It’s getting late on election day. The polls are closing and now we wait. I don’t know about turn out nationally, but locally it’s a good deal higher than it has been for some time with long lines at some polling places. I got up and voted prior to heading in to work, arriving about 7:45 and it took me about 45 minutes to wind my way through the line to collect, fill out, and deposit my ballot. I haven’t a clue what will happen tonight, but whatever it is, I’ll be getting up tomorrow and going in and taking care of patients because that’s what I do and that’s what’s really important – people helping others rather than trying to destroy them in pursuit of temporary political power.
I also see the spinal surgeons tomorrow in regards to my cervical spondylosis which has been causing spasms in my left shoulder girdle for the last six months. I have no intention of actually having surgery on my neck as I can deal with the pain and I haven’t had any functional issues, but I think it’s wise to know all of the alternatives. My guess is I’ll end up with some physical therapy and traction. The only issue will be trying to figure out how to fit in some physical therapy appointments into my already overly crowded schedule.
I was supposed to be at Little Women rehearsal this evening but illness in a key team member caused a quick adjustment to the rehearsal schedule and I am not needed. I thought about taking myself out to dinner and a movie, but decided instead to stay home and do some writing, catch up on progress notes, and go to bed early. I’m a bit fatigued after this weekend. As I didn’t have anything specific on the schedule, I raced over to South Carolina on Saturday to see Frank Thompson as Mortimer Brewster in a production of Arsenic and Old Lace (it was a bucket list role for him) and raced back on Sunday. It would have been relatively uneventful but in my throwing things into a duffel for the overnight, I somehow forgot to pack my CPAP and therefore slept very badly Saturday night. That combined with twelve hours of driving has left me a little bushed.
It has been some years since I last saw Arsenic and Old Lace produced on stage. I had forgotten what a singularly odd play it is – a farcical comedy about mass murder with galloping insanity, spoofing of religion and the police, and various 30s horror movie tropes thrown in for good measure. There’s nothing else quite like it in the American theater cannon. It still works with all the grisly humor played for laughs leaving the audience giggling at highly inappropriate subjects, similar to Sweeney Todd, although many of the references, while au courant for 1941, have fallen into obscurity. There are few under the age of sixty who will understand a joke about Judith Anderson. I don’t remember the last time it was produced locally (probably the South City production I saw about fifteen years ago) but I can think of a number of members of the theater community who would be perfect for various roles. I’ve aged out of the juicer roles myself and would probably have to settle for one of the lonely old men in the cellar.
Covid is still very much out there. It’s not at the 1/40 Americans infected that it was this summer, it’s more like 1/120 Americans currently has a case. Vaccination rates with the current booster remain low. I saw a statistic today that bothered me. Only 15% of currently employed health care workers have taken advantage of the most recent booster since it became available a couple of months ago. For the most part, it’s mandatory that health care workers receive flu shots. Both UAB and VA employee health start chasing me every October until I get one and I won’t be allowed to work in patient care until I can either prove my adherence or provide a medical reason why I cannot be vaccinated. No such rules have come down for covid boosters. I’m not saying that they should necessarily, but I find it interesting to compare and contrast.
The big issue is not acute covid infections. For the most part, between vaccine and natural immunities we’re doing pretty well at keeping ourselves out of the hospital. The issue is the long term complications of long covid which has somewhere between a 3 and 10 percent chance of occurring after even mild cases. Long covid significantly raises the chance of chronic respiratory illness, heart disease including heart attack and congestive failure, stroke, and dementia. For those in my generation who are starting to see the dementia belt approaching, keeping up to date on covid immunity is probably statistically the best thing you can do for yourself to stave dementia off.
One of the essays I’m toying with is something along the lines of ‘We Will All Have Long Covid’. If we are so lack luster at taking preventive steps, have significant chances of developing the issue, and enough time passes, by the 2030s we may have an enormous burden of what should have been preventable chronic disease above and beyond that brought by the aging processes of the baby boom (now fourteen months away from turning eighty). I sit and ponder these things and start flipping calendar pages and calculating my retirement date again.
I am not raising my blood pressure by watching the election returns tonight. I can do nothing about them and it’s not like I won’t find out. I’m sure to be beaten over the head with the result tomorrow morning when I wake up and open my computer. Good night and good luck.
Life, The Universe, and Everything 