Category Archives: Health

Aging, Health

Man On Fire

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Winter (?)                              First Moon of the New Year
Kate’s off at work.  The dogs are quiet and I’m finishing up some work before I work out.  Just mailed the Sierra Club legcom’s agenda for next week’s meeting.  Moved Gertie and Kona’s crates up stairs.  Read a couple of chapters in The Art of Fielding. (Bill Schmidt, this novel takes place in a college that reminds me of St. Norberts.  You might want to take a look.  Mine is an e-book or I’d lend it to you when I’m done.)

(This is what I think I look like while I’m doing short burst training.)

Now I’m drinking my cup of Awake tea, two tea bags worth.  I read somewhere that caffeine helps workouts and I can report that it’s true.  I don’t get nearly as exhausted 

(This is what I really look like when I’m done.)

These workouts are known as short burst training.  You run or bike or do push-ups, whatever, as hard as you can for 30 seconds or a minute.  Then, you quit and do resistance work, stretching, balance work until your heart rates drops back to base-line.  At which point you do another minute at hard as you can.  You keep this up for four or five short bursts.

The advantage to it is that in between you get all your resistance work done and, when you’re in peak shape, you can do the whole work out in 30 minutes.  It takes me 40 + right now, because my heart rate takes longer to drop back down after the third burst.  But that will change.

 

Aging, Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Health, Humanities, Myth and Story, Politics

The Death of an Honest Man

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Samain                                      Moon of the Winter Solstice

Christopher Hitchens died.  An honest man, Diogenes would have stopped searching.  He faced death as a non-believer, a man whose God Is Not Great made him a name in the theist–anti-theist debates of this millenia’s early days.

His angry anti-religious bias fit in well with the Richard Dawkin and Sam Harris crowd, agreeing with their totalizing, methinks-they-protest-too-much screed.  If religion is so bad, why has it persisted for so long?  A scathing atheist has backed himself into a metaphysical box, one much like the box he insists all religionists occupy.

To adamantly claim God’s non-existence is just as silly and unwarranted as the claim of God’s existence.  Neither can have, by definition, empirical validation, so, in each case we enter the realm of faith, of conjecture believed because it feels right, true.

Faith in its purest forms is a beautiful aspect of human culture, allowing us to transcend the often bleak realities of the day-to-day, finding a blissful reality where others see only pain and boredom.  Marriage, for example, requires faith in another human being, another human being as wonderful and amazing as yourself and as awful and horrible.

Monotheism as practiced in the dominant Western religious traditions is only one item on the menu of faith as offered by human culture and even it comes in three flavors:  Christian, Jewish and Muslim.  The ancient traditions of the West synch up better with the pluralist pantheons of India, Nepal, Tibet, Africa and the indigenous Americas.

Monotheism, rather than religion per se, seems the better target, since it makes definitive and often absolute claims, claims which sometimes pose as divine law, unbreachable and final.  The nature of monotheism’s claims rather than its actual content or institutional form are the problem.

With one deity and one book the temptation to sure knowledge, certain dogma too often overwhelms these believers, though in all three traditions there are, too, the more measured, more humble ways.  In fact, strange as it may seem given the all too charged dialogues of the past twenty years, the liberal orientation–former mainline Christianity, reform Judaism and the Sunni/Sufi mainstream Islam–is numerically dominant.

 

Aging, Health, Weather +Climate

It’s Beginning To Look a Lot Like…March?

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Samain                                 Moon of the Winter Solstice

It’s beginning to look a lot like….March.  Geez.  Rain?  In mid-December?  47 degrees.  Come on guys.  We need that climate deal now.

(this was the scene out my study window on December 11, last year)

How would Robert Frost write “Stopping by Woods on A Snowy Evening” for the Winter Solstice?  Somehow the carriage sunk in mud while the rain beats down just doesn’t carry the same poetics.

Annual physical finished.  Tom Davis, the internist whom I see, enters the State Fair art contest every year in photography and has never got admitted.  He has one of his pieces in his office and it’s pretty damn good.  A pensive work in Galena, Illinois.

Each year after the physical, since fasting is required, I go to Hell and have breakfast.  Hell has its Minneapolis location in the basement of the building next to the Medical Arts parking ramp.  An all punk wait staff, classic movies projected on a big screen and broadcast over TV’s, and an imaginative menu make Hell a bigger draw than you might imagine.

 

Aging, Commentary on the news, Health, Politics, Retirement

One Last Physical

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Samain                                       Moon of the Winter Solstice

As 65 nears there is one more physical left under the old, private insurance model.  COBRA, which allows extension of private medical insurance for up to 18-24 months after loss of employment or retirement, if you can afford it, has kept the Health Partners plan in place until February 14th, when this baby boomer adds another droplet to the silver tsunami.

So, one last time under the private health care insurance model that has bankrupted and made more ill hundreds of thousands in this the wealthiest of all possible countries.

Tom Davis has seen me now for four years or so since Charlie Peterson took off for Colorado, Steamboat Springs.  Tom collects native american pottery and hopes some day to become a docent at the MIA.  He’s a good doc, a geriatrician in the mix.

Each year.  Downtown to the Medical Arts Building.  Park in the ramp, find the skyway.  Take the elevator.  Yes, nothing to eat or drink other than clear liquids since midnight.  The blood pressure cuff, measuring my major health problem.  Once by the nurse.  Then again by Tom.  Maybe yet again.

The ritual questions.  Any difficulty swallowing?  Any changes?  And on.  Probing with words while the eyes watch, looking for signs, fleeting symptoms.  Diagnostics at work, the differential tree now second nature, honed by so many patients.

Disrobing. The paper gown.  So cute. Poking, coughing.  A reflex tested.  Prostate checked.  Prescriptions refilled.  Blood work drawn.  Urine sample.

After visit summary in hand, back out through the lobby.  Others wait.  For the blood pressure cuff.  The ritual questions.  The disrobing.

Next year though it will be socialized medicine and a local HMO taking care of the visit. Medicare is not the problem, it’s the solution.

The ritual question for solving the problem:  for whom will you vote?

Aging, Commentary on the news, Health, Politics, Retirement, US History

Grocers and Beware of Abstract Ideas

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Samain                               Moon of the Winter Solstice

Kate and I went to the grocery store together.  OF alert!  As I do most of the grocery shopping, I often notice older couples on what appears to be their big outing of the week.  Buying food.  And here we were, wandering the aisles of Festival Foods, a Kowalski burb grocery name.

It was nice to have her along and she prefers to drive the cart.  Read:  she always drives the cart.  Just like I do the car.  Gender insensitive on both our parts, I know.  Still.

We loaded up for the week, going over budget some, probably because there were two sets of eyes to be sucked in by the clever marketers behind grocery stores.  Low margin business along the walls:  veggies, fruit, meat, dairy, bread.  Higher margin grocery items in the center aisles:  soda, cereal, coffee, baking goods, oils and mustards and mayo and pickles.  Highest margin items on the endcaps of aisles and the impulse purchases parked conveniently by the checkout lanes.

Message here.  Just shop the outside walls.

Still reading Scorpions, about the Roosevelt star Supremes:  Felix Frankfurter, Hugo Black, Robert Jackson and William O. Douglas.  The big news to me so far is the astonishing reversal of roles evident from this court to the current one.  Let me give you two examples, but first one thought to undermine them all

As the book reminded me, there is no place in the constitution that empowers the Supreme Court to decide cases in the way that it does.  Go back to Marbury vs. Madison, a hoary lesson from US History at one level of education or another.  Marshall created judicial review.

Example #1:  Judicial restraint.  Felix Frankfurter was an early, liberal, advocate of judicial restraint.  He specifically wanted the reigning conservative notion of liberty of contract, a legal idea that kept unions down and decided all cases in the interest of individual property rights, struck down and its source, a judicial interpretation of the 14th amendment stoppered.  In order to advance progressive ideas, Frankfurter said, justices should restrain themselves from intervening in matters decided by Congress and state legislatures.  Guess who’s in favor of judicial restraint now?

Example #2:  Originalism.  Hugo Black, a former radical member of the senate, known for his populist agenda, contended that justices should not make up ideas that were not in a plain reading of the Constitution.  This was aimed at the conservative invention of liberty of contract, also Frankfurter’s target.

Both Frankfurter and Black continued to expand their Constitutional philosophies as their terms extended.  Now, it is the Scalia’s and the John Roberts of the current court who advocate judicial restraint and originalism.  Beware of an abstract idea, it may not produce the result you expect.

Said he, an abstract thinker.  Me.  Beware.

Art and Culture, Cooking, Health, Travel

Empanadas

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Samain                              Moon of the Winter Solstice

Empanadas.  Kate and I came to enjoy this Latin perogi, or pasty, so we decided to make some ourselves.  This former baker did the dough while Kate made the filling and baked.  Cooking together is fun and I think we’ll do more of it as Kate eases in to full time retirement, possibly as early as March of next year.

By making more than we need we can then freeze some and have meals later from one morning’s work.

Whoa.  Ratcheted myself up about that presentation.  This happened because I agreed to do it before we left on our cruise, knowing I’d have barely a week to put it together when we got back.  It began looming as we hit Tierra del Fuego and turned north, the turn that in almost all my trips means heading home.

That meant I came home ready to cram, which I did.  After years of deadlines in college, papers and tests alike, I adopted an I’d rather get it done ahead of time attitude, so I prefer a relaxed pace, finishing something like a week before a due date.  I didn’t have that luxury this time.

The church did send me a nice e-mail a moment ago, so I feel good about that.

Since getting back from the cruise, I’ve begun a short burst training regimen.  That entails working at maximum effort for 45 seconds to a minute, I run on the treadmill at about 6.5 mph at 5% elevation right now, then getting off and doing resistance work or stretching, getting back on 4 minutes later, going full tilt boogie again, then off, until 4-5 minutes of maximum intensity have accumulated.

It’s fast and crams a lot of work into a short of period of time, plus, according to the literature I’ve read is much better than traditional workouts lasting much longer.  Even so, I also do a 50 minute low intensity treadmill workout on the off days.  I do the short burst three times a week.

Now, if I can figure out how to cut my calories in half.

Aging, Health, Woolly Mammoths

Woolly Mammoths, 6 pm

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Samain                            Moon of the Winter Solstice

First time at the Marsh, out on Minnetonka Blvd.  The Western burbs version of a California health spa.  In a small room off the dining area for their food service was a sign:  Woolly Mammoths, 6:00 pm.

Inside were Bill , Warren , Frank , Stefan and Mark.  Tales of the trip, yes, but mostly we were there to support Warren whose mother received a cancer diagnosis two days before Thanksgiving.  She’s now in hospice care at an assisted living center, asking only for palliative care.

Warren has been intimately involved with both his parents and his wife’s parents in their aging and decline.  They represent a degree of love and concern in that situation seen all too rarely.

On the way back I couldn’t find any music I liked, so, as I’ve done a lot lately while driving, I turned the radio off and entered into a road trip state of mind, a little bit country and a little bit Zen.

 

Art and Culture, Health, Politics

Kevan the Tool

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Fall                                                Waxing Autumn Moon

We qualify for a special mortgage deal proposed by my favorite institution in America, Wells Fargo Bank.  We went in today to see Kevan, a home mortgage specialist.  Kevan had a computer screen we could see and he happily punched in numbers explaining the joys of this wonderful deal.

Until.  “Can I see the type of contract you’re proposing we sign?  You know, the terms?”  “It’s all right here,” Kevan said, pointing to the computer screen.  Oh, well.  Since it’s on a computer screen, that’s good enough, right?  Wrong.

“I’d like to see the language we’d be expected to agree to, Kevan.”  “The terms are right here.” Kevan pointed to the swing out computer screen.  Again.

They weren’t.  What the screen showed was the advantage to us of taking the deal.  That’s all.  No other contractual information.

Kevan and I did not get along.  We did, because I had my much smarter partner with me, go ahead and sign up because the deal could lower our monthly payments by a significant amount.  In the process of signing up however they collected information about our income and several pieces of what I consider proprietary information.  And we get nothing in return.

We can still say no, but this was the only way (ONLY WAY) I could get to see the terms of the contract.  Kevan said it was a national program.  I pointed to the phone.  He could call the national program surely and get us the information.  He got exasperated then because signing up was the only way.  ONLY WAY.  Kevan is a corporate tool.

Afterward, I toured a group of tall, elegant Somali teenagers through the MIA’s ancient art collection.  They were attentive and interactive.

At 1:00 PM I went over to the Eye Institute where I had my semi-annual glaucoma check up.  This was the first time in over 20 years that I have not seen Jane West.  I now see Dr. Brown.  My eye-drops have dropped my pressures into the safe levels and my optic nerve is stable.  Between the holes punched through my iris in 2004 by laser and the eyedrops, we’re keeping that nerve as healthy as possible.

I started out with a central hole in my optic nerve bigger than normal, so I have less room to accommodate change.

 

Aging, Health

Weighty

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Lughnasa                                            Waning Harvest Moon

It took me 3 tries to give up smoking after 13 years, and I was able to do it then only after I’d quit drinking.  Neither was easy, but they pale in comparison to the next, similar challenge.  Over the last few years I’ve gradually added a pound here, a pound there, until all of a sudden, to paraphrase Everett Dirksen, I’m talking about real weight.

Now, I’m not obese, but I have passed certain personal barriers and seem headed further south.  This means I have to deal with this somehow.

A while back I wrote about the simple method of losing weight.  Eat less food.  I did it. Lost 6 pounds and felt great.  Problem is, I found them.  Then added a couple more.

That out of control feeling has begun to sneak up on me.  Not a personal favorite.  At some point here a hook, a handle on eating has to be found; but, right now I’m not seeing it and we’re headed for a cruise, which means 24/7 food available.

My personal creed has always been not to die of something preventable.  So far, so good.

 

Aging, Family, Health, Politics

Is There a Prophet In the House?

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Lughnasa                                                                                                  New Harvest Moon

NB: prophet is a gender neutral word as I use it.

Kate.  Always ahead of her time.  When Kate was in high school in Nevada, Iowa, she arranged a deal to take most of her senior classes at nearby Iowa State.  She’d run out of classes in the high school, at least classes that could keep her interest.  In her senior year, just as the deal was to kick in, the high school changed their mind.  Later, as a nurse anesthetist, she insisted on better pay for her position at Mt. Sinai.

After that, too long in the role of helper, she decided, at age 34, to go to medical school.  The medical school thought that since she was already a doctor’s wife, she should be happy with that.  She graduated and became a board certified pediatrician in the best medical delivery system in the US.

After a serious illness and poor treatment at the hands of her then partners at Metropolitan Pediatrics, Kate moved to Allina, its Coon Rapids’ clinic.  While there she became frustrated with corporate medicine and chose to become lead physician for her group.  Over her time there she integrated pediatric and family practice offices, initiated (by doing it herself) after hours care and agitated for a better deal for primary care docs in general.

Now, several years after she pioneered it, Coon Rapids’ peds has regular after hours clinic and the Clinic has an urgent care unit providing after hours non-emergency medicine.  Kate works in the urgent care, part-time.

She has been tireless in haranguing me about the stupidity of pediatricians treating psychiatric problems for which they have little to no training. (see today’s Star-Tribune)  The arguments about vaccine that I read in this months Scientific American I first heard over the breakfast table.  She also campaigns against the overuses of anti-biotics, the over prescription of pain-killers and, most passionately of all, the need for a single-payer health system.  An equitable distribution of health care services has been at the top of her need list for a long time.

She is a prophet in a system that, though excellent in its care, has become sclerotic in its administration.  The current over managed (way too many administrators with way too much power) model, corporate medicine as she styles it, focuses its efforts on the bottom line (money), on standardization (easier to manage), on patient satisfaction (results would be a better yardstick) and on turning physicians into employees.  Those who run these systems should listen to this practical, intelligent critic and change their ways.