jefferyvidrine.com

Jeffery Vidrine, Writer blog and news

Integrity, candor, and professional service. Allow me to demonstrate these attributes for you and your freelance writing needs. I can handle anything from blog posts to hard news, essays to fiction, and most points in between. After you view my reviews, please leave a comment with contact information.

Our motto is a tribute to “the Greatest”:

“The service you do for others is the rent you pay for the time you spend on earth.” Muhammad Ali

YOPD and me

I’m Jeff, and having had Parkinson’s disease for 6-7 years, am trying to understand how this has become my life. By training, I am a dentist. By serendipity and God’s good graces, husband to Teresa (28 years). By way of blessing (and punishment-lol), father to 4 sons, 24,22,20 &15. I have served our country for 24+ years, 3 as an Army dentist, 4 in the reserves, and 17+ on active duty as a Commissioned Officer of the US Public Health Service. I’ve been detailed to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, providing care to murderers,rapists, terrorists,mob bosses and gangsters. Always very active physically, never dependent on anyone, responding to emergencies like stabbings, assaults, mini-riots, and escape attempts.

And then I had a visitor. This was an uninvited visitor that would pop-in occasionally. My friend would not stay long but was the kind of visitor that quickly wore out his welcome. The big problem was when he would pop in and stay too long. Pretty soon he brought friends with him.

In 2000 or 2001, I was 43 and knew I wanted to stay healthy. I would run 2 - 4 miles a day, lift weights 2-3 x weekly. My unwanted visitor first showed up as a cramping up of my right foot after 5-10 minutes of running. I’d have to stop and let it relax, as soon as I would start again so would the cramp. I figured I needed new shoes. Then I noticed my right arm wouldn’t swing when I walked. It just hung there rigidly.

In 2002, enough was enough. My penmanship degenerated to where the words would get smaller and smaller as I would write. During oral surgical procedures that required force, my entire body would shake. My staff tried to make light of it - they called me shaky Jake. The right foot cramping was constant, making simply walking an exercise in pain.

So, I did the unthinkable for a man. I went to the doctor which gave me a whole set of new friends. People like my orthopedist who said finally, “I don’t know what is wrong with your foot.” He is the smartest doctor I ever have seen. Except he referred me to an orthopedic foot and ankle specialist who worked for the Indianapolis Colts, Indiana Pacers, and any number of university athletic programs. Needless to say I had right foot/ankle surgery February 13, 2003 to correct an anatomical problem causing my right foot pain. I’m here to tell you surgery does not cure foot dystonia from PD. The incision included the tendon that attached to the part of my foot that would cramp, causing tension on the line of incision. A four week recovery took one year!

In the meantime after ruling out brain tumor, etc., a neurologist diagnosed me with essential tremor, a non-progressive intention tremor that runs in families (my dad has it, so did Katherine Hepburn with that shaky voice) and starts on average at age 45.

And then finally at last I met my visitor who now lives with me. On my birthday (hard to forget), December 2, 2003, a movement disorder specialist introduced me to Young Onset Parkinson’s Disease (YOPD).

After fighting to keep working from 2003 - 2007, I’m throwing in the towel on dentistry and active duty. It’s time to move on to new challenges, new adventures. Since 2003, I have tried over thirty different meds and combination of meds to keep working. Today I take 16 pills a day related to PD and its effects. The hard part is the giving up of certain things you used to like to do. My meds affect my judgement, make me sleepy (I was recently diagnosed with narcolepsy), so I don’t drive too much. You have good days (”on” days or times in PD speak) and bad days (”off” times where the meds just don’t quite do it).
PD is caused by a loss of dopamine producing cells in the substantia nigra of the brain, the neurons die and we don’t know why.This doesn’t just cause the classic TRAP of PD: tremor, rigidity, akinesia/bradykinesia, and postural instability. It also has affects on your psyche, causing anxiety, depression, even dementia in the advanced stage. It affects your autonomic nervous system, things that are involuntarily controlled or auto-regulated. I can’t stand temperature extremes, have digestion troubles, and have an exaggerated startle reflex(fight or flight).

YOPD sounds terrible. Horrible. It isn’t. Or better, it doesn’t have to be. It makes you slow down. You are forced to sit and think. And pray.

Most people with YOPD (100,000 out of 1 million PD patients in the US) don’t die from it but live a normal life span. Advances in treatment bring better meds and the possibility of a cure. So it probably won’t be my demise (unless I drive off a bridge after falling asleep!)

The hardest thing for me is letting go, letting others do for me, do things I used to do for myself and my family. One example: Teresa and I get a phone call from a couple we know on a Saturday morning of a three day weekend. The wife says, “my husband and I will be over in 15 minutes, will you be home? I’m going to paint your kitchen and dining room while my husband cleans up your 4 acres. Is that ok?” Wow. I mean, WOW. A part of me wanted to say no because of pride and that fierce independence I’ve always had. But I let go, let these two wonderful people help us. I couldn’t even help that day (meds were “off”).

Laurie, our moderator, had asked me to write something about PD and me. I hope I have because I’m usually loathe to talk about myself. A final thought: for all of us with life-altering conditions, unwanted visitors that won’t leave, consider that maybe, just maybe this visitor was sent for a reason.

I’m Catholic and have deepened my personal relationship with Jesus through this disease. I have always believed that as Christians we are called to be of service to each other. Jesus says in the Gospel of John 13:14-15, “If I, therefore, the master and teacher, have washed your feet, you ought to wash one another’s feet. I have given you a model to follow, so that as I have done for you, you should also do.” Well, I can’t bend over to wash another’s feet. But I can let someone else wash mine. In allowing someone else to be of service to me, in letting go, I am assisting in God’s plan, helping that other person be Christ for me. If there were no sick, lame, helpless, needy, then to whom would people be of service? How would they be like our role model, Jesus Christ?

So perhaps your unwanted visitor has come to stay for a reason. This gives me hope and helps me accept my limitations. I don’t like PD but I also don’t necessarily like being bald, unable to speak Italian or not playing for a major league baseball team.

“Reflect on your present blessings, of which every man has many; not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.” Charles Dickens

Death and Life

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on that sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

- Dylan Thomas

This is a poem of life although death is its main theme. Mr Thomas would have all men resist the “dying of the light”. Good, wild, wise and grave, he speaks to all of us for “Old age should burn and rave at close of day”. As much right as a young man has to resent dying, Mr Thomas tells us that even the aged, who have lived a full life, should “not go gentle into that good night.” The light is so special, so valuable, that he insists upon raging against the dying of the light.

But Mr Thomas does give us an out, a hope. It is in the title and the first line, and continues to reverberate throughout the rest of these verses. Mr Thomas says, “Do not go gentle into that good night.” For although the light dies, we ultimately go into that good night. Even though it is dark to us, Mr Thomas knows that it is good. Just as at creation God looked at his works and pronounced them good, so is the place that God has created for us in the “night”, a euphemism for eternity.

Mr Thomas even speaks to the God made man, Jesus, who died as a man on a cross. In the throes of a hideous death, our poet asks the Father, “there on that sad height”, to look at the dying of the light as something to rage against, thereby cursing, but then blessing us his creatures, made in his image and likeness, with His fierce tears. Somehow, through God
living and then dying as a man, we all receive a blessing. However if even Christ rages against the dying of the light as He must have being God and man, that light must be a special one indeed.

So, as we are exhorted by Mr Thomas to “Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”, as it applies to our life, we must realize one more thing. Just as we have within us that light, so do all men. All life, all God-created life, is of special value. For those who cannot rage against the dying of their light, the helpless, the infirmed, the unborn, we have to be like Christ and curse, bless them with our fierce tears.

(An original essay by JLVidrine)

Rebuilding New Orleans - Save Our Sinking Ship (SOS)

The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’
- Ronald Reagan

This quote is a corollary to that which Henry David Thoreau said, ” government governs best which governs least.” In our world, anytime that anything untoward occurs a hue and cry arises to invoke a governmental solution. Matters that should be handled by private citizens, local governments or state governments, are demanded to be solved by the Federal government. Our founding fathers did not design the constitution to work in this way.

Just ask the victims of hurricane Katrina which occurred two years ago. House after house, neighborhood after neighborhood, block after block, one still sees the cruel devastation and lack of action. In many neighborhoods, the houses lie abandoned with the occasional FEMA trailer parked out front. Where are the people? They wait in FEMA trailer parks, with relatives, and in other towns. They wait for government assistance and intervention. The program authorized to bring these people home and disburse billions in Federal relief is a hazy gumbo of government mumbo-jumbo gone bad. The citizens of New Orleans reelected the very man who bungled the hurricane preparations, evacuation, and aftermath reaction. Elected official after elected official has been accused, indicted, arrested, and convicted in Louisiana. Governmental agencies charged with rebuilding the Levee system are rebuilding a category three system which failed under the pressure of category three Katrina. What happens when the next one is a category five?

Those citizens who have succeeded in recovering have done so on their own. They did not wait for help but pressed forward with the resources they had to reopen businesses and rebuild houses. These are the true entrepreneurs, risk takers. And that is the crux of my argument, that rebuilding New Orleans is a huge risk. Living below sea level, basically unprotected from a storm surge, and certain to be hit with a hurricane in the future, only the hardiest of risk takers should attempt to live in this setting.

The Federal Government owes its citizens life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. These are inalienable rights expressed in the Declaration of Independence but are not a guarantee of happiness. If it makes you happy to pursue living below sea level in a hurricane zone, then you have the inalienable right to do so. However, you have no guarantee of attaining happiness and should not expect such a guarantee from the Federal Government. The Federal Government provides best in its obligations by providing for a national defense and ensuring a stable currency to allow the economy to function. When it does these two things, people are free. Free to achieve or fail, free to express themselves, free to pursue happiness.

The American entrepreneurial spirit is summed up for us in the words of Abraham Lincoln, “Intelligence, patriotism, Christianity, and a firm reliance on Him, who has never yet forsaken this favored land, are still competent to adjust, in the best way, all our present difficulty.” He does not mention intervention by a Federal Government to save us from our “victim status”.

Hanging On!

O, brazen leaves, boldly rustling in the north breeze.

Will not quite give it up!
Life ebbing; dry, wrinkled, lifeless looking.
Yet the will to be remains.

O, brazen leaves, resisting the autumnal prerogative.

Hanging on! Resisting the forces of time,
Somehow hoping time will stop; a moment frozen
to keep forever, like summer in the Arctic climes.

O, brazen leaves, dried and brown.

Knowing deep down that as the other leaves have died
and fallen to the ground,
so will the rest that still hang on.

O, brazen leaves, that know not time nor temerity.

Heavenly hope having high expectations,
half-dead; yet noisy, cajoling, like a good group of friends.
Pushing one to ponder this visible proof of rebirth, of resurrection.

O, brazen leaves, boldly rustling.

Indoor dental clinic olympics

First of all, I have been a correctional public health dentist for 20+ years. Some days are busy, some downright exciting. But when a correctional facility is locked down, the day can drag on and on. It was on one of those days that this story takes place.

I was fortunate to have 2 dental students doing a summer internship with me. They gain experience and more patients get treatment. And these two gentlemen loved it. I called them Hans and Franz, more like brothers than colleagues. Enthusiastic, they came to “pump you up”, in the words of an old SNL skit. They competed at everything. They rented an empty, run-down apartment that smelled like cat urine so that they could get free green fees at the apartment owner’s golf course. And they played their version of the British Open, the Masters, and the Ryder cup all wrapped into one. Everyday.

Each morning the one who lost the evening before was subdued, almost to the point of pouting. “Hans, you kept talking in my backswing.” Or “Franz, you know I had a GI problem but you only gave me three strokes.” This was not the only competition: who saw the most patients, who did the most procedures, who has the smelliest patient.

On the day of the unending boredom, Hans and Franz came to the rescue. They created a new indoor competitive sport called the dental luge. Dental assistant chairs have excellent, smooth-running casters, and ours were new. After much heated negotiations over the ground rules, the competition began. The competitors used the doorway of the dental lab to propel themselves perched on a dental assistant chair through the four chair clinic. No extraneous body movements were allowed! Just the initial thrust of using both arms to explode out of the gate.

Two assistants lost their balance and actually tumbled over. One of the contestants went aerodynamic by wearing a protective visor to streamline his body contours. Most ran into the xray unit or ran out of steam about 2/3 down the clinic. It was Hans’ turn as he made a supreme effort of controlled power with purposeful balance. He just kept rolling and made down past all 4 chairs to the doorway of the dentist’s private office. “Yeaaah! Who’s your daddy?” and other such lines were heard from Hans. He had it won baby!

But not so fast, for “it ain’t over till the fat lady says it’s over.” With the imagined theme from Chariots of Fire filling the background, Franz entered the lab doorway, eyeing the course with a seemingly practiced eye. A hush filled the clinic as Franz rolled once, then twice in warmup before letting go on the third pull. He began a roll as unlikely as Tiger Wood’s putt on the 16th at Augusta, snaking his way down the clinic. The spectators gasp as Franz drifts ever so close to the xray unit. But like a NASCAR driver next to wall, he didn’t panic or flinch. He just kept rolling, he rolled to the doorway of the private office, through the doorway and into the office! Not finished yet, he continued through another doorway, past the bathroom and into the mechanical service room where his “luge” came to rest.

You may speak of the great individual achievements in the history of competitive sports but now you know of an achievement never to be topped, little known and much maligned, Franz’s indoor dental luge record setting run!

Something stinks in Newsweek

Newsweek magazine has a feature article in its current issue written by Mother Teresa hater, Christopher Hitchens. The impetus for his latest diatribe against what most people consider the one person certain to be welcomed into heaven with open arms is a book written by the person in charge of her case for sainthood.

Mother Teresa joined an order of nuns whose primary focus was education. And so, she began her religious life as a teacher. However, she felt a deeper calling in the face of the abject poverty and the lack of care for the lowest castes in Indian society. Through her persistent perseverance, Mother Teresa was given authorization to start her own order to provide care for the lowest of the low, the dying unclean, disease-ridden poor. Her care for these people recognized their human dignity, their humanity expressed best in Genesis, “and they were created in the image and likeness of God.”

Mr. Hitchens, in a multi-page spread complete with photos, jumped at the opportunity to use this book as proof of Mother Teresa’s hypocrisy, the Catholic Church’s use of promoting guilt and unworthiness in the individual as a means of enslaving them, and a disavowal of the existence of God and the Church’s use of such an idea as an opium for the masses. Especially for such a simple, non-intellectual as Mother Teresa.

The book in question has letters written by Mother Teresa to her spiritual director, in which she questions her faith, the existence of God in the face of such suffering, and an inability to feel a connection with God in her prayer life. Mr. Hitchens berates and ridicules those who promote Mother Teresa’s cause for canonization and Mother Teresa herself for living the life she chose in the face of her doubts.

Why did Newsweek chose an obvious secular humanist atheist with an axe to grind to write the main article of an issue about a Nobel prize winner, a truly holy person who unselfishly devoted her life in service to the poorest of the poor? Mr. Hitchens truly disapproves of Mother Teresa’s life, especially her public statements on the dignity of all human life and her strong, consistent anti-abortion stance. In doing so, he only shows his condescending depth of ignorance and bigotry towards people of faith. Minimal research into Mother Teresa’s problems with her faith and spiritual life would have revealed a commonality among all of the church’s greatest saints.

Mr. Hitchens mentioned minimally about spiritual dryness or the dark night of the soul. Most saints were afflicted with these same doubts and questions during their lives. Examples include St John of the Cross, St Teresa of Avila, and Blessed Padre Pio. The critical element that the “uber”-intellectual Mr. Hitchens missed is the word faith. St. Paul in his Letter to the Hebrews said that “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” He also explains in 2 Corinthians that as Christians, “For we walk by faith, not by sight.”

The true message of the publication of Mother Teresa’s letters of doubt and questioning to her spiritual advisor is one of faith. The egg-head, pseudo-intellectual represented by Mr. Hitchens does not have faith but walks by sight, his own personal myopic view of the world. Relativism reigns with no moral certitudes. and truth is determined by convenience. In Mr. Hitchens’ ego-centric, self-important world, one’s worth varies with one’s ability to “contribute” to society, to have an acceptable quality of life. Faith, as exhibited by Mother Teresa, recognizes universal, absolute truths. Despite questioning and doubts, Mother Teresa always walked by faith for if she had walked by the things she saw, the human misery and suffering would have sent her running in avoidance.

Faith is belief in that which we cannot see, a hope for the future and in God’s steadfastness. No doubt Mr. Hitchens has questions, doubts, and fear of the unknown future. Maybe as he walks past homeless bums and dirty, smelly street people to get his morning double latte at the local Starbucks, he will ask himself the right questions and then seek out the Truth. Good sources include any of C.S. Lewis’s books (Mere Christianity is a good starting point), G.K. Chesterton (The Life of St. Francis of Assisi), prolific author Father Benedict Groeschel, Thomas Merton’s books on meditation and contemplative prayer, and finally the seminal work on the work of the Holy Spirit, the stages of a fully developed prayer life, and a comparative study of the struggles of selected saints called The Fire Within by Father Thomas Dubay.

Mr. Hitchens, there is absolute truth, and it is not the stinking garbage you proselytize in your Newsweek article. The truth came to us over 2000 years ago. He came in the person of a man creating a singularity in human history. Although He was a man, He is also God. As Mother Teresa did, you may question the reality of this but in the end with an open mind and heart, you too cannot help but see the truth that there is a God who created us, cares about us, and lives outside of time and space with a home there for each of us. I believe this because I have faith in Him and what he said, “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. He who believes in me will have everlasting Life.” I am also convinced that Mother Teresa, through her walk by faith, is enjoying the beatific vision of eternal life. What life are you choosing?

The Walk

Stoic external.
Officiousness imprinted in the bricks and imposing entry edifice.
Institutional architecture, rising in front,
as one walks the walk.

I go voluntarily; many others do not.
Through sallyports, clanging automatic heavy metal grills.
Then, a hush; contrasting quiet to the cacophony of clanging
down the corridors of convicts.

In a short walk, one leaves a world of unimpeded movement
and open possibilities. Joining the throngs of the misused and users,
liars and thieves; Addicts all…
Addicted to power, violence, drugs. CONVICTED.

Welcoming from the gatekeeper and the keeper of the keys.
Everyday the same question, “Will I be their prey today?”
Safety requires it, sanity precludes it.
And so, I pray today.

Fear shown is a loss of control, a giving away of oneself.
Compassion, caring, freely given is a gaining of control-
the reason to be here.
In a short walk, I can choose to make a difference for better,
to give this walk meaning and significance.

Rajor wire, M16’s, pepper gas and riot batons.
Shanks, hooch, shakedown, lockdown.
Death row.
A short walk.