By Maggie Garuccio, ART in cooperation with N. Garuccio, CDMT
Do you remember in the 1990s how everyone seemed to be reading “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” by Robert Pirsig. Well, perhaps you were like me and never really read the whole thing.
I admit it. I am one of those who bought the book and only read parts of it, enjoying the little stories and anecdotes about the journey, but for some reason, just never really interested in the details. Zen is like that. But, two days ago, when I decided to write a summary of everything I learned about wound care and management and Jim Quinn literally stole the idea for subtitling an essay “Lessons Learned” and plopped in into his “Ten Years Later and No Lessons Learned” post, I asked the Tadpole for some punny title advice, but I got nothing from my Unreliable wordsmithing buddy here on TBP. I’m hearing crickets here, Doug.
I played around with the idea of Zen and the Art of Wound Maintenance enough that it led me right where I needed to go. I marched thirty years back into a time in my life ruled by order and discipline and the comfortable structure that surrounded my years in AWACS. That was a time when following instructions again and again and discussing procedures to critique errors and missteps, then debriefing the lessons learned just to make sure every opportunity for improving the routine is identified was a routine part of my life. There are many things about the military I do not miss, but the thoroughness of such details of training is something I do love and I do miss. I loved being part and parcel of something bigger than me, even though God has granted me my dream of living out the rest of my life in quiet companionship with my husband here in the suburbs of the sticks outside Podunk nowhere. I enjoyed the sense of comradery we all had in AWACS back then.
And all of us who flew the AWACS journey remember the never-ending weapons debriefs following every single mission, beating that dead horse midstream until the cows refused to come home. It was just part of it that sometimes people took too far. It is sound policy, though, the debrief and Lessons Learned and I know there are a bunch of AWACS crewdogs out there who can help me reminisce about all those mission debriefs we groaned through. But honestly, if you want to define and improve every single improvement that can be found in a process, you will continue to beat that dead horse until you have to change gears and sail away.
This past weekend my husband and I found ourselves here over Labor Day Holiday with no place to turn but to our 25 years of marriage and commitment, which happens to include dual careers in AWACS, similar but different though they were. My advice on Wound Maintenance doesn’t require knowing much about Zen or AWACS, but it does require you grasp that self-critique and review are the only way to handle any wide gaping wounds. In the end, the title wrote itself and I struggled most of the night to make it come together so I could tell you what I want it to say. I decided to use a couple of Pirsig’s fine terms and principles but I didn’t want to go full blown Zen. Anyone who knows a thing about Zen knows and gets a certain fundamental truth in Zen. You are Zen whether you know it or not.
There are many things we can just bandage up in a roughshod way, good enough, without worrying about long term healing or impact. But, when you actually have a wound requiring careful attention, you have just two choices: Clean it and seal it OR Die Trying. I don’t do the Die Trying thing.
I had emergency surgery a couple weeks ago, feared and suspected but dreaded and denied as long as I could do so, praying my son could graduate without having yet another study session for finals in a hospital by Mom’s side. I made it with a whole week to spare. He was here to watch the animals while Nick hauled me off toward St. Louis, seeking a hospital with a bed to put me in while they figured out why I could not keep food down. It turned out to be a bit more complex than that and I had surgery at 3 a.m. Sunday morning at MoBap in St Louie.
Within a day or so after surgery, I was barely sitting up when an Admin Doctor was visiting regularly to make sure I was on schedule to go home. They don’t seem to like patients much in hospitals and when your insurance is TriCare connected, the government’s insurance for retired military members and their families, then they really don’t like you. This is because TriCare has its own set of rules dictating how much money hospitals can bill them for that military member’s care and rules against balanced billing, which Nick and I had the sense to learn when I first started having medical issues which butted against a thing called catastrophic cap. But really, it doesn’t matter what insurance you have; there is an Admin doctor somewhere who is counting the pennies being spent on your care and resenting the fact that you are still there to use any of it. Billing your insurance without you there is much better. That way, you will not have to use any of their stuff. I told Nick the guy was beginning to suggest I was I was a slacker Tuesday, but I refused to give in to his insistence I looked better until those damn wound nurses I’d been promised came to show me what I was supposed to do with the sutures and bandages. They came Wednesday and Thursday and by 7 p.m. Thursday evening, I was home. Friday, I had my first home health visit and the disaster promised by my surgeon hit within hours of that visit. I will reserve the details of that fiasco for another day, perhaps a letter to the home health care managers. Suffice it to say Nick got blindsided because the whole wound care issue was supposed to be invisible to him. I wanted it that way.
This isn’t going to offer you “how to” advice on navigating the medical system. It is not going to focus on the mistakes made in the hospital discharge process which led to my being here, at home, without care and without a bandage on what was a terrifying wound even when it was stapled shut. After the failure of the wound vacuum, my husband and I looked across the gaping hole in my lower stomach at each other and did what we do best. We grabbed a handful of gumption* and reviewed the situation and reviewed the bandaging process and reviewed how the hell we were going to get through the next three days until a doctor’s office was open and we did what we do best: we coped.
We’ve learned as much as we’ve learned because we realized, early on, that the medical system is the entity your doctor struggles with and against as he/she tries to save your life. What I hope to do here is provide you with a couple of tools to use when opening up your own raw wounds and getting them cleaned, sterile and packed so as to discontinue the loss of blood and fluid. Nick and I addressed a very real open wound complication which seemed ready to defeat us this past Labor Day Weekend. At the end of the day, we returned to the training and discipline which has served us best all these long years dealing with crisis after crisis, both in health care situations and in family and personal crisis: Lessons Learned methodology. These are techniques for noting and identifying processes for improvement and understanding Lessons Learned is invaluable, whether you are ripping a bandage from a festering wound or if you are facing an enormous upside down mortgage or the coming onslaught of the federal debt. Rip the bandages off and look at it, identify what you need to fix it and get busy doing so. Otherwise, you will do what I refuse to do: Die Trying.
The wound is festering whether you are willing to address it or not. If you have the gumption to face it, like my husband and I, then you will probably get through the ordeal and manage to close your own wound in a crisis. If you lack gumption and your plan is to wait until the nanny state tells you where you can get some gumption, then I suggest you get yourself well stocked with some quality hard liquor. Because having an open wound with no pain relief is difficult and dangerous enough, but expecting our government to address what is, obviously, a personal and individual problem is suicidal. Quality bourbon or a good single-malt scotch will go a long way toward easing the pain of wound resolution by dying trying. I like Crown Royal Black Label, but I’m not planning to Die Trying. I’m planning to celebrate my son’s 25th birthday in November and my stepson’s upcoming marriage next June. To hell with Dying Trying.
After waking up in recovery to discover I had a rather large bandaged area smack dab on top of an incision made for a previous (but related) surgery almost twenty years ago, I was almost in despair, remembering how very painful recovery from that emergency surgery had been when my son was just five years old. I asked the doctor how long I should expect to be off my feet. He told me he expected me to be up and walking in days, not weeks. I didn’t believe him immediately, but within three days he turned out to be correct. He explained that the incision was intentionally placed on the old scar to minimize additional scarring and adhesions, which are guilty for my current complications and illness. The wound care nurses came by to assess my surgical wound and taught me how to keep the staples clean and the skin area cleaner. We were all very satisfied I would be just fine through the coming Labor Day weekend as long as my home health care service approved by the Veterans Administration was scheduled to visit Friday, the day after I was scheduled for release from St. Louis medical facilities.
I arrived “home” last Thursday, getting back to Narnia around 7 p.m. I claimed the entire family room as my recovery area and told my son he would be living in the basement until he left to go to job interviews later this month. Just graduated from college, with less than a week “home” since finishing the last three-credit-hour class required to finish his rocket scientist credential, I was mortified at ruining our long-awaited celebration of his achievement (a 3.1+ GPA in computer engineering/computer science is not too shoddy for a white boy with zero hopes of affirmative action credentials to bolster his qualifications for financial assistance, so as his Momma, I claim the right to brag here). But, I didn’t want him seeing me cleaning this ugly line of staples on my belly so I turned mean enough to get him angry enough to move out of our guest room and settle into the mancave my husband built in the basement for his own safety and solace when I’m in a mood. One day I hope my son reads this and knows that my kicking him out was the only gift I could manage after the series of unfortunate events which brought me home to recuperate from surgery last week. Son, I’m seriously proud of you.
And now that my old Air Force twin aka Normal Me, has you out there in Maryland helping her with a few things while I get back on my feet, I hope you will know this was perhaps, the best thing I could possibly do for you. And, if not, forgive me for trying.
He stomped off downstairs and within an hour, his father and he were hauling the mattress and box springs out the front door and downhill to take them into the basement via the entrance from ground level, rather than down the actual basement steps, which are narrow and not easily navigated, especially when carrying a large bulky item like a mattress or a wounded wife, which is why I’m not down there myself. They glared at me and I glared back. Nobody takes shit from anybody around here. Especially me. That young man was present at the emergency room the first time I almost died in transit there. He was five and clinging to my arm while a triage nurse took my blood pressure and said to my best friend Trina in a calm but stern voice, “If that is her son he needs to be gone because her blood pressure is 60 over 40 and falling and he is about to be very frightened.” Trina also has gumption. She took my little boy by the hand and said “C’mon, Joey. The doctors will take good care of her.” I didn’t see the kid for almost three weeks, but I also didn’t worry about him one bit. God has blessed me with stellar friends at the exact hour I need them.
So, moving into the basement after his successful college finish is kind of par for the course. Instead of coddling me and agreeing it was too stressful on me to worry about him walking past me while performing wound care, he just gave me a dirty look and said “Well, we all know it is all about you, don’t we Mother?” in a really snarky tone. I believe the several times he’s had to assist in getting me through hospital visits contribute to the ability to apply dry, chapped witticism to any and all crisis situations. During one emergency room visit in 2011, while still in high school, charged by his father to “watch your mother’s blood pressure while they are infusing her with antibiotics” because my pressure tends to drop suddenly and without warning into the danger zone (see that 60/40 mentioned above) due to the combination of hydrocephalus and a natural tendency for low blood pressure, he intentionally baited me by drinking coffee in front of me when he knew it was what I wanted more than anything. He really is a brat, but he is also the second of the two men I trust with my life no matter what.
The antibiotics infusion was intended to get on top of a low-level infection which my family doctor tested for and identified earlier that morning, prompting him to bring my son in from the waiting room to brief him on how to get me to the Mercy Hospital and NeuroScience Institute on the northern side of OKC. On the way there, I wanted a cup of coffee (knowing full well they were going to give me little pieces of ice at BEST once I got hooked up to an IV dripline) and I asked him to stop. The little brat refused, telling me that Doc Moser told him to take me directly to the Mercy Emergency room and ask for a certain person with whom our longtime family doctor had already made arrangements for my care. He was 17 then and it made me very angry when he refused to stop to get me a cup of coffee.
We didn’t speak again until we arrived at the emergency room, where he told me he’d park the car and be back in a few minutes. I told him I could handle it from this point on (I was really pissed about not getting any coffee!) and not to bother until someone called for him. He glared at me and told the nurse he would be right back. About the time they got me settled onto a table/bed with an IV drip saturating my system with antibiotics, my son sauntered in with a cup of coffee (brat!) and sipped it while sitting on the floor at the end of my bed staring at the red numbers on the big unit monitoring my vital signs.
I suggested he take a rest and go see a movie or stroll the local mall nearby while the three-hour infusion completed. He declined, telling me I wasn’t the boss of him, making sure I knew his Dad had given him orders to watch my blood pressure and he meant to follow those orders, not mine. I was sincerely touched less than an hour later when he stopped someone walking past the doorway carrying a clipboard and asked if she might take a look at my blood pressure which had “dropped” to 90/58 and, per Dad’s orders, he was staying on top of it. The woman, an administration type gathering insurance data for billing purposes, told him she was not a nurse and tried to leave. My son wouldn’t let her go, saying to her (and I am not kidding!), “Well, perhaps you KNOW a nurse you could send here to check on my mother.”
Damn right I’m proud of him and even though he was overreacting, I feigned sleep until the nurse came to allow him to take charge and do what he could to protect my blood pressure, which he was watching like a hawk, per Dad’s orders.
But, this isn’t about my son except in the sense that everything that makes any sense in my life is completely wrapped up in my love for my son and his brother, my stepson Vinny. Those two boys, who have nothing and everything in common, are the reason God put me here. Their father, the CDMT in the equation, is the glue that binds us together for better or for worse.
It isn’t about him either, but it is about our shared background in AWACS aircrew operations and processes. It is simply about how we managed to cope with the ultimate in medical system and care failure, by reaching across the decades to seize upon what we both knew works in a crisis situation. Debrief and critique to form checklists in order to make a step by step procedural instruction that covers every aspect of the job you are facing. Visit and re-visit each step to evaluate if there is a step missing or one that should be moved. Once that checklist is in hand, the only thing one needs to manage the process/procedure is the gumption to face what incidental things might come. It was not a big surprise to me that in spite of how much I’d grown to resent the bureaucratic nature of the AWACS command structure we both were part of at Tinker AFB as black-patch evaluators, when faced with a crisis we had no idea how to handle, we did what we knew how to do. We held a mission planning session to prepare to assess and address my open wound. We talked about the failures of the last wound bandage change and identified every single thing Nick would need to clean and pack my wound before he even thought about taking the bandage off to view what we were dealing with. Nick and I looked across the increasingly angry wound on my belly a few days ago and grabbed hold of enough gumption to seize control of what was a rapidly deteriorating situation.
The first bandage change was pretty good for his first time and I only critiqued the second too long the surgical clips were in the wound pulling out soaked clumps of gauze, but not until the wound was repacked and covered. There is a time and place for it all, folks, but when someone is cleaning and packing your open wound, discretion wins over a bitchy urge to criticize the only person you can count on no matter what. I thanked Nick for doing it so well and told him I needed those pain pills the old crotchety Navy doctor wrote me a prescription for, even though he is NOT my surgeon. He is a real doctor and if you have one of those, you are one lucky person in the current environment in our country hostile to health care. Nick heard my groan and his next wound repack was flawless.
As experts in our respective fields (mine, radar and his, onboard computer), we’d both had training in drafting and writing the step-by-step instructions which dictate almost every aspect of an aircrew member’s job. That training and experience served us well. The results for us have been good. We are hoping the next visit from the wound nurse (later today) will go smoothly and that our mad middle of the night scramble to figure out what to do in a situation no one could ever be prepared to handle as an amateur is the last time we ever have to do it. But, I gotta tell you something. I’m pretty smug about what we managed to accomplish all by ourselves out here in the middle of the woods.
Operations Debrief on this lessons learned is gonna be a piece of cake.
*Gumption is the perfect word choice in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I commend the author for his fine attention to meaning and intentionally flatter him by using it here. In the book, Pirsig writes, “like the word “gumption” because it’s so homely and so forlorn and so out of style it looks as if it needs a friend and isn’t likely to reject anyone who comes along. It’s an old Scottish word, once used a lot by pioneers, but which, like “kin,” seems to have all but dropped out of use. I like it also because it describes exactly what happens to someone who connects with Quality. He gets filled with gumption.” You will find the description of gumption around the 135ish page of the book, available online.
http://arvindguptatoys.com/arvindgupta/zen-motorcycle.pdf
**Now, I would like to give a shout out to a few of my former AWACS colleagues. Lori Robinson, when you were at Tyndall in Fighter Weapons School, I was becoming the 5th female ART on AWACS and we actually flew together a time or two when you were in training at Tinker before you went on to bigger and better things. I am the radar tech everyone said reminded them of the first female ART, Julie Cameron. Julie, being my mentor from a distance, laughed when I told her that and said it was probably because we wore the same size flight suit and we both had brown hair. If you remember Julie, you also remember our mutual friend Shirley Godsil, who later worked with you when you were in Wing Command at Tinker AFB during the 1990s. Shirley is now just over the meadow and through the woods in St. Louis, a real comfort to me in spirit. But, I was still around when you were in command, although I was busy with my toddler and Nick’s elementary school aged son while I attended college a couple days a week and enjoyed the privileges associated with being an honorably discharged USAF AWACS Aircrew Member living the near Tinker AFB OK. I really do admire women like you, Lori, and Shirley, who commit to their careers with the same devotion I commit to my family. But this is really about shared backgrounds. You are military weapons strategists through and through. I, personally, was glad to see you were part of the military advisors at Trump’s side. You were one of the few female weapons officers who seemed to “get” the value of the grapevine in the military organization longagofaraway in AWACS. You probably do not remember me, but you might remember an airman named Hescock from Wing Safety Training who had the unfortunate run-in with the vacuum over in the Life Support building. And you might even remember my ex-husband from New Hampshire and then realize why yours and my paths rarely crossed after Desert Storm. Enough said. THAT grapevine is what I am talking about.
Our government is saturated by traitors. I don’t know if there is a prayer of actually doing anything about it. But, I am hoping and believing you are that same determined woman I knew in AWACS long ago, who could follow that rumor mill as well as the best of us. Perhaps, someone who cut her wisdom teeth in AWACS can figure out how to detect and extract the enemy targets from all the clutter around you. And if you can’t seem to do it, then find yourself an old ART and see if they can’t help. We ARTS were an odd bunch, especially when trying to track down a target detection in a sea of chaff. I wish you well, Lori Robinson, and hope you are do not fall victim to the corruption that permeates our nation’s capital. Good on you, Lori. Now, go save the day.
And the rest of you crew dogs just sit tight and review your operations manual for improvement in the process. Because when the bandage gets ripped off it will be up to you to figure out what to do about it. Nick and I managed to clean it and cover it and move on. I suggest you do the same
dipity is a nice word too.
Holly O, I was thrilled to see you here yesterday and your popping in inspired me to jump into this essay with the passion only a freedom of speaking loving sister like you can understand. I will stand with you, Holly O, in those dark hours of the night when they are coming to shut you down.
A friend of mine, in AWACS, once told me a true friend was someone you could call at 3 a.m. and say “I need a thousand dollars and a gun” and that true friend replies, “i’m on my way.”
I have always been that good friend for my friends and what appears to be backstabbing here is just a bunch of pathetic curdogs yapping at their bettters’ heels. Don’t pay attention to it if you can ignore it, but if you can’t? LEARN TO USE THEIR HATE AS FUEL.
Because the world is getting ready to be really scary. It is time to sort through your friends, family and cyberacquaintances and decide which ones you want to both to spend your valuable time upon. Choose wisely, Holly O and T4C (you brave death nurse!) and others here who have put their heart, soul and minds on the line to try to help a few people look at things another way.
I said it before and I will say it again…
If you are the kind that prays, please pray.
If you are the kind that ponders, please ponder.
If you are the kind that resents and criticizes, please resent and criticize.
But, while you criticize me, look down into the dark depths of the depair you are standing in to be able to so violently and irrationally loathe and hate a woman who has survived something most of you will never ever have to survive or even face.
And, I did it with as much Grace and Dignity as I could muster.
Thanks Jim for staying out of the cesspool, when I know you wanted to rein your monkeys in a bit, knowing as you do, the whole story.
And thank you LGR for sending the beer! My wound nurse just left and she said that if the wound vac hold us through the weekend, I can have a beer or two with my dinner. In light of my being a one woman Ann Barnhardt fan club, I will admit being a bit uncomfortable waiting for a box of your beer to arrive.
LGR sent me Horny Monk and Dirty Blonde before, but I really kind of like that Horny Monk best. That’s kind of creepy with all the crap going on at the Vatican right now, isn’t it?
Serendipity. But, dipity works too.
Crewdogs reply here to send Nick the Knife your condolences for still being married to me. LOL… the rest of you hang around if you like people who like freedom. But, stay away from the curdogs. Tune your ears to the background hum of the radar and help me filter out the chaff and clutter. There’s probably a war coming.
For my three AWACer buds who have emailed me to say you enjoyed the read and commend Nick for his steadfast devotion to being a wonderful husband, father and all around good guy, I want to tell you that I still have high hopes Lori will check in, but if she hasn’t showed up by tomorrow, I will contact the “big guns” in my little toolbox.
Alexandro! You and Cheri are welcome here anytime. You should have known that. When you transferred from homeland security to the IRS in Dallas, I was a bit surprised. I thought your Cuban background was perfect for that sneaky kind of stuff.
I may have some names for you to investigate for me buddy. Email me later.
Gripping..and good advice, Maggie. I have been thinking about you off and on this morning and I log in while at lunch and lookee what I find! I am amazed at how you can be so lucid considering all of the mess you have had to deal with.
Sometimes I have trouble following your comments..I freely admit. I am a bona fide ADD survivor. By that I mean that they diagnose you and then push drugs on you. I tried the drugs years ago and they made me jittery and unsettled. You just learn to deal with it other ways. I know people think there is no such thing and I believe they are right, medically I don’t believe it needs drugs. It’s just they way we are wired, like being left handed. You work with it.
So when you comment, sometimes I get lost because it’s like a Trip To Branson the long way. Lots of scenery and I get distracted and by the time we get there I’m still musing about the scenery 100 miles back.
I’m sorry you got stuck in the “Medical Gulag” as Fleabaggs like to call it. I think it’s a good analogy. I almost got drug into that myself but that’s another story.
Sorry I think I maybe just took us to Branson myself.
I agree the wound in our system needs to be cleaned but in that case, probably should be exposed to the air instead of covered.
I do tend to ramble, but believe me when I tell you that there is intelligent design in the ramble. It is my personal style of storytelling and it has served me well. It doesn’t intimidate good writers, like yourself, who want to edit until things are closer to perfect. I just didn’t want to “over” edit this piece, but I am also a bit worn out from needing to get this posted and out of my thoughts. It has been a real labor of love because AWACS and the core values Nick and I learned there have served us well. We hate seeing what has happened to the military we once loved being part of and I have very high hopes we will be hearing from at least a couple of them here very soon. But, if not, I still wrote the piece as if I were simply talking directly to hundreds of old friends who will laugh and chuckle at “hearing” me on a ramble again after all these years…
Imagine my crew scrambling out of Iceland to intercept several pairs of Soviet Bears heading toward our coastline with me talking though the event on internal communication channel (private chat but with headsets and dial-in radio) as if I were the narrator of the effort to stand against the onslaught of Communism by focusing all our radar’s energy toward finding and intercepting the threat to our nation. (Actually weapons team members directed escort fighters to intercept, but hey… it was fun pretending I had anything to do with the intercepts and it made for some very funny internal radio chats about standing guard against Tyrants).
Something like this during takeoff:
And so she rises, the platform of diplomacy and the bulwark against communist oppression, a single E-3 AWACS plane, defiant a nd capable against the evil empire. From standing alert to flying cap on top of the world, throwing out a blanket of radar signal intended to catch all threats to freedom in its pulse, returning said signal to the ever turning dome where signal is routed to become data, all while the radar tech sits monitoring and maintaining that most unique of communication lines: the radar return.
That was the sort of thing I liked to do as crew mom long before I had a kid who refused to listen to my stories. Vinny loved my stories, but my own son? Not so much.
I do hope it stays semi-civil but if not? I did what I wanted to do and now, I can settle in for little nap. The wound nurse showed me that the deepest part of the wound is truly beginning to seal and heal. I am thanking the Lord for getting us through it and especially for bumping me into my husband on that last trip I took to Iceland long ago and far away.
Have a nice nap. I have to get back to my chores before I start to get dirty looks from my husband.
It has to be flushed and packed with saline to prevent festering. Open exposure is not good… cauterizing is better.
Maggie come fleet foot…
Ah, get sick, get well
Hang around an ink well
Ring bell, hard to tell
If anything is goin’ to sell
Try hard, get barred
Get back, write Braille
Get jailed, jump bail
Join the army, if you fail
Zen and the art of Tricare.
I read Pirsig in college, for fun because I liked the title. It changed my life. I will say it was a tedious read, especially the middle third of the book. Then it opened up for me and expanded my consciousness immensely. It was on par with The Greening of America.
I once asked a court appointed shrink if he had read it. He said no, it was not interesting at all, he found it too boring and non relevant. He is also the shrink who said his children did not lie, and denied he was a gatekeeper.
If my flagging memory serves me, I enjoyed the bit about Pirsig’s encounter described in the book with a shrink who was in need of Pirsig’s good orderly directions to improve the mind healer’s life.
I understood that dynamic when my marriage counselor had no clue on how to manage his group practice. He was grateful for the solutions I supplied.
And then there is tricare. Two decades ago or so my Navy widow girlfriend’s uncle was a retired admiral and he was HNIC of Tricare, or whatever they called it back then. Her cousin was head of Naval Air Forces. Anywho, I had opportunity to socialize with both of them. Tom Sr. was an exceedingly good man and gentleman. I entertained him and family on my boat, nice to ferry an ex admiral around for meals on an island… He was grief stricken by the Cole incident. And wanting to commiserate with him and his duty for dependents everywhere I said his job was mostly about allocation of fund$. He immediately agreed. I sympathetically said I bet you make a lot of enemies doing that. He nodded his head in agreement.
Maglita, dear one, get well soon.
Johny’s in the basement
Mixing up the medicine
I’m on the pavement
Thinking about the government
The man in the trench coat
Badge out, laid off
Says he’s got a bad cough
Wants to get it paid off
Look out kid
It’s somethin’ you did
Thank you, Whosie Susie.
I believe my time is gonna come.
Saw REO at the OKC zoo. Kevin Cronan asked for requests and I yelled “son of a poor man” and he turned around and looked toward me, asking “Damn. How OLD are you?”
My older siblings were big fans of the little band from across the Mississippi near Cairo, Illinois. My brother took me to see a small concert of theirs when I was 14. I should NOT have been there. I was exposed to a lot in the 70s I should not have been exposed to.
Just sayin’
I think REO had the best lead guitarists in the business then. I love the key changes and the musical tension in this one… around the 5:30 point. Their older music was the better music, before they hopped on pop as a money making thing. Oh, well, people do have to pay their bills.
this here is good geetar playin’
And, if there are any crewdogs lurking, who remembers the stereo system Prickel and his roomies had set up just to listen to really awesome music? Bouvier-Schatz? You around? OMG… let’s have a reunion right here right now… Nick hasn’t seen the piece since posted (he thinks the tone here is a but crass, especially since I felt I should let him know I might have a stalker problem again. Ever hear what Nick the Knife did to that one guy, mark from down the street but we never visited tell beth hello? How’re them okeenawan kids of yours?
You spurred a memory. Saw them live during high school years.
This less popular one was a fave. Good road tune.
Cheers.
Saw REO at the OKC zoo. Kevin Cronan asked for requests and I yelled “son of a poor man” and he turned around and looked toward me, asking “Damn. How OLD are you?”
My older siblings were big fans of the little band from across the Mississippi near Cairo, Illinois. My brother took me to see a small concert of theirs when I was 14. I should NOT have been there. I was exposed to a lot in the 70s I should not have been exposed to.
Just sayin’
I think REO had the best lead guitarists in the business then. I love the key changes and the musical tension in this one… around the 5:30 point. Their older music was the better music, before they hopped on pop as a money making thing. Oh, well, people do have to pay their bills.
this here is good geetar playin’
And, if there are any crewdogs lurking lut there who drank beer with me in Iceland until we realized it was never going to get light and who also remembers the stereo system Prickel and his roomies had set up just to listen to really awesome music? Bouvier-Schatz? You around? OMG… let’s have a reunion right here right now… Nick hasn’t seen the piece since posted (he thinks the tone here is a bit crass and crude. He’s right but these monkeys are smart. Well, there used to be smart monkeys b and that would get the Knife on here, but I don’t see it happening so some of you guys know what I been through and so does he, but he don’t want to talk to some of these idiots even though he hopes to get to meet MC from here soon, since he’s secretly hoping she will come take the pig of a goat Simon, or at least little stuck because that little horndog has to go. but since I let him know I might have a stalker problem again, he suggested we just go completely inactive online because I have people’s emails if I need to contact them so here it is. I hide messages in chatter, like a little passive talker rambling away on the edge of the world where only the bravest ever venture. And if that didn’t get some of those weirdo test 24 talking freaks like dougiemace and markchaffe and all the other KPslopewhite minions who’d go to the club saturday night to talk about RADAR siting up paying attention nothing will. Slamming beers chattering about codes and frequencies and that silly thing called stability nobody ever talks about anymore but every single one of you know exactly what I am talking about now if you see this and you probably have chillbumps and even so, let it be known that when the going got tough and there was an idea which would not leave me alone, I refused to shut up even in the face of tyranny so oppressive it does not call itself tyrant.
Information bursts are propaganda tools and they are usefull because they are effective. There are none so blind as they who will not see.
I would love to be able to talk to Ty Ammerman again. I admire her so for what she put up with those last months in AWACS. KP and I talked about it and I swear to you now in front of anyone who might ever see me again and know my true name that had I known what they did to you I would never have left your side. You are always on my heart and mind, girl, and I hope life rewarded you for your longsuffering patience.
Now, it is time for a little wound maintenance, so I bid you ta ta for now.
Were you one of the bohemian hitchhikers of the seventies. It seems to me you might have thumbed a ride or two in your life.
FUCK YOU INDECIPHERABLE ACRONYMS.
Too tough to figure them acronyms out, retard? Go fuck yourself. Stick your all caps and stupid fucking monikers you’ve had in the past and go get yourself a socialist to pummel, you miserable prick. What’s your problem? Cut her some slack. If the rant is too difficult to follow, ya can’t just pass it by, huh? Gotta vent on good BDRs.
Whoops, that’s Big Dog Regyoolahs, if you can’t decipher that one, and you’re not one, regardless of how often you chime in, sharpshooter. Sharp.
As sharp as a fucking bowling ball.
Asshole.
I like that. There are some sharp bowling balls here, aren’t there STM. I can’t help but wonder What Would AWD Do? I like to think that AWD, like most of the people who tried, and failed, to throw all the shit they could manufacture my way, would have grudgingly admitted I was indeed one broad it might be good to know instead of some of these pathetic BROs around this place.
I am not anyone’s welcome wagon, not even Stuck’s, who I indeed love like a brother from another mother. I could be wrong about him too, but Nick the Knife, in the 25 year history of our marriage is never wrong in his assessment of the good or bad intentions of my cyber friends. He read a half-ass compliment/insult Stucky wrote to me with comments about Double Dees and he laughed out loud. “That guy’s a keeper. He’s funny.”
And, so, Nick’s in like Flynn.
I just bought Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance because Jordan Peterson said he read it. I read about 25 pages of it six weeks ago. It hadn’t changed my life yet, so I stopped. Maybe I’ll try again soon.
I don’t think it necessarily has to be that, but I attached the pdf link to the document if you just want to down load it and read some of it that way. It is the sort of thing of which small doses serve greater purpose.
I think the author put it online in pdf out of spite for all the misuse the media whores performed on his clever title. The was Zen and the Art of everything and the shit was trademarked and I remember both he and another true “thinker” of the zen buddha way refusing to allow anyone to trademark their words.
“Throw a dime to the tambourine man, and kiss all the horses goodbye, and believe in the spirit of love that never dies.”
Which nkit is this? The one with or without a roll of duct tape for me.
Update for the crewdogs.
The nurse from St. Louis got a nurse here by 11 a.m. after Nick informed her in Nick the Knife tone that either someone would be here by noon or we would be headed to my surgeon’s office in St. Louis, stopping only to update our lawyer on the situation. He then gave her a brief overview of what he knows about our lawyer.
It really is kind of cool having a lawyer whose diaper I changed 30 years ago. He’s running for an associate circuit judge position (whatever the hell that means… am proud of him) in upcoming elections, and I’m told he’s the chosen one by the local powers that be. (All politics are local. Ever hear that?) I am hoping to be well enough to help with the PR for his campaign, but to be honest, he is honest and has integrity. I’m kind of sorry to see him enter politics in any form, but he’s got a right to build his credentials for future opportunity as much as the next guy.
It has been more than 30 years since I babysat him and his cousins, my beloved friend’s daughters, while his beloved aunt fought the ravages of breast cancer. I loved her like a sister and had a hard time letting go, as did her two daughters and her nephew, who loved her as his own mother. But those bonds never break. If we have to get him involved he will bite down like a bulldog and make this home health care company pay.
So, again, our AWACS experience and lesson learned methodology continues to pay off and my decision to go to Iceland and bring Nick the Knife back to Tinker that longagofaraway day in May 1992 is the best decision I ever made. Thank you Hornet for deciding you did NOT want to make another Iceland trip and asking me if I wanted the TDY.
Now, I happen to know someone who manages the Show Me Center in Cape Girardeau. I can’t confirm or deny the rumor that Donald Trump is coming here because that would mean there was a security breach. Unless it is common knowledge.
Now, if you are watching this, Lori, please contact Shirley not me directly. I do not watch the news right now, not local news anyway, so I don’t know if my old school chum really does know something about a visit here by Trump or if it is wishful thinking. However, if it is something that is true and that I should NOT KNOW, please assess and advise the president accordingly.
We cut our teeth on military intrigue and you were better at it than I am, so I’m hopeful you are three steps ahead of the idiots and already know about this problem, if it is indeed a problem.
Anyone know if that is common knowledge?
Yep.
Design by Robert Frost
I found a dimpled spider, fat and white,
On a white heal-all, holding up a moth
Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth–
Assorted characters of death and blight
Mixed ready to begin the morning right,
Like the ingredients of a witches’ broth–
A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth,
And dead wings carried like a paper kite.
What had that flower to do with being white,
The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?
What brought the kindred spider to that height,
Then steered the white moth thither in the night?
What but design of darkness to appall?–
If design govern in a thing so small.
https://letterpile.com/creative-writing/Analysis-of-Poem-Design-by-Robert-Frost
Maggie,
Hope your dealing with healing…and your healing is dealing you the gift of God’s amazing regeneration.
Best wishes
Hmmm…two lemon sucking downvotes for healing encourgement…tsk tsk
Am dealing with the hate. I appreciate the kind thought Mark.
Hmmm…Now only one lemon pucker sucker…down voting a message of healing encouragement…must be a bitterly sour self important fruit?
Lemon down voter…very pretty (in the mirror) but the “fruit” of the poor Lemon down voter…is impossible to eat.
For some of my Lessons Learned Review Items I will explain them here. Nick and I are trying hard to critique each disaster as it comes, but todays was so freaking hideous I’m not going to share. And I’ve shared some pretty hideous stuff here. Enough said.
1. Why do these things keep happening which I’ve been told could never possibly happen again?
2. Why doesn’t the company have enough wound care nurses to cover their patient commitments?
3. Why do my nurses badmouth the VA’s processes and claim they are the problems with delays on getting this wound vacuum set up right when the VA’s box with all the equipment was here before they were and it took them three days longer than it should have to get it installed after that first visit resulted in me on my knees on the floor all night?
4. Why does my nurse say she wishes she could afford to get certified as a wound nurse when the damn company ought to be paying a certification person to come watch her repair my wound daily for another week and maybe the single actual wound care nurse the company appears to have covering the entire eastern region of Missouri and possibly southern Illinois might actually pop in and find out what model wound vacuum the VA actually sent. What kind of a scam is this home health care thing if my surgeon told me to make sure a wound care nurse took care of my wound and I haven’t seen the wound care nurse in a week and when I called her after being on the floor all night she told me she normally only sees patients one day a week. Her having to send a real wound care nurse with my regular wonderful RN today probably counts as this weeks visit. Yeah, that one is a lot to parse through, but I’m kind of tired.
I have it here and I’ll break it up later.
Perhaps a nice walk will make things look a little better.
Perhaps you might look on your own thread and see that I extended to proverbial olive branch and suggested we start again.
What is really wrong with you? I will say a rosary and send money to Ann Barnhardt in your name.
Having ventured out to my flower bed to just walk and look at the weeds which have overtaken my planned tropical garden and fishpond, I returned and took a long rest, thankful again that Nick manages to check on me without smothering me.
Of course I have to walk. If I don’t get up and at least walk, my digestive tract will completely shut down. Just like when JDAWG laid down for the last time last spring and he looked in my eyes and whimpered to me that he hurt and I told him I knew it, but if he couldn’t get up anymore, I was going to have to help him stay down.
I didn’t like crushing his windpipe to help him stop seizure after seizure after seizure, but when he didn’t fight back and simply continued to gulp against my grip on his throat, I knew somehow he and I were in agreement on some “other” plane.
He died in my arms after five attempts to breathe. I went and stopped Nick from digging his grave and told him JDAWG had passed so he could hug the big guy and pet him a bit before it got really ugly. JDAWG hadn’t been eating for several days, so I knew his body was shutting down but he had a big heart and so, when his heart finally beat that last beat, I wrapped him in an old blanket, tucking it around his hindquarters carefully to catch and hold the evacuation of his bowels, which happens to us all on expiration. What JDAWG held was was small, but very very toxic due to all the medications we were forcing down his throat to fight the ehrlichnea.
We called my son and he drove down from Rolla to help bury and be part of the sad gathering. Nick knows, I told him this past summer, more than a year later. I don’t want my son to know unless he has to know.
I’ve had to kill a lot of animals while looking in their eyes, waiting for that cloudy haze to tell me their consciousness is fading. But, I’ve never had to kill an animal I loved like that dog and if I didn’t love him so, I could never have done it
I thank my Creator God, who loves me even though I have done terrible things to some people and even animals, for giving me the ability to do what I had to do to stop the nonstop suffering of my beloved pet.
I think this will sit nicely in your archive, Admin, for me to copy and link for sharing elsewhere. I only have a dozen hillbilly friends and I think three of them are the same person, but I’ll just mirror this from here and I don’t need your monkeys cluttering the message. Thanks.
Please examine your need to downvote this story considering Jeebus’s impending arrival.
Allrightie then, Admin. I am editing this one to tell you it is getting a bit tricky and I hope there is a simple way to do what I suggested might support your wish to NOT censor but delay the free expression in a way that allows the message to be sent. It is a radar technique of which even KP himself would declare himself proud that he taught to me with all those boring boring boring lectures on pulse doppler target data extraction at the club. At the CLUB, KP. Good Heavens. And what is funny, TBP folks?
He lived down the street from me, kind of, in OKC and I dropped him at his home (so I got even more of that KP radar theory and neverending discussion that most of you, even prickel and schatzie and dougie and so on…i got the stan eval position buck because i am smarter than you get over yourself.) His wife would be out in the driveway with a baseball bat and I would tell her he was fine and she would stomp off into the house waiting to bitch him out or not. But she never had ill feelings toward me. She knew I was truly fascinated by the way KP’s mind worked.
I am also thankful to the Man With No Name who has given me the ability to hide replies on my own screen. That is something some coyote ought to write a “how to” for and follow it. Esprit de corps. I know you have some.
Well, shine my boots and polish my fingernails. It was true, Shirley!
If our mutual friend can help, wanna come to Narnia for the day? Email not gmail.
https://www.semissourian.com/story/2549706.html
Does anyone out there remember discussing elements of writing?
Stimulus: We didn’t speak again until we arrived at the emergency room
Tag and Response: where he told me he’d park the car and be back in a few minutes
My Response: I told him I could handle it from this point on
Emotion to shift tone: (I was really pissed about not getting any coffee!)
My stimulus to him: and not to bother until someone called for him.
His response followed by the neatest of responses to NOT MOM: He glared at me
told the nurse he would be right back
time lapse
Summary end: About the time they got me settled onto a table/bed with an IV drip saturating my system with antibiotics, my son sauntered in with a cup of coffee (brat!) and sipped it while sitting on the floor at the end of my bed staring at the red numbers on the big unit monitoring my vital signs.
It is scene and structure of writing. It is not rocket science. Stimulus leads to response leads to redirection leads to S/R until you get to resolution or the cows refuse to come home at all hsf. Where’s my syrup?
Mags, this seems like a nice article. I couldn’t read it all …. strikes too close to home. For 17 months I took my mom to a wound center so they could tend to an ugly open wound on her leg. That ended about half a year ago. Well, it reopened …. and she refuses to back to see a doctor!!! I’m truly afraid she’s going to die from the consequences of her “home remedies”. It’s got me down, down, down. And that is all I can, and will, say for now. But, I’m glad you’re doing well. At least you have common sense.
Stucky, you might have noticed my own agonizing time piggybacked on yours and I could barely read your articles without crying for my Poppa Grooch and all those nights I slept on the loveseat at his bedside so that when he cried out for Marge in the night, his beloved senile wife of 60 plus years who had bitterly declared she never wanted to see him again. It was a comfort to him that I was there and I know you have been an amazing comfort to your own family when in crisis or facing evil raccoons. I can hardly read your stuff without wishing you were here at the pond so we could drink a cold bottle of good beer and discuss the meaning of life. I’m talking about the Monty Python version. I thought that was hysterical.
Stucky, you were not the intended audience though I am glad you dropped by.
So, Don’t worry about reading this strangely worded attempt to see if there really is a difference between signals and symbols. I think there might be something to it.
You’re a terrific lady and a very good TBP friend. When mom dies there will be NOTHING to keep me in NJ. I have no idea yet where I will go. But, who knows? Maybe I’ll live close enough to stop by for a beer at the pond with you and that Other Nick. heh heh
I’d love that. And just so you know, Nick and I joked last night that if you do show up, we will roast Simon in a pit (or little horndog stuckenheimer… or both) in a pit and have a big goat grab, like Nick’s students threw for him at one of their homes at the end of his last trip to Saudi as a contract instructor for Boeing when Pete and he got to be friends with one of their semi-connected Saudi students. While Nick and I held our jobs as enlisted aircrew members, in The Kingdom, the aircrew postions were reserved for officers in the Saudi Royal Air Forces. That’s why Debi and I were able to attend the camel races with modest American attire instead of in abayas. I don’t ever remember seeing the Burka thing in Riyadh in the 1980s, but the abayas were bad enough.
That was another data burst, none of which concerns you.
Stucky- Her problem is on the inside, she has a lack of healing enzymes due to mal-absorption due to diet/advanced age. Give her Wobenzyme Plus capsules every day along with juicing organic fresh pear, apple and carrots with a little lemon juice(no lemon rind) three to four times per day. Also if she can eat raw food, give her organic grapes , mostly red and black. At her age will take about three weeks to a month to see a fair amount of progress. Manuka honey on the wound. Always clear things with her doctor first.
Again. Thanks to TMWNN for the new ability to hide replies.
What ability to hide replies Maggie? I’m sure you could just email any offline comments if you felt the need.
you really have nothing else do you? I feel sorry for you. we were once friends back in Mayberry.
That was not me that downed you. That was a legit question, if all of you can email, just email. What is the need for hidden replies, did not know that existed in the new and improved plumbing.
No need to feel sorry for me, I am doing just fine.
Bea, perhaps you should stop right now and reassess where you want to be where the real shit hits the fan. Which side of the fan do you want to stand on?
According to the doc, she’s also not getting near enough protein. She has a shit diet.
I’m GLAD you mentioned Manuka honey for the wound. She does like honey. And I recall reading some very positive things about it. Although I might need to take out a mortgage to pay for it. lol
TTFN… offline. Got my duct tape handy.
Not me with the downer again either. If you think real hard about your comments in the not too distant past, you may understand where it all went south. Best wishes to you.
A classy way to leave it. Until we meet again in Mayberry perhaps.
Stucky- From the looks of the downers on my suggestion, I’m guessing that some people around here don’t realize that it is enzymes that heal wounds, broken limbs etc. Raw food will provide a great deal of enzymes but in this case , enzyme therapy with Wobenzyme Plus would be like adding another layer to the treatment. Juicing several times a day is a must and delicious too.
Just trying to be helpful, I really miss your articles and comments…..really.