Okay, the Super Bowl is over and the New York Giants won. Now what? The Green File is officially going through pigskin withdrawal. It happens this time each year. Basketball, hockey and lingerie football just don't cut it as far as I'm concerned.
There's a bland two-month period between the time the curtain comes down on football and the start of the major league baseball season and the Final Four hoop crazy weekend to crown a new national champion. Wake me (yawn) when it's over.
It wasn't always this way. There was a time that I was absolutely bananas about basketball. I was a kid in a small town in Northern Illinois where the fire for high school basketball burned with a deep intensity. It seemed the whole community turned out for the local varsity's home games.
Mom and Dad fed us hamburgers and french fries at our house, then we drove on snow-covered streets to the warm confines of the Libertyville High School gym. It was in that hallowed venue where the hometown Wildcats did battle with the likes of the visiting Zion Zee-Bees, Barrington Broncos and Crystal Lake Tigers among others.
The gym began filling up with fans well before tip-off of the varsity game. We couldn't get there early enough as far as I was concerned. It was a privilege just being able to sit there in the bleachers. The gym floor sparkled and only athletes and coaches were allowed to walk on it on game nights. Pennants celebrating past league championships hung proudly along one wall.
To a 12-year-old boy like me, the gym was more shrine than anything else.
It was a place where gods performed miracles at times and legends were born. Had school officials provided me with a cot and bureau dresser I would happily have taken up residence there.
As it was, I wasn't afforded that opportunity. Instead of rubbing shoulders with the high school players, I had to be content with dreaming of the far-off day when I would suit up as a Wildcat, earn a varsity letter and strut around town in one of their beautiful black letter jackets complete with large orange L and cream-colored leather sleeves.
Back in those days there wasn't a lot of money on the streets. Our parents worked hard to provide us with a decent home. We never went without food or clothing, but there weren't a lot of extras. One day Dad brought home a basketball for me. It was orange-brown and made of a synthetic material so you could use it on the playground or in a gym.
That humble basketball was my pride and joy. After school, I'd hurry home and shoot baskets at the hoop attached to the garage at home. At night, right before bedtime, I'd scrub it clean with a wash cloth, then set it on the nightstand beside my bed. That went on for a few weeks before I came to the conclusion that no matter what I did, the ball wouldn't stay new forever.
Alas, I wasn't destined to ever wear the orange and black of the Libertyville Wildcats. Dad got a promotion and we moved to Northern California. Upon arriving, one of the first things my brother and I did was walk to the local high school to check out the gym. We peeked inside and I remember thinking, those bleachers aren't very big. We were to learn fans in our new community turned out in the hundreds, not thousands as we were used to in Illinois, for high school games.
Over time my passion for basketball waned. Football and baseball rose to the fore. Now there's a hole on the calendar and in my heart where basketball once dominated almost everything else. But lately there has been a stirring. After watching New York Knicks phenom Jeremy Lin play on TV this weekend, I'm ready to give basketball another chance. I'm beginning to realize you're never too old to fall in love with something a second time.
I guess my love affair with fountain pens began back around 1975. Well, there was this girl in one of the English classes I took during an ill-fated semester at San Jose State in the fall of 1967. She sat at a desk next to mine and she employed a fountain pen to take notes. It was a Parker model and used ink cartridges. I found it fascinating that a student of that era actually used a fountain pen, which called back to an earlier time when people rode trains and sent each other telegrams.
The recent snowstorm and long dark days got me to thinking. Especially since the power went out at my house Thursday afternoon, came back on for half an hour, then went out again until after 7 p.m. I sat in my front room watching darkness creep over the landscape. For a time, all I could think about was the bumper sticker popular in Alaska and elsewhere back in the days before the oil pipeline was built there. "Let the bastards freeze in the dark," it said, meaning environmentalists and others who opposed it.
That's what I call kidney dialysis. The kind of a job most of us have held at one time or another. The kind you don't like, but have to show up for. Welcome to my world. It has been two-and-a-half months since my foray into dialysis began; three times a week, four hours per session.
People ask me what it's like. It doesn't hurt, I tell them. It's just very time-consuming. Like a bad part-time job, I add, and immediately they get it.
Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful it's available, especially in Shelton.
Otherwise, I'd be driving to and from Lacey three times each week, which would add close to six more hours to the 12 hours I actually spend in dialysis.
People in psychoanalysis spend time on the couch. Those in dialysis spend time in the chair; a comfortable recliner. I'm told in the early days of dialysis, patients spent eight to 12 hours per session. That would be more like a bad full-time job, so things have improved over the years.
My dialysis day starts at 4 a.m., when I struggle to wake, have breakfast and watch a little TV to learn what's going on in the greater world.
Around
6 a.m., or a little after, I climb into my rig and head for the Shelton Dialysis Unit across the street from Mason General Hospital.
I park facing the hospital and a spectacular tree, the latter just a few feet from my vehicle. It's cool to look at its branches silhouetted against lights from North 13th Street. I listen to news on KPLU a few minutes, then it's time to ante up and head inside the unit.
It's a clean, well-lighted place, to steal a phrase from Ernest Hemingway.
I actually feel quite comfortable there. I hang up my coat and weigh myself. For some reason, the medical profession has converted to the metric system over the past 25 years or so. Fortunately, you can push a button that converts your weight to pounds. Owing to dialysis itself and the renal diet I have been trying to follow faithfully, I now weigh less than I did when I was a high-school athlete more than 45 years ago.
There's always a nurse and one or two technicians on duty and there are nine chairs inside the clinic. Patients are usually assigned a specific chair, which helps make you feel more at home there. I've gotten to know nurses Chris and Betty and techs Jill, Steve, Travis and Becky. I like them all very much. I'd have to say I have more rapport with Chris, who reminds me of a guy I played football and baseball with in junior high and high school; he likes to laugh at things and just has a great attitude, always upbeat.
It takes about 10 minutes to get hooked up to the dialyzer machine -- and away I go for the next 240 minutes. While the machine quietly goes about its business of withdrawing all 4.5 liters of my blood, filtering it and then returning it (not all at once, thankfully), your obedient servant sleeps, watches TV, reads or chats with nurses or techs as they happen by.
Several of the other patients sleep or watch TV. Most of us bring blankets, which help keep us cozy during the process. Pillows are provided and I'm comfortable most of the time. My body tends to stiffen up a bit, but you can't just get up and move around; you're tethered to the machine.
Once in a great while somebody has to use the restroom. They're unhooked, then reattached upon return. Plus, their stay that day is extended by however many minutes they're off dialysis.
You don't get to talk much with the other patients. For one thing most of the chairs are a ways from each other, which affords you a bit of privacy when you're talking with the doctors, dietician and others who come by at least once every month. For another thing, most patients probably prefer keeping to themselves during their sessions. Also, the unit is a fairly quiet place and constant banter would be annoying.
Patients are also hooked to a blood-pressure cuff and your blood pressure is automatically measured periodically while you're in the chair. If it drops below a certain point a little alarm goes off and you're given a saline solution to bring it back up.
After four hours, I'm unhooked, then stand to have my blood pressure measured one last time before I'm cleared to leave. I weigh myself again.
Typically, I lose between three and five pounds of fluid per session. I'm able to put that weight back on before the next session. My incoming weight fluctuates between 175 and 178 pounds.
Then I'm free for the next day-and-a-half until it's time to return to my part-time job: kidney dialysis.
Belated New Year's greetings to one and all. The Green File started 2012 with what's politely come to be known as a senior moment. In other words, I simply forgot to write a column last week. There I was on Monday, January 2, in front of my TV gorging on bowl games. The Rose Bowl blew me away. Great game, followed by the Fiesta Bowl. After that one ended, I yawned and turned in for the night.
The Green File with Jeff Green
About Jeff Green:
Jeff has been a journalist since the early 1970s. It can be said he came in while Nixon was going out. Jeff was born in Washington, D.C., but escaped uncorrupted by lobbyists and special interest groups when at the tender age of 5 he moved with his family to the Maryland suburbs. A few years later, the traveling circus known as the Green family headed out for the territory, lighting in Northern Illinois for four years before pushing westward to Northern California, where Jeff played sports, read Sports Illustrated magazine and eventually spent countless hours cruising town with his buddies. His fledgling baseball career was nipped in the bud in the 11th grade when his English teacher encouraged him to concentrate instead on writing. "Curse you, Mr. Molinari, I could have signed for possibly dozens of dollars," he said. But since he always had trouble hitting a curve ball, experts doubt whether he would have wound up in the Baseball Hall of Fame. We'll never know.
Jeff started his newspaper career with the San Francisco Chronicle at age 15, as a paperboy. It's been downhill ever since. After graduating from college with a hard-won degree of dubious value in sociology, he embarked on a career as a newspaper reporter, which has included stints at a now defunct weekly in Napa, California, The Olympian and the Shelton Mason-County Journal. He has called Shelton, including Potlatch, home since 1977. He can often be found drinking coffee and eating breakfast or lunch at Nita's restaurant in Shelton, which he claims is his home away from home. He also prowls the Shelton library on occasion.
Send Jeff an email:
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
.
All of the Green Files are below:
The Green File: Like It Or Not We're in the Winter Doldrums
There's a bland two-month period between the time the curtain comes down on football and the start of the major league baseball season and the Final Four hoop crazy weekend to crown a new national champion. Wake me (yawn) when it's over.
It wasn't always this way. There was a time that I was absolutely bananas about basketball. I was a kid in a small town in Northern Illinois where the fire for high school basketball burned with a deep intensity. It seemed the whole community turned out for the local varsity's home games.
Mom and Dad fed us hamburgers and french fries at our house, then we drove on snow-covered streets to the warm confines of the Libertyville High School gym. It was in that hallowed venue where the hometown Wildcats did battle with the likes of the visiting Zion Zee-Bees, Barrington Broncos and Crystal Lake Tigers among others.
The gym began filling up with fans well before tip-off of the varsity game. We couldn't get there early enough as far as I was concerned. It was a privilege just being able to sit there in the bleachers. The gym floor sparkled and only athletes and coaches were allowed to walk on it on game nights. Pennants celebrating past league championships hung proudly along one wall.
To a 12-year-old boy like me, the gym was more shrine than anything else.
It was a place where gods performed miracles at times and legends were born. Had school officials provided me with a cot and bureau dresser I would happily have taken up residence there.
As it was, I wasn't afforded that opportunity. Instead of rubbing shoulders with the high school players, I had to be content with dreaming of the far-off day when I would suit up as a Wildcat, earn a varsity letter and strut around town in one of their beautiful black letter jackets complete with large orange L and cream-colored leather sleeves.
Back in those days there wasn't a lot of money on the streets. Our parents worked hard to provide us with a decent home. We never went without food or clothing, but there weren't a lot of extras. One day Dad brought home a basketball for me. It was orange-brown and made of a synthetic material so you could use it on the playground or in a gym.
That humble basketball was my pride and joy. After school, I'd hurry home and shoot baskets at the hoop attached to the garage at home. At night, right before bedtime, I'd scrub it clean with a wash cloth, then set it on the nightstand beside my bed. That went on for a few weeks before I came to the conclusion that no matter what I did, the ball wouldn't stay new forever.
Alas, I wasn't destined to ever wear the orange and black of the Libertyville Wildcats. Dad got a promotion and we moved to Northern California. Upon arriving, one of the first things my brother and I did was walk to the local high school to check out the gym. We peeked inside and I remember thinking, those bleachers aren't very big. We were to learn fans in our new community turned out in the hundreds, not thousands as we were used to in Illinois, for high school games.
Over time my passion for basketball waned. Football and baseball rose to the fore. Now there's a hole on the calendar and in my heart where basketball once dominated almost everything else. But lately there has been a stirring. After watching New York Knicks phenom Jeremy Lin play on TV this weekend, I'm ready to give basketball another chance. I'm beginning to realize you're never too old to fall in love with something a second time.
Add new comment
The Green File: Confessions of an Ink-Stained Wretch
The Green File: Dreaming About The Desert And Baseball
THe Green File: A Really Bad Part-Time Job
People ask me what it's like. It doesn't hurt, I tell them. It's just very time-consuming. Like a bad part-time job, I add, and immediately they get it.
Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful it's available, especially in Shelton.
Otherwise, I'd be driving to and from Lacey three times each week, which would add close to six more hours to the 12 hours I actually spend in dialysis.
People in psychoanalysis spend time on the couch. Those in dialysis spend time in the chair; a comfortable recliner. I'm told in the early days of dialysis, patients spent eight to 12 hours per session. That would be more like a bad full-time job, so things have improved over the years.
My dialysis day starts at 4 a.m., when I struggle to wake, have breakfast and watch a little TV to learn what's going on in the greater world.
Around
6 a.m., or a little after, I climb into my rig and head for the Shelton Dialysis Unit across the street from Mason General Hospital.
I park facing the hospital and a spectacular tree, the latter just a few feet from my vehicle. It's cool to look at its branches silhouetted against lights from North 13th Street. I listen to news on KPLU a few minutes, then it's time to ante up and head inside the unit.
It's a clean, well-lighted place, to steal a phrase from Ernest Hemingway.
I actually feel quite comfortable there. I hang up my coat and weigh myself. For some reason, the medical profession has converted to the metric system over the past 25 years or so. Fortunately, you can push a button that converts your weight to pounds. Owing to dialysis itself and the renal diet I have been trying to follow faithfully, I now weigh less than I did when I was a high-school athlete more than 45 years ago.
There's always a nurse and one or two technicians on duty and there are nine chairs inside the clinic. Patients are usually assigned a specific chair, which helps make you feel more at home there. I've gotten to know nurses Chris and Betty and techs Jill, Steve, Travis and Becky. I like them all very much. I'd have to say I have more rapport with Chris, who reminds me of a guy I played football and baseball with in junior high and high school; he likes to laugh at things and just has a great attitude, always upbeat.
It takes about 10 minutes to get hooked up to the dialyzer machine -- and away I go for the next 240 minutes. While the machine quietly goes about its business of withdrawing all 4.5 liters of my blood, filtering it and then returning it (not all at once, thankfully), your obedient servant sleeps, watches TV, reads or chats with nurses or techs as they happen by.
Several of the other patients sleep or watch TV. Most of us bring blankets, which help keep us cozy during the process. Pillows are provided and I'm comfortable most of the time. My body tends to stiffen up a bit, but you can't just get up and move around; you're tethered to the machine.
Once in a great while somebody has to use the restroom. They're unhooked, then reattached upon return. Plus, their stay that day is extended by however many minutes they're off dialysis.
You don't get to talk much with the other patients. For one thing most of the chairs are a ways from each other, which affords you a bit of privacy when you're talking with the doctors, dietician and others who come by at least once every month. For another thing, most patients probably prefer keeping to themselves during their sessions. Also, the unit is a fairly quiet place and constant banter would be annoying.
Patients are also hooked to a blood-pressure cuff and your blood pressure is automatically measured periodically while you're in the chair. If it drops below a certain point a little alarm goes off and you're given a saline solution to bring it back up.
After four hours, I'm unhooked, then stand to have my blood pressure measured one last time before I'm cleared to leave. I weigh myself again.
Typically, I lose between three and five pounds of fluid per session. I'm able to put that weight back on before the next session. My incoming weight fluctuates between 175 and 178 pounds.
Then I'm free for the next day-and-a-half until it's time to return to my part-time job: kidney dialysis.
The Green File: Stop the Presses, Columnist Remembers Deadline
More Articles...
Page 1 of 18
