Attending a Wedding in Korea

While I was stationed at Camp Humphreys, South Korea, I had the honor of attending a Korean Wedding. Several of the members of my unit had Korean wives and Bob Johnson’s wife, Yong-Su was from a village not too far from the Camp. Yong-Su’s sister was having her public wedding ceremony and I was invited to come along and enjoy the festivities. There were five of us in out little group. Dave McMahon and his Korean wife (I can’t remember her name) Bob, Yong-Su and myself. Dave was the videographer for the event (videotaping weddings was just becoming a trend.) and I tagged along as a guest of the Bride’s family. Dave, Bob and I were all decked out in our dress blue army uniforms.

It was about a ninety-minute drive to the village and we arrived at the town wedding hall where the event was being held. It was late morning and when we arrived, lunch was being served to guests in the great hall downstairs. I was taken aback by the size of the crowd, it seemed that everyone in the village was there. Easily 300, maybe more guests were seated at long tables with bench seats and caterers were serving them lunch. Bob and Yong-Su went to sit with the family, Dave, his wife and I found seats at a table along the far side of the building. The food was typical Korean fare (Stir-fried vegetables, fried meats, seafood and of course rice in many presentations.) and there was plenty of it along with several options of spirits. Dave was drinking Makli, which appeared to me to be dirty river water, sticks included. Dave raved about it, but I declined and drank water since we were in dress uniform and the day was already heating up. There were ceiling fans, but no air conditioning so I was sweating already.

After lunch, it was time for everyone to visit the bride in her rented pearl beaded gown. This requires a bit of explanation I think, so let me set up the situation. Yong-Su’s family was a blue-collar, working-class family. By local standards they were doing well, but far from well to do. Her sister and brother-in-law had been married in a civil ceremony and saved their coins for seven years to pay for this public spectacle. (They had three children by the time they had enough money saved.) Hence the rented hall, catering and rented dress. (The dress value was over $8,000 in 1990, hence only rented.) This was a public ceremony to show everyone they had the means to have the wedding. (This was based on conversations with Dave, Bob and Yon-Su, and may not be representative of Korean culture in general, just the small part I witnessed.)

The procession of people visiting the bride and giving her cash wedding presents in her alcove on the second floor continued until early afternoon when it was time for the wedding ceremony. The ceremony was in a large hall on the 2nd floor (half the size of the downstairs hall) and it was packed to capacity. It was standing room only in the back, which was nice as I was standing near a balcony door trying to get any breeze I could find in the heat. It was a western style Christian ceremony conducted in the Korean language so I couldn’t tell you what the officiant said or give real details on the text of the ceremony. It lasted well over an hour and finally it ended.

Once the bride and groom exited the hall, the guests filed the out and back to the hall downstairs for more food and drinks and the reception. Meanwhile, the bride and groom changed into the traditional hanbok, a traditional Korean dress specially designed for the ceremony. Then they were sequestered in a small area draped in silk where the kunbere ceremony was held. The Korean ceremony represented thousands of years of tradition and was private for the bride and groom.

Eventually, the bride and groom re-appeared and were seated at a long low family table in the front of the hall on a dias. It seated about 30 or so and Dave, Bob, Yong-Su and I were all seated with the immediate family this time. I ended up seated between two of the bride’s younger brothers. I was at a loss for much of the conversation as I spoke no Korean a and only Yong-Su and my army mates spoke English. Yong-Su was our translator and I only had a clue about what she translated, which was I’d say less than a tenth of the conversations that were going on. Mostly I was eating and some drinking while everyone else was talking around me.

After the ceremonies, there was a slow departure of everyone but the immediate family at the table. I was slow to notice this as I was seated facing away from the main seating area and because I was becoming occupied at the table. In the process of everyone trying to get to know the Americans at the table, I was asked: “How many sons do you have?” I replied that I had three sons and immediately my status at the table soared to incredible heights. Now it appeared, it was time to challenge the manliness of this incredible American stud.

I was politely informed that it was customary that if you wanted a refill of your drink, you poured a drink for the person seated adjacent to you. I was seated between Yong-su’s brothers and one of them had poured me a shot of Soju, so I in return poured him a shot. No big deal. (Soju is a rice whiskey akin to panther sweat. It takes about 4 shots to get seriously polluted.) After pouring his shot, he signaled “cheers” and we both kicked our drinks back. Then the other brother repeated this dance, and I kicked back another shot. My father taught me well, that if you are going to be drinking, to eat well too. Booze and an empty stomach are a bad combination, so I had been taking every opportunity that came along to put on the feedbag. It quickly became evident that the plan was to get me hammered.

I’ve never been a small person and I have been 200+pounds since the eighth grade. These brothers may have matched my weight together. I decided if they were going to get me hammered, I was going to return the favor. If one of them poured me a shot, I poured them both one. Shot for shot they didn’t stand a chance with me. Then they tried just putting the glass up and taking a sip while I drank the whole shot. I made a big production and animated that if I kicked back my shot, they had to kick back theirs. After I called them out, everyone was watching the show and I had peer pressure on my side as they tried to outdrink the stud. After 5 shots, I was wobbly but still eating, the brothers were leaning against me dozing lightly.

Eventually, the wedding hall staff wanted to go home. They had cleaned up, put all the leftover food in buckets and we were shooed out of the building to the parking lot. There seemed to be no real plan after that point as I remember we spent a long time in the parking lot, talking, eating out of some of the buckets and of course the Soju was still flowing. Eventually, the party dwindled down to about 10 and we drove down the road to the bride’s house. (This part may seem a bit disjointed, but I was pretty well smashed and this is what I could piece together after I sobered up.) Dave’s Korean wife was now our driver as she was pregnant and was the only sober one in our group.

At the house, the men congregated in the kitchen, the women in the family room. There was a TV on in each room and I think we were playing poker while the ladies did whatever. I can remember the brothers again trying vainly to out drink me resulting in them laying passed out on the floor. I was wobbly, but still upright for the most part and successfully managed to find the toilet. (You entered it from outside, that is all I really recall.) And finally, Dave’s wife corralled Dave, Bob, Yong-Su and I and convinced us we needed to go back to base.

I woke up the next day with a terrible hangover, but memories of another interesting adventure in Korea.

Housing inspector

During my army service I did a lot of things, and one of the more interesting ones was a housing inspector for post quarters in Fort Richardson, AK. I’d recently been promoted to Sergeant (E-5) and this was a problem for the Battalion S-1 (Personnel office) as they had no slot for me to be assigned into. The Battalion Headquarters & Headquarters Battery (HHB) had a more fluid organization and I was temporarily assigned as an aide to the Battalion Command Sergeant Major (CSM). The CSM is the most senior (Non-Commissioned Officer aka Sergeant) NCO in the battalion. He is the person that makes sure that the desires and directives of the Battalion Commander are carried out. In garrison, one of these tasks was to ensure that the assigned area of post enlisted housing was maintained to standards. While working as his aide, this was my primary duty when we were not deployed.

I think this tasking was one of the turning points in the way I reacted to situations in my life. Up until the time I entered the military, I had always been plagued with self-doubt and a lack of confidence. But as I moved up in the military, I started learning a lot about myself and how I was seen by others in the military. If you have ever had self-confidence issues, you know that every time you something, you have doubts about it. Is this the right decision? Will my boss like this? This kind of thoughts can consume your confidence and paralyze your decision-making processes.

I entered active duty with 6-years’ service credit for my time in the National Guard, and this allowed me to rise up in the active duty enlisted ranks much faster than normal and arriving at Sergeant with only 18 months of active duty time. This speedy rise also afforded me a look at how my chain-of-command looked at my performance and was part of my realization that my personal standards were higher than those I was being evaluated with, and as long as I met my own personal standards, my life in the military would go pretty well.

Anyone who has lived in post housing knows that there are post policies that are to be followed about maintaining the quarters (Mow your grass, trim the shrubs, keep the place neat and tidy). Other regulations have to do with following safety guidelines and even common-sense directives (Don’t have a charcoal grill against the building while having a cookout, etc.).  The job is similar to dealing with the management at an apartment complex of condominium. There are also some differences.

Being a very junior NCO, one of the things I had to deal with was more senior NCOs who felt that I could either be intimidated by their rank and experience or they thought that I was naive about how their rank and position applied when I was doing my job. I recall one such interaction pretty vividly.
One major safety issue was the storage of gasoline operated machinery in or near the buildings. In this case, a motorcycle that was parked and tarped on the front porch of the building. The regulation was precise and clear. Each quarters unit had an assigned parking space (only one, parking was at a premium) and if you had a motorcycle, it was to be parked crossways at the front of the space next to the sidewalk allowing you to park your car in the same space. A Staff Sergeant (SSG) lived in these quarters took exception for my giving him a notice that he was in violation of regulations and that he had 24 hours to resolve the issue.

He then proceeded to inform me that I had no authority over him as he out-ranked me and wasn’t in my chain-of-command. I listened patiently to his diatribe and smiled and told him that was fine, he didn’t have to do anything that I said. I also reminded him that I was working on behalf of my Battalion Command Sergeant Major and I was sure he’d enjoy having a discussion with the Staff Sergeant’s CSM later that day and I walked away. Mysteriously, within an hour, the motorcycle had moved to its assigned location, so much for his bluff and bluster.

Since the aide to the Command Sergeant Major was a make-work position that the Battalion created just to slot me somewhere until a TO&E (Table of Organization and Equipment) position could be found for me to be formally assigned to fill. I only worked that position for about two months before I was re-assigned to Headquarters and Headquarters Company (HHC) 5-327 Infantry as a Sergeant in the Motor Pool. Housing inspector was a fun little job, but I was glad to get back to some real work.

Dealing with the car

Having the wife’s car totaled and being laid up after a knee replacement is not a fun situation. My wife was lucky and only received minor injuries and some unwanted trauma in her life, how did we know replacing the car would be more traumatic?

Once we were informed the car was totaled, we made what we thought was a good decision and went back to our dealer to get a replacement. I mean we’d just bought a car there six months ago so this one should be a breeze, right? Well, not so much. I think a lot of this started off with some poor assumptions on my part (I’ll admit, I doubt I was thinking super clear as I was still pretty uncomfortable from the knee replacement.) and there were miscommunications with the dealership too. This should have been pretty easy. It turned out to be: Complicated.

My first failed assumption was; Hey, I’m an existing customer, you should have all my information and realize I’m not some yahoo off the street. Seems between the time we bought the last car and this attempt; they had changed over to a fully computerized system and all the paper records were in archives somewhere away from the dealership. The original purchase had gone well with the exception of my Report of Military Service (DD214). They needed a copy of the document and I don’t carry a DD214 copy on me, so I needed to email it to them.  It took about a week back and forth because, I don’t know, and when they finally got the email, they said the scan was too faint to read. We finally just hand carried a copy to them.

I had also purchased a prepaid maintenance plan with the car. Again, making the assumption that this could just be transferred to the new car seemed logical, and the Sales Manager at the moment told me it would be no problem.  My failure was to get that in writing. That came up a bit later.

My last screw up was not insisting on being assisted by an experienced salesman. Ali, the kid we ended up with was all enthusiasm, but he had no experience with how the processes worked so he was as much in the dark about the processes at the dealership as we were. Things were complicated by the fact that there was not a car on the lot that met our needs. This meant one on the incoming cars would be tagged for us and that was fine. We couldn’t buy the new car until we had the insurance payment and we expected that to take a couple of weeks. We didn’t need the car immediately as I wasn’t going back to work for a month anyway. That first day, we spent about 2 hours trying to get everything front loaded so when the car arrived, it would be simple. Again, great concept, but it didn’t execute well.

We were given expectation of 3 to 4 weeks for the car to arrive (It was in shipment from Korea) and we were fine with that. Someone at the dealership apparently was a bit more antsy about getting me a new car and they found another Sonata hybrid at a sister dealership and had it driven in to Round Rock. We got a call after 10 days saying your car is her, come and get it. Having learned a long time ago, that you often cannot get things done over the phone, we agreed to come in that afternoon to talk about it. I had made it clear early in the process that nothing was going to happen before I had the insurance money in hand, but that doesn’t stop some sales managers.

Ali, the salesman, had full confidence in us coming in to buy, but apparently the sales manager on duty was concerned as we had nothing in writing on this new car. We show up that afternoon and look at the car, and we agree that it will do. This is when Ali asks us for a post-dated check to hold the car. I’m already irritated with having been called in early when we’d agreed to 3 or 4 weeks (which would have given us time to collect on the other car) and this really put me off. I told Ali to get the sales manager. The Sales Manager comes trotting out (not the same one I’d talked to 10 days ago of course) and starts giving all kinds of excuses as to why they need some monetary tool (post-dated check, credit card etc.) to hold this car until we can buy it. I told him, he was free to sell the one they had and we could order another and then he goes on about how they’d busted tail to get this one there. At this point, I just sat back and said: “Get me the General Manager.” He seemed taken a bit aback and trotted off to the office. Apparently, somewhere in the office a bit of clarity emerged and all of a sudden holding this car for a week or two was no problem. Leaving that afternoon, Anna and I discussed going through another dealer, but we decided that we were likely over most of the bumps in the process. Alas, we were not.

While the dealership was a pain in this process, USAA (My auto insurance provider) was such a divergent difference. The day after I had the discussion with the Hyundai dealer, they messaged me that the payoff balance had been transmitted to my bank. Knowing that even an electronically transmitted draft is not immediately accessible, I patiently waited until I could confirm with my bank that the draft had cleared and I had the money available in my checking account. It also worked out that my eldest son and his wife flew in to visit and help with my spirits and this was a nice distraction. Based on our schedule for visiting and such, we setup with the dealer to pick up the car on Thursday.

We arrived at the dealer at the appointed time (10 AM) and figured we should be out in an hour or so and head to lunch. Boy, I was an optimist. This is when I learned that we were essentially starting from scratch. Everything was all computer driven and of course all our information was transferred into the system in the change-over. Being computerized, it was supposed to be faster, I would debate that. This was when I also learned that the pre-paid maintenance couldn’t be transferred, it had to be refunded. The refund had to come from corporate and so we’d have to buy it again on this car and wait for the check. This is also the point where I am again asked for my DD214, even though I have the disabled veteran plates in hand to put on the car. The finance manager was trying to be helpful but he’d been sandbagged by all the previous crap and I was losing patience.

There were some bright spots in the process, we actually got a better financing rate (it is amazing what you can do with an 857 FICO score) and the computerized paperwork process was kinda neat (touch screen LCD built into his desk) and so we got through endless paperwork electronically. Then were ran into the mailing address quagmire. It seems their system had no option for a mailing address different from the street address. This was problematic for us as our mail goes to a PO box and any postal mail sent to my street address, by post office policy, was returned to sender. We explained this in detail to the finance manager who told me they, by law, must write up everything to the physical address. We ended up with an empty assurance from the finance manager that he’ll make sure that the mailing address for everything is updated (especially with the finance company) to avoid any problems. Finally, at 1 PM, Anna drove off in her new car.

I got an email from Ali about needing another copy of the DD214, and I dutifully replied almost immediately with a very clear copy of the document that I’d printed off during the 1st encounter with the dealership. I had assumed this was a done deal until a couple of weeks later when the dealership office was again calling for the missing document. I returned to work by this time and I confirmed that I’d sent the email and it had not been rejected by the email server for the dealer. This left Ali as the glitch in the matrix. Ali had left car sales for greener pastures and of course no one had access to his dealership email. Anna said screw it and just drove over with a copy. A couple days later I got a check from the dealership and expected it to be the refund for the maintenance plan. Instead, it was the difference between what they charged and what my vehicle tag transfer fee cost at the clerks’ office. This prompted me to stop by and talk to my favorite finance manager (Cory) and it was at that moment, (while he was looking up the refund check) that I learned about a $50 fee and 13% proration of the refund. This just wasn’t going to fly. Lucky for Cory a senior sales manager was there and calmer heads prevailed, I didn’t get the money back. Instead, I got an upgrade on the service plan worth more than they were screwing me for (They still made a profit, but it was something I could take home to the wife). Another issue was the mailing address. We hadn’t received anything from the lender about the new auto loan. We’d gotten two copies of the payoff of the previous loan, but nothing on the new one (the same company was used). Anna got proactive and called them and of course they had our street address listed as our mailing address. (I wonder why the mail kept coming back?) She had updated the address information and I had an agreement to check with Cory in a week or so.

Seventeen days elapsed and I was so unsurprised that I hadn’t heard squat from Cory. I sent him an email and ask “What the F***” (WTF)? I also made a reminder with myself to stop by his office after work. Cory called me around noon, and let me know he’d gotten the email and was looking into where the check was at. I told him that was fine and I’d be there about 4:30 and we could talk. (This was about June 7th or so.) I arrived and he was busy on the phone, so I amused myself for the next 40 minutes or so getting popcorn, using the bathroom and getting a bottle of water from their fridge. Finally, he came looking for me and we scurried off to his office. The phone calls he had been making were about my refund check. It seemed that the check had been mailed May 30th, to the lender. The last information the dealer had was that there was an active lien against the car so any refunds were sent to the lender. Apparently, my presenting them with a totaled statement from my insurance company didn’t trigger them to ask if I’d paid off the loan. Cory had also called the lender and determined that they would either send us a check or apply the check from the dealer to the outstanding balance, and that would be our choice. He also learned that we had already updated the mailing address. I did manage to leave with the paperwork validating the service plan was updated and at this point I declared the new car purchase process complete. The refund check from the lender did arrive four days later.

90 Days have passed

It has been 90 days since the knee replacement surgery and I have to admit it has been a resounding success. The first two weeks home were challenging as I expected, but with my wife Anna’s support, it all came together. I had planned on 2 weeks in a walker, 2 weeks using a crutch and 2 weeks on a cane, but things progress faster than I anticipated. A lot of that was Anna’s constant encouragement for me to do my Physical Therapy twice a day whether I felt like doing it or not. (I did it.)

Things got a bit more complicated my 6th day home. Anna and I had just returned from Physical Therapy in Temple and we’d just gotten me into the house and comfortable on the couch. Anna decided to take her car to the Post Office just because we hadn’t been driving it much since the surgery and she wanted to exercise it a bit. That didn’t go quite as planned. Two blocks from the Post Office a young man made a left turn across two lanes on Main Street trying to turn into a Shell station when he hit Anna broadside in the driver’s side doors. While the accident was unfortunate, God was smiling upon her as the Coupland Fire & Rescue squad were fueling their truck at the Shell station and she had EMS response in 15 seconds. Anna was shaken up and some glass cuts and bumps and bruises, but she was fairly intact. She texted me to call her and she told me in a halting voice about the accident and that the car was totaled. I made some calls and got ahold of our pastor (Pastor Cela) who followed the ambulance to the hospital and sat with Anna until she was released.

The result was her new Sonata Hybrid (1700 miles, exactly) was totaled and now it was time for “Games with Insurance Companies” while I was recuperating and Anna was stuck with being the only person capable of driving while dealing with car crash trauma. We spent a lot of time the next two weeks dealing with one thing then another with first the insurance companies and then the Hyundai dealer. The car was officially totaled about a week after the accident and once that was setup, we started working with the Dealer for a replacement car. While all this was going on, so was my recuperation. I transitioned from the walker to a crutch the day after the accident. My therapist (Diane) was both surprised and impressed with my progress. When I first started outpatient rehab, she started by telling me to do two laps around the clinic area in my walker to get warmed up. I pointed out that I’d walked in from the parking lot and I thought I was pretty warmed up already. It was at this point where she started smiling every time I came into her clinic.

Knee rehab is hard work. But is just work and you have to just do it if you want to get better. One of my first love/hate relationships in Outpatient Therapy was the Schwinn Aerodyne stationary bicycle. Even with the seat set on the 10th setting, I could not get my left foot over the top of the arc trying to pedal the damn thing. The first couple of days of therapy in the clinic, I’d just rock back and forth, using my good leg to push the pedal first forward then back as far as the left leg knee bend would allow. Finally, the third day, I was able to get the left foot over the top 3 times pedaling backwards. I was grinding my teeth, seeing stars, my knee was on fire and my sciatica was acting up too, but I pushed through it. Two days later, I managed to get it over the top 13 times, and after another two days, 60 full revolutions. This was only one, of about 5 exercises we’d do during an outpatient visit, but is was one I could do solo allowing her time to work with inpatients while I was there. The other exercises were painful and uncomfortable, but you become accustomed to pushing up to the pain point, and then a little further, to make progress in the recovery. About this time, Diane also introduced me to the stairway to the main floor in the back of the clinic. Just more fun.

Very quickly we fell into a routine where I’d come in and get on the Aerodyne and pedal for 15 minutes. The day after I did 60 revolutions backwards, she had me pedal forwards (It is harder, trust me) and she also dropped the seat an inch. I saw stars and it took about 5 minutes to get over the top the first time, but at this point I really started seeing progress in the range of motion of the knee. I graduated from outpatient therapy after only 3 and a half weeks when I had a passive bend (Unassisted) of 110 degrees. By this time, I was also walking with a cane and about a week later I retired the cane to just walk on my own. I still use the cane, but only when playing disc golf and walking across rough terrain.

On Friday, May 3rd, I saw my orthopedist (Dr. Graham) for my final visit and release to return to work. He was both impressed with the progress I was making in therapy (I walked up 5 flights of stairs to the clinic) and the incision had healed nicely. In his opinion I was at 6 weeks where most people were at about 9 or 10 and I was happy with his appreciation of my hard work. I returned to work on May 6th (the anniversary of the explosion of the Hindenburg Zeppelin in 1937) which seemed appropriate to me. My boss was surprised because he was thinking I’d be out for another week. My return to work was otherwise uneventful and I soon fell back into my morning swim workout routine and in the afternoons, if I wasn’t playing disc golf, I was at the gym on the stationary bicycle for 30 minutes on my way home.

The most satisfying part of the knee rehab is when you start to do things you couldn’t do before the surgery, or couldn’t do without thought and preparation. Sitting on the pot for example. The last year before the surgery, most days, just sitting on the toilet took some planning. I needed room to stretch out my left leg (minimal knee bend) and I needed a counter or a hand rail to hold on to while lowering myself down. Getting up was the reverse. At work, it could be a real challenge in a regular stall just sitting and standing. I was at about 7 weeks post op, when I realized I was pretty much just sitting down now without much thought. (Angels sing.) It is little things. Getting up in the morning and being halfway across the house when you realize that you hadn’t thought about the left knee, you just walked across the house. Mowing the grass, getting up and down off the floor, getting into bed even, all are so much better. I can get up late and still get out of the house in 30 minutes if I really need to get moving. I’d say most days now, I spend less than 10% of the day having any notice of the knee, and that is nice.

The knee doesn’t feel “normal” per se. But it feels like my “new normal”. It is hard to describe clearly, but an artificial knee doesn’t feel exactly like a natural knee and I’m not sure if it ever will. It doesn’t hurt generally (there is still plenty of natural tissue around the knee) and I learned that it isn’t “bullet proof” by straining a ligament or two. What I can say is the intense burning fire pain I had endured, especially after exercise, is gone. Now that most the swelling has gone down; the kneecap is more mobile and I continue to gain a degree or two range of motion every week. Sometimes the knee has an audible click and sometimes I notice a motion in the knee that doesn’t match the other. All that is minor stuff and as I continue on my rehab, they seem to get better and I continue to adjust to my “New Normal”.

It is time to get up and go do my morning swim. I’ll try and post soon more about fun with insurance and car dealers.

Saying goodbye to Uncle Buddy

Leonard Marvin (Buddy) Kempf was my father’s older brother (Eight years older) and he passed away May 27, 2005, almost 4 years after my father died. He was seventy-nine. He was cremated and he was later interred at Arlington National Cemetery (in the Columbarium) that October. Buddy was the last surviving member of my father’s generation outliving his younger brother and older sister (Doris).

After World War II was over, he went to college on the GI Bill and became a safety engineer. Uncle Buddy had moved away from our hometown in 1955 (before I was born in 1958) and I only knew him and his family from sporadic visits he made to my grandparents in Jeffersonville, Indiana. I remember Buddy as an articulate and well-educated speaker that as a you child I found to be somewhat of a bore. (I was the second youngest of all the grandchildren, only Buddy’s daughter Lydia was younger.) He was a safety engineer and he was a contributor to may safety devices we all take for granted now including motorcycle helmets and seat belts in your car. I admit, even now, safety is a dry subject to talk about.

My uncle served in the Navy during World War II in 1944 & 1945 as a submarine sonar operator aboard the USS Picuda (SS-382) a Balao class diesel-electric submarine in the Pacific theater. The Picuda completed six war patrols during the war and received six battle stars for World War II service. And I only learned of this when I found out that he was to be interred at Arlington in the fall after his death. Since then I was able to read some letters he had written about his experiences during the war and his description of patrolling off the Japan and China coasts.

My last interaction with my uncle was in 2001 when I took him to the airport after my father’s funeral. I do regret that I could have done more to communicate with him and learn more about him while he was alive. I think that is one lesson I have learned as I age, if you want to be with or interact with someone, just do it. You may not get the opportunity later on.

When we learned that Buddy was being interred in Arlington, my brother Richard and I coordinated with our cousins (four of Buddy’s five children), to attend the funeral. It also worked out that my son Kevin and his Wife Stephanie, who lived in Boston could also make the trip to Arlington to pay final respects. Richard and I drove from our homes in Tennessee to Middleton, Virginia where we spent the night and then we met up with the rest of the family at the Arlington welcome center. Arlington lays to rest 27 to 30 veterans each weekday with full military honors. I was impressed, but unsurprised with the efficiency of their process and proud of the level of respect every veteran is afforded there. There are four reception areas in the lower level and they cycle four families and hour, (one family, per room, per hour) through the funeral process all day long. It is a practiced and well-orchestrated process. During this reception and information session, we learned that uncle Buddy was a member of the U.S. Submarine Veterans of World War II. When any WWII submariner is interred in Arlington, they have representatives at the funeral. We met two of these gentlemen, and they were a treasure trove of information on what life was like in these ships during the war. It did cause me to stop and wonder how that will be addressed once there are no members that are able to be there, it was a somber thought.

I’m going to go into a bit of a history lesson here as I believe it is appropriate and it gave me a better background to understand the hardships our submariners endured. These veteran sailors there were telling us about what their life was like on board and it was absolutely fascinating. One topic that is always mentioned is food. These subs had fuel and stores to allow for them to cruise for 8 to 10 weeks without resupply. That came at quite a cost with both food variety and quality though. Fresh foods like salad, vegetables, dairy and fruit were exhausted buy the third or fourth day away from port as their capability to store such items was very limited. This meant that for 7 to 9 weeks, they ate nothing but canned and reconstituted dry goods. I can see where that got old fast knowing my experience with army rations when in a war zone. We had access to additional supplies, they had only what they left port with in the ship.

That brings up another item that I learned, how and where they stored all those canned and dried goods. Space is at a premium on submarines and I never understood how they could possibly store all the food on board. I mean the space was so limited that the sailors had to hot rack. (When you got out of your bunk, someone else got in it to sleep.) no space was wasted. The answer to the storage issue was fairly simple, they stacked all the food stores on the floor. At least one layer on every flat surface and in some areas, like the forward torpedo room, more than one layer. They literally walked on their chow. Spaces not needed immediately, like one of the shower areas in the torpedo room were also filled along with every nook and cranny that could possibly accommodate food was filled and these stores lashed down to secure them. I’ll also take a moment to remind you that this ship was tight quarters to begin with. I was able to tour the USS Pampanito (SS-383) which was the next ship in the Balao class and very similar to the USS Picuda. The ship is a little over 300 feet long and less than 30 feet wide on the exterior and much smaller dimensions inside.

The mess for instance, had seating for about 20 people and was about the size of a small bedroom. The 1st person seated was the last person out as when others sat down, the was no room to move. The galley kitchen was about the size of a bathroom in your house. Zero wasted space. Another consideration was that fresh water was limited, so the showers were infrequent. I can’t imagine that things smelled fresh in these tight quarters. I can see where duty on deck as a spotter was valued just to be outside in fresh air, regardless of how dreadfully boring it had to be just staring at the open sea. Thus, ends the short history lesson.

Back to the reception/assembly area for our family. Our funeral coordinator was very good about keeping us informed on the schedule and how the funeral would proceed. We then went outside and assembled into a small convoy to the memorial site near the Columbarium interment location. It was a sweltering 95 degrees and a beautify cloudless afternoon, not a great day for me to be standing in the sun in a navy-blue suit but I managed. The honor guard was just as perfect in their execution as you would expect at Arlington, and I barely held my emotions in check during the flag fold, Taps and the rifle salute. To this day, Taps is the most mournful song I can think of and brings to me an overwhelming feeling of emotion that I can barely describe. The ceremony concluded with a short walk to the actual columbarium location where Buddy’s ashes were laid to rest.

Later that evening, the family met for a celebration dinner for Buddy at the Fort Myers Officer’s Club, one of Buddy’s favorite places to dine. I was a wonderful time with several stories of Buddy and our remembrances of him.  After the dinner, my brother and I said our goodbyes and headed back to our motel in Middleton and the end of a quite long but incredible day.

Forty (40) days, the countdown continues.

It has been a week since the last post and it has gone well, I am pleased with the progress that I have achieved. I completed my follow up visit with VA Urology and I was cleared by the clinic to have my knee surgery. (There was much rejoicing!) I was pretty confident that the FlowMax was working well, but is was nice to clear that obstacle and continue on with the process of getting this much needed knee replacement. Most days are tolerable, but more often at the end of the day, I cannot wait to get out of the knee brace and try to find some sort of comfortable position.

I have been continuing my preparation at work for my leave of absence. With the last knee replacement, I was on medical leave of absence for 6 weeks and I hope to have about the same recovery period this time. (I may be optimistic, we shall see.) One task I was able to check off was to coordinate with the disability management office for my leave of absence. Last time, this was complicated and a bit convoluted as there are actually two leaves, both taken together. This time, I was relieved to learn that my application for disability will automatically trigger my FMLA and both are now managed by the same case worker. (YAY!) I had called for asking information and was informed I could go ahead and get my leave scheduled and now the paperwork is on its way to me, arriving in two working days or so. It is comforting to know that I will not be losing any pay during this work outage. Between personal days (I have to take five days of personal time or vacation before leave of absence starts.) and the short-term disability, I will draw full pay the full time during my recovery.  One less thing to worry about and one more thing off the list of things to do before surgery.

I’m working off some of my pending tasks at work so I do not have to hand them off to my teammate for him to manage while I am gone. We both cover the same overall area of expertise, but there are several tasks I have been the project lead on or solo worker on, that I wanted to finish up before I walk away from work for a month or two. Last week, I was able to finish one of these and the task was setup as a self-service tool that users can use to submit a request to our logistics team when they need to resolve sending a kit to a customer.

I have been coordinating with my eldest son and his wife to come visit in April during my convalescence and we can celebrate our anniversaries. (My 40th, their 4th?) I think I have a plan worked out and we shall get the details coordinated and plane tickets purchased while the price is still acceptable. (Two round trip tickets for less than $800.00.) The wife and I both think that having some of the kids around will be a good thing to help me keep my spirits up while recovering. Since our anniversaries are less than a week apart, we try to celebrate them together when we can.

Forty-Nine (49) Days and Counting

In forty-nine days, I’m scheduled for my twelfth surgery, a total knee replacement (TKR) of my left knee. I’m looking forward to this with both great anticipation and with the usual anxiety about having any surgery. Let’s face it, I’m six decades old now and I’m not recovering from things the way I used to bounce back. Mostly though, I just want to get the surgery over and get on with my life.

Overall, my wife and I are in a pretty good place in life. I have a great job and I’ve been promoted twice since arriving in Texas in July 2016. We are not fond of Texas in general but the town of Taylor is a nice place to live and that makes it bearable. Unfortunately, about the time we arrived here was about the same time that my left knee started to become very problematic.

My initial left knee injury was pretty ironic as I tore the medial meniscus in it two weeks prior to having my partial knee replacement in my right knee. I succumbed to the most common way of injuring you knee, a flat-footed pivot, for me, it was getting into my car. (Sigh) That was nine years ago and between that injury and a couple other injuries (ACL and MCL tears) time and arthritis, the left knee is pretty well shot. I wear a brace daily and a lot of my activities are affected and or limited by what the knee can tolerate. The dual frustrations of the pain and limitations have been my motivation to get something done about it.

I decided to consult the Veterans Administration (VA) orthopedics clinic in December of 2016 where is was agreed upon immediately that I would benefit from having the surgery. There was only one problem, my weight. While getting the surgery is a bonus for my pain and discomfort, the VA Ortho clinic has guidelines they follow for elective TKR and the one I wasn’t meeting was my Body Mass Index (BMI) of below 35%. This became my first intermediate goal on some life change. The clinic staff let me know that I could get cortisone injections every four months as long as they were helpful and they also gave me a different knee brace to wear while exercising. I weighed about 300 lbs. at the time and I have spent the past two years working on my eating habits and developing an exercise program to slowly lose the excess weight I have gained in the past two decades. I left the Army weighing about 230 lbs., and I would like to get back to under 220 as a long-term goal.

In October 2018, I made my first intermediate goal getting and staying below 272 lbs., (35% BMI). This allowed me to schedule surgery for March 25, 2019 and begin pre-operative screening that the clinic also requires. On the surface, some of the screening seems odd until you look at the demographic of the average veteran that the VA sees for this type of surgery. As a group, we are not in the best of shape and many of us have limits on our routine medical care. VA medical care is needs based and is also dependent on your VA disability rating. It is a complicated process, but let’s just say some treatment is harder to get than others.

The pre-op screening process has included a VA dental exam. (Most veterans do not have routine dental care or dental insurance.) Periodontal disease is not unusual but is averse to any knee implant surgery as the exposing of the bone marrow is an avenue for infection and periodontal disease is one of the easiest routes for infection in the bloodstream. I passed with flying colors due to regular dental care and good insurance. I was interviewed at the Physical Therapy clinic to ensure that I was aware of what I was getting into and they confirmed that I was clear on the post-surgery therapy requirements. I had to show proficiency with a walker, we discussed the issue of stairs (I pointed out that we bought a garden entry home that is a ranch with no steps other than the two-inch step up through the doorway.) and that my wife was already making arrangements with the furniture to accommodate a walker,) The third of these initial screenings is the one that I had a small glitch on, Urology.

You get accustomed to seemingly weird instructions when you visit a new clinic, usually because no one bothers to give you the background on why you get the instruction. But, as a good soldier, I just follow instructions and I generally will learn as the need to know is determined. In this case, Urology said arrive at the appointment with a full bladder. Those familiar with the military medical system know the unofficial motto: “Hurry up, and wait.” Arriving at a new clinic was a concern, but I was glad to see I was called back just a few minutes after my appointment time. The technician was friendly and inquired if I had the requested full bladder. I replied that I did and was directed to go into this room and pee in the white bucket, then meet me in this room across the hall. The white bucket turned out to be a nifty little device that not only measured your urine output, but also the rate of flow and the duration.

After much relief, I went across the hall for the usual vital signs check then we went across the hall again for another test, an ultrasound. She just said to “butterfly my pants” and lay down on the table. The ultrasound determined I had 150 milliliters (ML) of urine left in my bladder (surprising her as I had peed 305 ML.) and I was told to zip up and go back to the waiting room until the doctor called me back. This too wasn’t unexpected.

About the time I was getting ready for the clinic visit, I’d come to the realization that I’d been putting off going to the doctor about my “old man pee” situation because it hadn’t become a severe problem. I’d say very slowly over the past decade I had noticed that I was having minor issues with having to go more often and sometimes very urgently only to have a hard time starting, but I’d never seriously thought about talking to someone about it. After what I had just experienced, I concluded that I likely had an enlarged prostate, which was quickly confirmed when I was called by the Urology Physician’s Assistant (PA). We had a very detailed discussion and I learned they had a very complete screening protocol that resulted in us spending about twenty minutes in a question and answer period about my urinary habits. Then it was across the hall to an exam room for the standard drop your trousers, external exam and digital rectal exam to check for prostatitis and enlargement. No prostate infection (I’d had one over 20 years ago, not fun) but further confirmation of the enlarged prostate. This is apparently present in better than fifty percent of senior males.

I was sent home with a provisional diagnosis of an enlarged prostate, a prescription for FlowMax to see if we could increase my urine flow, a follow-up appointment (next week) and a better understanding of why this was important to a knee replacement patient. During the surgery, you are catheterized and it is normally left in place a day or so post-surgery. The PA explained that with a swollen prostate, the concern is when the catheter is removed, the urethra may swell shut making urination impossible. Therefore, pre-operative treatment is recommended to ensure this issue does not occur. Lord only knows I so not need to make the recovery process any harder than it already will be, so I am glad they have developed these protocols. For what it is worth, FlowMax works for me. It is hard to tell how much you accommodate an issue until you have it treated and see positive results in a couple weeks. Trips to go pee, easily cut in half. Urgency issues almost completed abated. Side effects of the medication so far minimal and easily addressed. (Dizziness on standing is the most notable due to reduction of blood pressure.) The medication works well enough that I recommended it to others.

After my follow-up with Urology where I expect to be given a green light for surgery, then the next hurdle is the 7-appointment day a week and a half prior to surgery. These include:

• Chest X-Ray
• Labs
• Electrocardiograph (EKG)
• Anesthesiology
• Ortho Clinic
• Ortho Ward 

Appointments start at 8 A.M. and go through 2 P.M., it should be a fun filled day with lots of time sitting in waiting rooms and maybe two hours of actual productive time getting a test or briefing from someone.

One other fun facet of this, is that it is possible that the timeline for surgery could move up. If someone on the list ahead of me cancels due to health issues or such, they move people up who can accommodate the change in schedule. I volunteered, but as yet, nothing has changed for the original plan. I still have to coordinate both Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) to maintain my job while off work and Short-Term Disability (STD) to continue to get paid while off from work in recovery. You would think these would have one combined case worker, no such luck. I learned this with my last knee replacement and I am prepared for the bureaucratic nightmare that taking medical leave can be.

This winter has made playing disc golf (one of my main exercise activities) difficult due to the number of rain days where it is either raining or the courses locally are too wet to play. I’m hoping for some dry weather soon, but the ten-day forecast is not promising. We appear to be finished with cold weather for the most part and I expect we will do the standard Texas skip spring and jump directly to summer and 100-degree heat while I am convalescing.

I have been remiss in my regular writing in the past few months due to laziness and some lack of inspiration. While I am not especially inspired at the moment, I am trying to beat back the specter of laziness and get some of these thoughts (however random) jotted down before I forget again.
Other minor achievements since my last missive have included changes at work (a second promotion since moving to Texas) my job being transferred from one division to another and a new manager as a result. I retired the 2007 Pontiac G6, took my wife’s 2011 Hyundai Elantra and bought her a 2018 Hyundai Sonata Hybrid. There have been some trips to New York (wife went solo last April, we went together in September for my birthday.) and all the kids, daughters-in-law, girlfriend and granddaughter visited the first week of January for a late Christmas. I can truly say I was busy in January 2019 and too busy to write during their visit. No real excuse for no other posts though, just lazy.

I think I’ll wrap this up for now and see what thoughts I can get written down in the next week or so.