The Horns of a Mantra

The right wing sits on the horns of a dilemma when addressing the issue of government regulation of and intervention in the corporate sector.  After arguing vociferously and repeatedly that the federal government had no business intervening in the financial products industry when it was imploding, they now have to argue as loudly and as often that the same bodies didn't intervene enough to prevent a catastrophe in another powerful industry:  oil, of course.  The logic they used to spin the former is diametrically opposed to the logic they have to use to spin the BP fiasco negatively.

The discrepancy raises multiple questions.  "Do you support regulation of corporate giants or not?"  "Should some industries be regulated and others not?  If so, why?"  "Are some corporations and/or industries more equal than others?"  "How do you reconcile ignoring the probable collapse of the entire financial system and supporting tying the government's hands to intervene with a position that accuses the government of not intervening enough in a similarly large and powerful industry?"  "Furthermore, what does any of this do to close the hole in the ocean?"

Governments, by their nature, can be either constructive or destructive.  They can tear down, or they can build up.  They can make an affordable college education available to anyone who’s qualified, or they can relegate advanced education, by default, to the more privileged students who can afford the exorbitant tuition, fees and books that now prevail.  They can provide every citizen with quality health care available somewhere other than an emergency room.   They can also provide emergency services, like police officers, fire fighters and EMT’s on the scene quickly because of the 911 system.

Government is not evil by definition.  It can be over-reaching or oblivious.  Defining the border between the two is a no-man’s-land like the DMZ in Korea.  Government either provides the structure that allows a people to flourish while protecting them, or it ignores the people all together. 

Those are the choices at the end of most days:  protect and maybe over-reach or ignore.

The critics of the administration basically say that it did not over-reach far enough.  My response is that they can’t have it both ways.  Trying to do so is fundamentally hypocritical and dishonest on every level.  I would not be surprised if the most vocal critics of the administration’s response took the most money from the oil companies they’re supposed to regulate but didn’t because “regulation is bad”.

I think that mantra is dead, laying on the floor of the Gulf of Mexico next to a geyser of oil that doesn’t want to stop.

The Cynical Optimist Revealed

I took Mama to the office today to meet my boss and some other people.  I had intended it to be a 15-30 minute visit, but that turned into over an hour.  Many of my co-workers are closer to Mama’s age than mine, so they can find something to talk about, even if it’s reminiscing about old TV shows and arguing about who played Gidget:  Sally Field or Sandra Dee.  (When we got home, I looked it up, and it was Sandra Dee.)

But they greeted her warmly, as I knew they would.  And they bragged on me so uniformly that I’m guessing she could see how much they respect me.  More than one of them said “he keeps us in line.”  Mama asked one of them, “Well, who keeps him in line?”  “Nobody,” she replied. 

And more than one told her that she had done a good job raising me.  Coming from people very near her age with children as old or older than me, I’m sure those statements had more gravitas than if they had come from younger people.

But I’m pretty sure that she already knew that.  Having that backed up by other people was nice, regardless.

I told one executive that I had living proof that I actually had a mother.  My persona is a cynical man who could as easily have been spawned from Satan as given birth to by a human being.  Nothing could be farther from the truth, in reality. 

I’m a happy, realistic and optimistic man who hides behind a persona totally contrary to that cynical facade. 

The people I work with know that, if they know me at all. 

And the ones that do loved meeting Mama.  We were there for so long that the window on getting to the LBJ Library closed.  We’d have only have had an hour and a half or so before they closed.  But she was enjoying herself, so I was happy. 

It wasn’t the day I had planned, but it turned out pretty good.

A Non-Long Day

Our outing with Mama got derailed today when Shannon fell on the sidewalk on the way into the Long Center.  We were supposed to have a tour, and they would provide a wheelchair for him.  He fell last week after I had gone to bed and laid on the floor for two hours picking cat hair up before he was able to get to his feet. 

He picked the cat hair up because he was bored, but he didn’t try to wake me.  I told him that next time, he should throw a shoe at the door or just yell. 

He hadn’t been out of the house for a week until today, and he looked a little ashy getting out of the car.  We made it across the street, and I told him to wait.  I’d bring the car around and drop him off at the front door.  No sooner did I turn around to go get it than Mama started shouting.  I turned around, and he was on the ground. 

His head had hit the concrete, and his arm was bleeding.  He couldn’t sit up immediately, much less stand.  Mama said she’d tried to catch him, but couldn’t.  Understandably, since he out-weighs her and is almost a foot taller.

We got him on to a low retaining wall after a few minutes, then I went in search of a restroom.  I knew that he would need to sit for longer than I could go without peeing.  Mama sat with him while I walked over to the Hyatt and pretended to be meeting someone in the bar. 

When I got back, I got the car, circled around and pulled it off the street and up over the curb onto the grass next to the sidewalk so he would only have to go a few feet.  Between me and Mama, we managed to get him into the car and on the way back home.

We missed the tour, needless to say. 

Tomorrow, when we go to the LBJ Library, I can probably go in, get a wheelchair and take it to the car to fetch him in.  That’s what I’m hoping, at least. 

We’ll see. 

In the mean time, I’ve bandaged him up and tried to pre-treat the blood stains on both of our clothes so they don’t set in the fabric. 

More than that, I don’t know what I can do.

Wait Time

Mama’s here finally.  We’ve changed plans several times since I first proposed the trip, including dates and travel methods.  First she was going to come down over Mothers’ Day, but that got changed.  Then she was going to drive down with my nephews the week before Memorial Day, but that got changed as well.

I picked her up at the airport this evening and swapped 2 dozen yellow roses for her baggage.  Little old ladies should carry flowers, not luggage. 

I got there a little early (I never know what traffic will be like), and her flight was delayed a few minutes.  Those minutes morphed into what seemed like eternity waiting to see her get on the escalator down to the baggage claim level, where we had arranged to meet.  Meanwhile, I stood in the middle of people coming and going or waiting on bags, looking anxious I’m sure.  With 2 dozen roses wrapped in purple tissue paper.

Waiting isn’t something I do well, and after plane after plane expelled passengers downstairs, I was more antsy than the last time I had to sit for jury selection.  But I finally saw her get on the escalator, and all my panic stopped.  I could breathe again.  (I also didn’t have to sit on the jury, by the way.)

She’s tucked away in the guest room/hideaway-for-me.  I have a tv, computer and horribly uncomfortable rattan sofa in there.  She’s sleeping on an air mattress.  She said she could probably sleep on the sofa, but I told her she probably didn’t want to.  Doing so is the quickest way to a back ache that I know.

Tomorrow, I introduce her to kolaches (a Czech breakfast staple in this part of the world).  And my favorite seafood restaurant (Eaves Brothers on Airport—the best, freshest seafood you can get in Austin).  And my favorite building in town (the Long Center, which used to be a dated, ugly and unused venue before it was turned into one of the best performance centers in the country).

I want to show her all the things I love about Austin, but I can’t do that in a few days.  So we’ll hit the high spots.  If we get bored, we can go to Mt. Bonnell or take a walk around Lady Bird Lake.  Then there’s the Susanna Dickinson house, but I’m not sure we can fit that in. 

I also want to leave time for doing nothing and just talking. 

Now that she’s here and safely tucked away, I can breathe freely and quit worrying that something will screw things up. 

It’s the first time she’s met Shannon, also.  She’s talked to him on the phone, but that’s about it.  As I’ve said before, he doesn’t travel well. 

We have several great days in store.  And since my employer forces me to take vacation time, I can’t think of a better way to spend it.

For Everything Else

After spending days worrying and fretting about my blood test for hemachromotosis, I had a message on my phone at work:  “Your results are back. Please call”.  I couldn’t read anything from the terseness of the message: it left no clue as to the outcome of the test.  The voice sounded neither cheery nor grave, just clinical.  It sent a shiver down my spine.

I took a few deep breaths to quell the anxiety that was about to boil over, and called back.  My hands were shaking so badly that I could barely punch in the right number or hold the phone to my ear.

I stuttered through my reason for calling a couple of times to different people and was finally connected to Sonja (I think), who told me that my test did not show an elevated level of iron or any sign of hemachrotosis.  It showed, rather, that my iron level is low. My doctor wants me to take over-the-counter iron supplements for 6 weeks and come back for a new test.

In the process of cleaning the house because my mother will be here tomorrow from Tennessee, I ran across information about the disease that I had forgotten.  Detected early on, it’s highly treatable.  Treatment involves having blood drawn a couple of time a week for a year or two, and then once every 3-6 months after that.  And, if I have a blood test once a year, the doctors should be able to detect it in very early stages.

I don’t really know why or how the treatment works, but it seems simple enough.  The prospect of the disease, though, is enough to get me beyond my irrational anxiety about doctors and into a lab at least once a year.  As I said in an earlier post, I’m not done yet. 

I have perfectly good health insurance (it’s better than many policies out there), but I almost never use it.  Mostly because I almost never get sick.  At least not with anything other than a passing flu, and I can tell myself to rest, drink plenty of fluids and wait for it to pass.  Dragging my weary butt to a doctor’s office, paying him and listening to him tell me what I already know makes no sense, regardless of how you look at it. 

I’m better off staying home and getting rest when the alternative is potentially infecting everyone else in the room with my bug and paying for a doctor to tell me what I already know:  I have a virus, it’s not serious and antibiotics will do nothing to rein it in.  Go home.  Rest.  Drink fluids.

Still, having a doctor (or his delegate) tell me that there’s no indication of this potentially fatal genetic disease is priceless.  I’m tempted to say that “for everything else, there’s MasterCard”, but I won’t.  Except that I just did. 

Tonight, I’m getting ready for my mother’s first visit in over a decade.  I have cleaning to finish and manicotti and a fruit salad to make.  I told the doctor that she was coming, and, if I didn’t have a good answer on the disease, she would not give me a moment’s peace.  But I have a definitive diagnosis, so we can concentrate on enjoying each other’s company.  It’s one of my favorite things to do.

And maybe it is true:  “for everything else, there’s MasterCard.”

Walking on Glass

I learned a year or so ago that a deadly genetic disease runs in our family on my father's side.  One cousin has died from it, and another has it.  The disease restricts the body's ability to process iron, so it builds up in the system.  It settles in the liver and eventually kills it.  Patients with hemachromotosis (the disease) are, by default, not good candidates for liver transplants.  The gene doesn't change, and liver failure will almost definitely happen again.

Transplant patients get ranked by the immediacy of the failure, the prospects of immediate survival and the long-term expectation of survival.  They reserve the scarce organs for the sickest.  But the sickest have to be healthy enough to indicate a high probability of survival.  Those with congenital genetic defects that will almost certainly lead to another failure go to the bottom of the list.

That's where that scenario would put me:  at the bottom of the list.

In the short term, my doctor tells me I’m very healthy.  And he didn’t even qualify that with “for a person of your age” (a phrase I’m getting used to).  In the long term, if I have the gene, my prospects are not so good.  I might never develop the disease, but the probability that I would increase by 10 fold.

The gene may have come from my uncle's side, in which case, it doesn't affect me.  We share no genes.  But it could have come from my aunt's family, and I share all the genes from her mother on down.

I don't worry about it, unless I do.  I got screened yesterday.  I'm still waiting for the results.  I'll hold my breath until I get the results back.

I know nothing about it, other than that it kills, and I don't know what food has iron and what doesn't.  The possibilities scare me silly.  Am I going to be killed by broccoli or other green vegetables?  Am I going to have to live on rice cakes?  Can I have lasagna or manicotti?  Or a nice fruit salad?

I've known about the issue for a year or so, but it didn't become real until I let someone stick a needle in my arm for a lab report.  Now, it's more real than I want.
 
Meanwhile, I'm mentally pacing the floor, trying not to worry or let anyone else know how much I'm worried.  This is a personal issue that I will make public when and if I need to.  It’s not that I’m afraid of death:  I’m just not done yet.

And who will take care of Shannon if I’m not here?  He depends on me so much, but I don’t mind.  I depend on him, too.  If that equation gets broken, I worry that the vortex of psychosis might pull him under for the last time.

I’ve tried to hedge that anxiety by having life insurance.  He’s the primary beneficiary of those policies and my 401(k).  But who’ll do the laundry?  Insurance policies are great, but they don’t put clean clothes on you.

I balance that with the knowledge that my time here has been rich and rewarding.

In the mean time, I’m sitting on pins and needles, and my ass is getting pretty sore.  I try not to think about it, but I can’t not.  It’s real now.  I’ll get a phone call in a day or two that tells me whether my probable life span has just shortened or that I’m fine.

It’s like walking on broken glass.