Well, Mom was right, as I hate to admit. There are still family drug stores up here peppered in among the nail salons and the bodegas and the 99-cent stores, and Town sent over a very nice young man to my apartment with generic Tylenol and generic Band-Aids and I was very impressed. They'll be getting my business from now on.
Ironically, in working from home this week, I was able to hear a lecture given on Our Global Community by this guy named David Korten on MNN. He was talking about the Institutions of Empire and how our local supply chains have been surreptitiously (and not so surreptitiously) cut by huge chains like Wal-Mart and Rite-Aid, and we delay restoring them at our own peril.
Lots to think about when you're not feeling well - what happens if our community supply chains never come back, and we suffer some sort of natural disaster? Pictures of Haiti have shown us that it's not only hell on earth trying to get food and water, but the little things that we all would miss terribly, like an aspirin, toilet paper, a prescription for an antibiotic or antiseptic to clean out a wound, would be virtually impossible to find if we were to suffer a catastrophic weather event.
David Korten pointed out in this lecture that in the early part of the 20th century, catastrophic natural disasters on average were running around 41 per year. In the past three years, our world has suffered an average of 350 weather-related natural disasters per year. Okay, we could perhaps allow for a margin of error owing to incomplete reporting, but 350 last year? And the year before? Even the President's State of the Union Address garnered a laugh last night when he mentioned that there were still people running around thinking Global Warming is a myth created by scientists to get grant money. So if something were to happen here? What would we all do?
Inwood is actually the highest point in Manhattan, so if there was a sudden flood I might be okay. If I had water stored. The water supply would be cut off. So it would be about walking to Jersey via the GW bridge. You remember that post-flu scene in "The Stand" with Gary Sinese. Like that. Hurricane? Not all that likely up here - they tend to come up, but they weaken into a heavy rain and just kind of take out the West Side Highway. Earthquake? Nope. Insane snowfalls? Yeah, they happen for sure. But Korten's whole point is that if one part of the globe suffers, we all eventually suffer. The supply chains for just about everything criss-cross the planet so intricately that for us to continue to let corporations act like anti-social psychotics is the great shame of our human race. I'm going to add links to Yes Magazine on this site ( yesmagazine.org ) and to a site called The Great Turning ( thegreatturning.net ) so you can check out Korten's writing on the subject. I wish I could find that powerpoint presentation on there - I'm going to look harder.
By supporting small businesses like the nice folks at Town, I'm doing a very, very small bit for keeping local community supply chains alive, though they're not necessarily all that healthy. Restaurants in Manhattan have caught the "local ingredients" bug, but for them it's more a trend than a committment - if I can be cynical for a second, it probably means that buying Cabot cheese is more cost-effective than buying imported French fromage. Their hearts are in the right place - but if we don't insist that all restaurants try to do this, it will go the way of "adding heat" to food or using weird plates to make your food look trendy.
Mt. Sinai Hospital, Madison Avenue (very swanky)
I was only mildly nervous about having surgery - they were going to put me under general anesthesia, because I've got mild sleep apnea and tend to stop breathing if somebody puts me on my back to go to sleep. That was fine as far as I was concerned. The check-in process was kind of cool - they have you fill out a couple of forms and then they give you one of those electronic beeper-toys that they use at Red Lobster to let you know your table's ready. Okay, before the teasing starts, MOM loves Red Lobster so we end up going there when I'm out in the 'burbs. Then we both go home and check each other's blood pressure because of the tons of salt they use when they cook up that mess.
Anyway, after they check you in, they take you back in these little private rooms where they check your vitals and put your clothes and your stuff into a big ziplock, and walk you backstage (well, what the hell do you call it in a hospital? Backstage seems to fit...) and you lay down and wait for the anesthesiologists to come and put a needle in your arm and wheel you into the OR. Since Mt. Sinai is a teaching hospital, there were a couple of real youngsters on the team. Brooke, my anesthesia resident, looked exactly like Kristen Chenoweth, and kept up a steady stream of bright, bubbly chatter which normally I would have beaten the shit out of her for, but she was holding a needle so I held myself back. Then the surgical resident came over with Brookie's boss, and he looked really nice and really, really guilty. There was this look in his big, brown eyes that said "They're going to be yanking you around like a pork shoulder in there, so I'd like to apologize in advance". His name was Al. He seemed nice.
I actually had a dream under some portion of the anesthesia, and Brooke later told me this was unusual. It was a very mundane dream - just thinking about how soon Robby would be able to come and pick me up - but I didn't think people had dreams when they were drugged, so that struck me as odd. People ask you questions when you're coming out of that stuff, and it's kind of cool because your brain and your mouth are functioning well enough to ANSWER them, but you can't open your eyes or feel the rest of your body yet, and the whole conversation sounds like it's happening in the next room.
The chick who had to train me to use the crutches was another perky blonde. Apparently, Mt. Sinai is knee deep in schicksas. The thing about crutches is that you probably blow out more muscles trying to use them than you blew out hurting yourself in the first place. And, later, when I got back home to my one-bedroom apartment, they were not only a total liability but a potential cause of death and dismemberment, so I chucked them and just steadied myself on the furniture. Later I realized I had also trashed my abs because my doc had said something about "going up the stair on your tush" but, of course, there was no mention of the strategy of actually getting back up off the floor again. Hilarity ensued.
Poor Robby had to help me get back home. He was a rock star getting my fat ass up the stairs, but the worst part for him was the actual cab ride up to the hood, because he gets carsick in taxicabs. In fact, about six minutes into the ride, when Mr. Singh was driving two-footed through start-and-stop traffic, I basically had to shout that he had to try a little harder for a smooth ride, because first my friend was going to throw up, and then I was going to throw up when I saw him throw up, and Mr. Singh was going to have a back seat full of ralph.
Now that I've had the experience of being treated in a well-run and upscale hospital, it makes me really sad that my Mom's doctors practice out of Jersey, because she's got a lot more wrong with her, being 76, than I've got at 47, and I'd love to have her get over her New-York-o-phobia and agree to come if anything else goes wrong with her. But Mt. Sinai has money poured into it from all over the place, and in this country we're all pretty much at the mercy of the money pourers. St. Vincent's Hospital down in the village is downscaling as we speak, and the people who live in that area aren't going to be afforded the opportunity to support their local hospital - because the hospital owes money to TD Bank and several others, and that bank (which, by the way, works very hard to make itself appear like a "neighborhood bank") has decided that getting it's money is more important than allowing a hospital to run. The tiny hospital that were some of the first responders during the AIDS crisis in the 1980's. The tiny hospital that overflowed with people seeking treatment for trauma after 9/11. Gone. Why? Because it couldn't turn a profit. Or what a hospital recognizes as a profit, which is a minimal loss. Ironically, St. Vincent's is the only Catholic hospital left in NYC, so one wonders why the Pope isn't coughing up some dough. Maybe he's too busy apologizing for those Hitler Youth rallies he went to as a kid.
My knee is feeling much better, by the way. I was able to pop up and down the stairs today, only three days after surgery. I hope I will continue, as I get better and back up to speed, about where the things I consume come from - how far away they are made, and whether or not small shops will experience a renaissance, as President Obama promises, or whether they will continue to disappear - even from Inwood. We derive meaning in our lives from the relationships we have. Corporations are trying their best to destroy the sources of meaning in our lives. Do we have an alternative, therefore, to the hospital corporation? Gotta grill Kelvin on this one - he works for a healthcare-related not-for-profit. And Joann of course - she works in a hosp-corp in Maine. I need to get some insights.
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