Braunstein Speaks

Braunstein’s Daughter Speaks: Still Speaking

I hate to disappoint you all, but…

I know that I promised you all that my dad would be posting a column very, very soon.

I know that I assured everyone that he would have Wi-Fi access in the rehabilitation facility.

I know that you’ve all been waiting patiently.

But it’s just me, Daughter of Braunstein, once again. Turns out that while he does indeed have Wi-Fi in his building, actual access is a matter of pure luck. He did not immediately realize this. He mentioned to a doctor there that he would be posting a column later that afternoon.

“How?” asked the doctor. “You can’t get on the internet here.”

My dad was puzzled. “I just got a connection last night, on my first try. I decided to wait to post today, seeing that there were no problems…”

The doctor just laughed, and told him that he was obviously the luckiest guy in the building, but not to expect it to happen again. And he was right. It hasn’t.

My father is continuing to make an amazing recovery. Already, he can transfer himself from bed to wheelchair, from wheelchair to chair, completely by himself. The physical therapists are astounded, and expect him to be ready to go home in a week or two. He has a terrific roommate, a sailor, and the two of them are raising already legendary hell in the hallways. That party they threw the other day will live on in infamy….

Thank you for all your good wishes. We should be able to get him posting again shortly.

(At least they came through on the Fox News!)

Braunstein’s Daughter Speaks: Again.....

I am delighted to inform my father’s loyal readers that he has come through his recent surgery with flying colors. The amputation was a complete success, and is already healing nicely. He is resting comfortably as I post this, sitting up in his bedside chair, pain-free for the first time in far too long. He is also being slowly driven insane by boredom. Alas, the hospital he is in has no Wi-Fi access (imagine!) and no news but CNN. He is very cranky about his only news source.
“By the time I finally get out of here, I’ll be a liberal!” he snarled.
So I performed a quick emergency test. I asked him, in as non-judgmental and accepting a tone as I could muster, how he felt about the job the President’s been doing lately.
He replied with one word that I do not believe I should print here, as I know that several impressionable young people read this blog regularly. I think we’re safe. This will not be The Huffington Post any time soon.
Alas, we have no firm date by which he will be able to return to regular posts, but we hope that he will enter an in-patient rehabilitation center by the end of the week, and we have already checked: Wi-Fi and Fox News will be available to him in the new facility.
Thank God.
For everything.

Interregnum

Tomorrow morning, if all goes according to schedule, I should be deep in anesthesia-induced sleep while a surgical team amputates my leg. Except for a brief anesthesia countdown a few years ago when I had the “wide excision” to remove that first Merkel lesion from my leg, I have no real knowledge about what goes on in surgery.

My wife did a brief surgical rotation many years ago, but she also has no direct knowledge of what takes place in a surgical suite during operations.

My own concepts come from television and movie portrayals of surgeons—such as “ER” and “Chicago Hope.” Although I am pretty sure that they will not have to cut my leg off in the elevator, or “crack my chest,” as they usually do on TV hospital shows, I know from watching police activity in the entertainment media that television surgery is probably about as realistic as television police tactics are.

In any case, I am pretty sure that I will not be able to get a column out tomorrow—or more realistically—for the next few days.

I still have no further knowledge about my length of stay in the hospital over the “three to five days” estimate I was given a week ago. I know not yet where my therapy will take place, but I have an idea of how long it should take my incisions to heal; and I hope I will be back on my feet (foot?) by this summer.

I appreciate your good wishes for my rapid recovery, but for those who laughed about Dick Cheney’s recent heart attack, you’ve wandered onto the wrong blog. Just back out of this page and turn left.

Hope to get back to all of you as soon as possible, and in addition to the ongoing Washington soap opera, I should have some interesting—if not amusing—experiences to write about in the future.

Sudden Acceleration Syndrome

In the middle 1980s, I bought a 1984 Audi 5000 from a fellow who was facing divorce and had to divest himself of certain holdings. The seller regularly obtained second-hand Audis from a neighbor who worked for Volkswagen/Audi in Troy, Michigan.

The 1984 Audi 5000 was the first year of production of the new design, and was unusual in that it had the European-market five-speed manual transmission instead of the Borg-Warner automatic that was standard equipment on all Audis imported into the States.

Shortly after my obtaining the car, CBS’ 60 Minutes had a segment on unintended acceleration. It seemed that some suburban housewife had driven her Audi 5000 through the rear wall of her garage and into the swimming pool. She explained that when she attempted to put the car in gear to back it out of the garage it suddenly lunged forward through the garage wall.

By the time the 60 Minutes crew completed their investigation, which included injecting high-pressure air into the transmission case (I have no idea why they would do that) every heavy pedal jockey with an Audi reported unintended acceleration; including one person who swore that his car started itself up and drove off!

It was not until my car (which, remember, had a manual transmission) did something unexpected, that I understood what was going on.

In the 1980s, fuel injection started to replace carbureted engines, and there were certain unforeseen problems with the changeover. I was waiting at a light, when unexpectedly there was an audible blip in the idle speed. Even though my car was in neutral, and my right foot was on the brake, I felt my foot press down harder in an involuntary movement.

What had been happening was that owners with automatic transmissions, upon starting their cars, heard this blip in the idle speed, and stepped down hard on the accelerator, thinking that they were stepping on the brake. (This was the conclusion that the Federal Highway Administration investigation arrived at.)

I spoke to an Audi mechanic about what I had experienced, and he insisted that I immediately bring my car in for adjustment. He wouldn’t comment on the blip, for if he did, then Audi would have to admit some culpability in what was obviously a pedal misapplication by startled drivers.

There is no automatic transmission in any car that would allow the car to move if the driver has his foot firmly on the brake, even if the driver is stepping on the accelerator at the same time.

After some time—and a few settlements—the Audi unintended acceleration problem disappeared from public consciousness. At the same time as Audi was having its problems, so was Ford, which was also converting to fuel-injected engines—but only Audi made it onto 60 Minutes.

Unfortunately for Toyota, they are going to have to go through the whole bad PR and law-suit business before a new generation discovers that stomping on the gas when you think you are stepping on the brake is the cause of Toyota and Lexus Unintended Acceleration Syndrome.

The New American Revolution

“But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.” – Declaration of Independence, July 4th, 1776.

Since World War II, we’ve had it too easy. The last time that the United States was invaded by a foreign power was in 1814, when the British burned Washington—nothing any modern American would shed a tear over.

Winston Churchill said, “Democracy is the worst form of government—except for all those others that had been tried.” For the last 65 years, we have been asleep at the switch, ignoring the little alarm bells sounding to warn us that things were not well.

“This is the United States,” we told ourselves. “This is the richest, most advanced country in the world.”

Television and air travel destroyed whatever regionalism we had left. In one generation, we went from a Union of 50 individual states, to a strong central government—something the Founders never envisioned.

We absorbed all these changes with nary a murmur. Our Republic had a stability that would overcome whichever party controlled Congress or the presidency. The Framers designed a government with divided powers so that none could come forth and seize unfettered control.

And then came Obama. Barack Obama recited the same blather that we have come to expect from all presidential candidates on the campaign: He spoke in utterly meaningless slogans like “Hope” and “Change,” except that the Communist Obama really meant it.

In just one year, Obama, with the help of two fools like Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, tried to fundamentally change the government of the United States—not only without popular support—but in secret meetings which locked the minority Republican Party out.

We were already used to a corrupt press before the 2008 Campaign, but the majority of news agencies acted as agents of the Democratic Party during the last election.

Even in the light of three special elections that were overwhelming messages to the Democrats, and the very public death of the myth of “man-made global warming,” Obama and the Democrats are still trying to resuscitate healthcare “reform.”

Despite media and Democratic—the same thing, really—attempts to disparage and ridicule the Tea Party Movement, it is a growing political phenomenon that seeks to rejuvenate the feelings of alienation of the American people towards a government that no longer represents them.

The Election of 2010, which will see 36 Senate seats and all 435 House seats up for contention, will tell us a lot about the future direction of this nation—either as a Democratic Republic—or as another Marxist experiment—doomed to failure.

How Come Clark Kent Looks so Much Like Superman?

[It is Friday, and as I did not produce a column yesterday, I feel somewhat compelled to put something on paper. When all else fails, I look to what I wrote a year ago, and if the subject is still timely, present it again.

[My last column touched on super powers, and exactly one year back I published this take on Superman vs. Clark Kent, a juxtaposition of personas whose point still remains valid—and probably always will.]

I grew up with the original generation of comic books, when DC Comics only cost a dime. I remember (and this is independent memory) looking at the Sunday Funnies before I could read, and trying to interpret them by the pictures alone. By the time I started school, the comics had taught me to read.

Irony is lost on children, so in the Letters to the Editor section of Action Comics (yes, even comic-book readers were literate in those days) a young reader asked why no one seemed able to tell that Superman and his alter-ego Clark Kent were one and the same. After all, they looked exactly alike (although Clark wore eyeglasses) were the same height and weight, spoke with the same voice, and were never seen in each other’s company.

When the editor answered that actor Ralph Bellamy, who portrayed Franklin Roosevelt in the 1958 play “Sunrise at Campobello,” looked exactly like his character, that response was deemed sufficient.

I might have seen old newsreels of President Roosevelt, or I might not have; but I could certainly tell the difference between him and Ralph Bellamy!

Several actors have portrayed World War II hero General George F. Patton on screen, but since 1970, Patton would forever be George C. Scott.

Likewise, Abraham Lincoln would forever be Raymond Massey since the 1940 film, “Abe Lincoln in Illinois.”

Jesus was portrayed by former cowboy-actor Jeffery Hunter in 1961’s “King of Kings,” and then by Swedish actor Max von Sydow in “The Greatest Story Ever Told,” in 1965.

While Hunter’s Jesus was the classical Renaissance portrait, von Sydow’s character looked like someone who actually could survive 40 days in the desert.

When some film producer finally got around to casting George Washington in the 1984 television miniseries, actor Barry Bostwick showed us that Washington had blow-dried hair, a detail unobtainable in history books.

Up to that point, Washington—to say nothing of Jesus—was never shown onscreen out of respect for the historical character. Remember the scene in “Ben-Hur” (1959) when Jesus gives Charleton Heston water? All we saw of Jesus was his back, or his hands and sandals.

Today’s generation has seen photos of Barack Obama morphed into Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, and even Jesus himself (certainly no accident, that) but like the children of my generation, they can certainly tell the difference between Clark Kent and Superman.

The Sixty Thousand Dollar Man

I have noticed that where I used to be good for a column every day, lately I’m lucky to produce three or four a week. I could make the argument that everything I have predicted has come true, but most of these magical prognoses have also been seen by other seers.

Maybe I’m just tired of making the same points about global warming, politics, and American Idol—yeah, like I’d even watch American Idol.

I really feel that my lack of output is that I am preoccupied with literally, a life-changing event next week. I’ve had surgery before, and it always seemed to follow the same formula. It begins with my counting backward from 100, and the next thing I know, I am aware of people hovering over me in the recovery room.

After a few days hospital stay, and the removal of the bandages, I went back to life as I’ve always known it, maybe a little slower for a while; but even that passes. No more.

This time, most of me is coming home from the hospital, but most of my right leg is traveling north to check out the family burial plot.

I am going to have to learn new life-skills. I’ve no idea how one handles ablutions and other daily activities with only one leg. I do know how difficult it’s been over the last few years with limited use of my right leg, but from now on I won’t even be able to use it for a prop.

While I look forward to this new challenge in my life, and I expect plenty of help from family and professionals, there are still many unknowns. An amputated leg takes about 30 days to heal, and during that time I will learn to get around on crutches. After the healing is complete, I will be referred to a prosthetist who will fit me with today’s version of a wooden leg.

A modern prosthesis for a transfemoral (above the knee) amputation has four basic parts: The socket fits over the stump and transfers weight to the knee. There are various types of knees on the market; some more sophisticated than others.

Next comes a pylon—a shaft-like extension that couples with the foot. Although, like knees, there are many types of prosthetic feet and ankles, most are covered with a synthetic skin-like material that looks like a foot.

Most of you over 40 will remember the Six Million Dollar Man; you know, the old guy who now sells cheap hearing aids on cable TV.

Like Superman, Steve Austin was able to use his bionic arm to lift many times his own weight. Today, I’m sure that Steve Austin would be the Six Billion Dollar Man with the Democrats in power, but I wonder if I could use my new bionic leg to kick bad guys down the block—in slow motion, of course.

‘Settled Science’

“You keep using that word [‘inconceivable’]. I do not think it means what you think it means” – Inigo Montoya, “The Princess Bride.”

“World May Not be Warming, Say Scientists” – Times of London, February 14th, 2010.

From “settled science” to “we really don’t know what we’re talking about” in a period of five years. In Al Gore’s 2006 science-fiction documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth,” all I remember—except for melting glaciers and suicidal polar bears—is the “hockey stick” graph of temperature change that was so abrupt, Gore had to mount a man-lift to reach the top of it.

One thing that is “settled science,” however, is that politicians need votes to stay in office. Sometime in the past, we are told, politicians were once leaders who directed national policy. These days, we all understand that politicians are followers who are all too eager to pander to those same voters—be they right or wrong.

If a majority of voters feel that “global warming” is real, then woe betide that politician who does not climb on the “let’s declare carbon dioxide a ‘pollutant’” bandwagon. Moreover, the statists in government (most Democrats) find that the “global warming” frenzy is the perfect medium to seize control of all aspects of power generation and manufacturing in the United States.

Even the most vocal “climate change” advocates (after several seasons of cool summers and even cooler winters, they had to rename “global warming” “climate change” to avoid being laughed at) now openly acknowledge that there hasn’t been any evidence of “warming” or “change,” these past 15 years—quarterly seasonal change being the exception.

When Al Gore’s “hockey stick” is adjusted to reality, we see regular weather swings over the past 1000 years, such as the Medieval Warming Period and the Little Ice Age.

With the climate scientists in full retreat, and polls finding that the electorate sees “global warming” as the last thing that they are concerned with, it won’t be long until the politicians fall in line with this “new reality” formed by changing voter sentiments.

The Glib Reaper

Ever since I got into this cancer game, people have been asking me how I manage to keep an even temperament; and what’s more, keep my humor.

After almost three years of treatment, I find that my attitude isn’t all that unusual. The last time I had chemo—about two months ago—my seatmate was a young man with mesothelioma, a form of lung cancer caused by exposure to asbestos. The young man already had two surgeries and countless sessions of chemotherapy, but liked to focus on the fact that he was still here.

Only once in those three years did I ever hear a fellow patient publically express distress or ask, “Why me?”

Years ago, I had a neighbor who had two children in a row born with a cleft palate. The first he accepted as fate, but learned it was easily corrected; and after the second was born, he announced: “It’s better that it happened to us instead of some young couple. We now have experience with cleft palate, and we know what to do about it.”

Over a year ago, all the radiation absorbed by my right leg led to a condition called lymphedema, which is fluid collecting in the limb leading to gross swelling, and the loss of knee flexibility. Although I was treated regularly for this symptom, I developed an ulcer behind my knee that would not easily heal.

About six months ago, this ulcer reopened; and despite regular visits to the hospital Wound Clinic, and despite applications of treatments that have worked before, the ulcer behind my knee will not heal.

This afternoon is my scheduled bi-weekly visit to the Wound Clinic. The biggest concern now is not healing, but infection; as this case will now be closed. Before what would have been my next scheduled visit, the ulcer—along with the multiple tumors and calcified skin on my right leg—will disappear.

Ever since I found out about losing my leg, I have been adding one-limb jokes to my humor repertoire. Recall the Black Knight Scene in Monty Python’s Holy Grail movie:

King Arthur has cut the Black Knight’s arm off. “Now stand aside, worthy adversary!”
Black Knight: “’Tis but a scratch.”
Arthur: “A scratch? Your arm’s off!”
Black Knight: “No, it isn’t!”
Arthur: “Well, what’s that then?”
Black Knight: “I’ve had worse!”

As long as my mouth (or my keyboard) is still attached to my brain, it’s not likely that I, like the Black Knight, will “stand aside.”

The Blizzard of 2010

Oh, the weather up north is frightful,
But Miami is so delightful,
And since up north we won’t go,
Let it snow! Let it Snow! Let it Snow!

Not only has this been a tough winter from Vancouver, B.C. to Washington, D.C., but many think that along with the “Warmer” hijinx that took place before the Copenhagen Climate Conference debacle, that the Winter of 2009/2010 put the last nail in the liberals’ favorite (It’ll take a hundred years to prove us wrong!) scheme to take over the world.

As silly as it sounds, I read a hot Warmer activist actually blaming “man-made global warming” for the record-breaking snowfall in the Mid-Atlantic States. The theory is that global warming is the cause of all the excess water in the air. Now, water vapor doesn’t sound as scary as murderous carbon dioxide, or even cow-fart or volcano-generated methane, but it IS a greenhouse gas, and it is falling as snow.

For those of you who think that we South Floridians are having an easy time of it, living in the United States’ only contiguous Tropical Weather Zone (The only other one being Hawaii) this winter hasn’t been all fun and palm fronds.

Since the beginning of the winter, I’ve had to heat my house for several weeks as nighttime temperatures fall into the 40s—and Miami houses are not designed for heating! Fact is, if it doesn’t make it into the 80s during the day, it can get really uncomfortable around here. No, seriously!

Since I only wear long pants for The Man, and I don’t work for The Man anymore, it can get chilly wearing shorts and sandals. It is not uncommon around here to see short pants worn with hoodies.

Anyway, I know how you Northerners suffer during Hurricane Season worrying whether or not Miami or New Orleans gets wiped off the map and you’ll have no warm place to go next Christmas.

One thing that we can all agree on, though: As long as Washington, D.C. is shut down, the rest of us are safe!