Reflection

A very poignant piece and lovely poem / lyrics by the late John Denver.  I know exactly what Josh Brown and Denver mean.  Ah, the stories to be told, but now, they've been mostly told to me as I could practically reverse the digits of Brown's age in stating mine.  But 37 is a great age, a time to feel fabulously alive; then I was running a publishing company, feeling pretty much like Josh, waking up excited by the forthcoming day, and the week if it was my favorite day, Monday.  But just wait, Josh, if you think time is accelerating at 37, well, you know what I'm about to say, so, instead here's some advice from a septuagenarian: enjoy every day -- you'll never get one of them back!  Finally, although someone else might be looking back at me in the mirror, my mind says he's a stranger; I'm still eagerly looking forward to the coming day.

The Other Side of Memorial Day

Previous Memorial Day entries have been about what the "holiday" really means to me, and it still does --  what our service men and women sacrificed to make this country great (in spite of our problems).  It makes me think of my father who fought in WW II, and friends, Ray, Ron, Bruce, who served in Vietnam.  I've always abhorred the other side of the day, the commercial part of it, but it does signal the "start" of the summer season and I suppose one has to accept that along with the true meaning.  So contrary to my other entries, this is mostly a photo album of a trip we took yesterday around Peanut Island, which has become a party island during the Memorial Day weekend. 

There seem to be two groups of boaters there, young families and then large groups of young people who are there to "seriously" party.  Ironically, Palm Beach County has an new ordinance that makes drinking on the island itself a misdemeanor, so that is the safe place where the families can congregate.  But it is legal to drink "off the island" so hundreds and hundreds of boats are anchored, beached, rafted around the island -- mostly party hardy types -- downing booze like there is no tomorrow.  No Memorial Day thoughts there and amazing, these same people get in their boats and go back to wherever they came from that same day.  So it's not OK to drink on the island, but OK to pilot your boat home drunk (there are marine police about, but how many boats can they check on their way out?).

The partiers look at us, two old folk in a boat, as a relic species, a societal vestigial organ, and perhaps we are, although when we were that age, we might have thought the aged eccentric, but always treated them with respect.  Perhaps that is a word (respect) that has become extinct in our society in many ways. 

Is it any wonder that a study by the Yale School of Public Health of entries in Facebook by individuals in the 20-29 age range found:

     74 percent berated older individuals

     41 percent mentioned physical debilitation

     27 percent treated the elderly as children, and

     37 percent advocated banning them from public activities such as driving and shopping.

One group even advocated facing a firing squad when one turns 69. Guess my time is up!

So, with that in mind, we planned a trip to reconnoiter the scene, choosing to leave our home during the noon hour, knowing that we would be returning well before the worst of the mayhem. (In fact, this year some fights broke out while "under the influence.")

Even though we left early, the boat traffic was already heavy and some Florida boaters don't seem to be aware that even in "speed zones" such as Lake Worth, they are responsible their own wake.  Entering the Lake, immediately south of the PGA bridge I try to time my run so I am either well behind or well ahead of the big sportfishes and yachts that run the Lake as if they own the water and everyone else be damned. This still puts us at the mercy of these large vessels approaching us, the greatest danger being when we are between two markers and can't run outside of them.  I'm amazed that these boats don't slow down to give a smaller boat a safer passageway, but most don't.  I had a 41' Hatteras approach us at full bore which left six foot wakes, tightly spaced and with curlers on top, ones I had to take on my port quarter.  Although we took these off of plane, there were a few anxious moments.  We knew the Lake would be rough and I knew our boat could take it, but the boat seems to take it better than our backs.  Unfortunately, between piloting our boat and hanging on, it is impossible to get photos of these inconsiderate, dangerous boats or their wakes. 

But, thankfully, it is slow speed all around Peanut Island and although we had boats on both sides, and ones approaching from all angles, it is fairly easy to navigate, although, again, many Florida boaters seem to lack knowledge of the rules of the road and what it means for the burdened vessel to give way or for the privileged vessel to maintain course and speed.

So here are a few photos of our trip.  First, leaving the placid waters just south of the PGA bridge..

Entering Lake Worth, traffic coming at us, going south...

After passing under the Blue Heron bridge, one beholds Peanut Island on the North Side....

Looking east, rafting on the northern sandbar of Peanut....

 

This is what the rafting looked like on the Northwest side of Peanut...

Heading south along Peanut's west side....

Tent colony on Peanut's west side (overnight tenting is permitted in designated areas and they are immune from the law that does not permit drinking on the island...go figure)

On the south side of the island, the old Coast Guard station and the West Palm ferry...

Larger boats on the northeast side of Peanut....

Passing Sailfish Marina which is to the east of Peanut -- home to some large sportfishes...

And the rafting goes on and on -- here on the northeastern sand bar right near the narrow channel...

There are some derelict boats near the Island, but this one is someone's home...

Finally, home, and our safely boat in its lift, a paddler surfboarder goes by with a doggie on the bow (wow!)...

Brave New World of Medical Technology

Lucky me, I have a pacemaker.  Actually, very lucky as when I was fifty four I was running around the office one day, feeling a little dizzy, but going about my business, preparing to get on an overseas flight to the Frankfurt Bookfair, and my wise wife forced me to see my doctor before we departed (she was going with me). My doctor took an EKG and looked startled, saying that my heart was beating at only 30 BPM.  I should have passed out long ago and he wondered how I was able to get through the day.  So I said, isn't there a pill I can take, I have to be in Frankfurt tomorrow. He replied, the only place you're going is to the ER.  Had I gotten on that plane, ignoring the symptom, I was told I would have died.  So, lucky me, indeed.

After ER, I was admitted to the cardiac unit and they thought I had an advanced form of Lyme Disease, which can attack the heart's electrical conduction system. I was put on heavy duty antibiotics and meanwhile they warned me that if my heartbeat dropped below 30, I'd have to have a temporary pacemaker wired through my neck.  That evening a team of medical personal came bursting into my room, monitors beeping, indicating my heartbeat had dropped to 28-29.  Look, I said, I'm conscious.  Please don't put a temporary pacemaker in unless it drops further.  So they watched me that night and I was at least stable.

After almost a week of medical treatment, and no improvement of my condition, a cardiologist informed me they would be prepping me for a permanent pacemaker the following day.  They had no idea why, at my age, my electrical system was failing.  Lousy genes they speculated (a favorite explanation offered by medical personal when they have no clue). So, into the operating theater I was wheeled and was told I'd be sedated but hazily conscious as the surgeon would have to ask me questions as he placed the leads into the heart.  A representative of the pacemaker manufacturer was present and I remember he and the surgeon joking during the procedure.  The surgeon said this is a piece of cake as he's relatively young and in good shape so I piped up, I ought to qualify for a discount then!  Fat chance he replied.

In any case, I have lived with a pacemaker, now, for sixteen years.  Actually, I'm now on my third such device as when the battery runs low, it's not like replacing a couple of double A's.  A new pacemaker has to be inserted in my chest. 

I know, it's an awful looking picture, but that's what my chest looked like five days after getting the last one.  It actually looks worse than it felt.

My third generation pacemaker is high tech.  The older devices needed monitoring, usually in the cardiologist's office.  But now the monitoring is done remotely, as the pacemaker transmits the information wirelessly to a receiver that sits by our bed, one that is plugged into our phone system, and it dials out the data as I sleep.  Every three months if does a "pacemaker interrogation" the same one I had in the office and transmits the data (it will also send data immediately if it detects any serious irregularity such as a ventricular tachycardia).  Our phone system is now digital, so the information goes out via our cable company's broadband.

But wait, more high tech.  Our telephone answering service is provided by the cable company as well; not only are messages recorded, they are transcribed using voice recognition, and then sent to me via email.

And yesterday I received the following email:

From: Voice Services@-------.com

Sent: Tuesday, January 15, 2013 1:04 PM

Subject: You have a new Voicemail

    "Hello this is your implanted cardiac device clinic calling to let you know we received your follow up data and it looks normal. We look forward to your next appointment. Thank you and goodbye."

Thus, from an implanted pacemaker with a computer chip transmitting on a proprietary band, to a receiver that dials out via broadband to a computer that analyzes the data and, if normal, then places an automated call which is recorded and then transcribed via voice recognition, finally being emailed back to me.  A full circle without human interaction!

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.....Arthur C. Clarke

But there are serious issues with all this technology, both positive and negative.  My pacemaker is transmitting at all times.  Anyone within 10 feet knowing the frequency and having the right equipment, in a public place, can have access to the data which raises privacy issues.  I have no problem with that but it also means that same person would have the ability to reset or even disable the pacemaker.  Pacemaker (and implantable cardioverter-defibrillator) manufactures say that is nearly impossible, but it seems to me that almost any "techno-magic" is feasible today.

Thinking more macro-medical technology, we have the ability to build a national database of medical information, at least for Medicare recipients, that would obviate the endless duplication of medical record keeping for the same patient at multiple health care facilities and doctors' offices.  Again, privacy issues have been a stumbling block, but imagine the significant cost savings (and improvement of data accuracy).  I have less concern about the privacy issues than I do about rising health costs and the burden it puts on taxpayers.  Surely there is a techno-magic means of satisfactorily addressing the matter.

A Little Anesthetic Drip

I'm turning 70 soon. It seems like only yesterday I was reconciling myself to my 65th birthday, fortunate of course to make it to both milestones, but knowing that time is steadily running out of the hourglass.  It's not as if I come from hearty stock where everyone lives healthily into their nineties and then has the good fortune of just not waking up one day.  And I've had my issues, most recently open heart surgery just last year.

The older I get the more I seem to "work" for Doctors who take charge of my body with tests, medications, procedures, just about any time they want. And I'm not in it alone: friends, some from childhood or college days, are going through the same thing, that is the ones who have made it thus far.

Speaking of college, for some reason, unknown to me now, as a student (that's my college yearbook photo to the right) I had memorized John Masefield's graceful poetic masterpiece, On Growing Old.  Masefield wrote the poem when he was only 41, as if some sudden, unexpected  poetic insight into his own future materialized.  I still know the words today.  One of our first boats was named 'Spindrift' because of a line from the first verse:

Be with me, Beauty, for the fire is dying;

My dog and I are old, too old for roving.

Man, whose young passion sets the spindrift flying,

Is soon too lame to march, too cold for loving.

I take the book and gather to the fire,

Turning old yellow leaves; minute by minute

The clock ticks to my heart. A withered wire,

Moves a thin ghost of music in the spinet.

I cannot sail your seas, I cannot wander

Your cornland, nor your hill-land, nor your valleys

Ever again, nor share the battle yonder

Where the young knight the broken squadron rallies.

Only stay quiet while my mind remembers

The beauty of fire from the beauty of embers.

Whatever compelled me to commit that to memory more than fifty years ago?  Was it a perverse acknowledgement that I too would one day be the subject of the poem although at the time I would have thought 70 an eternity away?  But the day is arriving and ironically I don't feel like that at all -- I'm not nearly ready to "gather by the fire." If anything, my mind tells me I'm a kid, defying the image in the mirror, belying the health issues.

But my literary hero, John Updike, most perceptively describes the process of aging and the collateral inevitability of one's demise in one of his last short stories, "The Full Glass." The main character is thinking about his grandfather and Updike writes: “As a child I would look at him and wonder how he could stay sane, being so close to his death.  But, actually, it turns out, Nature drips a little anesthetic into your veins each day that makes you think another day is as good as a year, and another year as long as a lifetime.  The routines of living – the tooth-brushing and pill-taking, the flossing and the water glass, the matching socks and the sorting of the laundry into the proper bureau drawers—wear you down.” 

No truer words were ever written.  So, onward into my 70's!

And Happy Holidays as celebrated in Florida.........