Filed under: Daily Kos, Emergency, Flu, Flu Wiki, Government, Health, Pandemic, Plague, Preparedness, Religion, Society, Survival
One of the ‘front page’ writers at Daily Kos is very much concerned about public health issues, and preparations for a pandemic or other public health emergency. He’s also one of the people responsible for the Flu Wiki. He had a good post up today at dKos about how this issue is playing out in the current presidential election. In the discussion of that post, there was one comment in which the author said this:
Our Emergency Rooms are in Chaos Now …
…without a pandemic.
We are in no way prepared for anything out of the normal. Republican misrule has mazimized corporate profits in medicine while minimizing social welfare benefits. Unprofitable activities like emergency preparedness have gone wanting.
If we have a pandemic, pray hard.
I am not a person of faith. I don’t write about that much here, though if you follow any of my links over to UTI, you’ll certainly see what I have to say about religion there. So the thought of praying for help in a pandemic would never occur to me – I would much rather do something practical to prepare for such an emergency, like getting our hospitals ready.
And I don’t think that the author of that comment is saying that we should only rely on prayer – just expressing some exasperation with the current situation, the current mindset about what role hospitals play in our society. Daily Kos is, after all, a blog devoted to electing progressive democrats and pushing liberal values like a good universal health system.
Anyway, first consider how prepared you are for a possible pandemic, earthquake, whatever. Personally. You have to take responsibility for yourself and your family. As I have written before, there are a lot of good resources with excellent information on what steps you can take to insure your own survival in an emergency. And then investigate what steps you can take to help your local government, your community, to better prepare. It is a very complex problem, and they will likely welcome your help. This will be a step I will likely be looking into in the future, now that our care-giving responsibilities are done and I am recovering.
If prayer is important to you, then by all means, pray. But that shouldn’t stop you from doing what you can to also prepare in more tangible ways.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Ballistics, Gardening, General Musings, Guns, Health, Patagonia, Predictions, Publishing, Richard Matheson, Science Fiction, Sleep, Travel, Writing stuff
You may have noticed that some of my posts have gotten a little longer over time, at least in the last couple of months. I haven’t been doing word counts or anything, but that is my sense of it, looking back over the archives. This is because I am emerging from the exhaustion of caring for Martha Sr, slowly but surely.
And as this progresses, it is interesting to see how certain aspects of my life are starting to come back to me. My wife and I have started to resume something that can be called a social life, getting together with friends for lunch or dinner, having people over. I finally got that book review of the Matheson Companion done – that had been hanging over my head for a while. I’m putting together the stuff for the ballistics testing, and figure that we’ll have the website for that up next month some time. I got my garden in, and am harvesting strawberries. This is good.
And I’m starting to get a creative itch again. No, not the low-level sort of creativity that goes with this blog and my conservation work. I’m thinking about the next novel. I’ll probably toss out what I have written of St. Cybi’s Well, and just start fresh – those first couple of chapters were so long ago that I barely remember what I intended to do with them. It takes (me, anyway) a lot of mental energy to juggle all the various threads in a decent novel, and I’m not ready just yet to tackle that. But I am thinking about it, and that is a very good sign.
And I have another idea for something completely and totally unrelated, which would also be a lot of fun. But I have to wait to get a new computer system for that – this old thing just doesn’t have the capabilities which would be required. I would also need to learn some new software programs. From these facts you can guess that this idea would have something to do with the ‘net, and you would be right, but that’s all I’ll say for now.
Oh, yeah, and I need to learn survival Spanish sometime before going to Patagonia in October.
It’s nice to feel this way again.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Alzheimer's, Health, Pharyngula, PZ Myers, Religion, Science, Science Fiction, Scientific American, Society, Writing stuff
Hello, my name is Jim. I’ve got a writing problem.
Via PZ and Evolutionblog, news that blogging (and writing in general) is actually a therapeutic form of self-medication:
Self-medication may be the reason the blogosphere has taken off. Scientists (and writers) have long known about the therapeutic benefits of writing about personal experiences, thoughts and feelings. But besides serving as a stress-coping mechanism, expressive writing produces many physiological benefits. Research shows that it improves memory and sleep, boosts immune cell activity and reduces viral load in AIDS patients, and even speeds healing after surgery. A study in the February issue of the Oncologist reports that cancer patients who engaged in expressive writing just before treatment felt markedly better, mentally and physically, as compared with patients who did not.
Scientists now hope to explore the neurological underpinnings at play, especially considering the explosion of blogs. According to Alice Flaherty, a neuroscientist at Harvard University and Massachusetts General Hospital, the placebo theory of suffering is one window through which to view blogging. As social creatures, humans have a range of pain-related behaviors, such as complaining, which acts as a “placebo for getting satisfied,” Flaherty says. Blogging about stressful experiences might work similarly.
Flaherty, who studies conditions such as hypergraphia (an uncontrollable urge to write) and writer’s block, also looks to disease models to explain the drive behind this mode of communication. For example, people with mania often talk too much. “We believe something in the brain’s limbic system is boosting their desire to communicate,” Flaherty explains. Located mainly in the midbrain, the limbic system controls our drives, whether they are related to food, sex, appetite, or problem solving. “You know that drives are involved [in blogging] because a lot of people do it compulsively,” Flaherty notes. Also, blogging might trigger dopamine release, similar to stimulants like music, running and looking at art.
OK, I don’t know about doing it ‘compulsively’, but I do know that writing has always been a way for me to cope with stressful events in my life, and I can honestly say that writing about caring for Martha Sr for the last year of her life with Alzheimer’s helped me keep some hold on my sanity.
Likewise, writing at UTI about the absurdities of modern life, with a particular emphasis on the effect of religion and politics, allows me to blow off a little steam and keep things in perspective. Some dialog with others, getting feedback and another perspective, also helps, and is the appeal (to me) of blogging over just writing for myself. This blog has a different emphasis, though there is some overlap (and why I cross post a fair amount between the two). I tend to be more personal here, and to tie things more often to the vision of the future portrayed in Communion of Dreams.
And as addictions go, it’s a lot less self-destructive than many options.
Jim Downey
(A slightly different version of this is at UTI.)
OK, I’ve been tagged by Hank Fox:
That pest Hank Fox (of www.HankFox.com) has tagged you with another idiot blog meme:
Tell the story of a (non-surgical) scar you have somewhere on your body. Answer and tag three other bloggers.
I tagged: PZ Myers of Pharyngula and Brent Rasmussen and Jim Downey of Unscrewing the Inscrutable.
(Hope you don’t mind.)
Hank
This is a story many of my friends know, and it’s bloody-well about time that I wrote it up.
So, about 25 years ago I was living in Montezuma, Iowa. I’d moved there after college, wanting to spend a couple of years working while sorting out what to do with my life in terms of graduate school and so forth. The old farmhouse I had bought at auction (a long story in its own right) had come with an established garden and many fruit-bearing trees. Out of simple self defense, I had taken to doing a lot of vintning, and started to earn a reputation within the SCA for my various homemade wines.
One summer evening, late (about 10:30), after a long day of working around the house, I was racking off some rich, golden, crabapple wine for an upcoming SCA party. It had been a very hot day (the house was without air conditioning), and all I was wearing was a pair of cut-off jeans. Furthermore, at this point in my life my hair was long and my beard was full – I worked at a local radio station in a non-public role, and my employer didn’t care too much how I looked.
Anyway, I transferred over some of the wine into a gallon glass cider jug. Since it was going to be drunk up in just a couple of days, I wasn’t too worried about properly corking the thing – the screw-top metal cap would be fine. After finishing up, I took the bottle into the kitchen where I had a deep farmhouse-style sink, suitable for rinsing off the jug under hot water.
As I was standing there at the sink, letting the hot water pour over the jug, I looked out my window to the north, where on the horizon I could see the glow of the local fair grounds. It was all lit up because the annual rodeo event was going on – this is the sort of thing that would have the entire town in attendance. Not a lot happened in Montezuma, and people took advantage of what few opportunities came around for entertainment.
Looking out the window, thinking about this, my attention slipped from what I was doing for a moment. And the jug slipped out of my hands.
I have very quick reflexes. Always have. One of the reasons why I was such a successful fighter in the SCA. Unfortunately, my quick reflexes frequently get me into trouble. Like this time.
I had instantly realized that the jug had slipped, and quickly moved to cradle the bottom of the thing to stop it from smashing in the deep sink. My hands were directly under it when, unfortunately, the neck of the bottle clipped the edge of the sink.
In a flash I pulled both hands out of the way of the falling glass shards. And I almost made it. Except one fresh edge of broken glass managed to slice across my left wrist. It wasn’t a particularly deep cut. But if you hold your hands as though you were going to cradle something, wrists bent 90 degrees, you’ll note what happens to your inner wrist: the tendons pull back from the surface of the skin. And the vein and artery tend to push up against it. That’s what happened to me.
As my hands flew away from the sink, a spray of brilliantly red blood streaked up the wall. And onto the ceiling.
I have had a fair amount of first aid training. Instinctively, I clamped my right hand across my left wrist, base of the palm up the arm to apply pressure to stop the bleeding. “OK,” I thought to myself, “I’ll just roll my hand back, keeping pressure on the wrist with the base of the hand, and see just how bad the damage is.”
Blood spurted like some bad horror flick. All over me, all over the window, and all over the sink and countertop.
“It’s bad.”
Now, what to do? I couldn’t dial a phone – my left hand was numb and useless, my right hand needed to stop from bleeding to death. Oh, yeah, the blood was still squirting with disturbing regularity between my fingers.
“Get help. Go to a neighbor’s,” I thought. I kicked open the door from the kitchen to the garage, and ran out into the street. There in the street I looked up and down, trying to figure out which of the few houses in my part of town to go to. Every one was dark – all the neighbors were at the damned rodeo.
I’m starting to worry a bit.
Then it hits me. There was a nice octogenarian who lived at the end of the street, a bit more than a block away. She wouldn’t be at the rodeo. I ran.
Got to her door. Could hear the TV blasting (she was a little deaf). Frantically, I started kicking her front door, trying to get her attention over the sound of the TV. “Lena!!” I screamed at the top of my lungs as I kicked on her door “open up! It’s Jim from down the street!”
A few long seconds later I hear her say “Coming!”. Light on the small porch went on. Door opened a crack. She looked out at me, and her eyes grew wide. The door slammed shut.
Of course. Here was a long-haired loon, nearly naked, covered in blood and glass and wine, standing on her doorstep, raising hell.
*sigh*
I slumped down and sat on the edge of the porch. The adrenaline burn was starting to give out. I was getting cold. I’d lost a fair amount of blood, and figured I was going into shock. I needed to sit a moment and try to figure out what to do.
I heard a rattling of chain. The door opened behind me. Lena had to close the door to remove the security chain. She stood there, still wide-eyed and clearly started, but she stood there. “Jim?”
“Lena, call an ambulance. I need an ambulance. Hurry!” Montezuma is 20 miles from the nearest hospital, a little one in Grinnell which usually didn’t even have a doctor attending at night. The amulance would have to leave there to come get me.
Door slammed shut again. What seemed like an eternity later, she came back.
“Here, Jim, I brought you a towel so you can wipe yourself off a little.”
She was smiling. I figured that I was dead.
“Lena, I don’t need a towel. You have to call an ambulance.”
She looked confused. “Here, I brought you a towel so you can wipe up.”
“Lena, I need an ambulance. Hurry, please.”
“Well, here, you’ll want this.” She draped the towel across my shoulder. “I did call the ambulance. They’ll be right here, don’t you worry.”
I want to interject something here. I have long known that I have the best bad luck in the world. That is, I have bad luck – things happen that seem absurdly improbable – but then it’s like someone flips a switch and everything works out for the best.
I hear the sound of an ambulance siren. From the fair grounds, not a mile away.
“See, here they come,” says Lena.
What should have been a 20 minute wait is less than three. That’s a guess, of course, since by this point my sense of time was badly skewed.
The ambulance pulls up to the street. I recognize the two responders who pop out of the back, because part of my job at the radio station was to get accident reports and so forth. They recognize me, as well.
“Hey Jim, what happened?”
Briefly, I explain. Said I figured I’d hit the artery. They got me over to the back of the ambulance, sitting on a gurney. One guy grabs a compression bandage, another holds onto me. “OK, remove your hand, let’s see what we’ve got. Just get a glimpse to see how bad it is, and then we’ll slap this compression bandage on and get you to Grinnell.”
I remove my hand. Blood fountains. Compression bandage gets slapped on. I fall back onto the gurney.
“It’s bad,” says the driver, standing there watching.
Next moment, I’m strapped in, metal clip shutting off the artery on my upper arm, and we’re making about 90 mph to Grinnell.
Couple of minutes later, driver hollers back to me: “Hey Jim, you’re in luck!”
“How’s that?”
“Oh, seems that there’s a doctor from the U of I who happens to be there at the hospital already. Micro-surgeon of some sort.”
Huh.
We get to the hospital. Without further fanfare I’m wheeled into the OR adjacent to the emergency room. By this point I already have IVs and whatnot. They drape my arm, doctor comes in, freshly scrubbed. Pokes around a couple of minutes.
“You are incredibly lucky.”
“People keep telling me that.”
“How did this happen?”
I explain.
“Huh. Amazing.”
“How so?”
“Well, the position of your hand meant that the tendons receded. All you did was slice the surface of the skin, and through both the artery and the vein. And fresh-broken glass is sharper than a scalpel. No rough ends, no damage to the tendons. I’ll have everything neatly back together here in just a few minutes.”
He was true to his word. About a half hour later, I was out of the OR.
“You can go home. See your doctor in a few days for a follow-up.” The surgeon nodded to a nurse. “She’ll give you some information on caring for the wound. And some pain-killers for when the stuff we gave you IV wears off. Don’t drive tonight.”
“Well, my car is at home.”
“Can you get someone from here to take you home?” asked the nurse.
“Yeah, just get me a phone.”
I called a kid who worked at the radio station with me. He came and picked me up. Pretty decent of him, since it was now about 2:00 AM.
We drove back to Montezuma, me mostly silent, somewhat in shock, somewhat dopey from the painkillers. As we pulled into town, I told the kid to go around to the front of the house, and I’d let him in.
“Yeah, sure.”
We got to my driveway, got out of the car. He went towards the front of the house. I went in through the garage, still fully lit from earlier. It was like following a trail. Of my blood. Through the garage, up a slight couple of steps and turn into the kitchen. Door still standing open from where I’d kicked it. Sound of water running.
It looks like someone has slaughtered a pig in the kitchen. Blood was everywhere. I go over and turn off the faucet. Look at the glass. Look at the blood. On the counter. On the wall. On the window. On the ceiling. I stood there, just taking it all in.
Until I heard the sound of someone walking into the kitchen from the front of the house.
I turned to see my buddy enter the room. He took one look around, and vomited.
* * * * * * *
Addendum.
It was because of this experience that I choose my SCA Arms, designed the way they are. You can see them here. What it is supposed to represent is a whirlpool. Which is what I saw for just a brief moment when the jug first burst. A whirlpool of golden crabapple wine, and my blood, swirling . . . swirling . . . down the drain.
Jim Downey
(Also posted at UTI.)
Remember this?
The pepper that the idiot bit into – twice – was a Bhut Jolokia. Widely considered the hottest pepper currently in cultivation, they are rated at over One Million Scoville Heat Units – twice as hot as the peppers I talked about harvesting in this post last year.
So, naturally I had to order some in.
They should arrive Thursday. And I spent most all weekend prepping the garden for their arrival. Oh, yeah, I also planted the usual selection of tomato plants (five varieties, this year subbing in a German Green heirloom for the Brandywines I’ve grown the last couple of years) and standard bell peppers. But really, the thing I am most looking forward to getting in there are my hot peppers, both the Bhut Jolokia and the Red Savina. This year, in an effort to avoid the problems I ran into with the local deer population (mentioned here) I also put up a light fence around the entire perimeter of the garden.
And since I had the luxury of being able to spend as much time as I wanted in the garden this year, as opposed to the last few years when we were still caring for Martha Sr, I was able to get the ground properly tilled and my landscape fabric down (which I use to control weeds – it’s cheaper than using bales of straw, and more effective). All told, I spent maybe 12 hours out there working. And I have the aching muscles to prove it. It feels good, no matter how much I complain to my wife, the dog, and all my friends.
So, I’m ready. Bring on the peppers!
Jim Downey
Filed under: Alzheimer's, General Musings, Health, Hospice, Machado-Joseph, Science, Sleep, Society, Uncategorized, Writing stuff
It’s now been three months since Martha Sr died.
You’d think by now that I’d be caught up on sleep. You’d be wrong. As I look over the last few month’s posts I note that time and again that I mention sleep. It is still the default that I want more, more, more. Even when I’ve gotten a good night’s sleep, and am not fighting any kind of cold or flu, a nap in the morning or afternoon tempts me. For someone who thinks of himself as energetic, productive, it kind of goes against the grain. For someone who has a backlog of work running to years, it can be a little maddening.
Yet, sleep is still the default.
* * * * * * *
My sister called the other day.
“Thirty pounds? Wow. Be careful.”
I assured her that I wasn’t trying to overdo anything. That it was just my body moving back towards a natural set-point, as mentioned in that blog post.
But she has a good reason to be concerned: in our family, weight loss is one of the markers for the onset of the family genetic curse, Machado-Joseph disease. To be honest, this is one of the major reasons that I have always felt a little comfortable in being a bit overweight – it provided some sense of protection against the disease (which was very poorly understood or even known as I was growing up). That’s not how it works, of course, but it was always there in the back of my mind. If you’d lived with seeing what the disease does, you’d be willing to risk obesity, too.
* * * * * * *
Go back to any of the entries from last year under the tag Alzheimer’s, and you’ll see that one of the most common things I talk about is just how tired I was. For years – literally, years – my wife and I had taken turns being “on call” each night, lightly dozing while listening to a baby monitor in Martha Sr’s room. On those nights you’d barely get anything which amounted to real rest. When you weren’t “on call” sleep usually came, but wasn’t as easy or restful as it could have been – having your partner there more or less awake next to you all night wasn’t that conducive. Sure, there were naps whenever we could squeeze them in, but I would still say that my average sleep per 24 hour period was probably about 5 hours, maybe 6. Things did improve once we had a health aide three nights a week, but by then we were in hospice care, which had its own stresses and demands.
* * * * * * *
ATLANTA – People who sleep fewer than six hours a night — or more than nine — are more likely to be obese, according to a new government study that is one of the largest to show a link between irregular sleep and big bellies.
* * *
The research adds weight to a stream of studies that have found obesity and other health problems in those who don’t get proper shuteye, said Dr. Ron Kramer, a Colorado physician and a spokesman for the American Academy of Sleep Medicine.
“The data is all coming together that short sleepers and long sleepers don’t do so well,” Kramer said.
The study released Wednesday is based on door-to-door surveys of 87,000 U.S. adults from 2004 through 2006 conducted by the National Center for Health Statistics, part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Surprise, surprise.
* * * * * * *
I’ve got a pretty strong work ethic. And it was shaped by conventional standards: get up, go to work for 8 -10 hours, come home. That’s not how I work – hasn’t been for years – but it is still the baseline instinct for me, the initial criteria I use for whether or not I am “getting things done”. So it is frustrating to feel sleepy and want a nap. That doesn’t pay the bills, get the backlog under control, get the next book written or the ballistics research written up.
Three months. Seems like a long time. And our culture doesn’t understand grief well, nor leave a lot of room for recovery that takes time. We expect people to “get over it”, to take a vacation and come back refreshed. It is part of who we are – part of who I am.
But I try to listen to my body. It is naturally shedding the excess weight I put on, now that regular sleep and exercise are again part of my life. Realistically, it is only halfway done – I’ve another 30 pounds or so to go to get back to a point which I consider ‘normal’ (though that’s still about 20 – 30 pounds heavy for me, according to the ‘ideal’). Does that mean I have another three months of wanting naps all the time? Yeah, maybe. Maybe more. I’ll try and give it that time.
I’ll try.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Emergency, Flu, Flu Wiki, General Musings, Government, Health, NPR, Pandemic, Plague, Predictions, Preparedness, Science, Science Fiction, Society, Survival, Writing stuff
Well, we all will, unless there’s some sort of miracle breakthrough in medicine or technology. But that’s not what I’m talking about. Rather, I’m talking about something anyone who has thought about it much has probably already assumed is true: that in the event of a large-scale pandemic, procedures will be put into effect by medical authorities to determine who will be treated and who will be allowed to die.
This is called triage. And to the best of my knowledge, for the first time such procedures are being publicly put forth as being applicable for all hospitals in the US, in recognition that it is better to have consistent and uniform criteria already in place before a disaster hits. The May issue of CHEST, the peer-reviewed journal of the American College of Chest Physicians (ACCP), today carried a supplement titled Definitive Care for the Critically Ill During a Disaster. From the press release on the ACCP website:
(NORTHBROOK, IL, May 5, 2008)—In an unprecedented initiative, US and Canadian experts have developed a comprehensive framework to optimize and manage critical care resources during times of pandemic outbreaks or other mass critical care disasters. The new proposal suggests legally protecting clinicians who follow accepted protocols for the allocation of scarce resources when providing care during mass critical care events. The framework represents a major step forward to uniformly deliver sufficient critical care during catastrophes and maximize the number of victims who have access to potential life-saving interventions.
“Most countries, including the United States, have insufficient critical care resources to provide timely, usual care for a surge of critically ill and injured victims,” said Asha Devereaux, MD, FCCP, Task Force for Mass Critical Care. “If a mass casualty critical care event occurred tomorrow, many people with clinical conditions that are survivable under usual health-care system circumstances may have to forgo life-sustaining interventions due to deficiencies in supply, staffing, or space.” As a result, the Task Force for Mass Critical Care developed an emergency mass critical care (EMCC) framework for hospitals and public health authorities aimed to maximize effective critical care surge capacity.
So, is this just good public health planning? Well, yes. But it is also very sobering to read the following:
The proposed guidelines are designed to be a blueprint for hospitals “so that everybody will be thinking in the same way” when pandemic flu or another widespread health care disaster hits, said Dr. Asha Devereaux. She is a critical care specialist in San Diego and lead writer of the task force report.
“When”. Emphasis mine. Not “if”. The news report goes further:
Bentley said it’s not the first time this type of approach has been recommended for a catastrophic pandemic, but that “this is the most detailed one I have seen from a professional group.”
While the notion of rationing health care is unpleasant, the report could help the public understand that it will be necessary, Bentley said.
Devereaux said compiling the list “was emotionally difficult for everyone.”
That’s partly because members believe it’s just a matter of time before such a health care disaster hits, she said.
“You never know,” Devereaux said. “SARS took a lot of folks by surprise. We didn’t even know it existed.”
Again, emphasis mine.
I’ve written many times about the possibility of widespread flu or some other kind of pandemic. Partly this is just because such a catastrophe sets the stage for Communion of Dreams. But more importantly – and this is even part of the reason *why* I wrote Communion of Dreams – is that I don’t think that people give this matter nearly enough thought.
It is good to see that the public health authorities are taking this step. And I was heartened to hear about it on NPR as I started to compose this post. Maybe it will prompt people to stop and think for a moment about what they themselves should be doing to prepare for some kind of pandemic or other disruption. Because I bet that almost no one you know is actually ready to ride out such an event – and by the time you hear of a pandemic starting, it will be too late to get everything you will need to increase the chances of you and your loved ones surviving. This is not fear-mongering; this is taking some reasonable precautions – the same sorts of precautions that have lead to the development of this new triage plan. If you want to know more, check out the Flu Wiki (where they also link to this resource).
Yeah, we’re all gonna die. And I can easily imagine disaster scenarios where I would not want to live. But I sure as hell don’t want to die needlessly from something I can avoid, or ride out with a little advance prep.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Civil Rights, General Musings, Government, Health, Music, NPR, Scott Simon, Society
Brief follow-up to this post.
This morning Scott Simon of NPR did his weekly meditation on the story of Christopher Ratte and the Hard Lemonade. It is worth a listen, as usual – Simon looks past the immediate news item to the underlying issues, as I try to do. He points out that at each stage of the whole debacle the various officials responsible were just “following procedure”, not risking taking some action on their own initiative which would lead to a common sense resolution for everyone involved. As he notes:
… But you might remember what happened to the Ratte family next time a poll discloses that the American people distrust bureaucracies, public or private, whether they run schools, airlines, or health-care systems – they abide by procedures, not people. They take lemons, and just make a mess.
Jim Downey
(With thanks and apology to Bob Dylan.)
Filed under: BoingBoing, Civil Rights, General Musings, Government, Health, Society
Via BoingBoing, news of just how vigilant they are in Detroit to make sure you read the label of any beverage you are served:
Boy, 7, taken from family after drink mixup at Tigers game
The sign above the Comerica Park concession stand said: “Mike’s Lemonade 7.00.”
So when Christopher Ratte of Ann Arbor ordered one for his 7-year-old son at the April 5 Detroit Tigers game, he had no idea he was purchasing an alcoholic beverage.
Or that his son would end up spending three days and two nights in the custody of Children’s Protective Services.
A park security guard spotted 7-year-old Leo Ratte drinking the Mike’s Hard Lemonade, confiscated the bottle and took the family in for questioning.
Yep. Didn’t just tell the guy to drink the damned thing himself. Didn’t warn him that giving the kid an alcoholic beverage in a public venue wasn’t a great idea. Took the family in for questioning. What followed was Kafkaesque. And all too common when one transgresses something that the authorities think you shouldn’t do.
They took his kid to a foster home, where he stayed for several days before being released into the custody of his mother. And the father was prohibited from living in his own home for a full week, so that he wouldn’t have contact with the child.
And that happy outcome wouldn’t have happened nearly so quickly had not the parents been professors at the University of Michigan, with the full power and resources of the University available to them to help deal with the nightmare. From the news article:
Don Duquette, a U-M clinical professor of law and director of the child advocacy law clinic, said he got a call from the chair of Ratte’s U-M department at 9 a.m. the next day. Duquette spent most of that day on the phone, trying to get Leo back into his parents’ custody.
* * *
Duquette said the fact that Ratte and Zimmerman got their son back so quickly was unusual and due only to their sophisticated legal counsel.
Ratte said he and his wife know that they were lucky to have the resources of U-M behind them.
“Class has something to do with the fact that the child was only in care for two days,” Duquette said. “What the referee said was that she would have kept the case for at least a week while the department completed the investigation. … If you’re not sophisticated, the system isn’t set up to give you very much of a chance to work against the ritual that’s ordinarily done.”
It took three more days for the judge to dismiss the complaint, allowing Ratte to return to his home. That happened after Leo and his 12-year-old sister, Helena, were taken back to Detroit for further interviews.
Imagine if it had been you. Think you would have been able to get your kid back so easily?
*Sigh* I am not against the state watching out for the safety of children, and following up on any reported cases of abuse. Not at all. But look at what happened – this guy, perhaps a bit clueless about modern alcoholic drinks (I’ll admit – I hadn’t heard of this beverage before – I pay no attention to ‘alcopop’ drinks. I drink beer, or scotch, and could have made the same mistake), no doubt distracted by all the excitement and activity of taking his 7 year-old son to a ballgame – accidentally gives his kid this bottle without carefully reading the label to see that it contains alcohol. Guard notices the kid drinking it. Guard confronts parent, who denies knowing that the thing had alcohol in it. Guard summons police, and the nightmare begins, and at no point does anyone in authority exercise the slightest bit of common sense.
Why? Probably because once the paperwork started, everyone involved on the side of the authorities was ‘just doing their job’.
I don’t know what Michigan law is on the matter, but a number of state laws allow parents to give their kids alcohol, so long it is consumed in the presence of the adult. In Europe, kids routinely drink alcohol with meals. It used to be that most cough medicines contained a large alcohol content, even the stuff made for kids (this may still be the case). I grew up having alcohol now and then with my family. OK, ignore that last item – I’m not the best example, godless heathen that I am.
Anyway, my point is that it isn’t like the kid was plastered, or that the father was doing anything dangerous. The guard should have just told the guy to stop. Once the cops were called, they should just have exercised a little discretion (which happens all the time, particularly if it is another cop involved in a transgression), warned the guy, and sent father and son on their way.
Insanity. Glad I don’t have kids.
Jim Downey
(cross posted to UTI.)
This afternoon I was getting ready to take some books back to Special Collections, and since it was still a bit cool out, thought I’d toss on a nice leather vest I have. This is a vest which was a gift a couple of years ago, designed for concealed carry, and which I find to be very useful for other purposes as well. Anyway, I put it on, and noticed something . . . it felt a little loose.
Hmm.
Now, I knew I had been shedding weight since Martha Sr had died, as a natural function of getting regular sleep, more exercise, and not eating to excess as a function of stress. Pants fit better, I’d taken my belt in a couple of notches, all those sorts of things.
But this vest was a new one. For the first time in a couple of years, I could actually button the thing up, and it felt comfortable. Excellent.
I have no illusions about getting back into the sort of shape I was twenty years ago, when I was honestly in “fighting trim”. But in the last three months I’ve probably shed close to thirty pounds. If I can lose another twenty, I’ll be happy – thirty would be just about ideal, particularly if I can change some of what remains from fat and slack muscle into toned muscle.
Anyway, just a small personal triumph I thought I would share.
Jim Downey
Communion Of Dreams 