Post Ménière’s diagnosis has been a life of trial and error. Since my last post (September 21st), numerous problems have been my companion. For example, emptying a dishwasher is considered relatively easy for most folks. However, I have to hold the counter’s edge while bending over. Walking a hallway at night is challenging because I constantly bounce off walls and doorframes. Walking downstairs is a damn nightmare. Will I fall, land my cane correctly, not trip and remain even? Other things scare the crap out of me.
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I think there’s a lot me of in Anderson Cooper. No, I have no delusions that CNN’s Anderson Cooper is remotely related to me. However, I just finished listening to Mr. Cooper’s podcast about coping with grief. Cooper began recording the podcast while cleaning out his mother’s New York apartment two years after her passing. During the session, he discussed reliving grief from losing his father, brother, and mother.
In his mother’s last few weeks, Cooper recorded some of the conversations he had with his mother. “I was surprised how lonely I felt as the last surviving member of my immediate family,” Cooper said, “and I discovered that talking with others, who’d moved through grief and spoke the language of loss, was life-changing.” It was in that moment of self-reflection I found an uncommon bond.
“Well,” said the audiologist. “Ménière’s Disease will not kill you, but it will suck. Elderly MD patients tend to have a higher prevalence of Tumarkin attacks (when a person falls to the ground with no warning). Phrased as ‘drop attacks,’ they seem to come out of the blue and do not affect everyone. Ménière’s Disease victims usually exhibit faster development of hearing loss and vertigo spells in your age bracket. However, you’ll remain awake during the attack and will not lose consciousness. You will experience neither a heart attack nor stroke, but everything will be a bitch.”
A friend and I overhead another table repeating a false narrative that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is hiring hires 87,000 new ‘armed’ IRS agents. The keyword (i.e., ‘hook’) is ‘armed.’ The claim is false. Whether the folks repeating was knowledgeable or not, they weren’t alone. Social media folks and news personalities (i.e., FOX News and others) also repeated the falsehood. Even 88-year-old Republican Senator Chuck Grassley repeated. What they are saying is, “Watch out everyone. The IRS Bogeymen are coming.”
Some are criticized for lack of forthright principles or are looked upon with scornful eyes as we compromise some political position. However, many engage in the fine art of conciliating, balancing, and interpreting facets of opinion. We mentally thread the needle, balance the justification, and mold the means to justify the ends. I did it. I’m sure many do it today. And damn, we are not profiles of courage.
During the Turning Point USA Student Action Summit in Florida, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene argued that Christian Nationalism is a good thing. “That’s (Christian Nationalism) not a bad word. That’s a good thing. There’s nothing wrong with leading with your faith. If we do not live our lives and vote like nationalists—caring about our country, putting our country first, and wanting that to be the focus of our federal government—if we do not lead that way, then we will not be able to fix it.” Christian Nationalism is a political ideology and cultural framework that merges Christian and American identities. Unfortunately, the ideology distorts both Christian faith and America’s promise of religious freedom.
Many moments in professional sports bear witness to the “F**k you. It’s about me, dipstick.” Last week ten members of the Kansas City Royals could not make the trip to Canada. Why? Well, they have not completed Canadian vaccination requirements. This week, three members of the St. Louis Cardinals bowed out of the team’s upcoming Toronto games for the same reason. Most either claimed “Personal choice” or something to the effect of “I made a decision that’s best for my family.”
Congratulations assholes! You are the epitome that shows formal education gets drained somewhere in-between long hours of training and boring cross-country flights. As noted in countless reports, COVID-19 vaccine risk is negligible and keeping yourself vaccinated (plus booster) is the best way to protect yourself and your family from COVID. But none of that matters, as life is about personal choice.