Monday, November 25, 2024
D+20
1957 President Dwight Eisenhower suffered a mild stroke, impairing his speech
2023 VA ER, IC flare; first day of one year without coffee, carbonated & alcoholic drinks
In bed at 8:40, awake at 4:30, and up at 4:40.
Prednisone, day 195, 7.5 mg., day 11. Prednisone at 4:50. Sore shoulders, especially the right shoulder, painful right side mid-back. Morning meds at 6:25.
One year of cold turkey: no coffee or tea, no carbonated drinks, no wine, beer, or booze. All it took was horrific pain from my long-abused bladder and Andy's taking me to the VA Emergency Room. My journal entry:
Treadmill; pain. I woke up OK but the CPP started early on. Last night's pain was pretty nasty right up to bedtime. Intense pain this morning around 7:45, a 7 or 8, right kidney area, had me moaning and thinking about calling Andy to see if he or Anh or Peter could drive me to the VA emergency room since Geri is quarantined with COVID. It got better after 10 minutes or so. Where did that come from??? It came back @ 8:25. I typed out a text message to Andy but didn't send it; again the pain went away.???? Pain worsened at about 2, sent the text to Andy, who picked me up and took me to the Zablocki ER. Got there at 3, got home at 9. UTI or a flare of my IC.
How does a condition of the bladder (which turned out to be lesions or ulcers result in intense pain up around the right kidney? I was sure it must have been a kidney stone but the CT scan revealed none. It was my second trip to the VA ER with intense pain in my back that I (and Geri) thought had to be a kidney stone but on that first visit it was diagnosed as a UTI. Hard to figure. The lesions in my bladder were fulgurated on March 5th of this year with no bladder pain, or chronic pelvic pain since. Fingers crossed.🙏
How can we not hate them? The U.S. House passed legislation Thursday that would give the Treasury Department unilateral authority to strip the tax-exempt status of nonprofits it claims support terrorism, alarming civil liberties groups about how a second Trump presidency could invoke it to punish political opponents. Trump has appointed right-wing, reactionary, billionaire/millionaires Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, both of whom won the 'birth lottery' having 'come from money,' to dismantle government programs designed to make life more sustainable for millions of our fellow Americans who are not billionaires or millionaires, programs like Medicaid, Food Stamps, Head Start, ObamaCare, and others. Trump wants to put soldiers and Marines on the streets of America when civil rights demonstrators get unruly, perhaps to 'shoot them in the legs.'
Bicycle Thieves. I watched it again yesterday. Vittorio de Sica's masterpiece. I think of the plight of the Ricci family in that film when I think of people whose lives will be affected by the kinds of "efficiencies" that Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy would bring to the federal government. I think of those families now at the holiday season when I shop at food stores with their shelves chock full of expensive foodstuffs which I buy without concern about their prices but which so many cannot afford. I so often remember the long tracking shot in Godard's Tout Va Bien, hundreds of shoppers lined up in checkout lines at a supermarket. I think of being sent to Mr. Kelly's to get food without the money to pay for it. From my memoir:
I got my going-off-to-college clothes on Dave Fein's credit at a store on Roosevelt Road, one block north of Maxwell Street. I wonder how much that set back my parents. Many parents today get their school clothes at Goodwill or St. Vnnie or from the House of Peace. I can't forget those millions of people who live hand-to-mouth, paycheck-to-paycheck, pinching pennies and nickels, often going without, and living with a deep, low-intensity but ever-present anxiety about money.Because my Dad could not hold onto any job for long, we had precious little money. We lived from paycheck to paycheck, but sometimes there was no paycheck except what my mother earned waiting on tables at a neighborhood ice cream parlor and luncheonette at the corner of 74th and Halsted and later in restaurants. When we were out of money, I would be sent to Mr. and Mrs. Kelly’s small grocery store, a literal “mom and pop” operation on 73rd Street not more than 40 or 50 yards from our apartment to get what we needed for dinner. Mr. or Mrs. Kelly would add up the bill by hand (no cash register in the store) and write it on a piece of meat wrapping paper which was kept in a cigar box. When there were some earnings, I’d be sent to pay the bill. The Kellys were also our neighbors; they lived in an apartment building across the street from us. They had to know of the notorious crime against my mother and that my father was a wreck returned from the war. This knowledge may account for their willingness to put our food purchases “on the cuff” and their patience waiting to be paid.
We bought clothing through a ‘factor’ named Dave Fein. A factor was like an ambulatory bank or living credit card. Dave had credit accounts with clothing merchants on Roosevelt Road, just north of Maxwell Street. We bought clothes on Dave’s account because we couldn’t pay cash[and didn't have credit anywhere except with the Kelly's]. Dave went from door to door servicing his accounts. Every week or so, he would show up at the door to collect a payment on the account, sometimes 25 or 50¢, sometimes one dollar, rarely more. Dave carried his account book with him so he could enter his customers’ payments and inform them of their balances. If we had no money for him, we would ‘lay low’ in the apartment, not answering the door, keeping quiet and staying away from the kitchen and the bedroom. Dave (or anyone else) could see into the kitchen from the passageway next to our door and into the bedroom from the steps from the passageway up to the sidewalk outside. A few minutes after Dave stopped knocking, ‘the coast was clear’ and we could resume normal activity. The new clothes my parents bought me to go away to Marquette in 1959 were purchased at a store on Roosevelt Road on Dave Fein’s account.
Tuition at St. Leo’s Grammar School, which Kitty and I attended through 8th grade was sometimes an issue between my mother and my father. The tuition was $1.50 per month and there were times when we were slow paying. We also had to wear uniforms, for me a tan shirt and blue tie, for Kitty a blue jumper. My Dad didn’t think we needed to be going to a Catholic school but my mother would not hear of us going to the public school. The tuition at Leo High School was $15 per month, 10 times the grammar school tuition. My cousins also attended Catholic grammar school and high schools: Sacred Heart Grammar School, De La Salle High School for Jim and Doug, St. Martin (my mother’s alma mater) for Christine. The tuition payments for the five of us represented quite a sacrifice for our parents.
I don’t know that I thought of us as ‘poor’ in those days. We never went without food or clothing or a roof over our head (complete with hot water pipes) and we attended the Catholic school. It was impossible however not to be always aware that money was in short supply. This expense or that, like the Catholic school expenses, often led to bickering between my mother and father. His spending money for beer at the North Pole Tavern was a sure source of tension in the house. When he would occasionally pick up the tab or buy a round, my mother would “let him have it with both barrels.” The strain of living from hand to mouth, from payday to payday, is great and it takes a toll on people. The toll is greater when a member of the household is an alcoholic wasting precious money on beer or booze. Even as a child, there was some embarrassment or mortification at having to get food from the Kellys’ ‘on the cuff’’ or at avoiding Dave Fein when we had no money to pay on his account or no money to pay the tuition at St. Leo.
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