My Buddy

I would never have believed it but my wife insists it’s true. She says as soon as she pulled into the rehab hospital’s parking  lot Rusty started to whimper and wag his tail. He hadn’t been up in two weeks but on this his third visit he hadn’t forgotten where exactly I am incarcerated. 

My wife takes him for walks and he comes running back to me and reaches up over the bed rail to tell me all about it. 

He bothers no one, never tries to run out of the room and makes not a sound. Most of the staff love him. 

We move his bed around as he chooses. 

He loves grass and my great regret is we lack thick lawns in most areas of the Keys. Up here he takes advantage. 

Layne’s sister is in town for a visit. 

Fantasy Fest

Say what you want but Fantasy Fest is exemplified by the  final Saturday of the weeklong event. It’s a day of wandering Duval Street quite possibly in costume, hopefully tasteful, and if not tasteful then you can be forgiven.  I’m sorry I missed the festivities this year even though I generally participate only marginally as it as a very busy week at the police department, obviously. Anyway my pictures from the Grand Parade come from Chuck who enjoyed the event. Indeed I have heard from others that this year Fantasy Fest was more costume and less nudity which is nice to hear. Sheila says it was the best Fantasy Fest ever for her and she enjoyed her elaborate teal tutu costume on several outings. I observe from a distance as do you. Oh well this year I’m in rehab, what’s your excuse? Here’s to a new style,  cooler Fantasy Fest into the future. Next year they celebrate 40 years with the theme of In Tune But Off Key. 

If you are on Facebook you will see a lot of people who give themselves the mantle of world weary locals tired by the week’s holiday. Ignore them. They are trying to be cool but aren’t cool enough to stay private or take a weeks vacation and go out of town rather than see people having fun. It’s the same pursuit of coolness as those dreary individuals who are so eager to tell you how long by they’ve lived in Key West. About Fantady Fest make up your own mind. 

I’m not into costumes or dressing up but especially now that gratuitous nudity is being toned down a week long local holiday is rather fun. Too bad so many people act sonpissed off about it. People who are too local to ever set foot on Duval Street. 

Change At The Top

I met Donie Lee shortly after I started working dispatch at the police department. Maybe it was 2005 when I took my elderly Labrador Emma to the vet on Flagler Avenue. As I recall he was there with his boyfriend and a large brown Labrador-like dog. He was a sergeant of detectives and I couldn’t find anything not to like about a man who cared about a dog. Obviously.  

In December he retires after a life spent in Key West with the police. The thing about Donie Lee is that he is thoroughly decent. Of course as a boss he made decisions that annoyed people but somehow he navigated the politics infested waters of Key West taking care of police business but managed to keep the city commission happy. I admired his political skills from a distance as I’m a civilian, a dispatcher on the margins of what the public sees on the streets. I was much closer during Hurricane Irma which in my experience was a highlight of teamwork in the face of catastrophe.  Donie Lee led us through that fearsome time like the seasoned leader he was and it wasn’t easy for him. My admiration for him notched up even higher. 

Outside the chief’s office there is a corridor filled with pictures of chiefs past going back to the 1920s. The occupants of that office has a long legacy to live up to in a city founded in 1828. 

Chief Lee added one word to the department mission statement. He has always felt strongly about the department’s commitment to service to the community.  He’s a fifth generation Conch so for him the city has really been more than a job site. In his briefings to us the employees he always stressed service.  He also pushed for a hundred percent success rate in everything we did. But he noted that’s not possible so make sure you do darned good.  Yup. It was always a challenge to get that good for Chief Lee! I will miss him. 

Our new chief took me on a ride along when I got hired in July 2004. Captain Brandenburg takes over the department in December. He is in charge of the administration of the department at the moment which includes dispatch. I’m glad he got the job not least because I respect his work ethic and his expectations. Working for the captain has always encouraged me to do better. 

I think this is going to be an easy transition for our department from one well grounded leader to another.  I can’t wait to get back. 

A Round Table

I wonder if there will come a time again in my life when I sit at a table and share my experience of nearly dying with two other men who saw my hand  and instead of freaking out raised me more near death each of them. It happened this past week and I have been ruminating on it since the conversation. 

If you have been paying attention you know I can’t photograph or identify Dave or Joe (names changed) but take my word for it, we three old white guys sat around a table in Occupational Therapy and talked without holding back. Dave started it. He asked Elias what I was in for and Elias said he couldn’t say owing to privacy rules. I rolled over to Dave’s table and told him the story of my wreck. I don’t embellish it- that would be hard!- but I tell it as a funny story and it is very funny.  Me flying through the air, telling by standers what to do, and then considering who the listener is either I skip to the helicopter ride or I’ll tell you about fading away. 

Dave nearly died from complications of routine surgery. He described sensations I am now quite familiar with, a physical sensation of comfort and warmth, a gradual loss of interest. To outsiders I describe it as looking for the white light but even though I never did see the white light I was entirely at peace for a while.  I don’t even know how long. I had no visions and I didn’t see anyone from my past, I just lay there and the physical coldness from blood loss left me. Dave was telling his story and I was nodding along because I recognized it. I thought I was fully conscious throughout the crash and aftermath but there was someone real holding my hand and I talked to her she said (on Facebook) and of her I have no memory.  I was busy fading away because I do remember laying there waiting for the end of this chapter and the start of a new journey. Then the paramedics arrived and started asking questions and so forth and I was back. I even took a selfie on the stretcher. I thought it might be the last picture of me alive. Not sure why that was important, and if it were I should have smiled. 

We sat at the table lifting our weights and squeezing our hand springs as we chatted. Dave is in his 70’s, a thin gaunt man with deep set eyes and a hook nose and a shock of white hair. He looks like a pirate having a streak of bad luck in his hospital gown and a startled look in his eyes. He stopped eating in the ICU and is proud of the hundred pounds he lost. He didn’t die either.  He cheered me on as I took my first steps in the walker. Nowadays he gives me grief as I lie on the mat strengthening my legs. “Sleeping on the job Michael?” “Fuck off Dave,” and he starts cackling from his chair. The therapists try to stay professional but we old codgers test them. Then I cheer him on as he fights the parallel bars. “Go back to sleeping,” he shouts over his shoulder.  We are alive both of us. My bed in the gym:

There were three of us at the table. Joe also in his seventies listened to us and then stepped in, as you do when sitting in a wheelchair, with his story of acute internal organ failure and twice he stepped up to the pearly gates.  Not ready he said as he pounded the weights. Was it easier the second time I asked. No he said, I still didn’t want to go. For all the agony of recovery, Dave’s piss bag whose tube is always getting in the way as he rises out of the chair, Joe’s grim determination to survive despite the odds he has overcome, my mild sense of confusion that I am still alive all combine to keep us awake and trying to do these impossible exercises.

You should have joined me in my ICU fast when I lost a hundred pounds Dave says as he watches me deploy my upper body strength (thank you Broga) only half defeated by my beer keg as Nathalie calls my abdominal six pack. Fuck off Dave I say conversationally between gasps and tugs at the Red Cords. He cackles as they wheel him out of the gym. I walked a total of fifty feet on my longest march this week.  Not all of it was brilliant, a bit wobbly, but I did it. I took four showers and shat in a toilet three times. I am alive dammit. 

The MRSA wound is almost closed and I am very happy about that.  What I am not so happy about is how pissed I felt when I was diagnosed. Dying in the roadway like a piece of bloody meat didn’t bother me aside from a vague feeling that I’d like more time thanks. However the possibility of the bacterium getting me pissed me off. It seems irrational to me. Perhaps after such a smash I had no expectations but getting through the ICU and all that misery had primed me to see a future which suddenly looked cut short.

I didn’t want to go back to pain and tubes and immobility. Perhaps that’s another lesson to be learned: just because I survived one brush with the Grim Reaper gives no immunity from the next encounter.  There’s food for thought.  Like Joe I wasn’t ready for a second go at the white light. None of us are so I have to keep on wasting no time. This is exhausting. Better make it worth it!

Sugarloaf Loop Road

Once again thanks to a reader for sending me some pictures. I actually met Mike on the Sugarloaf Loop and he remembered the encounter as did I. Anyway out of the blue he mailed me a bunch of pictures of his latest excursion. Pretty cool so here they are and grateful I am to have received them, a window for me on the outside world. A reminder of walks Rusty and I took and will take again.