The Only Christie News That Really Matters

Are you, like me, bored senseless with the horserace "news" about the portly governor and former Federal Attorney of New Jersey? He's up! He's down! We got a horserace now! Hillary is wiping the floor with him; the woman mayor of Hoboken is wiping the floor with him! Cat-fight! Cat-fight! Yaaaaaay!

Bullshit.

All through this nonsense runs the devastation from Hurricane Sandy, devastation that lingers years after the event, just as the devastation on the Gulf Coast from Hurricane Katrina (and others) still lingers -- and probably will never be fully repaired, nor will displaced populations ever fully return.

This is how these storm situations are being handled these days. Send money to the best off so that they can get their beach mansions up above the storm surge levels in time for the next event, and deny money to the least well-off and most needy -- so that they will Go Away.

From time to time I get updates from Occupy Sandy and from various Occupy efforts and their offshoots going on around the country and the world, and today's email brought news of the Occupy Christie efforts to shame and ostracize the Governor and all his minions for their deliberate and ongoing refusal to address the real problems of the people of New Jersey left in the wake of the storm. While the events have been going on since last Sunday, and I only got the update this morning (having been drop-kicked from one of the email lists I was on and only just got it restored) I thought it might be useful to post the contents of the email so as to give some idea of the extent of the problems for recovery in New Jersey:

Dear friends and supporters, 

 In light of the recent disturbing disclosures concerning Governor Chris>

 Christie's flagrant misuse of federal Sandy aid money, the collective of
> storm survivors and their allies who organize under the Occupy Sandy New
> Jersey banner are hereby calling on residents of New Jersey to join us in
> Trenton in Occupying outside the Capitol starting this Saturday, January
> 18th, at noon. We intend to maintain our camp through Chris Christie's
> re-inauguration festivities on Tuesday, January 21st.
>
> In particular we invite and encourage Sandy survivors to make the trip to
> Trenton (we'll help you get here if you reach out: call 609-318-4271 or
> email OccupySandyNJ@interoccupy. net) to tell your stories to the state
> and national media already camped out nearby. We know that the people of
> New Jersey have stories to tell, to Chris Christie and to anyone willing to
> listen, and we plan to provide a safe space from which to do so.
>
> Since our Sandy recovery work continues on a daily basis?indeed, some of
> our volunteers and organizers may not even be able to make it to Trenton
> due to responsibilities in the field?this will only be a four day
> Occupation. However, should the administration fail to quickly fix its
> broken response to the storm and shift its attention to the state's
> residents who are most in need, we will not rule out returning to Trenton
> again soon. Governor Christie must understand that the last people he
> should be bullying right now are Sandy survivors.

> #OccupyChristie starts at high noon TOMORROW at the State Capitol. Bring
> sleeping bags.

> To Governor Chris Christie, here is our one demand: do your damn job!

> In solidarity,
> Occupy Sandy New Jersey
> ________________________________
>
> WHEN: Saturday, January 18th, NOON to Wednesday, January 22, 9am.
> WHERE: 140 W. State Street, Trenton, NJ
> WHAT: Camp #Sandygate (see partial schedule below)
> RSVP:?https://www.facebook.com/events/490811191030334/
> ________________________________
>
> ?
> Why "Camp Sandygate"?
> ?
> Sandygate is the real big scandal of Chris Christie's administration. While
> the state and national media are fixated on "Bridgegate" -which indeed does
> make for a good story -the real story should be the thousands of New Jersey
> residents who have been failed by Christie and the state. This is not
> simply an issue of storm recovery being a long and difficult process, as
> officials are often heard saying, but this is an issue of discrimination,
> misappropriation, and lies. Sandygate is about callous state officials
> deciding that one group of people will get help, while another will be
> ignored.

> 

> Frankly, Sandygate is a scandal about mistreating the most vulnerable
> among us.
> 

> Below are just a few of the grievances we hear most often through working
> with both survivors and service providers. As the links below demonstrate,
> the NJ media has actually done quite a good job of telling the real story.
> 

> Unfortunately, the national media has so far failed to put the pieces
> together:
> 

> Racial discrimination: Blacks and Latino applicants have been
> disproportionately rejected for resettlement and construction grants. 14.5%
> and 13.5% of White applicants were rejected by the Resettlement and RREM
> programs, respectively. Contrast these rates of rejection to 20.4% / 18.1%
> of Latino applicants, and a shocking 38.1% / 35.1% for African-Americans.
>
> Regional disparities: South Jersey's battered Delaware Bayshore has been
> almost completely left out of the recovery process. Residents of Cumberland
> County, one of the poorest counties in the state, are ineligible to receive
> state-administered federal funds. This means that while a beachfront
> homeowner on Long Beach Island is eligible to receive up to $150,000 to
> repair their home (or even to jack it up on stilts so their flood insurance
> remains affordable), bay-front or marsh-front homeowners in Downe Township
> could have lost everything and yet be eligible to receive nothing from the
> state.
>
> Discrimination against mobile-home owners: Despite assurances from the
> state that the grant application process did not exclude mobile-home
> owners, the process was riddled with confusion. In October, 2013, only 10
> of 3,500 statewide applicants for rebuilding grants were given to
> mobile-home owners. In the devastated Vanguard and Metropolitan parks, in
> affluent Bergen County's working class borough of Moonachie, only 4 of 400
> residences were approved. The state website still contains language
> excluding "RVs and trailers," which is believed to be the main cause of the
> confusion.
>
> Mishandled recovery for renters: Rental property recovery was underfunded,
> and relief went to landlords based on demand, rather than need, leaving
> renters out in the cold. As a result, $2 million of the $4.5 million
> awarded through the state's Incentives for Landlords program ended up in
> Essex County, which did not experience nearly the magnitude of
> storm-related damage as did other Atlantic counties. Devastated Ocean
> County, by contrast, received a mere $47,484 from the same program.
> Furthermore, while the state has been focused on landlords, renters
> themselves have too often been ignored.

>
> Leaving people out in the cold: As a result of the systemic mishandling
> and inequities in the Christie administration's recovery effort, many of
> the most vulnerable among Sandy's survivors have fallen through the cracks.
> The state has yet to commission a comprehensive survey of survivors, nor
> assessed the needs of those who currently live crammed into motel rooms
> with their whole family, or by sleeping in the condemned ruins of their
> home, or in between the reeds hidden in sand dunes. These and countless
> other survivors are still in urgent need of assistance with basic
> necessities such as food, clothing, medical services and stable housing. We
> do what we can for them every day, but there is so much more work to
> do.
>
> With so many resources going to well-off people and businesses, even one
> vulnerable person left behind should be a scandal. Tragically?and due to
> the decisions of Chris Christie and the state of New Jersey?thousands have
> been left behind.
>
> This is Sandygate. Please join us in Trenton tomorrow if you share our
> outrage.
>
> ________________________________
>
> PARTIAL SCHEDULE OF EVENTS:
> Day 1 - Saturday
>
> Noon - Occupy
>
> 6pm - Community Dinner & Assembly
>
> 8pm - Memorial Candlelight Vigil for Sandy's victims
>
>
>
> Day 2 - Sunday
>
> 9am - Breakfast
>
> 1 pm - Community Lunch & Assembly
>
> 7pm - Sunday Dinner
>
>
>
> Day 3 - Monday
>
> 9am - Breakfast
>
> 11am - Press conference
>
> 1 pm - Community Lunch & Assembly
>
> 7pm - Dinner
>
>
>
> Day 4 - Tuesday
>
> 8am - Breakfast
>
> 11am - Sandy Survivor Speakout
>
> 1pm - Lunch
>
> 7pm - Dinner
>
>
>
> Day 5 - Wednesday
>
> 9am - Breakfast and break down encampment

This is the real story of the Hurricane Sandy relief debacle. 

It's not about the mayors and the governor and Hillary and the polls

and the Rockefellers and all the rest, it's about the People and their struggle 

in the face of this ridiculous mess and media 

sideshow. 

This issue is the real story all over the world. 

One day, we might come to know about these things in real time. 

Haiti, anyone? 

The Silk Pillow Effect

Silk Pillow

I've been out for the last few days with an episode of sciatica, a recurring problem I've had for the last ten years or so. This is the first time it's happened since we've lived full time in New Mexico.

There was a precursor episode about ten days ago, when I knew a sciatic attack was underway, but the symptoms were mild enough that I wasn't particularly bothered. I could walk, sit, stand, and the pain was relatively mild, focused on the left side of my lower back. It felt as if a vertebral disc was protruding and pressing on the nerves that ran down my left leg. I've had this before, and it's annoying. Sometimes the leg goes completely numb, but more often, my left foot is numb which can make it difficult to walk without lurching and limping about. Usually the pain is mild and can be controlled with Advil or the like. Initially, too, I applied Holy Dirt from El Santuario de Chimayó, which caused immediate and lasting pain relief. Milagro! I can't explain it, but that's what happened. I knew that there was still a sciatic condition, for I could feel the disc protrusion, but the nerve pain was nearly completely gone, and I was quite in wonder at the miracle of it all. I think I then became somewhat complacent. Mistake.

On Friday I woke up in real agony, with intense pain in my left hip, so intense that I was unable to sit or stand or walk for more than a moment or two without experiencing excruciating pain, and so,  for all intents and purposes, I was confined to bed. This was the worst episode I'd had for close to ten years, and the evocation of what I went through back then was not pleasant. Something had happened during the night to force the disc out further and press even more severely on the nerves involved thus producing a constant intense pain. Movement of any kind was difficult. Sleep was impossible.

I came very close to calling Emergency Services, even though it would mean transport by ambulance over 40 miles to Albuquerque's Presbyterian Hospital emergency facilities. This was not an idea I enjoyed at all. Bad as I felt, the thought of an extended trip in an ambulance to wait in an emergency room for essentially little or no treatment and then a ride back home in the car (would that even be physically possible?) was daunting.

I would just have to tough it out somehow.

Sciatica is the set of symptoms signifying a nerve condition in the lower back and hip region often affecting one leg as well (rarely both). It can cause extreme pain and discomfort, numbness in leg and foot, and difficulty walking, sitting or standing normally. As it is right now, for example, although the pain is mostly gone, I can only walk with a very pronounced limp and may have to start using a cane. The cause, in my case, is a herniated and protruding spinal disc that presses on the sciatic nerve that runs down my left leg.

Yes, when it is bad, it hurts like almost nothing you can imagine. There is no escape from the throbbing, shooting pain that lies so deep in the tissue of the leg and hips that it seems to come from some mythic place you didn't know existed. In my case, it was impossible to sit or stand or walk for more than a moment or two, and even lying down could be fiercely painful. Adjusting positions could become an agonizing trial. 

As I say, I've had the condition for ten years or more, the first episode occurring when I was getting out of the car one day and twisted my back just so, causing the spinal disc to protrude. I knew something had happened, because I could feel the protrusion before the pain started. Once the pain started, I couldn't move without extreme pain, and had to be transported by ambulance to the ER where I was promptly seen and diagnosed, but apart from a cortisone injection (which really didn't help much) and some meds, there was nothing, they said, they could do. It would have to heal itself, which they said would happen in a few weeks -- or months.

True enough. The pain gradually dissipated to almost nothing, though leg and foot numbness was constant and relatively severe. In about three months, I felt the disc pop back into place, and the pain -- and most of the numbness I'd been experiencing -- promptly went away. But not completely. In fact, ever since, I've felt consistent numbness in my left leg and foot, sometimes mild, sometimes relatively severe, and I have had modest difficulty walking and have a slight limp favoring my left side. It's been very difficult for me to bend down to pick something off the floor, and there have been other issues, especially around driving long distances (which I used to do quite a lot). For all intents and purposes, sciatica is a chronic condition for me, sometimes debilitating, typically merely annoying. One learns to cope.

This was the first time a severe episode had happened in several years, and it was the first time I had experienced it since moving permanently to New Mexico. Now that I have Medicare Advantage through Presbyterian (one of the major health care providers in New Mexico) at least I have access to medical care if I need it. The problem is that Presbyterian's services are located in Albuquerque, and we live out in the country 40 or more miles away from the closest Presbyterian clinic or hospital. There are alternative services closer to us, but they tend to keep banker's hours and are not equipped for emergencies. If I were to use these out of network clinics, the financial consequences would be essentially the same as if I had no health insurance at all. One thinks long and hard before doing so. On the other hand, when we actually did have no health insurance, we had to use an urgent care clinic for a badly infected wound, and the cost was surprisingly modest, the service competent and quick. The really major expense was for antibiotic medications, not for clinic services.

In this case, since I knew what had happened -- oh yes -- and knew from previous experience that except for certain prescriptions (and possibly a cortisone injection), there was nothing that could be done about it except to grin and bear it and let it heal on its own, I decided to forgo medical treatment altogether. I had enough meds from the most recent episode, a nice cozy bed, and I'm always more comfortable at home than in the noisy, frantic atmosphere of a hospital, especially the emergency room, in any case.

I came to suspect my cozy bed itself was part of the problem. It has one of those memory foam mattresses, which at first was extremely comfortable but over time -- we've had it well less than a year -- began to develop rather more permanent depressions where we sleep than returning to shape as advertised. We have another bed with a more traditional innerspring mattress in the south bedroom, but that room isn't heated during the winter due to our energy conservation routine (we close off unused rooms during the winter, so as to heat the least amount of floor space we can. Still heating costs are quite high as energy is relatively expensive in this part of the country -- about twice the rates for gas and electricity we were paying in California, for example). There was no way we could exchange the mattresses between rooms in my condition. So, we had to figure out if there was something we could do to modify the foam mattress enough to support my hip rather than let it sink in.

This is where the Silk Pillow came into play. The pillow is usually on Old Joe's chair, the one item of furniture we retrieved from Joe's house next door in California after he passed away. Frank and Rosemary, who had been taking care of him, were clearing out the place preparing it for sale some weeks after he died. They thought the old chair was worthless and were grateful that we wanted to take it for the memory of him. It's a very '40's style rounded upholstered chair, beige, very much like Joe himself, and we treasure it. For a time, it was my main seat in the living room, but I traded it out for another old leather covered chair we have some time ago. Old Joe's chair became the "sickie-chair." When we are feeling under the weather or one of the cats needed care, we'd use Old Joe's chair because it was snug and comfortable, and we all seemed to heal better and faster there. The Silk Pillow was on top of the seat cushion as extra padding, just enough, it seemed, to make the chair quite soft and supple. We decided the Silk Pillow was needed on the bed to support my left hip, and that's where it went.

Relief began almost immediately, though the pain continued to be quite severe nevertheless. From Friday to Sunday, there was no let up in the pain, though I could tell it wasn't getting worse -- a good sign -- and I was gradually able to move somewhat more freely. By Monday, I was able to get up and get around, not exactly freely, but at least I could become physically more active and walk -- or hobble -- to the bathroom, that sort of necessary thing. I had a very pronounced limp, though, and nearly fell over a number of times. It was as if my left leg had shortened several inches. Sitting was still a problem, but as the day wore on, even that became less and less troublesome.

Finally, by the end of the day yesterday, I could say with fair confidence that the pain was gone, though numbness continued in my leg and I still have a significant limp. I can still feel the disc protruding, though not as much it did during the worst of the episode. Pressure on the nerve is mostly relieved, whew.

In the course of this episode of sciatica, I've used several tactics to control and relieve pain, some of them remarkably effective, if only for a short while. The Holy Dirt was the first thing I tried, and it worked -- miraculously -- until Friday when the pain became severe and the Dirt didn't work when I applied it. Well, I shouldn't say it "didn't work," because it did, sort of. The pain near surface level immediately vanished, but the deeper pain continued unabated. Something else would have to be tried. The medications I had included Darvocet, Vicodin, and Valium. I took them at recommended dosages, not really expecting much relief (as I'd used them before, briefly, and didn't think they helped much) but I was willing to try again. In fact, this time they did work surprisingly well though not perfectly. Pain was controlled for as long as a couple of hours, which was better than nothing and allowed some sleep. We used ice packs on the affected hip (actually frozen vegetables wrapped in a towel) which was a real, if temporary, relief. Thanks to a recommendation, I tried a topical analgesic "StopPain" -- which at first seemed to make the hip pain much worse -- OW! -- but after fifteen minutes or so, the pain was literally gone, and the effect lasted for about another fifteen minutes. Hmm. Success, modest though it was. The Silk Pillow continued to support my hip so that there was lessened pressure on it and thus less pressure on the nerves that were being squeezed by the protruding disc. And that, in the end, seemed to do the trick. As the pressure was relieved, the pain lessened to the point that it was practically unnoticeable.

And then there was the cat, "Girl" she's named, who recognized right off I was in distress and she wanted to help. Cats are very sensitive that way. Unfortunately, she wanted to help by curling up tight on my right arm -- which strangely made the pain in my left hip and leg flare up. So I told her, "No." She didn't understand at first, and then it occurred to her that she could help by lying closer to the source of the pain, but not actually on me,which she did. By golly, it did seem to help, and she seemed so pleased and proud of herself to have aided my recovery. She liked the Silk Pillow, too.

And so, there's the story of sciatica and the Silk Pillow Effect.

We do what we can... ;-)