November 9, 2021

What has been on my mind regarding this blog changes as the days go by so today it's just this. I do interact with others in the few social settings I enjoy. On the telephone, I talked with my friend who I rarely see in person who called me for a change letting me know that he appreciates me because my son Joshua has befriended his nineteen year old grandson who just started at Gonzaga University and gets relief visiting Joshua and his wife at their home outside of Spokane. On this phone call this friend is upbeat with more timbre and force in his voice about his plans to move to his country home outside of Reno with his partner who he greatly values. His health disabilities and past health near death experiences had gotten him in a terrible funk which concerned us bystanders since his past communications of doom and gloom were interspersed with hateful opinions towards various groups in our society so that I felt powerless as he but hesitant to interact further with him. My last conversation with him was delightful bringing back my past positive interactions with him. 

Last week we enjoyed making pizza and having our neighbor couple over. We enjoyed hearing about their past adventures touring more eastern Europe and enjoying the special times in Prague. They shared with us the story of another couple we are friendly with who rented out the ground floor of their house for a movie producer. They got to know the movie and acting crew which brightened their lives. Of course, Rebecca and I shared a few experiences we had that were similar in our travels and I was reminded how our neighbors had rented their house out to the secret service in one of Obama's past trips and this neighbors experience of giving Obama some breakfast cake she made the day he was walking near our homes on the beach in Kailua. Afterwards while Rebecca and I were watching our TV show this neighbor was knocking on our door. Another neighbor across from us was very upset with fear concerning her husband's deteriorated confusion that evening. I went over and came into a bedroom where our confused neighbor was sitting on a chair in a darkened room babbling mostly incoherently sometimes with strong emotion in his voice. His wife was besides herself saying he had hugged her aggressively, she did not know what to do, yet she seemed drawn to go near him, trying to interact yet withdrawing for fear of aggression. I knew that he had been hospitalized before for what I presume was similar behaviors months ago. There had been history of mistrust and failed interactions between his wife with his two children and their spouses in the past. His wife was suspicious of another helper who have been very supportive towards her and her husbands trying to assist them due to his cognitive decline and her inexperience in running a household budget. She accused her of having designs on her husband. I asked her if he had been drinking that night which she replied only one glass of wine. I told her that he should not have any alcohol which seemed to surprise her. I told her that what he needed was to have as little interaction as possible except to reassure him that he was safe and he should rest (it was about 11 PM).  While talking with her I reminded her about his previous hospitalization for similar behavior which she appeared not to remember. I opined that he had cognitive decline probably similar to Alzheimer disease which she did not seem to comprehend. I then went back to my neighbor and simply told him while he was babbling to me about an orange golf ball I said that it was late and then should get into the bed and go to sleep. He promptly got up and walked his naked self over to the bed and lied down on the bed and I put the towel over him while he had his eyes closed. We all tried to tell her not to get too close to him, if he appeared agitated to tell him he was safe and if she was frightened fearful he would harm her to call 911. The next day she was outside doing gardening and in the days since I've seen he and she walking together in the yard. Our other neighbor told us that this other distraught wife had told her that the woman who was assisting them with financial and logistical help was her husband's drinking partner-not true! That evening of my interactions I called my cognitively impaired neighbor son and daughter in law and learned that they were concerned had other information confirming my impressions of the lack of insight and poor judgment and would attempt to be as supportive as they could be. Uggh! My dealing with these type of situations is not new since my career included similar interactions with clients. Rebecca likewise took care of a friend of her late husband who had similar issues as our cognitively impaired neighbor. Fortunately, she had assistance from her late husband's accountant and this impaired friends son to guide her in getting psychiatric help and assisted living resources. My son shared with us he had a client who mismanaged his life while actively drinking alcohol so he is now almost broke now. My hiking friend is concerned about his client a professional who has an estate left to her, since she fails to communicate with him, give him needed information for him to advise her financially, and fails to file her income taxes. Well should I treat these situation like Peyton Place. This controversial series from 1964 to 1969 dealt with rape, murder, incest, abortion, promiscuity, and adultery in a neighborhood and enjoyed some popularity and a lot of controversy in providing entertainment over issues once less discussed. So I'll criticize myself for writing about this but obviously I'm moved, upset, angry, annoyed, and critical all while being amazed I'm alive!

I've been playing the last four piano sonatas of Haydn sometimes well enough to get a rise out or Rebecca but really very amateur. I got the sheet music from a golfing partner John who I met through another golfer Larry. John, Larry and myself have in common that we were hired by Larry to study and testify as expert witnesses in some of Larry's trials. My case with Larry involved the death of a professional caregiver from overdose of barbiturates. He was a patient at a clinic who was complaining of insomnia as his main concern but gave a history of anxiety, feeling helpless and hopeless, and depression. His psychiatrist prescribed a lethal number of barbiturates which his patient took all at once and died. The clinic lost the lawsuit so his deceased wife and children had some income compensation. My role was fairly easy since it's ipso facto. So John an ophthalmologist retired enjoyed our company. He had a daughter impaired with schizophrenia since her adolescence who can get by most days with her activities of everyday living but does need guidance and sometimes more aggressive interventions. A devoted father and husbands to a physically impaired wife now he retired and did come out to golf with us. John knew I was attempting to learn to play classical music. He was an accomplished player with specialized schooling. When he decided to retire to Kauai he gave me some music book concluding the Haydn which now I'm beginning to appreciate. Unfortunately, Larry is long gone cognitively into severe Alzheimer's disease. 

Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr has a fragment of a Greek story about a man searching for heaven he heard about existing way up in the clouds and the only way to get there was to be changed into a bird. Unfortunately, the people he chose to help him transform changed him into a donkey.  As we follow his adventures the book describes another set of characters just before during the siege of Constantinople about 1453. We follow the birth of a harelip country very poor hill family and their two oxen. The boy is lucky to be alive since the harelip connoted evil spirits to some of his community but his grandfather has mercy. This young boy gets recruited by the sultan’s army with his two oxen for the siege.  In Constantinople we learn about a young girl very bright and adventuresome and her sicker sister all exploited by a seamstress proprietor. The girl has her adventures and narrowly escapes the siege to hook up with the harelip countryman. Another character during more contemporary times is abandoned by his father to a woman's home grows up to be captured by the Chinese soldiers during the Korean war and somehow survives with another soldier he thought was killed before he was repatriated. As he grows older he is fascinated in trying to decipher the fragments of the Greek story about the man looking to get to the cloud cuckoo land first turned into a donkey. In the small town library he is hard at work trying to piece together fragments left we presume by the girl who escaped Constantinople but then the athletic team comes to the library since they are unable to practice do to forest fires and they are curious about the researchers frustrated efforts. In the meantime we learn about a single mother and her son. She is struggling to make ends meet and her son is special in that he is very sensitive to noises, finds social interactions difficult, and has behaviors problems at school. But he likes the woods, learns about the wild life especially a gray owl living in a large tree near hnis neighborhood. Residential crawl and exploitation occurs and the hillside is denuded, the owl winds up dead, and the boy is now radicalized and communicating with some environmental activist terrorists to bomb the residential developers office which is next to the library that the researcher and the students are working. The students have decided to collaborate with the researcher who is now writing a play about the man, donkey, birds Greek adventures to cloud cuckoo land and decide to have a rehearsal when the disillusioned terrorist comes with his bomb to blow up the residential developers office.  Well I left out another set of characters we read about who are on a spaceship to escape the pollution and devastation of the earth. The characters here have some relationship with the others and it all comes together in the end.  So why the book review? Fiction holds a special place in my interests. Here we can have a writer give us some semblance of reality of the inner working (thoughts, feelings, prejudices, longings, remorses, etc.) of others. Anthony Doerr has written a great book his first All The Light We Cannot See which I highly recommend. In this book his writing captures the inner life of his characters so the story comes alive and very interesting though what your reading is the horrors of the second world war. 

Paul Offit, M.D. wrote You Bet Your Life to describe the messiness and history of discovery of medical advances. He starts with the history of heart transplants. The messiness included many attempts using mostly animal hearts finally to our present approaches. Lots of failures and hubris until science reared its light to some great successes. Then there is the history of blood transfusion the discovery of blood typing and Rh factors, the contamination of our blood supply with transmittable diseases such as Hepatitis C. When 54 I had open heart surgery with coronary bypass surgery and veins from my legs harvested with the mammary artery to keep me going. Along the way to recovery my vocal cords were paralyzed since my right recurrent laryngeal nerve  was severed during surgery. Then tachycardia and discovery I was very anemic so two units of packed cells in the hospital . Maybe one year later Hepatitis C was discovered due to my liver enzyme elevation so my gastroenterologist was involved with the research and I had two courses of interferon and then ribovirin so three years of feeling I had the flu with malaise (I'm cured now). That's also the time I learned to meditate which helped me get through. So in the book my experiences with our tainted blood supply was described. Fortunately, my transfusion was at a time when blood typing was correctly done but unfortunately the blood bank did not screen for diseases and sometimes paid people for their blood products. Offit describes some very frightening and horrible mistakes with antibiotics such as pediatric version of sulfonamide and mistakes with vaccines such as Cutter labs cutting corners and infecting people with smallpox. His description of x ray machine development reminded me of my childhood. In the shoe store I went to they had a machine that showed you the relationships of your foot to the shoes using x rays. When x ray cathode tubes were being made the technician tested the bulb by placing his/her hand there and seeing his skeletal images of his hands. This was at a before they realized how harmful x rays are to our body. Needless to say the technicians lost fingers, suffered severe, pain, and some died prematurely.  He also described anesthesia and the history of ether. Before electric light bulbs ether would be ignited by the candle and lantern light so the poor patient would die a horrible death and the medical team could be severely burned. 1944 and 1946 I had ether anesthesia for tonsil and appendectomy.   

I am so thankful that we still have a free and open press. Today I was reading an article in The Atlantic by Jonathan Karl regarding the story of Johnny Mcentee (https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/11/trump-johnny-mcentee-january-6-betrayal/620646/).  Very scary since the reporter with source backup which to me seems credible describes how a body man (someone who carried Donald Trump's suitcases) before he was inaugurated became a de facto president the last year of Trump's presidency.  This man was put in charge of loyalty testing the administration so his bullying mimics Trump. The news about the insurrection and the planning, scheming, and bullying is very frightening. Also in the news is the climate change Glasgow politicking leading me to shake my head and enjoy the good days we have now in Hawai'i. I suggest those who like movies to watch Tom Hank's and his wonderful movie team (Finch) take you into a dystopian world  in which you'll appreciate his relationships with a Hank, Goodyear his dog, Dewey robot, and Jeff robot while you become fearful of going outside.  

Leonard