Month: December 2019

The Glad Game

– In which Dorn reveals one of his inner demons.

T

he 1950s and 60s were in many ways a simpler and more sentimental time to grow up in than today, or at least it seems so to me. But I remember a certain movie that even back then I found too schmaltzy to stomach. It was Pollyanna, a live-action 1960 Disney movie about a young orphan who comes to town and wins the hearts of all the embittered townspeople with her unstoppable optimism. Oh ugh. Even as a kid, I agreed with the movie’s screenwriter David Swift, who is quoted as saying that “Pollyanna was so filled with happiness and light that I wanted to kick her.”

The movie was an adaptation of the book by Eleanor H. Porter. It was the first of her “Glad books”, published in 1913 when the children in books were angelic, optimistic, and dutiful, and in the end were always rewarded for their goodness. With this as the norm, it’s small wonder that subversive stories like A High Wind in Jamaica (I raved about it here) met with such simultaneous outrage and acclaim.

One of the ways Pollyanna accomplished this optimism was to play what she called “The Glad Game”. One plays it by imagining all of the good things that have come about because your dog died, or whatever situation you find yourself in.

As a kid, I would be mortified at anyone accusing me of being a Pollyanna, or (shudder) indulging in The Glad Game. But I confess I recently found myself doing it, and not just once but on three separate occasions. As with many of the Things of Importance in a Third-Ager’s life, they all had to do with my health.

The third incident happened just the other day. I had completed my required endoscopy to find the source of my internal bleeding (chronicled here). The doctor had told me before-hand that they would be looking for the cause of the problem, and upon identifying it, they would zap it, snip it, clip it, or take a piece for a biopsy, depending on what they found. (I told my doc that “biopsy” sounds like cancer, and asked had she avoided ever mentioning that possibility because it was so unlikely, or just because it was so scary? She said they—doctors—don’t like to talk about it because it’s scary. That answer in itself is kind of scary.)

Well anyway, as I mentioned in my previous report, my upper GI tract inspection showed no serious problems of any kind. The goal of the procedure, at which it completely failed, was to find and fix the problem causing my bleeding, but I couldn’t help thinking, “This is good news! No cancer in the upper GI tract, and when they do the other half of the procedure, I’ll have a complete clean bill of health for the entire food tube!”

My second example was last year when I was recovering from a knee injury. The scans showed something that was “probably nothing, but you should check it out”, which is doc-speak for “don’t sue me if you ignore it and it turns out to be cancer.”

So I arranged a bone scan, although I was pretty confident that I didn’t have cancer (the main cancer indicator was knee pain, and I already knew where that pain was coming from—I BUSTED IT!), and I thought to myself, “what a stroke of luck! This bone scan covers my entire body, so now I’ll get a complete skeleton cancer scan, all free-like!” And I did!

My first example stems from a cardiac incident many years ago, that started me on a cycle of regular tests with my cardiologist. Every test came back fine since that first incident, and after a few nervous years, I finally decided that with all this testing, I’ve probably lowered my risk of being surprised by a heart attack! “Good thing I had that thing that sent me to the cardiac ward!”

*   *   *

I actually had those thoughts. The true offense of The Glad Game is, of course, not to think it, but to tell others about it, preferably with personal examples, so that they will learn how wrong they were to feel bad when their house burned down. I am telling you about it now, it’s true, but not to encourage you to adopt the approach. Far from it! But if your subconscious points out some silver lining in a storm cloud, you might as well take it—you’ll need it when the real disaster hits!

Frameless

To balance out the cosmic glad scale just a little bit, I’ll play a little of the misère version of The Glad Game. The misère version, I’ve decided, is like the misère version of Hearts, or Sprouts, or a number of other games where you are allowed to turn the rules upside down, so that if you can force your opponent to “win” by the normal rules of the game, he or she loses, and you win! Plus I think a word like misère is especially apt to apply to The Glad Game. Serves it right, so to speak.

So here goes. Ever since I got my new hearing aids (here), I’ve been a nervous wreck. I’ve gotten much clumsier—every time I put a glass down on a table, I can tell from the sound that I’ve hit it so hard that I’m sure it will explode in my hands. And my car and most of my home appliances with moving parts are all on the verge of total collapse, judging by the racket they make whenever you turn them on. I know I can just hear better now, but it’s no comfort to realize you were constantly teetering on the edge of mechanical disaster before and didn’t even know it!

The way I use The Glad Game to bolster my own health self-image (I wrote all about unrealistic optimism here) reminds me of a famous quote by Nietzche: “That which does not kill me makes me stronger”. That was the opening quote of a movie I’m proud to be a fan of, that 1982 Arnold Schwarzenegger classic, Conan the Barbarian. Now if you ask Conan what makes him glad, he’s got a ready answer for you: “Crush your enemies. See them driven before you. Hear the lamentation of the women”. What a guy!

Here’s wishing you get whatever makes you glad in the coming year, with much thanks for listening,

Dorn
12/31/2019

Winter Solstice Time

A couple of years ago I was lucky enough to visit New Grange in Ireland and experience their simulated solstice experience of the shaft of light that comes into that great Neolithic bunker on exactly the solstice. It was very powerful to experience that in the same way our 5000-year-old ancestors did. I felt like trying to recapture a little of that, so this year I looked around to find a solstice ceremony to go to. The ceremony I found was nice – but a little disappointing to me. I thought it would be more elemental! But we were in a cozy heated room, seated on comfortable chairs, and when it came time to light our flames, we fumbled for the little switch at the bottom of our electronic candles. In the ceremony we completed a dispacho, which is a little ritual offering that, according to The Four Winds website, is “a gift for the organizing principles of the Universe”. From that website I also learned that traditionally, in the Andes, this despacho ceremony is performed after each earth cycle to renew and re-imprint the powers of nature on our luminous body, to connect with the Universe and accomplish perfect balance and reciprocity – not for us personally, but for the wellbeing of our group. So, group, I was happy to do what I could to help all of us maintain our wellbeing.

Thinking of the solstice also made we want to add an elemental touch to my latest portrait, so granddaughter #4 gets to be a solstice girl and wear antlers.

NOW HEAR THIS!

– in which Dorn comes to his senses. One of them, anyway.

will always remember the day I came home with the results of my first audiogram that showed I was starting to lose my hearing. Some gentle readers (especially those who are married) will find this hard to believe, but Kathleen had said to me, and more than once, “You’re not listening to me!”. 

That day I came home too excited even to take my coat off first, and I told her proudly, “AHA! I AM listening to you, I just can’t hear you! Here’s proof! BUSTED!”. 

And I showed her the audiogram, that clearly showed this drop in acuity especially around a certain mid-high frequency (which I call “the Kathleen frequency”). The odd shape of the graph, the audiologist told me, indicated that the deafness was probably hereditary. My dad was hard of hearing then, so I blamed him for it (as I do for the fact that I’m tottering ever on the verge of baldness). 

Back then, my hearing wasn’t bad enough to take any action; it just gave me a ready excuse whenever Kathleen accused me of not listening. I remember exactly when I realized that my hearing had gotten so bad as to need intervention. I was at work, at one of those innumerable and interminable meetings that all Federal bureaucrats must attend. My friend and boss Leon leaned over and whispered something in my ear. 

Now, everyone who has ever been subjected to these things knows that the most important parts of any meeting are the things whispered to you while you’re pretending to pay attention to the Powerpoint. But I found to my horror that it was impossible to make out anything he said! I couldn’t pull out a single word or phrase from which I could fake a vague but meaningful-sounding response! I had lost one of the most fundamental tools of any functioning bureaucrat.

So I sprang for some hearings aids. My health insurance covered the testing, but didn’t pay anything for the hearing aids themselves. And they weren’t cheap! They cost several thousand dollars, easily the most expensive (per pound) thing I owned.

They served me well over the next few years. They occasionally they had to be adjusted upward (though they have been at their maximum setting for a few years now).

They’ve been lost and found many times, survived a hot shower and, amazingly, a full-cycle trip through the washing machine. Their engines finally gave out and had to be rebuilt about five years ago, so I knew they were probably coming to the end of their useful lives. 

A month or two ago I learned that some hearing aid manufacturers had cut deals with my insurance company, so that new hearings aids, and all the hearing tests, would be be absolutely free to me. 

I knew that hearing aids had gotten much more sophisticated in the years since I had bought mine. They could be controlled and fine tuned by a smart phone app, rather than having to tote them back to the audiologist. The hearing aids could interact with each other via Bluetooth, they could stream sounds from phone calls or other devices directly into your ears, and even tell you where you lost them. My old hearing aids weren’t dead yet, but this seemed like a deal too good to pass up, so I decided to upgrade my oto-tech. 

I talked my Dad into getting new ones too. He’s deafer than I am (did I mention that my deafness is HIS FAULT?), and he’s also more of a social butterfly, so he needs his hearing even more than I do. But he rarely wears his current hearing aids because they’re cumbersome and don’t work that well. They’re over 20 years old, so he’s certainly due for some new ones—especially as his insurance has the same deals that make them free to him too!

We went together to the hearing aid store, where an attractive young audiologist* gave us each hearing tests, took measurements and asked our preferences, and recommended which hearing aids to order. (*Full disclosure: I’m 65 and my dad is over 90, so to us virtually every woman is young. And attractive.)

My Dad has an iPhone, which all the modern hearing aids are compatible with, but I had a cheap old Samsung phone that didn’t work with most of them. After a some searching for hearing aids that worked with my phone, I realized I was basing my selection of four- or five-thousand-dollar hearing aids on compatibility with my $99 phone, which was completely backwards. So I resolved to go out and buy a more modern phone, and selected a hearing aid model based solely its features and quality (cost not being an object).

In a couple of weeks we went back and got our new hearing aids. Or I did, anyway; my Dad’s were not set up right and had to go back to the factory. “I’m sorry”, she said, “for some reason I forgot to check the box for iphone compatibility.” 

(I know the reason she forgot. She was being age-ist: my dad is a nonagenarian, and she just assumed the most advanced thing he could possibly own was a flip phone, or more likely just a rotary-dial phone on the wall at home. (For the record, my Dad DOES have a rotary phone on his wall in addition to the iPhone in his pocket; in fact, he also has a hand-crank phone on his wall, but that’s a story for another day.))

So I got my new bionic ears yesterday, in time for Christmas. What a difference! Before when I had my old ones tweaked, I would notice for a few days how sounds were just a little bit sharper (like when you first put on glasses with a new prescription). But with these, I could suddenly hear everything! She assured me I was just hearing what normal-sounded people always hear, but to me it was like everything was clear, and understandable, and way too loud. 

We had friends over last night, and I had to ask Kathleen if everyone (including me) was shouting, because it seemed so loud to me. I excused myself to use the bathroom, and when I was peeing, it sounded like I was clanging a cow bell in there! My first thought was that everyone must be able to hear me!

My second thought was, don’t worry, it just seems so loud to you because of your new hearing aids. You’re not peeing any louder than you were before. 

My third thought was, but now you have normal hearing, and before you were deaf, so this is how loud you really are, and for all these years you were making this big racket in the bathroom and didn’t even know it. Now I know why people talk so loud at dinner parties!

I’m sure I’ll get used to the hearing aids soon, both the sounds, and the social implications, and it is really nice to be able to hear at what I imagine must be a normal level (it’s been so long, I can’t really tell from memory). And Kathleen is certainly looking forward to being able to address me in a normal tone of voice. So this has been a great present for me, and that doesn’t even count the cool phone app to play with that lets me adjust the hearing aids while I’m wearing them! What a Christmas!

Thanks for listening,
Dorn
12/20/2019

Happy Holidays and Link to Calendar for 2020

It’s almost time to welcome a brand new year! For fun, I have made a 2020 calendar with embedded pictures from my seasonal series and it’s something anyone who wants to can download, print and have a great “Lona’s Grandchildren” calendar. The link is here: https://thirdagethoughts.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/calendar-doc-2020.docx

Here are thumbnails of what’s included:

To those who’ve read any of the blog posts this year: Many thanks!!!! To Dorn, who really outdid himself with content: You’re the greatest!!! Hoping everyone has a new year filled with tons of positive energy!

-Lona

Endo-cation

– in which Dorn and Kathleen have a themed mini-vacation.

T

his is an update of my adventures with my mystery illness (last mentioned here). Despite the confidence my doctor voiced at the time, the video-capsule endoscopy didn’t help. The capsule-cam simply didn’t see the cause of my bleeding as it tumbled through my GI tract. Maybe it was looking in the wrong direction at a critical moment. It did spot some damaged-looking areas, though, so the next step was to send an endoscope down the throat to inspect those areas, and if the bleeding cause was there, fix it. 

The endoscope, I was told, would be equipped with two balloons at the business end, for gripping the intestines from the inside, and scrunching them up onto the endoscopy pole in the same way one might scrunch up the draperies all onto one end of the curtain rod. This technique lets one explore about half way down my GI tract. (For the other half, they do the same thing, but start at the other main access point.)

The endoscopy was to take place at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. Kathleen needed to be with me, but she also needed to be near Archie. So we got a dog-friendly hotel room in Eager Park for a couple of nights, and made a mini-vacation of the event. It was fun walking around the city before and after the procedure, for us and for Archie.

There was a little grassy area right next to the hotel for Archie to frolic in that was outfitted with short trails lined with shrubs and a park bench or two. It seemed to be designed to resemble a city mini-park, but it was also equipped with discreetly hidden access pipes and raised gravel beds that very much resembled the tertiary septic system and field in my back yard (or would resemble it, if I were a better landscaper). Still, Archie didn’t care what the square’s real purpose was, and if Archie was happy with it, so was I.

The Eager Park neighborhood seemed pretty safe to walk through even at night, though an internet search didn’t include it on the list of the safest neighborhoods in Baltimore. (It also wasn’t on the list of coolest neighborhoods in Baltimore, but we liked it anyway.) 

I really don’t remember much of the endoscopy itself, as I was under the influence of sedation drugs.

My first memory after the procedure was Kathleen telling me that they still couldn’t find the source of the bleeding, and they might have to look again from the other direction.  Either the source of the bleeding was further down than the scope went, or it was completely healed (the bleed had taken place six months ago) leaving no trace.

She didn’t seem particularly bothered by the news that I would likely have to come back. That’s not really like Kathleen, but she later explained why—the performing doctor looked and sounded, in her words, like a Bollywood movie star. I don’t remember it, but I can imagine him giving Kathleen the results of the endoscopy with a rakish smile and a twinkle in his eye. (All I can remember about him was that he wore glasses. Either the sedatives messed with my memory, or he just didn’t make as strong an impression on me.) 

The hotel was close enough that we could walk back after the endoscopy. (Or rather Kathleen could walk back. She tells me that the best I could do was amble aimlessly, while she kept pulling me from in front of cars and urging me in the correct general direction.)

After my drugs mostly wore off, we had a night on the town with our niece Haven, an up-and-coming young cusper (on the millenial/gen-Z cusp) who lives in Baltimore. She’s a vegetarian, which she proved by only ordering drinks with basil leaves in them.

We tried to cajole Haven into telling us the hot spots in town that all the young people go to, but she insisted that her idea of a wild night was making soup at home, or if she was in a really crazy mood, baking cookies. I think she was just trying to keep our elderly frames from having conniptions upon hearing her shocking lifestyle. We had great fun with her anyway, even without frequenting any mosh pits or flash mobs or speakeasies, or whatever the young people frequent these days.

And that’s the story of our little endo-cation in Baltimore. Nothing really spectacular happened, but when the central theme of a vacation is getting a hospital procedure done, that’s just where you want to end up.

Dabangg!,
Dorn
12/14/2019