All posts by Steve Stern

Zorching

Americana, War

I ran into this line, by Navy spokesman Captain John Kirby, a couple of days ago, I don’t want to leave anybody with the impression that we’re somehow zorching 1two carriers over there because we’re concerned about what happened today in Iran. He was telling reporters that quickly moving two aircraft carriers to the Arabian Sea is not unusual. I like to think that I am more au courant than a Navy captain, the Navy, after all, being the most conservative of all the conservative military services; but I had no idea what zorching means. Oh, well, I guess I do now.

By the way, the U.S. Navy has 11 aircraft carrier groups each with a supercarrier. Nobody else in the world has even one. And now the Republicans are running on saving our military from the ravages of the Democrats. I don’t know if they actually believe what they say, or they get up in the morning, check what the president is doing and then say the opposite. Either way, I do love zorch as a word, it just sounds so right.

1 Zorch is defined by the  Urban Dictionary as To travel with velocity approaching lightspeed.


9AM….everyday

Americana, Around home, Science,

 

 

Everyday at 9 AM, I go into Sequoia Hospital for an intravenous shot of an high-octane antibiotic – daptomycin, Daptomycin with a capital “D”? – to protect my cow aorta valve. Every day for six weeks; Saturdays, Sundays, New Years Day, at 9 AM. I do not think that I have done the same thing at the same time for six weeks in my entire life, it is very strange – not bad necessarily, but strange – and I am having a hard time getting used to it.

What is also strange is the PICC line in my arm, just below the armpit, that runs through a vain – or artery, I am not sure which – up, through my shoulder, and down to a large gaggle of pipes near my heart. According to Wikipedia, the PICC lines are used when intravenous access is required over a prolonged period of time or when the material to be infused would cause quick damage and early failure of a peripheral IV, and I think that is the case with me. I had a peripheral IV port in my hand that they used for a couple of days and my hand is still sore.

I think of the PICC as a very small, very long, hole that runs from outside my body to, almost, my heart. It is very handy: anything anybody wants in me can just be shoved in through the hole; the Flue Vaccine I forgot to get earlier in the year, a Pneumonia Vaccine I didn’t even know I should have, lunch – I guess. But, and it is a big BUT, protecting that hole from bad stuff getting in is a big deal. A much bigger deal than protecting a  IV because any bacteria traveling up the PICC would end up right next to my heart which is what they are trying to protect, in the first place, by pouring in the dosages of antibiotic.

Tuesday is the changing of the covering-dressing day and it is sort of emblematic of my whole Sequoia experience and – by only slightly fantastical extension – our health care system.

 

The changing of the covering-dressing is almost ritualistic in its detailed, loving, complexity; it is driven, in large part, by outside vendors coming up with new, improved, and increasingly expensive ways to do it; it is staggeringly wasteful; and once you see it, it is hard to think of a cheaper, simpler, way to do as good a job. First the nurse takes a sterile envelope containing sterile gloves and opens it to to form a sterile area, then she empties all the cleaning supplies and sterile dressings on to the sterile area. After she puts on the gloves and facemask, my existing dressing is removed and the area cleaned.

Each part of the new dressing comes in a sterile package that is now waste and has to be carefully disposed of. As an aside, much of the waste has my name and birthdate  on it and each time that happens, it has to be disposed of differently so that my name doesn’t end up in the garbage where somebody could see it. End aside. Then the new dressing, including a jell-packet of disinfectant, is put on to cover the entry point of the PICC.

Lastly, the new dressing is dated. Then, probably for the second or third time, the nurse asks me my name and birhdate and gives me my daily charge of daptomycin. I have no idea what all this costs, somebody once said that the daptomycin, alone, is $110.00 and it comes with its own – wrapped in a sterile covering, of course – connecting line and two syringes to flush the PICC line before and after the dose.

Then I am happily on my way, back into the world.

 

 

 

 

Four years ago last Tuesday

Uncategorized

Michele and I were working on the Obama primary campaign making phone calls into Iowa. We believed that Obama was the Change We Need and we were Who We Have Been Waiting For. We believed that one man could change the trajectory of the country, could change the world. This year, we watched the Republicans play a strange game of musical chairs – or last man standing, or something – where each and every candidate – except Huntsman who is probably conservative enough but not pissed at Obama enough – rises to be the top runner over poor, hapless, Willard Romney1 and then sinks back into relative obscurity.

There was a time, last year, when I was pretty down over the presidency being over Obama’s head, over his detachment, over the job that Obama is doing, and I am still disappointed but I have stopped looking to him to be the answer. I think that he is a better than average president, but not the game changer we thought we so desperately needed. Still, for me, this year seems strangely hopeful.2

I don’t think that government is going to solve Global Climate Change – shit! the Federal government might not even really admit it exists until the seas rise above the streets of downtown Manhattan – but change seems to be bubbling up. From states and cities. From the private sector. And we are going to adjust to the new, more intense, weather. My biggest disappointment is that we are trashing our education system – at one time not too long ago, California’s higher education system was the best in the world and almost free – and that sucks and is unbelievably short sighted  (with no “but”). Still, while our country has become unbelievably unequal, the 99% live pretty well compared  to almost any place and any time in history.

Our health care is a mess – except for people like me who have single payer, commy, health care – unless you are rich, but the real problems are really how we eat and how we act and that may be changing. Or not. One thing that I think that I learned from watching Obama during the last – almost – five years is how entrenched the system is. It is much more difficult to bring about change today than it was during Roosevelt’s time; maybe because the special interests are stronger – the barnacle theory – maybe because Bush handed off  the economy to Obama too early in the cycle so he ended up sharing the blame unlike Roosevelt who came in after three disastrous years.

And I am strangely hopeful, Still.

1 Who, when Wolf Blitzer said his real name is Wolf, couldn’t resist saying that Mitt was his real name also. The poor sad-sack can’t help but lie when it doesn’t even help him.

2 Maybe just because I feel better about myself and am projecting it out on the country.