Sunsets
Sunset was official at 12:54 New Zealand time on Thursday, March 23. I was up early in the day to see the last sliver of our solar companion begin its’ final plunge below the horizon. I can’t honestly tell you it was a particularly remarkable sunset, or a sunset more or less spectacular than one you might see elsewhere in the world. What made this sunset different is that it’s the only one I’ll even see in Antarctica. There are no 24 hours cycles hereof dark and light, just one long day and one long night; and today the former has ended and latter has just begun.
There are
three unique holidays we celebrate at the Pole.
Like druids of old, we celebrate sunset, mid-winter, and sunrise. We do not, however, prance about naked with
ribbons and streamers in the forest. For
one, there is no forest. Second, nobody
should ever prance naked near the Pole, because while I won’t speak for every
over-winter physician there’s no way I’m going to rub aloe vera lotion on some
of those body parts that are bound to be frostbitten.
(It’s like
the joke about the two cowboys who are camping on the range and one get bit on
his manly parts by a rattlesnake. They
don’t know what to do, so his buddy rides to town to consult with the local
sawbones. The doctor advises him that he
needs to suck out the poison to save his friend’s life. The second cowboy rides back to the first and
proclaims, “Doc says you’re gonna die.”
Of course, this joke was written before Brokeback Mountain, so now I
suppose the ending would be that the second cowboy saves his buddy’s life, and
then they embrace and note that “it could be like this forever.” But I digress.)
The Sunset
Celebration is a dress-up, clean-up affair.
It starts with the assignment of the Polar Number. This seems like a trivial thing, but it’s
actually quite meaningful. Your number
designates where you are in the heirarchy of those who have over-wintered at
the South Pole. It’s your street cred,
the way someone will know if you’ve really spent the season in the cold or if
you’re just (excuse the expression) blowing snow. The lower your number the more esteemed you
are. My number is 1697, meaning that
1,697 people have over-wintered before me.
Women get a second number to show where they are in the pecking order of
females at the Pole; our Maven of Supply, first wintered in
2005 and has number 126. To put these
numbers in perspective, between astronauts, cosmonauts, taikonauts, Bezonauts,
and Don Knotts (“The Reluctant Astronaut”), there have been a bit over 600
people in space. The over-winter crowd
isn’t quite in that rarefied air, but it’s still a pretty select group.
In addition
to a Pole Number, later in the year we’ll be getting a medal. It’s the United States Antarctica Service
Medal, and it’s available to both members of the Armed Forces and civilians who
participate in Antarctic activities sponsored by the government of the United
States for at least 10 days below 60 degrees of latitude. On the front is a guy in a parka framed by
the words “Antarctica” and “Service;’ on the back is a small map of the
continent surrounded by penguins and seals with the words “Courage, Sacrifice,
Devotion” emblazoned in their midst. I
like these words better than “Darkness, Cold, and Lack of Fresh Food.” The accompanying ribbon is shaded in white,
green, blue, and black. If you’re here
for the winter, you also get a clasp that goes with the medal indicating your
“Wintered Over” time. I’m very excited
about this…the only medals I have are from high school debate and serving as
Captain of the Shawnee Mission East Categories Cable Television Quiz show
team. I’m planning to wear it at my next
high school reunion. I’ve also learned
that that medals are ranked, and this one falls in precedence just below the
Korean Service Medal and above the Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal. While I
think it’s more than reasonable for the Antarctic Service Medal to fall below
one given to those who risked their lives in the Korean peninsula, it seems odd
that the military would honor you for eating penguin livers and seal meat over
participating in armed conflicts in foreign lands. But I’m just a civilian.
Speaking of
astronauts, it’s been said that a winter in Antarctica is the closest you can
get to being in space with your feet on the ground. I’m not sure I completely buy this
comparison, primarily because we can go outside. It’s not always pleasant to do so, but
outside there’s still oxygen to breathe and freedom to move, not tethered to a
spacecraft or enclosed in a pressure suit.
Being able to go outside, or at least knowing you can, is helpful when
you feel you need time to yourself or just want to marvel at the fact that
you’re here. In the event of disaster we
have no opportunity to escape, while the residents of the International Space
Station (ISS) often have a Soyuz or Dragon capsule for emergency use. Communications are better on the ISS, as
their orbits continually take them over tracking stations, while we’re
dependent upon specific satellite passes for the few hours of internet, e-mail,
and phone we have each day. But at least
we have elbow room; on station, each of us has our own berthing quarters, and
the place is large enough that you can always find quiet corner for rest,
reading, relaxation, or even just hiding from everyone else. We have a gym, a
music room, several TV and video lounges, a library, and even a sauna. With 44 souls on board, there’s more of a
community feel to the place than I would imagine if it were only ten along for
the interplanetary ride. But I do
understand those who draw lines between the models, especially in the context
of the need for self-sufficiency and the interplay of personal dynamics in
isolated groups. We’ve been invited to
participate in several NASA-funded projects this fall, including studies that
propose the use of virtual reality to lower stress levels in our group, and
that look at group dynamics in decision-making in isolated populations. Personally, I’m not too sure about the first
study, and that lack of enthusiasm comes from a career in emergency
medicine. The administrative buzzword of
the last decade has been “physician resilience”…essentially, how to make
physicians “toughen up” to a challenging work environment. I can do yoga, I can eat healthy, I can take
personal time for myself, I can try to value the patients themselves, but when
I walk back into the ER it’s the same stressors…too much to do, too little help
doing it, the ever-present specter of consumer metrics, administrative oversight,
simply dealing with life, death, and everything in between, and the lack of
willpower on anyone’s part to fix it. It’s hard for me to see how, in a closed
spaceflight environment with its inherent hazards and challenges, with even
your private moments always under the watchful eye of Mission Control, how
twenty minutes under a visor watching Bambi graze in the forest is going to
help. But I’m certain the results of the
study will point otherwise, because otherwise the funding shuts off.
(We do have
some astronaut memorabilia here on Station.
There are mission patches and autographs from several spacefarers,
including Owen Garriott, one of the original Skylab crew. Astronaut Jessica Meir did her post-doctoral
research at McMurdo Sound on the physiology of diving penguins before joining NASA
and spending time on the ISS; Christina Koch over-wintered at the Pole. The piece
de resistance, however, is a Kleenex used by one of our nation’s moonwalkers,
carefully preserved for all time in a niche within the ice tunnels beneath our
feet.)
After the
ritual of the Pole Numbers, there was cocktail hour and dinner. Sunset dinner is one of the three plated soirees
we have over the winter. We put on our
best clothes for the occasion, and some of us even used extra (or any)
soap. The bare tables of the galley had
been dressed with table linens and fanned napkins, and multiple pieces of
silverware framed every plate. Dinner
began with sweet potato soup with crème fraiche, followed by a salad of greens
from our hydroponic chamber accompanied by a poached lobster tail. A main course of braised short ribs with
mashed potatoes and vegetable ragout was then brought out, and the meal
finished with a dessert of flourless chocolate torte and homemade vanilla bean
ice cream. Each course was announced by
the chef, which was elegant but slightly unnerving, as I had just watched the
film The Menu with the BGFE shortly before heading south. In the movie, Chef Ralph Finnes announces
each dish before taking his guests on a destructive culinary journey which ends
with each of them donning a marshmallow hat and being drizzled with milk
chocolate before being set aflame as a purgatory offering to the Art of
Cuisine. I mentioned the movie to our
Head Chef and smiled in a rather ominous way.
I’ll be watching him closely as the days get darker.
(Do you
remember a few weeks back when I learned you could accidentally annoy a baker is by
telling them you liked something that was not freshly prepared, but frozen in
some packing plant and simply thawed out?
It turns out a good way to annoy a Polar Chef is to ask that if we were
stranded, how long would it take before we would have to eat somebody. They get very indignant about the whole
thing. “There’s two years of
stores! We won’t have to eat
anybody!” And yet amongst the non-galley
staff we’ve already established a pecking, or perhaps a gnawing, order with one
person already volunteering to be eaten first as he’s a muscular workout junkie
and full of useful proteins, and a second more heavyset fellow stepping up to
the plate because he knows we could all use some fat, but doesn’t want to go
until he’s tasted someone else first. I
don’t like aging one bit, but this is one of those times it’s good to be a
tough, stringy oldster.)
Dinner was
followed by karaoke night, in which I recognized about half the songs because,
as the BGFE often reminds me, I don’t believe that any new music has been
created since Love Shack was issued by the B-52’s. Eleven PM saw me off to bed, and I’m told I
missed a pretty good show. But as the
internet meme goes, it’s a Saturday night, it’s not even dark and I’m in bed –
my childhood punishments have become my adult dreams.
**********
I noted that
most of us got cleaned up before the Sunset Diner, and that leads me to recall
that in correspondence over the past few months, folks have asked about the
“two-minute showers.” In the outside
world, in the Jeopardy category of “Things You’re Not Supposed to Know About
the South Pole but Everybody Does,” the two minute shower twice a week has
become legend.
The truth is
that nobody keeps track of your time in the shower. You take as many showers as you need to avoid
being a stinky person. Galley staff may
shower daily, as do the vehicle maintenance folks who are always covered in
grease and oil and the end of their day.
The rest of us can space it out a bit, but there’s never a Shower Nazi
timing you. It’s just a matter of being
judicious with your time. You might
squeeze in a Nessun Dorma (because who doesn’t like to hear an off-key VINCERO
echoing throughout the communal ablutions), but not the whole opera, and
certainly you’re not going to venture, as adolescent boys sometimes do, on a
prolonged voyage of self-discovery under the nozzle. Sometimes for bingo and other contests we
give out gift certificates for five or ten-minute showers, which are highly prized
and just as highly disregarded.
Why do we
limit the showers? It’s not like we’re
not sitting on two miles of frozen water.
The limits have much less to do with the water supply and more with
where the water goes on the back end.
The water
for the station comes from an ingenious device called a Rodwell. Named in part for its’ inventor Raul Rodriguez,
it’s essentially a heated probe alongside a pump that’s introduced into the
ice. As the probe melts the ice, the
pump brings the now-liquid water to the surface, where it’s channeled into the
station for use. As there’s nearly two miles of ice below us before you hit
land, the water supply is essentially unlimited. Once within the system, the water undergoes
some very mild treatment through a limestone filter and is treated for
bacteria, but it’s still the clearest and freshest water you’ll ever
taste. There’s a tap where you can get
water directly from the well; it’s called “Jesus Water” because it’s about 2000
years old.
(Interestingly,
when they first built the water system the water coming out of the well was so
pure that it would leech copper out of the pipes and the water would turn a greenish-blue. A quick pass through a filter fixed that. Our Water Guy says that if you want to
taste the cleanest water on the planet, go about 200 yards north of the
Atmospheric Research Observatory and dig in there. It also turns out that
Bailey’s poured over Antarctic snow is a drink like no other.)
So if the
water supply is infinite, why the water conservation? It’s a matter of where your water goes after
its’ use. Here at the Pole we don’t have
a river, lake, or reservoir to hold our used wastewater, nor any kind of
treatment plant for recycling. Our
liquid wastes, including wastewater, goes back into the previous Rodwell
shafts. If we use too much water, the
shaft fills too quickly, and we want to be several years ahead on drilling
shafts for new water so we can use the older ones for our waste. We’re currently getting our freshwater from
Rodwell #3; the shaft of Rodwell #1 is already full and Rodwell #2 is starting
to reach capacity. Solid wastes are
periodically scooped out of traps and put into barrels for transport off the
continent. One wonders if a thousand
years from now, someone drilling ice cores for research will run across several
hundred feet of wastewater and urine and what they’ll think of us. Savages, I suppose.
Waste management
here is a fascinating process. Noting is
allowed to landfill or burn on continent.
So all of our waste is first sorted into categories such as food waste,
cardboard, hazardous waste, materials suitable for a landfill, and those for
recycling such as glass, plastics, and paper.
Electronics and batteries are recycled as well. Every day there’s a
“trash pull,” which is assigned to the medical clinic twice a week. It’s actually pretty fun. You start by going down to the recycling room
and bagging up the recyclables for the week.
(Others have already put out their trash for the landfill and other
destinations.) During the summer, the
waste bins (called trifolds, because they’re made of three layers of heavy-duty
cardboard) are located outside the station near a loading dock with a crane. The waste (mostly food waste and cardboard)
is then lowered to ground level and put into the proper container. To do this, our Wastie (yes, everyone
has a diminutive nickname) extends the boom of the crane off the side of the
cargo deck, with the one-and-a-half ton metal basket dangling below. He can rise and lower the basket, but the
actual steering is done by two people hanging on to ropes that dangle from the
bottom corners of the basket. It’s
trickier than I would ever think, not having been a longshoreman at any
time. As the basket lowers, the
slightest bit of pull or slack on the rope can cause the cage to crash into the
loading docks (there are two, located immediately one above another). Over time, you learn to manipulate the ropes
so the cage will land at the proper angle to minimize the number of carries you
need to get the waste into the proper bins.
But it’s also quite fun, for someone not used to working with heavy
cargo, to move half-ton chucks of steel around with a simple rope.
In the
winter, the process is different. You
can’t leave the trifolds outside because they’ll get drifted over by snow and
ice. Instead you put all the trash into
a set of wheeled bins out in the Beer Can (the round, corrugated metal
structure at the end of the building.
The Beer Can is unheated, and contains a staircase and freight elevator
leading to the underground power plant, storage arches, and vehicle maintenance
shops). The elevator is rated for cargo
only, not passengers…it breaks from time to time, and stuck in an elevator at –
60 F is not a good place to be. You
start the process by calling the elevator to the top, load the waste bins, and
then close the cage. You can’t program
the elevator to go somewhere; it has to be called to it’s destination. So you go down the 96 stairs of the Beer Can
to the bottom (about forty feet below ice level) and call the elevator. Once it arrives, you wheel the bins through
the tunnel leading to the storage arch (actually called the LO, or Logistics
Arch), where the trifolds await. You put
the trash in the respective containers, then wheel the bin back to the
elevator. You load the bin back into the
elevator, close the cage, and then trek up the steps again to call the elevator
to bring the empty bin back up to the top.
Repeat for each bin you find on the first and second floors of the
station. If you can coordinate your work
with a friend, it works out much better, as one can be calling for the elevator
on the bottom level while another does the return calls up top. It’s technically indoor work, but because the
Beer Can is unheated you’re still in the ambient cold with ice coating the
walls.
(Remember when I said in an earlier piece that some people will climb Observation Hill at McMurdo 37 times…the height of Mt. Everest… as part of a fitness challenge? The equivalent here is climbing the steps of the Beer Can. If you climb them 560 times, you will have ascended Mt. Everest. The other fitness challenges here are the “Walk to McMurdo,” which is when you do enough miles on the treadmill that you could amble your way to the coast, expect for things like dark and cold and frostbite and malnutrition and scurvy; and the "Lift to McMurdo," where you strive to lift the poundage equivalent of the cargo and fuel delivered to the Station during the past summer season. For those of us on the lazy side, there's the "Eat to McMurdo." The Internet tells us that you burn about 100 calories per mile, so it only takes 80,000 calories, or a couple dozen boxes of Twinkies, to earn this honor. Personally, my fitness challenge thus far is the World’s Largest Crossword Puzzle currently laid out in the corner of the galley. 28,000 clues and it’s done. I’ve calculated that if we’re to finish it in the 200 days we’re together, each person needs to do 3.2 clues daily. Because I am a real go-getter and a chronic over-achiever, most days I do five, just to take one for the team.)
When the
bins are full, waste management takes them on a forklift to another part of
the LO where the trifolds are packaged on pallets and prepared for transport on
flights out in the spring. The trash is
then flown out to McMurdo, loaded onto a cargo ship, and taken back to
America. While New Zealand is a fine
country full of friendly folk, they tend to draw the line at being the recipient
of all our trash, and the terms of the Antarctic treaty mean we can’t keep any
of it on continent. So our pallets of
waste eventually make it back to California, where they wind up in a landfill
or recycling plant. Depending upon how you feel about California,
putting our trash there is either another way of despoiling nature or simply
something that belongs in California.
Which makes me realize I’ve got to rewrite the lyrics to “All the Gold
in California” by the Gatlins to incorporate what I now know about
trans-continental waste disposal. It’s a
project for a cold winter’s day, of which I’m about to have plenty.
I’ve also tried
out some other hygiene experiments since I’ve been here. I was going to grow my fingernails just to
see how long they could get, but they keep cracking and breaking. I was also going to grow my toenails out for
a lark, but after two months they were long and sharp enough that they would
rip at the inside layers of my woolen socks.
Since I need toes more than toenails this winter, that investigation also
bit the dust. I’m still growing my hair
long (Why? Because I’m sixty and I can),
and letting my beard sprout as full as it can.
The only difficulty I have so far is that when I drink a smoothie for
breakfast a lot of it stays in pace on my upper lip. I figure I’ll get rid of the facial mane when
I either cross the threshold of the Jacksonville Airport (per the pre-issued
order of the BGFE) or I feel like there’s a Spaghetti-O caught in it that just
won’t come out. But for now it’s a fun
and different look. My mother thinks I
look like Grizzly Adams. As for the
BGFE, I sent her a picture of me doing dish clean-up after dinner one night,
and she says I do not look like her boyfriend with two graduate degrees but
instead like a homeless person who got offered an extra bowl of soup if he
would stay late, help clean up, and, to quote the Gatlins once again, “get saved
for the third time this week.”
**********
One of the
sunsets this week was the astronomical one.
The second was more personal. Just
as polar sunsets take place over weeks, mine started about a month ago as I was
making an attempt to shovel snow off the main outside staircase as part of my
House Mouse duty for the week. (I freely
admit to the proper use of the word “attempt,” because shoveling snow is even
below mopping in my Hierarchy of Things I Don’t Like to Do Which is Why I Live
in Florida.) As I was working, I felt a
slight tweak in my left lower back, but thought nothing of it; not because it
was minor, but because my hatred of snow-shoveling overwhelmed any other
feeling at the time.
My back pain
kept getting better each day, with some occasional exacerbations and sciatica,
but nothing that stopped me from doing what I needed in the Clinic or the
community. However, a week ago I was
walking on the treadmill when the pain got suddenly worse, and the sciatica was
unbearable. It was nearly impossible to
walk, and Thursday morning found me a patient in my own clinic, getting an
injection of pain medicine and prescriptions for steroids and muscle relaxants. I spent Thursday night in one of our two observation
beds in the clinic simply to minimize the number of steps I would need to take
to the restroom. (Even in pain, I won’t give in to the Pee Bottle.)
The doctor
thought process when it comes to their own illness is purely binary. It’s either nothing or it’s a disaster. So after following the former course and
eating Alleve for a month, I went fully the other direction when the pain got
worse. I told Eric that not only did I
need an injection for pain (“good stuff”) and how to administer it (IV through
a butterfly needle), but suggested a workup that included a lumbosacral spine
film because I’m over 60 and the most common site for metastatic prostate
cancer is the bone, a blood chemistry profile to see if my calcium is elevated
(another sign of metastatic cancer to the bone), and probably a urine test to
make sure there’s no blood suggesting an occult kidney stone with an atypical
presentation of low back rather than flank pain. If we had a CT scan or, better yet an MRI, I
would have wanted that, too.
(To
understand how desperate I was for relief, understand that I HATE needles. It's all psychological, of course, and I’ve
gotten better over the years, but I still HATE needles unless they’re going
into someone else, in which case l’m just fine with them. I hate them more than I hate asparagus, and
I’m convinced that asparagus is Satan’s Own Vegetable. The last place I worked full-time ER the
nurses would raise a pool to see who would pay the most to take me into the
Trauma Room, give me a flu shot, and see if I would pass out. At least I got juice and butter cookie when
it was over.)
The
Physician Assistant listened carefully to the description of my problem as well
as my instructions. He then checked me
for Red Flags (“Red Flags” are those key signs and symptoms that suggest
there’s a true crisis on hand) such as loss of motor strength in the
extremities or loss of reflexes at the ankle or knee. Finding none, he then told me he was doing
none of these things except give me something for pain, and it would be a
non-narcotic because using opiates for back pain wasn’t part of his practice.
What? The Physician Assistant is supposed to Assist
the Physician! Surely I knew best. Except I didn’t, because I was in disaster
mode, and with no Red Flags the treatment is simply pain control and follow-up,
and we try to avoid narcotics in the Emergency Department whenever we can. He was absolutely right, but at least I got some glum
satisfaction out of the fact that he blew one vein and infiltrated another while
giving me my meds. Although since it was
my arms that got poked and turned back and blue, I suppose it wasn’t much
revenge after all.
Two more
days of muscle relaxants and steroids pills got me back on my feet, but I was
still worse for wear. It hurt to move,
it hurt to sit, it hurt to think about it hurting and it hurt to not think
about it. The worst part was not the pain,
but knowing that I wasn’t up to my job. In
a small community like the Pole, the efforts of everyone count, and you don’t
want to let your friends down by not holding up your end of the bargain. I do understand that at 60, I can’t shovel
snow like a 30-year-old, but that doesn’t mean I can’t do my share of trash
duty, dishwashing, helping with outdoor activities, or teaching the medical
side of emergency response. I felt
helpless, like a drain on everyone’s time; and instead of providing
consolation, their genuine care and concern just made me feel less useful,
adding an emotional burden to the albatross of pain slung over my left hip and
leg.
My Dad has
had some issues with neuropathy in the lower extremities, and has had some mild
mobility problems in his later years. He
would get frustrated with these limitations, and I would explain to my Mom that
when he got angry and yelled, it wasn’t at her, but at the situation. Here was a man who for over 80 years did
pretty much whatever he wanted, and now he needed help or simply couldn’t do
those things he enjoyed. I could explain
it cognitively, but until now, at the South Pole, I didn’t really get it. I, too, felt the anger, and in my mind I
lashed out at everyone I could find, mostly myself for even being here in the
first place. The feeling of helplessness
and not being able to contribute gives voice to a visceral primal scream of
irrelevance, like the last few rays of light that simply dance off the rim of
the solar disc before sunset, bringing no heat or joy, but simply an echo of
what was and what cannot be again.
I’ve used
the term “community” a lot in describing our polar family, but it’s really
true. Physical training here is a big
deal (like in that other captive place, State Prison), and there’s a lot of
knowledge about fitness, biomechanics, and alternative medicine coming from
smart people at the top of their game.
It’s hard for a doctor to recognize it and, even when he or she does, to
accept it. In medical school we paint
our wagons with the motto Allopathy or Bust!; and while many of us become more
accepting of other ways of looking at health care as long as it does no clear
harm, most of us default to diagnostics, medications, and surgery because it’s
what we’ve been raised to do. So it took
me until this last bout of pain to give in to the help that was being offered
to me.
I had at
least given myself what I thought was a proper diagnosis of piriformis
syndrome. The piriformis is a muscle
deep within the buttock (“but-tock,’ says Forest Gump) that has its’ origins
over the inner sacrum bone (the bone at the bottom of the spine) and connects
to a bony prominence on the outside of the thigh bone, or femur. Its’ main action is to abduct the hip, or to
rotate it away for the midline of the body.
When you cross your leg so the elevated knee forms a right angle and
your ankle rests of the opposite knee, that’s an abduction motion that is
driven in part by the piriformis muscle.
In about 20% of people, the sciatic nerve runs through the muscle. The sciatic nerve is the largest nerve in the
human body, and provides motor (muscle) and sensory function to parts of the
thigh and the entire lower leg and foot.
When the piriformis muscle is irritated or inflamed, as can result from
injury or strain, the sciatic nerve sitting in the middle of the muscle becomes
involved with resultant pain and weakness in the affected leg.
Two of our party have studied the science of fitness, and it was after weeks of offers to help that I finally turned to their aid. One of satellite engineers is into hard-core circuit training, where the pace is dictated by the fastest participant instead of the slowest, and everyone either finishes or throws up. This is admittedly beyond my comprehension, because unless I’m looking to expel a poison or challenging myself with ‘shrooms or micro-dose LSD (something I’ll do the day after I’m done with clinical medicine, because why not?), I can’t find any value in vomiting. Which reminds me of the BGFE, because the first time I told her I loved here she threw up. Long story, but at least there’s a happy ending. So far. Our Safety Engineer favors more gentle body weight training, where the mass of your own body acts as resistance to exercise. She also does her homework, and when I finally gave in she came to our session complete with a list of diagnostic tests and therapeutic plan.
Here’s what
I learned about my body today:
I point my
left foot out to the side when I walk.
Never knew that before. The
constant strain on the piriformis muscle, especially when walking at speed and
angle on the treadmill, is the most likely contributor to my acute pain.
I have
weakness in the hip muscles of my left side.
This was discovered doing an exercise called the Single Leg Squat, which
I could do on my right without difficulty but not on my left. The weakness promotes the dragging of my
foot, which in turn reinforces the weakness in the hip.
I need to
“Walk with Intention.” This means paying
attention to keep my foot pointing straight, as well as keeping myself aligned
by swinging the opposite arm forward when I advance.
The Safety Goddess gave me a TENS treatment today, as well as did cupping over the sore muscles
and farther down the leg. If you’re not
familiar with cupping, it’s the practice of placing a plastic or glass vessel over
an area of pain or inflammation and using suction on the skin to promote
increased local blood flow in an effort to remove local toxins and promote
better healing. I was a little leery of
this to start, as one version of cupping is called moxibustion, where a lit
piece of paper is placed into the vessel prior to application to the skin. But she was kind, not setting me aflame,
and setting the suction somewhere between her holistic value and my pain
threshold. It didn’t feel bad at all,
and I enjoyed the unusual look of one who was attached by a squid once the
suction cups were removed. She's going to supervise me in daily exercises for several weeks, and after that I’ll
be on my own. I can’t say that I’m all
better after a single day, but I can tell a difference in the level of pain
when I “walk with intention.” So it’s a
good start, and a good lesson in keeping an open mind.
But it’s also
the start of my own sunset. When I can’t
bounce back on my own, when I can’t pull my own weight and do my job, when I
depend on others for help with the basics of life, the loss of autonomy and
relevance that comes with age is beginning.
When I spent a few minutes each morning counting out my pills...two
Prednisone, a muscle relaxant, a couple of Alleve, a Zantac for reflux, and a
Senior Multivitamin…it’s a reminder that the Fourth Quarter is about the begin,
and it’s just a matter of if I can send the game into overtime and sudden
death, which will be mine because the reaper never loses.
**********
Even though
the sun has just set, many folks are talking about signing up for another
winter. The contractors who do the
ground-level work for the United States Antarctic Program (USAP) love this, of
course; they get experienced hands on board, they don’t have to recruit, and
the hirelings may not have to repeat the Physical Qualification process. As for me, I’ve known from the start that I’m
a “one and done,” and have no regrets about it.
I wanted an adventure and I’m having it.
But the Pole would be a good place for someone who’s young and with few
connections, a place to not only adventure but to put money away early (aside
from what you purchase at the store, you have no expenses) and find yourself a
member of a unique fraternity for life.
One of my friends here, on her third winter-over, said that you go to
Antarctica the first time for the adventure; the second time for the money, and
the third time because you don’t fit in anywhere else. I think there’s truth in that, even the
latter clause. (It’s more than likely
applicable to me, but I adore the BGFE too much to come back and find out.)
It’s still
early in the season, but I get the impression that the South Pole Community
welcomes a degree of quirkiness as a way to break up the monotony. Teams here seem to be built not through
standardization of policies, procedures, and protocols, but from encouraging
diverse personalities to express themselves in a community of consideration and
acceptance. Intolerance of others is
never a good thing, but up north one can always leave a scenario when they feel
their worst impulses starting to show.
Once locked in for winter, leaving isn’t an option, and acceptance is
the only choice. There’s a certain
freedom in knowing that is order for the Station to work well, your peccadillos
and flights of fancy are just part of the package, and what happens at the Pole
stays at the Pole. At least until it
shows up on YouTube.
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