Left Coast Cowboys

For the second time in this first week of 2010, I hauled myself out on the road for a power walk. Monday was a Crissey Field 4 miler, today the venue was Golden Gate Park and the goal was 5 miles. I’d like to say it gets easier, and maybe two walks in a week isn’t anything to go by, but this walk seemed colder, harder and longer. Well, it was longer. I managed to clock 5.8 miles starting from Stow Lake, out to Ocean Beach and back up JFK Boulevard to the Boat House. I think I improved the pace, simply because I wasn’t pulling my camera out every two minutes to snap a picture. Not that Golden Gate Park doesn’t have scenery to rival Crissey Field. I just got myself turned around and failed to go out to the ocean on my planned route down Martin Luther King Boulevard. Instead, I seemed to pass only erosion control projects and mulch pile areas. Still, I kept up a good clip, at one point segueing into “Chi Walking”. I’d like to say I was gliding like a panther. But I was probably walking more like my feathered friend here.

Still even a cold, blustery day in the Park offers visual food for thought and a few photo opportunities.

Check out this interesting tree. Anyone have any idea what kind it is?

It looks as if it's made from green Ostrich feathers.

Seriously Jurassic. I was checking for Pterodactyls.

I stopped mentally complaining of the cold when I reached the beach and saw there were hardy souls surfing. Cowabunga, Dudes!

That’s when I discovered our Tsunami Evacuation Route. It’s good to know where these are.

When the water's rising, head for the windmills.

Speaking of windmills, Queen Wilhelmina’s Tulip Garden was looking pretty bare. But then it always looks bare, except for the two short weeks when all the tulips burst into bloom. Not yet, I guess.

The Park staff is apparently trying to fool the tourists with poppies. But we Natives know to accept no substitutes.

Back from my loop, I loaded myself into the car and drove home. And mentally calculated that I’d pretty much fueled myself on milk products: a Grande Mocha, a bagel with cream cheese and a yogurt. If I add a steak to that, I’ll feel like a Masai warrior.

Or maybe just like one more in the flock.

How boring is it to make a New Year’s resolution to get back in shape and lose weight? The only thing interesting about my attempt at this old chestnut is how long it’s taking me to get started. Well, of course I couldn’t start on New Year’s Day. Added to a regular hangover, I had the double-whammy of a cheese hangover from a most excellent fondue party. Then somehow Saturday and Sunday slipped by me and, four days in, no progress at all. So last night I tried all the tricks including laying out fresh gym clothes and shoes at the foot of the bed. Then the iPod was charged and filled with tunes. Add to that the prospect of another sunny, mild San Francisco day. No snow, no sleet, no excuses.

Except there are always excuses. First, my two terrier alarm failed to activate. While Oscar and Lucy usually wake between five and six AM desperate for a run to the park, this morning they slept in. I barely got Andy out of the house on time. Somehow that effort required draping myself back across the bed. Then checking out just one rerun cable episode of CSI: Miami. Then two.

But finally, finally, I got myself out of the house, across town and out to Crissey Field. Again, remind me to slap myself across the face. With this most beautiful of urban parks and the Perpetual Spring we live in here, we San Franciscans have no excuses not to get out and Just Do It.

Why am I not running every day when this is available? It doesn't even offer the last excuse of the San Franciscan: "I can't face the hills today."

Yeah, all those Red Staters who are hating on San Francisco: jealous! 'Cause we've got THIS.

In what other city can you walk past the place where Jimmy Stewart rescued Kim Novak?

And you know what, Rush Limbaugh? We have this place because of all of our Liberal, Do-Gooder, Tree Hugger values.

Okay, Liberal diatribe aside and back to fitness: I’d like to say I hit the ground running and knocked off a fast 5K. Not quite. There was a certain amount of meandering and looking and pausing to take pictures. The pace never got past a fast walk, but I did manage to work off 4.25 miles. In fact, I’d had the foresight to purge my iPod of all record of previous runs. So as far as my Nike-plus iPod “virtual personal trainer” knew, this was the first time I’d strapped on shoes. Lance Armstrong came over the iPod to tell me I’d set a “personal best”. It’s the little things, people, the little things. Well, not exactly an auspicious start. But it’s a start.

I’ve listened and listened to the ever ratcheting rhetoric about the increasingly vilified Public Option in the Health Care reform bill. And what strikes me is that the vast majority of the people fear mongering about it fall into two distinct camps: 1) those who believe “all government is bad, nothing the government runs can be good or efficient” (my response to this later) and 2) people who are actually currently enjoying the benefits of government run health care coverage but don’t want to share it with others. That latter camp would include the Seniors who are inexplicably waving “Keep Your Government Hands Off My Medicare” signs at Town Hall scream fests. So whose hands do you think are giving Medicare to you? Yup, it’s that bad old government and the simple gist of the Public Option is: Medicare style coverage for all SHOULD THEY CHOOSE TO TAKE THAT OPTION. So you like your Medicare coverage? Let’s extend it to your non-senior neighbors. If they don’t want it, they can choose Blue Cross or a private insurance program. Period. End of story.

Then there are the Congresspeople who have the same low cost, full coverage plan that is available to our military, but don’t want to make that sort of comprehensive coverage — which doesn’t recognize restrictions like pre-existing conditions — available to their constituents. Why is nobody standing up and demanding that any Congressperson who is bent on denying a government coverage option to his constituents must immediately and voluntarily relinquish his or her government coverage and place him or herself at the tender mercies of commercial insurance companies and big pharma?

You don’t hear of anyone taking that step. Because let me tell you, that coverage your Congressperson enjoys? Well, I grew up and thrived under that same coverage thanks to my career Army officer father. It was a coverage plan that continued to provide for my father until his death and still covers my mother. It is excellent and comprehensive coverage that is unmatched in the private sector.

Don’t believe me? Well, under Obama’s plan, you will be free to chose something else. And if you really think it will be that bad, well what’s the fear? If it’s crap, no one will chose it and it will die. Why do you think Big Pharma and the insurance industry are fighting this tooth and nail? Because they know it’s going to be better, more comprehensive and a real challenge to them. They’re scared shitless.

But back to my point, here’s what that government backed coverage did for my family:

1) It deducted a reasonable premium from my father’s pay (which was adjusted fairly over the years in response to his increasing salary).

2) It covered the entire family, including medicine, completely and with no co-pays and with nothing excluded.

3) It allowed us to go to whatever doctor or hospital we wanted — including some of the best in the Nation such as Mass General, Stanford and UCSF — and it covered even experimental and cutting-edge cancer and heart treatments.

Here is what it didn’t do:

1) It didn’t make me, as a teenager, run out and get an abortion (even though that would have been covered.)

2) It didn’t ration our health care. In fact, it covered second opinion visits at a variety of different institutions as well as treatments such as cutting edge pediatric heart procedures for me as a child and aggressive and comprehensive cancer treatments for my father toward the end of his life.

3) It didn’t make me put my parents in front of a Death Panel, even though it offered comprehensive End of Life Counseling.

Mr. Wilson, the office deserves respect, even if you didn't vote for the man. Photo: Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images

Want to know what End of Life Counseling is? Well, let me tell you because I’ve been through it. When my father’s cancer had spread to Stage Five and it was found that his liver was slowly shutting down, we were able to have a consultation with medical professionals and receive comprehensive and valuable information about our options. Should we keep on a round of invasive procedures and hospitalizations which would, at best, prolong my father’s life for maybe a few months? Or was there an alternative? Turns out there were a lot of options for home health care that would allow my father to end his life with dignity in his own home, surrounded by family and without being hooked up to tubes. He participated in the discussions of these options and he chose the latter. We could only have made that choice comfortably with the help of health professionals — whose services were fully covered by our government-backed insurance program.

Once my father had chosen Hospice Care, we were provided with home health care nurses to help with his care as well as counseling to help the family through the process. When he died, my father left a family in grief, but not in debt.

It was a coverage that, by its nature, seemed to have some built in efficiencies. Because it was so comprehensive, my parents never missed a check up from well-baby through our teen years. We went to the doctor for every cough, sore throat or health concern. As a result, we naturally fell into a pattern of preventative medicine, getting things checked before they became larger, more expensive and less curable issues. My mother, who has major lung issues (which were a pre-existing condition from her teenage years) has received such good care that, while most other people with her condition are walking around tethered to an oxygen tank, she’s riding horses on trail rides into her late Seventies. Could more be done to promote preventative medicine? Sure. But when you don’t have to weigh the cost of a check up against the cost of dinner, you are naturally more likely to go every six months.

This is NOT the way to change things, my friends.

It is the sort of coverage that should be available to all Americans. It’s the sort of coverage that is available to all citizens of France — who according to the World Health Organization have the world’s best health care. In fact, the WHO rates 36 countries ahead of the US in health care effectiveness. How do they rate that? On statistics such as longevity, infant mortality, major disease rates, etc. Okay, you can get all patriotic and split hairs, wave the flag and say our hospitals and doctors are better than any damned Frogs’. Maybe they are. The problem is, not all of us have access to that highest level of care. Too many of us put off doctors visits until it’s so bad we can’t avoid it. At which point, it usually costs much more to address and the problem may be not so easily cured. And that’s when many are forced to make that tough choice between dinner and health care. Or home, college funds, investments, savings and health care.

You want to talk about rationing of health care? Baby, we have that now. It’s rationing by price and by the whim of the insurance companies. On the military plan and the plan your Congressperson enjoys? No rationing. Well, there must be some point where the plan says “we just can’t cover this.” I’m not sure where that point would be. We had my father go through multiple aggressive courses of chemotherapy, radiation, surgery and other treatments for his cancer. At a certain point, we were told that the cancer had spread so aggressively that his liver was failing, which is pretty much the beginning of the end for a 78 year old man. Would they have denied us a liver transplant if we’d demanded it? Possibly. But my father didn’t ask for it. He weighed his options and his expected lifespan. No matter what was done, the outside estimate at that stage was 6 weeks (which he exceeded by sheer determination). He made the choice, backed by the honest information provided by End of Life Counseling, to live the last days of his life without recovering from yet another procedure that wasn’t promising many more weeks.

My final parting shot? That whole argument that government is bad and government can’t possibly do anything efficient. My friend, government is not some big entity in a parallel universe. Because we live in a democracy, our government is us. Go ahead and rail against it. That’s your right under the freedom of speech we enjoy here. But be honest and accept part of the responsiblity for anything you don’t like about government. Because its failings are your failings. They are a direct result of our failure to research the issues thoroughly and make the informed choices that would put representatives in office that will carry out our will. It is our failure, once those representatives are in office, to demand accountability from them — on a constant basis. It’s our tendency, when our party isn’t in power, to vilify the opposition. No matter who gets elected, they are sworn in to represent ALL their constituents. Barack Obama is everyone’s President, whether you pulled the lever or punched the chad for him or not. Let him know what you want — in a civil and proper manner. Let your representatives and Congresspeople know what is important to you.

Call me a starry eyed optimist, but I think it works. I did not vote for Ronald Reagan or George Bush Senior, but I had a long-standing correspondence with both of them. When they did something I didn’t like, I wrote to them. When they did something I liked, I wrote to them. They were my Presidents and I wanted them to hear my voice. And you know what? They wrote back. Several times. I still have the letters. Well, I’m sure it was low-level functionaries that wrote back. But in the aggregate, I think such communication is effective. Did I make a difference? Who knows? But I bet if there were hundreds of thousands of us who wrote to them as I did, they would have listened. On a more direct level, I helped elect the local, regional and state officials that I thought would more directly represent my interests and keep these Presidents accountable.

I have to accept that a small part of Bush Jr.’s failures must be laid at my door. I allowed myself to give in to the whole “I didn’t vote for this guy, I hate him” trap. I dropped out of active citizenry for awhile. Maybe if I, and thousands of Democrats like me, had stayed respectfully participatory, things would have been different. I won’t make that mistake again, no matter who is elected next.

What didn’t I do during the Reagan and Bush Senior years? I didn’t storm into town meetings and shout people down. I researched the issues and I wrote respectful but firm letters outlining what I wanted and expected from my Presidents. If the return letters I received back weren’t written by Ronnie or George themselves, they were answered by someone who actually read them. Because they always answered the exact points I’d raised with specific thought-out answers. It’s a start. And, as a participatory democratic effort, it beats painting a Hitler mustache on a Presidential portrait.

But I’m a long way from my main point. Which is that the government can indeed run an efficient, fair and medically sound coverage option. My entire family — and every military family I grew up with — is proof of that. Ask me any questions you want about my experiences. I’d be glad to share. If you’ve been covered by a similar government-backed coverage option and haven’t had my positive experience, I want to hear about it.

I think we’re all closer to a solution that we think. And I think it can be done without shouting and violence.

I’ll leave you with this food for thought.

Need a common-sense, plain-spoken explanation of the Public Option? Robert Reich lays it all out in two minutes:

Here’s conservative pundit Bill Kristol admitting that the government runs a first-class health care coverage program for the military, but the average American doesn’t deserve it.

Ready for a laugh (through your tears)? Here’s Paul Hipp with a rousing response to the US status as the Number 37th in health care (as rated by the World Health Organization).

For someone my age, I’ve been surprisingly careful about my skin. Largely it was because I found lying around trying to tan the most boring thing in the world, so I seldom did it. I never really wanted to go for that bronze look. I can count the sunburns I’ve had on one hand — and still have leftover fingers to flash the peace sign. (Those sunburns were not my fault. Who knew that the Caribbean sun could burn right through a T-shirt while you are snorkeling?)

So as more and more evidence came out about the dangers of sun exposure, I was right on board. I now have the largest array of high SPF sunscreen in the Western U.S. I regularly slather on 80 SPF, then wear a hat and long sleeved shirts out in the Sonoma sun. And I’ve always kept a close eye on my moles. ‘Cause I had a few of them.

Then suddenly last week, as I stepped out of the shower, I noticed that I had more than a few. I had more. Lots more. They had multiplied overnight it seemed. Cue panicked call to a dermatologist.

Wanting to get the very next available appointment, I told the receptionist I had a number of “suspicious” moles. She booked me immediately.

Full disclosure: I’ve never been able to tell from Internet articles on cancer what makes a mole suspicious. I sort of had the impression that it was a mole that was ugly or misshapen. Or would be happy living on a witch’s face.

I never had ugly moles. And they never turned my skin green.

In fact, if any of my moles had been on Cindy Crawford's upper lip, you would have called them beauty marks.

I think you are getting the idea that I am not going to be posting pictures of my moles. This is not that kind of blog. I just say “NO” to oversharing.

But still I worried.

Because I didn't want a charter membership with this group.

Turns out the dermatologist was a sweet elderly German man. Sort of a thinner medical version of the kindly waiter Carl in Casablanca. Dr. Carl, like the German stereotype, is very efficient. He did a quick examination of my torso with a magnifying glass and pronounced: “All iss gut. No cancer.”

Well, then why do I have five new moles?

“Zees are not moles. Zey are ‘Age Warts’. Vee alzo call zem ‘Senile Warts’.”

Warts?! Warts! I’ve never had a wart in my life. Warts are found on witches and frogs and warthogs. And what’s this “Senile” thing, anyway?

Turns out, according to Dr. Carl Casablanca, just about everyone of “a certain age” gets these things. They aren’t really warts as in virus-induced type things. They are just age-related changes to the skin. And they don’t become cancerous.

I still had Dr. Carl removed them. Because I’m too young for age-related anything!

And there is nothing that has warts that can be called attractive. Even when Disney tries to pretty it up.

Hakuna Matata, indeed!

Just a public service announcement: Don’t dismiss any new skin growth, even if you think it is a harmless result of aging skin. Get everything checked out. Even Dr. Carl Casablanca is going to biopsy every one of my removed moles, just to be sure.

Aw, yes. Resolutions. I have to make them this year and, of course, the old “lose weight and get in shape” one is topping the list. We all know it’s much easier to accomplish when you have a partner. But it doesn’t work very well in a house with an Englishman.

Me: We need to get in shape this year.

Andy: Great, I’m right there with you.

Me: We have to give up all this rich food. And cut way back on the wine. I think we should go vegetarian. At least a few times a week.

Andy: Okay, we’ll go vegetarian. Except for sausages. And foie gras. And those good aged steaks we get at Sonoma Market. We’ll only have wine when we have those meals.

Me: And how many times will we have meals with sausage and steak and all that?

Andy: Only on weekdays.

Me: What about weekends?

Andy: You can’t diet on weekends. 

If that weren’t enough of a challenge, remember that Englishmen only recognize a very few vegetables: carrots, peas and potatoes. All of which are starchy. None of which will help you lose weight.

We won’t even talk about exercise. Andy is a firm believer in the Executive Workout: ten minutes on the stairmaster reading the Wall Street Journal, then into the steam room and out for a massage.

So if I’m going to do this, I need another supportive partner. That leaves Lucy.

Poor Lucy. Some cruel people would say she’s looking porky. I really mean porky. Ever seen a Poland China hog? Same markings.

I don't want Lucy to end up like this overfed dog from New Zealand. Hard to believe it's the same breed.

Kinder critics would call her the Marilyn Monroe of Smooth Fox Terriers. She has a figure from another era. The kind of figure that used to make men in the 1940s sing the old Lucky Strike Cigarette song: “So Round, So Firm, So Fully Packed.” Yes, kinder critics would say she’s a va-va-va-voom terrier bombshell.

However, I did find a frightening story about two clinically obese Smooth Fox Terriers in New Zealand and Lucy’s looking more like one of them than she is like her skinny-marink younger brother, Oscar. So Lucy and I are making this resolution together. Tomorrow I’m off to get diet dog food for her and diet food for me. (It’s going to help for the kick-off that Mr. Sausage Man is in England for a week.)

So, based on ideal weight charts for Lucy’s breed, she needs to lose about 5 lbs. I need to lose…well, a little bit more.

Little brother Oscar is such a Skinny Marink you can barely see his body behind his big nose.

This whole thing would work better for me if Lucy could just put my correctly portioned diet meal in a bowl for me and deny me access to any other food. But then that methodology hasn’t really worked for Lucy so far. I give her less food, she wolfs it down, then beats up little Oscar and takes his.

Let’s hope I don’t start doing that to Andy. As I’ll be eating celariac and salad while he’s eating steak and roast potatoes.

It’s going to be interesting around here in the next few months.