5/23/24

 Thursday, May 23, 2024

Prednisone, day 11.  I got up around 2 with some nagging, but not terrible, pains in both shoulders.  Both hands are also a bit stiff but not painful and I can make fists.  I checked myhealthevet.gov to see whether Dr. Ryzka's prescription for the 10 mg. prednisone had been mailed to me and saw that it had not, which surprised and disappointed me.  Having to go to the VA to pick up a prescription is a bit of an undertaking, 20 miles each way, coping with freeway traffic and construction, etc., but as it happens I'm going there today for a pedicure so I will happily pick up the 10 mg. prednisone.  Unless I receive a secure message from Dr. Ryzka today responding to my second message to him, I will take the additional prednisone without a lot of enthusiasm since it increases both my daily intake and cumulative intake of the corticosteroid, increasing to some degree the likelihood of unwanted side effects.  Plus, it will extend the weaning protocol. . .  I picked up the 10 mg. dosage this afternoon.

My overnight oatmeal this morning was particularly tasty with fresh raspberries and blueberries and Activia vanilla yogurt.  I also put more brown sugar in it last night though I know that is problematic with prednisone's effect on blood glucose.

Another younger classmate has died, Pete Ottmer, 4 years younger than me, a career Army lawyer after graduating in our MULS Class of 1970.  With my indolent, sedentary, unhealthy lifestyle, how have I lived so long?

Sarah's coming to town next month.  She'll be in the States during Peter's sojourn in Germany.  Small world.

Facebook posting.  I posted my memoir account of my time in Philadelphia serving as CACA.  I added the following at the beginning and at the end:

When I retired many year ago, I wrote a memoir of my earlier years, including my time in the Marine Corps, service in Vietnam, and in the year following my Vietnam service.  Each year, as Memorial Day approaches, my thoughts focus not on my time "in country," but on the year I returned to the States.  Here's why:

. . . 

(end) This weekend I will visit Wood National Cemetery as I do now on  Memorial Day weekends.  I will think of the thousands of veterans buried there, each under a common military headstone.  But mostly, for the many who were KIAs, WIAs, and MIAs, I will think of their mothers and fathers, their sisters and brothers, their wives and children and other family members who opened their doors to see someone like me, bearing terrible news.

and my own comment:

I made those CACO calls in 1966 and 1967, early on during the Vietnam War or, as I now think of it, our war on Vietnam. How many time over the last 57 years have I recalled, almost relived those experiences. They have colored my judgments on all wars and military adventures since. On my now many visits to the VA Medical Center on National Avenue, I usually approach through 'the back door,' i.e., through the National Cemetery and the Old Soldiers Home. These locations have come to take on something like a reverence for me, not because of my years of experiences in the Marines or in Vietnam, but because of my few experiences with those mothers and wives in their doorways. They made me ever conscious that the most innocent victims and the most-suffering heroes of our endless wars are those mothers, fathers, wives, children, friends and lovers of those our government sends off to kill and be killed. My sister told me that in 1965 when my mother oened and read my letter from Japan telling the family that I was on my way to Vietnam, she cried. She wept, as she must have wept when she learned my father was on Iwo Jima 20 years before that. To me, Mother's Day is a Hallmark holiday; Memorial Day is the real deal.

How well I remember, almost viscerally, the dread I felt each day as my CACO duty day approached and the relief I felt when I made it through the duty day without Pete Powell telling me "We've got another one."  We weren't called upon to make casualty calls late at night and I can't recall at what hour of the evening I was 'off the hook,' 8 o'clock?  9 o'clock?  But I do recall sitting in our living room in my full uniform after work, after dinner, keeping my eye on the clock and praying the telephone would not ring.  I was 25, 26 years old, feeling half-dead, preferring to be back in Vietnam to having CACO duty.

More Yeshayahu Leibowitz: from his essay,  Religious Praxis:

Only by virtue of the Halakah was Judaism delimited as a single independent and autonomous unit distinquishable from others . . .  The upshot was that Judaism as a historic entity was not constituted by its set of beliefs.  It was not embodied in any specific political or social order.  [It] did not consist of a specific ethic . . . Judaism as a specifically defined entity existing continuously over a period of three thousand years was not realized in philosophy, literature, art, or anything other than halakhic living.

. . .

 Current attempts to identify Judaism with the Hebrew Bible, which is presented as procliming values ideals, and a vision that "sshine with their own light," are unrelated to the Halakhah and are independent of it.   This kind of bibliolatry is Lutheran, not Jewish.

 Major accomplishment:  (1) I got my first haircut and beard trim since March 4th. (2) Got a pedicure at the VA.  (3) Changed my email address at the VA.  (4) Picked up my 10 mg. prednisone at the VA.

Pleasant sight:  A song sparrow or a pine siskin nabbing a big hunk of nesting material for our cotton ball.

Disappoimntment: No wallk with Judy or Rachel today.