I could have been killed by an ear bud

 The first sign of trouble was a bulge in my left armpit. It didn’t hurt, but every time I applied deodorant I wondered what it was. On several occasions I asked the “substitute doctors” (PAs or NPs) and a doctor once. They all said pretty much the same thing—It didn’t appear to be muscular, so it likely was a lymph node doing its job. It still made me uneasy, especially when it lasted for months.

Before going on, you need to know some background on my left ear. It wasn’t a normal ear at all.

When I was about five years old, probably just playing by myself at home, I heard a sudden “POP!” in my left ear, and my ear hurt—A LOT! I cried, but my Dad said he knew what to do to make my ear feel better. He smoked cigarettes, and his solution was to gently blow warm smoke in my ear. Before you criticize him, know that he only had a 6^th grade education, and that was in a one-room schoolhouse in the sticks in southeastern Oklahoma. Anyway, the pain eventually subsided or I got used to it. But from that time and for many years, I had a slow flow of smelly gunk in my left ear. No one noticed it yet, but I also lost some hearing in that ear. And in retrospect, I’d say there’s a good chance that was related to the many, many sinus infections and tonsillitis over my childhood.

I don’t know how long it was before my mother decided to take me to an ear doctor. It had to be quite a while, though, because of what he found. I don’t know that “doctor’s” name, but I can tell you for sure that he was a quack. He used a long, pointed instrument made of brass and wrapped with cotton on the end to clean out the smelly stuff in my ear canal. There were several weekly appointments that were all the same—wrap cotton around that poker, wipe it around in my left ear canal, and repeat. He must have gotten it pretty clean after a while, because he found a growth attached to the hole in my eardrum and cut the polyp off. I guess that must have made him pretty proud of the job he was doing, but it would have been better if he had prescribed an antibiotic to get rid of the infection and patched the eardrum!

I finally told my mother I was tired of going through the same thing over and over, and that was the end of it. But that was NOT the end of the persistent infection in my ear, and of the frequent fevers and sinus trouble.

I must have been eighteen or so when my sister told me about an ENT she was seeing, and suggested I go there. Dr. Don Matheson had an office in near south Fort Worth, and I saw right away that he was a kind and personable man I liked. He cleared up the infection quickly (antibiotics, of course), and suggested an unusual operation. In the hospital he made an incision all along the back side of my ear and folded it over to reveal the workings of my hearing equipment. After clearing out the residue of the infection I’d had for more than 10 years, he wedged a bone chip into my hearing bone assembly to replace part that had been eaten away by the infection. Once it healed up he did a hearing test and was disappointed to find that my hearing had not improved. He offered to make a second attempt to restore it.

After a second operation he determined that my hearing was better, and had improved as much as he could accomplish. I had talked to him, wondering why such an infection might have started, and he offered his opinion: It probably was caused by swimming in polluted water. Armed with that detail, I asked if there was anything he could do to keep water from being held in my ear, and he offered to modify my ear canal to allow it to drain more freely. I agreed, so in one of those surgeries he scooped out some of the ear canal lining to create a more effective drain. While it seemed a good idea to both of us that the time, that turned out to be a regrettable decision.

It was on a weekend many years later that the pain started. I was nearly seventy years old, and had experienced many earaches and other pains, but this was bad. As stated at the beginning, I had been concerned about a lump under my left arm. Later I noticed a wide, soft bulge on the same shoulder above the clavicle. None of the health professionals I talked to were concerned about either of them. But on this weekend day, my left ear ached, and my entire left shoulder was in pain. Nothing would relieve it. My wife insisted that I go to an urgent care center, and I complied.

The doctor in the urgent care was a small Asian lady with a lovely manner. She asked questions and spent some time on my shoulder and looking in my ear. After bringing out a few instruments, she pulled out a black ear bud tip hiding in the hollowed-out area of my modified left ear canal. The rubber tip had not deteriorated much, considering the amount of time it had been in there. That’s when I remembered the time over a year ago when I lost the tip of a pair of cheap ear buds I used to listen to music from my MP3 player.

She also sent me to another room to get an x-ray of my left shoulder. After that she sent me somewhere else to get an ultrasound.

The sonographer used a Doppler ultrasound machine to inspect the shoulder area, and spent some time looking at the underarm bulge area. I asked a lot of questions and looked at the screen with her. She said she wasn’t supposed to tell me a diagnosis, but it was clear from what I saw, and from her reaction, that I had a blood clot under my arm.

I didn’t get the results from the urgent care doctor until the next morning, but the instructions she gave me were to go to the emergency room right away. I insisted on going back to see the doctor and thank her before continuing to the hospital, much to my wife’s frustration.

When I got to the ER, they put me on IVs in both arms so I could get antibiotics and blood thinner. A day or two later I got a needle biopsy of the “fossa” that protruded from behind my left clavicle. They determined that there was no current infection in the tissue, but that it had definitely been badly infected before the IV antibiotics had wiped it out.

After five days someone decided I was okay to go home, but I needed to continue with antibiotic pills and blood thinner for a month, just to be safe.

I was fortunate that the blood clot had not traveled to my heart. That would have been tragic.

I also saw an infection specialist, and had a follow-up appointment later. Her determination, as I had surmised, was that the ear bud had lodged in the hollowed area of my left ear canal and triggered a reaction in glands under my arm that indirectly caused the clot and infection that could have killed me.

So that was that. I could have died from an ear bud.

Her name is Bear

Her name is Bear. That's the only name she gave us, but I suspect it's just part of her real name. Bear is an active member of the Taos Pueblo tribe. The pueblo school only goes through eighth grade, but she continued through university. She is both intelligent and articulate, and she follows the old ways.

One of her several jobs is to lead tours of the pueblo, and she is a wonderful guide. She interjected personal stories in the tour script to better illustrate life there.

We learned that the pueblo is a matriarchal society: property passes down through the women. She said her grandmother had just recently gifted her a house inside the historic section, and she plans to move into it, without regard for the fact that there is no running water or electricity allowed.

Tours normally begin in the courtyard of the church, but since she doesn't want anything to do with the church we gathered beside the building instead. There was more to that story, and a little prompting got her to spell out the history behind it.

The Spanish introduced Catholicism to the community several centuries ago. In 1847 the US Army attacked the pueblo because it thought it was implicated in the murder of the Taos governor. Most of the tribe retreated to their holy mountain, following the ancestral beliefs. But the church leaders urged them to find refuge in the St. Jerome Church because they would be safe there. Instead, the army destroyed the church and all the people inside. 

As Bear was growing up she recognized serious conflict between church beliefs and the ancient tribal beliefs. As in the attack on the church, she said that the tribal beliefs had never failed them like those of the Church. She implied that the church is a bad influence on the community. But she insisted that those who choose either Church or ancient tribal beliefs do not think negatively of the other.

I found Bear to be a thoughtful, fine person I'm glad to have met. 

My Dad

I'm watching a movie about a guy who always hated his dad. It makes me think about my dad and what I thought about him when I was growing up.

I really didn't relate to my dad as a kid. I never really thought of him as a boy who grew up and had experiences like mine. To me he was a man who was dedicated to working hard all day every day, and often into the night. He and my mother never seemed to talk to each other without a loud disagreement. I never asked him personal questions. My interests were serious (not pop) music and apocalypticism. His appeared to be work, food, and TV. He once told me that he didn't understand me, and I know that was true.

It was only when he got me a job working as his helper (construction) in the summer before my senior year in high school that I started to see a bit of a personal side, but not much. I discovered that his work persona (they all called him Homer) and his home persona (Sherman) were a bit different. At work he would join in the jokes that wouldn't be acceptable at home or church.

We were installing marble in a new civic center in Atlanta, Georgia and living in a boarding house down the street. The work was pretty hard for a city boy, but not overwhelming. Among the other construction workers we were both just another couple of grunts doing the job. 

I worked with him again for a year after high school. At first we worked in Houston, but once there was work near home we moved back.

Among the others in his trade (marble masons) he was respected, more like a cousin or even a brother.

As he eventually became frail with no more work drive and with constant pain, I just saw him as a tired old man who was family. 

It goes without saying that we weren't close. He was never interested in what I did, and I didn't really appreciate (at the time) his work dedication and all the time he spent fixing the house and our parade of cars.

Now, as an older adult, I wish I had talked with him about his life. I've learned that he was an alcoholic who suppressed his addiction for many years for his family's sake. I know now that he served in the US Army Air Corps in Italy and that he regretted not seeing the amazing sights of that historic country. I have heard that he accidentally killed a child while riding a motorcycle in Italy. I understand that he went AWOL and flew home when he got word that his first wife back home was being unfaithful, and divorced her.

Dad was a country boy in the backwoods of SE Oklahoma who drank and smoked too early and too much, but he served his country, married his sweetheart, moved away, supported his family and his church, and was loved by many. I wish I had gotten to know him.

Silly Irritation

About every 2 or 3 weeks I like to indulge in a Barq's Root Beer, and I prefer the glass bottles. However, since we stopped entering stores, I have been entirely unsuccessful in using grocery pickup or delivery to buy any. And now the only store that previously listed the glass bottles no longer shows them to order online. 

No, it's a no-big-deal first world problem, and the tiniest inconvenience in these trying times. We have plenty of good food and everything we need. We even have Barq's in plastic bottles that I can pour into a chilled bottle.

I guess no matter how good things are, under the circumstances, we can always find something to complain about.

Thoughts on Covid-19

It's been 26 days for me. I started working only from home at the behest of my company, but it makes sense for me anyway. I have two family members with compromised health that could make them particularly vulnerable to covid-19, so every contact I have is another chance that I might bring home illness and even death.
I have been out of the house on cautious walks with Sherry, but I've also been to a few stores. We receive grocery deliveries that mostly sit on the dining table for days before being placed in the pantry, but cold things have to be dealt with quickly. Washing or wiping them down, we try to inhibit their ill effects. We wash our hands often and thoroughly.
The Spanish flu lasted roughly two years. Can we keep this up for that long? I wonder if cabin fever will bring about a second wave.

Downtown

I don't know whether my childhood memories are foggier than most or other peoples' minds automatically fill in details without them realizing it. I only have snippets of memory from when I was very young.
My uncle Jack drove the Lake Worth Bus. I remember him, and I remember that he would pick up my sister and me sometimes on his route to downtown Fort Worth. I'm not sure exactly where we waited for him, but it was on Jacksboro Highway near the border between Lake Worth and Sansom Park. My mother must have called to let him know we would be there. I don't remember what the bus was like or any details of the ride. We never paid.
The best I can remember, we had our allowances for the trip--a whole quarter each. The purpose of the trip was not to find what to spend the small fortune on, but I know it was important to me that I find the right purchase. I don't know whether I considered using it to buy pencils from the man sprawled on the sidewalk with braces on both legs. I'm sure I didn't have a thought to give it to the man playing an out-of-tune guitar and a harmonica held by wires to his mouth or the blind woman beside him who was screeching out almost-familiar hymns.
I remember walking through Stripling's, but my memory is of the quietness, the hard marble floor, and the bell sounding over the speakers that toned out 2-digit numbers. It was another 25 years or so before I understood what the numbers meant.
Most of our time downtown was probably spent in Leonard's. I don't remember the separate water fountains that I've seen in pictures, and it's hard to conjure up images of Leonard's basement before the subway was added. What I do remember is the glass case with warm, salted nuts. More than once I spent my money on warm cashews.
I can't recall when or how we caught the bus to go home. I doubt that I had a watch then, and of course we didn't use a phone. It must have been a pre-arranged time and place, though.
It's funny now to think that two little kids would be allowed to spend a Saturday on their own downtown, but it was a different world.
I miss that world.

Singing

I miss singing.
For my high school and college years I would sing for hours each day. College always started with an hour of choir at 8am. My favorite time was in Madrigal Singers where I was surrounded by other voice parts and had full responsibility for my part.
Since then I have been able to continue singing in a church choir, or at least in the congregation to exercise my voice. I also would sing much of the time driving to work. That all changed when we moved close to my job last year. That's also when we stopped going to church. It isn't that simple, though. I'm not anxious to start going to church again, because much of the service grates against my current beliefs.
Also, I don't feel comfortable singing around the house. It's complicated.
It's not that I think I'm a great singer. Every time I hear my recorded voice I realize once more that I don't really sound as good as it feels like I should sound, no matter what people tell me.
I need to start singing more.