Why I Need To Be Home In Houston
By
Leonard Zwelling
It was a very difficult summer for this blogger. While I was able to play golf in some new places in Maryland, Greensburg, PA, and Montana, there were many difficult meetings with family and friends, some who are sick, and some who are not. These difficult things are not the point of this blog. Neither are the many lumpy airplane seats I have tolerated or the dreadful travel food, or the fact that the walks in the airports seem to get longer and my ability to make those walks seems to lessen with age. I think I am ready for the golf cart. I gave up and at my son Andrew’s insistence, I acquired handicap hang tags for my cars so I can park in designated spaces to shorten my walks at concert venues and shopping centers. My lumbar spine is a source of recurrent pain.
I arrived home from all the travel with a very painful recurrence of the sciatica in my right leg which necessitated a fourth spinal injection by my interventional anesthesiologist. It didn’t fully work and I needed yet another (done on November 4). So far, this one seems to have been more successful. This gets me to the point of this blog.
In today’s medical world, anywhere but Houston, it might have been a month before I could have seen an anesthesiologist’s physician’s assistant and another month before I could get relief via the injection. Here at the center of the medical world, a world I have learned how to negotiate after having used it for forty years, I saw the PA the day after I landed in late August. I was scheduled for the injection on September 11. That wasn’t perfect, but that was pretty good. When the anesthesiologist saw me after my pain persisted following the September injection, he personally reviewed all the reasons why I got less relief than on previous occasions and decided that we needed more extensive blocks and that they must be done at a specific facility. He even forced my insurer to cover the re-injection when it had first been declined. That’s a doctor! As I said, so far, so good. Interestingly, despite symptoms totally attributable to L4-L5 problems, when he injected L2, my leg twitched, a sign, he said, of inflammation there, too. That’s probably why I need four, not two, sites of steroid injection. I have become a clinical trial with an N of one.
When I am out of town or meet friends of long standing, I am frequently asked to what part of the country am I going to retire. My answer is always the same:
“I’m there.”
Why do I love Houston despite the fact that it’s in Texas, one of the reddest, most regressive states in the country—with ridiculous abortion rules, a hyperactive Republican Lieutenant Governor who hates university faculty and student involvement in higher education, and an Attorney General running for the U.S. Senate who ought to be in jail? Because Houston is my home and Houston is not like the rest of Texas.
Houston has the best medical care anywhere and thanks to my experience, I know how to access it. There’s a lot to improve with regard to access for all Houstonians to that care as Texas is not a Medicaid-friendly state. Regardless, for me, Houston is the medical center of the universe and its resources are highly needed at my age.
People complain that Houston is hot. It is. I like hot. I hate cold. I hate snow. Here I can play golf twelve months a year. That matters to me and thanks to my doctors, I still can play golf.
Houston is the most serious city when it comes to work. Only people who are serious about their work move to Houston. Given the backward state legislature and the heat, Northerners don’t move here unless their work takes them here. Thus, Houstonians are serious people. Oh, they know how to party and they love sports, arts, food, and diversity, but they really know how to work and, as our recurrent disasters have shown (mostly floods, but the occasional hurricane), we know how to pull together and work with each other, as well.
For all these reasons, when I have had a summer like this, with too much travel and too many difficult encounters, I have to get back to Houston. The good news for me is that I am back, under medical care yet again, but back.
And despite the pain in my leg, being back feels really good.
