I was a lucky guy. For 20 years, I was a successful union stage technician in Los Angeles. I worked my way up from building sets for the Price is Right to running the computer automation for the Los Angeles production of the Lion King. When things were slow in LA one year (after the Northridge earthquake), my family and I cashed everything we had and moved to Hawaii for a year. We lived on Maui, very cheaply, because we didn't have that much to cash out. But we did manage to live on Maui for a year with two kids. Even though we were poor that year, we had our health, our beautiful children, and we were living in Hawaii. Walking to a beautiful beach less than a mile away.
Last year, I was diagnosed with severe osteoarthritis, told never to lift more than 20 lbs again.
This year, we pulled another cash out, moved back east where it's cheap and we're closer to my wife's family. Our daughter stayed behind in Los Angeles. Our son, now 14, didn't get much of a Christmas from us. We're still lucky. We're getting Food Stamps, so we're not hungry. We're borrowing money from friends and family because even my little bit of internet work has dried up. We're lucky we even know people who can loan me money while I wait for lawsuits and the Social Security Disability backlog.
But we're lucky. The difference between that Kalikimaka 10 years ago on Maui, and this one up here in the near tundra of central New York?
Health.
All my life I've half ignored people when they said "at least you have your health." When they said it to me, I was usually broke, between shows, running up debt, and bitching about it. Some consolation, I thought. I can walk to the unemployment office.
Walking to anywhere to get money sounds good right now. As I wrote in a diary from a few months ago, I was happy my welfare office has a nice view.
While there are many things I can do to alleviate my pain, the doctors tell me that we haven't developed the ability to replace vertebrae that low in the back yet. Disc replacement is out. There are dietary methods, drug injections into the facet joints to control that pain and nueropathy, and other strategies for OA pain management.
10 years ago, all the medical mumbo jumbo would have made my eyes glass over, and I would have thought about snorkeling at Keawakapu Beach.
Now I'm sick of talking about it.
Optimists of the world, unite! Tell me to cheer up, help is on the way. Remind me of how I felt 10 years ago, broke, celebrating some crazy thing called Kelikimaka that I'd never thought I'd get to celebrate, at least not actually in Hawaii.
Back then, I had no back pain. Sure, there were a few tinges now and then, but I was a stagehand, for Christ's sake. Sore backs are normal. I worked hard and was rewarded for it.
Now I'm a kcog that's been worn out, and very soon, will be bought off at the bargain basement price of a settlement, what's left of a pension, and maybe some social security. Guess I'm lucky in that respect, too. My worker's comp lawyer says it's too bad I didn't get this before Arnold changed the California worker's comp laws. They used to consider your future income in deciding these things. Now, you get a set price for a body part, no matter how much you made.
Life's a beach.
My wife and I have a little inside joke about the story of a woman, in south American I think, in a tree, giving birth, during a flood. No matter how bad it has ever gotten for us, we say, hey, at least you're not giving birth in a tree during a flood.
Not even funny to us anymore.