COVID & COPD

 I missed writing yesterday, which was a Sunday. Saturday night I went downtown with Claudia to meet my oldest son Carlos and his girlfriend Val. We went to Dodici Pizza & Wine, downtown's top attraction. Located in the heart of downtown in a brick building that dates back to the 1880s, it has an interior patio that transports a customer to any locale he or she could imagine in the world. A norther had blown through Brownsville earlier, so the setting was perfect. A good time was had by all fueled by generous glasses of wine. Three bottles later we went to El Hueso de Fraile, which is Brownsville's bohemian hangout downtown. Downtown, which I've always called a living museum, is slowly reviving. COVID closed all the establishments and nobody doubts that COVID could close all the establishments again. We are enjoying a small respite from the pandemic, but nobody doubts that another day of reckoning could be coming. As it surges throughout the country, there is no reason to believe that we have a special immunity in Brownsville.

I lost Sunday as part of my recovery. It wasn't the only loss. COVID deaths passed the 220,000 mark. The Astros lost their chance to go to the World Series. Today, Monday, I lost a sense of confidence in a long and prosperous future. For some time--two years, three years--I have been struggling with a loss of breath and a persistent cough. My X-rays and blood work returned and Dr. Polyphemous Pangloss informed me that I have COPD and high cholesterol. I've been saying the walls are closing for some time now and like my inability to take deep breaths on occasion, I'm finding that I'm running out of room to stretch my body to its full length. As it is, I'm taking Telmisartan for high-blood pressure, Levothyroxine for a thyroid condition and Colcrys for gout. If it weren't for the daily dose of Xanax, I might be so depressed that I would think that I was at death's door.

With the COPD diagnosis, I went immediately to Google. COPD is the acronym for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, the fourth leading killer of Americans according to the article I read. I have had it for an extended period of time. Three or four years ago I was in Austin with my boys Carlos and Joaquin and we went to a popular swimming hole. We had to ascend a hill on our return to the car and my sons thought they were going to have to assist me up the hill because I was so short of breath. The shortness of breath has never overwhelmed me--some outbreaks called exacerbations can require immediate hospitalizations--but oftentimes I feel myself laboring when I want to take a deep breath. I'm meeting with Dr. Pangloss in the afternoon, scrutinize all the results, determine the seriousness of my cholesterol and commence a course of treatment for the COPD. There is no cure and it is one of the worst underlying conditions during these times of COVID.

So it goes. I always tell myself that I'm not going to die today and to move forward. Yesterday I did nothing but sleep. I rose once for a meal and a second time to do my blogging. I knew that I wasn't in a mental state to write so I filled both my blog and Facebook with photos of the candidates that I'm helping. It is an impressive list: a congressman, a state senator, a state representative, five school district trustees, two community college trustees, two port commissioners, a sheriff candidate and a county clerk candidate. I also have a physician, an old friend of Dr. Pangloss, who advertises with me and graces my public with his pearls of wisdom. Of the 14 candidates, one has already won and faces no opposition in the general election. Five are prohibitive favorites, one is a strong favorite, five others have the edge and the last two are in the upset category if they prevail. They put their trust in me and I do my best to contribute to positive results. Come November 4, however, and the past is the past.

I run their photos with headlines that serve as cutlines. I learned the technique when I began at The Brownsville Herald. A photo standing alone was called wild art. There might be a small headline above it, but the cutline, that could run as much as three or four lines below it, would render the significance of the photo. I also like The New Yorker's presentation of its cartoons with a humorous one liner as the cutline. I apply this concept to the one-liner head above the photo. Readers want fresh meat every day and if The McHale Report or Facebook yields a chuckle or two, it will keep them coming back for more because curiosity is never cured. Blogging, most importantly, requires constant posting and the photos are an effective strategy because there are occasions when a page of pictures draws as many hits as a page with three or four articles. 

Spending the entire day in bed yesterday, reduced the days until the elections from 17 when I partied Saturday to 15 as I compose this piece Monday morning. Biden and Trump meet in their last debate Thursday. It will be a spectacle as Trump has lost control of himself demanding like a tinhorn dictator that the authorities immediately arrest the Bidens as he commits his crimes against humanity by holding his mass rallies with no masks and no social-distancing in many of the swing states where COVID is spiking. At this moment Biden is leading in every swing state, but his supporters are thinking that the reality of him defeating Trump is too good to be true and in their paranoia fear that the president has these silent masses who will launch a surprise attack in the last days to assure a Trump triumph.

Outside my window I notice the brushes are stirring. The sun is bright and the norther has passed. With the COPD diagnosis, I'm feeling more and more vulnerable. Besides fatiguing me, hangovers also precipitate anxiety and depression in me. That's the reason I double the Xanax because I want to rest peacefully the entire day not have to listen to the monkeys chattering in my mind. They have nothing good to say. Like becomes darker. It's the reason I don't drink as much as I used to drink. The price is simply too high and I'm growing too old not to have learned a lesson or two so I can continue to say, "I'm not going to die today." The sages state that pleasure is the absence of pain. Do we reach a point in our lives when we no longer engage in pleasure because our only desire is to exist without pain? I did have the pleasure of voting for Biden. I can only hope that enough Americans believe as I do that four more years of Trump would be too much pain and a COVID-19 infection exacerbated by my COPD would be a gift from God. No! I don't think so. Like the 220,000 already executed by Trump and the thousands more he has sentenced to die, I don't want to be one of his statistics over which he would sadistically gloat.