Tuesday, July 8, 2025
D+242/170/1291
1741 Theologian Jonathan Edwards preached perhaps the most famous of all American sermons, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," at Enfield, Connecticut, part of the Great Awakening
1969 US troop withdrawal began in Vietnam
2021 President Joe Biden said US troops would withdraw from Afghanistan by August 31, despite increased Taliban gains across the country
In bed at 9, awake around 3:30, and up at 4:10. 63°, high of 79°, cloudy.
Better Living through Chemistry used to be a slogan of DuPont Chemicals, if I remember correctly. It could be the slogan of the entire pharmaceutical industry today. In my July 2 journal entry, I posted a photo of my morning handful of chemicals that I take every day. To it, I could have added my weekly injection of Trulicity and my bi-weekly injection of Kevzara. Kevzara, however, is a "biologic," not a chemically-based med. How long have I been ingesting physician-prescribed chemicals? Years? Decades? Surely the latter. Did it start with medicines for blood pressure, or gout, or diabetes? Perhaps GERD? I can't remember. I started needing reading glasses at age 40 and started using hearing aids in my mid-70s, but I can't remember when I started with the daily chemicals. I recall feeling some shock when I asked Dr. Baugrud how long I should take allopurinol to fix my gout, and she said, "For the rest of your life." I had a similar reaction when Pat Keane told me I needed surgery to repair my inguinal hernia. Surgery! Was I in my 30s or 40s? Now I've been told that I need surgery to increase the size of the opening on the tip of my penis, a procedure called meatotomy or sometimes meatoplasty. The thought of it sickens and depresses me. Anatamists and doctors seem to have a name for every divisible part of the human body; the name for the opening at the end of a man's penis is meatus, a term regretably close to the word meat. A narrowing of the meatus is called meatal stenosis, which is what I have. It is clearly a relatively recent development since it did not exist on March 5, 2024, when I underwent the bladder fulguration at the VA. The surgery notes indicate no problem inserting the catheter and accessing my bladder with both the camera and the fulgurating instrument. Nor have there been any access problems during any of my many prior fulgurations and catheterizations. Where did this come from? Might this be an autoimmune problem? Is it perhaps related to Jardiance? Ditto the scrotal itching/irritation? The young urologist (Dr. Isaac Melin) seemed to think of the condition as a cause of the other problems rather than an effect. Who knows? Jardiance can cause necrotizing fasciitis of the perineum. It increases the amount of sugar in the urine,, and with the leaking, dripping, or spurting problem I've had, the itching is not surprising, either from a fungal infection (warmth, darkness, moisture, and sugar invite fungus) or some other cause. Whatever the cause and interrelation of my several current urological problems, on August 5 I am scheduled to have my glans penis 'under the knife.' Fuck.
After my examination by young Dr. Melin in Urology, I visited with young Dr. (Ph.D.) Kelly Bergstrom in Mental Health. She administered the VA's standard suicide risk questionnaire to me and interviewed me for about an hour, by the end of which she assessed that I was a suicide "positive" risk under the VA's system. I don't think this was related to my prior visit with Dr. Melin, because I was, if not exactly upbeat and optimistic during our visit, at least very candid, forthcoming, and talkative, perhaps befitting a former lawyer and law professor. The "positive" rating meant that Dr. Bergstrom had to go through a much longer interview and develop a 'safety plan' for me. The whole process took about 2 hours and 20 minutes. I think it was largely a waste of her time and mine, but I know the VA is very concerned about suicides among veterans, and this process clearly was part of how they are dealing with it. I agreed to see her one more time, the hour before my appointment with Dr. Ryzka in Rheumatology on 7/21, though I may cancel. I pointed out to her what I'm sure she already knew, i.e., that there is built-in conflict in counseling potential suicides, the patient's desire to be dead militates against participating in a process intended to dissuade him from getting there. On the other hand, there is perhaps no more selfish process in life than participating in a counseling/therapy session; all the attention is on you. For the length of your session, you are the center of the universe. Your thoughts and feelings, even if insane, are supremely important. It's a very self-indulgent process. "May I have your undivided attention, please? Thank you, thank you."
Two years ago today, apropos my visit with Kelly Bergstrom:
Night terrors, day terrors. I don't have bad dreams all that often, at least so far as I am conscious, but I do wake up in the middle of one occasionally. My repeated bad dream, experienced many times over many years, was of knowing there was somebody in the room in the middle of the night. It was a result of 'Jimmy' Hartman's crime against my mother, Kitty, and me on September 30, 1947. Last night I had a dream that one dear to me fell down a rugged mountain slope. It was pretty vivid; it shook me up and woke me up. I was out of sorts all morning and part of the afternoon, not exactly depressed or anxious, but decidedly unwell. The feeling wasn't helped by reading the morning papers which, as always, featured a lot of bad news of various sorts but, among the rest, stories of medical challenges of the elderly and of lack of staffing at elderly facilities. The story reminded me of my (and probably nearly all old folks') day terror, of falling ill with a serious disease that requires institutionalization, loss of home, and loss of autonomy. I'm approaching the end of my 82nd year of life and about to enter my mid-80s. There is something terrifying about that, not the fear of inevitable death, but the fear of sudden or gradual diminishment, fear of the incapacitating stroke or of any of the several kinds of dementia. In Vietnam, there was that stupid wood-burned sign some 'patriot' hung in our hootch, 'Better dead than Red,' but now both Geri and I can visualize physical and mental conditions where we believe 'better dead than [that.]" What if anything should we be doing about it? Not an easy question to grapple with. Maybe I shouldn't have been so quick to bow out of the session with the nice Ph.D. candidate from Marquette a few months ago.
Pass the basin, please. Headline in this morning's NY Times: Netanyahu Releases Letter Nominating Trump for Nobel Peace Prize. Further your correspondent saith not.
In a news release, VA said that it was on pace to reduce its total staff by nearly 30,000 employees by the end of this fiscal year, a push that the department said eliminates the need for a “large-scale reduction-in-force.” The announcement marks a significant reversal for the Trump administration, which had planned for months to cut VA by roughly 83,000 employees, according to plans revealed in an internal memo circulated to agency staffers in March. At the time, VA Secretary Douglas A. Collins said in remarks shared to social media that the cuts were tough but necessary.In a statement to The Washington Post, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (Connecticut), the top Democrat in the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee, said Monday’s announcement “makes clear VA is bleeding employees across the board at an unsustainable rate because of the toxic work environment created by this Administration and DOGE’s slash and trash policies.”“This is not ‘natural’ attrition, it is not strategic, and it will inevitably impact veterans’ care and benefits — no matter what blanket assurances the VA Secretary hides behind,” Blumenthal said.
A thought: Russia has Siberia's gulags, America has the Everglades Alcatraz.
A gift to the Evangelicals, Trump, and MAGAa. Today's WaPo:
The IRS said in a new court filing that clergy and houses of worship should be allowed to make political endorsements, a potential move away from an 71-year-old tax policy that banned the mixing of religion and politics.
Banning nonprofits — including congregations — from participating in political campaigns violates the First Amendment’s protection of the right to the free exercise of religion and freedom of speech, IRS Commissioner Billy Long said in a court filing Monday in a Texas federal court case.
Nonprofits should be allowed to make political endorsements and not lose their tax exemption, the IRS said in the court filing. Religious congregations, the filing said, are like families and communication between them should not be deemed “participation” in a campaign.
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