Flaming Pablum

On The Last Day: The 2023 Summer Survey

I wasn’t originally going to do another one of these, because … honestly … why would anyone care? But, then again, that same argument could be applied to pretty much every entry I post here, so, fuck it…here goes.

Defining Moment of Summer 2023
At the risk of drudging it all back up, I’d suggest the defining element of my summer involved my stupid, broken foot and having to wear that goddamn boot (see above) for four weeks. The worst of it is that here on the precipice of Autumn, it still doesn’t feel much better. I’m going back to see my quacky podiatrist in two weeks to discuss other courses of action, but it may be high time to find another doctor. Watch this space, if you care.

Best Purchase of Summer 2023
Back in June, we were invited to my nephew’s wedding, which was to be held in late August in Northern California. It was a “black-tie optional” event, so I used that as an excuse to go buy myself a proper black suit, hoping it would help me feel like more of a functioning adult. In it, I kid myself that I look like a reservoir dog, when the truth of the matter is probably closer to a middle-aged head waiter.

Best Meal of Summer 2023
Never mind just the summer, the best meal of my entire life took place in late June at a tiny eatery in Rome called Collene Emiliane. My main course was a dish simply called "Roast-Beef con purea,” which is basically just roast beef with mashed potatoes. I realize how banal that sounds, but it genuinely was the most lovingly prepared, succulent and immeasurably tasty meal I’ve ever consumed.

Best Concert of Summer 2023
Oliver and I saw some great shows, in the late Spring and earlier Summer, notably Depeche Mode back in April and then the Sisters of Mercy in Brooklyn in June. Both of those were great fun, but I’d have to say the best evening of live music I experienced this summer was only a few weeks back, seeing Calexico perform the entirety of their 2003 album, Feast of Wire at (le) Poisson Rouge over on Bleecker Street. They’re an amazing band, and I cannot recommend them highly enough.

Best Book You Read During Summer 2023
I read some fun stuff this summer, including “Heady Daze,” the second installment in the sprawling autobiographical series by Wayne Hussey of The Mission. I also enjoyed "World Travel," a collection of essays from the late Anthony Bourdain, “I Die Every Time I Hear the Sound” by Mike Doughty, “Nothin’ But a Good Time” by Tom Beaujour & Richard Bienstock,” as well as “Sweet Dreams: The Story of the New Romantics” by Dylan Jones. But, far and away, the best book I paged through this summer was “This Must Be the Place: Music, Community and Vanished Spaces in New York City” by Jesse Rifkin. I honestly cannot recommend it highly enough. Rifkin’s attention to chronological detail, musical minutia and geographical accuracy across multiple genres and local music scenes - from bongo-bangin’ folkies through Brooklynite hipster kids and the myriad musical tribes between them — is genuinely astonishing, and handled with a reverence that is inherently readable and illuminating. Even if you’re not familiar with the particulars in question, it’s an endlessly engaging journey. A MUST-READ book, full stop.

Best Movie of Summer 2023
I saw neither “Barbie” nor “Oppenheimer,” and feel not a jot of regret. I can’t actually think of a film I went to (as in, in a movie theatre) this summer, but I did quite enjoy “Squaring the Circle,” the new documentary about the album-cover design team of Hipgnosis. I also quite enjoyed “Living” with Bill Nighy, which was lovely.

Best Gift You Received of Summer 2023
For father’s day, my son gave me a fetching Love & Rockets t-shirt (his latest favorite band).

Biggest Loss of Summer 2023
On a personal level, I actually went to three funerals, this summer, which seemed a bit out of the ordinary. Mercifully, no one in my immediate circle passed away, but these were extended family members (the siblings, fathers and godparents of in-laws, etc.), and I attended to show my support for those loved ones who suffered those losses. Beyond that, I have to say that the losses of both Pee Wee Herman and Sinead O’Connor were both painfully palpable.

Song That Sums Up the Summer of Summer 2023
I don’t know if there’s truly a single song that wraps it all up, for me, but if pressed, I’d say my favorite album of Summer 2023 would be Negative Stars by local noise-rock trio, Skull Practitioners. Their vocals need a bit of work, but they mine a compelling terrain that is reminiscent of several so-called “pigfuck” bands while also somehow calling to mind the noodley prog nuttsness of early King Crimson. On a song-level, though, being that our fleeting time out in Quogue, this summer, was largely scored by the strikingly limited playlist of Sirius XM’s “Yacht Rock Radio,” I’d probably have to cite “Diamond Girl” by Seals & Crofts as the tune that might continue to remind me of this summer. I also listened to the title track of Robyn Hitchcock's Shufflemania quite a bit. 

Happiest Memory of Summer 2023
While we bicker inanely like every other family, the fact that my wife and I had the pleasure of spending so much time with both of our kids, this summer, brought me much joy. We only packed our daughter back off to Scotland this past Friday. Summer is thus officially done and dusted, as far as I’m concerned.

Saddest Memory of Summer 2023
Learning of the sudden and awful fate of Jesse Malin after suffering a spinal stroke really took the wind out of my sails. During the early weeks of the COVID 19 pandemic, when uncertainty held sway, my department at work — all sequestered in our respective homes and duly “sheltering in place” — was tasked with conceiving new content to produce to keep our audience (our creative community of affiliated songwriters, composers and publishers) informed. I pitched a series of short Q&A’s with certain songwriters to see how they were handling the challenges of this new strange era. I got the green light, and started firing off emails to various names. To my very great joy, the very first guy that got back to me was Jesse Malin, who was entirely game. I lobbed a handful of questions over and within a day, he hit me back with some great, thoughtful and inspiring responses. At this risk of lapsing into fanboy hyperbole, Jesse has always been the mover, the shaker and the tip of the spear. A true believer in the music of New York City, he makes things happen, and has kept the spirit of Punk Rock alive in a downtown Manhattan riddled by gentrification. He’s also a tireless advocate for giving BACK, and has been involved in more charitable initiatives than I can count. He’s truly one of the good guys. May he swiftly recover from this latest setback.

Scariest Moment of Summer 2023
Apart from some testy moments when looking at my dwindling bank account, I’m relieved to say that Summer 2023 didn’t come with a great deal of sudden scares.

Word That Best Describes of Summer 2023
Over.

Puttin' The Boot In

I wasn’t going to post anything further about my stupid foot, but events took an unexpected turn, this week. Originally, you might remember, I was tasked with only having to wear the thing for three weeks. At the start of this ostensibly final week, however, I got in touch with my podiatrist to check in and he suggested that I should “stick with it for another week.” I was initially going to respond as to where he could stick it, but calmed down and thought better of it. I mean, after wearing it for 21 days, what’s another seven, right? It’s not that big of a deal.

Since last addressing the subject here, I’ve also started the “bone stimulation” treatments, which are in no manner as exciting as they might sound. It’s basically a little electronic device that I hook up to a strap around the “problem area” on my foot. I smear a little of this translucent jelly on its accompanying “transducer,” clip that into the strap and then sit with it for twenty minutes, ideally once a day. The device counts down the minutes, but I’ll be damned if I can feel it actually doing anything. I’m supposed to do that for about a month. We’ll see what happens.

Beyond all that bullshit, it’s pretty much business as usual. I’m not walking to work, during this phase, rather I’m taking the subway. While this is arguably less strain on the foot, it does mean humping it up and down a few flights of stairs, every morning, which is no fucking picnic. But, y’know, needs must.

I’m just really focussed on wrapping this up and moving forward, but the novelty has truly warn off. In terms of this blog, being that I’m not spending nearly as much time as I normally do walking these New York City streets, I’m not fielding the usual daily onslaught of random stimuli that regularly prompt any number of stupid entries I’d be posting here. Riding the R train four stops downtown and four stops back uptown just doesn’t inspire me in the same way. As such, I don’t have too much to share, at the moment, beyond frustrated banalities.

Watch this space.

"It Looks Worse Than It Is..."

Hey again, all. Once again, let me apologize for the slowdown in regular posting. Put simply, my life has been pretty much consumed by the otherwise dumb, workaday injury I’m vainly trying to get through. I’m almost a week into my boot sentence, and, ultimately, it’s all fine. I only have to wear it for three weeks, but it slows me down considerably and is completely clunky. But it is by no means a big deal. It does make me somewhat uncontrollably cranky, but c'est la guerre.

I am continually asked what happened, and I simply do not have a short, pithy response (and it’s assuredly nothing cool or sexy like a motorcycle accident or a shark attack), so I usually try to brush off the topic by saying that it looks worse than it is. If truth be told, I don’t even know if the boot is making a difference – I certainly don’t feel a pronounced improvement as yet, but I’m still waiting to start the “bone stimulation” treatments and still have two more weeks in the boot. It’s still early days, I guess.

This all said, wearing the boot curtails my walking time and eats up a lot of my energy, patience and attention, so my time ruminating about the usual subjects here has been a bit compromised. I’m also in a foul mood, a lot of the time, so it’s probably just as well that I’m not sitting here typing hostilities into the void.

But, again, in the grand scheme of things, it’s really not that big of a deal. There are people with significantly greater problems in the world, so I should shut right the fuck up.

Have a happy Fourth!

How It's Going

Back From The Boot

Hey there, all… Apologies for the relative slowdown, but upon my return from Italy this past Saturday, I’ve really hit the ground running. Well, may be not so much running as urgently limping. See, while I’m incredibly grateful to work where I do, the work itself does not wait for me when I’m away. This was compounded by the relatively sudden departure of a colleague of mine just prior to my vacation. As such, I came back from Italy with twice as many demands on my plate, and I’ve been doing my best to catch-up and make it all work. I’m sure you can understand.

In terms of the trip, what can I say? It was spectacular. Truly, one has not properly eaten food until one has experienced the culinary richness of Italy. They know what they’re doing. Just as one fleeting example, at a friend’s recommendation, we stopped by a restaurant in Rome called Colline Emiliane and it was without question the greatest meal I’ve ever had in my 55 years. I’m not kidding. Every other meal was amazing, as well. Even if you’re getting the most clichéd dish – arguably the Carbonara – it’ll genuinly blow a new part in your hair.

Beyond that, Rome is a tirelessly remarkable city, from the warmth of its people to the breathtaking art and architecture around virtually corner to the fascinating wellspring of its rich, magnificent history. Similarly, the Umbrian countryside is absolutely stunning, as are its myriad towns like Orvietto, Assisi, Spoletto, Spelo and Todi, each with their own, individual aspects to recommend them. The whole trip was amazing.

It wasn’t all delicious gelato, though. As I mentioned just prior to leaving, to my continuing astonishment, I have been walking around on broken bones in my left foot for some indeterminate amount of time, and the increasing discomfort brought on by same was already reaching a new level before I’d even departed. Rome and Umbria, meanwhile, are basically all uneven ground. I basically spent ten days subjecting my dumb, lame foot to uneven stone stairs, cobblestone streets, maddening inclines or combinations of all three (see picture above). That aspect was honestly torture, but what was I gonna do? Not walk around? Fuck that! I just did my best to bite the bullet, keep my complaining (relatively) at bay and get through it, which I did.

Upon my arrival home, I checked back in with cheeky Dr. Quip (not his real name, as immortalized here). I relayed my ambulatory exploits, and he rewarded me with a “prouder” (i.e. more pronounced) pad to be tucked into my left sneaker whilst I await the arrival of the my “short air cam walker fracture boot” which I’ll presumably be sporting later this very week. I’m sure I’ll have a litany of anecdotal grievances to relay from a few days of lurching around in that shit, so look forward to that.

Beyond the heartbreaking news about Jesse Malin, I was saddened to learn of the deaths of local hero Philipe Marcade of the Senders (who I’ve discussed here before), guitarist John Waddington of The Pop Group (and so soon after the demise of his bandmate Mark Stewart) and Teresa Taylor of the Butthole Surfers, who finally passed away from her illness this past weekend.

Back at you soon. 

The Exacerbation Vacation

Hey there, all. Sorry for the slowdown in regular posting, but between the revelation of my foot injury (as floridly recounted in the last post), the usual flurry of activity at the start of the summer, some unexpected developments at my office (a colleague just gave his notice, which means I’m inheriting his workload … hopefully temporarily) and the ongoing image-hosting problem here on this blog, I just haven’t had a moment.

This all said, I’m afraid you’re going to have to probably wait even longer, as my family and I are just about to depart for a ten-day vacation. Honestly, the timing isn’t ideal – between my foot injury and mounting responsibilities at work – but plans were made months ago, etc. etc.

A good friend of ours rented a villa in Italy and had originally planned to host her entire family. As it happened, she couldn’t bring that plan to fruition, for whatever reason, so she reached out to my wife to extend an offer for us (me, the wife, the kids) to come stay for a spell. It sounded (and may very well be) too good to be true, but we’re taking her up on it. Watch this space. 

We’re stopping in Rome for a bit first, which will invariably not do my ailing foot any good, but … Hell, I’ve been walking around with broken bones in it for at least a year – what’s another week or two?

The day after we get back, I’m going back to my podiatrist to get (hopefully) fitted for …. the boot.

But first, Italy … which explains the image of Mario with a foot injury above. Thanks, Internet!

Everybody play nice while I'm gone. I'll be back. 

 

"If It Was Broken, You'd Be Screaming!"

…so sang the inimitable noise rock duo, Happy Flowers on their 1987 album, My Skin Covers My Body, which also featured timeless chestnuts like “I Wet the Bed Again,” “Jenny Tried to Kiss Me at Recess” and, of course, “Why Didn’t You Tell Me You Were Bringing Home a Baby!” While the `Flowers wrote blackly comedic songs from the perspective of a vexed, psychotic four-year-old, there was indeed an element of foundational truth to “If It Was Broken, You’d Be Screaming.” An expression widely shared in the wake of sudden injury, it's essentially conventional wisdom. When you break a bone, it’s usually pretty obvious.

Alas, as it turns out, and in doubtlessly many-if-not-most instances, you shouldn’t really rely on the medical counsel of the Happy Flowers.

But let’s back up, a little….

Well over a goddamn year ago, if not more, I started feeling an odd sensation in my left foot (with apologies to Daniel Day Lewis). Initially it felt, while walking around on it, like my sock was bunching up around the toe, and the “ball” of my foot was being uncomfortably compressed, in some way. Closer scrutiny routinely revealed this not to be the case, but my foot continued to feel different. With each step, it didn’t fall and land the way it previously did. It didn’t hurt — but it didn’t feel right. An expensive chiropractor I was consulting, at the time, indeed agreed that the foot appeared to be “rolling” a little. That guy ended up prescribing a pair of very expensive and roundly uncomfortable orthotic insoles that I maybe wore for a few weeks before abandoning.

But the weird foot problem continued.

I then consulted my primary care physician, who upon examining the exterior of my foot, said he couldn’t detect any readily discernible problems. It was also around this time that I was experiencing, as recounted in this brow-furrowing episode, this weirdly recurring blood-rushing-in-my-feet sensation. I speculated to my doctor that I might have gout, given my heroic intake of beer and such. He basically laughed that off, underscoring that — much like “if it was broken, you’d be screaming” - if I was experiencing gout, I’d fucking know it (gout is reportedly mega-fucking painful). “Alex,” he sighed, "you think you might have gout because, let’s face it, you think you deserve gout.” He has my number.

I never got a concrete explanation as to why that blood-rushing thing was happening, and it eventually went away. But not the ball-of-the-foot problem. That continued.

I then went to see an allegedly proper podiatrist recommended by my primary care physician. For the sake of this fraught narrative, this podiatrist will henceforth be referred to as Dr. Quip. I went in to see Dr. Quip who, as his alias might suggest, was quick with the wisecracks. I started explaining to him my problem with my left foot, and he basically interrupted my typically epic-poem-like saga, blithely informing me that what I was experiencing was “in all likelihood” a condition called “second toe capsulitis,” which, if I understand it correctly, is basically inflammation of the soft tissue in the ball of the foot. That certainly sounded plausible, and I was heartened by his immediate recognition of the problem.

In terms of next steps (pardon the pun), he said that a confirmation of that diagnosis would probably require both x-rays and an MRI, but being that it was probably capsulitis, I should just go ahead and order this other pair of orthotics (“you can get’em easily from ol’ Jeff Bezos" … hilarity) and, along with regular stretching, it’ll most likely clear the problem right up. I hit up Amazon and got a pair the very next day.

I dutifully inserted these new insoles -- considerably more affordable that my chiropractor’s ones -- into my sneakers and started basically wearing them exclusively while also regularly stretching my left foot. Unlike the previous insoles, I acclimated quickly to the new ones. The theory was that it should take about five or six weeks to alleviate the issue.

Despite my really wanting this treatment to clear up the problem — it just didn’t. Six weeks after first wearing them, my left foot was still inexplicably stiff, sore and frequently numb. But, at the same time, life was suddenly very busy again, with family issues, work demands and other stupid shit vying for my time and attention. As a result, I didn’t get the opportunity to get back in touch with Dr. Quip until a few months later.

I told him that the insoles weren’t really getting me where I needed to be, and that I was still experiencing this regular discomfort (that was actually getting incrementally worse). Again, he repeated that an MRI would really be the deciding factor, but I couldn’t do that until I’d had x-rays, so … x-rays were next on the docket.

Despite the predictable pushback dance from my frankly shitty insurance company, I managed to get coverage for x-rays and hobbled over to NYU Langone to get those radioactive pictures snapped. Those, in turn, were sent to Dr. Quip, who leisurely got back to me a few days later saying that they basically told him nothing new, and that the MRI was, again, the ticket.

As before, my insurers were pronouncedly reluctant to cover this cost, and issued disarmingly swift notices to this effect, cruelly asserting that, after supposedly reviewing the specifics, they didn’t see any tangible necessity for an MRI. In a rare moment of professional tenacity, Dr. Quip made a more compelling case to them and secured authorization, and we were off to the races.

After breathlessly showing up at the specified radiologist’s office for an after-work appointment on the other side of town, however, it was gleaned that giggly Dr. Quip somehow forgot to send them the prescription order, bouncing the appointment to the next day. Oh joy.

I eventually did get that MRI — and hoo-boy, I don’t know when the last time you had an MRI was, but that shit is LOUD — and those results were also then sent to Dr. Quip. After two or three days of my peppering his inbox with questions via the Patient Portal (or, in my case, the Impatient Portal), he wrote back the following…

“hey, it appears you have an avn, which means one bone in the bottom of the foot most likely was broken at some point and stopped healing/doesn’t have enough blood supply.”

Johns Hopkins has a slightly more grave-sounding take, as is their wont,…

"Avascular necrosis is a disease that results from the temporary or permanent loss of blood supply to the bone. When blood supply is cut off, the bone tissue dies and the bone collapses. If avascular necrosis happens near a joint, the joint surface may collapse.”

So, all that capsulitis stuff? That was basically a big fuckin’ snipe hunt.

I walk a lot. I walk forty-five minutes to my office every morning, and forty-five minutes home from my office every evening. On the weekends, I walk all over the goddamn map. I don’t run. I don’t go to the gym, and I only really ride my bike during the summer. My biggest physical outlet is walking, and I’ve apparently been walking around with broken bones in my left foot that are slowly eroding for, again, well over a year or more. While I’m completely capable of heroically injuring myself in any number of stupid instances (this one springs to mind), I have absolutely zero recollection of ever doing anything to, with or on my left foot that could have possibly resulted in the breaking of a bone therein. Once again, I figured that, if it was broken, ….I’d be screaming, but nothing like that ever happened.

Limping forward, the next step is a new kind of pad beneath the problem area in the short-term (and I’m about to depart on an invariably walk-heavy vacation, in a couple of weeks), followed by — in the long-term — probably a “cam boot” or “walking boot” for god knows how long.

Rant over.

Just remember …. just because you’re not screaming doesn’t mean it ain’t broken.

At War with The Fitness Freaks: The Battle for Bond Street

Regular readers — again, if they exist — might remember a short series of entries I posted here back in 2016 wherein I attempted to divine the exact location of a short lived basement-level live-music venue called Downtown circa 1989. I remembered it as a place on Bond Street in NoHo that my beloved Killing Joke had been slated to play (going so far as having their name cited on a notice board outside its entrance). The venture actually closed before that show could take place. Other folks remembered it as place they’d seen local bands like White Zombie, the Lunachicks and the Cycle Sluts from Hell along with bigger names like Celtic Frost, Clan of Xymox, Cronos from Venom and Gang Green.

Honestly, I don’t think I ever found out much more about the place beyond pinpointing its location as the spot I’d remembered from that aborted Killing Joke gig. It was mere steps to the east of Broadway at Bond Street. here I am in front of it circa 2016.

It seems in the years since its tenure as Downtown — however fleeting that was — the space at 1 Bond Street has undergone a series of transformations, its days hosting loud rock n’ roll now but a romantic, sepia-toned notion for silver-scalped rock dads like myself. These days, it caters to a very different demographic.

As lamented here, in recent years, pretty much the entirety of the surrounding so-called “NoHo” neighborhood has become a de-facto “fitness corridor,” peppered with places like boxing-gym Rumble, David Barton, Soul Cycle, Equinox, Barry’s Boot Camp and a wide host of other workout-centric endeavors. I don’t necessarily decry the concept of physical fitness, I just don’t quite understand the necessity of such a high-volume concentration of said businesses in one single neighborhood.

True to this trend, the space at 1 Bond Street that had, once upon a time, been the rock club Downtown is now an adjunct space of a venture called Crossfit Union Square (who are technically located at the ominous location of 666 Broadway). From that lower-staircase, the clientele of same now regularly meet by the corner of Bond and Broadway, … and wait for their signal.

And when they get that signal — maybe it’s a starter’s pistol or a pertly chirped whistle or a gruff bark from a drill sergeant with a meaty neck — they run. And they run with a gravely humorless sense of determination around the circumference of the block.

The sprint sweatily and shirtlessly with rippling musculature towards Lafayette Street, at which point they turn like harried stags in flight of a hunter’s shotgun to the south and bound with breathy bravado down that stately avenue to the corner of Bleecker Street, where they turn west to lope like charging stallions back towards Broadway. Upon reaching that main artery, they course-correct like hoary steeds of glory to race north with steely focus. At Bond Street, they turn with great, dewy aplomb and complete their lap, glowing with an almost viscous radiance.

All to which I say, … “HEY, WE HAVE PARKS FOR THAT!”

I’m not sure if my handful of readers are at all familiar with the streets in question, but suffice it to say that the byways of Bond, Lafayette, Bleecker and Broadway can be handily described as “busy." Around that single block, highly trafficked businesses like Blick Art Materials, Bond No. 9, Showfields Department Store, Los Tacos No. 1, LeVain Bakery, Aape New York, Le Pain Quoditen, Wendy’s and a City MD (to name a few) all steadily operate. As such, the surrounding sidewalks are regularly teeming with foot traffic. In front of Los Tacos and LeVain alone, aspiring patrons literally line-up in anticipation of their turns. Navigating these stretches of crowded pavement even at a casual stroll can be demanding, lest you collide with an impatient muffin-consumer or taco enthusiast. Now, inject into this equation regular herds of fast-moving, self-absorbed, endorphin-addled fitness freaks and you have a roiling, organic obstacle course ready to detonate at any second.

Once again, I’m not saying anyone should necessarily refrain from working out or seeking to actualize their idealized visions of their healthiest, sexiest selves, but there’s a time and place for that shit, and the already pointedly crowded byways of lower Manhattan assuredly ain’t it.

Take it to the parks, people.

The Update

There’s nothing more self-indulgent and presumptuous than a blogger that continually apologizes for lapses in posting regular content, but here I go again.

As I’ve been routinely lamenting in myriad posts over the past couple of months, I’ve had a lot on the burner, so to speak, and my preferred schedule of regularly updating this stupid blog has taken a bit of a hit as a result. Adding insult to injury, I’ve also blithely dropped a couple of vague hints about certain aspects of my silly life that prompted a few people to be genuinely concerned. I assure you, that concern is sincerely appreciated but ultimately unnecessary, as it turns out.

I should preface this laborious saga by saying I’ve probably never been a model patient. For more years than is advisable, I took a “don’t fix what ain’t broke” approach to my health. I entirely neglected to visit my personal doctor, not even for regular check-ups. I felt fine, so why bother, right? A couple of years back, however, I was experiencing an issue so minor that I don’t even recall what it was, but figured it warranted a proper doctor’s explanation, so I tried to make an appointment with my primary care physician, … only to find out that he’d passed away about two or three years earlier. Oops.

From there, I started going to see this new doctor recommended to me by my wife’s obstetrician. Dr. K is about my age and has a nice, relaxed manner. For whatever reason, I find it immensely rewarding to make him laugh, as that seems to diffuse any anxiety I might be experiencing when needing to consult his services. I figure, if he’s laughing, nothing can be so dire, right?

In any case, after signing up with Dr. K, I resumed my regular routine of basically ignoring whatever health problems I might have been experiencing until absolutely necessary. I carried on with that until my advancing age and its accompanying rigors started meddling with my unsustainable idyll.

Prior to the pandemic, as recounted in these action-packed posts, the only real concerns Dr. K had were getting me to cut back on the beer and ensuring that I get around to getting a long-put-off colonoscopy. I was finally ready to undertake that latter task until COVID-19 came and turned our collective lives into a b-grade disaster movie with no ending.

Last year, I finally did take care of that particular issue, only to be breezily informed by my disarmingly dispassionate gastroenterologist that I needed to have another one only a year later. That’ll happen this coming June. But, that’s not what this post is about (you're welcome).

As ominously invoked in this comparable post of a few weeks back, over the course of the last several months, I’ve been struck by a couple of mysterious, recurring symptoms that revealed themselves in manners both inexplicable and worrying. Now, as a gent in his mid-50’s, while it is perfectly reasonable to expect an incremental degree of physical atrophy in multiple departments, I had these two strange conditions sprout up perfectly out of the blue, and both gave me a considerable amount of alarm.

The first problem was … the vision thing (with strenuous apologies to the Sisters of Mercy). It was a phenomenon I’d experienced sporadically throughout my life, but more recently, it had suddenly started happening quite often. Essentially, the experience unfolds as follows. My field of vision becomes suddenly obstructed by what seems like just another small “floater,” only this floater pulses and grows. Gradually, the floater impedes my ability to see clearly as it expands. It distorts my ability to focus, read or even pinpoint depth as it gradually — over the course of about 30 minutes — takes over the entire vista of my sight. And then, … it just stops.

That sound pretty scary, right? Well, lemme tell you, … it is.

As such, after a succession of these instances — usually one a day over a set of three or four days — I got my wife’s trusted eye doctor on the phone and made an appointment with all haste. A day or so later, I was in his office doing my best to describe what I just tried to explain above. The whole thing sounded so idiotic coming out of my mouth that I was relatively certain he was going to shrug and tell me to get over it. “Yes, I know exactly what that is,” came his surprising response, “but the problem isn’t an ocular one … it’s a neurological one.”

Oh…. great!

In swift order, he explained that these strange phenomena I was experiencing were called “visual auras,” which basically means electric waves that course across the visual cortex of my nonsense-addled brain. Evidently, they are most closely tethered to migraine headaches. Mysteriously, I wasn’t having any headaches — migraines or otherwise — just the auras, which were worrying enough. He basically told me that if they persist, I should go take it up with a neurologist. Oh joy.

I went back to Dr. K, my primary care physician, and gave him the whole schpiel. He said that, in light of the fact that I’d experienced them periodically throughout my life, it probably wasn’t anything to worry about, but to keep him informed if they persisted. He also told me to cut back on the beer, but then — he suggests that for every grievance I bring his way. That weary suggestion is usually met with an emphatic “why don’t you go fuck yourself?” We have a great rapport.

I didn’t get away that easily, though. After checking my vitals, he deduced that it was apparently high time to put me on blood pressure meds. A tiny white pill every morning. Imagine my glee.

A couple of months after that, however, I had to check into my local urgent care facility to have them poke around in my ear, as it was feeling prohibitively clogged up with viscous, waxy goo. Again, you’re welcome. They ended up giving me some frankly ineffective drops for it, but not before unsolicitedly checking my blood pressure, and coming up with a number they deemed “too high.” I relayed this fun bit of intel back to Dr. K, who wasted no time in adding another little pill to my morning blood pressure regimen. A little blue one, this time.

Concurrent to the addition of the little blue pill to my life came a completely new and foreign sensation. They started off in periodic bursts that swiftly increased in frequency. I started feeling the blood rushing in my feet pretty much all the time. Not tingling or numbness, mind you, which is a different thing entirely, but the naggingly regular feeling of blood coursing through the veins in my feet. It didn’t hurt, but it was new, noticeable, different and woke me up at night. I asked myself, “what is this and why is this happening?”

Using my shoddy powers of deduction, I leapt to the seemingly obvious (to me) conclusion that this new issue had be the result of that new little blue pill, right? I mean, these sensations started in tandem with my daily ingestion of the drug. It must have been a side-effect, I figured.

As it happened, this was all going on during a super busy and not-just-a-little stressful period at my office, wherein my attrition-battered department was responsible for jump-starting a series of important initiatives that had been dormant since the start of the pandemic. I honestly cannot recall a chapter wherein we were all so completely besieged and flying on fumes to get these projects done. The result of this was that I didn’t get around to getting back in touch with good ol’ Dr. K for about three or four weeks. So, basically, along with stressing my scalp silver over work demands, I was worrying myself sleepless about my mystery ailment for essentially a whole month before acting on it.

I shot an email to Dr. K saying that I’d assumed I was having odd side-effects from the little blue pill and described the blood-rushing-in-feet stuff and asked if it was cool that I went off it. He was reticent to concede that this new condition could possibly be the result of the pill, and preferred that I stick with it, as my blood pressure numbers were now at an all-time healthy low. Eventually, he said I could try it for week, but to also knock off the beer. “Up yours,” I responded, and started skipping the blue pill.

The week went by, but the blood-rushing persisted. Then, the visual auras came back in force — three in a row over the span of three days. I relayed this to Dr. K, who demanded I go back on the blue pill and to knock off all beer intake entirely, believing that the symptoms I was experiencing might be the amalgam of stress and alcohol fighting with the blood-pressure meds. Dutifully, I complied.

I went cold turkey on the beer, started investigating yoga and acupuncture options (hey, why not, right?) and did my best to settle my nerves (never an easy task, that). The visual auras stopped, but the blood-rushing-in-feet continued. At this stage, Dr. K said it was time to consult both a neurologist and a vascular specialist. I was not super enthused about the prospects, but figured actionable solutions would be better than trying to wish these things away.

Evidently, springtime in New York City is neurological grievance season, so finding an available appointment with one of the docs Dr. K had referred me to was like scoring box seats to friggin’ opening day at Yankee Stadium. The soonest I could schedule one was for some time in July, by which point the very problem I’m consulting them about may have gone away (here’s hoping).

I was, however, able to score an appointment with the vascular guy, a young gent who — after I was put through the paces of a veinous ultrasound probe — cheerily told me I had “the veins of a teenager.” While that certainly sounded promising, that didn’t explain the problem. He assured me that there was nothing …er….vascularly wrong with me. No clogging or blockages to be detected. He mentioned that maybe I should consult a podiatrist and/or I should invest in some deeply unfashionable compression socks. He had all faith that those would clear up the problem. I have yet to take the bait on that one, haunted by images of my late step-father’s peer group, walking around the beach out on Long Island in knee-high compression socks.

So, with that particular issue at least a little more illuminated, if not fully explained, the only items left to address on Dr. K’s to-do list remain the neurologist appointment about the visual auras, and, of course, my follow-up colonoscopy. The jury is still out on whether the visual auras are the result of undue stress, beer battling with the blood pressure meds, a combination of factors or something else entirely, but he said I could go back to having a couple of beers a week, which I, of course, have taken up with robust enthusiasm.

In any case, for the moment, at least, I’m not dying. I’m just aging.

Walk, Fat Bastard, Walk: A Playlist for July

In an ultimately futile attempt to be less of a fat bastard, I’m taking approx. three-mile walks around Quogue every morning, and exhuming a lot of music in the process. Based on the whole albums I’ve been listening to thus far, here is a de facto playlist for this month.

Enjoy.

1.“Juanita/Kiteless” by Underworld, from Everything, Everything.
2. “Boot Camp” by Soundgarden, from Down on The Upside
3. “Poor Boy” by Nick Drake, from Way to Blue: An Introduction to Nick Drake
4. “Your Silent Face” by New Order, from Power, Corruption & Lies
5. “The Hammer” by Motorhead, from No Sleep `til Hammersmith
6. “Damaged Goods” by IDLES, from The Problem of Leisure: A Celebration of Andy Gill & Gang of Four
7. “The Boy with the Perpetual Nervousness” by The Feelies, from Crazy Rhythms
8. “Summerhead” by Cocteau Twins, from Four-Calendar Cafe
9. “Wear Your Love Like Heaven” by Donovan, from Greatest Hits
10. “Hate Your Friends” by The Lemonheads, from Hate Your Friends