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.

I walk about in hand and ankle cuffs, throwing rocks, as I listen to old songs play in my head

Although the nights have been cold, today was the third day in a row of exquisite, warm, sunshine and after Caleb returned from his late-morning coffee outing, I got him to agree not to go to bed until I could take a walk. I headed down Seldon to Church Road and, as I returned, I saw this vehicle pull out from Lower Serendipity. I should know the make, model, and year, I suppose, but I don't.

When I first saw it, I wondered if it had once served as a hearse. If so, I wondered about the people it had carried. I pictured an old man with pure white hair and a handle-bar mustache lying in the back inside a fine, blue, coffin, his hands folded on top of his chest over a black suit with blue pinstripes, taking his final ride. Then I pictured a tiny coffin.

I decided that instead, maybe it had been a woody, with surfboards piled on top. I pictured bleached-blond surfers and their bikini-clad honeys from the 1960's driving it along the edge of California seaside cliffs, damn near driving off the road because they could not keep their eyes off the waves breaking below.

I remembered driving along such cliffs, surfboard on top, the girls in the car screaming in terror at me to watch the road instead of the surf. I wouldn't have driven off the road. Even though I studied the surf, I knew at all times right where the edge of that cliff was.

I'm afraid the car was not a woody, it was a 1960 Ford Fairlane sedan and the girls did not wear bikinis. They were modestly dressed, actually.

Mormon girls. That's why.

A Jan and Dean song came into my mind:

I bought a cool wagon and we call it a woody

Surf City, here we come

You know its not very cherry its an oldie but a goodie

Surf City, here we come

Well it ain't got a backseat or a rear window

but it still gets me where I want to go

And we're going to Surf City, 'cause its two to one

You know we're going to Surf City, gonna have some fun...

...Two girls for every boy...

If I could but live my youth again, those girls would not be Mormons, or, if they were, they would be the wild ones (sorry, Mom).

One is only young once, and those who stand at the pulpit and preach to young people about what will bring them unbearable regret later in life can really miss the mark.

I walked under a sky that was blue, so deep, clear and clean and in the not too far distance, the mountains rose beautifully into it. The air was wonderfully warm and its aroma was sweet. Yet, I felt trapped, as though I was shackled in steel cuffs - both on my wrists and ankles.

This is how I had felt last summer, too, when I would get out and walk and see the sky and the mountains. This is because it was all inaccessible to me. I could see it, but I could not reach it; I could not go to it. I could not walk in it. This was because of the injury that I had suffered. I was horribly fragile and had a long way to go before I would heal.

And that's how the summer passed, and the fall, but always I was improving slowly and in the winter I began to feel new strength, but still I was limited. The pain in my right shoulder, upper arm and wrist was constant and that whole arm was weak. My range of motion was limited. Even a slight amount of stress, whether by bump or pull, could jar me with startling pain and seemed to threaten to knock me right back to where I had been.

Come the beginning of this summer, despite the fact that I still wore a brace upon my wrist and that the pain remained constant, there 100 percent of the time but usually at a low enough level that I could forget about it, I felt as though I were ready to go, full bore now.

I had a plan to do just that. I had what I figured would be a month's worth of field work - shooting pictures and conducting interviews - to do on the Arctic Slope. I created a fantasy in my head. Even as I did this field work - shooting and working oh, say, 12 hours a day, I would somehow find another eight hours or so to construct my 96 page Uiñiq magazine layout, write all my stories and get my publication press ready by August 1.

Then, I would cut loose for the entire month and do all those things that I had not been able to do last summer. I would hike in the mountains, I would canoe in the wild country, I would catch fish, including a king salmon, kayak in Prince William Sound and then at the end I would see if I could shoot a moose and put it on the table.

As anyone who has been with this blog knows, I had a great time on the Slope and I would judge my field work to have been quite successful. But how in the world I ever got the idea that I could put my magazine together at the same time as I did that field work, I do not know.

So I resigned myself to the idea that I had no choice but to use the month of August to put the magazine together - yet every now and then, no matter what, I would break away to go into the mountains, or onto the water, for one day, or even just an afternoon.

And then Margie fell. And now she needs me all the time. Even out here, on this short walk, knowing that Caleb was in the house with her should anything urgent come up, I was nervous and uncomfortable. I felt that I must get back to her quickly as I could. Those mountains were absolutely inaccessible to me. I felt trapped. Cuffed.

And then another old song came into my head, this one by the Everly Brothers:

Through the years our love will grow

like a river it will flow

It can't die because I'm so...

devoted...

to you!*

That "you" would be Margie. And being devoted does not necessarily mean romance at all; it does not necessarily mean holding hands and staring raptured into misty eyes. It means giving up what you so desperately want to do to be with that person when that person truly needs you - just as Margie gave up so much last summer to care for me; it means to be exhausted and to get up at any and all hours of the night, when you do not feel you can even open your eyes or raise your arms, to help that person through an unpleasant and painful task.

And even as I felt trapped and cuffed while walking in the open air under the bright sun, my Margie lay on the same bed where she had lain nearly eight days straight now, always on her back, never getting more than one foot... no, not even more than eight inches... from the bed in all that time.

And yes, I am devoted to my Margie. By so many standards upon which the marital relationship is often judged, I fail. Many is the woman who would have left me long ago. But we like each other. We don't just love each other. We like each other. We are friends. We enjoy hanging out together. And I am devoted to her. No matter how contrary to the idea of devotion some of my actions might seem by the so often artificial standards of the society that we live in.

So all those mountains must just sit there, for now, without me wandering through them.

I did not mean to get carried away like this. I should strike all this.

But what is that rock doing in the air, just beyond my thumb?

I threw it, and photographed as it left. See, yesterday, I threw an apple core into the bushes, for the birds, the squirrels, the bugs to eat. My throw was not good. In the time of my chidhood, if a boy had made such a throw his friends would have teased him, "you throw like a girl!"

It was a weak throw, and the core only traveled about 15 feet - the lingering result of my injury. So I decided that when I walk, I will stop every now and then, pick up a rock, and throw it, until I can hit a target a good distance away.

I probably threw two or three dozen rocks on this walk. I gripped the rocks the way you grip a baseball, and made a concerted effort to draw my arm over my head in good baseball style. It was difficult. It hurt. None of my rocks went much past 20 feet - until the last one. It flew maybe 30 feet.

So I am going to keep throwing rocks until they are frozen to the ground and buried under the snow.

In the midst of this coming winter, I will take Margie to Hawaii and I will rent a surfboard and with my strengthened arm I will paddle into the surf and then I will ride a wave.

It has been so damn long since I have ridden a wave.

So please, please... no more accidents!

Speaking of accidents... at the edge of Wards Road, over the tiny pond my kids named "Little Lake" when they were growing, I found this crash helmet in the weeds. See the indention that covers the nearby area? I could see that it was made by an up-ended machine, probably a four wheeler, most likely driven by a kid hot-rodding in wreckless abandon - maybe a little kid - just before (s)he went off the road.

But I don't know. Maybe it was a responsible adult. All I know for sure is that someone had an accident here and the helmet was left behind.

I wondered how bad it was? Hopefully, not too bad. Maybe Margie is not the only person around here laid up in bed right now.

The other day, Caleb bought himself an iPhone. He plays a game on it.

This is progress. I was able to help Margie out of bed and onto a chair, where she sat for a very long time and read a book. Since she can no longer babysit him, and Lavina had to go back to work, Kalib enrolled in daycare today, just as he did after she injured herself last January.

He and his parents did not get home until late, about 9:30, but they brought Margie's dinner with them. Hawaiian food -chicken and rice - cooked at that place in Mountain View, the name of which I forget.

I did not want to wait that late for dinner and so had eaten mine  - a can of pinto beans and a ham and cheese sandwich - earlier.

But Margie gave me a taste of hers.

Oh, geeze! Had I known, I would have waited until midnight, if need be.

That's how good it was.

It may have been the best chicken that I have ever tasted.

Other than Mom's, of course.

Oh yes - the Sarah Palin experiment:

It worked. I had the biggest flood of hits today that I have received since I posted the Barrow baby contest.

No - Sarah Palin did not draw as many people to the blog as did the Barrow babies, but she drew quite a few, anyway.

*My condolences to Congressman Don Young, over the loss of his wife, Lu.

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.

Catch-up #3: Margie's latest injury - how it happened

The day began well. You will recall that I had stated that I wanted to sleep ten, 20, perhaps even 40 years, with Margie at my side. As it turned out, I only slept for about six hours, but it was a pleasant six hours, there, in bed, with my wife snoozing soundly beside me, Jimmy, the black cat, curled atop my shoulder and Pistol-Yero, the tabby, coiled up alongside my ankles.

After I arose, I still felt extremely tired, because one cannot push himself for as long and hard as I have done, sleeping as little as I have slept, even going 40 hard, physical hours with no sleep at all, with no catch up, and then recover with six hours of sleep - no matter how pleasant that six hours might have been.

But I was not worried. I had not taken a day off since June 13 - when  Melanie and I took our little hike up in Hatcher's Pass - but I figured that I would now take two or three days off and I would nap, rest, walk and bike ride at will.

So I got out of bed, looking forward to a pleasant day, and went into the living room where I found the expectant mom, Lavina, looking quite pleasant and cozy herself, cuddled up on the couch with two cats and her iPhone.

Back in Anchorage, Melanie was about to close a purchase on a house with a basement apartment. Margie wanted to go in and help her move. I wanted to do nothing but lay around and be lazy, but she assured me that I could lay around and be lazy at Melanie's new place and watch everyone else do the work.

I did not believe this, but I decided to go in, anyway.

I regret that decision. If I had stayed home, I doubt that Margie would have taken her fall. It is not that anything that I did directly caused her to fall, but by going to town, I created a different dynamic for the day then if I had stayed home. 

Had I stayed put, Margie would have arrived on the scene a few minutes later than she did, for I drive faster then she does. The jackets that she carried down the steps would have already been taken down. They would not have blocked her vision. She would not have missed that extra step just after the turn out of the stairwell. She would not have fallen.

I do not blame myself; I just wish that I had stayed home to be lazy. Then everything would have turned out differently.

True, there is a tiny possibility that things would have turned out even worse - say, for example, that Margie might have collided with a big moose in a terrible crash with a much worse outcome, but this is a remote possibility and I do not believe it would have happened that way.

I think she would now be healthy and happy, rather than in misery and pain.

But I did climb into the Escape with her, I did take the wheel and I did drive toward Anchorage. Even before we left Wasilla, a freight train came rolling by, headed towards Fairbanks.

I was thrilled to see it and shot a frame of the engine as it rolled past.

Not long afterward, the caboose rolled past, too. I could not allow such a momentous event to pass by unphotographed.

After we drove into Anchorage, we headed toward the Duck Downs apartment that Melanie would soon vacate, but less than a block before we would have arrived, we came upon Melanie and Charlie driving away in his pickup truck. So we followed them to the house. I was amazed to see it, for it was much bigger and appeared to be nicer than I had expected.

The people that she was buying the house from had not yet moved out of the top floor and so she and Charlie planned to carry the few things that they had loaded into the back of the truck down into the basement apartment. They would then wait until another day to do anymore moving.

I explored the apartment, determined that if I go bankrupt and lose this house (a continual worry of mine for the past 27 years - and always with considerable justification, especially right now) that it would suffice until I could publish a best-seller and put us back in the black.

I then climbed back up to see what I could carry down and, as I approached the truck, saw Margie carrying some jackets. That was all she intended to carry down.

I grabbed a couple of pairs of cross-country skis and then headed back toward the house. As I neared the top of the stairwell, I heard Margie shriek. Then I heard her cry in that desperate, painful, pitiful way that she had when she had fallen in the street in Washington, DC.

"Dad!" Melanie, who was with her, called from the lower doorway. "Come quick! Mom's hurt!"

I found her lying on her tummy, crying, and screaming out in pain.

We talked, she calmed down, rolled onto her back. She then decided that, although it hurt, she was okay and just needed a few minutes to pull herself together. She pulled her right knee up and then tried to do the same with her left.

This caused her to scream once again. She could not bend that knee.

I knew then that we had to get her to the emergency room.

It was a struggle, accompanied by much screaming, but we raised her from the floor. Charlie then picked her up and carried her in his arms up the stairs and to the car.

As we tried to figure out how to get her into the car, Jane, the woman who Melanie is buying the house from, showed up with a wide strap of webbing and announced that she was a physical therapist and has a great deal of experience hoisting hurt people about.

So she put the strap around Margie's waist. I went to the other side to help pull her up from the driver's side as Jane and Charlie hoisted her into the front passenger seat.

Melanie came with us as I drove Margie to the emergency room at the Alaska Native Medical Center. Lisa met us there. Eventually, we got Margie into a wheelchair and then inside, where she was sent to X-ray.

We were relieved to learn that she had not rebroken her kneecap fracture from January. My first thought was that this meant that she would be fine - just sore for awhile - but I was wrong.

Denise, the physicians assistant who examined her, told us that, judging from the extreme pain Margie was suffering, there must be ligament damage. An x-ray cannot look at ligaments. It would take a CAT scan. Before this could happen, she wanted Margie to go home and get some bed rest for about one week to give the inflammation that had caused her knee to swell to watermelon size to subside a bit and her pain to ease.

She expected Margie to be laid up for a total of about six weeks.

Denise examines Margie's leg.

Margie in excruciating pain. To help her deal with it, Denise asked what kind of pain killers Margie had been prescribed for her original knee injury. Our minds went blank, so she started reading off a list of pain meds, until she came to Tylenol-Codeine. 

We both remembered Margie taking those, so that is what she prescribed. What we had forgotten is that this came later - hydro-codeine, a more powerful painkiller, was what had come first.

As it would turn out, Margie would need all the pain-killer power she could get. She was also prescribed Motrin, to help reduce the inflammation.

We picked up the drugs from the pharmacy and then left, Melanie riding with us, Lisa following. Margie could not take her drugs until she ate something, so we stopped at the Taco Bell on Muldoon and placed an order for a bean burrito.

As we progressed through the drive-through toward the bean burrito (and a few things for me, as well), I looked in the mirror and saw this little dog behind us.

As for what lay ahead, well, hell. That's what is has been - hell. 

I must say that the US Indian Health Service and the Alaska Native Medical Center has been of great benefit to this family over the decades. Great benefit. They have my gratitude.

I trust that in this case, they will yet prove to be of great benefit, but as to what was about to come, they failed my Margie. If their job is simply to read what is written down on paper and follow procedure, then they succeeded.

But if their job is to look at a real, injured, human being and then do all that they possibly can to minimize the pain and suffering of that individual, then they failed miserably - and it is Margie who has had to bear the misery.

I am about to go into the jaws of this machine, where I will be ordered to lie perfectly still for 90 minutes - Hi, Bill! - Kalib studies the world

The thing is, my shoulder has made great improvement and continues to do so, but my wrist kind of got overlooked. I remember lying in the hospital after my shoulder replacement surgery, my wrist hurting like hell. I did not think too much of it - I figured that I just banged it up pretty good without doing any real damage.

The attention all went to my shoulder. Maybe three months later, when my wrist was still in pain, I brought it up to Dr. Duddy on one of my visits and so he had his beautiful technician shoot some some x-rays of it.

No breaks, no cracks, no damage of any kind that he could see.

So I continued to just tough it out, expecting the pain to eventually go away.

But it did not.

And now, on the whole, my wrist causes me more pain than my shoulder does. I can lift and pull with it, no problem. But if something pushes my palm downward, or someone shakes my hand too hard, or I lie on it wrong... AYYY YAHHH!

It hurts!

I have written about how I would like to get on a snowmachine this spring and head out onto the ice pack, but I am a bit afraid. And I know I could not hang onto the back of a sled.

It's my wrist, even more than my shoulder that causes me to bear such fear.

So yesterday, Dr. ordered up an MRI just for my wrist.

Today, I spent 90 minutes in this machine.

I had intended to describe the experience - the sounds of the MRI: some like a jackhammer, others like a machine gun, others like an old fashioned shock-treatment device putting an electric charge into flesh, all with NPR programs speaking soothingly to me through my headphones, but I have already written more words than I intended.

It was not painful, it was not terrible, it was just long.

And when I finally I got up, my wrist really hurt. My back was sore.

So I drove to Taco Bell and ordered a cheese quesidilla and a bean burrito with green sauce.

This is Bill, who works for Alaska Open Imaging here in Wasilla, the place where I got the MRI. He is not the technician who put me through the MRI, but he remembered me from the last time I came to AOI. That was after I got rear-ended the eve before Christmas Eve and was left with a bit of whiplash.

Not bad, mind you, but I had to get it checked out, anyway, and Bill is the one who took my x-rays. He was quite impressed today when he saw my G10 pocket camera and wanted to know all about it.

So, as a demonstration, I took his picture and gave him the address to this blog.

Hi, Bill!

And here is one sheet of film from that MRI. I must take it into town Monday to give to Dr. Duddy. I did not want to go to town, Monday. I already must go Tuesday to take Margie in for a followup visit regarding her injuries.

Oh, well.

And here is Kalib, looking out into the world. What a little man he has suddenly become!

It is white out there now, but soon it will be green. Mosquitoes will buzz through the air and tiny frogs will hop about in the back yard.

Not as many frogs as used to hop, though. 

Tons of frogs used to hop around out there.

Now only ounces of frogs hop about.

What happened to them all?