By's Musings

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Why Did The Chicken Cross the Road?

In my blog posting “Moving Right Along” I used a video featuring Dr. Who and a song from the Muppets to introduce the idea of a move half-way across the country for my wife and me. In this blog about the culmination of that move, I feature the opening line to what may be the oldest and most used joke in the world. It would not surprise me if someday we discover a cave drawing of a chicken crossing a path. If the Guinness Book of Records had a category for jokes with the most variations, this would be the winner without a cluck of dissent. Every five-year-old has his or her own answer to this question, which represents the three most basic questions of life: who, what, why. The who is the chicken. There are two whats: The first is the road that the chicken crossed; the second is the action of crossing the road. The why is the punch line to the joke.

One of my favorite answers is the obvious answer: “to get to the other side.” I also like the sarcastic answers:

  • “to prove to the opossum that it could be done;”
  • “because it was too far to walk around;”
  • “because the chicken heard a rumor that the Colonel was opening a new KFC franchise next to where he was standing;”
  • “the chicken saw a farmer dump half of his load of corn kernels on the other side of the road;
  • “the chicken saw a cute chick on the other side of the road.”

Why did I think about the chicken joke? My wife and I didn’t chicken out. We have completed the 650 mile move, crossing many roads along the way. Why did we do it? With my medical retirement, there were more attractions on the other side of the country and across many roads. We are now within 30 minutes of each of our daughters and their families, instead of 650 miles. In our first week after crossing all those roads, we got to see our older grandson sing in his school’s spring choral concert. The theme of the concert was Rock and Roll Forever. Our grandson’s costume was a white tee-shirt and a black leather jacket ala Fonzy. It was a special treat to see him and his fifth grade classmates sing some of the songs my wife and I listened to and sang as teenagers (several years ago).

This coming week, we will be able to see our older granddaughter play as a ninth grader in the state’s district softball playoffs. We were one week late in crossing all those roads. Thus, we missed the game in which from her catcher’s position, she threw out two runners trying to steal second base. While at bat, she hit a home run and two singles. The only time the other team got her out, she hit a screaming line drive that could have been another homerun, if the left fielder had not made an unbelievable catch.

In the last inning of the game, she was disappointed when the other team intentionally walked her with the tying running on second base. Her coach consoled her by pointing out that she did score the winning run when the two batters behind her got hits. He tried to encourage her by pointing out that the intentional walk was a sign of respect of her batting ability. He told her that if she continues to improve her hitting as she has this year, she should expect many intentional walks throughout her career.

My wife and I look forward to watching her develop as a ball player, as well as her as a student. She has just recently been inducted into the National Honor Society. After high school and college, she wants to be a veterinarian and a professional softball player. As a very biased grandfather, I think she can do it. It will be great to be close enough to see her try. That’s why we crossed all those roads.

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Moving Right Along

For several years, my wife and I have known this day was coming. Ever since the explosion of the blood vessel in my head and the removal of the benign meningioma that had attached itself to the right frontal lobe of my brain, we knew that we needed to move back to Pennsylvania to be near our family. We wanted to see our grandkids growing up. We wanted to see our younger grandkids enjoy their school and church programs. We wanted to see our older granddaughter develop into the excellent student and athlete that as a ninth grader she is showing the promise of becoming.

Through the years there were times when our daughters needed our help and support. Now, it was our turn to need their help, support and comfort. Doing those things from a distance of 650 miles had become much more difficult for all of us. This illustrates one of the biggest shortcomings of a mobile society. It also highlights the sacrifice that military and missionary families are called to make in service to their country and their God. As my wife and I faced the projected difficulties and pleasures of the upcoming years, dealing with them from a distance of 15 to 20 miles was much more appealing to us.

Therefore, three years ago when it was apparent that I could not work full-time as a college professor or administrator, we put our house up for sale. The past three years have not been the best three years to try to sell a house. Our real estate agent kept urging us to be patient. He would say, “Your house is a gem, the right buyer is out there.” He would remind us, “The house is a three-story, Sears house, erected in 1922, in mint condition. It is a classic, a house with character. It is just waiting for the right person to come along and buy it.”

This past fall the right person came along and made us an offer we couldn’t refuse. This kicked our preparations for a move up a couple of gears. We hurriedly found a one-level, first floor apartment that has three bedrooms so that I can have an office, my wife can have her sewing room and we have room to entertain overnight guests. It met our other non-negotiable condition: it is within 20 miles of each of our daughters.

Having made four long distance moves previously, you would think that my wife and I would be seasoned professionals at the moving process and know what to do when. We should have been old hands at this process. However, that is precisely the problem: “We are old hands.” There is one more complication. This move is coming out of our pocket. The tab for the previous four were picked up by my new employer. This time we have to pay the entire bill ourselves, which is no small task for a couple on a retirement income, facing mounting medical expenses.

Now, all of a sudden M-Day is here. We will be moving in less than three weeks. This meant that instead of going along in fourth gear, we had to find the overdrive that we have not used in three years. Even in fourth gear, I have felt that I didn’t have time to maintain my blog as I would have liked. Looking ahead at the next two months, I know my blog is going to have to take a rear seat to the move. So, this is not farewell, it is just good-bye for awhile. I will see you on the other side of the move.

In the meantime, I leave you with this video clip of what the last two months have looked like and what the next two months will look like for us. It combines several of my favorite TV characters, Dr. Who and the Muppets:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mo6QeBmXn18

 

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Never Take a Loved One for Granted

Within the past month, I learned several lessons from my 14-year old granddaughter. She shared with me an essay that she had written for her ninth-grade English class. The assignment was to write a memoir. I will admit that it brought tears to my eyes. Her essay showed the importance of family and the role that love and respect within a family should play. It emphasized the fact that the little things we do can make a big difference.

This may be the biased opinion of a grandfather who believes his granddaughter is one very special young lady, but I am convinced her essay exhibited a maturity far beyond what most of us exhibit, no matter what our age is. It also illustrated lessons that I have attempted to teach within the academy for 40 years that far too often have fallen on deaf ears.

With the permission of my granddaughter and her teacher (since it was an assignment), I take this opportunity to share the Memoir here at By’s Musings. I first present the essay and then will make some comments about it, speaking as a very proud grandfather.

Taken for Granted

               Most people think that nothing will happen to them or the ones they love. I learned the hard way that it can. It was back in 6th grade when I was eleven years old. I was a very outgoing person and I took my grandfather for granted, because I thought that he was always going to be around. He has always been a great grandfather and he was always the first person I would call when I would hit a homerun at softball or if I made a new team. I would only get to see him three or four times a year when my grandparents would come to Pennsylvania from Michigan. Though our visits were infrequent, we always had a great time when they came in.

I remember answering the phone and the person said that they were my grandmother’s pastor and that they were looking for my mom. I was so confused and had no idea what they were talking about. I walked into the kitchen and said “Mom, Grammy’s pasture [sic] is on the phone.” When I was eleven years old I did not know that a preacher was also called a pastor. My mom just stopped and looked at me like I was stupid and took the phone. I went upstairs to get in the shower, and when I came back down she was crying her eyes out. I asked her what was wrong, and the only thing she told me was that my grandfather was in the hospital. My mom called her sister, and she said that they think that he had a stroke. Right after she got off the phone she called my dad, and he came home right away. My mom wanted to go out to Michigan right away, but there were a couple of problems. PSSA testing had just started for me that day and we did not know how long we would be staying in MI. My mom and dad both had to work, we had nowhere to put my dog, and Michigan is over 13 hours away.

Missing work and school were the least of our problems. We decided that my dog would go to a friend’s house. We got everything packed up, dropped the dog off, and picked up my aunt. Then, the longest car ride to Butterworth Hospital out in Grand Rapids, Michigan began.

I remember walking in and I just started to cry. I walked over to his bed side and said, “Hey Pop-pop what’s up?” and I can remember his exact words “The sky.” At that point everyone started to laugh. My grandmother explained to us that he was in a meeting at work, after the meeting he put his head down on the table and one of his co-workers asked him if he was okay and he never answered. They immediately called 911, and when they got there they thought he had a bleeding stroke. We went to my grandparents’ home and one of my grandmother’s friends made us a casserole for dinner and left it on her door stoop.

The next day at the hospital they did a CAT scan and found out that he had a brain tumor the size of a racquet ball, and it caused some hemorrhaging. They wanted to do surgery immediately the next day. My grandfather had hair, but he was bald on top of his head. They shaved all of his hair off and he looked totally different. The day he had his surgery was the longest day ever. My family and I sat in the waiting room playing Apples to Apples, sleeping, and reading to past the time till my grandfather got out of surgery. We played Apples to Apples, because I had it in the car for from the long car ride.

When he finally came out of surgery and we could go back and see him, he had gauze wrapped around his head. He had staples in his head and when I saw him I almost got sick. We stayed for a couple more days, but we had to leave and get back home. I did not want to leave. I was afraid that he was not got going to pull through it.

My grandfather has never fully recovered from this whole incident. As a result of the surgery he has aphasia which is a condition that causes him to forget words that people take for granted in our everyday life. He cannot walk without a cane or for long periods of time. Since the whole incident he has also been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, which causes him to shake a lot. My grandfather before the brain tumor was a very self-sufficient person, but now he must rely on my grandmother to do most things for him. My grandfather was very upset after he found out that he is not allowed to drive any more or return to work.

This affected my family as well. When we got home every time the phone would ring we would be scared that something happened to him. It really affected my grandmother as well, because she cannot do everything by herself so they will move back to Pennsylvania in April of this year.  Anything can happen to the people that you love, so make sure that they know that you love them and never take them for granted.

.       The important lesson that we must all remember is the last sentence of her memoir. “Anything can happen to the people that you love, so make sure that they know that you love them and never take them for granted.”  I don’t think that she is being morbid in suggesting that whenever we see a loved one, it may be the last time we will see them. I believe that she is teaching us to make sure that we show our love to each other whenever we can, because we don’t know when that opportunity will be taken from us.

The lesson noted in the opening paragraphs of this posting I suggested fell on deaf ears in the academy is that everyone regardless of their age or status has something to offer. I believe that knowledge consists of content, skills and values. No one person has a monopoly on knowledge. If even one member of a class is prevented from offering their insights to the whole class concerning thoughts related to the subject of the class, everyone, including instructor and students, is short-changed. A complete education is facilitated by an open class in which everyone participates as both instructor and student. The role of the professor is not to serve as dictator, but to serve as a facilitator and guide.

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Weeping over Books

Yesterday was a hard day as My wife and I prepared to down size and pack to move to be closer to our family. We went through about half of my library and we culled over two hundred books that we are donating to our local library instead of packing and moving them 600 miles to have them set in a storage unit since we won’t have room in our new apartment for the book cases needed to hold all of my books. As I held each book, I recalled why I had the book and what it meant to me when I first read it. Some of them almost brought tears to my eyes. I know some of you would be surprised to know what books I kept and what books I decided to donate. I kept several books about the Dodgers who have always been my favorite baseball team. Of course they were “da bums” of Brooklyn when I started rooting for them. However, I donated the complete works of Edgar Allan Poe and Henry Ibsen. The stories of Duke Snider and the other boys of summer were important to me growing up in ways that other people wouldn’t understand. However, Poe and Ibsen can be of more help to others right now if they would take the time and make the effort to read them.

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Random Events, Conditions, Disorders, Diseases: Part II

I finished Part I of this post making two claims.  The first claim was that the labels given the circumstances of patients can affect the patients’ perceptions of themselves. The second was that those labels can affect the treatment offered to the patients. In addition to those two claims, I asked two questions. One of the questions was, “Is health care a public or private good?”

To those of you who are saying, “That’s a trick question,” I will admit that it is definitely a trick question. The trick spins on two pivotal points. The first pivotal point is how one understands the word “good.” If one takes it as meaning “benefit,” health care can and should provide a private benefit to individuals. I believe individuals should have the opportunity to enjoy their lives completely. If individuals are healthy, they are enabled to contribute as much as they can to society. The more individuals benefit society, the more society benefits.

I know the second pivotal point making this a trick question will get me in trouble with many readers, because I am going to bring the discipline of economics into the mix. Some of you are already asking, “How can you put a monetary value on a human life?”

Before I sink too deeply into this quicksand, I will tell everyone that I value everyone’s life, just as John Donne wrote in his essay, Meditation XVII,

“No man is an island, entire of itself…never send to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.”  If one person dies or is incapacitated, that takes away a little piece of me. Most people are more familiar with Donne’s essay translated into a poem that Ernest Hemingway used in the flyleaf of his novel, “For Whom the Bell Tolls.” In this sense, health care is of social benefit.

Although many political careers have been lost or almost lost trying to traverse this quicksand blog, I’m not a politician and I believe that I must begin wading through the quicksand. Health care, just like everything else in today’s world, has expenses related to it. Expenses and money bring the discipline of economics into the fray. Economics defines a social good as a benefit with two properties.

The first property is known as “non-rivalry.” This refers to a good that all can enjoy in common in the sense that each individual’s consumption of such a good leads to no subtraction from any other individual’s consumption of that good. Health care on the surface may appear to be a non-rivalry good. However, on closer inspection it is not hard to become convinced that there is not an inexhaustible supply of doctors’ time, hospital space or medications.

The second property is known as “non-excludability,” that is, it is impossible to exclude any individuals from consuming the good. For health care, it is easy to see that certain individuals can be excluded.

Since health care fails both the non-rivalry and non–excludability tests, health care can’t be classified as a social good. Does that make it a private good? The major problem with labeling health care a private good is that the overwhelming majority of individuals can’t afford the cost of treatments associated with health care.

In addition, even if all the individuals who need a certain type of health care were to pool their resources, they couldn’t possibly pay for the research and development necessary to further the fight against their condition, disorder or disease. R & D for health care must be considered something beyond the communal efforts of those directly affected. R & D requires a social effort.  In Part III of this post, I will highlight a number of those R & D efforts as well as some communal efforts that attempt to help patients and their caregivers cope with their day-to-day problems.

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Random Events, Conditions, Diseases, Disorders, Part I

Random Events, Conditions, Disorders, and Diseases: What, if any, are the differences between these terms? The term “random event” carries with it the connotation of a single event for which an explanation is difficult, if not impossible. The term “condition” carries the connotation of repeated events, which may occur with regularity or in a predictable pattern. The term “disorder” carries the connotation of a condition which is caused by an identifiable internal malfunction, or design flaw. The term “disease” carries the connotation of a condition which is caused by an externally introduced agent.

  Why am I concerned? Should I be concerned? Should others be concerned? The human side of these questions includes the human psychological need to name, identify and control internal and external events. However, it also includes the practical side to these questions because insurance reimbursement almost always requires the identification of a problem. Insurance companies are usually hesitant to reimburse for the treatment of a “random event.” I have been questioned on coverage until the random event could be identified as part of a condition or disorder.

I began thinking about this post in relationship to my concerns and questions connected to my recent battles with health, communication, physical abilities, and mental capabilities. However, as I have talked and exchanged emails with others, I have found that I was not the only person to ask these same and related questions. The article, “Branding a Soldier with Personality Disorder” in the February 25, 2012 edition of the New York Times, raises the related concern of a hierarchy among disorders. The article may be found at <http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/25/us/a-military-diagnosis-personality-disorder-is-challenged.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha2 >

This hierarchy among random events, conditions, disorders and diseases affects the coverage and treatment that one can expect to receive. Senior moments receive less attention than aphasia. Senior moments receive less attention than dementia or Alzheimer’s disease. Tremors receive less attention than Parkinson’s disease.

With these states of affairs stacked against an individual, it is imperative that individuals and their caregivers be prepared to insist upon and fight for the best and most appropriate treatment available. Given the current fiscal model under which medicine operates, the best and most appropriate treatment available may not be the first option offered to patients and their caregivers, if any option is offered at all.

Please understand that I am not condemning the medical enterprise for this state of affairs. I have spent 40 years in higher education. It has its own difficulties that many believe begin with a broken fiscal model. This often means that the best and most appropriate education is not always offered to students. At the risk of starting a philosophical war I invite responses to the question: “Are education and medical care, a public or private good?”