Four standing portraits; my health care/Obama comment on New York Times website gets top number of reader recommendations

One week ago today I took portraits of four individuals standing still that I had intended to post that very day. However, I got distracted by Pia and her tomatoes and so did not.

On Saturday, I took many pictures, but I do not want to edit them right now. It is well into Sunday morning and I want to go to bed as soon as I can. So I am going to hold them for tomorrow and post last week's standing portraits instead.

This is Dillon, a reincarnated gangster from the 1920's and he has dropped by Vagabond Blues in Palmer to pick up a little "protection money" to insure that the coffee shop does not fall victim to the local bad elements.

I jokes! I jokes! 

It's just Dillon, a kid in a cool hat, and the money that the barista holds came from our own Charlie. He was buying coffee and pastries for us all.

And here he is, Charlie, one week ago today at Vagabond Blues. As you can see, Charlie is a man of the world. He, Melanie, and his dad should right now be camped out in Charlie's dad's boat, somewhere out in Prince William Sound, not far from Seward.

They wanted me to come and I desperately wanted to, too, but I couldn't. Not because of Margie - she is doing much better and between Jacob, Lavina, and Caleb, she would have been covered. The fisher trio will not be coming home until Monday afternoon, and I just have too much work to do to take that kind of time off right now.

I just hope they bring us back a salmon, a halibut and a rockfish, because they are hoping to catch all three.

We saw this cat standing in a mud splattered car, about four blocks from Vagabond Blues. I hope it heals, soon.

Given what has happened to both Margie and me over the past 14 months, it kind of unnerved me to see Kalib standing like this. But you know what? Little kids are going to climb and stand on many things and they are going to fall, too, and most of the time they won't lose their shoulder, like I lost mine after I fell in Barrow, or break their knee caps and femurs the way Margie did.

They might cry a bit and then they will get up, laugh, and go climb something else. Most of the time. That's what they've got to do.

Still, it makes me a bit nervous.

Speaking of falling, on Friday, I left a comment regarding health care reform on an opinion piece written by New York Times columnist Bob Herbert. Over 400 other readers left their thoughts before the Times closed the comment period down. The Times allows readers to recommend columns and then gives those that get the most recommendations special attention on their own page.

To my amazement, my comment has so far received the most reader's recommendations of any, 369, making it number one on that list.

I know that this sounds like I am boasting and I guess I am, but I am so disgusted with the current state of health care in our country, and the demagoguery, lies and deceit that the opposition, including-you-know-who from right here in Wasilla, has thrown out there to scare people in the hope that they might inflame unjustified fear and thus bring down our President, the good of the country and its people be damned, should that good get in the way of their political ambition, that I must speak out.

You can find my comment, and the Herbert article that it is attached to, right here:

http://community.nytimes.com/comments/www.nytimes.com/2009/08/22/opinion/22herbert.html?sort=recommended

Back to ANMC - Margie's first time out of the house in over two weeks

I had been a bit worried about how we would get Margie out the door, down the two steps and then up into the Escape, which sits pretty high off the ground and is averaging 23.1 miles to the gallon, but the process went fairly easy. She pretty much did it all herself. 

Then we took off for Anchorage. As I drove, I noticed a young man pass by on the left. He looked at us and then started laughing. I figure this was because Margie was in the back seat and me in the front. The young man probably thought that he understood the situation - that my wife was mad at me, and refused to sit in the front seat with me, or perhaps he thought that I had picked up a hitchhiker and had made her sit in the back seat.

Or maybe he thought that my name was James, that I was the hired driver and that it was mighty strange for a chauffer to wear a t-shirt and drive a red Ford Escape.

We pulled off the freeway in Eagle River to get something to eat. We went through the Taco Bell drive-through and then parked next to a police car. It is the first one that I have seen with this picture of Anchorage stenciled into the word, "Police."

Yesterday, Margie got a call from someone at ANMC who asked her to come half-an-hour before her appointment so that she could get new x-rays shot first. So we did, and then we waited an hour before the x-rays were shot.

"It's so good to finally be out of the house," Margie said.

Margie getting her x-rays shot. I had to stand in this room for my own protection.

Margie's knee. The Physicians Assistant, a camera shy woman, who would attend to her would tell us that her bone structure is not good; she has osteoporosis, which means she can more easily fracture her bones.

When she was a child, Margie's family was poor and there were many times when they had little more than flour from which to make tortillas and tennis racket bread (cooked over an open fire on a homemade grilling device that looks like a tennis racket - very tasty). She seldom had milk or other dairy products, although her grandfather had a wagon and a donkey and on occasion would take her up the hill to the trading post and buy her an ice cream cone.

She greatly enjoyed that, but it just wasn't enough calcium for a growing girl.

Her bones have been a bit weak ever since. One time, right after we were married, we were playing in a park when I wrapped my arms around her and twirled her in a circle. We were both laughing, but then a rib cracked. She suffered pain for weeks.

That was when we first found out what the childhood lack of milk had done to her. We haven't thought about that for awhile. Now we have to think about it, because she's getting older and its getting worse, so we must do what we can to arrest it.

Damnit! This should not have happened to my Margie! She should be able to hike through the mountains with me, and run down the downhills, but she can't.

As we wait for the PA, I examine a fake knee. We didn't learn much, because, despite all her improvement, Margie was still too sore and tender and could not bend her knee far enough for the PA to make a good exam. The PA scheduled her for an MRI Friday, so that they can take a good look at her ligaments.

If this had happened to me, and I needed an MRI, notwithstanding the $100 thousand plus dollars that I have spent on my insurance, I can tell you from experience that the insurance company would find the way to get out of paying most, perhaps all of the cost, and I would be set back several thousand dollars more.

This fear of further financial setback is keeping me from going to the doctor for things I ought to go to the doctor for, from taking medications that I am supposed to be taking, and from getting checkups that I am supposed to be getting.

American Indians and Alaska Natives paid a terrible price for the health care that the government is now obligated to give them, but the good thing is, unlike my private insurer, her federal insurer will make good on all expenses involved. Furthermore, if something is bothering her, she need not fear what a trip to the doctor will do to us financially, the way I, who have paid a modest fortune for my health insurance, must.

You see, Sarah Palin, screamers, et al, these panels that you try to whip up so much fear about are already active and are denying many Americans the care they need right now, even as they drive them into a financial pit - but they don't work for Obama or the federal government. They work for the insurance companies. 

And so do you.

Can you feel my rage?

I hop from a fishing boat in Prince William Sound to Family Restaurant; Sarah Palin finally pushes me over the edge (this is not a test, this is real)

This morning, at 5:38 AM, I sat inside inside the cabin of a fishing boat, a seiner, as it pulled out away from the dock and headed into the waters of Prince William Sound. Suddenly, a big truck came roaring into our path, so I pushed the button that would blast the horn and at the exact moment that I did the phone rang in our bedroom. It jarred me full awake.

At first, I thought that I would not answer it, because what kind of idiot calls you at 5:38 in the morning? But then, of course, there are all those calls that can come at any hour of the night, when someone that you love has been injured or died. As much as you never want to hear them, such calls need to be answered. 

Or it could be someone on the east coast who wanted a photograph from me and did not check to see what the time difference between there and here. I have had this happen a number of times.

But the phone did not ring again. And so I wondered if it had really rang at all, or if I had dreamed it. Margie never heard it. But then she sleeps more lightly than I do and was drugged up on pain killers.

I am quite certain that it rang.

I was now desperately tired and wide awake at the same time. I lay awake for a while, then rolled from my right to my left side. This was observed by Jimmy, the black cat. He rose then from the mattress, climbed atop me and settled down in the crook between my hip and shoulder.

He made my blanket feel wonderfully warm and so I thought that I could drift back to sleep. Just when I was about to, I heard Margie stirring and I knew she needed help, so I made poor Jimmy get down and I got up and helped her.

I then went back to bed. The windows were open just a enough that it had become very cool in the room. When I crawled back under the covers, I could not get warm.

"Jimmy!" I pled, "come back." He thought about it for about ten minutes and then he did.

Soon, I was once again wonderfully warm. I was getting close to drifting back to sleep when Jimmy heard a certain bird sing outside. He suddenly leaped off me and hopped onto the window sill to see if by chance he might get that bird.

Now, I was wide awake again. I got to thinking about Family Restaurant. I knew that I should not go there. I can't afford to go there every time I get the whim. And there is my acid reflux to think about. I need to eat oatmeal.

Yet, I did not want to lie in bed awake all morning and then get up and cook oatmeal. It was after seven now and it seemed foolish to lie in bed awake any longer. But the only way that getting up seemed tolerable was if I went to Family and ordered an omelette and had somebody wait on me. 

So that is what I did.

I bought Margie a burrito from Carl's Jr. brought it back to her and then headed out the door to take my morning walk. This dog was in the driveway and was very surprised to see me. It is the same dog that nearly killed the rabbit and that lives on the corner where the chicken crossed the road. 

We stared at each other for about one minute, as I waited, curious, to see what he would do. 

He got the hell out of there.

Somebody had moved the helmet from accident site up to just off the edge of the road. It seemed odd that nobody had picked it up yet, which made me wonder if whoever had been wearing it had been hurt badly enough that he had no need for a helmet and so no one had even thought about it.

I still wondered if it was a child or an adult. I picked up the helmet and put it on my head. It was tight, but I could push it on.

Could have been a kid with a big head, or an adult with a small one.

There were towering cumulus in the sky. 

Later, I found Margie in the process of paying our bills, playing with crossword puzzles. You can see how much better she looks. It has been almost two weeks now. They said she would be laid up for six - if she does not require surgery, which we won't know until Tuesday at the earliest.

Late in the afternoon, I took a coffee break. I passed by the Wasilla skateboard park - the best in the state.

Now... concerning Sarah Palin... I think she has finally pushed me over the edge with her Facebook statement against health care reform. She may not be aware of it, but in this distortion she has made a personal attack against my health care - as I tried to take responsibility and so bought a health insurance policy in good faith, only to discover, when my time of need came, that my health insurance, which I pay dearly for, is run by an organization that views my health care as an obstacle to their profits. 

I have spent considerable time in off-the-highway Alaska, where medical facilities are limited. Quite often, while I was out there, someone who had suffered an accident or had fallen critically ill had needed to be medivaced to Anchorage or Fairbanks by air ambulance. I knew that such an event could break me, so, about 15 years ago, when I spoke with the sales representative for the insurance that I hoped to get through the National Association of the Self Employed, the first question that I asked was, should I need it, will this policy cover the cost of an air ambulance?

The sales representative assured me that it would. I went for it. No other member of my Apache family was covered under the plan, as all were covered under treaty obligation by the US Indian Health Service.

At first, I thought that I had purchased a pretty good plan - until the time came that I actually needed it. Then I realized that the over $8000 I spend annually was not doing me much good. Very little was ever covered - and that includes medication, which was not covered at all.

I could have received much better care, and not postponed or ignored so much that needed to be done, had I have put that $8000 toward it, rather than to someone else's profit.

Still, I held onto the plan just in case I should ever experience the catastrophic event.

That came in June of last year, when I took my fall in Barrow and suffered my shattered shoulder. There is a good hospital in Barrow, but it was not equipped to deal with the injury that I had. So I was medivaced by air ambulance to Anchorage.

The bill for that air ambulance alone came to over $37,000. My insurance company turned it over to one of those sharp individuals to whom they pay high salaries just to find any clause that might enable them to get out of paying a claim. That person did his job well. They refused to pay. And that was only the beginning of the many ways my insurance company failed me after I took my fall.

So, yes - if a national health insurance option were to be established with client health rather than profit being the highest priority, I would drop my company in an instant and switch. And if enough of their clients did so that they went out of business... good. That would be exactly what they deserve.

No, Sarah Palin - Barack Obama's health care plan is not "absolutely evil" as you state on your Facebook page. And when you write, "The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's 'death panel' so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their 'level of productivity in society,' whether they are worthy of health care," you are making that all up.

Your language is not only inflammatory, but dishonest. There will be no "death panel" and I challenge you to show us the language that a rational, intelligent reading of could be interpreted to imply such a thing. Your baby will be treated with respect, compassion, and care under the Obama plan - and not only that, but so will the babies of many parents not so fortunate as you and Todd, parents who cannot afford the kind of health insurance that you enjoy.

Why do you, of all people, stand against such parents and their Down Syndrome babies?

I also believe that you know this, but have chosen your words to pander to paranoia and fear in order to put yourself alongside the Rush Limbaugh's of the world.

Sarah Palin - I used to love you. I really did. I did not vote for you, because I feared where you might come down on certain issues dear to me, such as Native self-governance and subsistence hunting and fishing rights. Yet, after you took office, got rid of that jet and did a few other good and showy things, I had a change of heart. I thought you might truly be that "breath of fresh air," the cliche that even more Democrats than Republicans were using to describe you. But then came John McCain - who I also once loved - and you showed us who you really are. 

When I started this blog, I vowed to keep myself out of the fray, to not join the media and blog circus that whipped up around you, because I had other purposes and did not want to be diverted from them. I have often found it a struggle to keep that vow, but when I read the cynical words that you wrote Friday on Facebook, I could not keep it any longer.

You must be spoken against and so I speak against you.

The ordeal that my wife has so far faced - I wanted hospital care for her

Just today, the fourth day, the situation has begun to improve. I think we can reasonably manage it now, all on our own. But the previous three days and nights have all been hell; miserable, miserable, miserable; what little sleep could be had was for me always interrupted by Margie's screams of agony and for her prevented by the terrible pain itself. Simple, two minute tasks that everyone must perform have taken two, even three hours to carry out and it has taken the assistance of at least three strong adults each time. And very soon afterward, the task would need to be performed all over again.

To help get her through this, four adult family members have taken leave from work. It quickly became obvious to me and all the others here that she needed hospital care, at least for the first few days. The demands of caring for her in a way that would alleviate as much pain as possible were beyond our capability and facility. 

I will begin with the third night, when neither Margie or I got more than a few minutes sleep straight at any point. Every ten to fifteen minutes throughout the night - and I do not exagerate - Margie would scream out in terrible pain. This was how often the muscle spasms struck in her left leg. Each time one did, it pulled at her injured knee. This knee has been excruciatingly sensitive to movement and touch. The lightest touch upon her leg or foot could cause her to scream out in pain, as could the tiniest movement, often imperceptible to the eye.

This is why it would take us so long to perform those two minute tasks, for which we never moved her farther than one foot away from the bed.

So the third night passed with virtually no sleep for either of us - me, because the moment I would begin to doze would be the instant that her scream would jar me to full awake. Once awake, I was helpless to do a single thing for her. It is obvious why she could not sleep.

She took all her medications as prescribed.

Now I will bounce back to the first night, the first day, after we left the Taco Bell on Muldoon in Anchorage where I had bought her a burrito so that she could take her pain medication. I drove home, with her sitting in the back seat and, as usual, it took close to one hour. For her, it was a miserable ride.

Once I got her home I had to get her from the car into the house - but remember, the slightest movement, the slightest touch, would cause her to scream out in pain. We retrieved the crutches she had used after her last injury, but while there were no broken bones this time, whatever damage has been inflicted upon her ligaments has brought even more severe pain than did the break. After about 15 minutes of struggle, punctuated by scream upon scream, we had not succeeded in moving her more than a foot from the car.

We then decided that we needed a wheelchair, just to transport her, but we did not have one. So I came here, to my office, retrieved my desk chair and took it outside. Then, through many more screams, Jacob and Caleb slowly lowered her into that chair while I attempted to keep her leg straight and her knee from bending by supporting her brace wih my right hand just below the knee and her ankle with my left hand.

Once we got her into the chair, we could not really roll it because our driveway is not paved and the tiny wheels of my office chair would not roll over rocks, gravel and dirt. So we picked the chair up by its wooden arms, carried her into the house and sat her down in the middle of the front room. We padded another chair with pillows and placed her injured leg upon it in a way that would keep it straight.

She was now so exhausted by the pain and effort that she wanted to do nothing but sit in that spot without moving. So she sat there for about an hour, maybe longer, then decided that it was time to move to the single bed at the foot of our bed. This is where she had slept after I had I got my titanium replacement for the shoulder that I shattered on June 12, 2008. It is where she continued to sleep after she fell and broke her left kneecap and right wrist January 20, even before I had healed enough to share our bed with her.

So remember how last Saturday night, after I returned home from the Arctic Slope, I looked forward to climbing into my bed with my wife who I had not seen for seven weeks?

That night, last Saturday night, the night before she fell again, was the first night that we had slept together in our bed in fourteen months. FOURTEEN MONTHS! Who knows when we will next spend another night together in the same bed?

So we moved her slowly down the hall and then to the bed. Once at the bed, with me always trying to keep her leg straight, it took us three hours, again punctuated by many pained screams and shreiks, to place and position her.

No sooner had we accomplished this when she needed to use the restroom. We could not get her to the bathroom, but we did manage to raise her from the bed and we did manage to take care of the matter and then to place her back upon the bed - and again, the entire process was torn by the screams and shrieks and it took another two hours.

Altogether too soon, it would be time to do it all again. Any reader who has been with this journal for awhile will understand that I entered this new nursing job with its 24 hour shift followed immediately by 24 hour shift already in a state of exhaustion, yet it had to be done and so I did it. 

I knew that if she was going to get the care that she needed to keep her pain and suffering at a more tolerable level, she needed to go back to the hospital and be admitted. Yet, she had been through too much, suffered too much and was too exhausted to try now. The car was parked just outside the front door - less than a minute walk away out the bedroom, down the hall, through the front room and then outside - but it felt as far away and inaccessible as the moon.

It was late now, well after-hours, and there was nothing to do but to give Margie a chance to rest as best she could - which would not be much rest at all - and then see how we could get her back to the hospital. In the meantime, I decided to call the Alaska Native Medical Center, explain the situation and see if there was any kind of advice or help that I could get.

I called the main number and was transferred to the emergency room. I explained the situation to the person who answered. In an impatient tone of voice, she told me that she could neither offer any advice nor connect me with a doctor, nurse, or anyone who could, as it was against policy to make any kind of diagnosis or give any kind of advice over the phone.

The remainder of the first night and of the wee and early hours of the morning passed with many shrieks and screams of pain and with almost no sleep.

Come the second day, I was so exhausted that I could hardly function; I had strained my back in two places, but still my wife needed my help. I felt guilty for thinking of my own comfort and fatigue when I knew that what Margie was going through was so much worse.

Over the course of the next day, we spent some time on the phone with various people at ANMC, all of whom were most courteous and all expressed a desire to help. In the end, concerning the matter of further hospital care, a gentleman called me back and we engaged in a fairly lengthy discussion. This was the gist of his message: the chart for your wife has been examined. This is not the kind of injury that warrants hospital care. You can bring her back in. She will then have to be reexamined - the examination will mean we have to move her leg around and bend her knee. This will aggravate her injury even more. Then we will almost certainly send her home again and she will be in worse condition than she is right now.

This was followed by two more days of no sleep, of multiple two-hour, even three-hour, screaming ordeals. Her pain killer was changed and strengthened, yet not much seemed to change. 

This is me, late last night, lying on our bed not far from the one where Margie lay in pain. As he always is, Jim was there to help me through the ordeal. Not long afterward, an amazing thing happened. Margie improved dramatically. The two hour ordeal dropped to 20 minutes, her pain became bearable and her screams ceased. My help alone became sufficient to get her through it. Come morning, Jacob was able to drive back to Anchorage and return to work.

Lisa works at ANMC and had been busy serving as a go between to help her mom at least get a prescription for a stronger pain-killer, plus muscle relaxants. Perhaps that is what finally made the difference. Thank you, Lisa. And thank you Jacob, Lavina and Caleb for what you have done to help us get through this hard ordeal to this point.

On one of those miserable nights, Kalib looked out the door into the backyard and spotted a bull moose in velvet.

The bull moose, in velvet, in our backyard.

And so passes this recent chapter of our lives, right here, in Wasilla, Alaska.