Since you are listed as one of my subscribers to my musings on Substack, you should know that for sometime I have stayed in contact with Phyllis and Michael, via email. The three of us are first cousins and were born 10 months of one another. We grew up together in Dallas and the three of us were the youngest of our nuclear families and now are the last survivors. All of us are pushing 80. Michael lives in Trento, in Italy, with his wife Judith, and Phyllis lives with Ken in St. Louis. With that introduction, here is the email that Michael sent Phyllis and me this past Saturday morning:
Dear Arnie and Phyllis,
Apparently I had an ambulance ride last week, but I do not remember any of it. However, I can give you the back story.
For 13 days I had chronic hiccups, 24 hours a day. I was sleeping less than 2-3 hours a night. I could barely eat and lost 20 pounds. Every day I was referred to a different specialist or was at some hospital for tests.
On the 13th night I passed out and fell off the bed. That's when the ambulance ride happened. I spent the next three days in the hospital and finally they found a drug that worked. I still get episodes, but they are mostly controllable. Soon, I will be going through more tests to try to figure out the cause.
Recovery is a slow process. I am weak as a kitten because of the loss of muscle mass. I have a guy that walks with me an hour a day and I carry a cane just in case. Three days a week a Pilates trainer comes to the house to work with me.
The guy at the front door to the hospital told Judith he was glad to see that I was able to get out on two legs because when the Ambulance team took me to emergency, I was "mezzo morte" (half dead).
All this has brought to my attention how fragile we really are.
The good news is that with physical therapy, I will be OK.
I will update you next on the story of our house saga.
Love to you both, Michael
I immediately sat down to answer Michael, with a CC to Phyllis, but writing about this often leads to writing about that. I responded as best I could to Mike’s letter and sorrowful news, and I went on to update them on Sondra’s and my most recent plans for our trip to Europe and Israel in October, and how these plans were coming along. It was when I saw them typed out on the computer screen, simply listed under a series of bullet points, that I realized how utterly different travel had now become during the pandemic.
Sondra has had a large family in Israel for many decades, and our Kenny moved to Jerusalem 5 years ago. Altogether we must have travelled there at least a dozen times in the past 20 years. Once we got through the inevitable security checks at the airport, it was pretty much downhill. Not much preparation for the trip was needed, short of packing bags. Coming from America, we never needed a visa, we just needed to have our passport handy. Likewise stopping off in Europe on the way to Tel Aviv was always a breeze. Again, little preparation was needed.
But simply scanning the bullet list I created told me that things had really changed. Not only would we and our belongings be scanned and go through X-rays and metal detectors, but the Internet was going to be an integral part. I wasn’t sure how to feel about that. Viewed from one perspective it was simply funny, from another it was ironic, but from yet another, it was surreal. Finally, I realized that maybe there was a connection between Michael’s tsuris with hiccups and mine with bureaucracy. (Let me be the first to assure you, they were never remotely on the same level. Sometimes I felt frustrated enough to kill, but I have always been far from ‘mezzo morte’, thank G-d.) I only hope that in late October, after we return from our trip, I will be able to write, like Michael, “the good news is that” we will be okay.
So having sent off my emails to Michael and Phyllis today, and thinking about it some more, I decided that this topic will make a good Substack article. I sent Michael and Phyllis an addendum to my email, telling them of my plans and not to be surprised when that same email, that they just read, also turns up a day later in their inbox via Substack. Here it is.
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Dear Michael and Phyllis,
Michael, as they say in Italian, “Oye, Vaze Mir”. At medical school, in the library, I was an indifferent reader of current medical journals. I mostly scanned them. But when I came across a case report of chronic hiccups, I always stopped to read them. They only occurred infrequently and since they always came as single case reports, the reports were always short, (maybe that was a plus for me). I thought they were very interesting but obviously rare. I never actually saw a case, nor even heard of one from a colleague, throughout a lifetime career in medicine and psychiatry.
Back then, they were so rare that no one ever aggregated enough patients to actually say definitively what treatment works. I guess the field hasn’t changed much in that regard: try this, try that. I would certainly hate to live through it myself, but I am glad you have survived, Mike, and I hope you continue to get stronger fast. We are all getting too old for this nonsense. (What drug actually worked for you? You, Phyllis and I all share some genetic connection. Who knows, this knowledge might come in handy. I vote for a very strong opioid or a high dose of THC.) Meanwhile, we will await the next update of your saga.
Our saga continues in that Sondra and I are still doing okay, although the last 36 hours have been a little hairy. Sondra and I got our third (booster) Pfizer shot on Thursday, and went the following day for our annual flu shot. Last night we both had what were actually minor reactions (to flu, I am certain), and we are better this morning. I know it’s crazy but we are still leaving next Sunday for a 3 week trip (very long in planning) to Trieste, Italy; Ljubljana, Slovenia; and Zagreb, Croatia. We will rent a car in Trieste to take us through that itinerary before we return to Italy in order to catch a flight to Israel. We are planning to see Kenny in Jerusalem before returning home.
Of course, these plans have been in the works for over a year, continually put off and rescheduled because of the pandemic. Finally, 6 months ago we took the plunge and started making reservations. We assumed (you might say, we gambled) that things would continue to get easier. Covid would run its course, and by October we could travel relatively unimpeded by any Covid safety or Covid lockdown concerns. We are vaccinated, as are most people in Europe and especially Israel, so I have no worry for our own Covid safety (despite publication of case reports in the media to the contrary). However, just like the winter solstice comes around Christmas and after that, the days get longer, and more heat from the sun falls on the ground, January and February are still our coldest winter months. There is a lag between the sun’s heat in the sky and the temperature down here on the ground. Likewise, there seems to be a similar disconnect between our actual risks from the virus and how the world responds bureaucratically. Believe me, the bureaucratic response has been brutal. I would probably back out of this trip now, but we find ourselves in a situation which is “in for a dime, in for a dollar”. We have too much time, money and effort already invested to pull back.
Here is what our October trip now entails. For Europe, I needed to secure an online application for an “EU Digital Passenger Locator Form (dPDF)”, both for myself and Sondra. The learning curve was long and arduous, (everything is complicated at our age), and it took me a while to figure out what they wanted. Naturally, if I made anything other than a simple mistake correctable by a backspace, I generally had to go back to the very beginning. After doing my own application, I had to do Sondra’s, which of course went smoother. It was not easy (don’t ask) but I finally got through all of the online applications. To do so, required I read critically and fill in data fields packed into 20 or so screens, (40, with Sondra added). To avoid an error, I ended up carefully and laboriously typing the information requested, often with Sondra sitting by my side double-checking.. Finally everything was uploaded and evaluated and each of us was able to download a 3 page pdf file, containing a “QR code”.
Supposedly, showing this code on our dPDF will allow us to pass across the border from one EU country to another.
For Israel, (and here the Jews have really pushed the science of bureaucratic torture to stratospheric heights), I needed to complete and send to the consulate in New York an online application entitled “Application for an entry permit to Israel during the COVID-19 pandemic for passengers traveling with a foreign passport”. (Computer geeks only need apply.)
With these applications, Sondra and I uploaded digital files documenting our Covid vaccinations, copies of our passport, copies of health insurance covering us in Israel for Covid-19, and signed legal forms swearing we will be at an indicated location (our AirBnb) during the required 14 day quarantine, or until released by the ministry of health. (We are hoping for a very early release by the health ministry, since we are only in Israel for 5 days.) But wait, as they say in the informercial, “that’s not all!” In order for someone to be even considered for such an application, that someone (i.e., both Sondra and I) have to prove that the person we are visiting in Israel (i.e., Kenny) is a ‘first-degree’ relative (check the legal definition) living in Israel. Thus both of us needed to upload a copy of Kenny’s birth certificate, as well as a copy of his Israel passport.
But wait, folks, that’s still not all! Between October 3 and October 25, when we leave and return to JFK, we will be crossing 5 international borders. The instructions are as varied as from vague to ironclad, but everything I read says that in order to cross the border, you better be able to prove you are not trying to smuggle some Covid into the country. They may or goddam will demand a Covid PCR test, officially certified and taken within the prior 48 hours — or else forget it. That means (for both Sondra and me) a total of 10 PCR tests in 3 weeks. All we need is for one of the 10 to turn out to be a false positive, (not unknown), and both of us are royally screwed.
But, looking down at our dime, now stretched out to a half dollar, we think, well we have come this far… It’s just too late to turn back… So hopefully, we will be able to pull it off.
Michael, if we didn’t have such an inflexible schedule, fixed by our reservations, we would try to swing by Trento. Even though it’s impossible, I still considered making the trip but alas I have finally been deterred by the Italian government. To even be considered for the necessary approval, they demanded that I upload a signed, notarized form (in Italian and digitalized) that says I promise not to cause cousin Michael to break out into uproarious laughter and thus precipitate another hiccup attack. Since the wording specifies “either on purpose or by accident”, my lawyer insists I not sign. So, to compensate, I will send to Trento a ‘get well’ card by special messenger (i.e. ESP) to Michael when we are most nearby geographically. That will occur hopefully next Monday week, when we are in Venice changing trains on the last leg of our trip to Trieste, (flights being cancelled). Since this kind of special message is able to pass borders without a negative Covid PCR test, I will send a second message, also with love, to Phyllis in St. Louis.
Arnie
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Okay, I started this ‘musing’ by saying I could see a connection between Michael’s tsuris with hiccups and mine with bureaucracy. So what is it?
I think it’s attitude, and it applies to getting older, as well as dealing with frustration. It’s walking the line between being brave and being fool-hardy. There is bravery in both Sondra and my attitude in our upcoming trip. But if truth be told, the most prominent driving force, more than courage, is finding ourselves too far along to turn back. That is a dynamic that is so pervasive and so very easy to get sucked into. (It’s probably the main reason why someone obviously smart, capable and successful, like Bernie Madoff, ends up in jail for running a Ponzi scheme. Poor schmuck.) Faced with adversity, does Sondra and do I, quit, get comfortable and surrender to age or circumstance, or do we press on with our plans, despite everything?
Michael recognizes how fragile we are, and yet he avers he “will be OK”. My college girl friend, 6 months younger, who I esteem and am still in contact after 60 years, tells me that age is “only a number”. Indeed, she lives her life by that rule, despite a history of surgery and chemotherapy. A relatively recent widow, she plans to go alone on a Road Scholar trip to the Maine coast, because “those scenes of a rugged coast and roaring waves speak to me.” (I would tell you her name but she prefers anonymity, as if our college years, in the early 60’s, were anything other than a period of terminal chastity.) I admire her bravery. In fact, I admire all of our bravery. And I proclaim this in the face of the real possibility of returning from our trip on my shield, perhaps a victim of Covid-19, but much more likely a victim of insane proliferating travel bureaucracy.
I let Michael and Phyllis know of my plans to publish our recent correspondence on Substack. Michael wrote I should feel free and added that he continues to improve but is still involved in all kinds of tests and exams, including a “two color brain MRI”, adding, “If nothing shows up, we can still blame some evil unknown sorcerer for a voodoo curse.” Phyllis also gave her consent. Then she included a sentence referring to Sondra and I, alluding to our courage or maybe our insanity, it wasn’t clear. The sentence contained three words which I found nicely alliterative: travels, trials, and tribulations. I liked the way these words sounded together. I think I’ll use it as my title.