Heartbreakers

It's starting to look like there are peculiar cardiac issues arising at The Institute.  Last year Mr. Beagles had some blockage blasted away in lieu of stents and very soon Uncle Ken will get stents of his own.  Kind of nice living so close to a world-class medical facility, isn't it?  But the term "urgent care" facility is new to me; how does that work?  I had Mr. Google look it up for me but it looks like those facilities are unevenly distributed with a couple near the ivory towers of Marina City.  Did you walk there or take a cab and was the trip to the ER via ambulance?  None of my business, just curious how these situations get handled.

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I'm in the middle of a coronary adventure of my own with a couple of "procedures" in the near future.  Couple of weeks ago I woke up in the middle of the night unable to breathe, very scary, gasping for air.  Took some aspirin, dialed 911, got dressed, packed minimal necessities and waited but not long.  No sirens; the responders were in ninja stealth mode and they wheeled me out with some oxygen.  Quick trip to what used to be Swedish Covenant Hospital two miles away and their ER pit crew went to work.  Lot of action for a while they wired me up with monitoring sensors, IV hook ups, a little nitroglycerine pill under the tongue but still could barely breathe so they slapped a  high pressure oxygen gadget on my face and I settled down a bit.  Definitely a heart attack, or so they say (I believe it), and indications of internal bleeding of unknown origin or just severe anemia.  A baffler to be sure, or in medical parlance, "idiopathic."  Anyhow, tests were in order and I ended up spending a week there; not as bad as I thought and the food was more than tolerable.  Had an angiogram, the one that goes through the right arm, which indicated serious blockage with the coronary arteries, too clogged for blasting or stents.  Time to make reservations at the Triple Bypass Resort.  Got my first colonoscopy too, with some not-so-good news.  Not to be an alarmist but there's something that's got to come out, rhymes with "dancer."  Could be worse; it's small and not spreading but the heart stuff has to come first.  So 2026 is turning out to be the Year of the Long Knives for The Old Dog.

In retrospect there are things that I should have paid more attention to, and didn't.  Any shortness of breath I attributed to a previous diagnosis of mild emphysema, weakness in my legs due to lack of exercise, that sort of thing.  It could be one of those "guy things" where you only seek medical attention at the very last moment and I just squeaked by.  Whew!  That was close!  No complaints about the hospital stay; I felt like I was treated like a king.  Solid information from the nurses and doctors as I picked their brains, nothing held back, no waffling, and I took copious notes.  So I feel fine, maybe better than fine, as I deal with a new reality.  And the beat goes on...

 

The Medical Bureaucracy

 I had a little run in with those people last summer.  Turned out I didn't need a stint, they just shocked the shit out of me to make my heart beat like it was supposed to.  They said I would be okay after that, but I needed to take a blood thinner to prevent clots.  The druggist cautioned me that if I experienced gastrointestinal bleeding, I should go to the emergency room immediately.  Since I have experienced gastrointestinal bleeding in the past from taking blood thinners, but have never experienced clots, I decided not to take those pills.  I subsequently experienced the bleeding anyway, but I never did experience clots.   

Sometimes I wonder if their left hands know what their right hands are doing, but they must or they wouldn't be allowed to practice medicine.  Would they?  I think that they mostly mean well and are well qualified, but that doesn't mean you should give them your blind unconditional trust.  You have to ask questions and advocate for yourself, just to be on the safe side.   

adventures in aging

Every time a big snow blows hard here so that I can barely see the building across the street I think of you Beagles way up north, way up out of town.  I picture your house slung low to the ground and snow piling on the roof and up to the doorway so that if anybody was so stupid as to stand by the road and look all they could see was a muted glow from the kitchen.  I assume the kitchen, sounds like the place to go in a storm, close to the food, maybe you can turn on the burners for a little more warmth, and worrying about how much heating oil or just plain food you have and if it will get to you before, well before.

I've been to the houses of people who live deep in the country and throw open their doors and brag about how there is not a soul around for ten miles, and I think I could not live like that.  The most alone I've been is living in a trailer in the back yard of a house in a city of 10,000.  Now I have about 800 people living in the two towers with me and when I look out the window most of what I see is other windows most of them with people on the other side of them.  

Yes Beagles move to downtown Cheboygan, down on Main Street just south of Lincoln where that medical center is and looks like a Walmart and some fast foods, you could walk there in a blizzard, or at least get a grubhub or a cab.

Speaking of medical centers.  When we had that last cold spell I noticed when climbing the stars that my chest hurt and so did my left arm.  Well it's cold in the stairwell so it must be the cold.  But then the hurting continued when it got warmer.

So I went to urgent care where the guy gave me an EKG and said go right to the Northwestern Memoria Hospital Emergency Room right now.   Well I said, Ill drop by there tomorrow early when it's not so crowded.  "Right Now!" he repeated pointing a finger in that direction.

So I did, it was crowded, but the line moved pretty good.  Right off they wanted to give me an EKG and I pulled out the copy that I got at the urgent care, and he waved  away.  We don't need no EKG from some podunk urgent care we are Northwestern Memorial Hospital by gum.

Well ok then.  The emergency room once you get out of the waiting room is like a block long.  Doctors, patients, jabber, jabber.  I saw three or four docs, or folks who looked like docs, and they talked that doctor talk so I didn't know what they were saying.  Then they put on a gurney and pushed me into a hallway and then it seemed like they forgot about me, but after a couple hours they pushed me into a room.  Small room, no window, tethered me to some buzzing thing, and all I had was the clothes I was wearing and a magazine I'd mostly read, and a bossy nurse.  

It was a long night and a long morning, docs came in and out and I learned that I was going to get an angiogram.  I knew what that was because I had been speaking to Chatz before I went to the urgent care.  They stick a tube down your wrist or ankle and it goes up through your wrist or your ankle and if they see something they don't like they put in a stent or two.  Well I know people who have had stents, not so bad, let's get to it.

They put me on a gurney and wheeled me down to surgery and prepped me and I was good to go.  But first I had to just lay there on the gurney for three hours while people buzzed around me.  Finally I learned that the surgery before me was going well into overtime.  Not a good sign.

Finally they wheeled me into surgery, doped me just a tad and did the angiogram.  They wheeled me out and I was so happy because Chatz had told me once they do the deed you are good to go and I was ready to go.

But it turns out that they didn't put any stents in.  They wanted to talk about it.  I was back in the room with the bossy nurse tethered to that thing, nothing to read, half in and out of one of those gowns.

It turned out that they wanted to that they wanted me to stay another night.

I wanted to go home.  See my cat, wear some clothes, get loosed from that thing I was tethered to.  I was pretty sure I had the right to sign myself out so I asked to.  Well they talked and they talked, this person, that person.  If I stayed they could do it the next morning and everything would be taken care of.  I didn't believe them for a second, once they get you in their clutches they never want to let you go.

I went home and saw my cat.  Wednesday I had a talk with the surgeon, 3 options, open heart, robotic surgery, or the stent.  I was scared to death of open heart, probably unreasonably but scared to death anyway.  That robotic surgery a little weird, I am going for the stent.  I will get in Monday morning and I should be good to go.

The Blizzard of '26

 It started out on Sunday and continued through Monday, as predicted.  We had just finished digging out from the previous storm, and the weather man promised that the next one would be much worse.  Sure enough, it was.  We are still digging out from this one two days later, and we're not done yet.

Of course, I've seen big snowstorms before, but not when I was this old and infirm.  I found it frustrating to look out the window and realize there was nothing I could do about it except watch it pile up and wait for help to get through to us.  I considered at least digging out the front door, but my wife pointed out that if I fell off the porch and couldn't get up like happened last week, nobody would be able to come and rescue me before I succumbed to hypothermia.  Uncle Ken once theorized that the reason married people lived longer than single people is that, whenever they are about to do something reckless or stupid, their wives talk them out of it.  I tend to agree with him.  

We have both resolved that this would be our last winter on the Freehold.  Time to pack it in and move to the old geezer's home, or at least to someplace in town closer to sources of assistance when we need them.  I always wondered why so many people chose to live in a crowded urban setting when they could just as easily live in splendid isolation.  Maybe this is why.  

The Return of the Scourge

 The comment about signing up for Chatz is incorrect.  It costs money to sign up for one of the flavors of Chatz and I'm pretty cheap as I imagine so is Beagles.  I use the free option.  The hitch there is you only get like 10 questions but I find that adequate. 

If you don't like nicknames you don't like America.  Am I right Old Dog?

I did not take offense at being called a piece of shit.  Far from it, I smiled ruefully at the thought that The Universe was paying me back for my earlier dick move which was telling that poor guy to go away, and now I was even with The Universe.

Speaking of smiling I am glad that I brought a smile to Old Dog's face.

What me and Chatz have been chatting about lately is this new story I have begun and am using Chatz as a sounding board for.

And here it is:  

Dan Curley by Ken Schadt

 

CRWR 250 - FICTION WRITING WORKSHOP

In this class you will read and discuss a number of published short stories as well as examine the elements that make them successful. Using these short stories as models, you will write exercises, scenes, and a full-length short story that demonstrate, along with the rest of your work, your understanding of the fictional craft fundamentals.

Credits: 3

Attributes: Humanities

Prerequisites: ENG 153 or CRWR 153

MWF 2pm, 258 Lincoln Hall, Dan Curley Instructor.

 

Well why not?  It fit right into my schedule.  Dan Curley, the name was familiar, short story writer, I remembered seeing his name on books in the campus bookstore.  I figured I was creative enough.  How hard would it be to write a few stories? 

Not that hard at all it turned out.  I cranked them out.  They got a good response.  My characters were believable, the situations were interesting enough without being outlandish, my prose was smooth.

Maybe too smooth, that was the impression I got from Dan.  “Well done,” he would say after reading them, but then he would pause and I could see that he was about to say, “But… “ but then he didn’t say it, and I never pressed him on it.  But I’m pretty sure I know what he was thinking. He wanted a little roughness, a little meat, a little heart, a little soul.  Well maybe but I never was too interested in that stuff, it just got in the way, and who needs it if you asked me.  I wasn’t going to some famous writer, I just wanted to get an A and get on with my life.

And I did get the A, but then so did everybody else in the class who wrote the required 50,00 words.  Getting on with my life however did not work so well, a degree in Communications did not burn down the house when it came time to getting an actual job.

 

But then something came up.  The New Yorker was hitting the skids.  Well not the skids but their readership was slipping, and market research discovered that people thought it was maybe a little too stuffy especially their vaunted short story section.  They had all the top-notch writers as always, guys who all had these powerful agents pushing their stuff, and maybe that was the problem.  What about all those little guys banging away at their typewriters in their mother’s basement in the wee hours of the morning with a bottle of bourbon within easy reach?  Sure most of them were losers, but not all of them, surely there were some of them who had the right stuff, the new right stuff, the stuff that would light up the literary world like a Roman candle if only they could get their right stuff past all those pushy agents and onto the desks of editors, new editors, hungry editors who would look at their work with fresh new eyes and discover fresh new writers.

To this effect the New Yorker was going to hire The Hundred.  A hundred new editors, fresh new guys with fresh new eyes, so that every single story submitted to the New Yorker was now assured that they would get their story read. 

Sounded like a big publicity stunt to me.  Also sounded like maybe a job.

The New Yorker would be sending a crew down to the college the very next week and I made an appointment, though I knew I had little chance.  But then I ran into Dan Curley in a seedy downtown bar.

 

I usually did my drinking in those lively campus bars but that Friday I was nervous about the upcoming New Yorker interview, knowing I had little chance of getting the job and I wanted someplace quiet so I wandered off downtown and ended up at The Brass Rail, and at the end of the bar there was Dan Curley.  My first idea was to walk out before he looked up from his beer, but then I decided to sidle up to the stool next to him.

He lifted his head up from his beer.  “So it’s you,” he said, I knew he had forgotten my name, “The smooth writer who has no soul.”

“That would be me,” I said and offered to buy him a beer.

“Well thank you,” he said and then as the bartender brought over the beers he added, “Sorry for the crack.” 

“No problem,” I said, “I’ve been thinking about it, about the stories I wrote in my class, and I think you’re right about that soul thing.”

“Ah, it’s okay, I know you kids have other things on your minds and you want to get an easy A, so you can get on with your lives and do whatever it is that you want to do. I guess I shouldn’t mind.”

I hadn’t expected such a quick turnaround.  He turned his head to the bottles on the shelf behind and I did too and we both sat there with nothing to say to each other.  I had to say something.  “Maybe you should,” is the best thing I could come up with.

“Should what?” he asked still looking at the bottles on the shelf.

“Mind,” and then a little pause with him still looking at the bottles.  “You should mind because, because well literature, um, the arts, writing, taking something out of yourself, something out of your heart, putting it down on paper, putting it between covers, so that someday some stranger will pick it up off a shelf, likely for something to kill a little time but then they will realize that there is something being said and maybe it means something to them, and then, well who knows what, but for that moment it means something.”  I knew it didn’t make sense, but I’d read something like that in one of my English classes, and I put a lot of earnest in it, and maybe it worked.

He took a big drink of his beer and looked at me sideways.  “You’re a bullshitter aren’t you?” he asked.

I took a chance.  “Aren’t we all?” I asked him.

He stared at me, finished his beer, put a fiver down on the bar, and put on his jacket and said, “Early class tomorrow,” and took a couple steps towards the door then turned back to me, gave me an odd look.  “Where are you drinking tomorrow?” he asked. 

“Uh, here I guess,” I ventured.

“Good,” he replied, and he was out the door.

 

BSHIT is more like it

You guys.  It's hard to get a conversation in these parts unless you want to talk about Chatz...

Would you like some cheese with that whine?

https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/sam-altman-damage-control-mass-cancellation

Seems like only last year that certain Institute members were so enamored
of Chatbots, ChatGPT in particular, that they actually signed up for accounts; is this a correct recollection?  Even a cutesy nickname was assigned, "Chatz," not unlike other cutesy nicknames, like Old Betsy and 'Tarians.  One can only wonder about why Chatz is designated as a male figure, why not female or an androgynous type?  Perhaps there are unresolved Daddy issues, but this is none of my business (he wrote with a smile).

BCHAT?  Leave me out of this, and thank you for your attention to this matter (also written with a smile).

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What do you guys think?

About this?

I got off at my station and walking towards the stairs I saw this guy standing right in my way.  Just lollygagging, just doing nothing, but standing in my way.  I shoved past him, maybe gave him a tiny bump, muttered something like "Sorry," or "Scuse me." and he looked up at me and said "Don't let that happen again," and then added, "You piece of shit."

Yep, he got you pegged.  Shoving past a guy, minding his own business, and Uncle Ken takes offense?  Another dick move, I'm afraid.  Were you gonna smite this peasant with a rolled up copy of The New Yorker?

(final smile)

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And if none of you guys answer in 24 hours then I will ask a question.

Written only a week ago; I'll not be answering any questions.