Plastic Plea

I’ve been kicking it old school* with my transplant-related diabetes for going on nineteen years. I’m type 1, which means I’m insulin-dependent. That has required me to check my glucose levels by pricking my various fingers about twenty-seven-thousand times** over the years. Yes, ouch. High glucose readings (generally, above 180) usually mean I need to compensate for my pancreatic insufficiency by injecting insulin. Despite how onerous it all sounded back in 2004, I got the hang of it fairly quickly. My A1C, a measurement of average blood sugar over a three month span, has mostly remained under 7%, the generally accepted baseline for diabetes.  I consider myself both lucky and proud.

I saw my endocrinologist today and he gently suggested, for the fourth or fifth straight visit, that I join the 21^st century (my words) and graduate from all that finger stickin’ to a Dexcom G7 Continuous Glucose Monitor. A GCM, a sensor that is a disc about the size of a quarter, attaches to my belly with a plastic applicator and, through apparently some sort of witchcraft, sends continuous glucose readings to my phone.  Each sensor lasts for ten days, and then you just pop it off and attach another. How can you beat that, right?

Well, mostly. The problem isn’t with the GCM, which works very well. The problem is with the delivery system. Each new sensor comes packaged inside the applicator and after the sensor is applied, Dexcom says on their website, “throw out the sensor and applicator following local guidelines biohazard waste.” That big hunk of plastic, the size of a urine sample cup?*** I was so disappointed to find that to be the case, that there isn’t a program to return those for sterilization and reuse. This world is drowning in plastic, and more than ten million Americans tossing out those cups every ten days, well…

I tried emailing Dexcom to discuss this subject. If they answer I’ll tell you what they said. 

* The first and last time I will ever use that expression.

** I did the math.

*** See?

                 

Song of the Day: Mike Campbell, from Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, and his new band, the Dirty Knobs. They already have a second album, but this is the title track from their first. Kinda like Tom Petty meets the Stones.: 

Part Eight! 

“No, Danny, I don’t have to admit it. But yeah, it would be funny if it happened to, say, you. Now that would be funny,” Rich replied, jabbing his finger at Danny. “Listen, I was talking to Josie in the appliance section yesterday and she told me Dr. Gladstone (Motronics’ owner) has some apartments in Baldwinsville. She thought he would rent one to me if I wanted it. I can’t swing it by myself, but the two of us can. Plus, we’d have a great time!”

                Danny had just turned twenty-one and he was itching to get out of the too-small apartment he shared with the mercurial Helen, his sisters, and two year old Faith. He loved them all but was ready for his own place, so he said, “Yeah, man, let’s do it. Talk to Gladstone and line it up. I’m in. We’ll have a great time!” Danny said, completely unaware of how the definition of “great” was about to change. They signed the lease the following week, lined up a truck, enlisted Rich’s brother Lynn and Danny’s pal trailer park pal, Dean, and loaded up Rich’s meager belongings and Danny’s few possessions. When it came time to say goodbye to his mom, Danny, ever the sentimentalist, choked up a little but tried to hide it. He hugged his mom and said, as brightly as he could, “Mom, I’ll see you guys all the time. It’s not as if I’m moving to California.”

                “My little boy is moving away from me,” Helen said, her heart on her sleeve.

                “It’ll be good for me, mom. I need to find my way in the world,” Danny said, and his voice broke a little. He was still hugging her and now rocking her back and forth. “It’s time.” He disengaged from her, grabbed his keys off the table, and was gone, albeit with a few tears in his eyes.

                The apartment provided Danny with all sorts of new experiences. Save for that homeless stretch they went through in ’74, he never lived on his own. He was never responsible for his own meals, laundry, and housekeeping, much less budgeting his money; he was better at the first three than the last, which wasn’t saying much. Living with a roommate was just one of many new experiences for Danny, and his roommate introduced him to another mind-opening experience—pot.

Somehow Danny had never even tried marijuana. Almost everyone he knew smoked it, and that certainly included Rich, who smoked pot since high school. Rich smoked it with abandon in the apartment, and the sweet smell intrigued his innocent roommate. One night, Danny watched Rich expertly roll a joint and lick the ends shut, then looked on with curiosity as Rich took a big hit. “What is that like, Rich? How does it feel?” Danny asked his roommate.

                Rich took another hit off the joint, held it in for a few seconds, then slowly blew it out. “Wanna try it?” Rich asked Danny. Rich had never offered before. He knew about Danny’s lung problems. If Danny asked, however…

                Danny hesitated. He knew that because of his cystic fibrosis smoking anything was a bad idea. But Danny had cheated death at least twice in his life, and almost certainly wasn’t going to be around too long, anyway. Live it up, thought Danny. “Yeah, sure. What do I do?”

                Rich, midway through a toke, lost it after he heard Danny’s adorably naïve question, and burst into a full-throated laugh. Danny’s question was exponentially funnier since Rich was stoned. He handed the joint to Danny. “Smoke it, Danny. Take a deep drag and hold it in for a few seconds,” Rich counseled. Danny took a hit and immediately blew back outward, hacking and coughing. He laughed and Rich roared. “You’re never getting high that way, Danny,” Rich said, still laughing. “Give it another shot, but maybe not so deep this time, and really try to hold it in,” he continued.

Danny gamely took another hit, fought the urge to cough, and held it in for three, four, five seconds before once again hacking. Then he roared with laughter. “How’s (hack hack) that, Rich? (cough)”

Rich took one more hit and said, “Hey, man, maybe you should stop for now and see how you feel.”

                “How should I feel, Rich? I have no frame of reference,” Danny asked his mentor.

 Rich just said, “Remember that quote from the Supreme Court guy who said, ‘I can’t define porn, but I know it when I see it?’” Danny nodded, mystified, and then laughed at the phrase “Supreme Court guy”. “Well, you’ll know you’re high when you are,” Rich said, laughing.

They did a lot of laughing that evening.

                The first thing the boys set up when they moved in, even before the beds, was Danny’ stereo. Priorities. Danny still wasn’t sick of The Wild, the Innocent, and the E-Street Shuffle, and luckily Ray only demolished the tape, not the LP. Danny put it on the turntable. “Kitty’s Back” started playing, and Rich grooved along and then looked at Danny, who seemed very far away. Danny was, in a sense. He was one with the music. “Kitty’s Back” enveloped him and played back in almost a third dimension. It washed around him and through Danny. The instruments sounded more present than ever, not just in the room but part of him. Even though Danny knew every note of the song, had heard it dozens and dozens (thousands?) of times, he picked up new and exciting parts for the first time. “Kitty’s Back” had turned from a great song to a thrilling experience. Danny thought, I’m high! I’m fucking high!

                Danny and Rich, both fucking high, decided they were fucking hungry. Rich said, “Hey, do you want to go get Chinese food? There’s a place in Fulton that’s the best I have ever had.” Danny had never eaten Chinese food before. He was dubious. He wasn’t sure he wanted to get off the couch, much less travel all that way to eat strange, untested food.

                Rich was insistent. “Danny, you will not believe how great this place is and how delicious Chinese food is!” Rich said, evangelizing. “I’ll drive, and I’ll order the food. All you have to do is eat it.”

                Danny just wanted to hear “Kitty’s Back” again but he reluctantly agreed. He was way too stoned to argue. Rich got behind the wheel and Danny, liquefied by this point, flowed into the front seat. He was grinning like an idiot which made Rich laugh again. Rich headed to Fulton while Danny looked in vain for “Kitty’s Back” on the radio. Twenty minutes later, they pulled into The Secret Garden. “Are you ready, buddy?” Rich said, excitedly. Danny was ready to nap, but he was voraciously hungry, and just grinned and nodded. They went inside and Danny marveled at the colors on the walls, the tablecloths, even Rich’s shirt. Was that a new shirt? That’s a nice shirt! thought Danny.

                Rich ordered a Pu-Pu platter for starters. “Pu-Pu” platter made Danny laugh, but he probably would have laughed even if he wasn’t stoned. Soon, a lazy Susan full of strange, otherworldly delectables was placed in front of them. To Danny, it looked like the edible equivalent of the Star Wars cantina. There were egg rolls, spareribs, beef teriyaki, skewered beef, fried wontons, and fried shrimp.  Rich grabbed an egg roll. “Dig in, Martini!” Rich said, his mouth full.

                “Where do I start?” said Danny. What have I gotten himself into?

                “Start anywhere! It’s all fantastic!” said Rich, who had inhaled the egg roll and now happily chomped down on a fried wonton.

                Danny hesitantly reached for a fried wonton and took a bite. Oh my God, he thought and then said It out loud, “This is the best food I have ever tasted!”

                Rich laughed. “See? What are you worried about? Dig in before I eat it all.”

                Danny dug in with great fervor. He ate everything on the platter that Rich hadn’t already polished off. He asked Rich, in all seriousness, “Why don’t we get another one?”

                Rich guffawed. “Fifteen minutes ago, you didn’t want anything to do with it and now you want a second one? Relax—our entrees are on the way.”

                Dishes of sweet and sour pork and pepper steak arrived with a side of pork-fried rice, and Danny and Rich devoured them as if the Pu-Pu platter never existed. Every bite Danny took, of everything, was the best food he had ever tasted. Nearly fifty years later, Danny still considered that meal at the Secret Garden the best one he had ever had, straight or stoned.

                That little apartment became a hopping den of iniquity. Rich’s steady supplier meant they were seldom “dry,” (the term for “out of marijuana”). Danny and Rich’s friends came around almost every night—Dean, and Motronics coworker and friend, Gary Cavaliere. Mondays were reserved for the Adventures of the Monday Night Geniuses. Danny, Rich, and Gary, and huddled around Danny’s bargain-basement recording studio (two cassette tape decks with microphones) got high and created “humorous” tapes of masterful and incandescent quality. “Masterful and incandescent” in this case really meant a moderately amusing, inside-joke packed product of stoned twenty somethings. Playing those tapes years later proved, unsurprisingly, as cringeworthy as, say, finding a teenage diary or notebook full of poetry.

                Danny knew he shouldn’t smoke pot. But it was so much fun, the most fun he’d had since even before he and Claire had split. Besides, how bad was it? Danny chatted with Dr. Schwartz at one appointment and Schwartz asked if he used any “street drugs.” Danny admitted he smoked pot.  Schwartz not only wasn’t alarmed; he didn’t try to dissuade Danny. That was surprising, especially in hindsight.

                Like everyone, he smoked a lot of pot at concerts. Danny’s first live concert was in 1974, a hard-to-believe triple bill of Lynyrd Skynyrd (who opened!), Bad Company with Paul Rogers and the Edgar Winter Group, for the princely sum of four bucks. His enjoyment was tempered by the thick fog of marijuana smoke in the arena which was Danny’s first-ever contact with pot. His fear of a “contact” high neurotically kept him from enjoying the show.

Arena concerts and, especially, club dates, were both affordable and plentiful. Danny and Rich spent much of their disposable income on weed and concerts. They took full advantage of the low prices and the proximity.  They saw some great concerts at the Onondaga War Memorial. Boston; Van Halen (seated helplessly in front of a giant column of speakers which rendered them both nearly deaf for a week); a J Geils/Southside Johnny double bill; and Bob Seger. At the Landmark Theater, a grand old movie palace nearly torn down for a (lyrical) parking lot before it received landmark status, the roommates had front row seats for Ray Charles, and Danny and Rich both thought they died and went to heaven. They had balcony seats for Little Feat at the Landmark, only weeks before founder and lead singer Lowell George died of an overdose. The balcony was shaking so much Danny’s paranoid mind was sure it was ready to collapse.

Blue Oyster Cult was riding high with their huge radio hit, “Don’t Fear the Reaper,” and the boys scored tickets to their War Memorial show. Predictably, the band finished their set and walked off stage without playing the hit. Bic lighters by the thousands lit the arena. Everyone knew what was coming, but only Danny knew how. He had it all figured out. “They’ve got a big theatrical presentation planned,” he told Rich excitedly. “They’re gonna leave the lights off and let the crowd go nuts, and then the band will sneak onstage, and then out of the darkness you’ll hear that great opening riff. Then, the bass drum and band will kick in as the lights will come on and the crowd will go nuts.”  Danny, budding rock choreographer, had nailed it.

Rich nodded excitedly as he listened. “You’re right. That will be so awesome!” he told Danny. They both took another toke and steeled themselves for the exciting encore.

Naturally, the lights came on, the band ambled out and lead singer Buck Dharma said, “This is our new song, ‘Don’t Fear the Reaper’,” with all the enthusiasm of a Greyhound bus dispatcher, and then they anticlimactically played the hit.

Danny had limited himself to weed, nothing stronger, until one memorable evening when he was home alone. Danny had bought some blotter acid, or LSD, from Rich’s dealer a couple weeks earlier, and it was burning a hole in his pocket (so to speak). Rich had assured him that an acid trip was a fun and safe experience but Danny was apprehensive about trying it, until that night. What the hell? he thought. I’m home. I’m safe. Despite Rich’s advice (“Trip with a buddy”) he not-so-wisely decided to take the psychedelic plunge that evening. Alone.

The LSD was soaked into a small scrap of paper—hence, the term “blotter acid”—that featured a picture of a malevolent looking bowling ball about to smash into ten terrified pins. Danny carefully put it in his mouth, chewed slowly for a minute or two, then swallowed. Even though its effects were supposed to take a while, he expected instant gratification. He gave it two minutes and after the walls didn’t start melting, he thought what’s the big deal?  Disappointed, he began playing Heat Treatment, by Graham Parker and the Rumour, an album he bought a couple weeks earlier and, naturally, played non-stop until even Rich asked him to give it a rest.

But Rich wasn’t home. Danny put Heat Treatment on the record player and played it loud. He listened for pounding on the ceiling from the downstairs neighbors, but nothing. Good. He turned it up. As side one of the album ended, with “Hotel Chambermaid,” Danny started to feel…different. Not a marijuana high. Something else, something more. He grinned to himself. As a matter of fact, his face hurt from grinning. He flipped the record over to play the B side and the needle dropped with a thunderous kapow. Danny jumped a bit. Jesus, that was loud!

“Pouring it All Out” began the second side of Heat Treatment. The opening guitar battled with the Hammond B3 organ for dominance, and then Parker’s insistent vocals followed. Danny sat up straight, his breath shallow, alert. Parker got to the chorus and Danny felt a thrill cascade though his body. “This is the greatest song I have ever heard!” Danny said out loud. “This is the greatest record that has ever been!” he shouted to the empty room. Danny picked the needle up and restarted the song. A second listen confirmed it; “This is the most amazing, most remarkable song in the history of music!” he said again, only louder. He wished Rich was home so Danny could tell him, so he could share this moment.

Danny needed to get the word out, to someone, everyone, about “Pouring it All Out.” He did the only thing he could do in 1978. He called people. He called June. He called Ann. He called Gary Cavaliere. None of them, apparently, had dropped acid that evening and were more than a little confused by the Graham Parker raving evangelist on the other end of the phone. “That’s nice, Danny,” Ann said. “I’m glad you like Grant Parker—”

“Graham Parker!” Danny said impatiently, then added, “You just don’t get it!” Which was certainly true, especially then.  Rich, back from his shopping trip, unlocked the door, which startled Danny.

“Hey, Danny—that music is a little loud, isn’t it?” Rich said, a sentence he almost surely never said before, then added, “Graham Parker, again?”

“Graham Park—oh, right” Danny started to correct Rich, then realized his roommate got the name right. “Rich, you’ve got to hear this song!” Danny said, then recued the tonearm and restarted the ne plus ultra--“Pouring it All Out.”

Rich stopped him and picked up the tonearm. “Danny, I’ve heard this song a hundred times. It’s fine—”

“Fine?! Fuck you, it’s fine. It’s the greatest record ever made!” Danny said, rather maniacally.

Rich laughed. He insightfully asked, “Danny, did you drop that acid tonight?”

“Yes, but don’t change the subject, Rich,” Danny said, still battling for hearts and minds on behalf of “Pouring it All Out.”

Rich decided to appease his tripping roommate. “On second thought, it is the greatest song I ever heard. Listen, Dean, Hooper, and Glowacki are on their way over.” Hooper and Glowacki were friends of Dean’s and, by extension, friends of Danny and Rich. “We are gonna take a ride into the city. Glowacki wants to see June.” Glowacki had a little crush on June.

“I don’t think I should be driving, Rich,” Danny said, wisely, the first wise thing he had said all evening.

“Ok, I’ll drive. Come on, it’ll be fun!” Rich said. A few minutes later, Dean, Hooper and Glowacki showed up and off they went in two cars. Rich drove Danny’s car, Dean rode shotgun and Danny sat in back. He watched the streetlights fly by on the highway at about a thousand miles an hour. They were in the left lane, and in the right lane alongside them were Hooper and Glowacki in Hooper’s car. Hooper drove his car and Glowacki rode shotgun. They were also traveling at a thousand miles an hour and Danny kept waiting for the sonic boom. Sonic boom. Sonic boom. Those words sound funny together. He watched in awe as the two cars pulled almost close enough for their side mirrors to touch. This was just like a movie, Danny thought. Maybe it was a movie. If it was a movie “Pouring it All Out” should be the song in the background, he decided.

Danny’s awe turned to frightened awe. He watched Dean pass a joint at a thousand miles an hour across the highway to Hooper. All Danny really saw was the light from the joint, as it passed once, then twice, and then Hooper’s long hair caught on fire. Hooper frantically swatted at his head with his left hand, trying to extinguish the flame, while he steered with his right hand. At a thousand miles an hour. Dean and Rich both laughed uproariously at their friend’s plight. Danny sat in the back seat, his mouth agape, his mouth devoid of moisture. “I don’t like this movie anymore,” he said.

Hopper managed to extinguish his hair and they made it to June’s apartment alive—five of them stoned, one tripping. They all knocked loudly on June’s door like a S.W.A.T team.  After a minute or so, June answered the door. “What are you guys doing here? Why didn’t you call?” Danny’s sister said, plaintively. She had, ahem, company.

Rich spoke for the group, as Danny was, as previously established, tripping and Glowacki was too embarrassed to speak. “Sorry, June, we should have called,” he said. The five of them skulked back to their cars and, in solidarity with the disconsolate Glowacki, solemnly retraced their route back to Baldwinsville. Nobody’s hair caught on fire on the way home. “Anybody want to get high?” Rich asked when they got there. That was normally a rhetorical question, but everyone declined.

“Anybody want to hear a great song?” asked Danny. He didn’t wait for an answer.