Fleet Week and A&L Cesspools

It is the 23rd annual Fleet Week, origins unclear to me, but each year midtown gets flooded with crisp Navy whites. Many of the events, I gather, take place on or around the Intrepid. I did a bike ride a couple days ago, in warm early evening weather, down past the ship. The night must have included some kind of reception for as I biked south an officer, in his whites, got out of car accompanied by a young woman in a long dress. Together they made their way to a tent where invitations were being checked. A few blocks further down, at 43rd, with thunder in the air, I turned around and on the return trip saw that a truck with "A&L Cesspools" printed on each side had completely blocked the Intrepid entrance. Apparently it had missed its proper turn and security was in the process of turning it around with some mild traffic blockage. No one seemed particularly perturbed that, say, al Qaeda might have had hijacked a cesspool truck, but I enjoyed the mild juxtaposition -- arrive dressed to the nines for an Intrepid event and have your way blocked by a company truck loaded, or about to be loaded, with human waste.

Monet's Water Lilies, I

At A Certain Point in Recovery,

and I can do it now, you realize that it is going to be a recovery, not -- for me, for now at least -- the ending that awaits us all. I reached that point this afternoon while lying on my stomach with Dr. K. applying electrodes to my legs, giving me an EMG to test for neuropathy because of the tingling in both my feet. The sensation was like having sleet or light hail hit against your bare skin, mildly unpleasant from time to time, not at all painful. And it turns out, not surprisingly, that I do have some degree of sensory neuropathy, no motor to speak of, thank goodness. The next step will be to find out the reason why, although in 30 percent of neuropathy cases, according to the website I just read, no cause can be pinpointed. It was an awful day today in NYC, cold, barely 50 degrees, and periods of hard rain. Thursday I see Dr. M. for more blood work and I'll ask then if she will take me off some of these meds. I don't feel invincible anymore, but after the tests I did feel like a pisco sour and said to myself "why the hell not?" and went off to Pio Pio for one and two chicken empanadas. Don't overdo, but don't deny. It all was as good as before my illness. And then I slogged home, through the wet to find the annoyance that the letter I had sent to the address that the insurance company says you are supposed to use to request reconsideration of a claim had been returned marked "Return to Sender, Not Deliverable as Addressed, Unable to Forward". A fake address -- now that's an imaginative way to avoid insurees wanting reconsideration.

Ferrets and Constipation

The hospice work is different after the illness. I think I am better at it because now I've been close and while not languishing, I can see a little better where the hospice residents are and where they are going. It was strange, but not unexpected, to go back and find all the people I'd visited had died. One young woman I knew of, but had never stopped to see because she didn't particularly care for visitors, was still there, so I decided to go in and say hello. And for about six straight visits that was it, hello, I'll see you next week, until it got so I wondered if I was interfering rather than supporting. As so often happens, Sam broke the ice. I had him with me one day, walked him in and after hello, how are you, this is Sam, was ready to leave again when she said, "Maybe I'll have my three ferrets here next week." Today, a couple weeks later, we had a pet conversation and, though the ferrets are still not with her, she showed me a couple dozen pictures of them on her computer. Next week it's a video. A ferret breakthrough...yes!

Then down the hall to my easy to talk to guy, J. He told me the laxative he'd been given to help the constipation that his pain patch was causing was doing too good a job. With my recent experience including both of those extremes, I counseled Philips Milk of Magnesia, if his dr. approved.

Now too I'll sit by a sleeping patient. All is quiet, but up on the 12th floor on a windy day, the windows whistle. Then the bridges and the city look more remote somehow, but that only makes me more all the more grateful to still be among them. I may be tired and I may be fuzzy, but I am.

Next Moves?

I am now sunk in the morass of the U.S. health care system, the little matter of the $21K bill from the doctor who worked on the aneurysm. She is an "out of network" provider, even though the hospital that employs her is in network. I wonder if the new legislation requires that if a hospital is in network, all doctors who work out of that hospital must also be in network. Anyway, in talking to the doctor's billing arm today, and following the guidance of the recent NYT article on unexpected or uncovered hospital bills and my health care provider, here is where I got -- nowhere. At one point the exasperated New Yorker with whom I was speaking asked, "What do you want from me?" I said, "I want to pay less than this bill." She said, "Have you filed an appeal with your insurance company?" Well, no, I haven't since the company's basic approach was we paid, the dr is out of network, you try to get them to accept what we did pay as payment in full. So, to sum up, the insurance company points to the dr -- at least the dr's billing office (and that's fair enough. As the dr was working my aneurysm, the last thing I would have wanted was her mind wandering to billing issues of her patients.)-- and the dr's billing office person, fed up with me, points back to the insurance company. At least she said she would annotate the account so it will not go to collection. Or at least again, it should not go to collection. But I suppose if all appeal fails, the bottom line is this, would I rather be dead or would I rather work out a payment plan for $21K. I think I have the answer to that.

I'm So Vain

After all these years, it's now clear Carly was singing to me. Got to thinking about the leg last night and how the plan was never to show it, to always wear long pants. One day of summer altered that. And it really doesn't look so bad, certainly no worse than what is seen every day of summer and sometimes out of season. But that's on others; it was never -- I was determined -- going to be on me. That and much else has changed as a result of my January nap. One shred of vanity remains -- I draw the line at wearing shorts with my "medical legwear," despite the packaging it came in with the photo of the attractive blonde sitting at her desk, legs stretched out to show hers.

But overall the leg and everything else continues much better. I feel spacey far less often, don't lose my train of thought as much, energy level slowly building up. No call from Dr. F. so I assume that means the CT scan had no significant negative results, although I will call her office again tomorrow. And, in the best news, both Dr. M. and Dr. W., who was in charge of my case in the hospital, have given the thumbs up to the summer travel plans. Just got a call from T. in Luanda, inquiring whether we would be going to see them in Tel Aviv as planned. I assured him it was on. Life is instantaneous if you seek it out. He knew all about the car bomb in Times Square. Since I never watch TV news, I only learned of it this AM when I opened the apt door and saw the Times headline.

The Saunter

First day of May feels like the first day of summer. Supposed to get near ninety. I took the bike out for the ride up to the Little Red Lighthouse, then down to 59th and back up to 125th. Eleven or so miles. Everybody passes me now, even the overweight. I wore shorts; the right leg remains all swollen, though much better. But it still looks foreign. Once on the Hudson bike path, I immediately began seeing walkers with numbers on their backs or chests and "The Great Saunter 2010" printed on them. And so they were omnipresent all up and down my route. Finally, heading back up from 59th I stopped and asked three women what the Great Saunter was. As I suspected, the idea is to walk the perimeter of Manhattan. It's been going on for 25 years; it's 32 miles. I said to them, "The East Side must be much harder to follow the shoreline than the West." One of them replied, "I wouldn't know. I've never made it that far." Probably not this year either since it was close on to noon.