Titration and Me

14 Thursday Jul 2016

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Six months ago I entered a sleep study. I thought I was sleeping well, getting my eight or nine hours a night of solid sleep, usually interrupted by a brief trip down the hall once a night. Jan encouraged the decision, asserting that she was tired of finding me taking time-outs from breathing. There was also the occasional early morning when I would awaken with severe chest pain and a pulse sub-30 bpm. The first night of the study was miserable—noisy, hard mattress, wires attached to nearly every part of my body, but the technician was glad to let me know that I had slept the required three hours, I did indeed have sleep apnea (which I have known for years), and I would need to return someday to have a titration study.

Titration is a laboratory method of quantitative chemical analysis that is used to determine the unknown concentration of an identified analyte. I expected that the only time this would become important in my life would be the study of concentrations of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere. It turned out that the study of oxygen saturation in my blood had become the issue, since 70% was probably not enough.

I didn’t hear anything back from anyone for two months, so I judged that I was in the clear, but Jan thought I should check with someone about the titration study schedule. Unfortunately I had just been overlooked, and they wanted me to have the study after all, so it was scheduled for two months later. Then a cancellation occurred, and they wanted me to come in and fill it six weeks early. When I reported for the study, the cancellation had been a mistake, the other person had shown up, and I was sent home again, but not for long. A few nights later they were ready for me again.

On the night of the titration study, in the same hard bed and with the same wiring attached, I tried out three different facial devices, attached to a “Continuous Positive Airway Pressure” pump to provide breathing assistance during sleep. If the hospital space was noisy or not, it did not matter, because the facial devices, from the “nose pillows” to the “nasal mask” to the “nose and mouth mask” made enough noise and leaked enough to keep me from sleeping and make the results ambiguous. Nonetheless, the physician in charge wrote a prescription for a Bi-PAP machine (with a two stage pressure setting) and the last mask that I tried, and soon I had one to use for a three month trial. The mask did not fit well, so after three weeks, I exchanged it for another. Although it fit better, the machine and mask still made getting to sleep difficult, and they still woke me a dozen or more times every night for the next three weeks.

At that point, only my wife’s faith and the encouragement of three people who had successfully adapted to the use of the devices kept me from dropping the whole project. I had to admit there were already two benefits—Jan was sleeping better, and I had not experienced chest pain or extra-slow heart rate for the last three weeks.

Three months after the original titration study, I am doing better. The supervising physician is happy that I have met the required “four plus” hours of BiPap use every night. At the time of my appointment, they had not seen the results of the continuous wi-fi monitoring system, because the medical equipment people had not bothered to connect me to my physician’s office (and the office had not requested it). A few hours later they adjusted the pressure on my machine upwards, so, presumably, my “titration” has finally occurred. At least the rough indicators of better oxygen saturation –fewer episodes of breathing interruptions—were not yet where they wanted them to be, at twenty per hour instead of five, so they have increased the pressure setting. There is yet hope. Having “qualified” for further attention, since I am “compliant,” I have another chance to get a better-fitting mask and possibly even more adjustments that increase the oxygen saturation in my blood. I am sleeping better, almost as well as when I started. Thank you to my medical insurers for their investment of fourteen thousand dollars, and counting.

This is not a problem. It is a learning experience. I am smiling. Maybe you will, too, if you ever have a sleep study.

Gender and Job-Seeking

23 Thursday Jun 2016

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Chicago skyline 1970

In 1970, while Jan, my wife, was serving as an interviewer for the Illinois State Employment Service in Woodlawn on Chicago’s south side, a couple of transvestite job-seekers came into her office. They were obviously enjoying the day, with make-up applied and dressed more extravagantly than anyone in the office. Jan prepared their forms, leaving the male or female box for the next referral counselor to fill in. She regretted that the next available counselor was Mr. Z, who tended to be abrupt and careless, instead of Mr. P, who saw the best in everyone. It wasn’t long before the two clients emerged from Mr. Z’s office, acting as though they had never been so insulted in their whole lives. Jan and I again had something new to think about at supper that evening.

When did we cease to play the game of dress-up, playing with the discarded dresses, purses, and high heels that my grandmother provided to her 30 plus grandchildren? Probably around the age of five or six; after that it became either a cause of ridicule or a rare source of fun, although one of my cousins made a career out of it, serving in the costuming and entertainment industry. Why did people make such an issue of the clothes that people wore or the gender roles that they identified with?

Some of our high school, college, and seminary friends had wrestled with sexual identity issues personally, finding little acceptance when they “came out” to others, but they remained our friends, and we found them just as faithful, and socially and morally appropriate as we were.

We studied sexual identity issues in bible classes in seminary, finding that a close reading of scripture gave no support for the kinds of discrimination and cultural exclusion that had dominated our society. The very words that were sometimes translated “homosexual” did not refer to the same behaviors that they did in our contemporary society, and the censure of transgender behaviors was, at best, part of a rigid culture long gone.

In 1982 we happened upon the movie Victor, Victoria, while we were taking a rare three-day trip without the children. A charming commentary upon gender identity, sexual orientation, culture, and poverty, the movie represented issues that were always present but often suppressed. Birdcage came in 1996, and Connie and Carla in 2004; otherwise our transvestite cultural contacts have tended to be rare. Along with other media, these movies made their points effectively with good humor.

In 1983 I was a delegate at the United Church of Christ 14th General Synod, meeting at Ames, Iowa. I gladly voted in favor of the “’Resolution Calling on United Church of Christ Congregations to Declare Themselves Open and Affirming.’ This resolution encouraged a policy on nondiscrimination in employment, volunteer service and membership policies with regard to sexual orientation; encouraged the congregations of the United Church of Christ to adopt a nondiscrimination policy and a Covenant of Openness and Affirmation of persons of lesbian, gay and bisexual orientation within the community of faith.” It felt like a small step in the right direction.

In 2003, I was a synod delegate assigned to the study committee on transgender issues at the Minneapolis Synod. Along with a group of dozens of UCC members who represented different forms of transgender identity, we elected belatedly to add “transgender” to the list of people for whom “open and affirming” should apply. The joy expressed in that room when the vote was almost unanimous contrasted with the stories of risk and rejection that many had shared.

Again in 2005, I was a delegate voting in favor when the “Equal Marriage Rights for All” resolution passed the 25th General Synod of the UCC in Atlanta, Georgia. We knew that a statement by seven hundred was just a little step, when so many people in our country had expressed outrage against it.

In my life these have been small and relatively easy matters, but they are still a part of some substantial and significant changes for people’s acceptance of themselves and others.

Voting for a Compromise Nominee

07 Saturday May 2016

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Chicago skyline 1970

For the first election in which I was eligible to vote, 1968, I began the year as a supporter of Democratic Senator Eugene McCarthy, the anti-Vietnam War candidate for President. Only a handful of political leaders took on the challenge to oppose the war. The opinion polls indicated that a majority of U.S. citizens still supported the war even though the reasons for it changed with the calendar. Some military analysts stated that the U.S. would have to prosecute the war for another thirty years before any resolution could be expected. Already we had used more armaments than we had during the entire Second World War, and the prospects of suffering in Southeast Asia and loss of life for everyone involved would surpass that war if the analysts were correct.

When Bobby Kennedy joined the campaign, I did not immediately move to support him, even though I knew that he had a better chance of mounting a successful campaign than McCarthy. His willingness to join the war opposition seemed late and calculated, depending on the courage of McCarthy and others to clear the way. Nonetheless I knew that I would vote for Kennedy when the time came. Sirhan Sirhan removed that possibility in the wake of the successful Kennedy campaign in California.

Next came the Chicago convention and the disastrous clashes between demonstrators and police that alienated people on all sides. The convention nominated a stalwart and hard-working liberal, Hubert Humphrey, who in ordinary times would have seemed an outstanding selection to win the office. Humphrey had been supportive in his role as President Lyndon Johnson’s Vice President, but as a candidate he tried to conciliate between those who supported and those who opposed the war, without specifying changes in the conduct of it. Republican candidate Richard Nixon promised that he had a plan for ending the war, but he was no more specific in describing his plan than Humphrey. Perhaps, given Nixon’s history, people could have foreseen that his plan for ending the war involved a major escalation in waging it, doubling the deaths and destruction, but a majority of voters chose Nixon and his secret plan.

Having my own views of the histories of Nixon and Humphrey, I opted reluctantly to support Humphrey. In this first election I also decided to work for him, canvassing the precinct including our apartment in Hyde Park on Chicago’s south side. I volunteered at precinct headquarters and was assigned to a Mr. White, a distinguished Jewish gentleman. While we worked together in his precinct, he invited me into his home, my wife and me to join him and his wife for a meal, and to worship with them at their Reform synagogue.

Mr. White had endured through many decades of Chicago politics and somehow remained idealistic. His work for Senator Paul Douglas and Alderman Leon Despres had given him sufficient hope to keep at it. Somehow he had managed to negotiate the tortuous route between the Chicago Democratic “machine,” the needs of people in his precinct, and his sense of the larger world beyond the city. He and his wife were the only bright spots in what proved to be a disappointing election.

The Garage at 708 1/2 North Sherman

22 Friday Apr 2016

Posted by in Church, Faith, Gullibility, House, Learning from mistakes, People, Volunteering

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I had sought a year-long pastoral internship in the middle of my seminary education, and in part to restore a relationship with the Methodist Church that had disappeared since I had been studying at a non-Methodist seminary. My prospective supervisor had flown to Chicago to interview me, and in that process he had offered two housing options for my little family of soon-to-be three. One option was a small house two doors from the church which was now occupied by a young family who would have to be given notice to vacate. The second option was a one bedroom cottage with a small kitchen a few blocks away from the church. The cottage was already vacant. Since we were already living in a furnished efficiency apartment and would return to similar circumstances after the internship, the latter option made the most sense to me, not making someone else move for our benefit. (This was forty years before the advent of the tiny house movement, although nomadic furniture was in style.)

When the owner, Don Freeman, showed me the “cottage,” I thought I had made a big mistake. It was a two-car garage that had been converted into an apartment many years before, situated on an alley with no yard of its own. Covered with gray faux-brick asphalt roll shingles, an oil tank was the other conspicuous feature on the outside. Entering the small living room, I smelled the oil heater that occupied a corner of the room. The kitchenette sat to the left with the only closet (or pantry) next to it, and the bedroom and a small bathroom occupied the second stall of the original garage. It was about the same size as our Chicago apartment, with just enough room for a crib and baby’s dressing table next to a double bed. In such a small confined space it could be a difficult year for Jan and our baby. I asked Don to provide a full closet in the bedroom and to make arrangements as soon as possible to replace the oil heater with a fully vented gas wall furnace. Don had already paneled and recarpeted the interior, but he took my suggestions in stride. Since he was donating the space for a year, and he had a wife and five young children living in the four-square house at the front half of the lot, he had already committed about as much as anyone could expect. I had to make plans for air-conditioning—a small window unit would work—and the needed furniture.

Living in trust that God would provide had been our mode for several years. How else could we explain getting married with no money in the bank, moving to Chicago, starting graduate studies with no jobs lined up, Jan taking a job in the heart of the south-side slums, and then having our first child? This would surely be a test of that resolve and our marriage.

What I had not taken into account was the character of the family we inherited with the cottage. As full of trials and challenges as any family, the Freemans—Don and Sonja and their children, Donnie, Kathy, Carol, David, and Alice—accommodated and taught us as much or more, living in close proximity and grace, as the internship would teach me. Their laundry, workshop, and lives opened to us, and their experiences, Don as a trusted banker and active layman, Sonja as an extraordinarily loving mother and talented church secretary, the children with their enthusiasms and growing pains, became a part of our extended family experience of love and self-giving.

We probably would have not have chosen to live in that house if we had seen it before making our decision. That would have been the mistake. We were blessed.

Playing with Dynamite

13 Wednesday Apr 2016

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Monkeys see, hear, speak no evil, Bangra.com

Marty (not-his-real name) was one of my parishioners many years ago—memorable nonetheless. His life would have been a case study in oppositional defiance if anyone had chosen to examine it. His parents and siblings were “good church members”—steady, reliable, active in volunteering and supporting as well as anyone else, but Marty was a no-show in the church and in the community as long as I was acquainted with him.

His father was a World War II veteran and his brother had served in the army, but Marty first showed up looking for me when he learned that I had been a draft counselor, and Marty wanted to avoid the draft at all costs, not on any principled grounds, as this was during the Vietnam war, but just because he didn’t want to serve his country under any circumstances. His timing was right and he managed to slip between the cracks when the draft lottery was instituted.

Next came his girlfriend, seeking help in dealing with his bad moods and abuse, which, predictably when co-dependence is strong, escalated steadily. He lived with his under-age girlfriend in her mother’s home, which I naively assumed should make it easy for her and her mother to kick him out. No child was involved. Neither she nor her mother could carry out a resolution to make Marty behave or leave. It appeared that her mother was as emotionally tied to Marty as his girlfriend was. We talked about all of their options, legally and behaviorally and in seeking help, but they did not change anything. Marty continued to abuse them within their own house.

Marty had trouble keeping a job, mostly because he could not take orders or follow directions. He always knew better than anyone else how any job should be done, or he simply did not want to do the job in anyone’s time other than his own. In his favor, Marty was intelligent and curious enough to figure out many things, and well-meaning employers saw his potential, especially when they knew the rest of his family and attempted with their enabling persuasion to give Marty another chance. Marty went from job to job at a time when many young adults were having trouble finding a first job.

Marty’s record included any misdemeanor you can name—tickets for speeding, parking, noise, shoplifting, drunkenness, disorderly conduct. Someone was always bailing him out in one way or another, although I could not persuade people that this was not helping Marty accept responsibility. I tried to find him, to talk with him about the direction of his life, but he was more adept at avoiding me than I was in catching him. For a while I lost track of him and the newspaper carried no more news of his infractions. I had hope that he might be growing up. He and his girlfriend had a son. She had stopped calling me to ask for advice. Things might be working out, I thought. Certainly I knew that there were many people praying that they would.

The end came in an unusual way. Marty had worked for a man who cleared trees and prepared land for development, and he knew where the dynamite was stored. Marty broke into the building and stole some dynamite and decided to have some fun with it, blowing things up. He was successful. One of the first things he blew up was himself.

I officiated at Marty’s funeral. I said in passing that there were many ways that Marty played with dynamite. My words were not appreciated.

The Descent Into Hell

05 Tuesday Apr 2016

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Shannondale Community Center

When we can’t turn around and go back, when we have no choice but to go forward into a place where we do not want to be, when we find ourselves in that place and do not want to be there….

One stretch of the Current River has always been problematic for me and for those with me, either because of the weather that day in storm or miserable heat or some other unexpected development. Below Round Spring to Jerktail Landing is that stretch. Few signs of civilization are evident, and that in itself isn’t a problem as long as the trip is going well. The most redeeming feature of the ten miles is the Courthouse Cave with its beautiful large flow stone near the entrance, but that is only a short paddle below Round Spring. Long relatively straight vistas of the river follow with series of shoals that prove that you are in fact descending steeply into an area where the mountains seem to grow taller by the minute and deeper into wilderness. Beyond Jerktail is an equally long stretch to Two Rivers Landing.

My partner on one trip was Tom, a big, good-natured youth with a gentle heart. We had started out the day at the tail of ten canoes, but by the time we reached this stretch we were in the lead of many tired canoers, trying to set a pace that would get us to Jerktail Landing before dark. He had worn flip-flops, against my advice, and had lost one of them when we were collecting the gear from one of the overturned canoes of people in another group along the way, so his tender feet were suffering every time we had to find our way through the shoals and his weight meant that we had to step out of the canoe frequently onto the rocky river bottom.

We had set our take-out for Jerktail Landing, although this was the first time for the new Shannondale Director Jeff Fulk to go to Jerktail. The ten mile bus ride (towing the canoe trailer behind) down the narrow , winding, rutted gravel ridge road down to Jerktail Landing was no fun for him and his two young sons with him. After paddling all day we were all-in when we arrived at the large peninsula rockbar that was Jerktail, and the canoe behind us was just within sight. Our ten canoes were probably stretched out along the river about half a mile. Jerktail itself is more barren and desert-like and larger than any other rockbar on the river, and we had to paddle several hundred yards around the rockbar to reach the Landing. Right away when we reached the Landing, Tom and I were relieved to see the Shannondale bus, but we noticed that no one was standing around it. In fact the Landing appeared to be deserted until we saw some people at a distance standing and pointing toward the river shore.

Then we saw what they were pointing at—the largest diamondback rattlesnake I have ever seen , basking in the sun at the edge of the river in the middle of the landing area. It looked to me like it was big enough to be a python but it was unmistakably a diamondback rattlesnake, something I never expected to see nor hope ever to see again in the Ozarks. We did not approach the Landing but found a calm spot near the opposite bank to wait for the other canoes, wondering what we would do if the rattlesnake did not move.

We waited for a while until the snake decided to move, and it gradually made its way along the shore until well clear of the landing area before Tom and I and all of the rest of the canoes ventured to make our way toward the landing, and before Jeff and his sons left the security of the bus. It had only been a few minutes but, as time goes, it had seemed like hours.

Some years later Jeff told me that he had never made arrangements with another group for taking out canoes at Jerktail Landing. Nor did I ask for it.

 

 

Courage Comes in Varied Guise

22 Tuesday Mar 2016

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After Rod became a participant in Zion Church, he also showed strong support for Zion’s youth fellowship and frequently lended his adult help to the youth causes and events. This included sharing his vacation time in the renewed service and recreation trips to Shannondale. Knowing that Rod was new to canoeing and not comfortable in water, we tried to persuade him of the safety and enjoyment potential of the activity, assuming his careful attention to a few basic canoeing instructions. These included wearing his flotation device, learning how to read the waterway in front of the canoe, practicing some basic paddle strokes, and, of course, leaning toward an obstacle downstream when the paddlers inevitably lose control of the canoe and the current pushes them against it. His nervousness was obvious as the time approached for canoeing. Others novices were likely just as nervous, but unwilling to show it. We paired new canoeists with more experienced ones, and hoped that they would have time to learn “the ropes” before they ran into any challenge that the Current River might offer.

I chose Cedar Grove as the place to put into the river. From Cedar Grove the flow was moderate and there would be few places where portaging would be necessary due to shallow water. The river was relatively narrow there. My impression was that snags, rootwads, boulders, and other obstacles were rare in that part of the river, so Rod and other nervous beginners should have time to gain some skills before they faced more challenges downstream. We did everything but promise that they would have no problems. Even if they overturned their canoes, the river would be shallow enough in most places for them to stand up in the river and set the canoe right again, and we would be there to help. Rod accepted our encouragement and suppressed his fears.

The day for canoeing came, and the morning was cool and a little foggy, but the sun promised to burn the fog away quickly and open us to a clearer late morning and afternoon. We got an early start, and the Shannondale bus left us on the Cedar Grove beach. There was no turning back. We distributed the gear, lined up on the shore in the order that we would depart, reviewed a few basics, praised God for the beauty surrounding us and the opportunities ahead of us, and sent off one canoe at a time. Rod’s canoe was not first but among the early ones. I was probably in the last canoe, to be in a position to help the stragglers and less successful ones. The river turned to the right immediately after the put-in, so no one left on the shore could see what the canoes ahead of us were facing after the turn. Trees and brush obscured the way forward.

Right after the turn there was a snag difficult to avoid, even by an experienced canoeist, and, as it happened, the snag collected debris over a hole that was deeper than any of us was tall. Rod’s initiation into canoeing came during the first hundred yards as his canoe overturned into a pile of debris. Most of the canoes managed to avoid the obstacle, but Rod’s and another canoe overturned and they needed our help to collect themselves and their gear and get started again. Rod did not accuse us of malicious intent, but he well could have. It was evidence of his good nature that he did not complain (at least aloud), he did not give up (with nowhere to go but downstream), and he did keep going (although I could sense his relief with every break we took).

Rod continued to accompany us on trips, and he even succeeded in canoeing the next year and the year after that. Along the way in years to come, he decided to devote himself to other useful business while the rest of us canoed. He had taken his life in his hands enough times without finding a way to “enjoy” it.

The Ethan Allen Roast

11 Friday Mar 2016

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Shannondale Community Center

While we walked through the Rock House shortly after we moved in, Shannondale Director Jeff Fulk had noted in passing that the old overstuffed rocking chair with the springs sticking out of the seat had seen better days. No one could sit in it comfortably without one of the springs poking him in the wrong places. I thought he was probably right.

It happened a couple of days later, after we had been out working in the rain most of the day. When the time came for the campfire that evening, and the temperature was warm and inviting, we looked around for dry kindling, but most of the wood on the forest floor was well-soaked from the day’s downpour. The evening was too nice to waste after a nasty day, so we gathered around the campfire pit anyway. Jim Wilson was ready to tell some tales. The rest of us couldn’t compete, but we could add a few tidbits to keep him going. But what is a campfire circle without a campfire?

The old chair came to mind. Inside. Dry. Just a few yards away. I had a hatchet. I asked for a couple of volunteers to come with me. Soon we were lugging the old chair outside into the campfire area.

Some of the members of our party registered some reservations. Nonchalantly I noted that we had enough money to replace the chair. I chopped off a few pieces and got a fire going, enough to dry out some damp wood and keep it going. Then for whatever reason—I don’t remember—I left the scene. When I returned someone (or ones) had toppled the remainder of the chair onto the fire and the resulting blaze was reaching as tall as the bottoms of the pine tree overhead. Fortunately for us, the tree was still wet from the day. Fearing the worst I called for help to bring some buckets of water from the house, and we successfully dampened the blaze down to a manageable size before the tree above us caught fire.

 

The Gift of Carrot Cake

09 Wednesday Mar 2016

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Shannondale Community Center

We were at Shannondale Community Center for a summer week of service and recreation in the Current River NSRP. Jim Wilson was our guide with his many years of experience in construction as we repaired and applied vinyl siding to a house that had seen many additions with sidings in various degrees of disrepair. The elderly widow who resided there was very grateful for our crew of adults and youths who were helping her achieve a long-held dream.

The lady of the house helped in various ways. She gave us access to her inside toilet (which was not always available in the project houses we tackled). She provided water and iced tea for our refreshment. She pointed out the nest of copperheads in the patch of weeds at the east side of the house, and warned us that baby copperheads were as dangerous as adult ones, so we were very careful when we removed them to work there (They were very cute.). On the second day, when we were eating the sack lunches we had prepared as usual at breakfast in the Shannondale kitchen, she came out of the house with a beautiful carrot cake in a sheet cake pan—enough for all sixteen of us, though some of our group declined the gift. Several of us felt the obligation to have a piece of the cake, whether we liked carrot cake or not, because she had gone to the trouble of preparing it for us in gratitude for the work we were giving to her. I thought the cake was delicious. Danielle ate the cake but not the frosting. We finished the siding project soon after lunch and went on to other things.

That evening one of our group began to feel unwell and turned in early, skipping the campfire at the end of the day. I heard her vomiting as I went to bed. Not long after that someone else was headed to a noisy stomach-emptying in the common bathroom where we stayed. An hour later another one succumbed. The bathroom was becoming very busy, and no one had the luxury of being able to wait. Fortunately, the group shower house and toilet facility was not far away, and part of the group stayed at the community center building with its two bathrooms. About 2 A.M. yours truly of the iron stomach began to take my turn. It was a long miserable night, but as we compared notes, we came to the unavoidable conclusion that it was not an intestinal virus. Everyone who had eaten the cake with the cream cheese frosting had gotten ill. Everyone who had turned down the cake, and Danielle who had eaten the cake but not the frosting, had remained well. No one got a lot of sleep that night.

The morning dawned beautifully, and some of our group enjoyed breakfast. I had some toast and a little coke. We had promised to tackle another task, which was to help an area resident move her household furnishings into storage until another place became available. Enough of us were in good shape to do the job, and most of the rest of us tagged along, getting stronger as the hours passed.

As miserable as the night was, I would not have changed it. From that point on “carrot cake” became our humorous code phrase for anything that was a well-intentioned but questionable gift. Sometimes we learned to say “thanks” but “no thanks,” but it is always a challenge to be gracious when refusing a gift.