Stroke! Stroke! Stroke!

My mom me sent one of those emails stating, "Pass this on to ten friends and save lives." I have a personal policy to never pass on anything no matter what it is and I never vary from it. This one seemed pretty good though. It’s about how to identify the symptoms of a stroke. I didn't pass it on but I decided to investigate nonetheless.

Up until about ten years ago I rarely thought much about strokes or any medical problems. Most people in the military take care of themselves, especially in these rabidly health conscience times; and part of the job requirement anyway is staying in shape, so death by disease is rare for people on active duty.

Not only that, but most of us are forced out by "high year of tenure" rules before most of us are anywhere near old enough to get sick and die of conditions like heart attacks and strokes. When one does get sick like that to the point of no longer being qualified to be "a war-fighter," it's medical retirement time, whereupon it's time to go home as a civilian to either die or recover.

The email’s subject line was: New Signs of a stroke - Not a joke

The body of the email continued on thusly, about a woman named Ingrid at a BBQ who tripped and fell, seemed fine, ate her BBQ, had a good time, went home, and soon thereafter died in a hospital:

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx x**************************

STROKE: Remember The 1st Three Letters... S.T.R.

x

STROKE IDENTIFICATION:

x

During a BBQ, a friend stumbled and took a little fall - she assured everyone that she was fine (they offered to call paramedics) and just tripped over a brick because of her new shoes They got her cleaned up and got her a new plate of food - while she appeared a bit shaken up, Ingrid went about enjoying herself the rest of the evening. Ingrid's husband called later telling everyone that his wife had been taken to the hospital - (at 6:00 pm, Ingrid passed away.) She had suffered a stroke at the BBQ. Had they known how to identify the signs of a stroke, perhaps Ingrid would be with us today. Some don't die. They end up in a helpless, hopeless condition instead.

It only takes a minute to read this.

A neurologist says that if he can get to a stroke victim within 3 hours he can totally reverse the effects of a stroke...totally. He said the trick was getting a stroke recognized, diagnosed, and then getting the patient medically cared for within 3 hours, which is tough.

RECOGNIZING A STROKE

Thank God for the sense to remember the '3' steps, STR. Read and Learn!Sometimes symptoms of a stroke are difficult to identify. Unfortunately, the lack of awareness spells disaster. The stroke victim may suffer severe brain damage when people nearby fail to recognize the symptoms of a stroke.

Now doctors say a bystander can recognize a stroke by asking three simple questions:

S * Ask the individual to SMILE.

T * Ask the person to TALK to SPEAK A SIMPLE SENTENCE (Coherently) (I.e. It is sunny out today)

R * Ask him or her to RAISE BOTH ARMS.

NOTE: Another 'sign' of a storke is this: Ask the person to 'stick' out their tongue. If its crooked, if it goes to one side or the other, that is also an indication of a stroke. If he or she has trouble with ANY ONE of these tasks, call 911 immediately and describe the symptoms to the dispatcher.

********************

So that was the "stroke email." Before taking such a thing as gospel I thought I’d check it out on Snopes and send it to a doctor buddy of mine to scope out. Snopes addressed the exact email that my mom sent and it basically says that yes, its mostly good stuff. Read it here.

Snopes also addressed another BS "pass it on" email about strokes that instructs people to prick and bleed a stroke victim’s fingertips as well as to pull on their earlobes, all according to some ancient Chinese remedy. Snopes claims the supposed "Chinese stroke cure" is complete malarkey. No surprise there.

After checking out the above email, my doctor pal gave me a critique of the stroke email that I had received as well as a pretty good rundown on strokes, and even provided some great insights into heart attacks. All of it is good stuff, and combined with the excellent info from Snopes you’ve got everything you need to know about the whole range of cardio vascular episodes.

Check out what Doc Dick had to say:

Yes some of it is indeed true. Some of it is baloney.

If a person has a stroke, their smile is going to be different. The affected side of the face will generally droop downward to one side, something that would be abnormal for that person.

Getting them to talk and say a simple sentence will tell you a lot because usually the speech might be a little slurred or the person might have aphasia which is difficulty talking at all.

Asking them to raise their hands above their heads will tell you which side is affected. Generally speaking the person won't be able to raise the affected side as high.

I don't believe this lady had the stroke at the BBQ though. Once a stroke starts, it generally gets worse by the minute. She probably had a pre-stroke at the BBQ, which medically is called a transient ischemic attack (TIA). That's a warning. Sometimes people have TIA's and recover as if nothing happened. Sometimes the TIA is a warning that the big one is coming shortly - could be within hours or a few days.

Other tips:

If a person is having a stroke - he or she will normally have a very strong bounding pulse that is slower than normal.

There may be projectile vomiting.

The pupils will generally be uneven one dilated and one constricted if it is actually a stroke. This is not always the case in a TIA.

Have the person squeeze your fingers with both hands. The squeeze on the affected side will be much weaker.

A transient ischemic attack (TIA) is usually mild and may only last a minute or two but sometimes it might last a few days. However a transient ischemic attack (pre-stroke) will improve and the person may resume normal activities very soon. Not so long ago, a guy I knew here had a TIA. He dropped like a sack of potatoes in Garfield’s. He insisted on going to his doctor’s office instead of the hospital. I went with him and told the doctor I thought he had a TIA. The doctor gave him something sweet to drink saying it was just his blood sugar (which he did not check).

Two days later the guy died of a stroke.

What is baloney below is this. If it is a pre-stroke or transient ischemic attack, yes, usually within two or three hours a good neurologist can have the person out of danger and possibly even have the problem identified. If it is a thrombosis (blood clot) causing the TIA, then there are drugs to dissipate the blood clot. If it is a bleed, i.e. a burst blood vessel in the brain, then surgery at this point may take care of the problem IF it is in an area of the brain that is operable. Only about 25% of the brain is operable.

If it is a full blown stroke, not a TIA, even with a good ambulance service, the chances of saving the person's life are not so good. The reason is that the blood clot if that is what it is, has already damaged a large portion of the brain or if it is a bleed, then the intercranial pressure has already turned the brain into Jell-O. If the person lives, more than likely he or she is going to be severely debilitated due to brain damage and require quite a bit of rehab to be functional again - if being functional is possible.

Statistics for heart attacks and strokes are basically the same, since they are basically the same thing - except one is happening in the brain and the other is happening in the heart. About 50% of the people who have a first time stroke die from it within two hours. Most of them never get medical help until it is too late.

50% of the people who have heart attacks die with the first heart attack because most fatal heart attacks have NO symptoms at all. The person feels fine one minute and drops over dead the next minute. It's called "sudden cardiac death". When I was an ER doc, we used to tell people the fact that they are having chest pain is a good indicator that they are going to survive the heart attack.

And now you have had your medical class on strokes and heart attacks for the day. Regards bro.

Poor Laurnen Caitlin, Poor Us

For some, poor Lauren Caitlin Upton has become the poster child for our allegedly "poor" American education system, and I’m not talking about “Special Ed.” (No pun intended Ed Abbey.)

Jokes aside (for now), when I first saw this doe-eyed "deer in the headlights" beauty from South Carolina trying to answer her simple beauty contest question, I honestly thought she might be "challenged" in some way, other than being a pageant participant that is.

I shouldn’t say that. In fact, I take it back. One of the smartest gals I’ve ever had the pleasure of hanging out with was Miss Arkansas 1992, Shannon Boy. That girl was sharp, and so nice and down to earth that I didn't hold it against her that she was studying to become a lawyer. By now, I'm sure she is one and probably very successful. Oh, and she has some very interesting "Bill Clinton is a horny dog" stories.

Anyway, back to poor Lauren Caitlin. I know I'm not being fair to her, or to our much maligned education system. After all, it seems pretty obvious that the question in question was really just a way to prompt commentary on the poor state of education in the United States, wasn't it? And being unable to speak well—or in Lauren's case, to speak intelligibly—in front of several million people does not necessarily reflect one way or another on her erudition or on the system that made her that way.

I must say though, whenever I try to watch that beautiful, yet in THAT moment, pitiful, creature trying to answer the simple question: "Why can't twenty percent of Americans find America on a map?" I find myself as uncomfortable as when I watch the "rumbling, bumbling, mumbling, stumbling" President Bush speak to an audience, and I like the guy. Some people just do not express themselves well in public.

For Lauren, her mind was trying to work, but all it managed to do was spit out bits of disjointed half thoughts and fragments of nonsense. Plain and simple, she became tongue-tied. As a childhood stutterer myself, I know exactly how that feels. Time slows down to an excruciating crawl and no matter how much you try to unlock the words they won't come.

In fact, the harder I tried, sometimes, the worse it got. You figure that saying something, ANYTHING, is better than the deathly silence. Just fill up the dead space with words—never mind that none of them make any sense.

I don't think Lauren is a stutterer. She sort of knew what she wanted to say, maybe, but couldn't quite get it out; but I don't think it was her tongue that got tied—it was her brain. In the vernacular of sports, she choked.

Getting past the poor girl’s inability to express herself, she attempted to respond to a question that only had one or two obvious answers anyway. As a bullheaded contrarian, and due to natural orneriness, I tend to answer questions exactly the opposite of what is probably expected. I like to call it "thinking out of the box," or being “original.” Others might just call me a smartass—all three metaphors are accurate.

Looking deeper, the pageant writers of Caitlin's rather leading question probably weren’t looking for the obvious answer that would probably be something like, “It apparently shows that Americans didn’t study their geography in grammar school.” What they were REALLY looking for was some kind of social commentary—like they do for every beauty pageant. Surprise, surprise!

If it had been smart-aleck me, I would have said, “Well, it seems to show what I’ve suspected for years—that a lot of Americans aren't smart enough to find their OWN butt with BOTH hands!”

All right, that’s too earthy for a Teen USA pageant, but if you could read my pretend beauty contest thought cloud that’s exactly what it would say.

Getting back to Miss Upton—she’s supposed to have graduated from high school not long ago with a 3.5 average. Given that, and her public speaking aside, she's probably a fairly intelligent girl. But, some will use her ramblingly incoherent answer to make a point, which might be that Americans are morons and our schools suck. Well, according to the study used in crafting Caitlin's question, apparently, many of us are! And, our schools do! Personally, I've known both for decades.

Continuing to look at the question itself makes me wonder a thing or two about the people running the Miss Teen USA pageant. Why in the world would they want to embarrass their own nation by using a question that disparages us? Who are these people? It seems more and more lately that certain persons in positions able to do so LOVE to take cheap shots at their own. I don't get it.

I’ve watched a couple of “post pathetic answer” interviews with the beautiful blond, like on the Today Show, and honestly, in those venues she STILL came off as being a cross between a ditzy valley girl and a southern “Dukes of Hazard” babe. I wonder what courses she took in high school that she was able to pull off those straight A's? Oops, there I go again. It’s just hard not to bash her—she makes it too darn easy, especially when she says something.

Enough already. Why spend so much time talking about and obsessing over an inarticulate 18-year-old pageant winner wannabe who came off sounding like a complete idiot on national TV? Good question. Primarily, because she put herself out there and then MADE the very point that her over-simple pageant question was begging to make in the first place. To paraphrase, “Why are so many Americans so ignorant?”

Her response was perfectly ironic—it was the pot answering why the kettle is SOOO darned black, and with southern valley girl inflection.

So this whole silly affair has nothing at all to do with our education system. It’s about Americans finding someone really beautiful; certainly tons better looking than they are, but coming across as a complete imbecile.

Since uttering her blooper from hell, well over a million people have accessed it on the Internet. Why would they do that? It’s obvious—because now 60,542,005 Americans (1/5th of us) who can’t find the United States on a map, suddenly have someone who makes THEM look smart.

Poor Lauren Caitlin. But she DOES have her uses.

The REAL Boys of Summer

The 2007 Little League World Series just finished up this weekend at South Williamsport, Pennsylvania. I watched as many of the games as ESPN would show over here.

I won’t make it a secret—I rooted—and did so strongly—for the eventual American round-robin winner from Warner Robins, Georgia in their quest to vanquish the little leaguers from Japan, who were the winners of their own tournament against the rest of the little league-playing world. Basically, the way the series tournament works, it’s the USA against the world.

For baseball, it’s more of a true “world” series than the supposed world series that Major League Baseball claims to have. But truthfully, at this point, when it comes to major league baseball and its spoiled players and blundering owners, I have nothing but contempt. In fact, the Detroit Tigers, my “old team,” and the New York Yankees, the team I used to “love to hate,” are playing each other this very second on ESPN, and I could NOT care less.

There are more than a few reasons I developed this total disdain for MLB, and for that matter, for pretty much ALL professional sports. It started in 1990 when “my Tigers” decided not to wear an armband for “the troops” during the 1st Gulf War, unlike the rest of the major league teams, which did. The Tigers were the ONLY team that didn't. Lou Whittaker wouldn’t wear it, so the rest of the team deferred to him.

I was one of the “those troops” the Tigers decided NOT to support, so, I decided in turn to end my own 30 odd years of support for them. When they lost their shot at a world championship last year I felt smug satisfaction. My brother tells me I should get over it, but I guess the old phrase "Hell has no fury like a woman scorned" applies to me as well, especially when it comes to being scorned by my erstwhile favorite team.

The more money these nimrods have made over the years the bigger jerks they’ve become, and that goes for the jerks playing in the NBA, in the NFL and even in the NHL. The more millions they’ve made, the more they’ve wanted, and the more they lost sight of what’s important—namely, the game itself, and the fans of the games.

Remember the baseball strike in 1994 and 1995? Well, I do, and I’ve NEVER forgotten it. When they, the players and owners, put their already bloated paychecks and revenues ahead of the game and the fans, I put THEM out of my mind. Screw ‘em. Hell, they didn’t even play a world series that year. The jerks!

In spite of myself, in 1998, with great excitement I watched Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa duel it out over who would end up breaking Roger Maris’ single season homerun record. I was even in the St. Louis stands that September when McGwire hit a frozen rope over the left field fence for number 63.

Then, I found out that both McGwire and Sosa, and MOST of the rest of MLB, took and probably are STILL taking steroidal type strength enhancement drugs—and to think I actually believed them when they all used to claim that their huge muscle-bound bodies were the simple result of protein supplements and weightlifting. Was I an Idiot or what? Don’t answer that…

Speaking of steroids, it’s an open secret that Barry Bonds has taken them for years as well. In case you haven’t heard, he just surpassed Hank Aaron’s career homerun record. As far as I’m concerned I now feel betrayed by ALL of these charlatans. NONE of the records of the last 25 years should count—they should be discounted—including Bond’s, McGwire’s and Sosa’s.

Actually, Bonds has already beaten McGwire’s, so McGwire doesn’t even matter anymore. Just the same, strike them ALL from the books. No wait; I don’t CARE what they do, because I don’t watch ANY of them—ANY more—ANY way!

My pent up disgust for all things MLB came on unexpectedly yet again and boiled over as I watched and listened yesterday to one of the little league world series TV announcers--I'm pretty sure it was Dusty Baker. He was one of three announcers of the semi-final game between Georgia and Texas. I erupted angrily when he made an asinine comment that really brought home just why I despise the professional level these days. Baker is a retired major league outfielder and manager and he made his ridiculous remark after a Texas little league player hit a "dinger" against the Georgia team.

As the hitter began his circuit of the bases, the first baseman of the opposing team congratulated him, as did most of the rest of the Georgia infielders as the hitter passed them--they all touched hands with the passing hitter as a sign of sportsmanship — the kind of sportsmanship that ideally SHOULD, but DOESN’T exist in the majors. I believe it was Brent Musburger who remarked glowingly about that small exchange of esteem between the young players, while instead, the cynical Baker reproached, “…I’m not sure I like that. It’s a little too much to show that kind of respect for the other team.”

How outrageous was that! At the moment he said it, all the loathing I’ve developed for the major league game over the years came spilling out of me in a small storm of rage. His outrageous comment did nothing but bolster exactly why I DON’T care about HIS game. I’d rather watch T‑ball between 8 year olds than ANY MLB game.

Here’s another bit of mean spirited MLB idiocy for you. When the major leaguers complete a game the winning team gets in a line and congratulates EACH OTHER while the losing team stalks off the field, seemingly in a pique of childish displeasure. At least in the NFL you’ll see the opposing players walk off the field together, and usually they will be talking to each other like adults and even shaking hands.

What’s wrong with that small manifestation of open friendliness and respect between opponents? I enjoy observing these days even a trace of graciousness between players, mostly because its so rare anymore. Coach Baker be damned, there’s nothing wrong with two teams shaking each other’s hands after a game and telling their competitors they played a good game, and MORE IMPORTANTLY, showing it to the crowd as a shining example to the young and impressionable.

And there’s certainly NOTHING wrong with opposing players remarking “good hit,” or “nice catch.” It’s still done in professional golf, with its omnipresent “nice shot,” and “good putt.” That’s why golf is the ONLY pro sport I still follow, BECAUSE of its continued stress on good sportsmanship and courteous play.

For me, that miniscule level of regard between players is a sign of hope that even a small speck of civility STILL exists in our ever increasingly uncivil society.

Heck, if you want to see acted out barbarism and savagery, watch professional wrestling, another so-called professional sport, which is really nothing but a joke on ourselves, since it seems to be a telling indicator of what many of us truly think are admirable American male traits--big, loud-mouthed, angry, steroidally-muscled maniacs. Oh wait, was I talking about WWE-styled wrestlers OR MLB baseball players? Anymore, what's the difference?

Speaking of telltale examples of brutishness in our society, every time I see a brawl on an NBA basketball court, or on an NHL hockey rink, or on an MLB baseball infield, I feel as if there is no hope for any of us. It tells me that people can’t even play a simple game without trying to ram each other’s teeth down throats.

And WHO sees that insane violent out-of-control garbage? Why, little leaguers of course, the boys and girls who follow every steroidal move that those crazed big leaguers make.

It’s been popular in the past couple of decades for professional players of all the sports to claim that they don’t consider themselves to be roll models. Well guess what? They are absolutely right. The REAL role models are those little leaguers I watched over the past week. I watched them play their hearts out for no money, and I saw them congratulate and respect each other without a trace of rancor for their rivals. Now THOSE are the REAL boys of summer!

Part 6 of "Broken and in Pieces, the Story of Mike"

More than a month has passed since my buddy’s lower leg was shattered in an “accident.” For him, it’s been sheer hell. He’s normally a very active fellow; in fact he’s hyperactive, so this forced inactivity is driving him nuts.

(To see how this mess started, here are parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5).

His orthopedist has been a godsend. By chance, we had found the good doctor just a few weeks before the mishap in our continuous search for local physicians wily enough to help us out as we assist veterans looking for decent medical consultations.

Most of the doctors hereabouts don’t write well, at least not in English, so finding this guy was great. The fact that he writes brilliantly AND he’s a brilliant orthopedic surgeon is pure bonus.

For my friend and his shattered leg the first three weeks or so was all hospital time. He had to wait for the battered tissue to reduce swelling enough for the first operation, which was devoted to pushing and pulling all the bone splinters and fragments back into the semblance of what was once a straight and intact tibia.

Two surgeons spent 5 hours getting that done using a heavy stainless steel cage called a fixator and a whole lot of X-rays to make sure the pins were going in correctly. I hear that the latest fixators are made of lightweight materials, but not so over here. Currently, my friend has about 25 pounds of metal dragging down his right leg. Or at least it drags on it when he tries to get up, which is not very often, just when he goes to the head or takes a few minutes to check his email on his PC.

He’s had to return to the hospital twice now, in fact, he’s there now, this last time because of a serious infection. The way I see it, around here, all infections are serious. In this tropical climate with the environment so laden with bacteria, those lurking nasties await the smallest chink in our bodily defenses to attack us.

In my friend’s case, he has more than a half-dozen metal pins pushed through the flesh of his leg into the bone, all designed to “fixate” the lower leg to allow proper alignment during the healing process.

Every couple of days, using a brush and a solution of hydrogen peroxide, the doctor scrubs away the clotted material from around the pins penetrating his leg. I guess it’s a form of débridement. The holes have to be kept open until its time to remove them. As far as my friend is concerned, that day can NOT come too soon. He tells me he’s been dreaming of the day a normal cast will replace the current cage-like monstrosity.

Last week, a few days before he reentered the hospital for his current round of IV administered antibiotics, I was deeply concerned because his leg was throbbing from the inside in an area that had not hurt all that much before. I also noticed his foot seemed a bit discolored and extra swollen. Right away, I knew it was probably the onset of a serious infection. The doctor thought so too, and a laboratory analysis proved us right.

I don’t know how he doesn’t have infections ALL the time considering he’s got those pins providing an out-and-out super hi-way right into the depths of his leg.

Infections scare me because they remind me of Mike, a fellow American veteran whom I once “assisted” with VA claims advice at least once or twice a week. To get my broke-legged buddy to listen carefully to his doctor’s instructions to get into a hospital for another round of heavy-duty antibiotics, and better yet, to do so IMMEDIATELY, I told him the story of Mike.

Up until his death about two years ago Mike was a fixture on Fields Avenue, which should be called “Party Avenue.” Usually from the early afternoon on you could catch him tooling about in his battery powered wheelchair scooter, and almost always he was skunk drunk by 2 p.m.

Once he had his daily buzz going he’d find a spot to park along the street and just sit there like an inebriated Buddha in the sun. He’d talk, mostly in an incoherent mumble, to anyone and everyone he happened to know or thought he knew.

Indeed, he looked like a suntanned Buddha-bum with his completely shaven baldhead and round, deeply browned tummy poking out prominently from his wide-open unbuttoned cotton shirt.

Mike didn’t sit on his chair so much as he perched up there, mostly because he had no legs, since not even the stumps of them were left. The good thing about Mike was it didn’t take much drinking to get him drunk since he was missing most of the bulk of his body.

When Mike first came to see me for help with his VA and Social Security claims I had assumed that he’d lost his legs to diabetes or to some grievous war wound, but in time I learned that his leglessness had not happened due to disease at all.

Mike had only nominal service with the navy back in the late 50s between wars, so he didn’t qualify for any veterans benefits. His only income was a small amount from social security. If not for the help he received with filling out applications from the veterans groups here in town he probably would not have received even that. In fact, that powered scooter of his was a donation from those same groups.

He had come to the Philippines for the same reasons many have come here over the years—for the low cost of living and the wonderful women. In the end, the Philippines killed him; or more like it, he offed himself, using the Philippines as the means.

The beginnings of his woes started off ordinary enough—one day he was a passenger in a trike when another vehicle struck it. Mike’s legs were injured; I’m not sure how badly, maybe some broken bones and lacerations. If he’d been anywhere back home it would have been no big deal. He would have been taken to an emergency room where they would have patched him up, indigent or not, but that’s not what happens here.

Here, if you get hurt and you can’t pay for antibiotics, or surgery, well, you don’t get them. Mike lay with in his bloody bandages in a bed in a public hospital in a large room with a bunch of other people who could not afford quality care, and his legs slowly rotted off his body. Gangrene set in and he lost them.

Luckily he didn’t die, although it’s a miracle he didn’t. I’m not sure, but I think some local Americans finally learned of his situation and chipped in to help him survive the amputations. Once out of the hospital he lived under some cardboard in someone’s carport for months, when once again, some of his fellow expats stepped in and got him some help from social security. After that, he could afford to pay a small rent and still had money enough for utilities, and more importantly to him, enough to keep him drunk for most of the day.

When I met him he was already dying. His heart was barely pumping enough blood to keep him alive and his internals were already so damaged from the drinking that it was just a matter of time before he croaked. He had a number of serious conditions that he should have been taking at least a half-dozen medications to control, but he spent all of his small income on his drug of choice—his booze.

The local embassy warden tried to convince him to let the United States fly him home to some kind of sanatorium in the States, but Mike knew he’d never be able to have his “fun” there and refused to go. In time, I learned that he had finally died.

So, okay, it wasn’t JUST infections that ended Mike’s life, but if left unchecked, those microscopic flesh-destroying bacterium WILL do a number on you. The good thing is once I told my little yarn about Mike to my friend it seemed to get him off the pot and he was back in the hospital the next morning.

Mission accomplished…

Me, My Mom and Nixon

It was only a few weeks before the presidential election of 1972. My mom drove us up Davenport Street on the western side of Saginaw, Michigan. I’ve been racking my brain trying to remember why the two of us would have been in that neck of the woods at that particular time and place, but for the life of me I cannot remember.

Nevertheless, we heard on the car radio that President Nixon would be making a quick campaign stop at the Tri-city airport. We were only a few minutes from there so we convinced ourselves that it would be a great idea to go and get a glimpse of a real live president. So, on a whim, off we went.

We parked in a large grassy field already half filled with cars. There was no longer any room left in the actual airport parking lot; or, perhaps the airport authorities decided it would be better to have “the presidential rubber neckers” park away from the main building.

We joined a straggling line of other pedestrians like ourselves, most of whom just wanted to see a president. Walking toward the terminal we saw signs directing us around the side of the building. We entered a gate and passed through a chain link fence. A man stood there and directed us towards a long shorter fence separating the airport parking apron from the terminal facilities, and that was where we were supposed to wait for the impending “presidential whistle stop.”

We got there a little over an hour before President Nixon was due to land in Air Force One. At first, it was all quite peaceable. People spoke to each other quietly about the nippy weather or craned their heads around searching the sky for any sign of the president’s plane. Not much was being said concerning politics; most of us either liked the president or didn’t dislike him. Well, that’s how it was at first anyway.

It was there and then for the very first time in my life that I saw the word “Watergate.” Towards the back of the quickly gathering crowd I saw a small group of scruffy “hippy looking” characters wearing washed out field jackets and faded bell-bottoms. They carried crudely written signs on sticks and in magic marker they had written things like, “What about Watergate?” and “Tell us the truth about Watergate.”

I asked my mom what that Watergate stuff was all about, but she had no idea either. It’s funny, by the following summer we were going to be virtually inundated with TV coverage about the Watergate break-ins. I’ve always wondered how those guys found out about it so much earlier than the rest of us?

A half hour before the scheduled presidential arrival things began to get alarming. I was 15, my mom was 38, and both of us were pretty small. The crowd had grown exponentially during the minutes we’d already been there and as people continued to pack in around us it was starting to become scary. We were shorties in a dense sea of giants.

The waist high chain link fence to our front and the brick wall of the terminal building behind us prevented any chance of retreat. Even if we wanted to change our mind and leave the throng, the sardine-packed crowd prevented any possibility of that.

At its worst, just as we saw Air Force One circling overhead, I became extremely anxious because of the tightness of the pressing bodies. I had never experienced anything like it. I felt like I could actually pick up my feet and not fall to the ground.

I looked over to my mother and searched her face. She looked tense and concerned, and occasionally she made protesting remarks to somebody pressing perhaps where they shouldn’t, but I could see for the most part she was merely feeling apprehension for me as I was for her. I just wanted to protect her like any son would, but I realized there was nothing I could do.

Anyway, my feet ached, so to rest them I experimented by just picking them up. The continuous push of the bodies held me snugly up in the air. So it was true—I actually COULD pick them up. Yes, it was that jam-packed.

At last, Nixon’s blue and white Boeing 707 taxied to a stop and for some reason the pressure of the people around us decreased a little. What a relief that was.

The big beautiful bird’s engines wound down and shortly thereafter the unmistakable face of Richard Nixon appeared at the top of the steps. It was exciting, but for me, some of the grandeur of the moment was reduced because of the hours-long wait, the cold, the crowd, and my tired feet.

After he came down the steps we couldn’t see the president again for quite some time. Try as we might, the taller people blocked any view. He passed quite near shaking hands with the hordes of people to our front where they were jammed up against the short fence, but getting a good clear view of him was not to be. I got tired of trying to catch a glimpse and just gave up.

But then my mom cried out excitedly, “Oh! There he is!”

And there he was, only 10 feet or so away. He must have been wearing makeup because his pallor was a rich dark brown. No one else around him had a complexion anywhere near his “Hollywood shade” of tan and it made him stand out from everyone around him. I remember seeing him in profile and that sloping Bob Hope-like nose of his was instantly recognizable.

I saw him fairly up close like that for perhaps a full 2 or 3 seconds and that was it, other than from afar once more as he made his way back to the plane standing up in a convertible. He continually waved at the screaming crowd. He almost seemed like caricature of himself with that fake tan, and the big smiling teeth. He was definitely a politician, and he proved it that November when he blew McGovern out of the water in a landslide win.

And speaking of the election, it was all but impossible for Nixon to lose it since the democrats put a near imbecile up against him. And after all, Nixon was the man who got us out of Vietnam with honor and the same man who, with Kissinger’s help, convinced China to start playing ping-pong with us.

What a shame that he allowed some overzealous idiots pull the totally unnecessary break-in at the Watergate Hotel. That foolish venture caused the ignominious end of what would have been a magnificent presidency.

Even more importantly, South Vietnam would not have been allowed to go down in flames to the bloodthirsty communists. The democrats in congress used their newfound post-Watergate power to end all aid to Vietnam and the rest is inglorious history. I blame Ted Kennedy and crew for that bit of national disgrace, but Nixon’s Watergate fall was the domino that set it all in motion, and for that, I have to blame Nixon.

We didn’t wait for his plane to take off before heading back with great relief to the car. If we’d known about three hours earlier what we knew then, there’s no way we ever would have made the spontaneous decision to go see the president.

Still, I’m glad we did.