8/11/24

Sunday, August 11, 2024

1919 Green Bay Packers football club founded by George Calhoun and Curly Lambeau - named after sponsor Indian Packing Company

1954 Formal peace treaty ended over 7 years of fighting in Indochina between the French and the Communist Viet Minh

1984 During a radio voice test, US President Reagan joked that he "signed legislation that would outlaw Russia forever.  We begin bombing in 5 minutes."

1988 Al-Qaeda formed at a meeting between Osama Bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and Dr Fadl in Peshawar, Pakistan

2020 Biden announced Kamala Harris as his running mate.

In bed by 9, awake at 2:45, and up and out by 3 to let Lilly out.     

Prednisone, day 91, 15 mg., day 13/14.   I took the 15 mg. at 4:45 a.m. followed by Dave's buttered bread at 5:15, and morning meds at 7:15.

Today marks the end of one month since I awoke with a painful hip on July 12th.  My opening journal entry that day: "In bed at 9 and up at 4 with lower backache.  Lilly came out at 4:55 to be let out.  When I stood up, I had considerable pain in my right hip, a new pain making it painful to stand and walk."  How was it that overnight I went from no pain in my hip to 'considerable pain making it painful to stand and walk"?  Was it related to the backache, the 'severe arthritis at L4-L5, L5-S1?  Relatedly, it has also been a month since I've gone to the basement, to paint, stretch my big canvas, retrieve Kleenex or paper towels or toilet paper, or do anything.  My printed daily journal entries from July 12th onward lie atop the printer waiting to be brought downstairs to join 2 years' worth of earlier journal entries.  I'm confident I could get down the basement stairs alright, but equally confident I wouldn't be able to climb them.  Should I spend thousands on a stair chair?  It's also been more than a month since I've set foot on the patio.  I missed the flowering of our bottlebrush buckeye bush and wondered whether my Cuban oregano plant would survive its long neglect on the patio table.

What are the sequellae of the month of pain and inability to stand and walk?  (1) My leg muscles have significantly weakened so that (a) I can't get up from a chair using just my leg muscles, I need to push myself up with my arms, and (b) I can't confidently mount even a single stair or step.  (2)  My likelihood of falling has significantly increased because of my altered and awkward gait as well as balance challenges.  (3) My diet has been significantly altered because of the inability to prepare meals.  During the day, I eat 'grab and go' food, lots of fruit, berries, cottage cheese, sardines, marinated herring, crackers, dense bread, etc.  (4)  As a result of the altered diet and daily prednisone, my blood glucose is persistently high; current 7 day A1c is 7.9, 30 day A1c is 7.7.  (5) I have developed a "bed sore" or pressure ulcer on my butt, causing me considerable concern.  (6) I regularly rely on my rollator for walking around the house, now that I can do some walking after the hip injection.  Life does indeed turn on a dime.  Most significantly, I still have the pain in my hip, thigh, and knee so I'm thinking the injection didn't work, or did it?  I'm more able to stand and walk than I was before the injection, but far from pain-free.

ON THE OTHER HAND, Andy returned my car this morning before going to mass.  I took it up to Mequon to fill the gas tank and get it washed and then went to Best Buy in Fox Point to buy black ink cartridges for our printer.  I managed to fill the gas tank and to walk to and from the back of Best Buy using only my cane, i.e., without Judy, without significant trouble, i.e., only the now normal unsteadiness and gait issues.  Later in the afternoon, I took a 2-hour drive through Dacada in Ozaukee County and up to Waldo in Sheboyboygan County.  I was in 'seventh heaven,' stunningly beautiful farm fields, farmhouses, silos, barns, and other buildings.  The sky today was a gorgeous cerulean blue with widely scattered, puffy, cottony white clouds hovering in the air.  There are miles and miles of corn still in the fields, and soybeans, alfalfa, and what else in the ground, but it looks like most of the hay has already been harvested and bundled into bales and ricks.  There was hardly a car on the country roads I drove over, and not many even on Highway 57.  Tonight is the Perseid meteor shower which should be visible late.  Will I remember to step outside and look when I get up in the middle of the night?  Will my hip and knee (still iffy) permit it?  The photo above is of the farmhouse next door to the stables where I used to volunteer as a helper to an occupational therapist who provided 'hippotherapy' to severely disabled children.  All I did was lead the horses by their halters in the arena or on the pastures while she did her professional work, but I was helpful and enjoyed the work.  One of the therapy patients was the son of my former faculty colleague and now long-term dean at MULS.  Dealing with some of the gentle hills in the pastures and with trotting became something of a challenge for me as my own condition deteriorated.  As I drove past the stables this afternoon, I saw that there were still many horses boarded there and they all appeared to be out on the pastures on this beautiful afternoon.  The photo below is of the farmer's barn and adjacent pasture, showing the gorgeous clouds pending above.  These fields are often messy, with grazing animals, farm implements, motor vehicles of all sorts, boats, and what-have-you strewn about, not like our neat suburban streets with weekly-trimmed lawns and gardens and precisely-placed decorative trees.  I"'m always reminded of how easy it is to understand why rural folks are Republicans, disliking the kind of intrusive regulations that urbanites and suburbanites live with as a matter of course. 

Anniversaries thoughts.  First, the Packers.  I just thought I couldn't ignore this one.  What an impact that business has had in Wisconsin for the last 125 years.  And I'm remembering suffering at the 1967 Ice Bowl with Carl Horst.

Second, the Geneva Accords divided Vietnam just short of my 13th birthday.  10 years later I landed in Chu Lai on my way to Danang.  The U.S. financed France's losing effort to maintain its imperial status in SouthEast Asia and then financed its own unsuccessful effort to create and maintain its own imperial status in SouthEast Asia.  Fools.

Third, Reagan's on-air joke about bombing and outlawing Russia 'forever.'  We wonder why the Russians are so deeply distrustful of the U.S. and the West.  I think of this in connection with the great effort to expand NATO membership after the break-up of the Soviet Union and to surround Russia with hostile forces, even in Ukraine, so historically connected to Russian history and culture.  Who really is responsible for Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2014 and annexation of Crimea?

Fourth, it was 36 years ago that OBL, Zawahiri, and Fadl created al-Qaeda.  The U.S. drove the organization out of Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, killed Bin Laden in Pakistan in 2011, and killed Zawahiri in Kabul in 2022.  Dr. Fadl fell out with the others over doctrinal and other disputes and apparently is still alive.  Also still alive are the ideas of Islamicism, jihad, pan-Arabism, and 'the Caliphate, all the ideas and grievances that underly al-Qaeda, ISIS, Islamic Jihad, Hamas, Hezbollah, and all sorts of Arab and Muslim-related terror organizations.  Killing the leaders, as the U.S. and Israel do with great self-congratulations, doesn't kill the ideas, the grievances, or the goals of the leaders and their thousands of followers.  We were supposed to have learned this after 9/11, though I doubt that our government did.  Netanyahu has never learned it, which is why we are now on or near the precipice of a major earth-shattering war in the Middle East over Israel's assassination of the Hezbollah leader in Beirut and the Hamas leader in Teheran.

Lastly, who would have believed in 2020 that Harris would be at the top of the Democratic ticket in 2024?  Who would have wished it then?  Wasn't she the first to drop out of the 2020 race, unable to find financial backers, even before the Iowa caucuses?