Day 69 - Seeking a More Poetic Existence

          There seem to be a lot of jobs in health care—more than in any other single segment of the economy. I think that I might like to break out of the manufacturing niche and get into health care. The money would be comparable. The benefits would probably be better. The working conditions would almost certainly be an improvement. And of course we have already discussed my attraction for nurses. My one hope would be that I would be surrounded by smarter people. This is not to suggest that smart people do not work in the manufacturing sector, but only that they tend not to be in charge.

I actually started my accounting career with a health care provider—a kidney dialysis facility in Tampa. That was years ago, however, and things have changed a lot since. Now every accounting job I see listed in the health sector requires at least five years experience with a primary care provider. Unless a little good fortune comes my way I might just be stuck doing what I’ve been doing or doing nothing at all.

Periodically I have flights of entrepreneurial fancy. The last time I gave in to one of these I bought a small florist shop, moved it, merged it with a much larger plant and garden center, and promptly lost my shirt. Failing in a spectacular fashion builds character and also a considerable immunity against further flights of fancy. So far at least I have been able to resist the temptation to further entrepreneurial exploits. It doesn’t hurt that some eighteen years later I am still in hock to an assortment of credit card companies for more than $60 thousand—the price of refusing to file bankruptcy, and a nut that I do not seem to be able to crack in spite of earning a respectable salary.

Still there is allure in the prospect of not having to work for fools and charlatans. I’ve really had enough of that, and were it not for my astronomical credit card debt I would be looking for an opportunity to be my own fool and charlatan once again. Actually I am looking, but my search is constrained.

What I need is an opportunity that doesn’t require any initial capital outlay. This means my product has to be virtually free to produce. There can be no requirement for facilities, equipment, production workers, or materials inputs. Advertising will have to be direct and viral. Distribution will have to be on an as-ordered basis, orders pre-paid. As I’m sure you realize, we’re talking the Internet.

We’re also talking about writing. Writing is virtually free to produce. All you need is an idea to get started. Everyone already owns all the other necessaries to getting the idea into or onto something that someone else can read. All that’s required then is a mechanism for monetizing the process. If you look you will see that the Internet is rife with places where you can publish articles on practically any subject and get paid based on the number of people who either read the article or, more commonly, click through from the article to a place where they actually buy something. I signed up today for one of those. I even published an article. Not an article really but a funny poem about diet and exercise. Here it is in its entirety.

IMMORTALITY

If we could all decide our fate, and name our time of death and date,

Most all of us would check out late, and queue en-masse at Heaven’s gate—

Arriving at the same damn time, procrastinators in a line,

Who’d put off dying long’s we could, but just the same in coffin’s wood

Would all be lying stiff as boards awaiting judgment from our lords.

Though this is what we’d all prefer, yet most believe we must defer

To higher powers this life length choice. Sing halleluiah! Let’s rejoice!

But some there are that what they think’s our span of life’s not writ in ink,

But penciled on our page of fate—a mere suggestion to abate—

Just change the pattern’s warp and weft to raise the sum of days we’ve left.

The starting point is what to eat. The fare is spare and short on meat.

Less sweet desserts, less this and that, a pan-caloric tit for tat

Less fat or carbs—just take your pick. What works for some makes others sick.

More fibrous greens, organic fruit, whole-kernel grains, and tofu suit

The longer, leaner lifetime mess (though much of it be flavorless.)

Then what’s required is discipline and going placidly within—

A regimen of proper diet, avoiding all excess and riot,

Restraint in all save exercise (in working out we’ll agonize.)

For fitness is the way to stay about a longer time than they

That shirks their time inside the gym, and journey fat through thick and thin.

Hard work and sweat must now align to gobble up great gobs of time—

Running, rowing, dance aerobic, pumping iron, and skipping ropic,

Swimming climbing, step and stretching, jogging to the point of retching—

Till weary rapture of corpuscle coursing through sore, aching muscle

Signals that this hard persistence barely lengthened our existence.

Then free from guilt but full of pain we pause to calculate our gain,

And find when appetite’s denied that all life’s fruits are froze and dried,

And though we may have added years, they’ll have to be reviewed through tears.

Oh, we can choose long life to live, knowing we’ve but one to give,

But racking life out to its limit sadly leaves scant living in it.

A silly thing surely with, hopefully, some entertainment value. We’ll see what happens.

Day 16 - Breaking Rocks

          The lithotripsy frightened me not at all. In fact I was kind of looking forward to it. It’s an interesting thing, and the place where they do it, the Kidney Stone Center at Memorial Hospital, is a fun place to be. I know this because I’ve already been there twice for lab work and x-rays. Everyone is good-humored and upbeat. They go out of their way to make you feel good. In my experience this kind of thing usually starts with the doctors. If the doctors are good natured, then so is the staff, and by extension the facility.

I like my urologist. He is Indian, but he was born and raised in Texas so he does not have one of those sign-song accents that you think of if you’ve seen too many movies or met some Indian transplants. He is very smart, very young, and very personable. He is too young to be doing what he is doing, but he capitalizes on his youth by being irreverent and taking a conspiratorial tone with his patients. He does not take himself too seriously although he does frequently lecture board certified urologists all over the state and has written some well received papers. He must be serious somewhere, but he is not serious with me and I appreciate it.

The nurses and technicians started flirting with me before I had a chance to flirt with them. I don’t know what’s up with that. I feel like I have a certain responsibility to my nursing staff public in the recovery room, and if these women are going to jump start the process before I even get any drugs into me then I am really going to have to kick out the jambs later. I don’t know if I’m up to the pressure.

They put me in a little dressing room where I have to strip naked and put on one of those ridiculous hospital gowns that tie up the back. I don’t know how they expect you to get one of those things on properly, but somehow I do. The x-ray tech stuck her hand through the curtain to get my attention, and asked if I need any help getting the thing on. I told her thanks, but the deed was already done.

“Darn,” she said. “I was hoping to get a look at your butt.”

I could scarcely believe what I just heard. I couldn’t wait to tell my wife about this.

“Sorry to disappoint,” I said to the tech, “but you didn’t miss much.”

“I’ll be the judge of that,” she said.

Anyway she took some pictures so the doctor would know where the stones were before he started the procedure. Then she took me to a staging area. I climbed into a rolling bed. They covered me up with a blanket they just got out of a warmer. They started an IV. They took my vitals. They asked me what I wanted to watch on TV while I was waiting. They brought me my wife. We were having a high old time. The nurses were in a party frame of mind. People kept stopping by to visit and ask me questions. I got visits from the surgical nurse, the staging nurse, the recovery room nurse, the nurse anesthetist, the anesthetist, and my urologist.

They all wanted to know pretty much the same stuff: what was I there for, which side kidney were we doing (left or right), had I have anything to eat or drink since midnight, had I had a bowel movement, did I need to go to the bathroom, where do I see myself in 5 years, what are me three best and worst traits and why? I was better at answering some of these questions than others.

Eventually they gave me something in my IV to help me relax. Relax from what I don’t know. This was about the most laid back, non-threatening, friendliest setting I’d ever been in, and the notion that I might require some pharmaceuticals to help me relax is near nonsense. Of course I wasn’t about to protest. I mean really. What harm could it do? Besides I didn’t want to upset the delightful ambiance by protesting.

I woke up in the recovery room. This is the great thing about surgical procedures. You sleep through the traumatic parts and wake up stoned and surrounded by women. I was feeling pretty good. Since there’s no cutting with a lithotripsy there’s no residual pain. The meds are less intense, so you wake up faster.

The procedure had broken up about half the stones in my right kidney. The 14 original stones were evenly distributed throughout both kidneys. The stones at the top of my right kidney have been pulverized into sand, but that sand is still in there and I’m going to have to pass it. To ease this process the doctor has inserted a plastic stint in my ureter—the tube that runs from my kidney down to my bladder. The stint is supposed to keep the sand from getting trapped in the ureter, clogging the works, and causing damage. The stint will stay in for a couple of weeks depending on how fast the sand passes. It may cause some discomfort. I’m to let them know if I have any serious pain. Other than that the doctor was pleased with how many stones he got and my prospects for a quick recovery and transition into the next procedure.

My wife drove me home. We stopped for lunch at a high-priced flatbread pizza place with snooty waitresses and some truly oddball, California inspired, fusion cuisine. It was all health food inspired, heavy on the whole grains and sprouts and such. I guess the idea is that the society matrons and trophy wives who inhabit that particular area of town need food that will help maintain their stick figures to go along with their Botox immobilized faces. My wife hated her food. Mine tasted like cardboard, but I was still a little high and trying not to interject any negativity into the proceedings.