Blue Tooth Forsooth

There is a new and disturbing phenomenon taking place in this country... It is actually two phenomena. I’m certain that you’ve experienced both of them.

We always tell our kids--well, now it's the grandkids--to turn the volume down on their radios, usually when they are playing music.  Then, when they don’t listen to us and keep the volume cranked up, we tell them that they’ll lose their hearing if they continue to listen to loud music.

We already have a lot of people who have lost their hearing, and they aren’t all kids.  Have you noticed, as I have, that there are a lot of people walking around with hearing aids?

I thought modern technology was miniaturizing everything except TVs, which seem to keep getting larger and larger.  But the hearing aids I see are pretty visible, with strange pointers sticking out of them.  Some even have little blue lights on them.

 

 Not only do people have those hearing aids, but they also have apparently gone crazy, too, because many of them walk around talking to themselves.  I hear these one-sided conversations all the time.

I've come to the conclusion that the loud noises must cause both hearing loss and mental disorders. Maybe it's the stuff those people listen to that also makes them crazy.

I sure am blessed with good fortune, because my hearing is almost perfect.  Of course, I do a little of the talking-to-myself stuff, but there is a difference... I usually have the answers to the questions I ask!

           

I know, it's meaningless in this context, but I like the picture.

What A Way To Go

Now that I'm a septuagenarian, I am bombarded by health advocates who want to practice "preventive medicine" on me.  Not a week goes by that I don't get mailers advertising hearing aids and other devices and aids for the elderly.

But the real kick came last week, when I received a health alert from University Hospital here in Augusta in my email Inbox.  In it was a list of preventive care screenings that I am eligible for through Medicare and that are overdue.  They included colonoscopy, td/tdap, hemmocult, prostate cancer screening, digital rectal exam and flu shot.

The first action I had to take was a search of the Internet to learn what some of those ominous-sounding screenings were.  (Isn't the Internet grand, that we can learn just about anything in short order on it?)  Then I had to think about whether or not I really wanted to subject myself to some of those procedures.

I won't bore you with my medical history here, other than to state that some of those tests and shots are already accomplished.  However, I have a real aversion to volunteering for some of them.  I also have a theory that some things are better left undone.

I am convinced that some health problems--cancer, for one--are aggravated and/or initiated by the very tests to detect them.   I don't have any factual proof to back that up, but I do believe that when cancer cells are exposed to air, they seem to take off and start multiplying.

There are a lot of people who have had cancer that went into remission, but there are many more whom, once the disease was detected and treatment was started, died in a very short time.  One has to question the timing from onset to terminal.

Here's another reason I don't care to undergo uncomfortable screenings and procedures: Since I am already on the cusp of the hereafter, do I really care how I go?  Everybody's got to die of something, and, for me, I suspect my "something" is well established as coronary artery disease.  To learn that I also have another deadly disease would just be adding insult to injury.

With such a morbid topic, I can't leave you in a funk over it, so here is a little "kicker."

My barbershop quartet has a song we sing called, "Everybody Wants To Go To Heaven" that has a great ending.  The last line is, "Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die!"  Isn't that the truth? 

If I have to go anyway, I’d just as soon go out quickly and painlessly.  But if that is not to be, and I have to linger on awhile, I prefer to go out like this guy-note what’s in the IV bag.