Something Else to Think About.

In the aftermath of the attack in Paris, I've been wondering about my reaction to the news after reading Gary Myers' blog post  It was a gut reaction, but unlike reactions to other stories of senseless murders.  The questions have been nagging me relentlessly, this need to understand my response.

To add to the internal deliberations, along comes this from The New Yorker.  Something else to consider.  Thanks to mykwerks.

Two bloggers, Lucy and Gary, alerted followers to this massacre.

I am Charlie.

New Dawn, New Day, New Year

I have been trying for the last 24 or more hours to upload an image (tried different ones) to illustrate this post with no success.


I will give you the URL for the image I like best.  Maybe that will work.


Anyway, what I had to say can just as easily be said another day.  I wish you all a healthier year than the one just past, all the love you can handle, good friends and joy abounding, and sufficient wealth to do at least some of the more important things on your lists!


Happy New Year.


Martha

From Two USN Veterans to All Others

My daughter, Kareema, reminded me that an area restaurant was offering lunch to veterans today.  We went, with grandson Donovan in tow.  Nice meal, even nicer company.  On the way out, Kareema saw this flag and wanted us to have our photo taken beneath it.

Another time, I might have declined (don't like having my picture taken, as a rule), might have put her off.  Now, I'm taking every opportunity to make memories for later, to have a pleasant day, to enjoy every moment.

Thank you, veterans everywhere, for serving your countries and your fellow citizens.  If you are reading this, it means you came home from your service.  That's a good thing.

What Is Wrong With You, Google?

Every single time I log into Blogger, up pops a screen like the one above telling me Blogger cannot complete my request.  I dutifully click the button that sends me to a Blogger comment page.  I've stopped explaining what happens and now just let them take a screenshot and finish out the task.

Except today.  Today, their ubiquitous error message pissed me off to the point I stirred from my apathy and wrote back.  (I may be a tad grumpy today; sorry about that.)

Google Feedback lets you send Google suggestions about our products. We welcome problem reports, feature ideas and general comments. Notifications sent through Google Feedback will not be processed and should be submitted using this tool instead.

Start by writing a brief description: 

"As often as I get messages telling me how sorry you are that you can't complete my request, yet nothing changes, I have serious doubts that you really give a hoot.

So, to answer your question as to what I was doing when I got this error message, I was attempting to open a post I hadn't finished from the drop down menu on the Dashboard page.  I had just lifted my cup of coffee for a sip with my non-dominant hand while the index finger of my dominant hand tapped the Posts selection.  As I waited for the next screen to rise (nanoseconds, really), I set my coffee mug down and proceeded to scratch an itchy spot on my left butt cheek.

Say!  Do you think such actions on my part - while in my less-focused state of mind - causes this repetitive failure to communicate on your part?"

Thank you for your feedback. We value every piece of feedback we receive. We cannot respond individually to every one, but we will use your comments as we strive to improve your Google experience.

Yeah, well; I won't hold my breath.

I Love My Circle of Willis

The image above of the Circle of Willis is from Wikipedia.  Thank you, Wiki, for letting me use this.

 

 

When I was in the USN's Hospital Corps School at Great Lakes, Illinois, our anatomy and physiology instructor, Mike Warman, used to tell us we should love our livers, that "we should massage our wonderful, beautiful livers every day."  Mike considered the liver the most important organ in our body.  Never could understand why, if that was so, he abused his every night by getting sloshed at the enlisted men's club.

 

My favorite body part used to be my eyes, then my breasts when they developed, then my genitals when I discovered what they were there for (ah, yes - massage that, Warman!); finally, my brain, when I fell into writing and found there was more in that squishy lump than I ever imagined.

 

Now, though, I am grateful for something else: my Circle of Willis.  I've named mine Bruce.  (Oh, come on!  You knew that was coming.)  I wish there was an easy way to gently massage my C-of-W, but there isn't. 

The Circle of Willis sits at the base of the brain.  It provides a communication pathway between the blood vessels which originate on both sides of our necks, to feed the hemispheres of our brains (left internal carotid feeds left hemisphere; right feeds right)- barely used when all is going well.  Should something unfortunate happen to one or the other internal carotids, the C-of-W acts as a traffic circle, rerouting blood from the undamaged, or less damaged, part of the circulatory system to the brain hemisphere that needs it.  This back-up system, thank you Mother Nature, is called a corollary system, also a redundancy.  Isn't the human body a wondrous thing?

In all likelihood I would have gone the rest of my life not caring about Bruce, taking him for granted as I have everything else about my body - at least, those things that are default systems I can't see.  If it hadn't been for a CT scan of my cervical spine to check on the degree of arthritis invading it, no one would have known about the occlusions in my internal carotids until I had had a stroke - or croaked.  That serendipitous finding may very well be the best thing that's ever happened to me.

I've had a series of test procedures done, one or two more to go, then I see a vascular surgeon about opening up and cleaning out the one that is totally occluded, to give the other one (not quite 50% closed) a break from having to feed both sides all the time.  (I've been operating for an unknown time on 1/4 brain capacity - just thought I'd save some of you from pointing that out.  Don't be snarky, now.)

What's interesting (to me) about all this is that before the CT scan, I'd been following with great interest fellow-blogger Fresca's posts (they start here) about her new job as activities maven in a facility for patients with Alzheimer's - and other forms of dementia, some only a temporary state.  These are a few of the conditions we aging folks give a lot of thought to, the possibility of losing who we are to an insidious disease, accident or physical debilitation. 

I find Fresca's posts enlightening and hopeful.  She approaches her charges as still vital, interesting, engageable people, not lumps of wasting humanity that need to be entertained or occupied with something to do between meals and sleeping.  I told her that I hoped, if I found myself in such a facility, that I'd be lucky enough to have someone like her trying to reach the person I once was.  I didn't know how close I might be to needing that kind of help.  These things happen to millions of people worldwide every day; I'm only one of them.

I just wish Bruce were more easily massaged.  I do rub the base of my skull and tell him how much I love him.  I hope that helps.

Minefields of the Mind

(After Corps School, on my way to Charleston Naval Hospital)



Blogging friend Should Fish More (Mike Mullins) wrote of an episode of PTSD-spawned flashback to his service in Vietnam.

As Mike says in a reply to a comment, everyone’s jungle is out there.  Maybe my first trip wire was the hospital ward at Ft. Polk, Louisiana in 1968, where we went to see my brother, recovering from wounds he received in Vietnam.  Or when I was stationed at Great Lakes, for corps school, and got my first exposure of the unending stream of walking (wheeling, hobbling, et cetera) wounded.  Then there was Charleston Naval Hospital, my last duty station.  None of what I saw was like being in a kill zone after a firefight, or working in a field hospital tent, but it was more than I had ever seen in real life before, and was more than I could process.  So it lay repressed, in deep cover, for 45 years, waiting for the right moment to ambush.

Sometimes I feel ashamed of myself for having these episodes when I didn’t see combat or serve close to the front, where the boys I did see had been patched together enough to send home to stateside hospitals.  I can’t imagine what I’d be like if I had been, and that’s scary to contemplate, considering.

I'm learning about triggers and desensitizing and coping mechanisms and how the 45-year-old memories that seem to explode from nowhere, that destroy my serenity, are also door-opening keys to the memories from childhood forward that I took with me into the Navy.  The memories I can’t look at directly, but only through the lens of my time in service.

I don’t fully understand the mechanics of PTSD; may never know.  But I’m working on it, getting better a little bit at a time, one episode at a time.  My heart breaks for those whose condition is far worse than mine, who can’t function in “the world”, who are still lost in their own jungles (or deserts, or mountains - wherever there was mind-altering trauma).  I hope they find the help they need and deserve…and have earned.

(Thanks, Mike.)