Tag: Brian Carnell

Last night was the first time I had a decent night’s sleep in weeks — the fault there being largely my own.

Somewhere along the line I’ve developed allergy-induced asthma. Allergies I can live with. From about the age of 6 until I was in my late teens, I had weekly allergy shots. By the time I hit college, though, I abandoned those because my symptoms had improved dramatically and there was excellent medication such as seldane to treat the sneezing, etc. By the mid-1990s I wasn’t even using seldane anymore.

Then in October 2000 I contracted a particularly nasty case of bronchitis that took what seemed like forever to go away. Then, again in October 2001 I contracted yet another nasty case of bronchitis. The physician at that time said it looked like it was caused by allergy-induced asthma and that I should follow-up later.

Of course I ignored that advice until the last several weeks when the seasonal sneezing was accompanied by breathing difficulties, mostly at night. So after a week or so of waking up with difficulty breathing and feeling completely unrested, I finally went to see a physician yesterday to schedule an asthma test and obtain some medications . . . and slept like a baby.

Over the past few years I’ve become an extreme creature of habit — my wife says that every year I’m becoming more and more like Dustin Hoffman’s character in “Rain Man.” So I spent much of last week in the hospital where my daughter was having surgery and then taking care of her after her successful operation, and it’s been very difficult to get back into synch.

And I’ve been completely unmotivated to do anything but watch television. You know you’re in a really bad place when you find yourself watching an hour long biography of Carnie Wilson (of Wilson-Philips “fame.”)

Ugh.

A few days ago I opened up the quarterly publication that the university library system puts out to find a short obituary on the last page of my friend Hardy Carroll. He died this summer at the age of 81.

When I was a student I took a part job in the university’s Business Library where I was responsible for making sure that journal’s were sent out for binding into hardcover volumes on a regular basis. At that time, Hardy was also working in the Business Library, though that’s a bit like saying that Einstein had an interest in physics.

Hardy was the most well-read man I have ever met in my life. I like to consider myself pretty well-read and overeducated, but I’m not in the same league that Hardy was in. His office was just wall to wall books, many of them in piles on the floor, open to some page where he had temporarily stopped reading to move on to something else for the moment.

Hardy’s breadth of knowledge was almost scary, and he was constantly suggesting books and journal articles I should read. There were quite a few students who would repeatedly come back to the library when their next round of term papers were do and insist that the other librarians wouldn’t do — they wanted to talk to Hardy and that was that.

But apparently along with knowing pretty much everything, he had also had a varied work life. Before becoming a librarian, he had been a construction worker, a forester, a director of an overseas Quaker work camp, and a public school teacher.

Now that’s living life to its fullest.

Today my Grandmother underwent her second (and hopefully final) angioplasty surgery. She’s getting up there in years (80+) and her doctors discovered she had exteremely poor circulation below the waist due to severely blocked arteries. The circulation was so bad that the choice was either have the angioplasty or almost certainly amputate her legs in a few years.

My brother is a military cop at an Air Force base here, and has been working 15 hour days ever since the 9/11 terrorist attack, so last night Lisa and I drove to Battle Creek, Michigan. She returned to our house with my daughter, and I slept on my Grandma’s couch.

This morning I drove my Grandmma to the hospital, she went through the surgery, and as the surgeon put it, she was back to her old ornery self within a couple hours. But then things really started to get weird.

Lisa was supposed to pick up Emma from her school, get her some food, and then drive to Battle Creek to pick me up (the drive takes about 20 minutes). I figured she’d be there around 6 p.m., but wasn’t concerned when she still wasn’t there at 6:30 p.m. When 7 p.m. rolled around, though, I was a little angry thinking she was dinking around rather than coming to Battle Creek right away.

By 7:30 p.m. I was past the anger and straight into being worried that something had happened to her. Her cell phone kept giving me “That caller is unavailable” and when I tried to call her family members, none of them were home either.

By 8:00 p.m. I was basically freaking out. I finally got her father on the phone who said that when he had talked to her around 5:30 p.m. that my daughter had a fever and had thrown up. So now, I’m calling all the hospitals, her pediatrician, the urgent care at the doctor’s office, and other places seeing if she had taken my daughter there.

Finally I decided to go back to my Grandma’s apartment and see if she was there, but on my way out I checked all of the parking lots and was very happy to see her car there. I ran into the hospital to hear my name being announced over the loudspeaker asking me to return to my Grandma’s room.

It turns out her evening had been just as frustrating as mine. She had shown up at the hospital at 6:30 pm. only to be told that my Grandmother had been discharged earlier in the evening. This was completely false, but she had no idea. Thinking my Grandmother had been discharged, she had spent two hours alternating between hanging around my Grandma’s apartment complex waiting for her to show up and taking my daughter to a nearby store to keep her occupied (the last thing in the world you want to do is sit around waiting with a four year old).

By the time 8 p.m. rolled around she figured something was up and returned to the hospital. Asking for more information about when my Grandma had been discharged, she was told that in fact she was in a critical care room for an overnight stay.

Whew! I was really stressing out there for a few minutes with all sorts of ugly scenarios and possibilities going through my mind.

We’re moving out of our house in early August and into a slightly nicer house (smaller, but better maintained) about 5 or 6 blocks away from where we live now. One of the main reasons for moving is to get away from our neighbors. Among the biggest troublemakers are the college students who live in a small apartment complex behind us.

It is bad enough that they begin partying on Wednesday’s, but lately they’ve been setting off firecrackers as well. We usually call the police, but noise violations are hardly high on their priority list.

Today I called the manager of the apartment complex to complain. He was extremely receptive to my tale of woe, especially how described observing drunken college students lighting fireworks on their wooden balcony. He told me that he’d take care of it, saying that he’d given them warnings about the fireworks, but “today, the hammer comes down.”

Excellent.

I had one of those experiences today that made me feel like a complete idiot.

Several days ago I was in the gym getting dressed after showering. I wasn’t having a very good day to begin with, and I was getting my clothes out of my locker when I heard this voice behind me saying something like, “Hey, how’s it going today?” The only person I ever run into who I know at the gym is this acquaintance, Dean, who I know well enough to exchange small talk but not much beyond that. It looked like Dean out of the corner of my eye, and so I started to say “Hi Dean”, when I realized it wasn’t him.

I had never seen this person before in my life, but he proceeded to talk to me like I knew him. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but the way he talked to me was a bit too familiar for being a complete stranger and he was kind of giving me a strange look — I thought maybe he knew me from somewhere or knew my wife or something. I quickly forced myself through the conversation and got the heck out of there.

Anyway, today after showering I’m getting dressed and again the same guy is sitting next to a locker and starts talking to me like he knows me, only now I realize what’s going on and feel like a complete idiot. He was blind. He had a folded up cane sitting next to him today; probably still had that in his locker or gym bag the previous day because I certainly didn’t see it and it never even occurred to me from the previous conversation that he might be blind.

Oy.