Latest / Plausibly Live - The Dave Bowman Show Podcast / Up All Night: Shoulder Pain, Homeless Hotels, and Finding Perspective
Transcript
- 0:10This is plausibly Live, the official podcast of The Dave
- 0:14Bowman Show. Well, I've been up pretty much
- 0:23all night, got a lot of stories in front of me that I thought
- 0:29would be interesting, but I'm I'm not so convinced that they
- 0:33are anymore. I don't think anybody cares
- 0:35about them but me. I'm sure I do.
- 0:40I got a great story here about a lawsuit that's been filed over
- 0:44homeless issues in Seattle. Remember when we used to stuff
- 0:49homeless people in hotels that we just rented out?
- 0:52Well, now the hotel owners are pissed off because as it turns
- 0:56out, the homeless people trash the hotels and the money that
- 1:02the city gave them isn't enough to fix it, so they want that
- 1:05back. There's another story here about
- 1:08the state of Washington and our IT system that we've spent
- 1:12millions of dollars upon to upgrade and improve, and they've
- 1:19given up. I swear to God, they've given
- 1:22up. They can't get it to work.
- 1:24So there you go. Back in 1988, it would have been
- 1:31the summer of 88, I was moving. My roommate Jimmy and I had
- 1:36decided that the apartment we were in kind of sucked and we
- 1:40wanted a nicer one. We could afford it.
- 1:42And we decided to move. And so we were in the process of
- 1:46moving when I went to pick up a speaker because kids back in
- 1:50those days, we had these giant stereo systems we didn't have
- 1:53when we had headphones, but we didn't wear them all the time.
- 1:57We had this giant speaker system for a stereo system that we had
- 2:00put together. And as I picked up the speaker,
- 2:02I felt a very sharp pain and a tearing sensation in my right
- 2:06shoulder. Now at the time, I knew what it
- 2:10was and it's torn rotator cuff obviously, and I knew that, but
- 2:15I also knew that I didn't really want to say anything to the Navy
- 2:21because they might disqualify me from from things.
- 2:24And so I just did the home remedies for it, you know,
- 2:28painkillers and and rest and the likes of that.
- 2:32And it seemed to get better. But that was followed by years
- 2:36of Navy sports, playing football, basketball, baseball,
- 2:41softball, even a little bit of hockey.
- 2:44And all of that takes its toll on a shoulder that's already,
- 2:48you know, messed up. And over the years, you know, it
- 2:54just did never really completely healed.
- 2:56But, you know, you just learn to live with it.
- 3:00On November 18th, 2018, I was headed down the stairs.
- 3:03It was an important day because we were in the process of buying
- 3:06the Subaru, which we still don't have back, by the way.
- 3:09And my knee buckled and I went down on the stairs and I landed
- 3:15on my right shoulder. I've told you this, I, I landed
- 3:17on my right shoulder, landed very hard on my right shoulder.
- 3:20In fact, hard enough that there was like this bulge in the top
- 3:25of my shoulder that freaked me out.
- 3:29I did hit my head on the floor, but my shoulder was just
- 3:33agonizingly in pain. And so I called Cami at work.
- 3:37So we got to go to the ER So we went to the ER, kept telling
- 3:41them my shoulder hurts. They kept saying, but you hit
- 3:43your head. Yeah, I, I know.
- 3:47And so they did a CAT scan on my head, CT scan, CAT scan.
- 3:53I don't know which one. It's the one that's really
- 3:54simple and easy. This is the circle thing.
- 3:57And and of course it was negative.
- 4:01There's nothing in my head anyway.
- 4:05But they never looked at my shoulder.
- 4:07They didn't even touch my shoulder.
- 4:09They never even said here's something for your shoulder.
- 4:12They anyway, which kicked off seven years of me bitching to my
- 4:18doctor every time I saw him about my shoulder and I couldn't
- 4:20get anybody to look at it. I finally last year, as I said
- 4:24before on what the frock, I grabbed his hand and said feel
- 4:28this. And I put his hand on my
- 4:29shoulder and he said, well that ain't right.
- 4:34So I got to go see the shoulder surgeon and he said, hey, you
- 4:41have some problems here. He sent me to do AMRI, which was
- 4:45an adventure in of itself. I, I, I, I'm not sure why Mr. is
- 4:52kind of freaked me out and I don't like them.
- 4:57This MRI, they told me it was an open MRI machine.
- 5:00They lied it was not, or at least I didn't think it was when
- 5:04I went in there because I didn't have my glasses on and I
- 5:06couldn't see it. So I thought it was not an open
- 5:11MRI machine, as it turns out it was, but I couldn't see it.
- 5:14So anyway, I ended up taking medication to help me calm down,
- 5:20which was probably a mistake because then I had to drive home
- 5:22and I ended up forgetting my wallet.
- 5:25But the MRI clearly showed that number one, obviously I have
- 5:31arthritis in my shoulder at the top of the acro acromiclavicular
- 5:39joint. Like I can say there's stuff it
- 5:44likely developed after the shoulder separation injury.
- 5:47Oh, by the way, I'd also separated.
- 5:48I'd also dislocated my shoulder plan basketball for the Navy at
- 5:52one point. Then it says I also have torn
- 5:55shoulder cartilage in the labrum.
- 5:58There's a tear in the rim of the cartilage inside your shoulder
- 6:00socket, specifically a SLAP tear that's short for superior labrum
- 6:06anterior to posterior, whatever the hell that means.
- 6:11Then I have a partial rotator cuff tear, which of course I
- 6:14knew, and I have tendonitis because, you know, nothing
- 6:19worse. What he said to me, in short,
- 6:21was that there are three main injuries that you can get in the
- 6:24shoulder, and I have all three. So yay me.
- 6:31And he said, OK, let's, let's see about surgery.
- 6:36Now this was at a time last year when things were not going
- 6:41particularly well with my other issues and my A1C was just
- 6:47slightly out of out of zone, but the trend was headed out of
- 6:54zone. And so he wouldn't do the
- 6:56surgery because my A1C was too high.
- 6:59It was 8.1 and he wanted it under 8.
- 7:04So Long story short, well, shorter anyway.
- 7:12Not that you care, but I'm up at, you know, 1:00 in the
- 7:15morning, so this is my time, right?
- 7:18Anyway, I things got a little out of control.
- 7:22My medication got messed up and things got really wild with my
- 7:27A1C. They went from 88 to almost 9
- 7:31something and my endocrinologist ended up putting me on the
- 7:36insulin pump, the the Dexcom monitoring system, which has
- 7:40been helpful for the most part. And it's now my A1C is now back
- 7:46under 7. And so he said, Yep, come on in
- 7:50and let's look at you and we'll schedule it.
- 7:53Now that is that appointment is scheduled for later in
- 7:55September. And of course at that point then
- 7:59we will look at the a ones. I'm sure who's going to want to
- 8:02do an A1C test and that A1C test will show that it's under 7.
- 8:07And at that point surgery will be scheduled.
- 8:09Now, when will that surgery occur?
- 8:11I don't know if it's anything like my knee surgery it took, I
- 8:20went in there on January 2nd to start the process and the
- 8:23surgery was on April 12th. But that required a little bit.
- 8:27We, we hadn't done some of the preliminary work.
- 8:29So there were other things that had to be done, examinations and
- 8:34tests and that kind of stuff that probably won't have to be
- 8:36done here. So I mean, it could be, it could
- 8:41be very soon in September, it could be into October, maybe
- 8:44even November has to be before December because otherwise my
- 8:47insurance will roll over to next year and I'll get screwed on it.
- 8:51So, but let let me put it this way.
- 8:55If they can't schedule it before December, I will not get it done
- 8:59because we can't afford it. But as long as it's scheduled
- 9:01before December, we've met our deductible.
- 9:04So everything will be good to go, assuming my A1C is in range
- 9:09and I'm assuming that it is surgery gets scheduled from that
- 9:15point. It's five weeks of my arm, my
- 9:19shoulder being completely immobilized.
- 9:21And this is what he said. It is completely immobilized.
- 9:24You will not move it at all. And that I got to be honest with
- 9:29you kind of freaks me out. It it kind of bugs me because,
- 9:34well, I'm right-handed. And if you're a dude, just think
- 9:40about all the things you use your dominant hand for.
- 9:43I mean, and I'm not even trying to be weird, I'm just telling
- 9:46you I do hold my coffee cup in my left hand yes, but I write
- 9:53with my right hand. I got a pen in my right hand
- 9:55right now. I, I type predominantly, you
- 9:59know, I use both hands obviously, but when I'm doing
- 10:03numbers and stuff, I use my right hand.
- 10:06When I'm doing mouse work, it's with the right hand.
- 10:11It's, you know, I tie my shoes with my right hand.
- 10:18I drive with a lot of my right hand.
- 10:21I cook with my right hand. In addition to things that I
- 10:26don't even want to get into that make me kind of oogie when I
- 10:31think about all these things that I'm not going to be able to
- 10:34do because you can't move your right arm And it, it shouldn't
- 10:39bother me, but it does. My brother, who is my brother?
- 10:47OK, my brother. The, the, the point of what I'm
- 10:50going to tell you is my brother is trying to really encourage me
- 10:52on this. He's what he said was you'll
- 10:55find out who really loves you when you when you go through
- 10:58this. But because he's been through
- 10:59it, he texts me the other day. I swear to God, this is Tuesday
- 11:05or Wednesday. He texts me and the text, it has
- 11:10pictures in it of minor League Baseball uniforms.
- 11:13He lives in Maine and he sends me a text of pictures of, let's
- 11:20see, the Worcester Red Sox, Worcester Red Sox and somebody
- 11:27else. I don't I whoever they were
- 11:28playing and he was interested because the the Worcester Red
- 11:32Sox uniforms basically look exactly like the Boston Red Sox
- 11:35uniforms except they say Worcester on them instead of
- 11:37Boston. And he wanted to know when this
- 11:40when this trend started. And I swear to God I'm reading
- 11:45this stuff and he says I'm watching a AAA game between the
- 11:50Jacksonville Jumbo shrimps and the Worcester Red Sox because I
- 11:53had ATV with Live Channels in the hospital.
- 11:56And I'm now watching the Cleveland Tampa Bay game and I
- 11:58swear the uniforms look 90% identical.
- 12:01The venue is bigger and the cameras are superior.
- 12:03But fashion wise, it's, it's the same now.
- 12:09Hopefully you caught what I caught at all that discussion,
- 12:12which was why the hell are you in the hospital?
- 12:16Oh, keep in mind this is Wednesday.
- 12:20Oh, by the way, I had a heart attack on Saturday.
- 12:23I've been in the hospital since Saturday.
- 12:30So here's my brother laying in the bed in the hospital after a
- 12:33heart attack. And he ended up with a a new
- 12:36stent. He did not require bypass, which
- 12:39is which is good, right? But he was not feeling 100%.
- 12:45He's still not paying weight. It's like, yeah, you'll you'll
- 12:49find out who really loves you when you when you get this done,
- 12:52which of course, Cami really does, but and she's a nurse, but
- 12:56it just bugs me. So anyway, I got that on my
- 13:00brother having a heart attack because I'm not telling anybody
- 13:03because he wants to talk about baseball uniforms.
- 13:06It's like when sounds like something I would do, but but
- 13:10there you go. So anyways, five weeks of
- 13:11immobilization and that's going to affect a lot of what I do by
- 13:16now, you know, I do. Is it 5 podcasts, this one, the
- 13:21Dave Bowman show, what the frock Dave does history, Bill Nick
- 13:26live and here's the here's the thing.
- 13:29So I got 50 and patrol reports 6 now.
- 13:31So I got 6 podcasts going right down there.
- 13:34They all require various degrees of work, various degrees of
- 13:38activity. Some of them, yes, are primarily
- 13:41AI generated, but I still have to do things to make that
- 13:45happen. It doesn't, you know, I don't
- 13:47just say to the computer, computer generated podcast.
- 13:49It's not how it works, which it was, but it's not the they
- 13:56require works and so and and some require more work than
- 13:59others. All of them require editing.
- 14:02All of them require, you know, my input, my control, because
- 14:05I'm a control freak and I'm not just going to put out something
- 14:08that's, you know, fake, completely fake.
- 14:14It's even when you hear, you know, Lena and, and, and Graham
- 14:18doing the, the patrol reports by it's my words, I'm the one
- 14:21writing that they're just reading the script to you.
- 14:23So it's, it's not that big of a deal.
- 14:25But it does take time to do all that stuff.
- 14:28So five weeks of immobilization is going to make that
- 14:32extraordinarily difficult. It's going to make it
- 14:33extraordinarily slow, if I can do it at all.
- 14:37Now I am working on systems to try to make that easier.
- 14:42I, I did buy new laptop to, to, to help with this because it's a
- 14:48smaller, it's a smaller laptop, it's a 13 inch laptop.
- 14:53And here's the weird thing. If you know me well, and some of
- 14:56you do, but if you know me well, you know that I have long been
- 15:00APC guy, personal computer guy, IBMI have been an IBMPC guy
- 15:06since they were invented. OK.
- 15:09Long before there were 280 sixes and 380 sixes and 480 sixes, I
- 15:13was using, I was programming in DOS.
- 15:16In fact, I remember when Apple and IBM both used DOS and then
- 15:21Apple went in their own little direction and that's when I
- 15:23stayed with DOS because I became in that era, I was a pretty
- 15:27heavy DOS programmer. I knew how to do it.
- 15:31Of course, they they moved on. I was telling Ben the other day
- 15:35I didn't go to Windows 3.1 until August of 1995, couple of months
- 15:41after Windows 95 came out. And the only reason I went to it
- 15:43was because there was a feature in Excel that I wanted the tabs
- 15:47and I couldn't get it in the DOS version anymore.
- 15:49So Long story short, I've been APC guy all my life.
- 15:54That said, I have an iPad. I've had an iPad for years.
- 15:58I've used iPhone for nigh on to 15 years.
- 16:01I like the iPhone. I love my iPad.
- 16:04In fact, I got rid of my Kindle because the iPad will do
- 16:07everything the Kindle does and do it better and, and far
- 16:12better. I mean, even even in so far as
- 16:14reading goes, it's better on the iPad than it is on the Kindle.
- 16:17So I, I, I, I do like my I devices, but I've always been
- 16:22reticent to go to the, to the MacBook computer because I don't
- 16:27know, it just seems weird to me. So last year I bought a, a used
- 16:35MacBook just to play with, just to get used to it.
- 16:38And I, I felt like I got good enough at it.
- 16:40It was a very old one, by the way.
- 16:42I got good enough at it that I, I have invested in a new one to
- 16:48try and make this stuff flow easier so that now I can do it.
- 16:52I can put some of the same apps that are on my phone on that on
- 16:56the, on the on the iPad and start to work.
- 17:00There's a bug flying around my microphone.
- 17:03Sorry, and, and, and start working that stuff.
- 17:07And from there it's much lighter, obviously, and much
- 17:10smaller than my, my desktop. So maybe I'll be able to use it
- 17:15a little bit easier left-handed. I am practicing that.
- 17:19I'm practicing doing left-handed things.
- 17:21I know that I can program a mouse to be inverted, but I
- 17:29haven't done it yet. So I'm, I'm debating on on doing
- 17:33that anytime soon. So Long story short, surgery is
- 17:38coming. I don't know when I will keep
- 17:40doing what I'm doing for as long as I can and that includes Bill
- 17:44Mick live and Liberty 250. But there's going to come a
- 17:47point in the next few months where I'm going to have to take
- 17:50some time off. Even even if I can do it, I'm
- 17:54going to have to take some time off because obviously I'm going
- 17:56to be limited as to what I can and can't do for a little while
- 18:01anyway. I'm sure that like most things,
- 18:04you know, I'll get up to speed. I'll want to I'll want to do
- 18:08some things and obviously I will do them as best I can, but in
- 18:12the meantime, that's what's going to happen.
- 18:16So not that anybody cares about the homeless issues, but they
- 18:19are suing the I don't know why I think that story's so funny.
- 18:23I just do that story just knocks my socks off.
- 18:27I who didn't see that coming, right, that they were going to
- 18:30sue over that the, the homeless, the the hotel owners were going
- 18:34to sue. That's just more tax money down
- 18:37the drain. So anyway, that's all I got for
- 18:40today because I've been up since 1:00 this morning.
- 18:42So I'm going back to bed because I'm tired.
- 18:47I'll talk to you later.