Let me first report, with something bordering on joy, that this has been a good bladder day. Close on the heels of which I must admit that it is, as always, a bad Apple Dictate day. The word in the above line, bladder, being first recognized by the supposed voice recognition engine as “latter.” As in the latter day Saints. Which go marching in, or probably not, because those marchers are distinctly not white, and the latter day variety distantly are. And incredibly, there was yet another voice recognition error, the bladder being ultimately changed to blatter. Not a word I even use very much. But I digress.

Speaking of words, did you know that an immensely educated person can be expected to have access to almost 700,000 words? And the more ordinary guy can lay his mental hands on like about 350,000 words. But the typical Hebrew speaker wandering around Judea, say, 2000 or 3000 years ago, had access to about 7000 words. What does this mean? It means today there is a global cottage industry in Torah study. I mean, it was built-in, wasn’t it? Almost designed to linguistically fail. Or more accurately, to demand endless interpretation, re-interpretation and so on.

As for the bladder, hard to say why I’m feeling a little better about it. It may be that I am discovering that the Kegel exercises really do help with the opposite of their apparent purpose, i.e., relaxing the whole thing. Which definitely helps with relaxing me. Nothing like feeling that one’s body is going even further out of neuromuscular control to pop a little too much adrenaline into the system.

And speaking of adrenaline, I just looked at a picture of Jane babysitting, if that is the word, two of her three grandsons, the three year old and the five year old (I think). And there is an honest reason for the confusion, because the little kids are growing so fast that I really am losing track. Anyway, there they are, dressed in various Marvel comic costumes and doing battle with each other using plastic swords. And there is Jane’s voice in the background urging “gentle, gentle.” Which is absolutely splendid, but little boys have a testosterone shield that blocks out such words. As soon as she is out of sight they will resume combat, I swear. But that’s another story.

The bladder news. I mean, when you think about it, that could be the title of a publication. Why not? Bladder News and World Report. OK, anyway, I followed through. Despite my fear that the 76-year-old urine bag was about to spring a major leak, well, somehow, it’s held its structural integrity throughout the day. And here I am, living proof. In the absolute peak of urinary health. Life is good.

My half a year at Rancho Los Amigos Hospital, Downey, California, was thought to be safely in the past. And now it has whipped around, time travel style, into the future. It looks like I may have to fly down there. And somehow, this is OK. Kaiser, my local health provider, seems baffled by, and incapable of, treating my condition, whatever it is. So might as well go back to the source. Rancho now calls itself a “national center.” For exactly what, being unclear,

It was such a relief to hobble out the door of that hospital In December, 1968. I went down the hallway, tilting and lurching, crutch clicking, toward the glass doors at the end of the hallway, and my father’s waiting Toyota. I had rolled in there on a gurney in early July. I had walked out, limping however badly, and making neuromuscular news. Such things never happened. But I had had a bit of luck. The night I was rolled into the student hospital at Berkeley, a neurosurgeon happened to be wandering out. And a nurse grabbed him. He gave me cortisone. These days, it’s standard practice. Everyone knows that the injured spinal cord swells within the spinal canal, further injuring itself. But no one knew this then, except a handful of people. Like this neurosurgeon.

Anyway, I hobbled out of the hospital in Los Angeles, or more precisely, Downey, conscious that 60 guys in wheelchairs were watching. None of them got out of the wheelchairs. Ever. And all of them are, by now, almost certainly dead. And going back there? Why not? They healed me once. Maybe they can heal me again.