Category Archives: health

Melvyn vs. Multiple Myeloma

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This is my father. His name was James Robert, or Jim, or Jim-Bob in his native Kentucky. My friends and I all called him Melvyn. It was based on a line from a comedy show that none of us remembers.

This picture was taken at my wedding reception, after he had dispensed with his tie. It looked unnatural on him anyway, although I must say that all through my childhood, he worked a government job that required a suit. I remember the scents of Aqua Velva and Vitalis, and the shine on his black shoes.

Then, when I was a teenager, he took medical disability because he had multiple myeloma.

When that happened, he went back to his Jim-Bob roots. He wore sneakers, flannel shirts, and a cowboy hat. He spent his time rediscovering hobbies like reloading bullets. When he was bedridden, family friend and library worker Beth McCarty brought him sacks of Zane Grey and Louise L’Amour westerns. It was quite a surprise to me to see him reading.

The disease spread to his bones as well as his blood. His pancreas failed and had to be removed, so he needed drugs to replace its function. He had an operation to take a piece of bone from his hip and use it to support his neck.

He had chemo and radiation. He didn’t really have much hair to lose at that point, but he threw up a lot. The doctors gave him only a couple of years to live. But he beat them by a significant number of years—10, I think. I really don’t remember the exact total; I wasn’t counting then, just hoping it would last.

One thing he didn’t do was go to group therapy. The local hospital had one group for cancer patients called Make Today Count or some similarly upbeat name. He flatly refused to go. My guess is that he had that Kentucky take-care-of-your-own-problems, keep-it-in-the-family mindset. It’s unlikely that they could have given him something more than he found within his own resources. Melvyn was stubborn, which in his case, he could substitute for positivity.

My mother was his caregiver, and she went it alone, too, except one time when she asked me if she was doing a good job. She knew down deep she was; she just needed to hear it from someone else. But, like Melvyn, she kept it in the family.

Recently, however, the New York Times reported a story, “From No Hope to a Potential Cure for a Deadly Blood Cancer.” It was about multiple myeloma and how new therapies are extending life for people who have been given a death sentence. People like Melvyn.

It’s a new kind of immunotherapy, which wasn’t possible, or maybe even thought of, all those years ago. The study, the Times said, was a “last-ditch effort.”

And, somehow, it worked, at least better than expected. “A third responded so well that they got what seems to be an astonishing reprieve—to have made their cancer disappear.” And after five years, it still hadn’t returned in those patients — a result never before seen in multiple myeloma.

No doubt, before the human test, there were studies on rats. (Melvyn always said he hated being compared to a rat.) The immunotherapy isn’t cheap. One dose is all that’s needed, but it costs $555,310. Our family couldn’t have afforded that, even with government insurance.

The scientists hope that if they diagnose the disease early enough and give the treatment then, it could be a cure. As it is, immunotherapy still isn’t a cure, but the treatment “increased median survival from two years to 10.”

That was something Melvyn accomplished on his own.

Walkin’ the Walk

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Babies learn to walk by stumbling around with a Frankenstein gait and frequently falling on their padded butts. And people think it’s cute.

Me, not so much. (It’s true that I have an amply padded butt, but it’s not sufficient to cushion a fall from my height to the floor. Which has happened to me fairly frequently since I had my knee replacement in late April. But I digress.)

The reason this all occurs to me is that I have had to learn to walk all over again. And I don’t look cute as I waddle and toddle and go boom. The going boom part has necessitated stays in the hospital and the post-acute rehab facility (aka nursing home). At least there was someone there to pick me up when I did go boom.

(Dan did fairly well when I boomed at home. (Yes, we’re both boomers. Like that was any secret. But I digress parenthetically.) But he has to work and wasn’t available for eight hours a day, which made us both very nervous. Fortunately, he was home when I fell and broke one ankle in two places. But I digress some more.)

But everything has changed—or is, at least, back to what passes for normal here. I’m at home, doing PT on an outpatient basis, and getting around the house with the walker and a PT technique I learned called “stand and pivot.” (Sounds like a square dance move to me. Perhaps I should curtsy to the walker. But I digress yet again.)

Square dancing isn’t in my immediate (or, most likely, long-term) future. Nor are ballet, polka, and can-can. (Waltz, perhaps. It was probably invented by someone who could do the stand and pivot. But I digress even more.)

Regular walking, though—that may not be beyond my power. At PT last week, I walked 97 feet, and yesterday I walked 250 steps. Both with the walker, of course.

Dan is urging me to try trickier forms of ambulation—climbing stairs and walking up and down a ramp that we installed for my wheelchair. My PT people insist that I need better balance and stamina first. And I don’t want to do anything that involves going boom. Chair-dancing—that I can handle.

Hungry Children: A One-Act Play

education, family, government, health, social policy, Uncategorized, , , , , ,

Sharing food with the needy

[Setting: The Halls of Power]

Guy in Suit: The media keep saying that there are hungry children in America.

Other Guy in Suit: Let them eat dinner.

Bleeding-Heart: That’s the problem. They don’t have dinner to eat. Or even breakfast sometimes.

GIS: We already give them lunch at school. That’s five days a week.

B-H: Unless they’re absent or on vacation or a snow day. Or if they can’t pay for it.

OGIS: Then it’s the parents’ problem.

GIS: Why do schoolchildren have so many vacations, anyway? We don’t get all those vacations.

B-H: Uh, yes you do.

GIS: Oh. Well, never mind that now. We were talking about tax cuts…uh, job creators…uh, feeding children. That was it.

OGIS: Suppose the media are right?

GIS: The media are never right unless we tell them what to say.

OGIS: Well, just suppose. For a minute. OK? The problem I see is that it looks good for us to feed poor, hungry, starving American children. By the way, are they as pitiful-looking as poor, starving foreign children?

GIS: Probably not. You were saying?

OGIS: If there are hungry children, and we do need to feed them, how are we supposed to do that without feeding the lousy, lazy, good-for-nothing moochers at the same time?

GIS: Ah, yes, the parents. If we give the parents anything, it should be one bag of rice and one bag of beans. And — hey — they could feed their kids that too.

B-H: But children need good nutrition — fruits and vegetables and vitamins and minerals, and enough to keep them full and healthy.

OGIS: Hey, we have plenty of minerals left over after fracking. Won’t those do?

B-H: No.

GIS: But if we give kids all that fancy food, what’s to keep the parents from eating it?

OGIS: Or selling it for booze or cigarettes or drugs?

GIS: Think about that! The drug dealers would be getting all the good nutrition. Then they could run faster from the police.

OGIS: We can’t have that, now can we?

B-H: But…the hungry children? Remember? Eating at most one meal a day, five days a week, when school is in session?

GIS: That’s plenty. I heard American children are obese, anyway. They could stand to lose a little weight.

[Curtain]

This post, which I wrote a number of years ago, became relevant again. I wish it would stop being relevant.

Foot Plus Mouth Equals Disaster!

Christianity, education, etc., health, humor, , , ,

In the comic strip “Peanuts,” Linus says that one should never discuss “politics, religion, or the Great Pumpkin.” That’s good advice, as far as it goes, but the list of things you shouldn’t discuss in public goes much further. In fact, erase that bit about “in public.” They’re dangerous to discuss among friends and family, too.

These days, politics is strictly off the table. You never know who has a concealed carry license. And Linus was certainly right that it’s best to avoid religion. When someone says, “Bless you,” the right answer is “thank you,” even if you’re not a believer. After all, they meant the religious equivalent of “Have a nice day.” (Or “gesundheit,” maybe. By the way, “Bless your heart” should be used with caution when you’re in the South. It can be a verbal middle finger. But I digress some more.)

Another topic to avoid is any that leads to a near-death experience. My husband, Dan, has blundered that way more than a few times. For example, when we were preparing for a party, I washed my hair, blow-dried it, used a curling iron, moussed, and sprayed. As I came down the stairs, Dan asked, “Are you going to do anything with your hair?”

And stay far, far away from talk of pregnancy. Suggesting that a woman is pregnant based on her weight, her clothes, or the way she waddles can be deeply offensive, particularly if she isn’t. In fact, one expert advises that you not comment on a woman’s potential pregnancy unless you actually see a baby emerging from her vagina at that moment. Better safe than hopelessly embarrassed. (I was a victim of this faux pas when I walked into an office looking for a job, wearing a loose denim jumper and a nice blouse. Admittedly, it may not have been the best choice for filling out an application, but the receptionist didn’t have to ask how far along I was. Later, she repeated the story as an amusing anecdote, not realizing that I was in the room and was embarrassed all over again. But I continue digressing.)

Everyone knows by now not to comment on a woman’s anatomy on pain of getting fired or a punch in the mouth. Not even when you’re trying to make a joke. I once told an acquaintance that I wasn’t at a party “because I was home nursing a sick cat.” “Didn’t you get scratched about the breast?” he asked. He almost got scratched about the face.

Then there was the time a guy had two girlfriends and was invited to a wedding. I don’t think he clearly understood the concept of a plus-one. He suggested taking one lady to the ceremony and the other to the reception. He somehow survived the occasion with at least one of the relationships intact. How? I don’t know.

Speaking of weddings, one of Dan’s bigger faux pas was when he suggested that, since his family lived in Pennsylvania and mine lived in Ohio, we should have our wedding on the state line, to inconvenience both families equally. (He was serious. But I digress for the final time. I promise.)

Because you’re bound to offend or insult someone, somewhere, sometime, my best advice, no matter what you are about to blurt out, is to remember your mouth has a zipper. Use it!

The Comeback of Bullying

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TW: suicide, violence

Some people have suggested lately that bullying is a good thing. This flies in the face of most people’s understanding of the effects of bullying and years of anti-bullying campaigns in schools.

We all think we know what bullying is, or at least that we know it when we see it. But what is bullying, really?

Bullying can be physical, verbal, or psychological, just like other forms of abuse. It can happen face-to-face or online. Online bullying is increasingly common and more difficult to deal with because much of it happens after school hours and because of the speed and vast reach of bullying speech or images.

Joanna Schroeder, a media critic and author, says that “the word ‘bullying’ often stands in for plain old bigotry or discrimination.” She notes that a slur for people with intellectual disabilities (the “R-word”) has been making a comeback.

The Anti-Bullying Alliance provides a succinct definition. Bullying, they say, consists of four characteristics:

• the hurting of one person or group by another person or group

• repetitive hurtful speech or behavior

• intentional behavior

• a real or perceived imbalance of power.

So, bullying is hurtful, repeated, and intentional behavior. That’s easy enough to understand. Let’s examine the last characteristic, the imbalance of power.

An imbalance of power in the workplace of a superior and a subordinate is a clear example. In schools, principals and teachers would be one example, and teachers and students would be another. But how does this play out in terms of student versus student? Where’s the power and the imbalance?

The imbalance of power can be obvious, such as that between the quarterback of the football team and the other players or the imbalance between a senior and a first-year student. A perceived imbalance can exist because of students who are larger in size, more athletic, neurotypical, physically unimpaired, or belonging to a majority racial or ethnic proportion of a school. They are perceived as having more power than those children who do not possess those qualities. And a clique of “mean girls” or a group of “rich kids” has the perceived superior power of popularity. Any of these imbalances can play into bullying. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reported that higher rates of bullying are directed at girls, LGBTQ students, and teenagers with developmental disabilities.

In the case against bullying, we have seen accounts that some children who die by suicide have been subjected to extreme bullying and others who perpetrate mass shootings have, too. (There are often other factors that contribute to their deadly actions. Bullying is rarely the whole answer.) Deaths have occurred during incidents of college hazing of pledges or recruits by the senior members of organizations. Mental health professionals view bullying as too serious a problem to be considered a character-building exercise.

So, if it’s so harmful, why is bullying losing its bad reputation? Some people think that society has gone too far in “coddling” children and that they need to toughen up or be less sensitive. The world they will live in is often harsh, and children must grow into adults who are aware of that and able to handle it. In this increasingly popular view, sensitivity is for the weak, and only the tough will succeed. There is anecdotal evidence to support this view. We can all think of bullies who have succeeded in politics, business, entertainment, or the media.

“If I’d never got bullied, I don’t think I’d be where I am today,” said one TikTok influencer. “I don’t think I would have the motivation to prove people wrong.” He believes that bullying “is not as bad as it is made out to be.” He has said, however, that it’s “never OK to turn to physical violence or pick on people based on their race, religion or disabilities.” But he maintains that at least some kinds of bullying are not as harmful. One wonders what his definition of bullying is and what the Anti-Bullying Alliance would say about it.

Just as the self-esteem programs of the 1980s, so popular at first, drew increasing criticism as leading to “participation trophies” and the devaluing of personal accomplishment, the idea of bullying may be undergoing a redefinition as a response to “wokeness” being seen as “weak.” It remains to be seen if this opinion will spread to society at large rather than just the bullies we already have.

Quotations in this post first appeared in the Oct. 6, 2025 edition of the New York Times in an article by Callie Holtermann.

Life With Furniture

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I’ve never had what I’d call a profound relationship with a piece of furniture. (Except for my bed. It’s an example of Amish woodworking, some kind of hybrid of a sleigh bed and a mission bed. Our relationship was shattered when we bought a mattress that came with an alarm. Unfortunately, the salesman neglected to tell us what tune it played. When we woke the next morning to the cheerful computerized strains of “It’s a Small World,” we swore a solemn oath to rip out both the alarm mechanism and the salesman’s larynx. But I digress.)

All that changed when I broke my ankle in two places. (I should specify. Two bones in my ankle were broken. I broke them in one place, my study, at the same time. But I digress again.) Since then, I have been living in my study and bonding with the recliner.

The thing is, I have to wear a giant black boot on my right leg. Despite the fact that the injury was to my ankle, the boot starts just below my knee. It features a plastic skeleton and exoskeleton, a foam liner, and far too much Velcro. It weighs, by my estimation, about eight pounds. I walk with a limp, not because of the broken ankle (well, not just because of that), but because I have no shoe (singular) with a sole as thick as the boot’s to wear on my left foot. And the recliner is the only furniture that can truly accommodate my needs.

Our house has a second floor, where the bed lives. But I can’t climb the stairs. Climbing them was iffy even when I used a cane (before the ankle accident but after the knee replacement). I’m living in the first-floor study that was the scene of my injury, and giving daily thanks that there’s a bathroom on both floors.

Dan brought a recliner down from upstairs. It doesn’t match the “decor,” and it doesn’t recline all the way. I can extend the footrest to horizontal, but reclining the back and headrest requires a maneuver that I’m physically unable to accomplish. It involves throwing your entire body weight against the backrest. (I have plenty of body weight, but not the strength to fling it with sufficient force. But I digress some more.)

I can at least sleep with my head supported and my legs straight rather than dangling. I sit in the recliner with my legs elevated to read, watch TV, and use my phone. To get to my real computer, I have to sit in my desk chair, where my legs dangle. (Evidently, dangling allows fluid to accumulate in my legs. It happened once. My thighs looked like Christmas hams. My cankles and the tops of my feet looked like puff pastry. My toes looked like Vienna sausages. But I digress even more.)

I see my surgeon on the 8th, and hope to graduate from the boot to something less confining. I was so happy to get the boot in the first place, as it allowed my foot at last to bear weight. (Ever tried using a walker with a knee sling? Don’t.) Now I can’t wait to get rid of the most recent torture device.

I’ll take the boot and the recliner, though, for as long as necessary. One benefit to the arrangement is that our cat Toby loves to lie on my lap as I recline and sleep there to his heart’s content. It makes my recliner extra-cozy and comfy, even if I can’t sleep lying all the way down.

Roommate Roulette

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When I spent time in a skilled nursing facility recently, I quickly learned that one didn’t find a compatible roommate. The choice was up to the whims of the powers that be. It could turn out either good or less-than-good. (My insurance company would only spring for a double room, so there was no chance of a private one, except on the occasion when my roommate happened to move out. But I digress.)

All-in-all, my experiences varied from okay to excellent. My first roommate was Norma, who was quiet and inoffensive, but unfortunately addicted to the TV show Gunsmoke, which she watched all day long. I suppose I could have raised an objection, but I was determined to keep the peace and, after all, I could hardly inflict on her eight-plus hours of cooking shows and Star Trek reruns. Norma was released to go home, however, and I had the room all to myself, my chefs, and my aliens.

The next time I returned to the facility, my roommate was Brenda, a woman with a large family who created quite a commotion when they all visited at once, though that was not often. When it happened, I retreated to Pandora and my earbuds (a must for any stay in such a facility).

I was moved to another room when Brenda developed an infection and had to be isolated. (Since we were then across the hall from each other, our Physical Therapist arranged for us to have weight-lifting sessions in our doorways so we could see each other and chat. Sometimes, Shirley, the lady next door to Brenda, joined in as well, and we all chatted while doing curls. But I digress again.)

My best roommate, however, was my third one, Darlene. She didn’t care for TV and had only a few visitors. Among her other ailments, she had PTSD, so she preferred to keep the curtain between us pulled and wouldn’t be distracted by comings and goings in the hall.

The curtain proved no impediment to our growing friendship, however. We started bonding over our shared love of murder mysteries and true crime books. Naturally, the subject of Jack the Ripper came up. (As it does.)

“When we were in England, my husband and I took the Jack the Ripper walking tour,” I shared.

“Oh!” Darlene exclaimed. “I’ve always wanted to go on that.”

“It was a foggy, drizzly evening—very atmospheric. And we booked our walk when Donald Rumbelow was guiding it.”

She recognized the name immediately. “Donald Rumbelow! I’ve read his book on Jack the Ripper! He’s the best!”

“That’s why we chose a tour when he was leading. We also went to 221B Baker St. and saw the Sherlock Holmes Museum. It was a small, narrow building sandwiched between two others. Every floor had displays related to his famous cases. The top floor held a toilet with a blue Delft-like design in the bowl. It looked much too pretty to use. Even if you could make it up all six flights to get there.”

“You’ve been to the places I’ve always wanted to go and done the things I’ve dreamed of doing! Tell me more!” We were off and running on travelers’ tales.

After that, we dissected our favorite mystery series and recommended them to each other. We talked about holidays and favorite foods and family and pets. We spoke of exes and jobs and rated the nurses and aides. We cheered each other on about the distance we’d walked during physical therapy.

And we talked politics. I had been reluctant to share my political views with anyone at the facility, knowing how divisive, not to say explosive, such talk can be. But once again, Darlene and I were completely in sync. We despaired of the state our country is in and blamed the same people for it. When neither one of us could sleep, we talked well into the wee hours of the morning.

Darlene had a birthday while we were both residents, and she shared it with me. Literally. We each ate half of the yummy carrot cake with cream cheese frosting that her family brought her. She reveled vicariously in the little anniversary dinner that Dan arranged for me, which featured sushi, electric candlelight, mood music, and ginger ale in champagne glasses. Dan brought Darlene a case of Diet Cokes and a box of plasticware that her arthritic hands could manage at mealtime. (The aides often forgot.) She let me watch Practical Magic on her DVD player and I ordered her a copy of Fletch when she told me how much she liked it.

I’m out of the facility now, but Darlene is in for the long term. Today, we’re going to stop by and surprise her with a box of the cheese-and-peanut-butter crackers she can’t resist. I can’t wait to see her face light up.

What Went on at the Nursing Home?

etc., fun and games, health, humor, television, ,

Well, to me it was post-acute rehab care, but there were long-term and memory units, so let’s call it a nursing home. I was there for about a month and a half recovering from complications of my knee replacement.

When I checked in, the first person I met was my roommate, a 90-year-old woman named Norma. I’m not sure what she was in the home for. What I did know was that James Arness was her secret love crush. I know this because she kept Gunsmoke playing on the room’s TV eight or more hours per day. Being the newcomer to the room and being over 20 years younger, I didn’t feel I should offer to arm wrestle the remote away from her.

(I was equipped, however. I had my phone, complete with Nook, Kindle, Facebook, and Pandora, complete with a charging cable and a pair of earbuds. I was set. When Norma left to stay with relatives, I had an essentially single room and complete control of the remote. But I digress.)

For those who didn’t choose to stay in their rooms watching TV, there were lots of activities, starting most days with a coffee hour and Wii bowling. Throughout the week, there were concerts, Bible stories, card games, trivia sessions, karaoke, cooking classes, and movie-and-popcorn days. There was a beauty salon for appointments, and one week, even a prom.

I mostly stuck with my phone and its assorted diversions, as well as non-Gunsmoke TV. (The one time I went to a “Family Feud”-style contest, the talk devolved into politics, and I bowed out. And I never even went to my own prom, so theirs didn’t appeal to me, at least. But I digress again.)

Another diversion for me was the age-old sport of door-staring. The restroom and room doors were made of wood, and I could spend endless time staring at them and identifying shapes I could see. There was one spot that looked like a spy peeking through a crack, or if you looked at it another way, a surly baby. Then there was one area that looked like the Virgin Mary or the Dr. Who that my husband likes (the one with the long scarf), only with a coat hook for a head. (Technically, this activity is known as pareidolia, which is a fun fact to know and tell. If you can pronounce it, that is. But I digress yet again.)

It was also fun to collect names. That is, to see how many different ways the staff referred to you. Most of the time, I was called Miss Janet or Mrs. Coburn (both of which are inaccurate), but I was also called Babe, Hon, Sweetie, and even Girlfriend. The woman in the next room was called Chiquita, which I never was.

(I’ve heard this described as “infantilizing” nursing home residents by using endearments instead of their real names. My mother told me that at one place she stayed, there was a woman who had a Ph.D. When she needed help, she would stand in the doorway and shout “Yoo-hoo.” I don’t know what the staff actually called her, but ever after, I thought of her as Dr. Yoo-hoo. But I digress some more.)

The staff had games of their own. They would hide little cutout figures of ducks or gnomes (or something) around the facility and see who could collect them all first. It was entertaining to see the nurses and aides careening down the corridors, laughing and squealing as they searched for the numbered items.

Another pleasant distraction was the little ice cream cart that the staff took around. I couldn’t have any because of my diet, but Dan was there once when it came around and scored himself a root beer float. Most of the time when Dan visited, we held hands and watched reruns of Star Trek.

To me, that was the most fun in the nursing home.

It’s All a Blur!

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My history with eyeglasses goes way back—over 60 years, in fact. That being the fashion at the time and me being even then the opposite of a fashionista, I wore many pairs of cat-eye glasses.

My husband, Dan, was only a little older than I was when he got his first pair of glasses. Unlike me, he’s near-sighted. (I’m cross-eyed and far-sighted.) He always tells the story of how, once he had glasses, he said to his mother, “Look, Mommy. Those people on television have faces!” (Although we have different diagnoses, we both require Coke-bottle prescriptions. But I digress.)

By the time I was in high school (when I had at last graduated from cat-eye to aviator frames), all my classmates were wearing contacts, and losing them regularly. I was unable to follow suit because of being cross-eyed and, more importantly, because I can’t bear to even think about anything, including me, touching my eye. I recoil whenever there’s a commercial for a drug that requires an eye injection. (That’s true to this day—both the wireframes and the horror of anything touching my eye. But I digress again.)

When I was a child, I had an ophthalmologist, Dr. Saunders, who was the epitome of gentleness and kindness. When it was time for me to select my own eye doctor, I wanted someone with the same vibe. So of course, I went to Dr. Gary, whom I knew from being in the same martial arts class. (I figured that if he needed to touch my eye for any reason, he could at least subdue me first. But I digress yet again.) When I first visited his office, his partner glanced at me and exclaimed, “You’re a hyperope!” which is the technical term for far-sighted, I learned.

Over the years, both my husband and I have been through increasing thicknesses of eyewear and various styles of frames. After all these years, I still prefer wireframes and Dan has come around to my way of thinking. Bifocals were an eventual necessity and I opted for computer glasses as well, since I spend so much time online.

We’ve had a few eye-related emergencies over the years. Mine occurred when I set off a flea bomb in the house and accidentally bombed my face. Fortunately, my glasses offered some protection and there was a bottle of distilled water nearby. Suddenly, I wasn’t so worried about something touching my eyes as Dan held them open and poured.

Dan’s extreme eye occurrence happened when he was driving. All of a sudden, he saw a flash in his right eye, and the vision in that eye became blurry. The next day, he had small, dark pinpoints in his right eye’s field of vision.

A quick trip to Dr. Gary seemed necessary. Dan learned that he had experienced an age-related phenomenon that affects the vitreous fluid in his eye. This information gave me the willies, of course, but Dan took it all in stride. The flash didn’t return and Dan named the largest of the floating points in his eye. He called it “Freddie the Free-Floater.” (Any Red Skelton fans out there? But I digress even more.)

I’m preparing myself for the day when I also see that flash and the dark points in my vitreous fluid. I don’t think I can come up with a better name for them, though. Dan surely wins on that count.

The Acceptable Addiction

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Once upon a time (okay, it was in high school), when I still had aspirations of becoming a poet, I took a creative writing class. (The teacher, Mr. McKnight, was the school’s football coach, which gives you an idea of what esteem creativity was held in. When I graduated, he wrote in my yearbook that I was the “raison in his bowl of flakes.” I wanted to believe that he was making a pun based on the fact that “raison” is French for “reason,” but I couldn’t really convince myself. But I digress. Already.)

Anyway, to get back to my point (and I do have one), the teacher/coach was convinced that, like his father, he would die of heart problems at age 50. So, when he turned 49, he gave up coffee, the idea being that it was bad for his heart, which is true. We, the class, had to put up with his pacing, irritability, and generally jonesing for coffee. He was going through withdrawal. He was a caffeine addict.

We have 12-step groups for alcohol and drugs. There’s Gamblers Anonymous. There’s even an Overeaters Anonymous program. And while I don’t know of any 12-step programs for nicotine addicts, there are plenty of products that aim to curb the cravings. The power of negativity comes into play, too. Cigarettes have a warning on the package. (No one reads it, any more than they read “Drink responsibly” written in tiny type on the alcohol commercials or the 1-800 number for gambling addiction on the ads for betting services and casinos. But I digress. Again.)

Social disapproval also comes into play. We have M.A.D.D. to combat drunk driving, one of the most successful campaigns ever to change public opinion. Smoking is banned in public spaces and even frowned at outdoors. (There is still such a thing as smoke breaks at work although, I must say, no crossword breaks for those of us addicted to them. But I digress yet again.)

But there is no social disapproval, advertising, warning labels, or 12-step groups for caffeine addicts. In fact, people seem to pride themselves on how many cups they drink per day. Think about all the memes and cartoons you see about an absurdly giant coffee cup that says “I only drink one cup a day” or wishing you could get a coffee I.V. (Coffee I.V.s are a bad idea. There is such a thing as a coffee enema, but I really don’t want to know any more about it. But I digress some more.)

Personally, I get my caffeine through iced tea or Diet Coke. I drank coffee when I had a regular job and there was always a pot in the breakroom. And I will have coffee with cream and sugar—or an Irish coffee—for dessert once in a great while. (I do insist that the Irish coffee be made properly, with Irish whiskey. If the bartender thinks it means coffee with Bailey’s, I send it back. In fact, I’ve been known to ask bartenders how they make an Irish coffee before I order one. Not that coffee with Bailey’s is a bad thing. It’s just not an Irish coffee. But I digress even more.)

Should caffeine be regulated? Well, maybe. It does have hazardous physical effects: increased heart rate, high blood pressure, and heart palpitations among them. Mr. McKnight was right. He’s still alive today and one of my Facebook friends. But I can’t picture a 12-step group without the ubiquitous coffee urn, a warning label on Mr. Coffee machines, or a public campaign called Stop Coffee Addiction Now (SCAN). As far as I can see, coffee addiction is likely to remain nothing to rant about. (This is not a rant. It’s a calm, reasoned exploration of the topic. So there.)