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.

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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.” 

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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.

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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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