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Connecting won’t become a medical forum, but I thought a query forwarded by colleague David Morris was worth a share because carpal tunnel is somewhat common among those of us who use a keyboard for our work. David writes:
Greetings, Connecting colleagues. More than 45 years of typing and 15 years of playing the upright bass have caught up with my hands. I’m having carpal tunnel release surgery on my left hand in late April, and the right a month later. Hoping to hear from others about what to expect from the surgery and recovery. I’m not a candidate for an arthroscopic procedure, so conventional surgery is in order. I’ve opted not to be put under, just local numbing of the hand and wrist. Anyone else go that route? Am I crazy (just on that question, please)?
Got any advice for David? Drop him a note at djmorris55@comcast.net
Have a great day – be safe, stay healthy!
Paul
Getting run out of Mexico at gunpoint
Marc Wilson - I got run out of Mexico at gunpoint while working for the AP.
I was covering the statehouse in Little Rock in 1975 when I got a call from Lou Uchitelle, then the head of AP Newsfeatures.
“Got any great story ideas?” he asked.
“The Arkansas Attorney General just issued a warning advising people not to go to Mexican border towns for arthritis treatments,” I answered.
“Sounds like a great story. Can you do it?”
“Actually, Lou, I’m in Little Rock and that’s a long way from Mexico. Maybe somebody from our San Diego or Texas bureaus could handle the story.”
“No, no,” Lou said. “I want you to do it. If I give you a budget of $500 is that enough?”
I told Lou I’d check with Chief of Bureau John Robert Starr.
“That’s ridiculous!” a furious Starr responded.
He stood up from his desk, red in the face, and stomped out of the bureau in the middle of the day, muttering “$500 is more than my entire travel budget for the year!”
The next day Starr returned, slightly calmer.
“OK, Wilson, you can have two enterprise days, and you can back them up with your two days off,” Starr said. “What a stupid company.”
I made a few calls. The Arkansas AG’s office said the Mexican clinic he was most concerned with was in Mexicali, Mexico.
I called the clinic and got through to the doctor who owned it.
“Don’t come! I hate American reporters!” he said and hung up.
Not deterred, I made a plane reservation to San Diego, rented a car and drove to Calexico, Calif., just across the border from Mexicali.
I stayed at an ancient motel that was filled with Americans who had come from all over the U.S. to go to the clinic. Several nearby motels, equally as old, also were filled with Americans heading to the Mexican clinic.
Universally, the American patients praised the Mexican doctor.
“First time I came here I was in a wheelchair. The doctor gave me a prescription and that night I went dancing!” one returning patient, a 70-ish woman from Minnesota, told me. The patients came every six months to fill prescriptions, all supplied by a pharmacy also owned by the Mexican doctor.
The American patients explained that they had to line up outside the clinic – about 200 to 300 yards from the border – at 5 a.m. to schedule an appointment sometime later in the day.
The next day, carrying my 35-millimeter Konica camera, I got up about 4 a.m. and walked with about two dozen Americans and crossed the border into Mexicali, a city of some one million people that is the capital of the Mexican state of Baja California.
A line had already formed outside the one-story clinic. By the time the clinic doors opened – 6 a.m. – there were close to 200 Americans waiting. As I took photos and notes, all again told me great things about the doctor and his clinic.
At 6 a.m., a grim-looking woman in a white nurse’s uniform came outside and told me, “The doctor will see you.”
“He told me on the phone that he wouldn’t see me.”
“He wants to see you,” she said and led me inside.
The waiting room was a plain cement block room with benches on all sides. About 50 Americans followed me inside and took seats while the rest waited outside.
Many of the patients gave me thumbs up signs and several said, “You’ll love this doctor.”
The same woman in the nurse’s uniform came to me and said, “The doctor will see you now.”
“I don’t mean to cut in front of all his patients,” I said.
“He wants to see you now.”
I followed her to a small office. She opened the door and gestured to me to enter. Behind me, all the Americans were quietly cheering me on.
The door closed behind me.
“Goddamit, I told you not to come!” the doctor said. “I told you I hate American reporters.”
He then started using every curse word I’d ever heard.
I told him I hadn’t planned to come inside, but his nurse had all but insisted. “And everyone I’ve talked to raves about how great your treatments are.”
He wasn’t mollified.
Instead – and still cursing -- he opened a desk drawer and pulled out a large brown pistol.
And pointed it at me.
“Give me your camera, you MotherF……r.”
With 50 or so Americans sitting on the other side of the door, I wasn’t frightened.
I stood up and stepped toward the door.
“Take one more step and I’ll shoot, you motherf……ing asshole! Give me your camera now!”
I didn’t want to give him my camera.
Seeking a compromise, I asked, “How about just the film?”
I handed it to him, and he tore open the back of the camera and ripped out the film.
Still cursing and still pointing the pistol at me, he led me to a back door, opened it and ordered me out into an alley.
About a dozen tough-looking teen-aged boys waited.
Now I’m frightened.
“Take him to the border!” the doctor ordered.
They didn’t have guns, but I figured they’d happily break a limb for 10 pesos.
My escorts left me at the border.
A U.S. Border Patrol agent asked if I had a work permit to go into Mexico.
“No.”
“Can’t help you then.”
I spent a sleepless night in Calexico before returning to Little Rock the next day.
Staring down barrel of a .45
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