Steven Harper's Blog, page 24

Booster 3

Yesterday I got the latest booster shot for COVID, the one designed to shield you from the new variants. Today, I have only a vague, barely-noticeable arm soreness. That's it. So, cool!

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When Did We Go Back To the Colonial Era?

Back in the Colonial Era and up through the early 1900s, part of a teacher's salary was room and board. This was provided by the families whose children attended the school. If your kids went to school, you were expected to have the teacher live with you for several weeks, after which, the teacher would go live with someone else.

This sounds to me like absolute hell.

If you were a teacher, you had no place to call your own. You lived out of a suitcase. You couldn't acquire any possessions. You were dependent on the parents of your students. You were on stage every moment. You had no real privacy. You couldn't be yourself. And you never knew what kind of housing you'd have. In one place, you might have your own room. In another, you might be crashing on a narrow sofa in your hosts' bedroom (as Laura Ingalls did in LITTLE TOWN ON THE PRAIRIE). Of course, you had no family life. You couldn't get married. Where would your spouse live? And forget having kids.

This happened because teachers weren't (aren't) respected. They weren't doing worthy work, and didn't deserve a salary that afforded them a decent place to live. Teaching was something a young woman did for extra extra money until she got married, whereupon she was expected to quit.

Apparently, we're living in Colonial America again. Schools in California are losing teachers fast for the simple reason that the teachers can't afford to live in or near the town where they teach: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/09/02/teacher-housing-california-bay-area/

The school's solution? Beg school families to take the teachers in. Anyone have a spare room to rent so a teacher can live there?

I know the district is desperate for a solution, but I find this hugely insulting. I can't imagine, as a veteran professional, being asked to live like a college student scraping through school. Downsize to a single room in someone else's house? Really? And what do they do about teachers with spouses? Children? Or even pets? What if the teacher has an actual social life and wants to have visitors?

A running refrain from the Republican party is, "You can't solve our education problems by throwing money at them." This is a complete lie handed out as an excuse for why they vote down school funding increases. You can solve almost every single education problem by throwing money at it. More money to pay teachers a competitive salary--and hire more of them. More money for physical infrastructure. More money for ... well, everything will improve it beyond measure.

Tell me how you can solve the California problem of teacher housing problems WITHOUT throwing money at it. I'm waiting with bated breath.

Meanwhile, I nod at the teachers fleeing this situation. They--and I--refuse to live in Colonial America.




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Mixed Blessings

This is another medical post, but unrelated to my shoulder, for a change. :)

I'm Type II diabetic, but just barely. I take meds for it and try to be careful about carb intake. A few months ago, I told my endocrinologist that I was tired of taking big handfuls of pills every day. I take pills for diabetes, to protect my kidneys from diabetes, for anxiety and depression, for kidney stones, and for other urological reasons. It's a LOT, and I've been trying to figure out how to cut down.

The doctor said we could combine two of the diabetes drugs I was taking into a single daily pill. I was up for that! So we did.

A strange thing happened. The next time I went to the urologist, he said the levels of sugar in my urine were off the charts. I told him about the new drug, and he nodded understanding. The drug makes your kidneys pull sugar out of your blood and excrete it. This worried the doctor a little. He said this kind of thing can cause strain on the urinary system, including bladder spasms.

A while later, I found myself having to run to the bathroom more and more often. It became unusual for me to last an hour. Darwin noticed because whenever we went someplace, the first thing I did on arrival was hunt down a bathroom, and I usually had to go again before we left.

I couldn't keep that up. Certainly not with school coming up. I talked to my endocrinologist again and asked what we could do. She suggested switching back to one of the pills and a weekly injection of Trulicity, which I could administer at home. She had suggested this several months ago, in fact, but at the time I was going through absolute hell and the thought of adding a weekly shot to my platter was just too much. Now I figured I could handle it.

She told me that common side-effects include nausea and loss of appetite, but they fade after a couple weeks. Another side-effect is weight loss. (See the above "loss of appetite" effect.)

I got the drug and injected myself on a Saturday morning. That night, I had really bad nausea and sweating. It was awful. I was up most of the night with it.

The next day, things had improved, but the appetite loss was kicking in. Very few foods sounded any good. Weirdly, kid cereals like Cap'n Crunch and Corn Pops sounded tempting, so I bought them. Most days, lunch didn't interest me at all, and I might have a piece of fruit, nothing more.

The nausea has stuck around. It's a low-grade nausea that continually hovers at the edges. All the literature says the nausea should only last about two weeks. I've been taking Trulicity for just under a month, and it's still causing me the problem.

And I've lost weight. A big chunk of it. I was at 187 when I started Trulicity. Now, less than five weeks later, I'm at 181. Last year, after my big weight loss, my clothes were hanging off me, and my jeans wouldn't stay up. I had to buy new clothes. Now it's happening again. My shorts and jeans have a lot of room at the waist.

Hence the mixed blessing. The nausea is bad, but it's bringing my weight down farther. I'd be thrilled if I got into the mid-170s. I'm going to give it another three weeks. If the nausea hasn't ended by then, I'll need to make changes again.

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Shoulder Surgery 22 (Records)

One thing I do like about U of M Medical is its patient portal. The awful clinic didn't even =have= a portal, and I had to specially request the chance to look at my own records. UM is the polar opposite.

UM enters every single patient interaction, and in great detail, including the doctor or therapist's personal observations. ("Patient would benefit from...." "Patient seems to be....") When I have a session of PT, everything is entered into the portal--what I did, how I responded to it, even how I walked and acted that day. At first, it startled me. It was like looking into the caregiver's mind. Then I liked it. I have an excellent record of everything, which makes me less anxious about visits.

The portal has all test results, all images, everything. They even imported my records from other, non-UM, hospitals. The procedures I underwent at Ford and at Beaumont are all there.

They're miles ahead of the Other Place, and I like it.

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Shoulder Surgery 21 (Back To It)

Yeah, I'm back at PT.

I stopped going a while before we moved. I didn't have time--packing and all--and the PT didn't seem to be improving anything. My shoulder still hurt, my arm was still weak, and it was enormously stressful attending thrice-weekly sessions at the clinic that had savaged and ridiculed me. Even though these therapists weren't the perpetrators, they were still causing me physical pain, and they work for the horrifying place, so my mind lumps them in with the crimes committed against me.

After the move to Ypsilanti was done, I called around to find another shoulder specialist through U of M Medical. This was in June. The earliest appointment they had for a new patient was in September. I didn't like that at all! Living with near-constant pain was bad enough, let alone waiting over three months to address it.

I called the office back every couple days to see if they'd had any cancellations. Finally, one came up in late July. Not ideal, but better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, I suppose.

As the day of the appointment approached, I became more anxious. I've noted before that whenever I go to the joint doctor or the urologist anymore, I shut down. It's a defense mechanism. If I don't feel =anything=, I don't feel terror. The problem is that I don't ask good questions when I'm shut down. I've even written questions down beforehand, then failed to ask them. This complicates my medical care, and I was anxious both about becoming anxious (if that makes sense) AND about the appointment going badly because I couldn't pay good attention.

The appointment arrived, and I made my way up to the doctor's office. And there was good news. I didn't shut down. Go me! And the doctor had reviewed my MRI from a few weeks ago, and he said he didn't see evidence of re-injury or poor medical work. The pain came from two sources--an inflamed tendon and a need to open the space in my shoulder, which had been necessarily tightened during the surgery. And there was bad news. I would need a lot more physical therapy.

I almost lost it then, but held it back. I did ask why it was taking so long, and the doctor said it can take a year to fully recover. I get angry again just typing this.

There are physical therapy facilities very near our new house, and U of M Medical's facilities are a bit of a drive, but I was seeing wisdom in having all my medical records in one place, easily reviewed by all medical staff, so I decided to attend U of M Medical.

It was a good two weeks before they had an appointment for a new patient intake. The day finally arrived, and I drove up to northern Ann Arbor, where the facility is located. I was in a surprisingly good mood--I hadn't shut down at the doctor's office, so apparently the reaction came from the people and the place, not the idea of what happened there.

But when I checked in at reception--BOOM. All the energy drained out of me and I sat in a chair, staring at the floor. I had shut down again.

A PT staffer named G-- came out for me, and I went with him, barely looking up. This place is way bigger and clearly handles more than joint problems. They have more varied equipment, including a pool, and lots of staff members bustling about. G-- sat me on a padded table and took measurements of my ability to move and what the pain threshold was, then went into detail about what my PT program would be, and what we were trying to accomplish. I liked this aspect of it. The other clinic never went into this kind of detail. Still, my answers and reactions were short. It got worse when G-- projected that I would need at least three more months of PT. My blood actually chilled and I almost walked out, but that wouldn't make my shoulder better, so I didn't.

G-- took me through an initial set of exercises that emphasized stretching rather than strength. They were fairly basic, and ones I'd done before. I dutifully went through them.

At one point, I pushed myself out of shutdown mode and told G-- what I had gone through at the other place. "I was hoping this place would feel differently for me, but it doesn't," I finished. "I hate coming here. It fills me with fear and anxiety. As a result, I'm not a social patient. I don't make jokes or small talk. I come here to grind through PT and get out."

G-- was appropriately shocked and horrified by what had happened to me and said he understood my reaction. We set up a series of appointments and I left.

The next time I went, a different PT therapist came for me, a woman named D--. I wasn't expecting this. I thought G-- would be the therapist. If G-- had mentioned anything to her, D-- gave no sign of it. I really, really didn't feel like explaining it all again, so I didn't. D-- was very nice, though shut-down me ignored her as much as possible. At one point, she wanted me to lay down on my back on a table with my knees up. There I came more to life. "I can't do that," I said. "It's a trauma trigger and it makes me upset. Can we do this sitting up?"

She said that this exercise wouldn't work from a seated position. Could I try lying down a little?

I finally allowed that we could, as long as she stayed a few steps away, where I couldn't see her. I got through the exercise set. That was the last one, so I left.

Later, D-- emailed me a list of exercises to do at home. I saw this as an opportunity. I hit REPLY and wrote her a note explaining what had happened and how to handle me as a result of it. Send.

Weirdly, sending that email made me less angry/anxious about the PT office. This actually makes sense--writing is the main way I process stuff and make sense of the world. When I showed up for the next appointment, I didn't shut down nearly as much. D-- told me she'd read my email and understood. I nodded, and we went on.

It's been three weeks now. The exercises have changed from only stretching to mostly strength-building. They have me planking again, something I haven't done since the surgery. I hate planking. (Does anyone like it?) Additionally, I can't do it like I used to. Before the surgery, when I was introduced to planking, I could do a bunch of poses and hold them for 45 seconds. Now I'm doing good if I can hold 20 seconds, and I can only do one pose. One. The planking right now reminds me of how weak I've become, and I don't like that. But it's easy to do anywhere and it's efficient, so I do it.

Recently, D-- put me on an assisted pull-up machine. I'd never seen this before. It works with you climbing up to a platform facing a pull-up bar. A stack of weights sit below the platform. They counterbalance your own weight, so you can do pull-ups with a single finger if you want--the platform rises beneath you and holds you up. You can also reduce the amount of counterbalance so you're pulling up, say, a quarter of your weight, or half, or whatever. I can't do full-weight pull-ups, of course, but they're good for the shoulders, and D-- experimented with different weight settings to see where I could handle it.

I bring this up because I think we need more of these machines, especially in schools. Being able to do pull-ups is one measure of fitness. The problem is, you can't build up to pull-ups. You can either haul your entire weight up, or you can't. It's not like doing bicep curls, where you can start at 10 pounds and use heavier weights as you get stronger. But this machine lets you build up. I remember in elementary school, I couldn't do pull-ups. I wanted to do them, but couldn't figure out how to get strong enough to do them. This machine would have let me.

So I'm back to doing PT twice a week at the facility and three times a week at home. For three months.

 

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Two Out Of Three

At about 6 AM today, we got the call. Although most buildings in the school district have power, two don't--one high school (mine) and one elementary school. Classes are canceled for those buildings today. So now it's two days out of three that we have no school!



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Stormy Start to School Year

This year's new school year proceeded normally. At first.

I did my two religious makeup days and used the time to make loads of lesson plans and a cornucopia of copies. I reset my classroom (what other job requires you to completely disassemble your office, including your computer system, and then set it up back up whenever you go on vacation?). Then we had two days of staff development. Then it was the weekend, and Monday we welcomed the students.

I have a section of mythology, three sections of English 12 (one of them co-taught with a special education teacher; the class is for students who struggle with English), and a section of English 9. First impressions? My mythology students will be fun. My freshmen will be a handful. And the co-taught English 12 will be surprisingly mellow. I was expecting more rowdiness from that class, but they were really chill. Which is cool.

I drove home--

--and the storm hit. Slammed into us, really. Winds at 70 MPH, sideways rain, continual lightning and thunder. I like thunderstorms, but this was a bit much even for me! But it passed after a few minutes, and things went back to normal.

And then we got the robocall. Turns out all of Wherever is without power AND is under a boil water advisory, to boot. School was cancelled for Tuesday.

I think that has to be the earliest school cancellation ever.

I feel I should point out that, in the entire time I lived in Wherever, our house never once lost power. Now that we've moved down to Ypsilanti, we STILL haven't lost power, and Wherever is in the dark. I take responsibility and offer my apologies.

As of this writing, there are huge areas of the district--the entire state--that don't have power and aren't expected to have it until late Thursday or even early Friday. The electric company's web site has no estimate for when power will be restored to the school where I teach. The boil water advisory makes it doubly complicated--the cafeteria can't operate properly, but federal law states that when the school is open, it must provide free lunch for those who qualify for it.

The district is in a bind. If they call school off again now and power is restored overnight, they'll get yelled at for calling off school needlessly. If they wait until the last minute to cancel school, they get yelled at for not giving people enough time to plan for child care. We just got an email informing us that they're going to decide early in the morning.  Yeesh.

It's been a stormy start to the year.

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Bunny!

The guest bedroom in our basement has an exit window, meaning there's a three-foot shaft with the bedroom window at the bottom, ladder rungs up the side, and a set of removable bars covering it. Last night, apparently, a baby bunny fell through the bars and landed in the shaft. It wasn't hurt, but it was there all day before anyone realized it. The poor thing must have been hungry and thirsty and terrified.

I opened the window and took the screen out, then managed to drop a milk crate over the bunny. It panicked, of course. It kept trying to get away, and even tried to leap out of the crate. It smacked its head several times. I laid a towel on the bottom of the shaft and scooted the crate and bunny over it, then carefully flipped it all over. The bunny calmed down a little once the towel covered the crate and it couldn't see anything.

I took the whole thing out to the back yard and gently tipped the bunny out. It sat there, stunned, for a moment, then realized it was free and bolted away. Hopefully, it learned its lesson!

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WSFA Award Nomination: Me!

I'm thrilled! My short story "Eight Mile and the City" in the anthology WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE (edited by Joshua Joshua B. Palmatier and Sam Butler has been nominated for the WSFA award for short fiction.

I do love this story, a noir SF mystery set in near-future Detroit. https://www.amazon.com/When-Worlds-Collide-Esther-Friesner-ebook/dp/B094LHDF8Y/

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Poker Night With New Drinks

Since the pandemic started, our poker parties have become more irregular, but we still have them. This time, Darwin and I were hosting in our new house. It's fun to have it here because I can make party food I rarely get to play with. This time, the centerpieces were home-made mac and cheese and a pavlova, which is a frothy, meringue-and-fruit dessert perfect for summer evenings.

When the players began to arrive, our friend Carol produced a housewarming present: a 2-liter of the new Vernors Black Cherry , which is difficult to find. Vernors, for those who aren't familiar, is a brand of ginger ale you can only find in the Great Lakes part of the country. It's one of the few regional treats left.

I tasted it and liked it and remembered I had in the freezer a bottle of cherry vodka I'd bought from a specialty brewery in Traverse City. And a new drink was born. I declared the name to be a Cherry Popper. (Because it's made with cherry pop. What did you think I meant?)

CHERRY POPPER
8 oz. Black Cherry Vernors
1 oz. cherry vodka
ice

Combine ingredients in cocktail glass and stir. Garnish with fresh or maraschino cherry.

It turned into the drink of the evening!

The game itself was weird. We had long, long streaks of dull hands. The flops had no face cards. Few of us got pocket pairs. The big moment, though, came when two players went all in and turned their pocket cards, only to show they BOTH had a pair of kings. (!!) The flop cards didn't have the right combination to give anyone a flush, so no matter what other cards showed up, it would have to be a tie!

It was a fun evening of food and cards.




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