for 19 MAR 07: A TWITCH IN TIME

At about 8:30 Sunday night, the tremors in part of my body were nine minutes apart. They were slight, but they were noticeable. And no, they had nothing to do with my old college making it to the "Sweet 16" in college basketball.

For the last year or two, I've detected slight occasional shaking in my left little finger. It might occur off and on for a few days, then go away. But in the last couple of weeks, the shaking began to occur on a regular basis - a couple of seconds at a time, about once a minute. It was as if a muscle in my left hand was pretending to be an air drill on a big-city street.

The small tremors were happening so regularly that I began to grow concerned. So I asked a nurse about it, in the church congregation I attend. The first thing which crossed my mind was the start of Parkinson's Disease -- yet I'd never stood that close to Mayor Pro-Tem Evelyn Turner Pugh.

The nurse guessed my twitching was something other than Parkinson's Disease. It could be nothing, she said -- or it could be the lack of something in my diet. She was unsure what the exact deficiency was, but thought it might be magnesium. They don't seem to put this in underarm antiperspirant, the way they once did.

"Have you had any changes in your diet?" the nurse asked. Well, my chocolate input had increased a bit in recent weeks. But I don't chant to myself "choc-late" during three-mile runs as I did long ago.

The nurse suggested I see a doctor about the twitching - and therein lay a problem. In almost ten years in Columbus, I've hardly ever visited a doctor. Only a couple of health situations had called for it - and you know, maybe Phenix Regional Hospital closed because everyone in Russell County kept themselves in shape.

I decided to wait a few days to see if the twitching would disappear - only it didn't. In fact, it seemed to spread to the bottom part of my left hand. If I didn't see an expert soon, before long I might be a walking earthquake.

A check of the WebMD web site for "finger twitching" found my fears of Parkinson's Disease were overblown. Something else came up - ALS, otherwise known as Lou Gehrig's Disease. Now this was even more puzzling, because I hadn't attended a major league baseball game in eight years.

After praying about it and thinking things over, I finally decided to have a specialist examine my left hand. Not knowing where else to turn, I went to Columbus Regional's Urgent Care Clinic one afternoon last week. A weekday afternoon is the perfect time to show up - with only ten minutes of waiting, and no crying babies in the lobby.

But of course, the day I determined to visit the clinic was the day the twitching went away. With nothing else to do in the waiting room, I timed my little finger - and it didn't move on its own in almost ten minutes. If the attendant hadn't called my name, I was five seconds from walking out and declaring victory.

There were the usual papers to fill out - but only three pages of them. The good news is that there was no in-depth stack of questions on a clipboard like other medical offices have. But the bad news is that one of the Urgent Care Clinic's questions involved whether I have a living will.

After two trips into the "back rooms" of the clinic and some basic checks of my weight and blood pressure, Dr. Graham finally entered the examination room to check me. He ruled out ALS at once, after I brought it up. As he put it: "Sometimes we're the victims of a little too much information."

Dr. Graham said my left little finger could simply be a passing thing, nothing to worry about. But he also hinted there could be a nerve ending problem, that a neurologist might need to check if it persisted. This was a bit discomforting, because I have a brother in a "neurological institute" - and he's barely been able to walk his entire life, much less write or speak.

"Any other problems?" Dr. Graham asked - and then I said something which apparently changed his diagnosis. I've felt a sore shoulder for weeks, which resulted from overstretching on the racquetball court. This explains why I don't go to Benning Park with a paint can, and cover up gang graffiti myself....

After a quick check of my shoulder, Dr. Graham told me the blood circulating around the shoulder could explain my twitching finger. So he wrote me a prescription for a medicine with a name like ibuprofen - only it begins with "Flurbi." It sounded like something the performers in "Disney on Ice" should take.

The paperwork from Dr. Graham included not only a computer-printout prescription, but follow-up instructions. One involved slowly taking "Oral Rehydration Solution," as my body could handle it. "Do you think the pharmacist will know what this is?" I asked the aide as I checked out.

"It's just water," he answered. That's pretty much what I expected - but it's still such a fancy name that I plan to surprise my friends with it one of these days.

The doctor's papers also advised me to "read the Shoulder Pain Handout and start Physical Therapy as directed." But I was never given a Shoulder Pain Handout. Maybe it was too heavy for me to carry, without causing more pain.

The trip to the Urgent Care Clinic wound up costing me 74 dollars, and the prescription about 21 more. So my twitching little finger wound up costing me about 95 dollars - and in the middle of my ten-day pain regimen, the finger twitching at several-minute intervals returned Sunday night. It's not affecting my typing at this point. And thankfully, it's not the middle finger that's jerking around....

E-MAIL UPDATE: This letter was sent to the Ledger-Enquirer, and "cc'ed" to me....

Several years ago the COLUMBUS HOUSING AUTHORITY issued $75 million in bonds to a lady from Ft Walton Beach to purchase five local apartment complexes. This was to be a social experiment where the tenants of the apartments were to work together to renovate and improve the apartments and common grounds for the benefit of all. Also included in the bond issue was money to be used to help with the renovations. This same thing was done in at least four other Georgia cities.

The bonds were sold, mostly to people who could not afford to lose their investment, and were most likely under the assumption that the bonds were guaranteed by the Housing Authority.

No payments were made on the bonds, the renovation money which was to be advanced as renovations were completed somehow disappeared, most likely to the lady in Ft. Walton. The apartments were foreclosed and sold for about one half of what was paid for them with the bond issue. The bondholders lost over half their investment.

Now we have Ashley Station a mixed income housing project which is another social experiment. I do not believe that doctors, lawyers, or any high income professional people are going to pay thousands of dollars a month in rent to live next door to someone that pays $200.00 a month.

I recently read somewhere that the CHICAGO HOUSING AUTHORITY said that the biggest mistake they ever made was building mixed income housing projects.

Lon Gammage

So if someone comes to your door in the "tornado zone" and claims to be bonded, be careful. They might actually be holding bonds which are in default.

The new Ashley Station complex is now open for occupancy, where the Peabody Apartments used to be. The buildings look quite nice -- but how are lawyers going to know what their neighbors pay in rent, unless they become nosy and start asking? Oh wait, I forgot. It's called the "discovery process" in a trial.

Isn't Ashley Station somewhat similar to how Columbus housing works in general, under the property tax freeze? Your new neighbor may pay twice the property tax you do. Yet the population of Columbus has been growing slowly -- despite the rush of people to a Harris County which still has no Wal-Mart or Piggly Wiggly stores.

Big cities such as New York also come to mind - places with "rent control" rules. Units in some buildings can have a wide range of prices. Yet somehow, the children from varied backgrounds all get along on TV, on "The Suite Life of Zach and Cody."

I think I was actually part of a "mixed income housing project" years ago in Oklahoma. Housing was scarce when I moved there because of an oil boom, so I lived in an apartment complex at the east edge of town. I actually made a game out of the discarded aluminum cans I picked up while jogging - and more often than not, the sodas beat the beers.

I never asked my neighbors how much they paid in rent. In fact, it never crossed my mind to ask. So what I did can work at Ashley Station - a policy of "don't ask, don't tell" which was years ahead of its time.

BLOG UPDATE: On this Hurtsboro Monday, the Constable who lives there is scheduled for trial on two charges. R.J. Schweiger isn't even leaving messages at Talbot County forums anymore. So maybe he's gone back to the "old school" way of rallying support - by going door-to-door at home.

Back to health issues, for our top item from the Sunday news....

+ The "Getting On Top of Life" broadcast on WAGH-FM found Pastor/School Board member Joseph Roberson revealing he spent time in intensive care three years ago, after his uvula was removed. Who knows how many church members went home, and tried to look up that word in the dictionary under "Y."

+ The annual "Thunder in the Valley" air show ended at the Columbus Airport. The stunts this year weren't quite the same, compared with a year ago. Not in the sky - I mean finding a parking place at the former Wal-Mart store on Airport Thruway.

+ Jimmy Johnson edged Tony Stewart, to win a Not-So-Well-Known Tool Company's 500-mile race at Atlanta Motor Speedway. This was a classic battle in every sense of the word - as Lowe's defeated The Home Depot.

+ My alma mater good ol' Kansas advanced to the regional semifinals in college basketball, by killing Kentucky 88-76. But for some reason, the server at Loco's put me in a booth against a wall where I had to look up and around a light to watch a flat-screen TV. I'm assuming he was trying to help me digest my dinner.

COMING SOON: An e-mailer directs me to a picture of a young man holding a fish....

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