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Davis Young
- Feb 16, 2023

DY: In Just a Few Words (#123)

Until we meet again.

My father was discharged from WW II duties at Santa Ana in Southern California, and that is how our family found itself living there for several years in the late 1940s.

California was always a hotbed for polio. Before vaccines were developed, everyone was vulnerable, and everyone was a potential carrier.

1948 turned out to be terrible for polio. The first reported case in Los Angeles County that year was my brother, Peter. He was first placed in a hospital ward with a teenager in an iron lung on either side of him. Both those boys died as he watched. Then he spent several months in a rehab facility. That was approximately 75 years ago, a memory he would carry the rest of his life.

Meanwhile, I have clear memories of our family being placed in a very strict home quarantine regimen. The only visitor who came to see us was a doctor, employed by the county to make certain families like ours were following the protocol as required. Neighbors would do the shopping, leaving paper bags full of groceries at the bottom of our driveway.

Peter Young died a few days ago. He was 91. The official cause of death was complications from COVID. How sadly ironic that he had survived the polio epidemic three quarters of a century earlier only to be taken by this pandemic.

Most blog readers did not know my brother personally because the large gap in our ages and the distance we lived apart meant we traveled in different orbits. Let me simply say he was a very interesting character with friendships and relationships at all levels of life.

We are sad that Peter Young has passed, but we are very grateful he had all those extra years. There is always a bright side.

Peter Young, we will see you again somewhere up the road. May your legacy be that all blog readers give someone an extra hug today, especially a family member.

DY: In Just a Few Words is a blog that comes out when something needs to be said or every Tuesday - whichever comes first. Davis Young is a communications professional who adds 50+ years of experience and perspective to issues of the day. His emphasis in DY: In Just a Few Words will be humor (a touch of sarcasm here, a pinch of facetiousness there...). Once in a while, he will touch on something a bit more serious - but hopefully not too deep or depressing.

This blog is a product of DY Author & Speaker LLC. Feel free to quote content with attribution. Respond. Agree. Disagree. Share the content with your friends. Heck - even invite him as a speaker for your group! Enjoy!

Davis Young
- Feb 14, 2023

DY: In Just a Few Words (#122)

I miss the good old days.

A friend of mine wasn’t feeling well recently. I have a sore throat, she said.

What should she do? I gave her my best advice. You need to see a doctor.

She looked at me in abject horror. That’s not possible, she responded. My doctor exists in some sort of medical vacuum. I haven’t seen him in years. The closest I have come was seeing his junior PA, three times removed, about six months ago. I think I’ll start with my local urgent care center. The question is should I stay in my regular medical system and go to its urgent care or should I go see the nurse at my corner drug store?

These are the critical life-saving decisions we all face as we plod our way through today’s ever-improving American medical system.

Are you old enough to remember the days when doctors routinely made house visits? You’d call your family doc first thing in the morning, tell him you didn’t feel well and he’d say, Why don’t you come in today around 1:15? If you can’t do that, would 4:30 work for you? Or I can come to your house at dinner time.

We live in a different world these days. I literally cannot call my doctor’s office directly. (I choose to keep the health system anonymous, but it’s one of the big ones.) I call a central number that schedules me through a central booking system. Have a sore throat or minor medical issue and want to be seen by your doctor today? Not gonna happen here. I CAN email my doctor directly, but it can take him several days to return a quick note. And what do I do if his response says this: I’d like to see you for this. Please call the office to schedule an appointment.

So, urgent care beckons. And, let’s be real, the word “urgent” is used very loosely here. Short of having trouble breathing, no one is being seen with any type of urgency. They do, however, like to urgently get you back out of the exam room. A quick blood pressure check, a thorough examination of perhaps as much as three minutes, possibly a prescription, and off you go.

Back to my friend with the sore throat:

After an hour and a quarter, she finally gets into an exam room where a medical assistant triages her. She is told that she will be seen by an x-ray tech who takes a look and immediately identifies the problem. You have a scratchy throat. You need to be seen by a doctor. Unfortunately, the most senior person on-staff today is a nurse practitioner. Our doc on duty has COVID and is home in quarantine. The good news is I can get you into a physician at one of our other convenient urgent care centers. How does Smithville sound? (FYI - Smithville is 37 miles from her house.)

Off she goes to Smithville where she can, indeed, get into a doctor quickly. That’s the good news. The bad news is that he’s a sports medicine specialist. He asks if her knees feel ok. He prescribes two aspirin every four hours and says if her scratchy throat continues overnight, she should go back to the original urgent care center where she started that morning.

Maybe socialized medicine isn’t so bad after all. We’re halfway there already…

Davis Young
- Feb 7, 2023

DY: In Just a Few Words (#121)

Another - inadvertent - chapter in overcoming my fear of heights.

This is a story about a sinner who was saved and ultimately redeemed in an amazing place called Brazil. We’ll start with being saved.

Have you ever been to Triphobo Mountain? No? Well, it’s part of the harbor in Rio de Janeiro, the famous Brazilian city of nearly 15 million people. The name Triphobo Mountain has been modernized to read Sugar Loaf Mountain (elevation 2,500 feet +) and it is a very popular destination for tourists from all over the world. Unfortunately, you can’t drive from bottom to the summit. You go in a gondola hanging on a cable or you don’t go.

When I got to Sugar Loaf, I was still a recovering Acrophobiac (one fearful of heights). Looking from the ground up to the top of Sugar Loaf is a sobering experience, perhaps better done when one is not sober. But, alas, I was. Sober, that is.

I stuffed my lingering fears into a far corner of my anxious mind and climbed aboard the gondola. There is a single stop going up and down the mountain at about the halfway point. The view of the harbor is breathtaking. I resisted exiting the gondola. Off to the top we went.

If it’s spectacular halfway, it is mucho spectacular at the top. You are sure you can see forever. Isn’t that Portugal over there in the distance just 4,500 miles on the left? And a mere 1,600 miles straight across the Atlantic is Senegal on the African coast. Could there ever be a more welcoming site?

Well, stay tuned.

Back onto the gondola we went for the return trip to terra firma. As we descended to the halfway point, we actually stopped a few feet short. Seems there was a slight mechanical issue with the gondola. The operator nudged it to the platform, but that was it. No further. Halfway from the top and halfway to the bottom. Ninety-two of us got off the gondola to await a solution. How in the world would we get back down to ground level?

Well, there was only one way. Helicopter. They took us off four at a time (that’s 23 trips, if you are counting). Needless to say, Karen and I were among the last to cross over the harbor and land on a soccer field. They had a small fleet of buses there to take us back to our hotel.

Enough thrill-seeking for that day.

The following day we went to another high, and famous, landmark overlooking the harbor. I refer to the massive statue of Christ the Redeemer - 98 feet of magnificent concrete overlooking Rio. Back on rail transportation, but this time not a gondola.

I was saved and redeemed all in 24 hours.

Wow! What an experience.

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