Deaf to all the alarms?

 

   The last two weeks have been a wild ride.  I went from a truly liberating and exhilarating trip up north to the Bay Area to being stuck in the hospital here for four days with another – yep, yet another – U.T.I.  (At least, this time my attendants were allowed to stay with me in the hospital, but not without a bit of a fight.)

   Before I ended up in the hospital last Sunday evening, I had planned to write a bit about my trip which was indeed liberating, as it was my first trip to the Bay Area to see family and friends in 17 months.  It was sheer joy to be in Berkeley and environs and to visit with my dad and his new partner Anne and with my sister and her husband and to spend a day with my dear friends Carl and David.  It was a real treat to see all of them “IRL” instead of on a screen, and a sweet bonus was going to a queer roller skating gathering at Lake Merritt in Oakland, which was like a very informal, small pride festival. 

   As wonderful as this Bay Area experience was, there was something alarming about it.  Or at least an alarm should be going off about it, if the alarm isn’t going off already. While I was there, the temperatures were in the 90’s.

   This was in the San Francisco Bay Area.  In June. 

   Something is wrong, very wrong – alarming, yes – about this. 

   It sometimes get into the high 80’s and low 90’s for a few days in August in the Bay Area when, as I like to joke, everyone up there freaks out. I will always remember when, many years ago, an attendant and I were driving to Berkeley at the start of an August trip, and we called the motel halfway up to say we’d be checking in late.  The guy who answered the phone said we shouldn’t bother coming up, because it was 85 degrees and miserable.  We laughed.  Eighty-five degrees sounded like Heaven after the 90’s and 100’s that we had been experiencing! 

   But it now turns out the 90’s in the Bay Area in June is nothing, what with it being 114 degrees – 114 degrees – in Seattle – Seattle, WA – of all places.   

   Something is really wrong with this picture.  Indeed, it is wrong, as many residences in Seattle don’t have air conditioning.  It’s not supposed to be hot, let alone 114 degrees, up there. 

   This is a bad sign – no doubt about it.  If we don’t hear all the global warming alarms going off, we are deaf.

   If nothing else, it turns out the guy at the motel had a message all those years ago: there’s no escape.    

Learning how to go out again

 

   I recently heard a friend talk about grit and grace, the need to have grit and grace to get big, hard things done.  There’s been a lot of grit and grace, determination and faith, in my life, especially in these last four years since my spinal surgery. 

   Recently, I’ve been upset about my left arm getting weaker and stiffer and it being more difficult to drive my wheelchair.  I haven’t been able to go out on my own, which leaves me feeling trapped.  As I write about in this column published in Friday’s Claremont Courier, I am exploring a new way to drive my chair, just as we all are exploring how to venture out and gathering after a year and a half of isolation.  We are doing this – leaning to go out again, perhaps in a new way – with grace and grit, faith and determination, with care and courage. 

 

                RETURNING TO A NEW LIFE

   This will work.  It has to.  I know it will. 

   After all, it worked for Aurora.  If it could work for Aurora, it could work for me. 

   Aurora was a disabled girl who I met with her mother in Grass Valley up north.  My friend Carl thought that Aurora and her mom should meet me.  This was a year or two or perhaps three before my spinal surgery four years ago, back when I was able to be much more independent and went all over – often a few miles in a day - in my wheelchair. 

   Even though she was non-verbal, Aurora was clearly bright and full of life. She was fascinated by me, looking up when I spoke and reaching out for the joystick on my chair.  What I found fascinating about her was that she drove with her head. 

   It was literally “Look Ma, no hands!”  When we went on a wheelchair-accessible trail after having lunch, Aurora would laugh and speed off, leaving the rest of us, including Carl and me in our wheelchairs, in the dust.  She was pressing her head against sensors in the headrest on her wheelchair, but it looked like she was being propelled by magic.  Even more remarkable was that Aurora was able to control her wheelchair in this way even though she had a lot of involuntary movement in her body – more than I did then and even more than I do now. And she made it look so easy. 

   I had no idea that day that I would need to drive my wheelchair with something like this.  Yet, here I am, back at Casa Colina Hospital, learning how to drive my wheelchair with my head.  And finding out that it isn’t so easy. 

   I really didn’t expect to have to be doing this. Two years ago, I was thrilled to find that I had recovered enough from my surgery that I was able to go out in my wheelchair on my own. I couldn’t go nowhere as far as I used to, but I was able to go around the neighborhood and to the Village and Pomona College.  I was able to go on my own to a movie or to s concert at Little Bridges, and I even made it to and from Memorial Park on the Fourth of July. It was tremendously liberating to be able to go out on my own, even when I was just tooling around my neighborhood.  

   But over the last year, even as my strolls around the neighborhood were more vital during the lock-downs, I had more and more difficulty on my outings, not being able to get far.  Perhaps it was because I stopped going to therapy and got lazy during the pandemic, but, for whatever reason, I began having less strength, less flexibility, in my left arm, my only functioning limb now, and had a hard time driving my wheelchair.  I eventually couldn’t get to the Village and then up to the railroad tracks, much less Memorial Park. 

   This was very upsetting, but I tried my best, until I went out on a warm day in February.  I was going along fine, happy that it was finally warm enough for me to go out, when, several blocks away from my house, my arm froze up, gave out.  I barely got back home, somehow, with people honking at me, asking if I was okay. 

   This left me very shaken, scared to go out on my own again. It was a lock-down in a lock-down. I felt even more trapped and knew I had to do something. 

   This is how I ended up back at Casa Colina, where I got a lot of help in the year or two before the pandemic as I got back to life after my surgery, where I went in my wheelchair two times a week for years before my surgery to work out in the gym and to visit my friend Robyn when she got M.S and was staying there when it looked quite different, where I went to nursery school with Robyn when she was able to walk before her rheumatoid arthritis got very bad. I was back at Casa Colina to find a way that I can go back out on my own in my wheelchair. 

   Which is why I’m now learning to drive which my head, like I saw Aurora doing. It’s a challenge, frustrating, I have to say – not nearly as easy as Aurora made it look.  But, then again, as Aurora showed me, it can be done, there’s a way for me to do it. 

   I keep thinking that doing this would be easier if I was not wearing a mask.  Wearing a mask makes it a bit more difficult to see where I’m going, or it makes me have to think more about seeing where I’m going.  Either way, it makes learning a new way to drive all the more of a challenge.  It also reminds me that I’m doing this in a very momentous time, when we’re all learning, learning as we find our way out of this once-in-a-century (hopefully) pandemic, find out if our lives will be different or will go back to the way they were. 

   We are all learning.  When will it be safe or feel safe not to wear masks, regardless of what the C.D.C says and the state opening up next month?  When will we be able to go to outdoor concerts?  Will we be able to go performances at the colleges when they open in the Fall – if they open in the Fall?  So many questions we are trying to answer. 

   As I try to learn this new, strange way of driving my wheelchair, of going out and getting around on my own, I am aware that it’s strange that we’re having to find our way, to learn how to go, back to normal.  Or a new normal. 

   It has felt strange to see television shows end their season, to see commercials for summer sales, complete with scenes of people traveling.  It feels strange that summer is coming, that summer will feel something like a real summer, when we will hopefully have backyard parties and be able to go to the beach, whether or not there will be concerts and performances around town and as we wonder whether to go to see a movie at the cinema or stream it at home. 

   It feels strange and difficult, but I’m not alone, we’re not alone and it can be done. 

Nothing to see here (except desperate power grabs)

 

   I am no fan of Liz Cheney, the conservative congresswoman from Wyoming and daughter of George Bush’s vice-president and dirty-deeds-doer Dick Cheney. But it was unfortunate, to say the least, when she was booted from her leadership role for continuing to condemn former President Trump for insisting – still! – that Joe Biden stole the election from him. 

   Not only is it alarmingly evident that Trump still has power over the Republicans.  The Republicans want to get this messy, inconvenient truth out of the way so they can focus on Biden, especially with, believe it or not, mid-term elections coming up.

   This can also be seen in the effort to establish an independent committee to find out what happened on January 6 at the Capitol, such as those that looked into the Kennedy assassination and 9/11. The Democrats are pushing for this, and the American public, if not also the world, deserve to know what happened, but the Republicans are balking.  They don’t want Trump to look bad, and they don’t want their likely chances to win back the Senate and also gain in, if not retake, the House to be marred by a focus on the shocking, violent insurrection attempt.  (The party opposing the president historically has the advantage in the mid-terms.)

   This desperation is also evident here in California, where Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom is facing a recall election.  In this dark blue state, where Democrats control the legislature and no Republican has won a statewide office in over a decade – and Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger won, yes, in a recall election, the only successful one in the state’s history – the Republicans are hoping this will be their entry to power.  Newsom has made a few blunders, like attending a mask-less birthday celebration at an exclusive restaurant during the height of the pandemic when he ordered everyone to stay home and wear masks, but most of what the Republicans are blaming him for – stay-at-home and masking orders to prevent the spread of COVID-19, power outages during wildfires, etc. – is beyond his control.  And unlike during the last recall election, when Democratic Governor Gray Davis was unpopular and Schwarzenegger therefore managed to win in a circus of an election with something like 135 candidates, polls are showing that Newsom will likely hold his seat, with the public having little appetite for an expensive recall election less than a year before the regularly scheduled gubernatorial election.  Talk about desperate!   

The strangeness of the normal (or is it the new normal?)

 

   It’s strange that, even as I go out to the movies on the weekend, I think it’s strange that downtown is hopping, with groups of people walking around and plenty of people eating at the restaurants.  At least, it feels strange. 

   After all, COVID-19 cases have gone way down here in Los Angeles County, and we’re about to go into the least restrictive tier.  Kids are back in the schools, at least part time (but not at the colleges).

   Still, I rush home after the movie, like I’ve snuck out, like I’m not supposed to be out. I don’t feel right milling around the downtown area, and I’m not ready to eat at a restaurant.  No, I rush back to my home, to my bubble, where I stay, hide out, cocoon for the next few days.  I go back to only going out for appointments and to go to the market, until the next time I venture out to the movies. 

   Clearly, judging by the foot traffic downtown, there are plenty of people who don’t feel this way, who have no qualms about being out and about, business as usual.  Clearly, judging by all those eating at restaurants, there are a significant number of people who think the lock-downs were unnecessary, z silly waste of time, and are going on with life as if there was – or is (look at India) – no pandemic. 

   When will I stop thinking these people are wrong, that they’re fools, to put it kindly, who don’t think of others? When will I stop looking at people to see if they’re wearing masks – and then having negative thoughts about those that aren’t? 

   There is now talk that there will never be herd immunity, that COVID-19 will never go away, that it will just be another illness, like the flu, that we’ll have to live (hopefully) with.  This might well be the case, based on the fact that much of the world (not just India, etc, but also some European countries) is getting vaccinated at a far, far lower rate than here in the U.S, not to mention the fact that a sizable group here – those who aren’t wearing masks? – are saying no to the vaccine. 

   I’d like to think that knowing this will make the transition back to normal or to the new normal easier, will make the landing softer.  But it’s probably at least as strange as thinking that people walking around downtown is strange.  

More vaccine guilt (and payback?)

 

    Yesterday evening, I read that America is something like 4% of the world’s population and has used about 20% of the COVID-19 vaccine. 

   And I thought I was feeling bad before!  I wrote here a couple months ago about how guilty I felt when I managed to get a Pfiser shot weeks before other disabled people younger than 65 were eligible to get vaccinated. 

   It didn’t help when, on the news yesterday, there were nightmarish scenes from India, where COVID-19 cases have skyrocketed, leaving the country’s already weak medical system decimated.  Not only are there no more hospital beds, the oxygen supply is very low.  And it’s said that cases will go up in the coming weeks. 

   What do we do about this?  Do we say that it’s a shame, like it’s a shame that more black and brown people in this country are getting sick with and dying from COVID-19 than white people and are getting less of the vaccine than white people?  Do we just thank our lucky stars that we’re not in India and be grateful when we get the vaccine? 

   The problem is that this isn’t as simple as a guilt trip.  The virus knows no boundaries and knows no limits in variants, which will eventually become immune to the vaccines.  Sure, we can sit back and feel bad for those poor Indians and black and brown folks, but we may all end up suffering.