Watch Your Step

I stepped off the curb to see which bus was coming down the street on 125th. The moment my foot hit the pavement I immediately felt a fiery shooting pain up my leg, and three milliseconds later (yes it was exactly three) I heard 'pop' 'pop.'

I lost my balance but I didn't fall down in the street (note: this is why I don't stand near the subway tracks when the train comes, all it takes is one misstep and 'squish'). I turned and hopped back on the curb and made it to the bus seat where I got that cold sweat, hard to breathe, faint feeling as my ankle began to throb.

I definitely have a self-diagnosed high ankle sprain and I have become painfully reminded just how much walking a person is required to do when they live in the city with two kids.

I had to gingerly walk down the street so as not to misplace my footing and make my situation worse. With each step I took my mind started to comprehend just how difficult it is for an elderly person who lives in this city to get around. There are so many uneven sidewalks, utility covers, trash cans, dogs, people, kids, razor scooters, doormen, subway grates, construction, STAIRS, crosswalks, etc to navigate. As a 33 year old fairly nimble person these obstacles are hardly ever noticed or respected. But these obstacles are really scary and seriously life threatening to the elderly. Couple everything I listed above with the winter chill and some snow/slush/ice on the ground and you get a situation that's ten times as dangerous.

As I hobble around the city for the next several weeks (yea no opening soccer game) I will be just slightly closer to understanding the difficulties elderly New Yorkers deal with. My goal for this fall and winters season is to slow down and notice the dangers in the paths of the frail in the city and do my best to help them navigate them safely. I will let you know how it goes.

Follow-Up

I've been away from the blog for a while, sorry about that. I was struck by the conversation that cropped up from my last post. The comments from readers had their measure of compassion and complete ignorance.

You would think that a soldier from our own country who goes and serves in war would be universally supported and cared for when they returned from that war. I guess it should be a surprise that this isn't the case. The political appointees in the Veterans Administration are clearly more concerned with the political and economic fall out in treating the mental health of veterans. We must have a better understanding of what is happening to our soldiers returning from war under this administration!

Army Vet's Suicide Raises Questions About VA's Treatment of PTSD Cases
The Public Record - Thursday, 24 July 2008
© The Public Record

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Catch-Up Post!

If you are a fan of the Daily Show, then you will love this podcast I recently discovered. It's called, The Bugle - Audio Newspaper for a Visual World. Here's the description from their iTunes page:

Based respectively in a penthouse turret in metropolitan New York and a small lair in South London, John Oliver and Andy Zaltzman, with their combined height of 3.59 meters, will together canoe through the murky swamp of big stories, small stories and assorted hogwash that inundates our daily world. Comprising news, sport, comment, analysis, other stuff, and our unique audio crossword, The Bugle is the newspaper of the future, before the future actually happens.

Here's the link to the most recent episode (episodes come out once a week).

*****

I hope Hillary looses both Indiana and North Carolina tonight, AND that Jason Castro gets booted off American Idol. Politics and pop culture all on a Tuesday night! I happen to be partial to MSNBC (Tim Russert is the best analyst on TV). Will you watch the primary results tonight or are you lame or I mean busy.

*****

Saw this incredible headline (sorry no t-shirt available):
Post-War Suicides May Exceed Combat Deaths, U.S. Says

The number of suicides among veterans of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan may exceed the combat death toll because of inadequate mental health care, the U.S. government's top psychiatric researcher said.

Community mental health centers, hobbled by financial limits, haven't provided enough scientifically sound care, especially in rural areas, said Thomas Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland. He briefed reporters today at the American Psychiatric Association's annual meeting in Washington.

My jaw dropped when I read that. According to the WHO the suicides per 100,000 males are 17.1 (source). According the article 1.6 million U.S. troops have fought Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001. If suicide rates were consistent with national rates for those 1.6 million soldiers then approximately 273 males would be likely to commit suicide.

There have been 4,560 soldiers killed in combat since 2001. If soldiers and veteran suicides do in fact outpace the death total from these two wars that would represent a 1,670% increase over the standard national suicide rate. Here's the damning part. A big part of the reason why there are so many suicides is because money isn't being spent to make sure the 53% of returning combat veterans who have PTSD get the help they need.

This from a country that spends over 700 billion every year on it's defense department (China is upping their spending to 53 billion). This injustice is sickening. We ask our young people to go to war for us, and then leave them hanging out to dry once they have done our dirty work for us. This will have ramifications for years and shows how insincere our Commander in Chief and congress is about supporting our troops.

It's a Boy!...And You're Going to Jail.

"A day after she gave birth in 2006, Tiffany Hitson, 20, sat on her front porch crying, barefoot and handcuffed. A police officer hovered in the distance. Ms. Hitson’s newborn daughter had traces of cocaine and marijuana in its system, and the young woman, baby-faced herself, had fallen afoul of a tough new state law intended to protect children from drugs, and a local prosecutor bent on pursuing it. She made arrangements for the baby’s care, and headed off to a year behind bars.

Over an 18-month period, at least eight women have been prosecuted for using drugs while pregnant in this rural jurisdiction of barely 37,000, a tally without any recent parallel that women’s advocates have been able to find.

There has not been a murder here [Andalusia, Alabama] in over three years, the prosecutor said. But a year ago a newborn died at the local hospital, and the mother had traces of methamphetamines in her system. Doctors told the police that the infant’s premature birth could be attributed to maternal drug use, and she was charged with “chemical endangerment of child,” which carries a sentence of 10 years to life in prison.

-Crackdown on Pregnant Drug Users, NY-Times

This article made my jaw drop and made me angry. I am sure that the police and prosecutors are having a hard time stopping illegal meth labs in their county so they punish the families of addicts to appear as though they are accomplishing something in their little corner of the drug war. It's clear from police affidavits that doctors, police, prosecutors, judges, and social workers all collaborate to send these women off to county jails, state prisons, or drug rehab clinics. What do you think that does to the doctor/patient relationship? Who are these women supposed to go to in order to get help if they wanted to kick their addictions for themselves and their unborn babies! One OBGYN in Oklahoma said in an editorial for The Oklahoman that these prosecutions are actually pushing women to have abortions rather than risk arrest for a bad outcome during a delivery (link).

The prosecutor Greg L. Gambril just looks like a jerk and his comments in the article don't really do much to change that perception. Look drugs are awful and do horrible things to families, children, and entire communities. Unfortunately the state has to get involved in order to protect chilren. But sending these women most of whom are young, poor, uneducated, and jobless to prison isn't the answer. My sister is a social worker extraordinaire and I can guarantee you that in thirty minutes she could come up with much more effective, efficient, and cheaper ways to help these women break their drug use AND become better mothers in the process. Unfortunately the paternalistic tendencies of the south and the unforgiving nature of the religious environment of these small towns have worked to oppress these women who need help more than they need punishment.

It might be easy to regard this kind of prosecutorial overreaching as a rural southern phenomenon, but you would be wrong. The National Advocates for Pregnant Women [NAPW] have been documenting the increasingly punitive laws aimed at women who deliver babies with drugs in their systems. These cases are disturbing because of the lengths the state can go to separate mothers from their newborn children, and punish women based more on assumptions of causality rather than a direct scientific evidence.

Let me say, I am not advocating that women who deliver babies with drugs in their systems shouldn't have any intervention. They should have intervention. But jail isn't an intervention, it's a tool that's used to punish and keep people segregated who are a menace to society. These women need a hand up not a lock-down.

The Cost of War

*links fixed*

Here are the dimensions of a dollar bill. It's about 6 inches long, and 2½ inches wide, and as thick as a regular piece of paper.

This is what a stack of dollar bills totalling $360,000 looks like (which would get you this apartment on the UWS of Manhattan). If you made a single stack, it would be 120 feet high.

You should see how big the stack of money is for the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as of July 21, 2006. It's incredible.

Last night Allison and I resisted the pull to watch the mindless Oprah Oscar Special and instead watched the hour long report "Bob Woodruff: To Iraq and Back." We watched with tears in our eyes the stories of people who have paid a price for this war that illustrative graphics about money could never convey. If you have a few minutes watch this video segment of the report.

Poor Teeth

I have genetically poor teeth. I have had three root canals, 12 cavities filled, and two wisdom teeth pulled. I say genetically poor teeth because my wife, who has the same oral health habits as I do, has never had a cavity in her entire life! I probably consume more sugar than she does, but that should account for a difference of only a few cavities not a dozen!

Last Friday while I was eating some chips and salsa at LOBO I felt a crack and discovered that I had split open one of the molars that has had a root canal. So I am walking around with a split tooth and chewing on the right side of my mouth.

So now I have to go to the dentist and I am thinking about going to the Columbia Dental School. Allison had her four wisdom teeth expertly pulled by a friend at Preston Road back in Dallas (1998) on his last day of Dental school. Total bill....$65. If we had opted for the gas it would have been $110, but we didn't have the money.

I am a little nervous about going up the school, but I am not going to pay $3,000 for a crown at some posh dental spa. I'd rather just pull the tooth.

*update* I am going to the dentist at our church. His practice is outside of the city, which is a pain, but he will address the problem without all the triage hassel of the school.