Titan, the Sub

The Titan submersible has been in the news lately. That's the submersible that was descending to the Titanic wreck and was crushed by the pressure of the ocean. All five persons inside Titan were killed instantly. So what, exactly, do I mean by instantly?

Did the passengers on Titan have any awareness of what was happening?

No, not at all.

The body surface area (BSA) of an average adult male is 22.173 square feet. That is 3193 square inches. Let's round it to 3000. The water pressure at the depth of Titanic is 6000 pounds per square inch (psi). Therefore, the total pressure on a human body at the depth of Titanic would be about 6000 x 3000 or about 18 million pounds, equal to 9000 US tons. 

Titan is believed to have imploded at 13,000 feet below sea level. The water pressure at that depth would be 13/19 of Titanic pressure, or 4100 psi. The crush force on a body would be the psi multiplied by body area, which is 4100 x 3000 = 12.3 million psi, or about 6000 US tons.

Your body would be obliterated in one millisecond. It takes about 15 milliseconds (or longer) for the human brain to recognize a nerve impulse. Your body and brain would be gone long before your brain could know that anything unusual was happening.

It's like sitting on an atomic bomb when it explodes. You don't have time to say, "Ow!" You just disappear.

Anthony Johnson

As I write this, the date is June 19, 2023. It is a holiday called Juneteenth, also known as Freedom Day. Juneteenth celebrates the emancipation of enslaved African Americans in the United States. The celebration brings to my mind the story of Anthony Johnson.

Anthony Johnson was a slave owner and became a wealthy man by growing tobacco in the colony of Virginia. But here's the twist in the story: Anthony Johnson was a black man, born in Angola and sold into the Atlantic slave trade. He sailed to Virginia in 1621. There were no slavery laws in Virginia until 1661 and so he worked as an indentured servant. He earned his freedom after a number of years of working in the tobacco fields. Typically, an indentured servant worked for four to seven years. (Note: one of my ancestors, a man named William Dawson who was born in England in 1599, came to Virginia as an indentured servant.)

According to Wikipedia, Anthony Johnson 

"...later became a tobacco farmer in Maryland. He attained great wealth after completing his term as an indentured servant, and has been referred to as 'the black patriarch' of the first community of Negro property owners in America".

You can read about him on Wikipedia here. 

I say, "Good for him." Johnson was obviously intelligent and a hard worker. He probably lived longer and almost certainly gained greater wealth in the Virginia colony than if he had remained in Africa. I am not, of course, implying that his fate justified his capture and servitude. But evil intentions can sometimes produce a good outcome in an unexpected way. I wonder if Anthony Johnson, on his deathbed, would have preferred to have lived his life and died in Africa. The New World, especially in those early days, really was a land of opportunity for those with the courage and strength to seize it.

The Storm

I've lived in my house a long time. Yesterday afternoon, my city went through one of the worst thunderstorms I've ever seen. I've been through hurricanes. I've been through tropical storms. But this was a thunderstorm and it took down limbs and trees all over the neighborhood. Some of those limbs landed on cars and trucks parked on the street.  

The rain was so intense, I couldn't see the houses on the other side of my street. Rain and hail rattled the windows like rocks thrown at them.  I was expecting the hail to break one or two of the windows, but they held up.  The electricity went off, of course. It stayed off for hours and came back on as darkness fell. This morning, Nuria and I walked around the neighborhood. It's a mess. I took photos, of course.

The first thing Nuria found in our yard was a half-dead little bird. She brought it into the house to show me. It was alive, barely, when she picked it up, but it died in her hand. It was probably scared to death.

There's a sidewalk—somewhere under there.

And that was a walk around the park in my little city.

Listen to the Nurses

I went to my cardiologist (heart doctor) this week. He prescribes medications for my heart. I have atrial fibrillation (a-fib) which causes my heart to race to the point that it makes me breathless. The medications I take slow it down and keeps it beating slow and steady. Of course, at those times when my body needs my heart to beat fast, my heart can't beat much faster, so it can leave me breathless and having to slow my activity or stop for a break. But nothing's perfect.

Last year, the doctor prescribed a potent blood thinner for me to take every day. The a-fib can cause a blood clot that can travel to my brain and cause a stroke. The blood thinner is supposed to prevent that. Of course, taking the blood thinner has its own downside. For example, if I have a hemorrhagic stroke (a brain bleed) I can bleed to death before an ER doctor can administer the antidote to the blood thinner. That was the cause of death for that great fiddle player, Charlie Daniels.

I haven't taken the blood thinner. At this week's appointment, the doc asked me if I was taking it and I told him I was not. He asked why I wasn't taking it, and though my reasons were multiple and would take a while to explain, I summed them all up with one statement. I looked him in the eye and I said, "I'm not afraid to die."

Then the doctor did something I had not expected: he smiled and stuck out his hand and we shook hands. I suppose the handshake was the doctor's way of saying several things that would also take a while to explain. He didn't say anything more about the blood thinner, although he did leave it in his list of recommended medications for me. That made sense. He does, after all, have to think about lawsuits and what constitutes "proper medical advice" for his patients. In other words, he has to "cover his ass."  All doctors must do that.

If you're ever diagnosed with a terminal disease, the worst advice you may receive is to remain in the hospital because you've been told that if you do you'll live six months, whereas if you go home you'll live only one month. You can choose six months in a hospital bed with IV tubes, bedpans, and all the other misery that comes with being an invalid, versus a month in your living room, watching your big-screen TV, listening to your music, and having your friends and family stop in for visits. (They would visit you in the hospital, too, but it's neither an inviting nor a comfortable setting, so you might see less of them.)

My advice: If you find yourself in the hospital having to make a decision about staying or going home, don't listen to the doctors. Rather, listen to the nurses. They've seen it all.

Another Sleepless Night

It's 1:20AM. It's very quiet except for the tinnitus that's always in my head. 

Nuria and I were in bed but I woke up and couldn't return to sleep, so I got up. That happens often. In fact, it happens almost every night.

I reflect now on my life. Parts of it have been a private hell. I didn't go to war, like some of my friends. I didn't start and struggle to run a business, like some of my friends. I did seem to hang on to my sanity with my fingertips for years, and I saw a lot of psychotherapists who could not help me. I did suffer in silence countless times. I tried to look normal but on the inside I felt anything but normal. 

There was Connie, who had her own problems not unlike mine. Maybe like attracts like. She was eight years older than me. The last time we talked, she called me and I answered with the little flip phone I used at the time. As we talked, the phone signal dropped out. I couldn't call her back because she didn't have a phone in her room. (She was in one of those places people are put when they can't live on their own any longer.) But a minute later, the phone rang again and it was Connie. She yelled at me, "Never hang up on me again"—and then she hung up on me. I couldn't call her back. A year later I found out that she had passed away. 

I could measure my life by the number and type of therapists who have treated me. There was a therapist in Burlington, NC, that I saw weekly for two years. There was a therapist in Richmond, VA, that I went to only twice. He was a hypnotherapist but he couldn't hypnotize me. There was another therapist in Richmond who practiced progressive desensitization. I went through a series of sessions with him twice, but none of it helped me.

There was another hypnotherapist in Roanoke, VA, that I saw for a while. He specialized in regressing patients through past lives. But he couldn't hypnotize me deeply enough for it to work. 

I went to an Indian doctor in Roanoke for a year or two. He couldn't help me. 

One day I read about a medication—a class of antidepressants called SSRI—that, as a side effect, could help treat the condition I had, which, by the way, is called panic disorder. I blogged about it here in 2016.

Somehow after going through all this, I ended up with a woman who cares for me and puts up with my quirks. She just had a birthday yesterday. I ordered a cake from Publix. It's the best-tasting birthday cake I've ever tasted. I customized it—I chose the flavors and colors of the various parts of the cake. If you put a gun to my head, I don't think I could order a duplicate of this cake, because there were so many options to customize. But it really was a tasty cake.

And of course I bought her flowers. And I suggested that we go to the mall and shop for something else she would like, but she declined.

Mother's Day was three weeks ago and Nuria has three grown daughters, but I knew they wouldn't send her anything special, because in Costa Rica where her family lives, El Día de la Madre is held on August 15th. So I bought Nuria this Russian Ring necklace with her daughters' names engraved on the rings.

I feel I need to do more, but I always feel that way, no matter what I do, so I'm never sure if I've fallen short or whether I just feel I have.

It's 2:45AM now and this blog post has wandered all over the place. Maybe it turns out that I really had nothing important to write about, after all.

I'll call it a night and rejoin Nuria in bed. She says my typing keeps her awake. But I have to write when the "inspiration" is there, such as it is. Goodnight, everyone. Or, goodnight to all three of you. Or to both of you. Or, goodnight to you who are reading these words at 3AM. I'm sorry to know you can't sleep either.