Life gets stressful

 Five weeks ago my dad had an episode as he bent down on their home's basement steps to pick up his belt and billfold. He passed out briefly and fell between the stairs and railing, landing on the concrete floor of the basement. My mom was doing laundry on the other side of the basement and heard it happen. She immediately knew that he was hurt and called 911. 

After multiple calls back and forth to me, she stressfully asked that I come to the hospital and that they would be transporting my dad to St. Mary's Hospital in Rochester. I hurriedly packed a bag and ran out the for at 10:30 PM and drop the 90 miles to the hospital in their hometown. Minutes later we left for Rochester – arriving at 12:30 AM. At that point we sat in a room in the Emergency Department for six hours while their ran tests and monitored my dad and devised a plan. It had already been determined that he had broken his pelvis and that there was internal bleeding. 

By 8 AM he had gone in for a procedure to stop the internal bleeding. Around 10 AM we were informed that they would take a non-surgical approach for the broken pelvis. His time in the hospital began on Tuesday. I returned home having been awake for 36 hours at this point, my mom did the same. 

She confidently began the daily journey to St. Mary's Hospital in Rochester to see my dad daily. On Thursday, she informed me that he wasn't doing well and I left work to drive to Rochester. I spent Thursday and Friday there before returning home again. 

The following Monday morning I was informed that he would be moving to a rehab facility in a nearby town. I left work and drove there so he would have a familiar face to see when he arrived. After visiting with him for a few hours, I went to my parent's house to help my mom with a few things before leaving to return home again. 

The next week or so was filled with frequent updates from my mom. My dad had ups and downs, missed being home and, most concerning, was regularly confused. He was frustrated with himself when he knew that he couldn't remember things. He mis-remembered things that had happened when my mom wasn't present and he was, for lack of a better word, depressed.

On July 3rd, I took yet another day off rom work and brought my kids along to see their grandpa. It raised his spirits even if it was only for about two hours. He was happy and when we left he was ready to sleep for a bit. We had accomplished our goal. The next few days looked good as we were going to Duluth for a brief vacation.

And everything about that vacation went well until 9:30 PM Saturday night when I received call from my mom stating that my dad was unresponsive and was being taken to the ER. In ten minutes we had hurriedly packed and were on our way from the north shore of Lake Superior to ten minutes from the Iowa border. In about three hours we arrived at the hospital with a few calls from my mom providing updates as we drove.  Once there, I was surprised to see that my dad was doing well. When the doctor did finally come into the room, I basically took over. It turns out that this was his third ER visit in as many days. I calmly asked my dad how bad his pain was and then firmly explained to the doctor that the amount of Oxycontin being given to him was essentially putting him in a comatose state. Cut it in half if not more. Move up some of the appointments because a month out wasn't going to help anything. And keep pushing the rehab facility to actually follow the medication plan. Them medicating him to the point of being unresponsive doesn't accomplish anything positive.

After that things went slowly. It would be two full weeks until I made my way back to visit my dad and this time I tied it in to accompanying him to a follow-up appointment at St. Mary's Hospital. On Sunday we visited for a couple hours before I went to my parent's house to help my mom with yard work. I had brought my large ring lawn mower and set to work on their eight acre yard. As I found out rather quickly, some of it hand't been mowed yet this year. In just over three hours, though, with myself and my mom mowing, we had covered every inch of that massive yard. We even managed to rake and back about 1/4 of the overall lawn due to the accumulation of grass. The next day we went to his appointment at St. Mary's Hospital.

The general prognosis was good. The multiple fractures in his pelvis were approximately 80% heeled and he could now progress with putting incrementally more weight on his left leg. In a month he would be 100% weight bearing. Of course, that would require the rehab facility to actually follow Mayo Clinic's directions. St. John's Lutheran Home in Albert Lea, MN is apparently poor at following guidelines from hospitals. After two days of rehab on the new plan, he has yet to put any weight on his left leg. Their insurance has stopped covering his expenses in the rehab facility. The care facility doesn't even have a proper scale to see if he is, in fact, putting the appropriate amount of weight on his leg. Of course that doesn't really matter because, as I mentioned earlier, they aren't having him put weight on his leg.  All of a sudden, the four week timeline is being drawn out. It is costing them hundreds and hundreds of dollars per day out of pocket for care and rehab which isn't following the process laid out by the Mayo Clinic. 

These are the frustrations of being an only child. These are the frustrations of having aging parents. These are the worries of seeing physical and mental decline happen in someone who had never slowed down for anything. This is reality.

Minneapolis is burning

As a white American who was born and raised in Minnesota, I come from a place of privilege. Tens of thousands of others are not as lucky as I am. Earlier this week, George Floyd – black resident of Minneapolis – died after being restrained by a Minneapolis police officer. The officer in question held his knee on Mr. Floyd's neck for approximately ten minutes while three fellow officers watched and a crowd of onlookers gathered with phones in hand to record the incident.

The Hennepin County attorney – Mike Freeman – has essentially said that the officers who have been fired won't be charged. The issue I have with this is that the officer in question – Derek Chauvin – is being held to a different standard than anyone else would be. If the actions in question had taken place between a shop owner and George Floyd and the shop owner had held his or her knee against the neck of George Floyd and resulted in the death of George Floyd, the shop owner would be in jail or at least facing charges of some sort.

I take little comfort in the fact that a police officer with a history of violence is free. Yes, he has lost his job which is a small step in the right direction but where is the justice? Citizens of America shouldn't fear cops. We shouldn't have to worry about being victimized by those who are employed to serve and protect. The question is "protect who"? Are they employed to protect each other? Are they employed to protect their bosses? Are they employed to protect one race from another race?

Can those divides be overcome? Is the racial divide in cities like Minneapolis, St. Cloud, Rochester, Austin, Worthington and countless others too ingrained to be overcome?

The answer is a resounding NO. By making sure that police officers are diverse is a tremendous first step. Weed out the violent and sometimes unstable officers. Have clear procedures which are adhered to. Hold offending officers accountable for their actions. Yes, that means actually charging, arresting, and sentencing those who make poor decisions while on duty. Think twice about actions. In an era where virtually everything is captured on video, there is evidence from multiple angles.

All of the strife and destruction in both Minneapolis and St. Paul could have been avoided. The murder of a man who committed a petty crime was unjustified. It's sad that the actions of one police officer have resulted in millions of dollars of damage and destruction. It has hopefully opened the eyes of the nation to the racism and profiling which exists in clear view of so many. It won't end, either, without true change.

Where does this all go, though? Where are we headed both as a state and a country? What ends this? Where is the true leadership? It isn't coming from the top, i.e. the president. It must and will happen from a community level. The effected neighborhoods will rise up and overcome. It's how change happens. It happens on a local basis. We are better than this.

COVID-19: what will 2020 look like?

We at approximately six weeks since America woke the hell up that COVID-19 was real and that there was no stopping the pandemic. It's been six weeks since we have seen something resembling normal. In the grand scheme of time, six weeks is nothing.

In doing some reading recently, the conditions we are living in are really no different than those surrounding the 1918 Spanish Flu Pandemic. Businesses closed. Schools closed. Places where large gatherings happened closed. In Minnesota, there were two month-long closures in late 1918. Theaters and retailers closed. Schools were closed. It all seems kind of familiar. Leaders at the city level of both Minneapolis and St. Paul recommended that people keep their distance from others. To me, that sounds quite a lot like social distancing. Not much has changed in 100 years.

Think about that for a moment. The people living in 1918 managed for two one-month periods to not completely crumble and stemmed what would have likely been a tidal wave of deaths. Minnesota as a whole fared fairly well with only 7,260 deaths attributed to the Spanish Flu. That was over the course of one year or less. Numbers like that can still be expected, in my opinion, even though were aren't yet to 400 COVID-19 deaths in Minnesota. Regardless of the numbers, COVID-19 is a marathon unlike the Spanish Flu which was fast and overwhelming to the doctors and nurses who attempted to treat the ill.

In the end, though, Minnesotans and Americans overcame the invisible enemy in 1918 and will do so again in the battle against COVID-19. The question which remains is what will be lost and what will be left?

While this is only speculation, many of these events and happenings being canceled is simply a matter of time.

• High School Proms
• High School Graduations
• Summer Festivals
• Fourth of July Celebrations
• County Fairs
• Minnesota State Fair

Many events will be severely altered.

• Major League Baseball
• NHL regular season and playoffs
• NBA regular season and playoffs
• NCAA football season
• NFL season
• NCAA hockey
• 2020-21 high school sports

Businesses WILL close permanently. When we enter the post-COVID world, there will be far fewer restaurants and retail stores. High unemployment rates will linger for years, maybe as long a decade. Your 401k will be decimated. Homeless rates will certainly increase. This has the potential to be multitudes worse that the Great Depression.

It doesn't have to be that bad, though. The mishandling of this pandemic stems from a lack of federal leadership. There has been denial of the truth from day one. We lost two months of valuable preparation time because the nation's president denied that a pandemic was coming. He kept having campaign rallies and blaming the media and Democrats. The reality is that our nation's governors will be the ones to get us through to the end of 2020. They are doing their absolute best to keep the healthcare system from being overwhelmed. They also have the power to unite and rebuild America quickly. 

What comes out of this storm in late 2021 depends on how the next eight months are handled both by the government and American citizens. Keeping people afloat will take hard work and many trillions of additional dollars to jumpstart a different sort of economy. We can come out of this with an economy driven by improvements instead of unbridled consumerism. We will still buy stuff – that's inevitable – but we will invest in things which improves our world's future. 

Together we can and will get through this. We can be more self-sufficient both as people and as a country. We can thrive.

COVID-19: Some insight, thoughts, and reality

Covid-19 or Coronavirus is real and it's here. It's been on American soil since AT LEAST mid- to late January. The time for action is yesterday but there is still time to make sure that our actions don't lead to an Italy-like scenario where the healthcare system is completely overwhelmed.

The problem now – even with Americans taking actions like social distancing, as many people as possible working from home, school and colleges shut down and more – is that it's already too late. We can see that in New York, where they are poised to run out of ICU beds this week, that the time to act was not March but instead January.

Imagine if we had acted sooner and had six additional weeks to prepare. Six more weeks of producing N95 masks. Six more weeks to ramp up production of COVID-19 testing kits. Six more weeks to produce PPE for nurses, doctors and other medical professionals. Six more weeks to track cases as they popped up in the earliest stages of spreading.

But instead, here we are completely fucked. An economy in shambles, hospitals overflowing. Doctors and nurses breaking down from being severely overworked. A president who is now actively considering lifting recommendations regarding sheltering in place and social distancing to get the economy back on track and willing to sacrifice potentially millions of our nation's senior citizens to save the economy.

In case you hadn't noticed, the damage is done. The economy is globally dependent and no matter what happens in America, we are influenced by Europe, Asia, and South America. When China and other Asian countries shut down, the ripple effects were almost instantaneous in America. We are facing, or already in, a true crisis. 99.9% of people alive today have never witnessed anything like this. We can get through this with creative thinking and smart actions but with the president that the United States has, we aren't going to see either of those. 

America's gun problem

America has a gun problem. We can file that under "obvious" but let me elaborate. I have absolutely no issue with someone owning a gun. But let's keep it sensible, folks. There's no legitimate reason why the average individual would need something more than a pistol, handgun or shotgun. If your intention is hunting, protecting your property or taking out the occasional critter on your property (skunks, raccoons, etc.) then those three options seem perfectly logical.

A good portion of my friends and extended family members hunt and what they bring home is pretty damn tasty. Not my thing, personally, but it's their hobby and I have no issues with it. I have other friends who love shooting for sport. Most of it is trap shooting or basic target practice. They enjoy the sport aspect of it but they are often in the group who stands in protest every time someone mentions gun control and/or bans on assault weapons. Hey, I'm not coming for your guns and I'm fairly certain that the government couldn't get its shit together to come for your guns either so settle down.

The problem, as I see it, is that the average consumer can stroll into a gun shop or sporting goods store and, after a quick background check, pick up a rifle with a 30 round magazine. While those are perfect fine for sportsmen who want to spend a Saturday afternoon firing off a few hundred rounds at a shooting range, a 30 round magazine can also do some serious carnage in the wrong hands. That's where we stroll into a gray area. Should 30 rounds be deemed too many for the average consumer? I'm leaning a bit beyond maybe. While it's fun for a day at the shooting range, what the hell else is a rifle which a 30 round magazine good for? I guarantee that no sane person is taking an AR-15 out to the woods in November in Minnesota to hunt deer. When a weapon akin to an AR-15 or its competitors is taken out of a shooting range, that's when things go wrong.

A "tricked out" AR-15 was used in the recent Dayton, OH shooting. An AK-47 was used in the El Paso, TX shooting. Both fall into the "assault rifle" category. This isn't a coincidence. They can fire off a round per second, sometimes more. They are designed for maximum firepower in the shortest amount of time possible. In these cases, they were used for maximum carnage in the shortest amount of time possible.

Background checks were done on both weapons which were purchased legally. Making background checks more stringent isn't going to do anything to mitigate our increasingly common issue of mass shootings. The cure is multifaceted. And banning assault rifles will never happen as long as the National Rifle Association (NRA) exists and continues to line to pockets of politicians. The most vocal NRA members are convinced that they need assault rifles to protect themselves and their families from the politicians whose pockets that the NRA isn't lining. They have sewn the seeds of divisiveness. Until the NRA is forced into the dark corners of the world where they continue to exist as an even more dangerous and violent fringe group, mass shootings will continue to be common.

The second issue is the increasingly divided political climate in America. Why does it have to be an increasing divide between neighbors, families and friends? Everyone has their own unique interests but we also have plenty of things in common. Nobody is standing on there porch screaming to anyone who will listen that they wish their families were less safe. To say that your neighbor who would like to see less (or no) access to assault rifles automatically means that they wish that their family was less safe is ludicrous. 99.9% of people in America want their families to be safe. Hell, that may very well be 100%. No matter what people believe and say, we do have plenty in common with our neighbors. Stop being so damned divisive and, instead, find the common thread that unites us.

The third issue is our gun culture in general. America was founded by a group who believed in being independent. They fought and shed blood to gain their freedom. Our history as a nation is violent. We can't run from that and never should. That doesn't mean that we can't evolve and move beyond our nation's violent past. Just like people can change, so can the culture of a country. While we have plenty who are spreading their hatred of immigrants and a small fringe who justify their mass shootings as stemming the tide of immigrants, there are just as many who are still welcoming of immigrants. My Grandpa was an immigrant. My family is relatively new to America. While being the  second generation born here is far from a struggle, we are a country of immigrants and being afraid of a non-existent wave of "brown people" from "shithole countries" who are all "murderers and rapists" is stupid. Today's immigrants simply want better lives like our ancestors wanted. They just happen to come from different areas of the world. The fact that people in positions of power have advocated shooting immigrants only further empowers our nation's gun culture. It's not necessary to shoot someone who looks different than you or speaks a different language than you do. Killing out of fear should never happen. Again, try using words and find the common thread that connects you.

The final issue is hatred in general. We live in a country that sees hatred of misunderstood segments of the population splashed on the front of websites, perpetuated on billboards and spoken about openly by politicians and people of influence. Why does it happen? It happens because hate speech is not only allowed, it is almost encouraged by a president who is a blatant racist. His speeches and his very public tweets are analyzed to no end and are publicized by those who support and oppose his statements. His ultimate goal is to further divide out nation so that he can profit from it. He gets off on being in the headlines. He is the product of an immigrant and two of his three wives are immigrants themselves yet he spreads his hate for immigrants openly and does so frequently. Sometimes it is veiled hatred, other times it is blatant hate speech. He sought out to divide the country for his own gain and has managed to succeed. Our only hope is years – likely generations – of acceptance to roll back this hatred and bury it while learning from it and growing out of it. This hate speech has been tied directly to violent acts including at least a few of the mass shootings in recent history. Violent and unstable, hate-filled men who are empowered by the man who calls himself our president. Violent and unstable men who justify their actions based on the very words spoken by our nation's president.

We, as a country, have a multitude of problems to address but our gun problem – especially after the events of the past week – needs to be priority number one. Take away platforms where hate speech flourishes. Punish and sew shame upon those who perpetuate and spread hate speech. Put an end to glorifying guns – don't shame gun owners or drive them underground but instead praise responsible ownership, education and gun safety. Empower those who legitimately oppose hatred and violence and teach our youth that there is no shame in peace, safety and education. Make access to assault rifles far more difficult than it currently is – tie the purchase to mandatory training and extremely thorough background checks, waiting periods and the same type of screenings which employers perform on potential employees. Make those things legal and mandatory and it could stem the tide of mass shootings and unnecessary violence in America.