05-AUG-C-5
THE
CONTINUATION OF THE DERWOOD CLEANUP
AND YARD
WORK, AND TREKKING OFF TO
AND
COUNSELING JOE OVER BETTY’S MANIPULATIVE PANIC/ANXIETY ATTACKS AS HE IS
PLANNING
HIS TRIP
ABROAD
August 25—28, 2005
You cannot hear the sound of the “Hepa-Aire” air scrubber in the basement absorbing the odors out of the basement and blowing cedar/cinnamon and potpourri scent through the basement as a dehumidifier is allegedly operating to decrease the mold potential from the soaking it had had before the floor scrubbing and appliance roll out and disposal downstairs. I had done a lot of work myself as these devices were operating, and after getting all the yard work completed in cutting back the encroaching jungle in Derwood after many weeks of absence, I had gone out yesterday to stock the refrigerators and freezer, and was confident to do so after I had seen the Viking freezer and refrigerator emptied, and stripped of all its contents then cleaned out twice in succession—the first time by amateurs, just to cart off all the spoiled and re-frozen stock to the dump, and the second time by the C & C Professionals who specialize in fire damage smoke, water and other such damages, restoring the conditions, they say, to “as though it had never happened.” I do not know how long the blowers will be here and when they plan to return, but the job is not yet done upstairs under the Viking Refrigerator. There is still a bad smell coming form under the appliances and cupboards there which will require the units to be pulled out to rehab the area beneath them. I have called freezer service people and the contractors to see how this can be done and no on e is eager to get out here to help that process. Meanwhile, I have trusted the inside of the units enough to invest in a lot of new food to be stored. By fall I will have to do some serious “meat hunting” to re-stock even a small part of what was destroyed and discarded.
The freezers and refrigerators downstairs were hooked up to a power line which had also furnished the washing machine and a small light under the stairs. When I could not get the little light to work, I tried new bulbs and found it still did not work, and learned then that the whole electrical line is out. It is not the case that a circuit breaker had failed but that the surge on return of electricity that never got the freezers downstairs hooked back up again, kept them from being frozen solid for disposal and left the mess in a vaporous condition for my cleanup which is now at the site of the understairs “air scrubber.” So, there are at least two additional items to be done—one is the moving of the Viking Refrigerator out to clean up the tiles and under neath surfaces, and the other is to get the power line resorted before replacing the appliances downstairs, as well as getting a dehumidifier for the basement. I was also going to get a “Baker‘s Rack” for the kitchen, and might try to arrange all this around the same time. I have tried to get things back to the way that they were “as though this had not happened.”
I came home early on Friday and borrowed Grace Masonson’s mower by pre-arrangement to do the heavy duty lawn and yard overhaul. The mower is heavy and I should have always used some form of cloth to put it into the trunk before driving slowly downhill to the driveway. As it is, and remembering the burn on my arm from touching the muffler the last time before my departure, I dragged it across the plastic shock absorbing bumper of the Audi, thereby scratching it and taking the black finish off form it. I had to touch it up afterwards with black paint. I did get the mower functional and set to work in clearing the encroaching Derwood growth of the hottest Month of the year (and a record for a long time) and used the mower well to cut back to twenty feet on either side of the drive in the woods—almost like a bush hog. I then had to actually pull the very high weeds at the house and along the rocky walls where I could not approach as well, and spent a two and a half hour period working hard on cutting the jungle back. This means that I would not have to run for any ex—almost like a bush hog. I then had to actually pull the very high weeds at the house and along the rocky walls where I could not approach as well, and spent a two and a half hour period working hard on cutting the jungle back. This means that I would not have to run for any excise, since this was far harder work than the running I had skipped in order to get this done, I owe Grace dinner at least, and stopped over afterwards after cleaning up and showering., so that I could propose this. But, she has two daughters whose last free weekend is the one just now in fleeting process before school starts on Monday, so they had to get the right backpack and shoes and other back to school gear. I had heard that this period of shopping is the second largest of the year, behind only Christmas. I am glad that all my shopping has been by dialing up through catalogs or the internet, since I would not want to go mall-trolling to get the new year ready.
One of my colleagues in the ELDP had gone through the assignments of the new courses for which we are registered and announced after tabulating it all—“we are due for a boatload of work!” I have just seen the table of due assignments and with one still past due since it was supposed to be posted on “Blackboard” the electronic submission that may work for some others but which I have been unable to get to work for me with any consistency, so I had mailed in a hard copy of the first of two assignments and have no feedback from it on which to revise the second submission. I have tried to keep current, and there are monthly assignments that look like semester long billets form before. So, everything in the ELDP is headed into the big crisis at the Spring break in which we align in teams to take the Comps in both oral and written forms. After that, everything centers on the long thesis process, which has already begun with sample drafts of the ideas and the bibliography that might support it.
Of the things I have done to date while waiting for the folk from the C & C Cleanup crew to arrive and other such downtime that has absorbed an inordinate amount of time and work, but which at least has something to show for it, is the accessioning of sixteen rolls of print film, with another 300 printed digital images, all of which is collated and put with the text of the two adventure trips of the summer in Azerbaijan and Eritrea and assembled in THREE photo albums. You may have already received a forwarded emailing with the access to the three Photo Works rolls of “On-Line albums” from each, and I had sent you the completed text of each description. Now, I will get together with the students to prepare a “show and tell” program and assemble them into a CD with video clips as well as the essence of the Eritrean mission, for their program here at GWU.
There will be a professional pair
of programs on DVD from Patrick Montgomery regarding the Tur hunt and for George
Sevich’s Eurasian Expeditions. Then
there will be a pair of DVD’s from Physicians for Peace done by the editing of
the interviews and operative pictures taken by professional photographer Steve Katz
from the Norfolk Pilot in
THE THRITITETH
ANNIVERSARY OF THE
“ATM”—
AND MY TWO
TRIPS TO
RUN THE RACE
Saturday was an unusually cool and
wet day, for the last of August, and IO had done some errands and household
chores during the day before driving out in the drizzle to pick up some books
on disc and then head over to
I went around the circles of the
ancient capital of
Strolling down to the harbor,
passing the Alex Hailey “Roots” storytelling statues, I saw the smart set,
sitting on their large floating piles of fiberglass, having a toddy on the poop
deck/. A few of the revelers appeared to
have been quite pooped out, including one fellow whop fell form the boat to the
dock, but never awakened, while his friends partied and posed behind him
drinking a toast to their fallen comrade.
He was stilt ere, unmoved in his original position upon my return. Under glowering black skies, I made it out to
the end of the wharf, where tour boats and water taxis were busy with long
queues of people taking in what is essentially the last weekend of summer, and
behind it all I could see the four large towers of the Bay Bridge, the communications
towers of the Annapolis Academy and smartly dressed formal Cadets with the
beautiful young ladies as escorts upon their arms trolling the town. I miss the formerly standard part of the run
which always had us cutting through the
My ice cream oversize cone (the first I have had in altogether too long) lasted as long as the stroll, and we admired the floating parties of drunken sailors, as I heaved a large sigh of relief, that –like the horsy set—I have not got into the capital and upkeep intensive luxuries of the yachting set. Other than a few working boats that go out to pursue the rockfish (which are sadly lacking now in my non-existent freezer space) there seems to be only one activity that is possible or usual on the non-working time spent on the boats not swabbing painting or scouring, and that is drinking—which seems to be done in a very publics display of imbibing to oblivion as passersby upon the quays can watch the tethered yacht residents fall into a stupor while those of us on the only slightly more firma terra are privileged to watch this enviable status. At least I escaped with full possession of my senses, and felt more righteous that I had at least come to do a bit of exertion down the same cobbled streets tomorrow.
And, that I did. I had several conversations with Joe (some
details below) who had bowed out of running this race with me for a couple of
reasons (to be understood later) so I got up early and drove alone through the
spattering rain to
As we stood there at the starting
line awaiting the opening of the chutes, the skies opened up, and the 100%
humidity that was the order of the day came to us in sheets of rain. This is the first time of all the times I
have done this race that I was wet before starting, and not from the friendly
folk along the way in
After finishing, I got my sailboat sculpture trophy and dropped it in the car using a cold Annapolis Striders towel they kept in a freezer to wrap around my neck in the cool down period. They had huge truck loads of watermelons and an open Michelob Ultra beer truck to keep people hydrated through the awards ceremony. I watched my friend Cliff, who usually gives me the post MCM massage, but did not stand in the queue to get one myself, since I will save that luxury for the long run in the fall.
MULTIPLE
CALLS WITH JOE AS I RETURN
FROM MY TRIP AND HE PREPARES FOR HIS
As soon as I returned from
When I had driven the whole family
through the rain on Easter Sunday to go to
On the next occasion I got a call that I should come over with a stethoscope since she was having a heart attack, and I needed to confirm that with a stethoscope. I explained that there is no such instrument, and the stethoscope is not capable of determining that and what she was having was NOT a heart attack but a panic attack of hysteria. No, she insisted, this is not something mental but she is seriously ill. With that I agree.
During the summer, Joe was at work, and no special things were happening except a few innocent events, like going to movies or a Nationals game. But, looming up ahead is Joe’s trip and Friday is when he is going. Betty is both primitive and predictable: her panic attacks take place just before some event at which Joe is featured prominently, and she can then no longer breathe and is in such anxiety that everything must come to a halt and focus on her. She is tired of being the wife of someone blind, and insists he should grow out of it, and expresses her depression with her own lot in life as a rather dumpy overweight wife of a star performer by shunning the exercise program available to her as a YMCA staffer and is getting worse whenever Joe is about to go somewhere. Now I got calls right after returning after missing one before my return. She panicked and “could not breathe.” She called here sister in Illinois and she said it sounded to her like the same thing she had and she should call 911—which, she did, and Betty was brought to Suburban Hospital in a tizzy where they worked her up completely and she had no problem with her heart or lungs—but she insisted that no further inquiry be made into her psychosomatic panic attacks. Joe had appeared at Suburban and the full stress tests were done with no problems encountered.
When I returned, the calls were directed to me, since I am much cheaper than any other physician and she was not happy with the doctor covering her regular doctor who is on vacation until Monday. I told her that this is an anxiety reaction and that she must control herself and get help over a serous long term relationship with a specialist who deals with where the problem is seated—and I am not a psychiatrist nor would I write a script for the meds they use—like Xanax, Zoloft, Paxil or one of the others which she will need to be started on as well as continuing counseling (which she has declined each time in the past.) So, when Joe and I were going to talk of running the ATM together, she had another panic attack, and when I was in bed at midnight last night, she was shrieking hysterically that she could not breathe and had asthma—but with no evidence of air trapping and with a long and complete high volume sentence that no one with asthma could produce, nor could anyone who could not breathe come out with prolonged and emotional outbursts of the kind she delivered. I try to support Joe, who does his best at calming her, but she was insistent that they get off the phone and that he immediately call 911. At least I spared them that drama and another very big, disruptive and expensive series of repeated negative tests of her alleged heart attacks or asthmatic crises—all of it located between her ears—and being used to manipulate Joe at a time when he has to consider canceling his trip. If she were to appear at regular intervals at the ER at Suburban without anyone skipping the long “rule out” defensive work up each time, she would be admitted, and that would surely put the monkey wrench in the plans. So, I talked them out of the return to the ER as she continued through the night to berate Joe for ignoring her very physical complaints on the basis of my advice that she is surely a psychiatric emergency and needs a different kind of consultation and treatment, since this has been coming on for along time, but always accelerates ahead of any big even in Joe’s life to distract and manipulate him.
I am not her physician, nor am I a psychiatrist. I devoutly wish I had far less experience with psychiatric illness and crises of self-destruction. But a classic, primitive and predictable series of crescendo crises coming on at the time of Joe’s prepatory week for Friday departure is no cause for manipulating Joe, and more especially me. I am not denying that she is seriously ill. In fact, I suggest that she has been for some time, and my earlier suggestions on the kind of illness it was and how it should be addressed had been rejected since she insists she is having either a heart attack or an asthmatic crisis neither of which is apparent or even likely. But was is more than likely but overwhelmingly probable is a manipulative series of self-induced anxiety/panic attacks that must be taken seriously and treated aggressively since they are surely not going to go away on their own, but will get worse, especially as any attention is directed at Joe and how he sublimates his handicap and uses his stresses to better performance. I have urged him not to be manipulated by this and to go forward with serous treatment for her patent and primitive responses and will continue to support him, adding that I should not be “on call” for similar manipulation and “enabling.” Joe called me on completion of the race as I was returning from Annapolis in the Audi, and I re-enforced the appointment he will make Monday on return of her regular physician and to get a jump on the consultation and real cause of her increasingly frequent crises which require psychotropic medications and long and sustained consultation and psychiatric care. Meanwhile, what Joe should do is run for the USA in Brazil and then return and run a few times with me for both the exercise and the exorcism to relieve himself of the extra burden he has to carry—we may go to the Army Ten Miler together as well as a few practice runs upon his return.