Today's date is February 3rd, 2018, sort of an anniversary for me. You see, on this date, 46 years ago, I darn near died. I was in a hospital in far northern Maine having had my gall bladder removed the previous day. My doctor had called it cholecystectomy and had further labeled it as discretionary meaning, I guess, that it was my choice. I "volunteered" because the attacks had been getting more and more frequent and a few weeks earlier, had scared the bejesus (my father's word) out of my parents and a girl friend.
The lady and I had driven from Aroostook County, ME down to Sullivan County NH for a brief visit. That Saturday evening, all four of us drove over to Hartland, VT for a roast turkey dinner (all you can eat with all the trimmings and home made pies for dessert) at a Congregational Church. After we returned, we got out a board game and were well into the intricacies of some sort of Canasta when I had an attack. I tried to muscle through it, but as those who've suffered from gall stones can attest, there is no ignoring those little clumps of what I've been told is primarily cholesterol. I tried laying on the couch, but the only way I could allay the discomfort was to curl up in sort of a fetal position with my head buried in a pillow and my butt sticking straight up. I realized the effect my discomfort was having on my parents and girlfriend, so I excused myself and went up to bed.
In the morning as we prepared to leave, I received a goodly portion of parental advice, all of it trying to convince me that I needed to see a doctor. That evening, the lady and I stopped for the night at a Holiday Inn on the north side of Bangor. In those days, most Holiday Inns featured a dining room and that is where we ate dinner, probably something equally as rich as the turkey dinner had been the previous evening. Sure enough, a short time after we'd turned out the light, another attack struck, that one seeming even more severe. It scared the wits out of her and she told me so, adding that I really needed to see a doctor.
Back at work, everything seemed normal until one day, when shortly after lunch (yup, there's a pattern here) a strong attack set me to hugging a file cabinet. My boss, realizing something was wrong, grabbed me by the arm, got our hats and jackets and took me out to his car. Ten minutes later I was at the emergency room in a wheel chair bypassing several folks with apparent lesser maladies because, as my doctor later described it, I was writhing in pain. As an aside, I'd always pronounced that word "reethe" until I heard him say "rythe."
He gave me a shot of something and soon the discomfort was gone. We had a brief discussion about my eating habits in which he told me a particular restaurant was off limits to me, and then set up some tests. Over the next couple of weeks, I ran through a whole battery of tests. X-rays showed no abnormality, even with a bucket of some awful tasting liquid I had to drink. CT Scans and MRIs were in the future, so some guessing took place. He eventually ruled out ulcers of any sort and one day, sat me down for that chat. He recommended surgery to remove my gall bladder, that he was about 80 percent certain that gall stones were my problem. I was ready, but did have a question that caused him to grin. I asked if there would be a noticeable dent with the gall bladder gone. He answered that the other objects in there would just take up the space and nothing other than a thin scar would show. Little did he know. At some point in our conversation I told him that, in college, I hadn't done well in Accounting 101, so I wondered how well he'd done in Cholecystectomy 101. He laughed and told me he'd graduated at the top of his class.
He scheduled surgery for February 2. The afternoon of February 1st, I drove myself to the hospital and was admitted. At some point, a nurse came into my room with a pan of warm water, a bottle of soap, and a cheap plastic razor and gave me explicit instructions on how and where to shave myself./ Now, the reader needs to understands something. I was a Staff Sergeant in the US Air Force, living in an NCO barracks (OK, OK, dormitory - it was a barracks to me) in which bath with path meant I shared a communal shower with about ten other NCOs. There was no way I was going to shave away much of that hair down there, believe me.
Later in the evening a pleasant-looking Lieutenant in a white nurse's uniform came into my room and asked how I was feeling. When I told her I was curious, she asked what that meant. I told her I'd never seen an operating room other than in movies, so I was curious about it. She laughed and then I noticed a string hanging out of her pocket. I recognized it as that on a pouch of Bull Durham tobacco and asked if she rolled her own. When she acknowledged that she did, I told her with those skills, she'd be mighty popular in some circles. She knew what I meant.
Early in the morning I was rolled down the corridor to the operating room. The anesthesiologist let me stay awake long enough to see the operating room, then I was out. I awoke sometime later that day with a dry mouth and a headache. The doctor came in with a little bottle and shook about 6 small, round grayish objects into the palm of his hand, saying they were the cause of my discomfort, and that the operation had gone well.
I darn near died the next morning. I woke with several people poking and prodding, one shoving a tube down my throat, another shoving one into my nose, and somewhere along the line one of them gave me something that turned out the lights. The next time I woke, that nurse with the Bull Durham pouch was sitting next to me with a rather concerned look on her face. I tried to say something, but that tube prevented it. She talked to me, telling me I'd given them a scare, but not explaining any further.
Later that morning, my doctor came in and sat down. He explained that something inside my twenty-nine year old body had gone awry and that he needed to go back inside to repair whatever had malfunctioned. In a hoarse voice that I didn't recognize, I told him to go ahead., What else could I say? I was hooked up to some sort of machinery via two tubes that traveled into my innards, there was a clear plastic bag on a shepherd's hook that dripped some sort of liquid into a tube that was connected to the back of my hand, and I felt absolutely miserable, despite the drugs that kept me in a state of grogginess.
The second operation went off as well as could be expected. The doctor told me something had ruptured and they'd found a grapefruit size clump of something that they took out. I'm sure he told me in more specific terms, but while I had a fair technical education, I had limited understanding of body parts and functions. Because they'd gone back into my belly through the same hole, they apparently could not just sew me up again, so twice a day, nurses would remove the large bandage, pull a crumpled ribbon out of the incision, squeeze a bottle of something to wash it out, then stuff more of that same kind of ribbon back in that hole and apply a new bandage, all the while telling me how well I was healing.
For the ensuing two weeks I was allowed no food and nothing to drink, not even an ice cube to suck on. Then came the first step of my liberation. I was given a small bowl of consommé and a cube of jello. As excited as I was to finally get something to eat, they tasted positively horrible. Each meal would be the same and I'd eat part of it, leaving more than I ate, not because I wasn't hungry, but because they tasted so bad. My doctor, apparently worried, asked me if I was a drinker. I told him I was and he left the room. In a few minutes, he was back with a ceramic coffee cup filled with orange juice spiked with some variety of an adult beverage. To this day, I don't know what it was, but it tasted as bad as the consommé. I think the doctor may have been insulted because he mumbled that he knew it wasn't the greatest whiskey, but it wasn't that bad. He suggested that I have someone bring me a bottle of my usual beverage, but to sneak it in.
That evening, my boss and his wife, SMSgt Jim and Ann Dabler, stopped in for a visit. I told them what the doctor had said and asked them to bring me a bottle of Canadian Club. The very next day, Ann showed up carrying a larger purse than normal, and left me a bottle. Honest to Pete, it tasted as bad as the doctor's private stash had tasted. Apparently, not eating for an extended period and the physical damage my body had endured, had given me a case of jaundice, and it had affected my taste sensations.
The rest of the month of February had me more or less staying in bed. I had a private room with a window, but I had to get up to see anything but the sky. Getting up entailed disconnecting those tubes, putting that bag on a traveling shepherd's hook, and having that cute nurse with the Bull Durham sack hold my gown together as she lead me down the corridor for my daily exercise. For a guy who'd been reasonably active in summer softball and winter skiing, it was disconcerting to need help just to walk few steps.
The next step in my recovery was learning how to change my own dressing. They had shown me how, then had me practice after my corridor travel. I'm not particularly squeamish, but I found if I tried to do it while standing, my knees trembled so badly I'd fear losing my balance and falling, so I learned to do it laying in bed. By then, they had pulled out the tubes that connected me to machines and begun bringing more substantial meals, but while that awfulness had abated, nothing tasted really good.
Finally the doctor came in and told me he wanted me to leave the hospital on the coming Saturday and stay out until Sunday afternoon. He told me he wanted me to go to the club and have a few drinks. "Don't get drunk," he said, "but have enough to loosen you up a little."
Saturday afternoon found me, weak as a day-old kitten, brushing three weeks accumulation of snow off my little MG roadster, climbing in, and zooming off towards my barracks on Caswell AFS. After getting a short nap in my room, I showered, changed the dressing, still laying down to do it, then put on some fresh clothing. Surprised, I found that I'd lost so much weight in the hospital that nothing fit well, but it was still winter and I'd have a coat on, so it wouldn't be noticed.
Down to the club I went. On USAF radar sites, the population was so low that everyone on base knew everyone on base, so I was treated like a long lost cousin coming home, albeit it one with traces of yellow from the jaundice. I ordered my usual, Canadian Club and water, but when it came, I found it tasted so bad I couldn't drink it. I ordered a beer, but it tasted even worse. I started getting a little depressed when somebody suggested a Collins. Eureka! The combination of nearly flavorless vodka with the sweet and sour mix topped with club soda turned out to be palatable to my violated sense of taste.
Saturday nights in radar site clubs was less than exciting. The usual snarly MSgt sat at the end of the bar passing judgement on everyone else. A few younger guys played card in the back and a few couples from the housing area drank themselves silly watching TV where a white guy played an Asian guy in a show named Kung Fu. I realized my evening at a club required a different type of clientele. A hotel bar in the town of Fort Fairfield would be just the ticket, so back to my little MG and off down the road I went.
A few hours later, tired of the old civilian at the end of the bar passing judgement on everyone in the place, the barely out-of-their-teens single girls dancing with each other and barflies watching Archie Bunker berate Edith on TV, and being somewhat buzzed from several vodka collins, I decided to go home. In the couple of hours since I'd gone in the hotel, it had snowed and several inches of the stuff covered my car, so once again in the same day, I brushed it off and hopped in. In Maine, when it snows, the plow trucks are dispatched early on, so the roadway was clear for the most part. The paved road way is all that gets plowed, though, and the shoulders of the road aren't plowed until the storm is over and the plowtrucks are sent out with wing plows attached.
Less than a mile from home, the right front wheel of my little car caught that three or four inch layer and pulled the car off the road, skidding so that the grill was embedded in the seven-foot snowbank and the rear tires were on the edge of the road. when I stopped the kidding, I put the gearbox in reverse and let out the clutch. The rear tires just spun. No matter what I did, the rear tires just spun freely. I knew that the next house down the road belonged to a state trooper, so I was really anxious to get out of there. I certainly didn't have the strength to walk a mile in falling snow and staying with the car sticking out in the road didn't seem particularly wise. I got out and perused the situation.
Aha! The solution came to me in a flash. I got back in the car, put it in reverse and let the clutch out. Then, with the tires spinning, I got out of the car and leaned up against the rear fender facing out, and started pushing with my butt. Slowly, my little car slid sideways and the spinning tires caught on the rough shoulder service beneath the fluffy snow, and the car stalled. I climbed back in, fired up the engine, and continued on my merry way.
The next day, I checked myself back into the hospital. The nurses checked on me and then in the morning, the doctor came in. He asked how it had gone on Saturday night. I told him most of what happened, omitting the part about getting my car stuck. The following Tuesday afternoon, I was discharged from the hospital with instructions to take two weeks of convalescent leave at my parents' home in New Hampshire. The date was February 29th. I had spent the entire month of February, except for that one Saturday night, in the hospital.
The story could end here, but I'm not ready to quit writing.
I got reservations out of Presque Isle on their daily puddle jumper to Boston's Logan International and a connection on to Lebanon Regional Airport. then called my folks to ask them to meet me. The flight to Boston was uneventful, even though it was snowing lightly when we landed. My bag had been checked all the way to Lebanon, so I hurried to the gate for my connecting flight only to find that flight was delayed. I called my folks and told them I'd let them know when we would be taking off. A short time later, they announced that my flight had been cancelled due to snow in Lebanon.
I went to the desk and confirmed that I had a seat on the morning flight, then asked them to retrieve my bag. It took a while, but finally I was paged and then told they couldn't find my bag. I asked about filing a claim and was told that, because the bag was checked to Lebanon, I'd have to file it there. I explained that my bag contained medical paraphernalia that was important, but that didn't help. I called one of the hotels near the airport and got a room. Once in there, I called my parents again, telling them what my new arrival time would be.
Dad was there to meet me, but when the luggage cart was brought around, my bag wasn't on it. Once the departing passengers had cleared the little lobby, I went up to the desk and told them I needed to make a claim for lost luggage. The fellow watched as I filled out the form, then stopped me and went behind the wall. He came back with my bag and told me it had come on a late flight the night before. I held my temper as I tersely explained that I'd spent a lot of money on a hotel and meals because I couldn't fly, but my bag had flown. He just shrugged his shoulders.
OK, now it can end. Oh, wait, there's a bit more to my yarn.
Sometime during my two-week stay, Mom asked if I wanted to go into town with her while she ran some errand. Along the highway, she stopped in as appliance store (for Lebanonites, it was the Hotpoint place on 120), and I stayed in the car. While I sat there, I heard the roar of loud exhausts coming down the flat and looked around as a bright red Ferrari GT250 came over a little rise at well over the posted speed limit. Mom came back to the car as it roared out of sight. Less impressed than I, she said something to the effect that he knew better than to drive that way. It was a man from our little village that was driving and everyone knew him as a nice guy with a heavy foot and enough money to indulge in expensive cars.
Later in town, we were in a bank when the driver of that Ferarri came in. We knew each other slightly, and after my mother scolded him mildly for driving like that, he asked if I wanted to ride home with him. You betcha, so the end of my yarn comes with me riding eight miles over a winter-rough winding New Hampshire highway in a car of my dreams.
Back in Maine, a Lieutenant in my office asked me if I'd like to come to his place for dinner. Of course I would, While the Air Force is noted for having fine chow halls, it isn't home cooking, and I knew his wife, a North Dakota native, could really whip a good meal together. After we ate, we went into their living room and she, a nurse at the Loring AFB hospital where I'd spent the month of February, began telling me how sick I'd really been. She said that she wasn't really supposed to, but she figured I need to know.
Her exact words were, "You damn near died until someone noticed and raised an alarm."
Oh, one more thing. Earlier in my yarn, I mentioned that the doctor had told me all I'd have to show after the operation would be a thin scar. Little did he know when he said that, but because the second operation made it necessary for the wound to heal from the inside out, I have a long, wide scar that is easily an inch deep at its center.
The observant reader will recall, if he or she managed to stay with me all the way to the end, that I began writing this on the February 3rd, 2018 despite the date that appears on top. I'm a slow writer and an even slower typist. On the 3rd, I'd gone into the living room where the State Peach of the Peach State was watching television. As I watched wildlife through the window, there was an ad on the TV for the upcoming Winter Olympics in Pyeonchank, South Korea. Something clicked in some long dormant brain cells and I remembered that I'd been in the hospital in Maine through the entire 1972 Sapporo Winter Olympics. In my visits to family and friends in the local Athens hospitals, I've seen that there are TV sets in every room. Not so the Air Force hospital on Loring AFB in 1972. There wasn't even a radio.
Early in the morning I was rolled down the corridor to the operating room. The anesthesiologist let me stay awake long enough to see the operating room, then I was out. I awoke sometime later that day with a dry mouth and a headache. The doctor came in with a little bottle and shook about 6 small, round grayish objects into the palm of his hand, saying they were the cause of my discomfort, and that the operation had gone well.
I darn near died the next morning. I woke with several people poking and prodding, one shoving a tube down my throat, another shoving one into my nose, and somewhere along the line one of them gave me something that turned out the lights. The next time I woke, that nurse with the Bull Durham pouch was sitting next to me with a rather concerned look on her face. I tried to say something, but that tube prevented it. She talked to me, telling me I'd given them a scare, but not explaining any further.
Later that morning, my doctor came in and sat down. He explained that something inside my twenty-nine year old body had gone awry and that he needed to go back inside to repair whatever had malfunctioned. In a hoarse voice that I didn't recognize, I told him to go ahead., What else could I say? I was hooked up to some sort of machinery via two tubes that traveled into my innards, there was a clear plastic bag on a shepherd's hook that dripped some sort of liquid into a tube that was connected to the back of my hand, and I felt absolutely miserable, despite the drugs that kept me in a state of grogginess.
The second operation went off as well as could be expected. The doctor told me something had ruptured and they'd found a grapefruit size clump of something that they took out. I'm sure he told me in more specific terms, but while I had a fair technical education, I had limited understanding of body parts and functions. Because they'd gone back into my belly through the same hole, they apparently could not just sew me up again, so twice a day, nurses would remove the large bandage, pull a crumpled ribbon out of the incision, squeeze a bottle of something to wash it out, then stuff more of that same kind of ribbon back in that hole and apply a new bandage, all the while telling me how well I was healing.
For the ensuing two weeks I was allowed no food and nothing to drink, not even an ice cube to suck on. Then came the first step of my liberation. I was given a small bowl of consommé and a cube of jello. As excited as I was to finally get something to eat, they tasted positively horrible. Each meal would be the same and I'd eat part of it, leaving more than I ate, not because I wasn't hungry, but because they tasted so bad. My doctor, apparently worried, asked me if I was a drinker. I told him I was and he left the room. In a few minutes, he was back with a ceramic coffee cup filled with orange juice spiked with some variety of an adult beverage. To this day, I don't know what it was, but it tasted as bad as the consommé. I think the doctor may have been insulted because he mumbled that he knew it wasn't the greatest whiskey, but it wasn't that bad. He suggested that I have someone bring me a bottle of my usual beverage, but to sneak it in.
That evening, my boss and his wife, SMSgt Jim and Ann Dabler, stopped in for a visit. I told them what the doctor had said and asked them to bring me a bottle of Canadian Club. The very next day, Ann showed up carrying a larger purse than normal, and left me a bottle. Honest to Pete, it tasted as bad as the doctor's private stash had tasted. Apparently, not eating for an extended period and the physical damage my body had endured, had given me a case of jaundice, and it had affected my taste sensations.
The rest of the month of February had me more or less staying in bed. I had a private room with a window, but I had to get up to see anything but the sky. Getting up entailed disconnecting those tubes, putting that bag on a traveling shepherd's hook, and having that cute nurse with the Bull Durham sack hold my gown together as she lead me down the corridor for my daily exercise. For a guy who'd been reasonably active in summer softball and winter skiing, it was disconcerting to need help just to walk few steps.
The next step in my recovery was learning how to change my own dressing. They had shown me how, then had me practice after my corridor travel. I'm not particularly squeamish, but I found if I tried to do it while standing, my knees trembled so badly I'd fear losing my balance and falling, so I learned to do it laying in bed. By then, they had pulled out the tubes that connected me to machines and begun bringing more substantial meals, but while that awfulness had abated, nothing tasted really good.
Finally the doctor came in and told me he wanted me to leave the hospital on the coming Saturday and stay out until Sunday afternoon. He told me he wanted me to go to the club and have a few drinks. "Don't get drunk," he said, "but have enough to loosen you up a little."
Saturday afternoon found me, weak as a day-old kitten, brushing three weeks accumulation of snow off my little MG roadster, climbing in, and zooming off towards my barracks on Caswell AFS. After getting a short nap in my room, I showered, changed the dressing, still laying down to do it, then put on some fresh clothing. Surprised, I found that I'd lost so much weight in the hospital that nothing fit well, but it was still winter and I'd have a coat on, so it wouldn't be noticed.
Down to the club I went. On USAF radar sites, the population was so low that everyone on base knew everyone on base, so I was treated like a long lost cousin coming home, albeit it one with traces of yellow from the jaundice. I ordered my usual, Canadian Club and water, but when it came, I found it tasted so bad I couldn't drink it. I ordered a beer, but it tasted even worse. I started getting a little depressed when somebody suggested a Collins. Eureka! The combination of nearly flavorless vodka with the sweet and sour mix topped with club soda turned out to be palatable to my violated sense of taste.
Saturday nights in radar site clubs was less than exciting. The usual snarly MSgt sat at the end of the bar passing judgement on everyone else. A few younger guys played card in the back and a few couples from the housing area drank themselves silly watching TV where a white guy played an Asian guy in a show named Kung Fu. I realized my evening at a club required a different type of clientele. A hotel bar in the town of Fort Fairfield would be just the ticket, so back to my little MG and off down the road I went.
A few hours later, tired of the old civilian at the end of the bar passing judgement on everyone in the place, the barely out-of-their-teens single girls dancing with each other and barflies watching Archie Bunker berate Edith on TV, and being somewhat buzzed from several vodka collins, I decided to go home. In the couple of hours since I'd gone in the hotel, it had snowed and several inches of the stuff covered my car, so once again in the same day, I brushed it off and hopped in. In Maine, when it snows, the plow trucks are dispatched early on, so the roadway was clear for the most part. The paved road way is all that gets plowed, though, and the shoulders of the road aren't plowed until the storm is over and the plowtrucks are sent out with wing plows attached.
Less than a mile from home, the right front wheel of my little car caught that three or four inch layer and pulled the car off the road, skidding so that the grill was embedded in the seven-foot snowbank and the rear tires were on the edge of the road. when I stopped the kidding, I put the gearbox in reverse and let out the clutch. The rear tires just spun. No matter what I did, the rear tires just spun freely. I knew that the next house down the road belonged to a state trooper, so I was really anxious to get out of there. I certainly didn't have the strength to walk a mile in falling snow and staying with the car sticking out in the road didn't seem particularly wise. I got out and perused the situation.
Aha! The solution came to me in a flash. I got back in the car, put it in reverse and let the clutch out. Then, with the tires spinning, I got out of the car and leaned up against the rear fender facing out, and started pushing with my butt. Slowly, my little car slid sideways and the spinning tires caught on the rough shoulder service beneath the fluffy snow, and the car stalled. I climbed back in, fired up the engine, and continued on my merry way.
The next day, I checked myself back into the hospital. The nurses checked on me and then in the morning, the doctor came in. He asked how it had gone on Saturday night. I told him most of what happened, omitting the part about getting my car stuck. The following Tuesday afternoon, I was discharged from the hospital with instructions to take two weeks of convalescent leave at my parents' home in New Hampshire. The date was February 29th. I had spent the entire month of February, except for that one Saturday night, in the hospital.
The story could end here, but I'm not ready to quit writing.
I got reservations out of Presque Isle on their daily puddle jumper to Boston's Logan International and a connection on to Lebanon Regional Airport. then called my folks to ask them to meet me. The flight to Boston was uneventful, even though it was snowing lightly when we landed. My bag had been checked all the way to Lebanon, so I hurried to the gate for my connecting flight only to find that flight was delayed. I called my folks and told them I'd let them know when we would be taking off. A short time later, they announced that my flight had been cancelled due to snow in Lebanon.
I went to the desk and confirmed that I had a seat on the morning flight, then asked them to retrieve my bag. It took a while, but finally I was paged and then told they couldn't find my bag. I asked about filing a claim and was told that, because the bag was checked to Lebanon, I'd have to file it there. I explained that my bag contained medical paraphernalia that was important, but that didn't help. I called one of the hotels near the airport and got a room. Once in there, I called my parents again, telling them what my new arrival time would be.
Dad was there to meet me, but when the luggage cart was brought around, my bag wasn't on it. Once the departing passengers had cleared the little lobby, I went up to the desk and told them I needed to make a claim for lost luggage. The fellow watched as I filled out the form, then stopped me and went behind the wall. He came back with my bag and told me it had come on a late flight the night before. I held my temper as I tersely explained that I'd spent a lot of money on a hotel and meals because I couldn't fly, but my bag had flown. He just shrugged his shoulders.
OK, now it can end. Oh, wait, there's a bit more to my yarn.
Sometime during my two-week stay, Mom asked if I wanted to go into town with her while she ran some errand. Along the highway, she stopped in as appliance store (for Lebanonites, it was the Hotpoint place on 120), and I stayed in the car. While I sat there, I heard the roar of loud exhausts coming down the flat and looked around as a bright red Ferrari GT250 came over a little rise at well over the posted speed limit. Mom came back to the car as it roared out of sight. Less impressed than I, she said something to the effect that he knew better than to drive that way. It was a man from our little village that was driving and everyone knew him as a nice guy with a heavy foot and enough money to indulge in expensive cars.
Later in town, we were in a bank when the driver of that Ferarri came in. We knew each other slightly, and after my mother scolded him mildly for driving like that, he asked if I wanted to ride home with him. You betcha, so the end of my yarn comes with me riding eight miles over a winter-rough winding New Hampshire highway in a car of my dreams.
Back in Maine, a Lieutenant in my office asked me if I'd like to come to his place for dinner. Of course I would, While the Air Force is noted for having fine chow halls, it isn't home cooking, and I knew his wife, a North Dakota native, could really whip a good meal together. After we ate, we went into their living room and she, a nurse at the Loring AFB hospital where I'd spent the month of February, began telling me how sick I'd really been. She said that she wasn't really supposed to, but she figured I need to know.
Her exact words were, "You damn near died until someone noticed and raised an alarm."
Oh, one more thing. Earlier in my yarn, I mentioned that the doctor had told me all I'd have to show after the operation would be a thin scar. Little did he know when he said that, but because the second operation made it necessary for the wound to heal from the inside out, I have a long, wide scar that is easily an inch deep at its center.
The observant reader will recall, if he or she managed to stay with me all the way to the end, that I began writing this on the February 3rd, 2018 despite the date that appears on top. I'm a slow writer and an even slower typist. On the 3rd, I'd gone into the living room where the State Peach of the Peach State was watching television. As I watched wildlife through the window, there was an ad on the TV for the upcoming Winter Olympics in Pyeonchank, South Korea. Something clicked in some long dormant brain cells and I remembered that I'd been in the hospital in Maine through the entire 1972 Sapporo Winter Olympics. In my visits to family and friends in the local Athens hospitals, I've seen that there are TV sets in every room. Not so the Air Force hospital on Loring AFB in 1972. There wasn't even a radio.
