bionic beach bandaids baffle Bellingham babies
“Be careful Tiger! Watch out, Arrow! Hold on! Don’t fall off. You have to wait for your turn.”
… I took them to the Shoreline Cafe for dinner. They shared a fish and chips meal — washed down with double apple juice. Each of them also had pieces of my fish taco. After dinner we walked on the beach. Tiger and Arrow both wanted me to fill their (now empty) apple juice glasses with ocean water.
“Would you like to dip your feet in the ocean too?” I asked.
Arrow agreed to come to the area where the waves were breaking… running away whenever the water got close. Tiger agreed to shout instructions from 10 meters away.
On the way back to the car, Arrow tripped and fell into the sand.
“I bashed my knee, Dan.” He explained. “I need a band aid and an ice pack.”
“A band aid or an ice pack?” I replied.
“I need a bandaid and an ice pack, Dan.”
“Does it hurt?”
“No.”
There was clearly no problem, so we headed toward the car. I carried Arrow and Tiger because they didn’t want to wear their sandals (“my sandals are sandy, Dan&rdquo
. I aimed Tiger toward his car seat and asked him to buckle himself in. I carried Arrow to his car seat and began to buckle him when he started to cry.“My knee hurts.” He claimed.
“If I kiss it, will it be better?” I asked.
“Yes,” Arrow replied.
I asked which knee, performed the magic kiss and buckle a now silent Arrow into place. I walked to my seat and began to buckle my seat belt. All of a sudden Arrow began to wail.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“You kissed the wrong knee, Dan.” Tiger explained.
“And who told him that?” I asked before getting out the car and kissing the ‘other’ knee.
In the process of looking for a good deal for Nazy’s flight to Bellingham, I also tried to make some preliminary explorations about options for trips on our bucket list: Alaska, Cambodia and Southeast Asia, Eastern Africa and South America. I didn’t get far — because the Internet knows too much. For example, booking.com included flights from Australia when I asked about trips to Alaska. And hotels.com quoted prices in Tanzanian Shillings when I made an inquiry about Angkor Wat.
In spite of the challenges, I found a reasonable deal for Nazy on Allegiant, a no-frills, ala carte carrier which has the only non-stop flights between Bellingham and LAX. Beating expectations, every time we’ve flown Allegiant, the flight has been on-time.
Flashback
Amsterdam Schiphol Airport
(15 or so years ago)
As I walked to the taxi queue, I realized that one ear had stopped working. I continued to the office, but left early and headed to a local urgent care facility. Rapid engagement with medical help was unusual for me, but this seemed serious. I was relieved when the Dutch doctor told me I had a cold. He prescribed nose drops.
“Nose drops?” I thought, realizing that I clearly wasn’t cut out for medical school.
My breathing got clearer as the week progressed, but I still couldn’t hear. As soon as I got home, Nazy joined me at a Zurich urgent care facility; the physician prescribed nose drops.
“Do you have a brother in Amsterdam?” I asked.
By the end of the weekend, I was wondering if both of these doctors had skipped the “E” part of ENT. I went to see a specialist. His analysis was more troublesome…
“You have sudden hearing loss.” He explained.
“I know,” I replied. “That’s why I’m here. Can I assume that my hearing will return suddenly? And, if so, when?”
“It could take weeks or months or years. Mostly likely it won’t return.”
“Aren’t you a bundle of joy?” I replied. “What causes it? And how do you treat it?”
“We don’t know. And we don’t.”
End Flashback
And so, for the next 15 years, I’ve had excellent hearing on the right side. I learned to cope with an inability to tell the direction of sounds and I arranged to place annoying managers on my left side. A couple of weeks ago, Nazy took me to a UCLA hearing clinic. They confirmed that my left ear was a mess and that my right ear was essentially perfect. They also explained that I wouldn’t be able to hear a 1000 decibel loudspeaker if it was placed in my left ear.
“I don’t believe that,” I thought, “I think the sound would travel through my head and I’d pick it up on the other side.”
However, they also said that a bluetooth-enabled transmitter could be placed in the left ear and routed to the right ear making it …
“… possible to hear from both sides?” I confirmed.
This week, I got the auditory upgrade. Astonishingly, it works. I can hear from both sides, I hear all kinds of things. Now I don’t know what I’ll do if I’m stuck in the company of someone boring.
The hearing aid is another step toward ‘Bionic’ Dan. I have new, cataract-free lenses in my eyes, technically augmented ears, a couple of dental implants and I started to think about the first car I got in college…
“… it was a ‘bug-eyed’ Austin Healy Sprint, Nazy.” I explained. “After a while, I had to replace the tires.”
“So?” Nazy asked.
“And then, the plugs and points needed to be replaced. And then the muffler (what there was of it) fell off and I had to put in a new head gasket. After a while, it was costing me more each month to fix things that didn’t work properly than it would cost to buy a new car. So..”
“Are you telling me that it’s time to get a new husband?”
“No. I’m telling you that’s why I’m keeping the price of this device secret.”
“You’re the six million dollar man, Dan.”
“How did she know?” I thought.
Naturally, Nazy and I celebrated our anniversary this week… more about that next week. It was a nostalgia focused venue where we hoped to reunite with our dining room chairs.
For last week's letter, please click here
Darius and Auriane