The following was written Sunday, but I could not post it for lack of an internet connection: I am writing this with one hand while sitting in a room in UAB Hospital in Birmingham.The other hand, swathed in bandages, is being held vertically higher than my heart to keep fluids from building up in the thumb doctors sewed back on Friday night.
It was a near thing. The surgery resident who was attending me had consulted with his boss and was already numbing the area around my dangling left thumb, preparing to amputate right there in the emergency room, His pager summoned him. His boss apparently had taken another look at the X-rays and decided it might be possible to save the thumb. I don't know whether he knew that I am left handed.
The upshot was that a surgical team spent four or five hours putting back together nerves and blood vessels, and I am tethered to an IV pole that is infusing me with antibiotics and blood thinner to try to prevent the vessels and capillaries from getting plugged up. The surgeon stopped by earlier this afternoon and said things are looking pretty good, though nothing is certain. He explained that he could not save the nail bed and that he pulled a flap of skin up to cover the missing nail. If it works, the thumb will be a little shorter with the first joint fused.If the flap fails, the thumb will be shorter still. As so often is the case, there was no indication that disaster was looming, On Friday morning, I was working alone in my neighbors shop on some Adirondack chairs for our front deck. I have worked with tools and wood almost all of my life. I know the safety rules, and like many others, I have skirted the safety rules from time to time without suffering consequences.
Until Friday. A moving saw blade, a hand too near it, and a mangled thumb. No one was around, so I wrapped my T-shirt around my hand and walked home. My wife was not at home and I couldn't reach her on her cell phone, so I found some gauze and tape and wrapped my hand and drove to the Russell Medical Center emergency room. They quickly determined that I needed to go to UAB and made arrangements. I had plenty of time during the ambulance to reflect on my own folly, and I am no less chagrined by hearing the doctors stories about power tool accidents much more catastrophic than mine. I've had time to consider, too, that it is not just guys with tools who grow dangerously complacent after years of getting by. Recent reports about inattention in airline cockpits have stirred concern. And I suspect that the many of the people aboard that oil-drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico were doing things they've done for years. The consequences of my complacency were great enough. Complacency on a larger scale can be truly catastrophic.
Contact the writer at billatthelake@gmail.com
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Mind Your Butts
We paid a brief visit to Charlottesville, Va., recently. One thing we noted in our meandering around the countryside was how well kept everything seemed. I’m not talking about houses or buildings so much as the countryside itself.
We theorized that spring later arrival in that latitude meant that there had been less time for weeds to grow. Perhaps, we thought, the vegetation is different and grows less rampantly.
It wasn’t until after we were back home and taking a long walk that another difference came to mind: litter. (Caution: this is a purely anecdotal observation. We did not walk as much as we do at home, and perhaps the places where we did walk were particularly neat.
Nonetheless, when we set out for a walk the other day, we saw the evidence of spring in our little corner of the world. When the water rises and the weather warms up, the litter along Old Susanna Road grows more quickly than the weeds.
I’d like to blame the boaters who use the boat ramp near the end of the road, and I’m sure they are responsible for a good bit of it. But they are not alone in using the roadside as a garbage can. Since the road deadends into the lake, and since there is litter along side roads leading off Old Susanna, it seems safe to assume that residents and service people contribute.
The plastic bottles and aluminum cans are bad enough, but most infuriating are the cigarette butts.
I’m a former smoker, but I am not one to lecture folks about their own smoking. I do, however, find it infuriating that smokers use the roadsides as their ashtray.
On our stroll, we came across a mound of cigarette butts. Someone had obviously stopped his or her car and emptied the ashtray. From the size of the mound, the ashtray must have been so full that it was in danger of creating a fire. Just around the corner, there was a line of cigarette butts, as if someone had just rolled down the window and emptied the ashtray while the car was moving.
It’s not just that the cigarette butts are ugly; they’re downright dangerous.
Consider this: Since 1998, approximately 470 billion cigarettes have been consumed in the United States. Ninety-seven percent of those cigarettes had filters.
I don’t know how many wind up along the roadside, but each cigarette butt is a miniature hazardous waste dump. The tobacco clinging to the butt is dangerous enough; tobacco is, after all, a member of the nightshade family. And the filter, which can take up to 15 years to disintegrate is a toxic chemical warehouse: arsenic, acetone, ammonia, benzene, cadmium, formaldehyde, lead and toluene.
When rain falls on those cigarettes, the chemicals are leached out and eventually find their way into the water.
A single cigarette butt seems so small, but think of billions and billions of them being flicked out of a car window or ground out on the sidewalk or parking lot.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration estimates that cigarette debris is responsible for killing at least one million sea birds and 100,000 mammals annually.
An article on the Discover web site reports: Even with a small amount of unburnt tobacco clinging to it, a single cigarette butt soaked for a day is enough to turn a liter of water a sickly yellow brown and kill 50 percent of fish swimming in it. Without tobacco, it takes about four smoked filters to do the same job.
There are many liters of water in a stream or a lake or an ocean. But there are billions of cigarette butts lying around, too.
I really don’t care if people choose to smoke, but if they can’t refrain from discarding their butts so carelessly, I’m beginning to think there ought to be a deposit on cigarettes to pay for cleaning up after them.
Contact the writer at billatthelake@gmail.com
We theorized that spring later arrival in that latitude meant that there had been less time for weeds to grow. Perhaps, we thought, the vegetation is different and grows less rampantly.
It wasn’t until after we were back home and taking a long walk that another difference came to mind: litter. (Caution: this is a purely anecdotal observation. We did not walk as much as we do at home, and perhaps the places where we did walk were particularly neat.
Nonetheless, when we set out for a walk the other day, we saw the evidence of spring in our little corner of the world. When the water rises and the weather warms up, the litter along Old Susanna Road grows more quickly than the weeds.
I’d like to blame the boaters who use the boat ramp near the end of the road, and I’m sure they are responsible for a good bit of it. But they are not alone in using the roadside as a garbage can. Since the road deadends into the lake, and since there is litter along side roads leading off Old Susanna, it seems safe to assume that residents and service people contribute.
The plastic bottles and aluminum cans are bad enough, but most infuriating are the cigarette butts.
I’m a former smoker, but I am not one to lecture folks about their own smoking. I do, however, find it infuriating that smokers use the roadsides as their ashtray.
On our stroll, we came across a mound of cigarette butts. Someone had obviously stopped his or her car and emptied the ashtray. From the size of the mound, the ashtray must have been so full that it was in danger of creating a fire. Just around the corner, there was a line of cigarette butts, as if someone had just rolled down the window and emptied the ashtray while the car was moving.
It’s not just that the cigarette butts are ugly; they’re downright dangerous.
Consider this: Since 1998, approximately 470 billion cigarettes have been consumed in the United States. Ninety-seven percent of those cigarettes had filters.
I don’t know how many wind up along the roadside, but each cigarette butt is a miniature hazardous waste dump. The tobacco clinging to the butt is dangerous enough; tobacco is, after all, a member of the nightshade family. And the filter, which can take up to 15 years to disintegrate is a toxic chemical warehouse: arsenic, acetone, ammonia, benzene, cadmium, formaldehyde, lead and toluene.
When rain falls on those cigarettes, the chemicals are leached out and eventually find their way into the water.
A single cigarette butt seems so small, but think of billions and billions of them being flicked out of a car window or ground out on the sidewalk or parking lot.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration estimates that cigarette debris is responsible for killing at least one million sea birds and 100,000 mammals annually.
An article on the Discover web site reports: Even with a small amount of unburnt tobacco clinging to it, a single cigarette butt soaked for a day is enough to turn a liter of water a sickly yellow brown and kill 50 percent of fish swimming in it. Without tobacco, it takes about four smoked filters to do the same job.
There are many liters of water in a stream or a lake or an ocean. But there are billions of cigarette butts lying around, too.
I really don’t care if people choose to smoke, but if they can’t refrain from discarding their butts so carelessly, I’m beginning to think there ought to be a deposit on cigarettes to pay for cleaning up after them.
Contact the writer at billatthelake@gmail.com
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