Joe, Pony tails: If you have a shop vac, put a rubber band (from a stalk of celery) on the end of the hose or wand. Position the hose or wand at the nape of the neck, around where you think the medula oblongata might be located. Turn on the vacuum, suck all the hair into hose or wand, roll the rubber band off the tube onto the hair. Turn off the vac. Voila. Don't forget to winnie as you put away your styling equipment.
The question should be, How many of us let our stomachs grow out after leaving the service?
Which leads to to another question that has puzzled me all my life. Why is it that all Harley riders have long white beards, and huge stomachs? Is it a "Santa Complex" thing, or some sort of requirement for ownership? If so, I will soon meet the requirement.
Dave B, it could prove interesting to list some of the things we use now that would have saved us time 40 years ago. Me first. GPS.
Dave M, I've got to hand it to you...I would never have thought of using that expression in Catalan as an icebreaker when you walk in to meet the guys down at AD Farrow but hey, go for it....... "enginy ianqui"!
A very Happy Birthday to you on this 50th anniversary of Earth Day!
Jim
CORRECTION: Mea culpa! Earth day is 22 April, not 20 April. Our class celebrates your B-Day, Janie, but only some consider 4-20 a day worth celebrating for other reasons. 🤔
I know I have been posting sad stuff lately, so in an effort to get out of that part of my brain, let me toss this song at you. It is meant to be funny, well maybe not guffaw funny, but perhaps wryly amusing. It is trying to capture that situation where you have a male-female friends-only couple, and both are quite tired of watching the female friend's life being a parade of poor man-choices. Unfortunately for the male friend, they both know he doesn't have the special chemistry she is looking for that would lift him out of the "friends-only" category. Nevertheless, he feels, enough is enough, and is compelled to pop the question, "Why not try me?"
This is meant to be a female-male duet, but unfortunatley for you, you will have to listen to me doing both parts. I added a visual device to help you keep straight who is singing which lines.
Dave, ha! I remotely opened the building door. They set cake in the entry. My neighbor brought it up. We dont allow visitors in our building. I lit candles and they sang to me. I cut some pieces and through same method sent the remainder back down. Insane!
Interviewed a virologist, a couple of nurses, and two covid19 patients over the past two days for a story I am putting together. Will take me about a month to write and finish up my research but I will post a link when it comes out. Very interesting how widely the symptoms and severity differ from one person to another. Also interesting to hear their personal stories - including the sense of being shunned once they have recovered, been through quarantine, and are no longer a danger to anyone. I got choked up as I interviewed the one man and he told me about the priest who got through to him in the dead of his darkest night in the hospital. He was in for two weeks and wouldn't let them put him on a ventilator, was determined to fight through it on his own. (I think this guy - he was a pilot in the air force and flew f15s and f16s, by the way - was scared of losing control. I think he thought he'd die if he let them put him on the ventilator). He talked about the bond with his doctor (the virologist I interviewed) who helped him through it by just sitting there and literally holding his hand. I think because of the fear factor and the unknowns of this thing the personal bond between doctors, nurses and patients is much, much more important than ordinarily with this disease. Interesting detail: he lost his sense of taste - which seems to be a common thing with this virus - and knew he was going to survive when he realized he could taste the strawberry ice cream the kitchen staff brought him one day. That has to be the best bowl of ice cream this guy ever had. I'll use the two patients as the anchor for a story that will be about the vagaries of the disease, the hardships on families, etc., the bond with caregivers, etc. I don't know much yet about this part of the science yet, I guess nobody does, but both patients are donating blood and plasma in the hopes that the antibodies they generated to battle the disease in themselves can be helpful to other patients.
Mike -- sounds like the makings for a terrific piece of journalism. Just this little summary you posted here was quite compelling in itself. Good luck with that. I hope you are able to do your interviewing on-line for the most part. You don't want to lose your sense of taste, or your life, chasing down this story. Be safe.
I shall be most interested in reading your story and I know you will write one with feeling and a patient's perspective.
In past posts I have mentioned that so much of medicine today, especially during this pandemic, is presented from an epidemiological viewpoint . My experience has always been with treating individual patients. Two of the things I have drilled into my students is the need to actually touch - lay hands - on the patients and talk to them (80% of diagnoses are made on the basis of taking a proper history), preferably face-to-face and not with their backs to the patients while tapping on a computer keyboard. Both of those require TIME, something that doctors today are being pushed to limit by some non-physician administrators. Telemedicine obviously eleminates the hands-on part. William Osler, the "Father of Internal Medicine", would be turning over in his grave! The doctor you mentioned who held that patient's hand is a true physician. I know telemedicine is useful in some specialties and in this pandemic. It has metastasized to so many others, but I really hope it does not become the "new norm". And those who say that a doctor should not get emotionally involved in their patients' lives are not being realistic.
Sorry that I got off on this tangent but your post brought out some thoughts that I think are important. Healing is both an art and a science, and only one of those can be taught, the other has to be learned by dealing with patients and families. Your story has a real opportunity to express that point.
Jim. I'm not in the least surprised by what you describe as a tangent. It's more of a reflection of the person I know you to be.
I think I mentioned both of these patient are donating plasma. There hasn't been enough time to do much research along those lines (at least for this particular virus) but I did find this:
