Stress

I’ve written about panic attacks in the past. This post is not about that, however; it’s about day-to-day life and the pressure we all deal with. It just happens to be mine.

My wife, Martha, had a fall three days after I had my knee operated on. I may have mentioned that in a previous post, but to be sure I’d have to go look back. In any case, when she fell she had some soft tissue injuries to her face which required stitches, plus she had what we expected to be a concussion and the symptoms that usually go with it, including a headache and double vision, nausea, and some weakness. Normally those symptoms resolve over the five to seven days after the event, and some did. Others, however, remained.

She followed up with Neurology a couple of weeks after the fall and ultimately ended up having imaging on her neck; the reason for that is the Physician Assistant who saw her suspected her issues were originating in her neck rather than inside her cranial vault. It turned out that he was absolutely correct.

She has what is known as Central Cord Syndrome. Her cervical spine between the fifth and seventh vertebrae is partially pinched as a result of the fall; apparently what happened was those vertebrae shifted and are now putting pressure on the cord. It doesn’t help that she has degenerative issues with those vertebrae anyway; this just makes it worse.

Next Monday she is having a surgical procedure to relieve the pressure on her spine. It involves the placement of what looks like a cage consisting of Titanium and cadaver bone at the affected vertebrae. It is not without risk; the entry is through the front and side of the neck, between the trachea and the large vessels. Plus there is the issue of the cord itself and the potential for compromise. We are both concerned about it, but the surgeon we are dealing with comes highly recommended. He has years of experience performing these procedures, and his success rate is quite high. So in principle, at least, I’m not worried about that. But the part of my brain that is more primitive is still squirming. I suspect Martha’s is doing something similar as she is the one having the procedure performed.

I’m sure there will be more to follow over this. It certainly is not out of my mind, and I don’t expect it will be anytime soon.

Letter From Home

I first heard this probably five years ago. It was by accident, in fact; I had no idea that this piece existed, other than the above title. As it turns out, I actually have a recording of this on compact disc that I didn’t realize was on the collection it was included in.

Aaron Copland composed this piece in 1944 at the request of orchestra director Paul Whiteman. He wanted music that would support the war effort at the time, and ultimately this was performed during a broadcast of The Philco Radio Hour. It is evocative; things that come to mind when listening to it, at least for me, include nostalgia for a time in our history that many wish would come back before everything we know now became so complicated. Another image is that of a deployed soldier reading a letter he received from his family. This would have been common as recently as Vietnam, although the music was written during the Second World War. In today’s world, however, we know this is not reality due to the relatively instantaneous communication tools many of us take for granted.

The setting of this piece of music is, as I said, during the Second World War. In the video that is set to this piece, however, the photos shown are closer to the beginning of the twentieth century with images from the First World War. And when I first watched this, I was reminded of what I imagine was typical in parts of New England or the Midwest during that time. Plus, the gentleman who put the video together did it masterfully, and I can say it is worth watching, if only for a few minutes.

Work

Most people who’ve read posts I’ve written, either in this venue or the previous blog I hosted, are aware of my profession. I am a Paramedic. I like to think I’m pretty good at my job, but I know full well there is always room for improvement. I also teach, and that actually helps me with my knowledge level. It’s important to learn new things, or at least review what you already know. I believe that, no matter what kind of work anyone does, we should always strive to be better. Not just for ourselves, but also, and more importantly, for those we serve.

In my previous career I worked as a technology professional. I designed and built computer networks from the ground up. Much of what I did was in office buildings or for different types of businesses. From time to time, however, I would get hired to do work in some interesting places.

One job I took on about 20 years ago involved assisting a group of amateur radio operators put a network on line that used packet switching to move data over radio frequencies. This technology is still in use but it has always been difficult and challenging both to implement and to fix when problems arise.

The reason they hired me certainly wasn’t because of the radio communications aspect of this project; I have a reasonable working knowledge of how radio signals are transmitted and received, but these people were experts, and I learned a great deal over a short period of time from them. They hired me because I knew something about how packet switching worked and they wanted to learn it. They both wanted to deal with someone they could not only work with but who also wouldn’t charge them an outrageous fee for my time. As the person who initially asked for my help was (and still is) a friend of mine, I did it partially as a favor to him, but the group (it was an amateur radio repeater club in northern New England – I won’t say where as the group is still active and I want to protect their privacy) also made it worth my while, both financially and educationally.

The various people I was working with spent time reviewing propagation theory with me as well as teaching me how to calculate wavelength and frequency to build antennas for transmitters, among other things specific to how it all works. In return I taught them the X.25 and X.400 protocols.

At the time it was a fair exchange of information. Remember that this took place about 20 years ago, and a lot has changed since then. If I were to do something similar today, it likely would not involve either of those protocols, simply because their use is extremely limited now. The aviation community and some military programs still use X.25. As for X.400, it’s primarily used to handle messaging. An common example would be the movement electronic mail between a group of servers for backup purposes. However, because of the ubiquity of the Internet, as well as high-speed capabilities in use almost everywhere one looks, it is pretty much gone from use in the United States, much of of Europe, and places like Australia and Southeast Asia. That said, it is still reported to be used in parts of Central and South America as well as parts of Africa and Central Asia.

I worked in other places as well, including as the technical point of contact in a municipal school system in southern New Hampshire, as a consultant for an energy supplier, and as the network manager of one of the hospitals in the Manchester-Nashua-Concord corridor. All interesting places to work, but none that really excited me. Probably the toughest consulting job I worked on involved a shoe manufacturer on the New Hampshire seacoast; they wanted to re-engineer their internal data center network, including installing all new cabling and hardware, plus updating their router and firewall. My employer at the time really low-balled the bid so that we would be awarded the contract. At the time I had no idea how far it went, but I found out afterwards.

It took much longer than I expected to do because I was doing all of the work myself; I put together a design proposal and a cost analysis (including engineering drawings based on the floor plan I was given), and when it came to actually implementing the plan I installed and tested everything. It all worked, and it worked well, but the company in question disputed the billing. It went back and forth for quite a while, and while it finally was resolved, I found out later that they hired a second company to revisit all of the work I did and see if it needed to be redone. Apparently this other consultant they hired said nothing but good things about the quality of my work, and it drove the person responsible (I presume it was the Chief Information Officer at the time) crazy.

Needless to say that I don’t miss the difficulty associated with that sort of work. It always involved artificial deadlines. I’ve always thought working as a medical provider makes so much more sense because the problems are real and have to be addressed. I’ve maintained that opinion for the better part of the past 25 years, and I still feel that way now.