Thoughts about people that affected my life

During my school years, I was an average student at best. In a way, this is sad, as I learned later in life that I was more intelligent than I had realized. I really didn’t understand that a lot the issues I experienced in school were due to my lack of engagement. If an instuctor could arouse my interest, I would excel, but most of the time I just plodded along in class. The first teacher I encountered that got my attention was in fifth grade, Mrs. Beatty.

Fifth grade was tumultuous time for me as it was a grade school class relocated to the junior high school due to overcrowding in the elementary school. It was the only single teacher class in the building aside from the special education class. I think both groups felt a bit out of place. All my previous teachers were from the old guard of the elementary school. I’d known all of them since first grade. Mrs. Beatty was a new hire due to the expansion of the school, our town was growing.

This was a dramatic change for me. We were located in a different building, a new teacher and a new school year. Mrs. Beatty was at least twenty years younger than all my previous teachers who were peers with my grandmother. I’d say she was in her mid-thirties but she was conservatively dressed and always had her hair up in a well-maintained style. My strongest memory of her was that she taught differently. She was the first teacher I experienced that engaged us as individuals. She used a lot of self-paced individual learning tools in her class. She used new teaching methods. I excelled using some of these methods, others, like “New Math” and “Phonics” were a total loss for me.

I don’t have a lot of memories of her classes specifically, but I know that I also learned I had at least some talent in drawing (I had never really been inspired to draw anything original other than blueprints and grasshoppers though.) from an exercise she had use do drawing trees one afternoon on the school front lawn. Mostly I remember having a very inspiring reading program and reading book after book after book all year long. I gained my love for reading in her class.

In junior high school, I developed an interest in science. This was due in a large part to Mr. Biggs. Mr. Biggs was another new hire and the only younger teacher I had in sixth grade. He was engaging like Mrs. Beatty and also used some newer teaching ideas. The main one that comes to mind is that he demonstrated the best way to learn a subject is to teach it. While teaching us about insects, he teamed the class up in pairs and each pair of kids taught a small section of the insect chapter to the rest of the class. We created a quiz where I learned I could draw a pretty damn good grasshopper. Aside from my partner in the lesson, no one else believed I drew it everyone assumed the drawing was done by the teacher. The result of that classroom experience was a new-found love for science that has helped me to this day.

Then came high school and Freshman English. My instructor was Mr. Terry McCartin. Mr. McCartin was unlike any teacher I’d ever encountered. After the first day of class where he ensured he had your name spelled correctly, he never addressed you again by your first name. You were Miss Koenig, Mister Crum, but never Angela or Todd. Mr. McCartin was from Tell City, Indiana. He made it very clear that he was proud of Tell City and that Tell City was the place to be. I always wondered why he was in Sellersburg, but that was apparently another story.

It became apparent to me that I had not learned English grammar in my previous eight years of school. Mr. McCartin made quite an impression upon me while getting grammar through my thick skull. Why, because he made English grammar interesting. That in itself was quite an achievement. In previous English classes as my grade point average clearly indicated I’d only excelled in sleeping. Mr. McCartin used wit, engagement, competition and mnemonics as the tools of his trade. To this very day, I can diagram the seven basic sentence structures and rattle off the eight basic parts of speech. (Noun, Verb, Preposition, Pronoun, Adjective, Adverb, Conjunction and Interjection)

Mr. McCartin’s greatest claim to fame though was his love of the Rudyard Kipling poem, “Gunga Din”. The first day of the second six-week grading period, Mr. McCartin handed out the two-page poem and a third page that included unfamiliar idioms used in India during the British occupation and their definitions. Your grade for the entire six-week grading period was based on reciting the poem in class and defining the idioms. When you were ready, you just informed Mr. McCartin that you wanted to recite the poem. All class work stopped and you were escorted to the podium to perform your recitation. He taught regular class during this six-weeks but the your recitation of the poem was the basis of your grade.

For those of you that have not been blessed with the opportunity to read Mr. Kipling’s work, here is the poem from “Departmental Ditties and Ballads and Barrack-Room Ballads” (1919) pages 163-166:

You may talk o' gin and beer
When you're quartered safe out 'ere,
An' you're sent to penny-fights an' Aldershot it;
But when it comes to slaughter
You will do your work on water,
An' you'll lick the bloomin' boots of 'im that's got it.
Now in Injia's sunny clime,
Where I used to spend my time
A-servin' of 'Er Majesty the Queen,
Of all them black-faced crew
The finest man I knew
Was our regimental bhisti, Gunga Din.
He was "Din! Din! Din!
You limping lump o' brick-dust, Gunga Din!
Hi! slippery hitherao!
Water, get it! Panee lao!
You squigy-nosed old idol, Gunga Din."

The uniform 'e wore
Was nothin' much before,
An' rather less than 'arf o' that be'ind,
For a piece o' twisty rag
An' a goatskin water-bag
Was all the field-equipment e' could find.
When the sweatin' troop-train lay
In a sidin' through the day,
Where the 'eat would make your bloomin' eyebrows crawl,
We shouted "Harry By!"
Till our throats were bricky-dry,
Then we wopped 'im 'cause 'e couldn't serve us all.
It was "Din! Din! Din!
You 'eathen, where the mischief 'ave you been?
You put some juldee in it
Or I'll marrow you this minute
If you don't fill up my helmet, Gunga Din!

'E would dot an' carry one
Till the longest day was done
An' 'e didn't seem to know the use o' fear.
If we charged or broke or cut,
You could bet your bloomin' nut,
'E'd be waitin' fifty paces right flank rear.
With 'is mussick on 'is back,
'E would skip with our attack,
An' watch us till the bugles made "Retire,"
An' for all 'is dirty 'ide
'E was white, clear white, inside
When 'e went to tend the wounded under fire!
It was "Din! Din! Din!"
With the bullets kickin' dust-spots on the green.
When the cartridges ran out,
You could hear the front-files shout,
"Hi! ammunition-mules an' Gunga Din!"

I sha'n't forgit the night
When I dropped be'ind the fight
With a bullet where my belt plate should 'a' been.
I was chokin' mad with thirst,
An' the man that spied me first
Was our good old grinnin', gruntin' Gunga Din.
'E lifted up my 'ead,
An' he plugged me where I bled,
An' 'e guv me 'arf-a-pint o' water-green:
It was crawlin' and it stunk,
But of all the drinks I've drunk,
I'm gratefullest to one from Gunga Din.
It was "Din! Din! Din!"
'Ere's a beggar with a bullet through 'is spleen;
'E's chawin' up the ground,
An' 'e's kickin' all around:
For Gawd's sake git the water, Gunga Din!

'E carried me away
To where a dooli lay,
An' a bullet come an' drilled the beggar clean.
'E put me safe inside,
An' just before 'e died:
"I 'ope you liked your drink," sez Gunga Din.
So I'll meet 'im later on
At the place where 'e is gone—
Where it's always double drill and no canteen;
'E'll be squattin' on the coals,
Givin' drink to poor damned souls,
An' I'll get a swig in hell from Gunga Din!
Yes, Din! Din! Din!
You Lazarushian-leather Gunga Din!
Though I've belted you and flayed you,
By the living Gawd that made you,
You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din!

Memorizing that poem as you can see, was no simple chore. Then to recite that in class, well that was just terrifying. I wasn’t popular in school and I didn’t have any self-confidence, so I did what any good student would do, I put it off until the last minute. I mean literally, the last minute.

I didn’t even recite the poem in class. I caught Mr. McCartin in the hallway (During lunch I think.) and recited it to him in the hall. I got a D+ for my effort, but I got a grade, which was better than getting an F. Two years later I pulled a fast one on Mr. McCartin to make up for the terror that assignment gave me. When I learned my best friend, Greg Goostree, had Mr. McCartin for English, I set Mr. McCartin up.

I taught the poem to Greg during the first six weeks that year knowing it was the main teaching point of the second six weeks. Greg was unlike myself in just about every way. Where I was quiet and tried to blend in, Greg walked into a room like a Banty Rooster. Greg liked attention (especially from girls) and he also liked causing trouble. Mr. McCartin liked to make examples of people who caused trouble in class, these made for the perfect setup.

After he passed out the assignment to Greg’s class and discussed the process for getting your grade, Mr. McCartin went on with the regular classroom instruction. Greg took his time and read through the poem once (It was the first time he’d seen it in writing), then Greg raised his hand and told Mr. McCartin that he would like to recite the poem. Mr. McCartin had already knew that Greg was a smart-ass and he took this opportunity to make an example of this smartass, Mr. Goostree. After making a rather large production of Greg wanting to now recite the poem, the class was told to stop what they were doing and pay attention. He then ushered Greg to the podium, announced with great enthusiasm and sarcastic fanfare that Mr. Goostree was going to recite the poem and then he walked to the back of the classroom turned around. He told Greg to proceed and this is when Mr. McCartin’s world crashed a bit.

Greg recited the poem flawlessly! By the time he got through the first stanza, Mr. McCartin’s face started turning red. When Greg was finished reciting, he was fully flushed and furious. Greg had made him look like a fool. The class clown had just gotten an A+ ten-minutes into the grading period. Red-faced, Mr. McCartin gained the nickname “Cherry” after that incident.

Then came the Monday morning where Mr. McCartin didn’t show up for class. We knew something was up because Mr. McCartin NEVER MISSED CLASS! English was my first period and there wasn’t a substitute for the class that morning. This meant his absence was unplanned and the vice-principal watched the class until a substitute teacher was called in. Tuesday morning arrived and so did Mr. McCartin, but this was not going to be like any other class day.

He looked different. Mr. McCartin wasn’t wearing a tie. He ALWAYS wore a tie. Today, just a dress shirt with the collar open. Next, he told us not to bother with our books, that the day's class was a freebie. Then he hopped up on the front edge of his desk. Mr. McCartin was the master of decorum. You sat on chairs, never on a desk and he always was standing when he was speaking to the class, but not this day.

He told us about his weekend. He started by talking about how he was grading our Friday quizzes in his apartment. He lived in the Tree Top Apartments on the hills above New Albany, Indiana. He said that he had worked on our assignments through about 7PM and decided he wanted to go get something to eat. He wanted something not available in New Albany, so he drove across the river to Louisville, Kentucky. He’d eaten at Kingfish on downtown and he was heading home on main street when he stopped at a traffic light. A long-haired guy with a 45 caliber revolver opened his passenger door and jumped into his car. Mr. McCartin had been car-jacked. There was the standard give me all your money demand and the robber was clearly disappointed in the amount of cash Mr. McCartin had on hand. He was wanting more and, in a panic, Mr. McCartin mentioned he had more money at home. This is how the robber learned where Mr. McCartin lived.

The drive to his apartment was a little over ten minutes away. They stayed at the apartment until late Saturday morning. The robber determined there was nothing else to be gained there and he forced Mr. McCartin to go back to his car. Things had changed a bit, as the robber handcuffed Mr. McCartin to the passenger door and got behind the wheel. They drove south across the bridge into Kentucky and out into the Kentucky hills arriving at some remote location that afternoon. On the way, the robber used Mr. McCartin’s credit card for a tank of gas and some snacks.

The robber took this time and location to demonstrate his marksmanship ability with the pistol. Shooting some cans in a secluded area, proving the pistol was operational as well as his shooting capability, they returned to the car. The robber motioned him to the trunk and put Mr. McCartin in it. Mr. McCartin was just appreciative to be alive at this point and he admitted to he fell asleep from exhaustion. When he awoke, he was refreshed and determined to see if he could manage to escape.

It was dark, the trunk had no light, and he was trying to be very quiet to avoid alerting his captor that he was up to something. He found a tire iron and he began looking for a way to pry open the trunk. After several unsuccessful attempts, Mr. McCartin managed to get a bite, allowing him to start prying open the trunk lid while they are going down the road. Unfortunately, the robber heard him and pulled over to investigate. When he opened the trunk, Mr. McCartin thought fast and explained that he couldn’t breathe and he was only trying to get some air.

His captor let he out of the trunk and back into the passenger seat, and forget to handcuff Mr. McCartin to the door. His hands were only handcuffed together. It is now Sunday morning and the robber has been awake for at least 48 hours, apparently blurring his judgement (Some drugs were likely involved too.) At a stop light on Shelbyville road near “The Mall” in the St. Matthews neighborhood of Louisville, Mr. McCartin saw an opportunity when he spotted a Metro Louisville police car in a Frisch’s Big Boy parking lot. Mr. McCartin leapt out of his car and ran over to the police frantically gesturing to them about being kidnapped. The police car took off in pursuit of his kidnapper leaving Mr. McCartin standing in the Frisch’s parking lot. At this point, his day took another turn for the worse.

The kidnapper wrecked the car trying to elude the police. He jumped out of the car, pistol in hand and started running directly toward Mr. McCartin standing alone on the parking lot. Mr. McCartin turned and started running across a small bridge into the adjacent mall parking lot. He looked over his shoulder only seeing his kidnapper behind him and the police car trying to navigate out of the traffic to pursue him. Now, Mr. McCartin was running in an open and empty lot and he started zig-zagging as he had no place to hide. He finally made it to the nearest building and turned the corner and kept running. He glanced over his shoulder, the kidnapper was still behind him. Mr. McCartin ran around another corner of the building and was now running past the front of all the shops. When he finally spotted an open store, he ran inside and yelled for the owner to call the police. He stood there at the counter and tried to figure out what to do if the kidnapper followed him in, but the only people that showed up were the police. Mr. McCartin was finally safe.

He gave a description of his assailant and after half an hour, a police supervisor came in and told them they had a suspect in custody and they wanted Mr. McCartin to make an ID. Mr. McCartin said he did’t want to go anywhere near the guy. The supervisor reassured him that the guy was in handcuffs in the back seat of a patrol car and all he had to do was go over to the window and look. Reluctantly, Mr. McCartin agreed and confirmed that they had arrested the correct person.

Aside from the trauma of being kidnapped, Mr. McCartin had another good reason for missing school the next day. He moved. The kidnapper knew where he lived, he was taking no chances and moved immediately. He also had to rent a car since his car had been wrecked when the kidnapper tried to escape.

The greatest part of all this was how he told the story. It was like we were there. He was able to laugh at his own folly and he emphasized the funny parts as well as he imparted the terror of the experience to us. He used entire class period to tell us his story and he left us in tears from laughing so hard. It also made him a lot more human to us.

This story became a ritual for his students as they returned from winter break each year. As afar as I know, he continued to tell the story as long as he taught school. One other side note, Mr. McCartin was also the Official scorer at all Silver Creek High School basketball games. I saw him there for every home game while I was playing in the band for each game.

The next teacher that had a great impact upon me was Mr. Ralph Best. Mr. Best was one of two instructors for the Vocational Building Trades class at Charles Allen Prosser Vocational center in New Albany, Indiana. I spent the mornings of my Junior and Senior years of high school building houses under his expert guidance.

Mr. Best was a Journeyman carpenter and an excellent teacher, he just didn’t look like it. He always wore green coveralls and had a notebook in his pocket. He looked like, and most likely was, a grandfather. He had a very unassuming style and was not in any way a demonstrative. But he knew how to build houses and he knew how to teach people to build houses.

We were taught all the tasks require to build a house. We laid out the foundation on the lot, we dug footers for the foundation. (In one case, I thought we were going to dig to China as the lot had been graded and it took us down to six feet in some portions of the footer to get to undisturbed ground.) We laid the block, framed by hand, plumbed, wired, hung drywall, made trusses and performed every task there was t build a house. Many times, we tore things out when they were not installed correctly and did the work again until the job was done right.

The notebook Mr. Best carried was his punch list of tasks that needed to be completed. It always felt good when one was marked off and we started on another task. He taught us how to work cooperatively and often we were working alone in small groups as he had 24 students and couldn’t be everywhere at once. It was interesting how he always seemed to be right behind you though when you made a mistake. If you were lucky, he stopped you before you made it.

Mr. Best showed us how to have pride in our work and we learned a real trade. It was one of my best experiences growing up.

You may have lost your right to vote

The other day, I received a mailer from the Republican Party of Texas. It was addressed to the Kempf Household with my PO Box address and had a warning in 24-point bold all-caps “YOU MAY HAVE LOST YOUR RIGHT TO VOTE. Upon opening it, I was chagrined to see that it was pre-filled out with my youngest son’s information.  Nothing about my wife or myself. Being a Democrat I was curious why I was receiving mail from the republican party and I was annoyed with the scare tactic formatting of the mailing. Mostly I was annoyed about the hassle my wife had to endure when we registered her to vote (I have written about this some in a previous post “Welcome to Texas”.) and after stewing about it a day or two I sat down at my computer and wrote an email to Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick and the Republican Party of Texas. Here is the email I wrote:

SUBJECT: We got your email about voter registration

Dear Lieutenant Governor Patrick and the Texas Grand Ole Party (GOP).

First, I’d like to thank you for your concern about the Kempf household’s voter registration for the upcoming election. I’m not exactly sure where your voter information was sourced, but it is apparently gravely in error and should be updated. I’d like to correct a few errors and save the Texas GOP some money on mailing costs.

My son does not reside in Texas. He resides in Oakland; California and he has never been a resident of Texas. He is a registered voter in California and is an active participant of the Democratic party.
My wife Anna and I are both registered voters in Williamson County, Texas and have participated in both elections since our arrival in July 2016. This was in no way due to the assistance of the state of Texas whom it appears makes it the most inhospitable place in the United States of America to transfer a voter registration.

In our thirty-eight years of marriage, and residency in Texas, Tennessee, Indiana, Kentucky, Alaska and Germany (I also resided in South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Bosnia, Hungary and Iraq while deployed in the US Army) we never encountered anyplace that put as many roadblocks to voter registration as we have encountered in Texas. When submitting paperwork to the US State Department, the Department of Homeland Security, The Department of Defense, the Veterans Administration, the IRS and other various government agencies, my wife and I had never been required to present a copy of our marriage certificate. When moving from Indiana, to Alaska, to Alabama, to Indiana, to Tennessee all of these states accepted each other’s driver’s license as a valid ID and it was sufficient in and of itself to obtain a local driver’s license. But not in Texas. NOPE, we got to vet you like you are trying to get a Visa from Iraq.

If you haven’t figured out yet, you guys have struck a raw nerve that I had suppressed until now. While all I had to do as a male to get my Texas driver’s license was produce a Xeroxed copy of my DD214, a copy of my VA disability letter (Neither of these had a seal or notary stamp, and thanks for the Veteran discount) and my Tennessee driver’s license, my wife however, was put through several hoops to get her Texas driver’s license.

She was required to provide her birth certificate, SSAN Card, Marriage Certificate with raised seal and provide her driver’s license from Tennessee. We were married thirty-eight years ago in Indiana. I had to enlist a cousin, who had to physically go to the county clerk where we were married and make an in-person request for the document, then overnight it to us in Texas (That was $40 I could have used elsewhere.) We then went to the Social Security office in Georgetown where we used my wife’s TSA approved Tennessee Driver’s license as a photo ID to get a new copy of her SSAN card. (I found the Social Security Administration’s acceptance of an ID that Texas would not accept to get an ID that Texas would accept quite ironic!) Then there was the $22 I spent with the State of Kentucky to get an OFFICIAL COPY of her birth certificate. Lucky for me Kentucky will let you do this on-line and they mailed the document in 3 working days.

So, after spending over 24 man-hours and over $100 getting redundant documentation that we had never needed in almost four decades of marriage, my wife finally got her driver’s license and I registered her as a voter in the great state of Texas. No wonder people complain about voter suppression in this state. It took us six weeks to get all that crap together, so a Trooper could glance at it and throw it into a pile of documents to be filed and never seen again.

For your information, we are registered Democrats.

Thank you for your concern about our voter registration and if this was truly a cause that you guys believed in, you would make it at least as easy as getting a mortgage, which I did with much less effort and definitely a lot more cooperation from the state of Texas. (Oh. Yeah, I forgot, you guys are killing me with Taxes too. Only 4x the rate I paid over the past 20 years in Tennessee.)

We moved to Texas only because it served as a good career move. God knows it wasn’t because the government here makes anything easy for a married woman. Only 3,891 more days until I retire and we flee this oppressive state and move back to Tennessee.

Respectfully, Texas resident under duress, and lifelong Tennessean,

Donald P. Kempf

As satisfying as writing that was, I really never expected any reply at all. But to my surprise, two days later I received a reply for the Lieutenant Governor’s office. I found it quite amusing and I am sure you will too.

SUBJECT: I would like to thank you for taking the time to write to me about issues impacting Texas.

Dan Patrick

Lieutenant Governor of Texas

President of the Senate

Dear Mr. Kempf:

I would like to thank you for taking the time to write to me about issues impacting Texas.  I always appreciate hearing from great citizens like you who care about the future of our great state of Texas.

This legislative session, I presented the legislature a strong conservative agenda that affirmed my commitment to property tax reform, women's privacy, life, the second amendment, border security, religious liberty and a lean and efficient government.  The Texas Senate was able to deliver on many of those promises to Texans.  Under my leadership and through the hard work of every senator many of the 30 priorities I announced in January have become law.

I am very proud of what we were able to accomplish in the recent legislative sessions and I give all the credit to the vigilance and hard work of every senator.

I invite you to visit my official website, at https://www.ltgov.state.tx.us/ to view all of my legislative priorities.

Again, thank you for sharing your comments with me.  I encourage you to continue making your voice heard to the officials who represent you, and stay involved in the issues affecting our great state of Texas.

Sincerely,

Dan Patrick

As you can see, I got Macro form letter in response, but that is still more than I expected. I’m tempted to send a reply back, but I’m going to dwell on that a bit as I don’t want to end up on a FBI watch list or get flagged somehow by the TSA as a troublemaker. I’ll post the reply if and when I write one. But this was my laugh for the day.

Why I needed Back Surgery

My first memory of injuring my back was during my 1989-1990 overseas tour in South Korea. I would like to say this injury occurred while I was doing something brave and daring. The truth however is pretty mundane and actually reflects how most of these type injuries occur.

My roommate, Steve Perkins had encouraged me to join the bowling league with him and some of his friends. There wasn’t a lot you could do on base at Camp Humphreys, South Korea, that didn’t cost a lot of money and league bowling gave us something to do one evening a week. Activities not costing a lot of money were high on my list of priorities as my budget was $300.00 a month.  I earned spare cash by covering Staff Duty Officer (SDO) for those who liked to sleep at night and making Australian fold map books for new pilots in the unit. ($50.00 for weekday staff duty and a map book, $100 for weekend duty.)

The bowling alley was about a ten-minute walk from our Bachelor’s Officer Quarters (BOQ) and like most buildings on post it had been repurposed from another use. It had eight lanes and was otherwise pretty much the same as any other bowling alley. It had beer and bar food, and the place was fairly noisy.

We’d been in the league for five or six weeks and we were in the middle of the pack as far as our scores. Steve was the best bowler and I was making progress and becoming more consistent with my throws. About half-way through the second of three games, Steve bowled a strike. I was at a table behind the pits, eating a piece of pizza and I leaned over the row of seats behind the pits to give him a high-five when I felt a small twinge in my lower left back. It really didn’t seem like much, maybe a pulled muscle and I tried to ignore it. I managed to get through the next game and a half without a great deal of pain and then I started walking back to the BOQ. After walking around 100 yards or so, the pain became so intense that I had to stop in the Burger King parking lot and squat to get some relief. I’d get up and walk another 50 to 100 yards and repeat this process until I made it back to the room sometime after 2300.

I woke up the next morning and the problem and my back problem was unchanged, so I went on sick call where I was seen by our flight surgeon CW2 Glenn Farris. Glenn put me on 72-hours bed rest in my quarters and of course he grounded me. He prescribed Flexeril and told me to get some rest. The next 72 hours were pretty much a blurry haze. I remember getting out of bed, going to the bathroom and crawling back to bed. After the third day, I was feeling better and I was really bored having seen nothing more than my glorified hotel room. I decided to go to the Gym when it opened at 0600 that Sunday morning just to get a change of scenery.

The gym was pretty well equipped for a small base and they had a weight machine circuit that I used a lot. There was a laydown back machine and I had tried that first with no results one way or another. I then moved through the different upper and lower back and abdominal exercises without any progress. I continued through the circuit to the hip abduction machines where you were either pressing your legs apart or pressing them together. The inward press required you to pull on a lever to spread your legs as far as you could comfortably stand to get the largest leg motion for your press. I pulled until I had tension as far as I could spread my legs naturally, and then I gave the lever a tug to get just a bit more tension. As I pulled to get the tension, I heard a loud pop and felt an intense stabbing pain I accompanied with a loud yell. It was a good thing I was alone in the gym at the time.

After the pain had subsided and I caught my breath, I noticed that the nagging back pain I had been suffering was gone. I had managed to do my own chiropractic adjustment and apparently re-aligned a slipped lumbar disc. I went on sick call that morning and Glenn cleared me for flight since my issues were resolved. That was the end of my back problem for the moment. I continued serving my tour for the next six months and had no residual after effects.

In May 1990 I was transferred back to the United States for an assignment at Fort Campbell, Kentucky with the 101^st Airborne Division, (Air Assault). I was barely in readiness training when we started to prepare for deployment in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf War in August 1990. We deployed and I spent all of Desert Shield/Desert Storm in the desert with no issues with my back. We returned in April of 1991 and my next encounter with my back occurred around October 1991 while training at Fort Chaffee, Arkansas, the Joint Readiness Training Center (JRTC).

We had staged for this exercise out of Little Rock where we’d setup on the 1000-yard rifle range with our Chinooks. From there we were flying missions to Chaffee and then we’d either return to Little Rock or land at a local site on Chaffee waiting for the next mission. I’d been sent back to Chaffee on a mission with instructions to return when the mission was complete. We were hauling internal cargo so we only took our ruck sacks to leave room for the cargo. So of course, when we completed that mission we were given a mission change and told to meet with five other aircraft for another mission the next morning. Since most of our equipment was back in Little Rock, we were left with what little we have kept on the aircraft for our equipment that night.

I ended up sleeping on the bench seats that lined the sides of the cargo area in the back of the aircraft in my sweats and wrapped in a poncho liner. In the middle of the night I can remember rolling over and twisting around to keep from falling off the seat and I felt a familiar twinge in my lower left back. I didn’t think much about it and went back to sleep. The next morning, I walked over to the next aircraft to gather intelligence on the mission I was diverted there to fly, only to learn we were only a backup in case something went wrong. Disappointed that I had spent the night freezing in my aircraft for no really good reason, I started the walk back to my bird. I again encountered back pain so severe I had to stop and squat. I repeated my walk, squat, walk, squat routine until I made it back to the aircraft.

The next twelve hours were the most miserable period of my life. I was trying everything I could to find some position where I could just keep the pain at bay. From about 0600 to 0800 I tried every sitting, standing, squatting, and laying position that I could think of with ever-increasing levels of pain. Nothing was giving me any relief. I have no recollection of how it came about, but I do remember finally finding that laying over a full rucksack, face down with my left knee pulled up to my chest was the position of choice that finally, allowed me some relief. It was quite evident that I wasn’t going to be flying the aircraft and the other 5 helicopters flew off for their mission leaving me and my crew behind in a big field.

Sometime during that endless afternoon, we figured out I could lay face down on a cot, again with my left knee pulled to my chest. I guess some where in that period I dozed from time to time. I managed to eat a Meal, Ready to Eat (MRE) in a face down position which was creative and I can clearly remember putting off going to pee as log as possible. I wanted to avoid the pain of standing up. At about 4PM another aircraft returned and I had hoped it would be with another pilot to fly us back to Little Rock. I was right about the pilot, but wrong about going back to Little Rock. They wanted the aircraft for a mission and I was moved into the tree line with a couple of crew members and our equipment while the aircraft took off for parts unknown. They told us someone would come and get us before dark. This day was getting better and better. Finally, another Chinook showed about 1830 to take us back to Little Rock.

The problem I encountered when I walked up to the aircraft was that the helicopter was nearly full to capacity with cargo. There were three seats available for us and I had to make some awkward gyrations just to get into the seat. I finally managed to get into the seat and I was concerned how I was going to deal with the pain of a very turbulent hour-long flight back to Little Rock. We finished the passenger briefing and we were told to buckle up for flight. As I cinched up my seat-belt, I felt a familiar pop in my lower back and the discomfort was somewhat relieved, but not resolved like it had been in Korea. At least I wasn’t howling in pain on the flight back.

The best part of being back at Little Rock was having my cot and sleeping bag back, but the back issue wasn’t resolved and the had officially grounded me. The next day, our unit recovered back to Fort Campbell and I was tasked as navigator on my flight (I don’t remember why). I managed to get us there in just about record time thanks to an internal 600-gallon tank of fuel that allowed us to make the flight non-stop. Once were got back to the base, I called my wife to come get me and she showed with the van and all our kids. This was good because I needed the boys carry my equipment to the van and they later carried it into the house for me. I can remember Anna did me one of the biggest favors of my life when she took off my boots (Something she’d never done in my military career.), because she could see how much effort it was taking me to reach them. She also helped me get my one-piece army flight suit off.

I laid down on our living room floor because it was carpeted and I wanted to try and give myself a hip roll to get some relief. Anna was playing on the floor with my youngest son Timothy. I was lying on my back with my left leg bent and I rolled to my right to try and get my back to relocate. Timothy was being quite aggressive wrestling with his mom and the next thing I know she fell backwards onto my leg. I heard a loud “POP” and howled in pain. Anna turned over to me and was telling me she sorry for hurting me. I told her that is was okay and that it hurt he right way. She had gotten my back aligned again. From there I got up cautiously and took a shower. I’d been in the field a week, I was pretty grungy.

Unlike my last encounter, the flight surgeon wasn’t letting me get away without further medical attention. After a plethora of x-rays and an MRI, I was sent to physical therapy three days a week for a month. Therapy was interesting. I was given pelvic traction for thirty-minute sessions and then ice for ten minutes and heat for another ten. I quickly learned how to configure my table for traction and the attendant would only check my setup and setting before turning it on. I had become a “regular” in the PT clinic. The traction was extremely relaxing and it was not unusual for me to sleep through a 240-lb. pull (the table cycled every two minutes.) After my course of treatment was completed, I was given a temporary physical profile but I was allowed to fly again.

In the months following, I learned that while my back was manageable, it meant that I had to take some steps that could be (as was) career challenging. I had learned that running long distance greatly aggravated my back injury and that many other army exercises were contributing to my problems. I was approved for a permanent physical profile (P3) which essentially said I didn’t have to run, do push-ups or sit-ups.  For my physical fitness test, I was allowed an alternate test with a 6.2-mile bicycle ride. While the profile was not an issue for my command, the army promotion board was another story. My flight surgeon told me straight up, I could walk or get promoted, my choice. I chose being able to walk.

I had no major issues for a couple of years of years and then the next episode occurred while I was in the Degree Completion Program. After three years with the 101^st Airborne Division, the army saw fit to send me for more formal education For eighteen months, my duty station was Austin Peay State University. It was the easiest change of duty ever, I didn’t even have to move out of my quarters at Fort Campbell as Austin Peay was the local college. My back problem arose again doing a favor for my neighbor across the street.

Jeanne was the wife of an Air Force officer who was on assignment with the 160^th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (SOAR) and her husband was deployed overseas. Jeanne had two boys, one in Kindergarten and the other an infant. She had developed a stress fracture in her right foot and she couldn’t drive. My wife Anna was often her driver. One day, Jeanne needed to make a trip into town and I volunteered to watch the baby, Mark, (her other son was at school) while they were away. We always kidded Jeanne about her going out and not turning on her cell phone so she made a rather large production about turning it on before she left. (This was the early 1990’s and you only turned on a cell phone when you thought you might need it as the batteries were so lame.) I placed Mark in his playpen and sat down on the loveseat as the ladies walked out the door. As I started to get comfortable, I slid my left foot forward a few inches and all hell broke loose.

It is hard to explain a massive back spasm to anyone who hasn’t experienced one. If you have ever had a cramp in your calf, imagine that pain, magnified by a factor of ten, in your lower back. Unlike the calf, you have no way of stretching it out to relive the pain. Your vision goes white, maybe it seems like 100 strobe lights are going off all around you, and you collapse on the floor screaming because it feels like someone has just stabbed you in the back with a glowing red broadsword that was recently pulled out of a blacksmith’s forge.

Anna and Jeanne are just pulling out of the driveway when this occurred. Mark was in his playpen screaming because I had scared him to death. I was lying on the floor whimpering and trying to curl up in a ball to find some sort of relief for a pain. Pain so intense I had no reference of how it could hurt so bad. Apparently, my previous experiences had been a mere warm up.

After an eternity of blinding pain (in reality maybe a minute or two) I was able to move, somewhat. Standing up was out of the question, but I could manage a very awkward low crawl with my knee pulled up to my chest. My mission of the moment, was to find the telephone. Jeanne and her husband always had all the newest, greatest toys. So of course, they had a wireless home phone. (Yeah, common now, but it was fancy then.) Unfortunately for me, Jeanne also had a bad habit of leaving the handset just about anywhere. She walked and talked a lot and when she was finished, she’d just set the handset down where ever she was at that moment. Often, she left the phone on the dining room table. I was only a few feet away, so I made that my first place to look.

I slithered across the tile floor to the table, then I gathered up my courage and pulled myself up on the edge of the table. It was similar to the way the toddler I was in charge of would on the coffee table. Alas, there no phone on the table. The cradle for the phone was on a desk in the kitchen, again a few feet away, and into the kitchen I crawled. I pulled myself up on the desk, to see an empty cradle. Defeated, I collapsed on the floor and dreaded what was coming next. There was a wired land line in the house, in the back of the hallway and in the far corner of a very crowded bedroom. The thought of trying to maneuver through that room was haunting me. I started my journey crawling to the back of the house by crawling through the galley kitchen to the front foyer.

I managed to get the fifteen feet to the foyer before I collapsed again from the effort and I rolled onto my back because the cool concrete slab gave me some mild relief. As I did this, I spied the antenna of the house phone sticking out over the edge of a decorative table in the foyer. As I reached up and grabbed the phone I immediately panicked because didn’t know Jeanne’s cell phone number. My fortunes improved as I looked at a whiteboard Jeanne kept in her kitchen with emergency numbers for babysitters and there was Jeanne’s cell at the top of the list.

I called Jeanne and the girls were laughing at the novelty of Jeanne’s  and I let them know that I was in a bad state and needed some help. They had just left post and were only five minutes away. I just tried to move to the end of the foyer where I could talk to Mark in his play pen. (I’d managed to crawl maybe thirty feet in a circle and I was just on the other side of the playpen where all this started.) Finally, the girls came in the door with another friend as they thought they might need some help getting me off the floor. They took one look at me and Called 911.

Living on post in quarters, we were about a half-mile from the hospital and the ambulance showed up in just a couple of minutes. The paramedics came in to find me on the floor, on my back, with my knee pulled to my chest. While checking me out, one of the paramedics tried to get me to straighten out my left leg. I grabbed him by the collar and pulled him face to face with me. I told him I thought that would be rather unhealthy for him to try and that he should leave the leg alone. We compromised, I let go of him and he left the leg alone. I was efficiently strapped onto a back board, and lifted onto the gurney. They even strapped me down with the strap over my leg (That was nice as I didn’t have to hold on to it anymore.) and off we went for my first and only ambulance ride to the emergency room.

The ER was just a long, long, long, afternoon for me. After I was checked, in I was some valium and sent to x-ray. When I came back, and I was still in pain, I was given some Tylox (Codeine & Tylenol). A couple hours later, I was given a shot of Demerol. Finally, after four hours in the ER, I could straighten out my leg. The ER doctor wanted send me home with some pills and my wife enlisted the assistance of one of our chaplains and together they convinced the doctor to at least keep me overnight for observation. That night I was introduced to the wonders of a Toradol injection, and for the first time in my life I can remember looking forward to shot. I was given Toradol every four hours that night.

This time, the back pain was slower to resolve and it took some weeks of therapy and exercise, but I managed to get myself back to some sort of a happy place. I do not recall any further issues during degree completion and I was given an overseas assignment to Germany after I completed my degree.

When I had my next issue, I was stationed in Giebelstadt, Germany. My unit was deployed to Kaposvar, Hungary in support of the US mission in Bosnia and I had been sent back to Germany with by platoon leader for some task(s), I really don’t remember the specifics. What I do remember was a very ironic event where I injured my back again, while trying not to injure my back.

I needed to move an old 1950s era metal army desk (super heavy). I only needed to move it a few inches so I just walked up to it and tried to nudge it over a bit with my thighs. No bending, no twisting, no awkward movement, just a nudge with both thighs and the dreaded “pop” was heard with that little twinge that I just knew would get worse. Unfortunately for me, it did. For the first time, I had a disc dislocate to where no matter the therapy, I could not get the issue to resolve. Exercise, physical therapy, nothing was relieving the problem. I was grounded and for the first time taking some pretty heavy pain medications just to function. Even then, I wasn’t functioning very well. Every morning it was like a mini-test to see what the day was going to bring. If I could stand up, it was going to be a good day. A bad day usually consisted of my placing my left foot on the floor and then collapsing into a spastic pile on the floor, overwhelmed by a blinding unrelenting pain. (Similar to the episode at Jeanne’s house). I decided it was time to do something about this.

The local hospital had orthopedics and the doctor I saw there was a reservist on active duty. His specialty was back surgery, but in the European Theatre all back surgery was done in Landstuhl and I was quickly given a referral to the Neurosurgery clinic there. At the Neurosurgery clinic I met Dr. (Maj) Gary Flangas, Dr Flangas had worked as a neurosurgeon in Houston for almost a decade before he decided to join the army and he was the head of neurosurgery in Europe. He evaluated me and he determined I was a surgery candidate so then we discussed my options. We could do the minimum necessary, a partial discectomy or we could do a spinal fusion. He noted we could do the discectomy and if needed go back and do a fusion, and if we did a fusion, then there was no more to do. I chose the discectomy.

My next surprise was to be scheduled for surgery within eleven days. Originally, it was going to be a four days, but he was already booked up that Thursday and we had to wait another week for him to have an available operating room. (He had the OR every Thursday morning.)

I made the trip back to Landstuhl and the actual surgery was fairly uneventful (for me) as I was wheeled in for surgery at 0700 and I woke in the recovery room around 1130, I was slow to wake from the anesthesia and the nurse was continuously telling me to breathe as my blood oxygen was dropping below 80% causing an alarm to go off. It was when Dr. Flangas came to the recovery room that I learned my case was more difficult than he’d expected. I was scheduled for a forty-five-minute procedure and I was in the OR for over two hours. He mentioned that the two cases behind me would be unhappy as they would have to wait another week. I was back to my room a little past noon and the nurses had me walking the halls two hours later. It was a wonderful feeling. For the first time in ages I had no issues with back pain. I was so relieved and I thought that all my problems had been resolved. I went home after two days and all seemed to be good. Five days after surgery, I woke up and couldn’t feel my left leg.

Fearing the worst, we called Dr. Flangas and I was given some steroids and told to stay in bed for seventy-two hours. They were figuring I had some swelling around the spinal cord and that it was causing the paralysis. I did get some feeling back and most of my motor function (I could walk fairly normally after the bedrest), but I could no longer lift up my toes and foot more than a couple inches. My dorsiflexors were not working right on the left leg and most of the foot felt like it was asleep. As soon as I was able to move and walk again I had a dye-contrast MRI and the results were inconclusive. Dr Flangas could see nothing that going back in would help and he hoped in time the issue would resolve. (It didn’t.)

The pain was gone and I was now permanently grounded. My aviation career was over in the army. My career was already in the toilet anyway as I had been awaiting my results from my second opportunity for promotion to Chief Warrant Officer 3 (CW3) and I was turned down again about the time I had surgery. In a way, the leg problems were beneficial as I could now apply for a disability retirement instead of just being discharged. I had to apply for disability through Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington as they were the approval authority for Europe. The disability process went from the end of 1996 through the summer of 1997 and I was placed on the Temporary Disability Retired List (TDRL) effective 1 August 1997.

I was given the impression that my medical retirement, at 30% disability from the Army was a done deal. I only learned afterward, during an appeal of the Army decision to reduce my disability rating to 20% and give me a Disability Discharge, that what Walter Reed decided was not the final say in the issue. All TDRL assignments were reviewed by the Army Medical Board at Fort Sam Houston, Texas, mine included. It also appeared that for the past thirty years or so, one of the main tasks the medical board undertook was to overturn decisions made by Walter Reed. In my case, since I had not run to the doctor every two weeks whining about how much pain I was in and that I could hold a job, I didn’t need the 30% retirement, with insurance for the wife and kids, and base access and the like. I was given a 20% disability discharge (capped at twelve years for pay even though I was being paid at a rate for over twenty-one years, and almost fifteen active.) Thank you very much, here is a check and go away. Oh, did I mention that if I’d had sixty-nine more days of active duty I would have qualified for an early fifteen-year retirement? That was an extra special, added bonus.

Once out of the army, I did apply for my Veterans Administration (VA) pension and learned much to my chagrin that I qualified for a VA disability pension, but that $278 a month of my pension from the VA will go to the US Army to pay back the severance pay I received for my disability discharge. At least that little special part of this story was paid off in January 2019.

I still have the foot drop to this day and I have had occasional episodes where I slip a disc ,but those are fewer and fewer as the years go by. I never had any additional surgery because no doctor could give me any decent assurance that the outcome would be significantly better than the situation I have now. It is something I have chosen to live with rather than battle in another surgery.

Checking out the ole ticker.

When you are a pilot in the US Army, you spend a lot of time interacting with your flight surgeon. As a result of this, most pilots will either try to avoid seeing the flight surgeon at all costs, or, like myself, embrace the process. Most of my life, I have been either borderline hypertensive or hypertensive. It runs in my family, regardless of my health, I’m always on the upper limit. As I got older, my ability to manage this without medication (and seeing the flight surgeon regularly) was no longer an option.

I always managed to get on well with my flight surgeons and I managed good relations with them. This did not mean I could avoid some circumstances though and in 1986, while in Germany, My Blood Pressure was too high on my flight physical and I had to start medication to maintain it. Because of some other irregularities in my physical, my flight surgeon decided he should be cautious and sent me to get checked out by cardiology. This was no big deal to me as I had been sent there before. This was nothing to get all excited about, just routine, I or so thought.

The cardiologist also decided on a cautious approach and he felt that I needed a stress test to ensure that there was nothing wrong with my heart. Okay, I’ve done this before too.  Running on a treadmill, wired for sound, no big deal, again. Aside from the blood pressure, I was in pretty good shape and I was feeling good about myself too. The stress test was just another let’s get this done moment I had to endure to get on with the flying business. When started the test, all was going well. The speed of the treadmill increased and the incline increased, and slowly, my pulse started to rise from a resting 56 beats per minute (BPM), toward the 130 BPM goal of the test. I’d worked up a pretty good sweat and felt like I was getting a workout when I hit 102% of the stress goal and the doctor said I could stop. Before I could even begin to slow down on the treadmill, the doctor started cursing. When I caught my breath, I asked him what was the matter? He replied you just threw a PVC.

Premature ventricular contractions (PVCs) are extra, abnormal heartbeats that begin in one of your heart's two lower pumping chambers (ventricles). In pilot speak it meant; “You’re Grounded”. I started inquiring with him what all this meant. I had over 15 minutes of Electrocardiogram and one errant heartbeat, no big deal, right? He said, that if I hadn’t been a pilot, no one would have cared. But, since I was on flight status, we had to follow up on it. He told me that for most people, they would simple do an echo-cardiogram as an outpatient and I would be good. He told me while that was fine for most normal humans, because I was a US Army pilot, the Army Aeromedical Board, had to approve my flight physical, would require a cardiac catheterization as well, just to be sure. He told me there was no point in doing the echo test as the cath was going to occur if I still wanted to fly.

I was stunned! There had never been any question about my heart, even. I had to admit that there could really be something wrong with my heart and until you’ve had that realization yourself, you really can’t understand what that meant to me. Sadly, concern about my heart was secondary to my concern about my flying career. I had been passed over for promotion shortly after arriving in Germany and I only had this one year left before I would most likely be passed over again and out of the Army. Every flight counted and any grounding was less opportunity to fly. This also brought about a second round of health concerns (The first time had been in flight school when I had been diagnosed with a Parathyroid Tumor that nearly ended my flying career before it began.) Would I get cleared to fly again? Could this permanently ground me? Might this prevent me from a civilian aviation career? These thoughts began to keep me up at night.

Since I was in Germany, none of the required testing could be done in the local clinic or the Wurzburg field hospital. I had to go to the Army Medical Center in Landstuhl (4 hours away) for the test. This required a temporary duty assignment (TDY) to travel to the hospital and once there it couldn’t be an outpatient procedure either. I had to be admitted, and the test had to be performed in an operating room. The only good thing was that I was scheduled for the following week, limiting my angst to a few days instead of several weeks or months, which I considered a minor miracle in and of itself.

The trip the Landstuhl itself was uneventful. Landstuhl was a huge sprawling medical complex that had been built after the second world war. Like all hospitals of the time, it was a group of 50 or so buildings all connected by hallways. I managed to check in without any problems and was ushered to my room to spend the night alone and hungry. I could have nothing to eat (the Latin medical term is nil per os or NPO meaning "nothing through the mouth") as I was going to be under anesthesia the next morning. Food in the tummy and medically induced sleep tended to cause you to be nauseous and should be avoided. I woke the next morning and followed procedure to bathe with the antiseptic soap and put on a clean gown sans skivvies. (You can’t every have your underwear in the OR you know.) and then I waited for the appointed time. (8 AM sounds about right.)

The test almost didn’t happen that morning. The nurse came to tell me that an orderly was on his way to transport me and asked me if my pre-op medication had taken effect. I soberly replied “What pre-op meds”? It seemed that I should have been given two Valium at 6 AM so that I would be good and relaxed by the time they began the procedure. The nurse started to call the whole thing off and I somehow managed to convince her that I should go ahead and take the Valium now then and that it really didn’t matter much because the test didn’t scare me and I was pretty chill to begin with. With just a minor bit of coaxing, I managed to get my meds about ten minutes before the orderly arrived. It was at this point that things began to get interesting.

I was wheeled into the operating Room and got to make the obligatory less than graceful transition from the gurney to the table in front of two cardiologists and five or six nurses. You can never move around in a hospital gown horizontally without displaying your private parts to all concerned, apparently, it was a rule of the medical profession that had to be followed. They wanted me to be awake for the catheterization process, but they didn’t want me paying too much attention to what they were actually doing. To facilitate this, they had one nurse, whose only task was to keep me occupied and distracted from the mechanics of the catherization. She was wearing full scrubs and a mask when we met, so all I ever got to see of here were her gorgeous eyes. I must admit, looking into her eyes was a distraction. She was very pleasant and she had a warm contralto voice, I was giving her a great deal of my attention. We did have a good view of the fluoroscope monitor though, so we could see all that was going on.

They started the process by installing a shunt in my right femoral artery. Just a poke of the local anesthetic was all I felt, then some pressure as the shunt was inserted into the artery. This in itself is a pretty major even, as one mistake and you can bleed to death before they get the flow stopped. They used the fluoroscope to see the catheter insertion and the dye injections. The cardiologist inserted the first catheter (It was kind of imposing to me as it was over three feet long) and she very quickly slid it up into my aorta. This part is painless as your veins and arteries have no nerves, so there is no sensation inside your body at all. She injected the dye and Viola! My left coronary ostium (Arteries of the left side of the heart) was displayed on the screen. The doctor quickly took some video and still photos with the equipment and slid the catheter out to insert the one designed for the right side. This is the point where things got extremely interesting.

With the second catheter in place, the she injected the dye just like the first time. The only problem was that nothing appeared on the screen. Puzzled, the doctor injected dye a second time with the same result. Finally, she injected the rest of the syringe, and still nothing appeared upon the screen. My distractor was trying to do her job and keep me occupied as she was concerned I was getting nervous. By now, the Valium had kicked in and I think they could have cut off my foot and I would have only commented that it would have been interesting to watch. Then the cardiologist had a minor epiphany and she removed catheter number two and reinserted catheter number one. (She did this very quickly and it seemed like she was just slamming that catheter back in like it was nothing unusual at all to do.) She attached a full syringe of dye and said “watch this”! She injected the whole syringe in one big push. (Her saying “Watch this was reminiscent of an army joke. What are the three scariest things you can hear in the Army?  A lieutenant who says: “I have us on the map.” A Captain who says: “I’m in charge!” and a Warrant Officer who says:” Watch this!”) As the dye went in, the left ostium lit up like a Christmas tree. Then the image appeared across the bottom of my heart, the right ostium started to appear. Soon all the arteries of my heart showed up. The Cardiologist commented that I had “unique plumbing” and that this situation occurred in about one of every 300 or so patients.

In a normal heart, the left and right coronary ostia receive blood from the aorta. In my case however, the left was the only connection to the aorta. There was a large arterial branch from the left to the right ostia and in essence I just had one ostium and it connected from the left side. She also commented that it was one of the largest coronary arteries she’d ever seen. More film and still photos were taken then the shunt was removed. My heart was fine. The PVC that had been recorded was a result of my unique plumbing and that the aero-medical board should have no issue clearing me for flight.

The post-operative experience was also a trip. It turns out that the actual procedure is not the most concerning part of a cardiac cath, but making sure that you don’t bleed to death after the procedure. They have just poked a rather large hole on one of the largest arteries in your body, now they had to keep you from bleeding out. To do this, someone had to place direct pressure on the artery for twenty minutes, after which they placed a compression bandage on the site. They chose an orderly who could have easily been a lineman for a football team for this task. For twenty minutes I laid on a gurney while a 280-lb. guy had his hands pressing firmly on the femoral artery just a few inches from my groin. This was “disconcerting” at the very least. They finally put on the compression bandages and I was released by Bubba so he could go crush someone else. Then came the best part of my day, lying flat on my back for SIX HOURS!

Somewhere around 2PM, I was treated to a late lunch which I devoured without much thought to the flavor as I was starving. I was released from the hospital the next morning and put on light duty for a week before I was finally cleared to go back to doing pilot stuff again. None the worse for the wear. Oh, the things pilots will go though so they can fly!