Pacemaker

Another Modern Day Medical Dilemma

You know, it has become very popular in the United States to implant an electronic device in the torso of people--mostly rich, elderly people--which regulates their heartbeat. Sometimes this device is called a "pacemaker". Does that sound familiar?

One of my elderly friends had one installed in his body and was completely satisfied.

The battery of the device had a ten-year guarantee and before the guarantee expired he planned to have the doctors replace his battery with a new one.

"Hell," he told me once, "my heart could go on beating forever".

Which made me think: what if his body wears out and he wants to die? Does the pacemaker keep right on keeping his heart beating? And if his heart is beating--can the doctors ever pronounce him dead? And if he has real good insurance, and if the doctors are not too scrupulous (as many MDs seem to be these days), could they keep him/it going for years? Hmmm?

The dream of eternal life realized in a kind of bizarre way!

Oddly enough, after his wife died, my "elderly friend" quoted above solved all these hypothetical problems by blowing his brains out with a pistol so I guess his pacemakered-heart ran out of blood to pump so the paramedics that were called must have pronounced his bloodless body dead.

Isn't modern medicine wonderful?

Tomasito, 2008

...

Calvin Clayton in memoriam

Goodbye, Uncle Cal--No More Cold Feet.

Uncle Cal R.I.P.

“Love itself shall linger on.”

Mom had another story about Uncle Cal's death:

After his futile operation, while Uncle Cal was in the hospital waiting to die, Mom and Dad drove down to San Diego and rented a motel room near the hospital so they could visit him every day.

Uncle Cal got weaker and weaker and then slipped into a coma.

His body looked dead and did not respond in any way to his family or to Mom and Dad, but the monitor the hospital had rigged up over his bed showed that his heart was still beating.

For three days Uncle Cal lay in this coma while my Mother, Dad and other relatives took turns holding his hand and praying for, if not his recovery, than at least for a merciful death.

On the morning of the fourth day, my mother told me she asked one of the doctors if there was any hope that Uncle Cal would recover.

"Not really, lady,' said the young doctor, "Actually he's been dead for a couple of days now, but we just haven't turned off the machines."

A little later the doctors turned off their machines and pronounced Uncle Cal defunct.

"It wasn't fair." Mom said, "We didn't know when to start grieving! And maybe poor Cal's body didn't even know it was dead!"

Cal's insurance company was paying about $20,000 per day for his hospitalization in the Intensive Care Unit, and I assume some people were in no real hurry to pronounce him officially dead.

Tomasito, 2008

...

Kez com

Skipping Stones

After I posted the hunting with a repeating shotgun blog, I received the following E-note from Bro Joe's son, Kez, who is grown, married and has a little girl about the same age as I was in the Colorado Alligators story.

See how things go---like ripples in a pond down the years and down the years.

Tomasito, 2008

Tom,

It has been a real pleasure reading your "blog" and getting a picture of things that Dad always told us about.

I happen to have that 12 gauge "repeater" from Grandpa sitting in a bag in my closet. It breaks down into two pieces and fits neatly into a fold over canvas bag. It is in need of some blueing and probably a good cleaning, but I know that 10 years ago it still shot birds.

I've got the 12 gauge from Grandpa Wold and a breakdown 4-10 from Grandpa Johnson, I don't hunt at all anymore, but I treasure them both.

paz,
Kez

My reply:

Hi Kez:
>
> Thanks for the note.
>
> Makes me feel good that you have the shotguns but don't
> hunt anymore. They were an important tool in the old
> days--but times have sure changed! They make good relics and
> museum pieces though--like old suits of armor,
>
> The Imhotep Construction Company blog is going to continue
> with some family stories that you will enjoy, I think.
>
> Thanks again for the encouraging letter!
>
> All well here,
>
> Love, T&T

And from Kez...

And when you catch a fish you can generally put it back a little wiser, not so much a bird full of pellets.

Kez

...

Pop's Question

Pop’s Question

For some months in my life while I was pilgrimming, I was living very free.

I didn’t pay much attention to commerce or any money transactions.

Whatever I had or whatever I earned was OK.

I didn’t question what would happen if I ran out of dough or if I would starve of if I would never get rich or anything like that.

For a while I even had the policy of giving whatever I had as far as money was concerned away every night so I could start every morning fresh and empty—you could say, “broke”—though I didn’t think of it that way at all. For me it was just kind of an experiment in living.

One afternoon during “Children's Hour” when I was explaining this to my father (we boys called him “Pop”) he asked me why I had lived that way.

“Well, a long time ago you told us kids we shouldn’t be overly concerned with money.” I said.

“Yeah.” He replied, “But I never thought you’d believe me!”

Tomasito, 2008

...

Cold Feet

Cold Feet

Dad dearly loved my mother's brother Calvin: "Uncle Cal".

Uncle Cal moved his family from New Mexico to California in the early nineteen-forties-- several years before my family moved there. Cal's choice was to live near the sea in the then small village of San Diego.

We often visited these relatives on holidays and, after we children were grown and gone, Mom and Dad still enjoyed visiting them. As I have said, Cal and Dad were the best of friends.

When Cal was old he had heart-bypass surgery. He only lived a few days in pain after the operation and then died--but Dad had visited Cal in the hospital before his death.

Dad said Cal had gone to the doctor in the first place because he was bothered by cold feet.

The doctor had convinced him that cold feet was a sign of poor blood circulation which could be improved by a nice, expensive bypass operation. (Unfortunately, Uncle Cal had good medical insurance, which would pay for the doctor's work.)

Dad said Cal had told him before he died that he should have bought a warm pair of socks instead.

Tomasito, 2008

...

The Single-action Shotgun

The Single-action Shotgun

There's another story Dad used to tell which I would like to share with you.

Shortly after Dad married Mom, she gave him a pump-action twelve-gauge shotgun as a birthday present. This was a beautiful, expensive (for her) and practical gift because Dad loved to hunt ducks on the slough ponds near Albuquerque. This shotgun would fire about eight times from it's magazine without re-loading--- you just pumped the gun's lever to eject the spent shell and it would automatically re-load itself and be ready to fire again--- you didn't need to take your eye off the moving target--- the flying duck.

In these long-ago days, thousands of ducks would be flying their migration path south in the autumn and north in the spring and Dad's hunting would provide tasty meals for the young couple and their friends. (The city grew, the ponds were drained and the ducks have vanished.)

Dad would hunt with his friend Danny Jucket (isn't that a lovely name?) and a Mexican I know only as "The Mexican".

Dad and Danny had repeating shotguns. The Mexican had only a single-action shotgun. This meant that The Mexican's gun had to be manually re-loaded after every shot.

Dad said The Mexican would place a shotgun shell between every finger of both hands and when the ducks came into range he would shoot, break the gun open which ejected the empty shell, slip in another shell, close the gun, aim and shoot again with lightning-like speed.

"He could shoot almost as fast as we could with our repeaters and got about as many ducks too!"

This incredible skill pleased Dad so well that he was still remembering it with pleasure sixty years later and thousands of miles away as we shared a glass of port in the California afternoon.

When I reached twelve years of age--the age when a boy became a man back then--Dad bought me, as a birthday gift, a single-action "410" shotgun.

...