Category Archives: health

Notes from a Quiet Street  (Hot Summer Days & Nights Edition)

Posted on by
Reply

We have officials from Missouri and many other states who are threatening to punish school districts and local health departments, in particular, if they institute mask mandates.  Our Attorney General, Eric Schmitt, is the chief guardian against local mask mandates and he now has a class action lawsuit forbidding school districts from having the mandates. He says parents and families should decide if children wear masks, not those who act in loco parentis when hundreds of children are together.  Parents and families, he says, should make decisions based on science and facts—-as if officials in charge of hundreds of children in close contact with one another can’t make decisions based on science and facts.  Or should not be allowed to make decisions based on science and facts.

The lawsuit also cites a low COVID death rate among school children.

Isn’t one child dying from this plague too high a death rate?

We find all of this energy by governors and attorneys general—almost unanimously Republicans—on this issue peculiar.

Remind us again which party is it that does the most griping about government over-reach, especially the federal government telling states (who know what’s best for their citizens) what should be done.

-0-

One thing we’ve noticed about the pandemic, and now “the pandemic of the un-vaccinated,” is that no preacher has tried to capitalize on it as God’s punishment for this or that nation condoning this or that whatever.  Perhaps it is because all nations, whatever their faults, are fighting this thing—and deciding what human trait is being punished is impossible to determine, even by those who in the past have claimed exclusive knowledge of God’s intent.

But maybe God can’t get in a word edgewise amidst all of the conspiracy cacophony that has helped give the pandemic new vigor.

-0-

There’s been a slew of book released revealing more about the more chaotic last chaotic days of the Trump administration. It is unlikely—we certainly hope it is unlikely!!—that we will ever again see so many books from so many insiders so critical of a president. But there’s one insider book we are waiting for although it might not come until the author determines that he will be more benefitted than damaged by his words.  Potential bombshell-author Mike Pence seems to think the success of his future is still too closely tied to his recent past to discuss it.

But, boy oh boy, the tales he could tell…….

-0-

We notice, by the way, that the former VP is becoming more visible on the public speaking circuit.  He’s hitting some of the big venues—a few weeks ago he repeated his lamentable attack on Critical Race Theory at the inaugural Feenstra Family Picnic in Sioux Center, Iowa.

-0-

Watching the drought envelop the West, we are reminded of some jokes that we heard back in the very hot summer of 1953 while growing up on our little Illinois farm.  That was the summer when the thermometers reached the 90s in late May and the heat wave ran well into September with several days in the triple digits.  In fact, the last 90-plus day was not until October.  Few homes or cars were air conditioned and I can recall my mother closing the curtains in the morning to keep out the sun during the day.

It was so hot that I saw three dogs chasing a tree.

We got a little rain one day and we sent what was in our rain gauge to the University to be analyzed. It came back only 35% moisture.

That was the winter is snowed a little bit but the snow was so dry we just shoved it into the ditch and burned it.

Not sure but those might have been told by Sam Cowling on Don MacNeill’s Breakfast Club that broadcast from Chicago for 35 years on the NBC Blue Network (which became ABC Radio) and is known as the program that created morning talk and variety as a viable radio format.

-0-

Several months ago we told the story of a Cole County man who got married into a family situation that sounded like the story told in the song, “I’m My Own Grandpa.”

Well, we’ve found another one.  From the Sedalia Capital, a newspaper founded when Sedalia was making an ill-fated run at taking the seat of government away from Jefferson City, February 21, 1925 issue.  Page 5 has a picture of a nice-looking lady captioned, “Miss Ruth Davis’ marriage to her stepbrother, Andrew Jean Stormfeltz at Kansas City, Mo., made her mother also her stepmother and her mother-in-law, and her stepfather her father-in-law. She’s her own stepsister-in-law.  Figure it out.”

We’re not genealogist enough to know, but would that make their children their own cousins, or their own aunts and uncles, step or otherwise?

-0-

I’m sorry, but—–

Posted on by
8

This is going to sound cruel.

Awful.

I’m going to say it anyway—because what others are saying by their actions or inactions is just as bad or worse.

I almost lost a friend to the Delta Variant a few weeks ago.

She’s making a slow recovery, finally off the ventilator that saved her life.

She is a vaccine-denier.

I’m glad she didn’t die.  I’m glad she’s getting well.  I’m glad none of her immediate friends or family have been stricken as badly as she was.

But I’m not sorry she got sick.

No, that’s not quite right.  I am sorry she got sick.

But she asked for it.

She gambled that she could go without vaccination and not get hit by the virus.

She lost.

She lost a lot, although fortunately she did not lose it all.

She had the usual excuses—no full FDA approval; it’s only for emergency use; fear of side-effects; stories of people who got sick anyway; the need for more research first; don’t want to be a guinea pig; it will affect my DNA; I’m healthy and my immune system works just fine, etc.

The CDC says that, as of August 2, more than 164 million people have been fully inoculated. That means that every day, 164-million Americans have been willing guinea pigs and are proof these vaccines work.  That should carry some weight. A lot of weight, in fact but some people are so fixated on the inflated anti-vax rhetoric that won’t believe this reality.

The CDC says less than 0.01% of vaccinated people develop breakthrough infections that produce serious complications or death. Deaf ears listen to such figures.

DNA is not affected.  This virus doesn’t attack the cell nucleus and that’s where DNA resides.

I suppose it is as hard for me to understand why somebody decides to roll the dice on their health instead of getting a shot or two that is proven effective as it is for anti-vaxers to understand why they shouldn’t get shots.

I bet I’m not the only person who is troubled by what we should feel under these circumstances.

Conversations with medical personnel have not been uncommon for me lately, and I’m hearing irritation, frustration, anger and resentment in their voices because they have worked themselves to the bone for the last year and a half, have watched people decline and die before there was a vaccine and now they’re inundated by people who don’t need to be sick or dying who are demanding medical care. And the medical profession is duty-bound to provide it.

It is hard not to look at people such as my friend and think, “Well, you got what you deserved.”  Or to want to ask, “If you worry about the side-effects of getting a shot, why don’t you worry about the possible side effect of NOT getting a shot?  Is death not a side effect that should motivate you?”

I’d much rather attend a funeral WITH somebody who has a sore arm than attend a funeral FOR somebody who died without one. I came close to attending such a funeral a few weeks ago. So did my friend, although she would have been beyond knowing whose funeral it was.

There is a certain guilt that comes with being callous enough to say that those who refuse to protect themselves get what they deserve.  Nobody deserves to get sick with this thing.  Nobody deserves to die.

But I can’t bring myself to be particularly sympathetic.

I don’t want to go to someone’s funeral angry that they are dead. I’d rather go to a funeral being sad.  But I’m afraid anger would be the predominant emotion.

So a few questions for the people who don’t want to get shots:

Why should I send you a get-well card? How should I feel if you gamble and get very sick?  How should I feel if you gamble and you lose everything?

How should I mourn friends who threw away their lives because irrational politics overrode rational thoughts of self-preservation?

What should I say to the grieving spouse you leave behind? The comment, “Well, at least they died doing what they loved to do” becomes even more ludicrous when what they loved to do was LIVE!

I probably won’t go to your funeral at all. It’s your fault that I have to make that choice. I don’t want to be your pallbearer.

It’s awful to feel these conflicting emotions.

It’s cruel.

I’m sorry, but—–

The Future of Water (update)

Posted on by
Reply

We seldom update one of these posts, and even less often do we do it immediately.  Had we posted on this topic today instead of yesterday we would have changed some information. But here’s an important update that underlines the point we made.

The Corps of Engineers announced yesterday that it was implementing drought conservation measures on the Missouri River.  June runoff from rain (very little) and snowmelt (much reduced) was just 52% of the average amount. The Corps has updated its forecast for upper basin runoff to finally be 60% of average.

It says this will be the tenth driest year in the upper basin since 1898.  Water storage in upstream reservoirs is expected to decline further.  That means less water coming downstream for all of the purposes defined by federal river law.

This doesn’t mean we who live in cities that rely on the river for our water will have to stop watering lawns, wash dishes once a week and clothes once a month and ourselves only on Saturday nights using the same water for everybody in the family (as many of our pioneer ancestors did).  But it adds further weight to yesterday’s discussion.

There isn’t “water, water everywhere” in more and more places.

The Daily Gift

Posted on by
Reply

(We were reminded this week by the death of a former colleague at the age of 44 that life and death are not predictable, not even for those imprisoned and facing capital punishment.  And what if it were?  Dr. Frank Crane ponders—–)

THE UNCERTAINTY OF LIFE

“There goes a man,” said the physician, “who is under sentence of death.”

“What to you mean?’

“He is in the secondary stages of a disease for which there is no known cure.  He is as sure to be dead or to lose his mind, which amounts to the same thing, as far as the victim himself is concerned, and one of these calamities is bound to occur within six months as the sun is certain to rise tomorrow.”

“Yet he seems cheerful. Why?”

“Because he does not know it.”

There you have the secret of contentment. For you and I, and every man, is under the sentence of death, as well as those marked by a mortal malady or sentenced by court-criminal our court-martial…

Every sunset, every clock-stroke brings us mechanically near the drop. And we know it. And we are cheerful. Why?

Simply because we do not know the date!

IF we knew that it would deaden our days and darken our minds. Just one fact of the future, if its time of happening were to be revealed to us, would paralyze life.

And so you see the falseness of another common notion, that the uncertainty of life is a bad thing. On the contrary, the uncertainty of life is its chiefest charm.

Heaven, which prescribes death, gives us death’s antidote, which is ignorance of death’s time. The sentenced world laughs and plays, drinks deep of dear human love, is busy with business—in fact the whole human comedy is interesting, amusing, and worthwhile just because the time of the certain fall is concealed.

 

It’s about time

Posted on by
Reply

The capitol started to cool at 6 p.m. last Friday, the official adjournment time of the 2021 regular session of the legislature.

Actually, as we understand it, the heat and the hard pulse of the building began to diminish at mid-afternoon when the Senate adjourned, deadlocked in an intra-party fight about the most notorious bill-killer issue for the last twenty or thirty years—abortion.

Tack some language on a bill that forbids any funding for any program that involved anyone who might say or think “birth control” and that bill goes to the grave’s edge with one foot on a banana peel.

That’s what took whatever wind was left in the sails of this session out of those sails.  Unfortunately, the effort this time was tied to a bill that continues a tax on hospitals—that are willing to be taxed—so more federal money is available to provide healthcare to poor people. Democrats let it be known the birth control amendment wouldn’t fly, especially after the Republicans refused to find funding for the expanded Medicaid program voters put into the Missouri Constitution last year. The Democrat leader moved to adjourn early and although the R’s had more than enough votes to defeat the D’s motion, it passed, leaving the House the only chamber still in business. The House, to its credit, slogged on despite expressions of urinary agitation toward the Senate.

It’s about time—-too little time to iron out problems assuming anybody wanted to do any ironing.

This isn’t the first time, by the way, that one chamber or another has quit early for one reason or another.

On the other hand, “it’s about time” has another and more positive meaning.

It’s about time the legislature approved a fuel tax increase that does not require a public vote.  The refusal of voter twice to support increases has left our transportation system in desperate straits and this observer thinks our lawmakers deserve a friendly pat for doing what had to be done—-although it should have been done years ago.

But discussing what should have been done has little value. What has been done is what’s important today.  Now.  My car is grateful and so am I.

It’s also about time the legislature finally decided state sales taxes should be collected on internet sales.  Again, it’s something that should have been done years ago but this year, it got done. Will it keep local stores trying to compete with internet super-super-super stores from closing?  In reality, not many probably.  But it’s nice to see the legislature get past the idea that having people pay sales taxes they should be paying is some kind of an onerous tax increase.

But there seems to be some kind of a tiny irony here.  Missouri will start collecting taxes on internet sales of things that lead to birth control.

We’re mulling what seems to be a logic disconnect in that but we haven’t figured it out yet.

To an Athlete Playing Old

Posted on by
Reply

In my mind, I still think I could play third base, could field the one-hopper, hop-step and throw the bullet to first base to get the runner by a step.  In my mind, it’s me and the pitcher, one-on-one and I feel rather than hear the bat strike the ball and I hear the wind whip past my ears as I sprint to first base. I smell the dust.  I hear the voices from my dugout. I know my skin, by the end of the game, will have a light coating of mud—dust mixed with the sweat of sweet effort.

In my mind.

It has been fifteen years since I put the supple black glove in the green bag at the end of a game —I played third in a co-ed game and threw out a runner trying to score on one of those one-hoppers, the ball going over his shoulder perfectly to the catcher who forced him out at home in a bases-loaded situation.  My spiked shoes are in the bag, too, although the soles have pulled away from the tops because dozens of nights of game-sweat eventually rotted the stitching.

I say it was my “most recent game,” not my “last game.”

I know the love of playing the game, a changing game as skills eroded, from that first season of baseball as an 8-year old batter terrified of a 10-year old pitcher (I summoned the courage to swing at a pitch in my last game and singled past the undoubtedly stunned pitcher), to fast-pitch softball, and finally (when fast-pitch disappeared and too many young men found it easier to impress the girlfriends by mashing looper league pitches over fences) slow pitch softball.

It was, and is, the game.  Playing the game in whatever form talent and circumstance allowed.

Many of us now slow of foot, thick of waist, driven by delusions of adequacy, understand when a young—by our standards—major league star finds the game is beyond his competitive capabilities. Or is told the game is now beyond their once-awsome abilities.

NO, we cry.  No!  We can still play!  I can still do this!

But at 60 or 70 or 80, it is easier to admit that no, we really can’t.  Or shouldn’t.  But we will remember.  And we will wish.

It is much worse when you are but 40.

We look at players such as Albert Pujols, old at 41, hanging on or wanting to hang on because the game has a grip on him more than he still has a grip on the game.

It comes to all athletes in all sports.  But for those at the highest levels, the realization can be agonizingly hard to accept.  I can get one more home run. I can strike out one more batter. I can throw one more touchdown.  I can hit one more buzzer-beater.

But others can do more while I’m striving for my one-more. I can be pushed aside.

Most of us common folks who hold regular jobs have the luxury of deciding there are too many other things to do in life than go to the workplace every day. Stepping away is easier, sometimes just plain joyous.

We never have to face the idea that we are 40 and there no longer is a place for us in the world that has been the consuming passion of our lives—all our lives.

The passion is there.  The fire of competition still rages within. But in a world that relies on physical skills, recognizing that ours no longer match our passion enough to stay in the competitive arena is so hard to accept.

As fans of sport, we do not measure our heroes by their age and when we think they are done when they are “only” 40, we realize these heroes are not ageless but are as human as we are—although we don’t have to realize we are old until we are old.

Moments such as these recall for us English Edwardian poet A. E. Housman’s elegy for a young athlete who died before he joined the great mass of those who faded into obscurity as their skills waned. He called it “To An Athlete Dying Young.”

The time you won your town the race, We chaired you through the market place;  Man and boy stood cheering by And home we brought you shoulder high.

The poem later speaks of “the road all runners come,” and “fields where glory does not stay, and early though the laurel grows, it withers quicker than the rose.”

Such is the life of our heroes of the playing field.

We who watch them might realize before they do that “glory does not stay.”  That time comes for all of us but usually not when we are just forty and have spent our lives among an elite few who can do what they have been doing. We sometimes say goodbye to them before they can bring themselves to say goodbye to the world that has consumed their lives.

It is much harder to step aside when you are 40 and a 25-year-old is doing what you only think you can still do, than it is when you are 65 and realize there is something liberating ahead.

Another English poet, from one generation earlier than Housman’s, wrote, “The last of life, for which the first was made…youth shows but half; Trust god: See all, nor be afraid.”

In time the resistance to Robert Browning’s sentiment will diminish.  But it is hard to accept when you are an athlete playing old.

The Constitution and the vaccine: and the danger of selfish people

Posted on by
Reply

Drew Vogel was one of my early reporters at the Missourinet.  He has had a lengthy career as a nursing home administrator in Ohio and since his retirement from a fulltime directorship has held several interim positions.

There’s a special place in my heart for people who work in nursing homes.  And for those who have been working in the industry during this COVID era, well, I’m not sure I can measure the depth of my admiration. Drew has a blog, too, and last week he let off some steam about people who think it is their constitutional right to refuse vaccinations and put others at risk.

Drew has been on the front lines in the fight against disease.  And we all know that THE front lines have been our nursing home.

He doesn’t mince words about vaccinations and the selfish use by some of the Constitution to avoid the responsibility all of us have to each other.  Listen to this good man.

I have just ended an interim (temporary) assignment as administrator at a nursing home Near Dayton, Ohio.  I have done, without bothering to count them up, something like 13 interim assignments the past seven years.

 I joke that interim work is great because you don’t stay around long enough to get fired!

 In reality, I am lucky enough that I don’t need to work a permanent fulltime job.  But I do need to work – especially since my wife passed away last September.  Work is good for my psyche, my emotions – good for my soul. There is a dignity element also – although no one has ever accused me of being very dignified.

 This recent building was one of my best interim assignments.  The staff was great, hard-working, friendly and fun.  I feel like in those 3+ months I made some friends for life.

 The guys were very positive in their approach to long-term care, in spite of, or maybe because of, the fact that they had been through some adversity.

 The facility was COVID-free in the early stages of the pandemic last year until around Thanksgiving. Then there was a major outbreak.

 Ultimately, 75-100 total people – staff and residents – contracted the disease.  By the end of the year about 15 residents had died.  No staff died, but some got very sick.

 When I arrived in January two employees were off sick with the coronavirus, but the outbreak was pretty much under control. Temperature checks, questionnaires and masks were required to get in the door.  Only people with a purpose could come in. Vendors dropped their goods outside – food, oxygen, supplies – and the staff dragged them inside.

 When visitation resumed, visitors were first tested, masked and confined to a room that did not require entry into the building proper.

 In January, the first week I was at the facility, I received my first vaccination shot – Pfizer – and in February I got the follow up injection.  I was happy to receive it.

 However, even though it was free and had been proven to work, not everyone took the vaccine. 

 It is voluntary almost everywhere in America. In my facility some staff and some residents – or their families – said NO!

 The month of March went pretty well.  Then in April, over a couple weeks’ time, a housekeeper, a cook and a therapist tested positive and were sent home to quarantine. 

 Yesterday, my last day, a nursing assistant tested positive – with symptoms.

 The COVID-19 protocol was immediately initiated.  A text was sent to all staff to come in immediately to be tested; all residents were swabbed.

 As of when I left yesterday afternoon, two more cases had been discovered – both residents.  There may be more by now.

 Six cases in April and NONE OF THEM HAD BEEN VACCINATED! 

 No cases in April among people who had been vaccinated – people working side-by-side in exactly the same confines as the people who developed COVID-19.

 As the saying goes, you don’t have to be a rocket scientist ……………..

 I’ve always believed our Constitution is the world’s greatest document – at least the greatest created by a government.  It contains enumerable individual rights.  But those rights cease at the point they infringe upon the rights of others – like the right not to die because of another’s misconceptions, fear and/or puffed-up ego.

 In other words, I am an advocate of MANDATORY vaccines.  Don’t give people a choice.

 Think about it, we need a license to drive a car.  We need a license to cut hair, catch fish, or be a nurse.  Nursing home administrators must be licensed, so do stockbrokers, real estate salesmen and ham radio operators.

 The licensing list in unending.  So why not issue a license to people to go out in public only if they have been vaccinated.

 Radical thinking?  Damned right it is. And I’m aware it will likely never happen.

 But dammit death, like ugly and stupidity, is forever.

 Amen, Drew.  Perhaps one or two self-righteous defenders of their right to privacy at the expense of the right to life of others will read your words and recognize the selfishness of their attitudes.

 

 

My cabbage crop

Posted on by
1

We conclude this week with a short personal note.

Technology enables us to post entries on these pages to be displayed even if we’re not in the office, the home, or even in the world.   Such has been the case these last two weeks.

I got into the cabbage business on Monday, April 12

It’s pronounced “cabbage,” but in medical circles it’s formally CABG—Coronary Artery Bypass Graft.

My surgeon—an amazing man beyond his skills of repairing the world’s greatest pump—thought I was going to get a triple.  But once he looked at the playing field, he decided I deserved a Grand Slam.

It’s not routine but it’s hardly unique any more. I’m one of about 240,000 people who will become “cabbage farmers” this year in America.  I sat in a chair the next day (Tuesday), taking a brisk walk through the halls of Capital Region Medical Center on Wednesday, a nurse hanging onto my belt with one hand while trying to keep up with a metal stand filled with hanging bags of this or that medication, taking another nurse on a similar but longer walk on Thursday, and back at home a week ago today.

I feel good.  Not good-good.  But I don’t feel bad other than a few aches here and there and a diminished energy level that will come back. For a couple of days or so, I felt bruised. And looked it, too.  And no you’re not going to see pictures.

Some of you have been through this and I hope you’ll agree with saying to those who will go through it that feeling anxious is understandable. But what happens is nothing short of amazing—although somewhat ghastly when the doctor starts removing various tubes.  The most awful part of the experience has been the removal of the dressings taped to my chest. Do not work yourself into a serious state if you are told you need to grow some cabbages

But knock me out first if I ever have to have a chest dressing removed again.

(The cabbages, by the way were parts of the artery in my left leg which has about five small incisions and extensive bruising but works just fine; Nancy and I walked across the street to see some neighbors on Sunday after coming home on Friday) and yesterday I was buzzing all about the house and even made a couple of out-of-the house trips. It’s okay when Minnie the cat wants to sit on my chest.  STANDING on it is a little different.

As odd as it might seem to say, I think I had a pretty good time at the hospital.  I got to know little bit about the nursing staff and found them to be the kind of folks I’d like to know better.  And my surgeon—–a man older than me who has been doing these operations for decades because  he considers it a sacred calling: I won’t get sick again just to talk more with him but I hope we have a chance for more conversations about everything from politics to books and TV series….and more.

See you around one of these days.

 

An Antidote to Uncertainty

Posted on by
1

(We might forgive ourselves for feeling uncertain about so many things these days—our political system, our health in a time of pandemic, our personal relationships, our employment future, the uncertainty of our climate, the instability of governments throughout the world—

But Dr. Frank Crane encourage us not to be consumed by uncertainty. He warns against —-)

THE POSTPONEMENT OF LIFE

Many of us are like the boy taking a “run and jump” who ran so far that he couldn’t jump. We spend so much time and strength getting ready to enjoy ourselves that we never enjoy ourselves at all.

We are like businessmen who break down brain, nerves, and body accumulating a fortune to wherewith to take their ease, and when they are at last ready to play they have lost the knack of it.

With too many of us, Today is a fevered compromise, a make-shift something we’ve got to get through with we known not how, something to be forgotten as soon as possible. It is “tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.” We have no joy but for a sort of reaching for joy, no satisfaction but expectance, no comfort but hope.

Would it not be better to give each day some kind of finish as a good workman perfects each ornament of a temple? Every day has possibilities for the perfect exercise of life’s functions. Emerson said, “Every day is a day of doom.” Here are a few hints.

First, remember that the one thing that has most to do with making life worth living is love. Let no day pass without some expression of affection.

Don’t postpone play. No day ought to go by without some moments of diversion. Play a game. Have a bit of a chat with your neighbor. Do something useless each day lest you become an enemy of the human race.

Don’t postpone physical exercise.

It is not the occasional sport that counts in buttressing health and avoiding flabbiness.

Don’t postpone mental gymnastics. No mind should go a whole day without sweating over some knotty problem, some book hard to read, some genuine, solid thinking.

Don’t postpone beauty. The best-known soul food is admiration. Find today some cloud or flower or picture that warms you. Drop in at the picture gallery, or at least pause a moment at the art dealer’s window. Never go to sleep without having seen some beautiful thing since the last sleep.

Don’t postpone work. Produce something useful, something of distinct value to the world, and if possible, something the world is willing to pay for. The sanest thing a person can do is work, and for wages.

Don’t postpone laughter. A day without one good laugh is a bad day. No drug you can take, and no belief you can embrace will do as much good for the health of your soul and body as a real hearty laugh, from the boots up.

Now, isn’t one day with a dash of all those ingredients a pretty good affair in itself? Think of it! A little love, a little play, a little bodily and mental exertion, a little work, a little laughter, a ltitle wonder; what is that but a whole life in a nutshell?

Love, as the carpenter might say, by the day and not by the job. For after all, life is too much for any one of us, but a day, well, we might manage that perhaps, if we would.

The First Day

Posted on by
Reply

This is the first day of the week for most of us after the day of rest on Sunday, the seventh day, in the Christian tradition.  This week will have two “first” days.

Nancy and I will get our first Pfizer COVID-19 immunization shots Thursday morning.

I don’t think I’ve written much personally about this pandemic in all these months but as I went back and looked at the first few entries in what I call “The Journal of My Pandemic Year,” starting in March that it’s obvious this has been a tense time because of the uncertainty that has pervaded our lives—what do we dare do about relations with friends and relatives; when can we go without masks (never, when we‘re going to be indoors with others), a daily  unspoken question about whether we might have picked up the virus somewhere and were soon to be sick, the whole business of—in effect—living only with ourselves day in and day out, week in and week out, month by month as we watched the calendar change and saw only chaos in our national leadership on this and other subjects.  And now we’re only days away from becoming immune.

We’re not down to counting hours yet; that won’t come until we near the date for our second shot. But making it to that first shot after all this time, all this uncertainty, all these days with all spontaneity removed from life, all the game nights we missed playing Five Crowns, or Rummikub or Labyrinth, or Quiddler, or something else with friends; all of the fellowship from church and other events gone—-just getting here while 400,000 other Americans didn’t—

I suppose some folks might feel almost guilty that they made it and so many more did not. I don’t think we do.  Asking, “Why me?” is, I think, a waste of time.  Why NOT me?  I don’t think the uncertainty of life has ever been more present, other than for a few minutes at a time, than it has been in these ten months when it has been part of every hour of our day.

And now I have “Pfizer shot 945 Cole Cty Health Dept 3400 Truman Blvd” written in my Day-Timer for next Thursday, February 4th.

All we have to do is just hang on for a few more days.

Today.

Tomorrow.

Wednesday.

Thursday morning, 9:45.

And then the other shot on the 25th.

That shot Thursday morning will be part of what truly will be the first day of the rest of our lives.