Tag Archives: safety

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Safe/Not Safe

I think safety is an illusion. BUT it is also nice to feel safe and embrace the illusion.

I sleep best in tents, because as a child, I felt safest at our families “shacks on a lake” in Ontario. Cabins, but pretty much one room cabins. No electricity, outhouses, and my family lived in tents. I loved it. I was more afraid of people than bears.

The pandemic, or this pandemic, has made people feel less safe. But that safety was an illusion too. I had influenza in 2003 and was out sick for two months. I had a racing heart and it hurt to breathe. No asthma. Only rest seemed to help. My doctor and I had no idea when it would resolve. It resolved after two months. My partners accused me of malingering and lying.

A fast heart rate can come from a panic attack, but it works the other way too. If your heart rate is very fast, you may feel panicky. When I nebulize people with albuterol for the first time, I warn them that it may feel like adrenaline, it may speed their heart and they might feel panicky. A friend with Long Covid kept saying that maybe they were just anxious. I got them to have an Urgent Care test them: a resting and a walking heart rate. At rest 72 beats per minute. Normal. Walking, their heart rate jumped to 165, very abnormal! Normal is 70-100 beats per minute, though if one is out of shape, 110 or 120 can result from unaccustomed exercise. But there is no way an athlete in their 20s should jump to 165. The Long Covid heart rate was driving the anxiety, not the other way around.

After I had the 2003 influenza, I read a book of essays about the 1918-1921 influenza pandemic. And I realized that we would probably have a pandemic in my lifetime. I thought it would be influenza, not coronavirus! Hopefully the world will learn a little from this one and change a little over time and be a little more sane if (ok, when) there is another pandemic.

I saw this video today. Wow, what costumes (all 1970s) and dancing! Wonderful! And such a sad song about a broken friendship that used to feel safe.

I hope that you have places or people that you feel safe with. Elwha sometimes likes to sit in the cat tent, even if it is partly open. It feels safe.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: safe.

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Wise fear

I don’t think the team of four taking down the four trunks of this cedar were fearless. They were sensibly afraid and stopped between each trunk. They discussed the next step and had all the safety gear in place that was possible. It was still very dangerous.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: fearless.

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A timorous culture

Over 20 years ago, when I first start practicing in Washington State, I get a letter from the state. It frightens me. It says that there is a complaint to the state from a patient and that I am being investigated. I think, “What did I do?” The letter says that they will notify me when they are done investigating. I am not allowed to inquire about it until they are done.

I worry, then shrug and go on working.

Eventually I get a letter from the state saying that the investigation is complete and has been dismissed. Now I can request information. I do.

The complaint is that on a yearly exam, I had asked if a patient had guns in the house. Since too many US citizens die by gun suicide and children can find guns and accidentally kill themselves or others, I was taught to counsel regarding guns. If a person has guns in the house I am to counsel them to keep the gun locked up with the ammunition locked up separately.

I was charged in the complaint with trying to find out how many guns this person has and “reporting it to the government”. I thought, that is ridiculous, but it did change my practice. Since there are paranoid timorous gun owners, I no longer asked if they had guns. Instead I said, “If you have guns in the house, as a safety measure, keep them locked up with the ammunition locked up separately.” We are supposed to counsel people to keep addictive drugs that can overdose and kill people locked up too.

I get three replies to the gun counseling. 1. “No guns!” 2. “I am a policeman (or hunter or retired veteran or gun collector) and all guns are secured at all times.” 3. Silence. The silent ones clearly have guns and do not lock them up. Truly I have had people tell me that they sleep with a loaded gun under the pillow. Really? That is our fear based timorous violent culture. We are terrified of….. someone. People on drugs, criminals, immigrants, people of another ethnicity, invaders, alien lizards in human disguise. Whatever.

I don’t have guns. I do have a fairly high level Tai Kwan Do belt, but my main home defense is that I am a packrat. Anyone trying to sneak into my house at night would trip over a cat or cat toy or the cardboard boxes in the kitchen that Elwha loves to sleep in. My house is seriously dangerous. I need to removed the stuff on the stairs by the time I turn 65 so that when they counsel me about fall risks at my medicare wellness visit, I can say that my stairs are clear.

Well, I do have a pop gun, loaded with a cork on a string. Also an Archie McPhee potato gun. Don’t shoot it in the house because those little bits of potato are hard to find. We have a 2 inch plastic ray gun that makes great sound effects and oddly has worked for years. I have a wooden katana and various instruments of garden destruction which could be deadly. I also have a lot of beach rocks and fossils, also fairly deadly, and other things. I’d rather not use any of these ever. Ok, I chased the 4 point buck out of the front yard with the baseball bat twice because he’d jumped the back fence and was eating my roses, but he’s allowed the run of the back yard. I was really mad at him.

We have to get past the fear based timorous culture, because it is making people crazy. Who are you most afraid of? In high school my daughter states, “Well, young white males with guns are the ones most likely to come shoot us, so that is who we should be afraid of.” That’s a sad, sad statement about the US culture.

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For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: timorous.

Hummingbirds are not timorous at all! They guard the feeder and seem to enjoy chasing other hummingbirds and bigger birds away and aren’t afraid of me either!

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we would have seen

Yesterday Rialto Beach was blocked off.

The forest service blocked it off because of the bomb cyclone. The winds are driving the waves way up the beach. The dead trees get thown around like tinker toys.

We would have seen how high the water had come if Rialto Beach was not blocked off.

We would have seen the corpse of a seal, washed up on the beach, if Rialto Beach was not blocked off.

We would have seen a soaking wet life jacket, just there on the beach, my size, if Rialto Beach was not blocked off.

We would have had to walk in over a mile and back, if Rialto Beach was not blocked off.

We would have wondered if the life jacket fell off a boat and we would have been glad not to find a body, if Rialto Beach was not blocked off.

We would have met a couple who said that they only got to the viewpoint and were chased back by a Forest Service worker on a bicycle, if Rialto Beach was not blocked off.

We would have seen the confluence of the four rivers, rushing high, a seal fishing in the river and cormorants, if Rialto Beach was not blocked off.

But Realto Beach was blocked off to keep us safe. We are home and safe.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt, corpse.

The picture is not of Rialto Beach.

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Quimper Family Telemedicine

Quimper Family Medicine is open and half or more visits have gone to telemedicine.

People are staying home, and hooray for that, many thanks to everyone who is trying to protect themselves and others. We have seen our patient numbers drop by more than half. We have intensified cleaning and discuss whether a clinic visit needs to be in person or can be via telemedicine. I am using VSee, Zoom and in a pinch, Messenger. At the same time I am still seeing some patients in person. We are extending refills, putting off labs, trying to walk the tricky balance of sharing decisions for each particular person.

Many thanks to everyone who is working with us. I am deeply thankful for all the people who are staying home and also for the people working in the grocery stores, supplies, garbage, electricity and medicine. Thanks to the Health Department and to the University of Washington lab and to Jefferson Healthcare’s Covid-19 testing. Thanks for the stimulus package that just passed and I hope will help everyone.

The photograph is Mount Baker on a hike with my daughter. It’s not in sharp focus, just like what will happen in the next week or two is not in focus.

Be careful out there.

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rest

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: exercise.

I have not been exercising this week, since Monday. I have barely left the house! but influenza is like that and it’s a time to rest.

I photographed this pair of American wigeons napping last weekend, at Kai Tai Lagoon in the sun. Napping in the water, how clever, I can’t do that. I do think I woke them, but at least one returned to sleep. Hopefully I’ve learned my lesson in the past too. I have to rest when I am sick and return to exercise afterwards!

A pair of American wigeons, on the water, female asleep and male awake.


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places in the world

I am thinking of the phrase “Places in the world a woman would walk.” I know it’s by Grace Paley. A short story? A line in a story?

Do you feel safe walking in your neighborhood? Or on a beach near you or in a forest? If you are male, do you thinks it’s safe for a woman to walk alone in your neighborhood? Do you feel differently about a male? And the same questions to woman.

And is there an age limit? Is it safe for me to walk the beach alone because my hair is mostly white? What about my son and daughter, both in their 20s?

Safety is relative. One of the unsafe things about our beaches is the warnings about an earthquake and tsunami. We have sand cliffs that will most certainly collapse. I walk the beach and eye the cliffs. There is some luck involved and I accept that.

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scarcity

The robins come in early. The tree looks like one of those find it games, or a puzzle where the pieces all look the same. They fly in and out of the tree and sometimes all take flight at once.

Others wait in the tall trees across the street, alert for danger.

robins on guard and waiting to eat

At home I saw another smaller flock in a tree in my yard. A flock of smaller birds joined them. It is the silhouette that tells their story.

Cedar waxwings join a flock of robins.
Cedar waxwings join a flock of robins.

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empower

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: empower.

J and I did not pick these mushrooms. We only picked two kinds, that we were both sure were edible. We must have seen about 15 species or more… I feel empowered to collect mushrooms and eat those we are sure of, but I am going to be very very cautious about others.

And I have had people say that they would never eat a mushroom that someone collected. I know some of the mushroom collectors that sell to our food coop and I trust them. Do we trust things in stores more than our wilderness now? And yet some things in stores are not safe….

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Kudos to Kops

The Kinetic Kops do krowd kontrol for the Kinetic Sculpture Race. Mostly to keep spectators, especially spectators with cameras, from being run over. Some of these machines are large and heavy and may not stop on a dime. Some of them went down to the water fast, gathering momentum, with spectators lining the way. People get distracted by the costumes and glitter and forget that these are built to climb hills, go through mud, go on water, human powered.

So Kudos to Kinetic Kops for protecting us all!