Mom Update

     As of Sunday evening, new bruises, aches and areas of concern were still showing up.  I'll be heading up to the hospital later.

     Readers have suggested one of the call-for-help pendants for her and it's looking more and more like a good idea.

Overheard On Air Force One?

     "All I hear in the press all day is how great Snowden did this, or how wonderfully Snowden did that.  Snowden, Snowden, Snowden!"

    I still think Snowden's a walking dead man but perhaps I underestimate the fed.gov's willingness to grind down a man in jail and in court instead of just rubbing him out..  As for what he's done, it's almost certainly a crime (right up there with the three felonies a day most folks average, just doing normal activities); but didn't Mr. Obama's Administration sail into office promising to be "the most transparent in history?"  In that case, Edward Snowden's done 'em a favor, the equivalent of the bum with a bucket of water and rag ambush-cleaning car windshields at a stoplight.  --Yeah, window-cleaning urban outdoorsmen aren't popular, but that seagull-splatter's not gonna clean itself, no more than the Feds ever will, no matter who's lurking in the Oval Office like a rat under the White House floorboards or how "transparently" they go about the sordid business of governing.

How Tough Is My Mom?

     The call came in late Saturday afternoon.  I was asleep at the time, having laid down 'cos I didn't feel so hot and found sleep had been lurking in the mattress like an octopus under a flat rock.

     Its tentacles were still wrapped around me when my cellphone started ringing.  I struggled awake, but too late.  The CALL button will show a list of calls mad and received and the last one was--  My Mom's number.  Huh.

     I hit CALL again and it rang once.  Mom picked up with, "Hello."

     "Hi, Mom.  How are you?"

     "Not too good.  I fell and hit my head on a cabinet on the way down.  It's bleeding quite a lot and I don't think I should try to stand up by myself."

     "Have you called 9-1-1?"

     "Well, no.  Do you think I should?  I was hoping you could come up--"

     "I'm on my way, but I want you to call 911 as soon as I hang up, okay?  Please!"

     "Well, okay."

     It's about ten minutes to her house, driveway-to-driveway.  I dug around for my glasses, frantically moved things from the small weekend purse to the big general purpose one, grabbed a hoodie, put on shoes, headed out the back door, came back in for a garage door opener, got to my car, called both siblings and a nephew on the way and made it in five.  The crew from the local firehouse was there already, had her on a backboard and in a neck brace "just in case" and were cleaning up the blood, of which there was rather more than you might think. (One ambulance, one fire truck, what seemed to be a blue dozen physically-fit and incredibly helpful young men.  They've been there before, once when we had to break in, and they know the drill.)

     After making sure where they were taking her, I finished the clean-up (light-tan carpet -- not a whole lot I can do in the way of emergency medical treatment but I could at least prevent that from worrying Mom!) and followed.  My sister was already at the hospital and my brother showed up soon after.  Nurses, docs, clean-up, a really fine staple-job on her injury, medical history, hands-on checking for additional injury: the usual drill, including CT scans and X-rays--

     "Mrs. X?  I'm Doctor Eeeyar and Dr. Wu* is working with me today.  We've gone over your X-rays and it looks like you'll be staying with us awhile."

     "Oh?"

      "Yes, you've broken your C2 vertebra and a pretty good job of it, too." 

     "Oh, my."
*  *  *      Let's review: My Mom fell, cut her scalp badly, broke her neck, scooted and crawled six feet to get a dishtowel to apply pressure to the wound, hauled herself another six feet to yank a telephone from the breakfast bar, called me, left a message, and answered calmly when I called back.  She's been conscious, calm and managing a lot of pain through the entire ordeal  --She's 82.  Do not cross her.
*  *  *
     Back in the ER, it was sounding grim.  They'd paged in the on-call neurosurgeon and were using terms like  "unstable fracture" and double-checking for numbness and muscle control while they were finding her a room in Neuro ICU.  C2, or the "axis," is an important part of the machinery; it's what your head pivots side-to-side on, with broad bearing surfaces and a little "pin" at the front that engages C1.  A common C2 injury is known as a "hangman's fracture;" it's what happens if you don't wear your seat belt and catch the steering wheel under your chin in a collision.  Or so Wikipedia told me at the time.

     It was therefor upsetting when the neurosurgeon bustled in, grinning, as jovial as St. Nick.  He ran a few more simple tests and explained she'd broken the dens or odontoid process -- that little "pivot pin" I mentioned earlier -- and that for breaks like hers, 99.99% of the time all it took to treat it was three to four months in a neck brace. No fun, but way better than neurosurgery, which is why he was smiling. (Neurosurgeons frequently labor against appalling odds; something that can be treated without huge risk to the patient is probably quite a relief.)

     After a few more hours of hospitaling (increasingly like the kind of rigamarole my friends who served in the military describe as "hurry up and wait"), Mom was in a better neck brace and had been moved from Neuro ICU to regular Neuro; they'd got her some better pain meds and she was finally relaxing a little.  I returned home about 2:30 this morning, having difficulty recognizing familiar intersections on the way.
______________________________________
* Not their real names.  Dr. Wu, just starting residency, was the very image of "Rannie Wu" other than slightly shorter hair and an absolutely sunny disposition.  She's also the doctor I want stapling me up if ever I have to be: patient, careful and quick.

Grumpy, Grumpy

     Antigunners protested Thursday along the Monon Trail in Broad Ripple -- actually, on the comfy deck at Westfield & Westfield, presumably because, hey, comfy deck; it's not a high-traffic area. Tam says it was a dozen, plus or minus.  Local media (the one or two who noticed) claim "nearly thirty."  Whichever, they look to be a grumpy lot.

Hillbilly Music that Isn't

...Sung by a guy who wasn't a hillbilly:

He was a Brit. The late Lonnie Donegan, the King of Skiffle.

Donegan taking on "Rock Island Line" twice -- 1970s style and more traditionally. Either way, it's a long trip from the 1934 John Lomax prison recording.

(How is "Tom Dooley" not Hillbilly music? I suppose it is; skiffle isn't. While there was indeed a real Tom "Dooley" (Dula), who did indeed hang for a murder he either committed or deliberately took a fall for in North Carolina in the 1860s, the various forms of "doule" are Scots terms for a place of hanging, as in "Doule tree." Art, life, hillbillies and Scots/Irish/Gaels: small world.

You May Have Noticed

...That "the next Indy BlogMeet" area is blank.

     It's no secret that I have been trying to get out of scheduling these events for quite some time -- even though I enjoy them (though with my declining hearing, they are something of a challenge), and the overwhelming majority of the attendees are fun folks indeed, there are down sides.

     Ever since we had an outright white-supremacist type show up at one, all smiles and sidling remarks about "those people," and not get found out (as more than merely a jerk) until after the event, I've been reluctant to have open meetings; I have no interest in facilitating the recruiting efforts of such scum and would as soon spare our local pubs and eateries the bother of hosting public confrontation.  I went to invitation-only for the next few BlogMeets, which was not entirely satisfactory.

     Recently, I had someone try to "win" a disagreement by attempting to divvy up mutual friends, the majority of whom are closer friends to that individual than to me already.  I won't play that game; bedamned if I will put friends in the position of choosing up over issues they have not themselves raised and may not even have strong opinions on.  Nope, instead I will bring to an end any situation where they might feel obliged to choose.  That includes, at least for now, BlogMeets.  Tam K. can set 'em up if she feels so inclined, or whoever else wants to.

     Racist scum are bad enough; clique battles are the last straw.

     Peer pressure won't work on me.  I'm not very social or sociable and there are something like 4,000 books filled with friends lining the walls of my dining room.

     (ETA: I will probably do one (1) BlogMeet during the 2014 NRA convention in Indy, because I'd like to do that; but please note that attendance will indicate nothing other than an interest in firearms and blogging.)

     (Fuzzy Curmudgeon, please e-mail me, I need to return your book.)

Blood Libel

     It is surprising to me -- perhaps it should not be -- that this vicious myth survives; as recently as 2005, some 20 members of the Russian Duma presented it as fact.

     Interestingly, similar sweeping libels are still applied against other minorities and are still promoted as absolute truth by people who one would expect to know better.

     There's a very simple yardstick for determining the truth of such talk: "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof."  Not to mention an extraordinary degree of skepticism in evaluating.  Remember, the simplest (and most directly personally beneficial) motive is usually the actual motive for people's actions, and vast conspiracies are only the stuff of spy novels.  (Sorry, Mrs. Clinton!)

     Is the NRA fomenting insurrection?  Are homosexuals out to destroy your marriage?  Is every swarthy cabdriver a mad bomber and lying to you as a matter of religion? Does Rush Limbaugh run the Republican Party? Probably not.  On the other hand, George Soros and the Koch Brothers are indisputably political activists with their own agendas and if money talks, they're plenty loud.  See how this works?

     (Edited: I had typed "poof" instead of "proof," with the expectable result in Comments.  Extraordinary, indeed!)

This Is Why We Can't have Nice Things

Rannie the cat loves on them.

     She was especially fond of the foam packing and flocked holder for the fancy screwdriver set.  I convinced her to go elsewhere.

"Meep-Meep" For The 21st Century

I blame Jeffro:

Oh, yeah.

People Are Annoying: Anti-Gunners In Indy

     Organizing For Action, right here in Broad Ripple, this Friday, from 11:00 a.m. to noon, at the Monon Trail near the intersection of Rivera and Westfield (or Westfield and Westfield, depending on how you score it.)  This is the same corner Brugge is on.

     They're trying to press Representative Susan Brooks to support the House version of the failed Universal Background Checks bill.

     Looks like a nice time/place for an Open Carry event.

     (So, the first comment is some dimwit urging a physical assault against the antis.  Um, NO.   Lookie here, commenting is a privilege provided for discussion, not a place where you can urge violation of basic moral principles -- the Non-Aggression Principle -- or incite felonies.  People have a right to express their opinions in public, even when they're totally wrong and/or stupid; they do not have a right to attack one another.  If you don't agree, go away; my blog is not for you.)

Adventures In Stubborn

This.

     So true.

Off To The Doctor

     Wish me luck -- I have to see a specialist for a nagging health issue, the details of which I shall not discuss.  (You'd thank me not to.)

     Ugh.