Rehab from the fusion surgery moved into a new phase last week. Here’s the current update:
“31 MAR 20: Overall improvement continues at a steady, slow pace. Uptime increase to an hour or more with the back brace now achievable. Imposing lumbar and hamstring flexibility loss drives increasing rehab effort. Strong nerve damage muscle tensing focused at the lumbar continues stressing the erectors, obliques, glutes and ilials. Most discomfort and pain from the job site is resolved. There is a sense of something missing there, I suspect akin to the feeling an amputee has for a lost appendage. I can sense there “was” something there, but it doesn’t hurt any more, with the old connections to it faintly sparking like downed power lines.”
Over the past couple weeks I’ve felt the entire right side of my body unwinding from over a year’s worth of struggling with an untreated back injury. The right leg and hip took a particularly hard beating. It’s gonna take a little work to get things properly re-oriented, but I can see a future on my feet now.
As a retired military member, I probably have a little better understanding of the “disaster” thing. That is after all, pretty much the military’s whole reason for being: creating violent disasters of the most unimaginable kind, and attempting to protect themselves from the same. With modern medical and airlift technology, evacuating and caring for the wounded was never a really big problem ever since the Korean war. Messes get cleaned up, life goes on – for the survivors.
But knowing the potential for unacceptably high levels of disastrous consequences was what kept people trained, supplies stocked, equipment tested and chains of command communicating and working together. I am quite certain it still does to this day, in the military. Today, New York sends the National Guard looking to collect ventilators across the state, while administrators bid for them on the open market. N95’s are going for 10x their normal price. It’s a fucking travesty.
So nobody in the healthcare industry saw the potential for a disastrous pandemic? More to the point: Who is going to accept responsibility for not preparing? We are talking about paper gowns, masks and rubber gloves. No storage space? Not enough in the budget? Should be interesting reviewing the plans in a few months. Wonder if they will comply with the subpoenas?
Healthcare suddenly became a scarce commodity when it literally ran out with their fingers buried deeply in the insurance co. cookie jar. We as a citizenry have paid the highest prices anywhere for the best healthcare available. Too bad it only comes on a pay-as-you-go basis. Now we employ questionable re-use sanitizing practices in tents as the price goes up REAL high. Has penny-wise and pound-foolish ever rang more true? Healthcare is no longer taken for granted. It is laid bare for what it is under the weight of the biggest pandemic in modern times: A ponzi scheme run by the Pharma co.’s and HMO’s.
Funny thing about this one is you only see how much you’re paying in from the pay stub. So now we have a new negative economic stimulus to go along with a run on the banks, and a run on the stores: A run on the hospitals. Consider the numbers assuming a 2% mortality rate, because numbers really are the the bean counter’s main concern, right? WTF have we been investing in all these years? Too bad parts of the problem are extremely lucrative, with practical solutions written out of law and corporate governance.
This is the country’s COVID-19 bow wave.
Just when you thought things in Corporate America couldn’t get any worse, Muilenburg’s deeds or lack thereof, now seem trivial in comparison.
Going on a year-and-a-half recovering from orthopedic surgeries, the answer for me will be, decidedly not. It “was” on our side while SARS-v2 was silently spreading all over the planet, before the most spectacularly disastrous governmental blunders since the German army invaded Russia unfolded like a new YouTube entertainment channel right under the noses of anyone paying attention. That’s an insidious part of the current “big” problem – paying attention.
It didn’t take long to stumble across a well-informed compendium penned by Mr. David Malmo-Levine. It is by far, the most well-researched, accurately cited and brutally honest review of the issue you’ll find in one place. Even ignoring the Cannabis culture ending reveals much insight. The Chinese have some ‘splainin to do. Trump already did his. the months of downplay and denial were purposely followed to avoid panic, don’t-cha know?! How generous of him to un-wittingly spend the one resource we had on our side. Gotta give him credit, tho – you can’t blame malevolence for that which can be explained by stupidity. Sometimes they even go hand-in-hand.
“The tests are perfect! Anyone who wants a test can get a test!”
That “part of the big problem” thing is, he knows the faithful only need hear his re-assuring sound bites spewed in smooth, con-man style, because apart from that and Fox News, they simply are not paying attention.
Does anyone not yet understand one of Trump’s biggest early so-called “accomplishments” was just another in the long list of cons?
“Parts of the facility were dismantled following a 2018 summit in Singapore between President Trump and North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un.”
Remodel ≠ Dismantle
“Kim promised to fully dismantle the site in the presence of international inspectors if a deal could be reached.” Nobody bothered to mention “the deal” as t’were, was not for a launch facility. The deal was trading lies for time. The big lie is Trump scored some victory over DPRK aggression. In the meantime, hermit kingdom gets a cover story for the remodeling project. Brilliant!
Buck the Cuck stood in the House this morning decrying the CARES act as a burden on future generations. Sometimes I get the notion certain officials have the talking points programmed in by a brain-suppression process rendering an inability to recognize other forms of cognizance. Maybe he thinks we’re just a bunch of farmers and ski bums already in debt so fuck the rest of the country. It’s hard to speculate on the thought process of somebody like that under these circumstances. But that’s what he did.
Here’s the source of Asimov’s quote below, alluding to the root cause of the problem(s) in this country and many others today. More to the point: “America’s right to know is a meaningless slogan, when hardly anyone can read.”
It rings more true today, than ever. Normal people hold no ill will against the simply ignorant. It is the willfully ignorant I despise. One common rallying cry heard lately is “Make the Liberals Cry Again!” That’s all they care about. Not any substance or issues – just hatred and bigotry, with no compunction for their mental state.
Failure IS an option.
They simply don’t understand that most GOP leadership is little more educated on the issues than them, with primary considerations being the Stock Market and the economy. These cocksuckers literally do not care who or how many die. ER’s are overflowing all across the country and these pricks want to make a point of getting back to work. They viewed the pending Federal money giveaway as just another opportunity to prop up big industry. Raging pandemic? Sounds like a great reason to take up the anti-abortion banner, right? We’ll just downplay it until it’s too late, then look at things from a conservative Xtian viewpoint when forced to confront reality. Never let a good crises go to waste. Fucking morons.
With one glaring exception: Being an intellectually-challenged Twit. That IS your fault, asshole.
Get cellphones in everybody’s hands and pump ’em full ‘o shyt. Brilliant. Until the lies, misinformation and money comes out of politics, life as we knew it, is over.
On my way to stand in line at the grocery store, I heard one of the local talking heads rattle off a list of “essential” businesses remaining open this week. They should have made a list of stuff NOT open. Seems like government and eateries are the only things shut down. Traffic was light, but not enough.
Looks like that infection curve will climb steeply, quickly.
At least the shelves were stocked – sort of. People were scared.
“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”– Isaac Asimov
Pandemic suppression is now in full swing. Never saw a Monday morning traffic map like this in a big city anywhere, ever.
How long will it last?
The transition to lock-down was alarmingly swift, after weeks of half-assed bullshit. Biggest impact noted so far: People panicked when they found out the liquor and weed stores were closing. They had to walk it back and make an exception for them.
I’m standing on it pretty well now, 7 weeks after the surgery. Thought I was all set for another few years of normal life after my 2nd hip replacement January, 2019. But you can’t always get what you want, and in this case I became the victim of not just malpractice, but malpractice followed by either incompetence and/or criminal misconduct. I say either and/or, because it still remains unclear whether or not they did it on purpose. I would be inclined to think doctors and their subordinates freely and actively discuss matters affecting their patients, but what do I know? Maybe the VA really is too big to fail and they are just doing their thing in a vacuum, with little effective oversight.
Here’s where it stands:
Unsure if a lawyer is really called for at this point, basing that decision on what they say. I understand these things are rarely if ever cut and dried, but this one is or should be. It’s all in the official VA medical record, with the exception of the one single important detail of what actually happened, and thus why I needed a lumbar fusion last month. Maybe they believe people are naive enough to not know anybody over the age of 60 who’s ever done a day of real work in their life has any number of benign annular tears up and down their spine. It takes an orthopedic surgeon (in this case) to rip one wide open and make it go toxic.
Senator Gardner’s staffer, Maria Secrest tells me there are lawyers working pro-bono to connect with vets at the Denver Veterans Service Center. It should be interesting to see the VA’s official response to our senators. The VA Director’s office apparently wanted more info, prompting ECHCS to attempt contacting me, which I initially rejected. I am soooo goddamned sick and tired of talking about this. Probably have to wait for the pandemic to burn out before it goes any further.
Mostly to quash science, these days. At least that is what they did in China. The first Covid-19 case turned up in Wuhan, November 2019. The Chinese doctor who sounded the alarm not long after was arrested and later died from the disease, or so they said. Healthcare workers trying to get the word out were also arrested late in 2019. Those are just a few early-on facts I am afraid have been overlooked. Many more are unknown, mostly because journalists were expelled.
The multi-dimensional stupidity practiced by authoritarian regimes including current mainland China, is historically self-evident. I have always observed the adage to not blame malevolence for that which may be explained by stupidity. In this case, it is not a huge leap to hypothesize a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) plot, sacrificing thousands of human lives to re-orient the hopeless economic disaster they have been flirting with for years. Might the easiest , fastest and least risky (to them) way to level the economic playing field be a hard reset on the whole goddamn thing?
Most pundits I’ve heard squawking about it in the past few days have pointed to the economic impact as the biggest issue. Alot of people will die from the virus, but not in Black Plague or Spanish Flu numbers. It’s easy enough for anyone prepared to simply wait for it to burn out. It certainly is difficult to fathom a conspiracy like that. The problem with big conspiracy theories is that too many people get involved. What if the people involved were just spreading a virus?
Not to take away from our own stupid, slow response, but did China very stupidly fuck it up, or did the CCP let it get very stupidly fucked up on purpose? This is not a racist rant, by any means. Stupidity knows no color. But China is at the top of the blame food chain, and that needs to be dealt with. Either way.
A recent (yesterday?) poll said the majority of Americans approve of Trump’s crises handling. They must have asked 10 people what they though about getting free money. For those more reality-based readers.
These assholes called a government spent months watching the Wuhan disaster unfold as if it was some new entertainment channel on Youtube. Now the Cunt-in-Chief stands before the country spreading misinformation and lies, while his crippled administration stands behind him in stark disbelief. The good part is at least we saw it coming. The bad news is we are woefully un-prepared.
He really wanted to do a full facepalm. Is he fired yet?
Oh wait – a dangerous new virus is raging across the planet in an un-unprecedented global pandemic. Now I get it. THAT’S why we need things like sick leave and robust disaster preparedness along with decent child care and unemployment programs.
Apparently that stuff was too expensive, complicated or otherwise un-doable a month ago. WTF happened? Duh. Just imagine if we had those things before the virus began spreading uncontrollably. My hindsight is 20/20. But we pay the government to have FOREsight – on things other than elections and corporate profiteering. Once again, somehow it just doesn’t seem like we’re getting our money’s worth.
To hell with conservative dogma. Those days are over. Too bad it took fear for their very own lives to get off their rich, fat asses and do the right thing for a change. Now we will wait to hear the walk-back after things clear up.
This morning’s FDA press conference was scary. I remain impressed with Trump’s ability to yammer on continuously without actually saying anything. The FDA Director’s body language and appearance was telling. I wondered if maybe we would witness a nationally-broadcast assassination attempt as he stood behind the Chump-in-Chief glaring angrily.
The CoronaVirus stance has transitioned from mitigation to suppression in many places around the world. That in itself portends very grave consequences in terms of both healthcare and economic viability, the world over. Remember the old saying “when the U.S. sneezes, Europe catches a cold?” Buckle up.
Had an interesting exercise in pandemic exposure. I’ve been avoiding human contact since before I retired five years ago, but I digress. First followup with Dr. Donner yesterday went well. The bone grafts appear to be taking hold with no untoward indications. I actually started walking somewhat normally, although still very time-limited, within just the past few days. Secondary symptoms including various pain sources are all diminishing now – for the first time in 15 months. Talk about awkward. I wanted to hug the guy!
Since I was already out anyway, I decided to stop for breakfast at my favorite Greasy Spoon on the way home. I suppose it was good timing, because everything is now closed for dining-in. Guess I got lucky. Or not. We’ll see if I turn up sick in a few days. Back to normal today – avoiding human contact.
Yesterday’s Symptoms Log:
16 MAR 20: 1st followup w/Dr. Donner showed the bone grafts healing as expected. All other symptoms have evened out and diminished noticeably. Midsection still tensing hard, but the back brace makes walking tolerable. Nerve jolts are beginning to subside with the switch that was turning it on (spinal stenosis from an inflamed, festering injury) is gone. My body still knows it has a major repair underway, but it is now successfully dealing with the surgery, instead of a losing battle against an internal injury. I’ll try to to ramp up later this week after another little cold snap.
It has given me something to focus on and stay busy with at times over the past year while nursing my newfound sedentary lifestyle. Painful, hard lessons are well-learned, but always trying to find the silver lining, nonetheless.
The larger issue of VA administrative and operating practices related to my hip surgery January last year has obviously taken a few twists and turns. It ultimately landed on the VA Director and Colorado Senator’s staff desks. I’m now freely using the term “criminal,” WRT my understanding of what transpired. Nobody involved has yet challenged one statement or assertion I have made, except to deny the source of it, in the face of overwhelming evidence.
Sound familiar? Once I realized what they were doing, it stopped being about just me. The personal hurt and insult is of course deep and raw. But that is overshadowed by the knowledge that this is just VA business as usual. I hope it doesn’t get any uglier before things are sorted. There’s a whole lot of people (~1% of the population?) with a current crop risking their lives around the world every day, deserving better.
Some central themes always seemed to carry across from one case to the next in the internal government investigations I was privy to: It’s pretty typical for someone to eventually crack. Dishonest and dumb people tread fearlessly on the dark side. Then when the hammer comes down, they spill the beans, crying like babies, begging for forgiveness. When we find out staff discussed the pre-determined course of my post-op treatment it will no longer be an HR issue. Not sure if the summons will come from the County or State, under these circumstances. U.S. District? I guess it depends on who we go after, and why. There are several options to choose from. We’ll see what the lawyers have to say…