Monthly Archives: October 2013

Not nearly as sexy as you’d think

Posted on by

I got fitted for a bra tonight.

Of course it was special, unisex bra, with an electronic control unit, batteries and electrodes. It sounds way kinkier than it really was.

You may remember that I posted earlier about a heart rhythm problem, an echocardiogram and a heart catheterization. Today I saw the cardiologist who did the heart catheterization, and he ordered a wearable defibrillator for me. Tonight at about 8, after Leah and I had finished our dinner but were still cleaning up, there was what might have been a timid knock at the door and the dog alarms went off. I didn’t think anyone was really at the door, so I opened it to show the dogs that no one was there. Only someone was there. It was a nurse who moonlights fitting wearable defibrillators.

When I told the nurse that I was surprised that she had shown up the same day as my appointment, she said that if I had been an in-patient, they would not have released me without this device. The doctor said he knows at least one patient whose life was saved by one.

The doctor had called it a vest, and then said it was really more like a bra. And it was. It looked a lot like a bra, but one designed for either a secret agent or a cyborg. It has three rectangular, metallic pads that fit into pockets on the back. These apparently are the shock pads. It has four round pads that fit onto the front. These apparently are the sensors. It also has a bulky control unit that I guess hangs from a shoulder strap. All of these components are wired to the control unit. When the control unit senses a dangerous fibrillation, it sends a signal to the pads, which produce a shock, thereby, one hopes, causing the heart to resume a more regular rhythm.

The doctor said, and she repeated, that this defibrillator is supposed to be worn 24 hours a day, taken off only to change the battery once a day and when I take a shower.

The doctor said that some types of exertion might fool the control unit, so it gives a warning before it shocks. He said that if I’m conscious and feel OK, I’ll have a chance to cancel the shock.

The control unit looks way too big for a piece of modern electronic equipment. I was trying to think of some common object that’s about the same size, but I can’t. It’s a lot bigger than, for example, an iPhone; maybe it’s about the size of four iPhones. It would benefit from a little engineering by a company like Apple.

I like to think of myself as a rational person, and I suppose I am fairly stoic about unpleasant necessities. There are a lot of things that happen that simply cannot be changed, so there’s no practical reason to worry or complain about them.

But I have to admit that this is kind of getting to me. When my father used to complain about all the pills he had to take, I would tell him he should consider himself lucky that all that medication is available today. The doctor told me that if he were in my condition, he would wear one of these defibrillators. And now I understand why my father didn’t want to hear what I told him. I didn’t really want to hear the doctor say he would wear one when it’s not even a remote possibility that he will have to.

I don’t want to wear the damned thing. It’s going to be like wearing a fishing vest and carrying a pair of binoculars around all day long, and then sleeping with them. I think it’s also at least partly coming face-to-face with my own mortality. No one has ever told me before that I need to have some kind of medical intervention because of the imminent possibility of death. It’s too sudden, and too different, and too unexpected. Heart disease has always seemed like a problem that old people, and especially other, people have. I’m not an old guy, and I used to be a runner. Doesn’t that count for anything?

I’ve also always had the understanding that I was going to be the first person not to have to die.

And then after all this, the control unit was defective. I have to wait till Thursday to get a replacement.

Mountains, horses, railways and uniforms

Posted on by

When I posted about our vacation to Colorado I mentioned that my mother and father had gone horseback riding at the Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs during World War II. I thought I remembered some pictures of when my father was stationed at Camp Carson (now Fort Carson), and I found a few.

Here is a not particularly good photo of my mother on horseback.

My mother on horseback

My mother on horseback

I’m not certain this was taken at the Garden of the Gods. I seem to remember other old photos that show the location better, but I couldn’t find them on my laptop. Maybe they’re on our home computer. But the only place my parents talked about riding horses together was at the Garden of the Gods, so maybe that’s where this is.

Here’s my father at the top of Pike’s Peak, where the Manitou and Pike’s Peak Railway stops.

My father at the Pike's Peak cog railway

My father at the Pike’s Peak cog railway

There’s no question about where this one is. The Pike’s Peak elevation shown on the sign is a little lower than the 14,114 or 14,115 feet given in most sources today. Here is my mother at the same place.

My mother at Pike's Peak

My mother at Pike’s Peak

The cog railway still operates at Pike’s Peak, although they no longer use this type of engine and car.

The old steam engine

The old steam engine

Here it is at the top.

Train at the top of the mountain

Train at the top of the mountain

I wasn’t sure the pictures of my mother and father were at the top of the mountain until I found the photo of the engine and car at the terminus.  You can see the Pike’s Peak altitude sign at the upper right in this photo. Leah and I took the cog railway to the top a few years ago. The current train stops at a structure with a snack bar and gift shop. It wasn’t there 70 years ago.

My father’s uniform includes a Sam Browne belt, which the Wikipedia article on Sam Brown belts says the Army eliminated in 1940. I don’t think the article is correct. My mother looks like she might be at least a little cool because she’s clenching her fists, but she’s not doing anything obvious like pulling her coat tighter or hunching her shoulders. So I assume the weather was perhaps cool, but not cold. My parents were married in November 1943, and after that my mother accompanied my father during his training in the western US. I am pretty sure she didn’t go out West prior to that. It would have almost certainly been pretty cold in Colorado Springs in November or later in the winter, and the 104th Infantry Division left for Europe in late August 1944, so my guess is that these pictures were taken in the summer of 1944 before my father shipped out for Europe. And here he is, wearing a Sam Browne belt, part of which we still have.

My father is wearing a garrison or side cap here with his dress uniform. This particular military headgear has a vulgar slang name that I won’t mention. My father never used that term, and I’m not sure where I heard it.

We have other pictures of my father in uniform in the 1940’s, as well as some of his actual uniforms from the 1960’s when he was in the Army Reserves. I think Army uniforms from those days are much sharper than modern uniforms, with or without Sam Brown belts.

Did you know that the US Army is going to a blue uniform? Blue, not green or tan or khaki. Blue, like the Air Force and the Navy wear. An Army website that’s full of the jingoistic jargon common in the Army today says that the blue uniform “links today’s warriors to their heritage and connects them to warriors past.” I think a blue uniform, and the jargon that accompanies it, would have disgusted my father and the soldiers he served with. I’m pretty sure they didn’t consider themselves “warriors” and I don’t think they would have felt it necessary to boost their egos by calling themselves that. I suspect that “GI” worked just fine for them. Did you know that theater missile defense systems are not meant to protect front-line soldiers? They’re intended to protect valuable assets in the rear, like supplies, air bases, and, coincidentally, generals, who typically sit well to the rear of the action. One of the very first Allied deaths in the D-Day invasion was a general. That wouldn’t happen today, so I imagine the generals need something to convince themselves and others that they’re really soldiers. I mean warriors.

Well, I don’t know where that came from, but I feel better now.

 

 

 

Friday Felines

Posted on by

Zoe and Zeke are not buddies, but they tolerate each other.

It's easier when they're asleep

It’s easier when they’re asleep

When Zoe is awake, he always seems to be grouchy around the dogs. Or anyone else, for that matter. Zeke is pretty cool about it, through.

We went to Colorado

Posted on by

We have been out of town on vacation for the last two weeks. We went to see some old friends in Denver, and had hoped to drive over into Utah to see Arches and Canyondlands National Parks. We saw our friends, but not the national parks. (Thanks, Tea Party. I hope your shutdown didn’t inconvenience any of you.)

We drove and towed a travel trailer. I know a lot of people look down on RVs. It’s not really camping. Some even consider it irresponsible. RVs use too much fuel. But I have some very fond memories of traveling with my parents in their RVs. I would love for Leah and me to have the same kind of experiences that they had.

I start out with a natural inclination to like this mode of travel. Leah, on the other hand, never did it until we got married. OK, twice before we got married. But still.

We had a small motorhome that had all the necessary conveniences. I stayed in it while working in Huntsville. It was a little small for me, and way too small for Leah. So we decided to sell it, and my one-year-old Nissan pickup, and get a decent-sized trailer and a used truck big enough to tow it.

I’ve done the drive from Georgia to Denver a bunch of times, including on my motorcycle, back when I rode. I always did the 1300 miles in two days. But towing a trailer is different, especially with two dogs along for the ride. We took four days.

On the third day, my outside temperature monitor showed 90 F early in the afternoon. By that evening it was 55 F. With that kind of temperature gradient, you can expect a strong wind, and that’s what we got. The last day before we reached Denver the wind blew strong and steady pretty close to directly into us. My fuel mileage dropped by about a third for that day, and when we stopped, it was hard to open the truck or trailer door.

The wind had moderated by the time we reached the Denver area. We stayed at Chatfield State Park, which is just a short drive from where our friends live in Littleton. It’s a convenient but not particularly pretty park. The sky compensated. This is what we woke up to one morning.

Sunrise at Chatfield

Sunrise at Chatfield

Here’s the view in the other direction, with the Rockies illuminated by the red morning sun. These are the best shots we got of the sunrises and sunsets.

Sunrise on the Rockies

Sunrise on the Rockies

There were some pretty skies in Colorado but most of the time it was impossible to get decent pictures because of utility poles, ugly buildings or lack of a good place to pull over while driving.

We arrived on Friday and had planned to leave the next Tuesday morning for Utah. We had hoped that the government shutdown would be over by then, but, of course, it wasn’t. So we stayed a couple of more days and then drove down to Colorado Springs.

We drove up Pikes Peak, but it was so cold and windy at the top that Leah didn’t get out of the truck, and I didn’t get out for long. That afternoon we drove around the Garden of the Gods, which is a park located in Colorado Springs. I have pictures of my mother and father going horseback riding in the Garden of the Gods during the war, when my father was stationed at what was known then as Camp Carson. He learned to ride because when he first went into the Army, he was assigned to the horse-drawn artillery. It’s hard to believe the Army still trained soldiers with horse-drawn artillery in the 1940s. He never went into combat on a horse, but, according to him, he managed to stop biting his fingernails when he worked with horses. Unfortunately for us, it was foggy and drizzling when we were there.

We left for home on Friday morning, a week after we arrived. The forecast was for more strong winds in eastern Colorado and western Kansas, mainly from the northwest. We didn’t feel much of it, and it didn’t compensate for the headwind we had coming out.

If you have never driven across eastern Colorado and Kansas, you can consider yourself lucky. I don’t know who coined the expression “miles and miles of nothing but miles and miles” but it applies really well to Kansas. It’s flat. The highest relief is usually a highway overpass, and I don’t think I have ever seen as many overpasses that crossed dirt roads in any other place. The most common man-made features are grain silos, with churches a close second. I cannot imagine living in the small communities out there, where the closest grocery store might be an hour away.

This was the most dramatic sky we saw in Kansas.

At least something's going on in the sky

At least something’s going on in the sky

This was taken through the windshield so there are some reflections, including the light streak near the top.

The wind in Kansas doesn’t go entirely to waste. It’s hard to see here, but there is a line of windmills that spans the horizon.

Windmills marching across the horizon

Windmills marching across the horizon

They are right at the horizon, which makes them so far away that they’re hard to see. The fact that you can see them at that distance means they are really big. These windmills are huge. They seemed alien and unreasonably outsized in this landscape, which made it hard for me to grasp their size accurately. I estimated a radius of around 80 feet. Based on Wikipedia, I might have underestimated by a significant amount. One article says that one of the wind farms along I-70 uses windmills with a rotor diameter of 80 meters, which would make a radius of around 130 feet. I’m not sure the ones we saw were that big, but they might have been.

I counted a rotation period of about five seconds. They looked like they were rotating lazily, but  If the rotors were 130 feet in radius, the tips would have been traveling at over 110 miles per hour.

We enjoyed visiting our friends and hope to go back before too long, but the trip out and back made me kind of discouraged about this country. The interstate highway system is an engineering marvel. It’s a great accomplishment that took a tremendous national effort at great cost. We had the resources and wherewithal, but, more importantly, the national will to build this transportation system. Now we have the resources and wherewithal, but apparently not the will to maintain the roads. Oh, there is a lot of road construction everywhere, but it never seems to make much difference in the smoothness of the roads. It seems to me that it’s what you get when no one really cares about the quality of the work. I have to assume that the construction companies build to the accepted specification, but why are the roads so rough?

I suppose you could argue that interstate highways are a thing of the past, and gigantic windmills are the future. But don’t tell that to the truckers; according to the Department of Commerce, trucks carry about two thirds of all freight shipped in the US. My guess is that the national highway system is declining because the important people don’t drive cross country; they fly, so rough roads mean nothing to them.

That leaves the unimportant people like me to experience this particular sign of our national decline first hand.

 

Friday Felines

Posted on by

On Sunday

We’re a little late on our Friday felines this (last) week. Here’s a new cat. Benny is a Colorado cat, and he’s a little shy. His owners said he lived under their daughter’s bed for a long time after they brought him home. They fed him and left his litter box right there. That was apparently OK with their daughter.

We saw bits and pieces for a while.

Benny, checking it out

Benny, checking it out

Later, when we were eating in the dining room, we saw him sneak into the kitchen to eat his own food there.  But we didn’t get a photo.

We ought to be able to post more often in a couple of days.