fell away.
Simultaneously, I was finding happiness within, not looking for it outside me. From an outsider's point of view, my life is much more difficult today than it was eight years ago, but from my viewpoint, I am so much happier. Eight years ago, like now, I had no husband or boyfriend, but I perhaps had more than one date a year, as seems to be my average these days. Eight years ago, I was making more money than I am today. And eight years ago, I did not yet have heart disease and I was not on kidney dialysis. Of course, I would love to be in a healthy, passionate, fun-loving relationship with a great guy. Of course, I would love to be making more money. Of course, I would love to have a body that is completely free of disease. But my happiness is not dependent on love or money or health.
And so today I am 5'8", 145 pounds, rather than the 165 or so of eight years ago. I'm not skinny, but remember that I am always carrying about two litres (4.4 pounds) of dialysis solution. If I weren't doing dialysis, I'd probably weigh around 135, since the dialysis solution itself adds between 50 and 65 grams of carbohydrates to my intake each night.
The message I want to give all those who think they can't bear to give up junk food is this: If you quit junk food today, a month from now, after a good four weeks of eating right, you're going to wonder why you ever craved that crap. It'll be like a bad relationship; once you leave it, really leave it, you're going to shake your head, amazed at how stupid you once were. Junk food will no longer taste good. You'll really fall in love with crunchy salads and lean meat and fresh fruit. You'll turn up your nose at Big Macs. You'll no longer need your salt and sugar fix.
So, all that I'm saying is that every time I see a heavy person, I think, "There's another unhappy American." Of course, not all thin or healthy-weight persons are happy; anorexia is a clear counterexample. But except for a few Carols, I venture a guess that most of the overweight have low self-esteem. What they need is emotional counseling, not just a diet plan. Any government or nonprofit efforts to simply get people to eat healthier are doomed to failure, as low self-esteem and unhappiness cannot be cured through diet.
Sunday, June 20, 2010
How About Charging for Excess Passenger Weight, Not for Checked Bags?
On my way to LA from Newark, I sat next to a woman who must have weighed 350 pounds. I had to sit sideways in my seat to accommodate her. Why should I have to do this!
As we took off, I wondered, With all the overweight people on this plane, will we be able to stay in the air?
Then it hit me that the reason airlines are charging for checked bags is that they are too chicken to ask the overweight to pay for their poundage. After all, the airlines claim that this is to offset fuel costs, and most Americans are carrying around a lot more extra weight than the weight of my checked bags. Just think that my checked bag maybe weighs 40 pounds, but many Americans are way over 40 pounds overweight.
Helene told me that in all her years with Air Canada, only twice did she charge a passenger for two seats--and it was the same passenger.
What would be so hard about every passenger standing on a scale when they checked in. Their weight would only be displayed to the clerk, so that information would remain private. Then they could do one of the following to mitigate the increased fuel costs of these hefty passengers:
* Set a cap for female and male weight, perhaps 160 for women and 190 for men. Anyone over that weight would pay a surcharge. Passengers who were grossly overweight, perhaps 280 and up, would have to buy two seats.
* Have a graduated fee schedule, say, $25 for up to 25 pounds overweight, $35 for up to 50, and so on.
* Charge $1 per pound of excess weight.
* Those people who are, say, 100 pounds or lighter would receive a break on their ticket.
* The excess-weight surcharge would not be based on body mass index. True, body builders and other athletes might be more than the cut-off weight and, true, their weight would be due to muscle not to fat, but if the surcharge is about excess weight, it doesn't matter whether the weight takes the form of fat or muscle.
Instead of everyone, fat and skinny and in between, having to pay for the excesses of some, why not make those who are responsible for the extra weight pay? This might have the added benefit of giving people an incentive to lose weight. Money is a great incentive.
As we took off, I wondered, With all the overweight people on this plane, will we be able to stay in the air?
Then it hit me that the reason airlines are charging for checked bags is that they are too chicken to ask the overweight to pay for their poundage. After all, the airlines claim that this is to offset fuel costs, and most Americans are carrying around a lot more extra weight than the weight of my checked bags. Just think that my checked bag maybe weighs 40 pounds, but many Americans are way over 40 pounds overweight.
Helene told me that in all her years with Air Canada, only twice did she charge a passenger for two seats--and it was the same passenger.
What would be so hard about every passenger standing on a scale when they checked in. Their weight would only be displayed to the clerk, so that information would remain private. Then they could do one of the following to mitigate the increased fuel costs of these hefty passengers:
* Set a cap for female and male weight, perhaps 160 for women and 190 for men. Anyone over that weight would pay a surcharge. Passengers who were grossly overweight, perhaps 280 and up, would have to buy two seats.
* Have a graduated fee schedule, say, $25 for up to 25 pounds overweight, $35 for up to 50, and so on.
* Charge $1 per pound of excess weight.
* Those people who are, say, 100 pounds or lighter would receive a break on their ticket.
* The excess-weight surcharge would not be based on body mass index. True, body builders and other athletes might be more than the cut-off weight and, true, their weight would be due to muscle not to fat, but if the surcharge is about excess weight, it doesn't matter whether the weight takes the form of fat or muscle.
Instead of everyone, fat and skinny and in between, having to pay for the excesses of some, why not make those who are responsible for the extra weight pay? This might have the added benefit of giving people an incentive to lose weight. Money is a great incentive.
A Narrow Focus on Physical Well-Being
When I first realized that dialysis was inevitable, I thought that the peritoneal dialysis clinic would be a helpmate, a resource, a place where I could turn if I had questions. Very soon I saw how naive that kind of thinking was. I received contradictory advice or nurses were afraid to give advice or they had the blanket response for everything--go to the emergency room. So I have tried to figure things out for myself and avoid the clinic as much as possible, except for my required monthly visit.
Let me cite one example of the craziness of dealing with the PD clinic. When I was training to do home dialysis in early February of last year, I must have asked a dozen times what I was supposed to do in order to get to the bathroom at night, as I was attached to the dialysis machine by a 9-foot cord. Nine feet was not nearly enough length for me to get to the toilet. All I kept hearing was that I should not disconnect myself as this would be unsanitary. I asked if I could put an extension cord on the electrical outlet, but that idea was nixed as it could shortcircuit the machine. So what I was left with was pulling the therapy cart as far as possible toward the bathroom, stretching the electrical cord and the patient line to the max. Once this resulted in the dialysis bags falling off the cart and pulling out of their connective tubing. This of course created a major risk of infection, plus I had to stop the treatment and start all over with new bags.
As part of the work-up for the transplant, I had to undergo all kinds of tests, including a colonoscopy. What was I supposed to do about going to the bathroom now? I'd be getting up many times during the night before the procedure. Finally, a nurse told me that there were patient extension lines that could be attached to the normal patient line, thereby extending it another 12 feet. Why hadn't this ever been mentioned before! Since then I have continued to use the extensions.
Then a month ago I was in a hospital in Fontana. I had to stay overnight, so dialysis supplies were provided. The nurse gave me a cassette that had an extra long patient line built in. This way I would not have to connect an extension, a good thing, since with every connection that is made, there is a potential avenue for infection. Why, why, why hadn't my own PD clinic told me about this over a year ago!
The answer I have come up with is that most health care professionals don't think of the patient as a real human being. Rather, they think something like, "Well, she should be happy she's alive. She doesn't need to have mobility, comfort, a social life, a sex life, a relationship, etc. She's alive. That's enough." And so they are very narrowly focused on the patient's physical well-being. What drugs can we give her to stop this symptom? What change in her dialysis solution do we need to make? They never take the time to wrap their minds around how they would feel if they were hooked up via a 9-foot cord to a machine for 10 hours every night. They think of their job as very narrowly about pills and protocol and covering their ass.
Let me cite one example of the craziness of dealing with the PD clinic. When I was training to do home dialysis in early February of last year, I must have asked a dozen times what I was supposed to do in order to get to the bathroom at night, as I was attached to the dialysis machine by a 9-foot cord. Nine feet was not nearly enough length for me to get to the toilet. All I kept hearing was that I should not disconnect myself as this would be unsanitary. I asked if I could put an extension cord on the electrical outlet, but that idea was nixed as it could shortcircuit the machine. So what I was left with was pulling the therapy cart as far as possible toward the bathroom, stretching the electrical cord and the patient line to the max. Once this resulted in the dialysis bags falling off the cart and pulling out of their connective tubing. This of course created a major risk of infection, plus I had to stop the treatment and start all over with new bags.
As part of the work-up for the transplant, I had to undergo all kinds of tests, including a colonoscopy. What was I supposed to do about going to the bathroom now? I'd be getting up many times during the night before the procedure. Finally, a nurse told me that there were patient extension lines that could be attached to the normal patient line, thereby extending it another 12 feet. Why hadn't this ever been mentioned before! Since then I have continued to use the extensions.
Then a month ago I was in a hospital in Fontana. I had to stay overnight, so dialysis supplies were provided. The nurse gave me a cassette that had an extra long patient line built in. This way I would not have to connect an extension, a good thing, since with every connection that is made, there is a potential avenue for infection. Why, why, why hadn't my own PD clinic told me about this over a year ago!
The answer I have come up with is that most health care professionals don't think of the patient as a real human being. Rather, they think something like, "Well, she should be happy she's alive. She doesn't need to have mobility, comfort, a social life, a sex life, a relationship, etc. She's alive. That's enough." And so they are very narrowly focused on the patient's physical well-being. What drugs can we give her to stop this symptom? What change in her dialysis solution do we need to make? They never take the time to wrap their minds around how they would feel if they were hooked up via a 9-foot cord to a machine for 10 hours every night. They think of their job as very narrowly about pills and protocol and covering their ass.
Ego Puts Patient Lives in Danger
When I was in France, I received an email from Janet, my neighbor who is my unmatched donor. She said that she had spoken with her coordinator at UCLA, who claimed she knew nothing about the paired donation we had arranged with Bob and Maria. I emailed Bob. What's up? I wondered. He wrote back that Maria had been told the same thing by the coordinator--that she knew nothing about our arrangement, nothing about Heidi and Janet. Under further questioning, however, she said that it was her job to arrange donations, not the patient's job and that we should have let her make the arrangements.
Can you believe that! Instead of saying, "Oh, how beautiful that you four found each other! That makes my job easier," she was prepared to thwart the arrangement because her ego had been bruised. It's like c'mon, lady, people's lives are at stake!
Once again, if the four of us were not on top of this, we could have been placed on the bottom of everyone's to-do list. It's amazing, with all that patients have to put up with, with the physical, emotional, and social challenges of being on dialysis, that we also have to deal with difficult health professionals who supposedly are being paid to help us.
Can you believe that! Instead of saying, "Oh, how beautiful that you four found each other! That makes my job easier," she was prepared to thwart the arrangement because her ego had been bruised. It's like c'mon, lady, people's lives are at stake!
Once again, if the four of us were not on top of this, we could have been placed on the bottom of everyone's to-do list. It's amazing, with all that patients have to put up with, with the physical, emotional, and social challenges of being on dialysis, that we also have to deal with difficult health professionals who supposedly are being paid to help us.
On the List!
Finally, finally, finally, I am on the transplant list! As of June 16, I am on the national kidney transplant list.
I was told on April 29 and a few other times after that, that the only thing UCLA had to confirm was that I have health insurance. It took them 48 days to do that! Unbelievable. This just goes to show, once again, how the so-called health care professionals are just doing a job, not thinking about the emotional strain that they are putting on patients. They could care less if it took 48 months to verify that I have insurance. It also points out again how a passive patient, one who just waited for other people to act, would still be waiting for an intial appointment with UCLA. If I weren't as assertive, if I didn't make all the phone calls I have to get people moving, to get people to do their jobs, I would never have gotten on the list. Whether you're on the list perhaps has more to do with chutzpah than with your overall health.
I was told on April 29 and a few other times after that, that the only thing UCLA had to confirm was that I have health insurance. It took them 48 days to do that! Unbelievable. This just goes to show, once again, how the so-called health care professionals are just doing a job, not thinking about the emotional strain that they are putting on patients. They could care less if it took 48 months to verify that I have insurance. It also points out again how a passive patient, one who just waited for other people to act, would still be waiting for an intial appointment with UCLA. If I weren't as assertive, if I didn't make all the phone calls I have to get people moving, to get people to do their jobs, I would never have gotten on the list. Whether you're on the list perhaps has more to do with chutzpah than with your overall health.
Trip Recap
First, I am so thankful for Helene's invitation. She used her 25th anniversary of service to Air Canada award of guaranteed first-class tickets. I also appreciate her arranging for the apartment in Paris and her muscle power in carrying my suitcases. And an especially big thanks to her for introducing me to her friends Marie and Stefania in Paris and for introducing me to Khadidja last summer when we were both in Nova Scotia.
Marie, Stefania, Khadidja, and Helene are all terrific women. They pick up and travel to exotic locales without a male escort. They are intelligent and multi-lingual and fun to be with. They're open to new ideas and new experiences. They are all pretty and stylish in their individual ways. Like so many wonderful women, they do not have a steady man in their lives or any man at all. Unfortunately, not many men are interested in confident, intelligent, self-sufficent women. Most men still would prefer a woman who is needy in some way. I sometimes wonder if the 2012 transition will also issue in a shift in men's consciousness, that they will begin to appreciate a relationship that is formed between two strong and amazing people. God, let's hope so!
Marie, Stefania, Khadidja, and Helene are all terrific women. They pick up and travel to exotic locales without a male escort. They are intelligent and multi-lingual and fun to be with. They're open to new ideas and new experiences. They are all pretty and stylish in their individual ways. Like so many wonderful women, they do not have a steady man in their lives or any man at all. Unfortunately, not many men are interested in confident, intelligent, self-sufficent women. Most men still would prefer a woman who is needy in some way. I sometimes wonder if the 2012 transition will also issue in a shift in men's consciousness, that they will begin to appreciate a relationship that is formed between two strong and amazing people. God, let's hope so!
Architectural Tour
Sunday, June 13, our last morning in Monton. We toured Khadidja's sister's house, a few houses away from Khadidja's. Amina's cellars were given an award for the best cellar in Monton. Three levels deep. She still stores wine and vegetables there, though not as extensively as in the old days.
Here's a photo of one of Anima's bedrooms in which the old beam figures prominently.
Khadidja's mom's place was right next door to Khadidja's. In fact, the two houses are so close that you can hop from one exterior staircase to the other. Jeanne is quite a gal--83 and still gardens every day. Just as in medieval times, the gardens are located outside what was once the city walls. She's also caring for a distant relative on her late husband's side. The 12-year-old girl is a little slow, and so her family sent her back to Algeria to fend for herself. When Jeanne rescued her, she was working under slave conditins as a maid.
Jeanne's house contains walls that were part of the castle built in 1060. This page from one of her childhood books shows the castle that became her house.
The houses are so close together that Jeanne's kitchen protrudes into Khadidja's house.
And here's a cupboard that was hollowed out of the wall.
The timbers in these old houses have been used many times over for many different purposes. Jeanne has one timber in her living room that has rungs on it, what was no doubt once a ladder. The beams are also of various widths, as shown here.
L to R: Jeanne, her cousin who is staying with her for a month, Heidi, Gabriel, Helene
L to R: Jeanne, Khadidja, cousin, Heidi
Before we left for the train station, Jeanne gave us a cherry custard she'd made from the cherries in the garden. That is the kind of easy back and forth between people in Monton, as the day before a neighbor had given us some cherries.
We then took the 12:45 train from Clermont back to Paris. I for one was sorry to leave this beautiful area. Khadidja had been such a warm and attentive host. She is quite a gal too.
We spent the night at Marie's, then flew from Paris at 1 p.m. the next day.
Here's a photo of one of Anima's bedrooms in which the old beam figures prominently.
Khadidja's mom's place was right next door to Khadidja's. In fact, the two houses are so close that you can hop from one exterior staircase to the other. Jeanne is quite a gal--83 and still gardens every day. Just as in medieval times, the gardens are located outside what was once the city walls. She's also caring for a distant relative on her late husband's side. The 12-year-old girl is a little slow, and so her family sent her back to Algeria to fend for herself. When Jeanne rescued her, she was working under slave conditins as a maid.
Jeanne's house contains walls that were part of the castle built in 1060. This page from one of her childhood books shows the castle that became her house.
The houses are so close together that Jeanne's kitchen protrudes into Khadidja's house.
And here's a cupboard that was hollowed out of the wall.
The timbers in these old houses have been used many times over for many different purposes. Jeanne has one timber in her living room that has rungs on it, what was no doubt once a ladder. The beams are also of various widths, as shown here.
L to R: Jeanne, her cousin who is staying with her for a month, Heidi, Gabriel, Helene
L to R: Jeanne, Khadidja, cousin, Heidi
Before we left for the train station, Jeanne gave us a cherry custard she'd made from the cherries in the garden. That is the kind of easy back and forth between people in Monton, as the day before a neighbor had given us some cherries.
We then took the 12:45 train from Clermont back to Paris. I for one was sorry to leave this beautiful area. Khadidja had been such a warm and attentive host. She is quite a gal too.
We spent the night at Marie's, then flew from Paris at 1 p.m. the next day.
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