In which our hero comes to feel his age

 Note to the reader: This post is entirely personal; you may well choose to skip it. Subsequent posts will return to issues of grammar, usage, editing, and journalism.

A year ago, traveling with my wife, her sibs, and their spouses through Central Europe, I put in 18,000 steps or more a day in Budapest, Vienna, and Prague, enjoying the pilsner and feeling no ill effects. Later in the summer, my annual physical indicated that I was in fine health for a septuagenarian. 

This year, as I turned seventy-five, everything went awry at once. 

My urologist, after years of recording steadily climbing PSA numbers, identified cancer in my prostate, of a variety likely to become aggressive. An MRI indicated that the cancer had not spread, and in February a surgeon removed the prostate. A follow-up PSA test three weeks later indicated nothing, and a further PSA test at the beginning of July registered 0.04, which my surgeon says amounts to zero. Out of the wilderness. 

But pain in my right knee, which an orthopedist diagnosed as an arthritis flareup, grew steadily worse, to a point at which I could barely limp to the end of the block and back. Further testing, including an MRI, indicated necrotic bone tissue in my right hip. A surgeon recommended replacing the hip, and surgery was accordingly scheduled. 

But in late June, as the date of the surgery approached, I experienced a severe attack of vertigo. Rising from bed at 8:00, I felt the room circling rapidly around me and staggered to the bathroom. Unable to sit up, I lay on the floor waiting for the vertigo to pass. Five hours later, when it had not, my wife called for an ambulance. Hospitalized for ten days, I received physical and occupational therapy and was released to go home. 

One of the therapists at Good Samaritan Hospital clapped goggles over my eyes to record eye movements. She concluded that the little calcium carbonate crystals had not gone astray in the inner ear but that the problem was with my eyes. Accordingly, after release I saw a specialist at Johns Hopkins' Neuro-Visual and Vestibular Disorders Center. He had a couple of technicians put the goggles on me and smartly jerk my head about. The conclusion from the recording: inflammation of a nerve in my right eye. The vertigo should pass in time, with certain exercises and therapies helpful. 

I am now at home, able to maneuver with a cane instead of a walker, but the dizziness, though reduced, has not passed, and hip surgery is indefinitely delayed until the vertigo has passed completely and the risk of a fall is reduced. 

In addition to my wobbly gait, the pain in my right leg enhancing the effect of the dizziness, my vision has limited how long I can read before the text starts to blur--though I was able to finish reading Emily Wilson's translation of The Iliad while in the hospital. (Three hours of therapy a day leave twenty-one hours of leisure.) And in addition to drafting this post I am cautiously signing on to copy edit the occasional story at The Banner. 

By the time my next annual physical rolls around I expect to be, cancer-free and smoothly mobile on a new hip, in decent shape for a man of my age.

A thought for the Fourth

 Let us acknowledge things about our national anthem. "The Star-Spangled Banner" is mediocre verse set to the tune of an old drinking song that is difficult to sing. Its author, Francis Scott Key, does not have a clean record on the slavery issue (though should we apply our virtues retroactively, who would 'scape whipping?). The third verse is not happy about British efforts to enlist enslaved people in the battles of the War of 1812. Let's admit that it is problematic. 

Now let me offer a modest defense. We're going to read out that third verse, because no one pays any attention to it. Patriotic Americans sing only the first verse, and there lie the grounds for a defense. When you sing only the first verse, it is not a triumphant anthem like the "Marseillaise." It ends instead with a question. Will that banner continue to fly over the land of the free and the home of the brave? In short, will we continue to live up to our founding principles? Are we up to the struggle to uphold and expand freedom? How are we going at the job? 

So here in Baltimore, home of the Orioles, continue to shout that "O!" Nothing amiss in a little local pride. But don't forget that you are singing a question that is not easy or comfortable to answer. 

And for the Fourth,. to see what can be done with that anthem, take a listen to Dudley Buck's "Festival Overture on the American National Air."