Who Am I?

I am Jack Duggan.  I’m 65 years old and I live in Oakland, California.  In November I retired as a California State Park Ranger. 

I was a Park Ranger for four years at Angel Island State Park, a one square mile island in the middle of the San Francisco Bay, and two years at Mount Diablo State Park, east of San Francisco near the Central Valley.  I had a religious conversion of the civil variety.  I went from the Devil’s Mountain to the Angel’s Island.  Park Rangers in California are real cops, guns, badges and all.  Prior to that, I was a banker for nearly 30 years, mostly in Los Angeles.  In between banking and rangering I was a Juvenile Hall Counselor, euphemism for guard, in San Francisco Juvenile Hall for three years. 

My self image is of being a schlepper, a kid from Burbank who is always trying to catch up but has never been ahead of the pack.  As a leader I’m a great second man.  I like someone else in front.  I’ve been very fortunate to have had some opportunities for some very exciting experiences.  I like a challenge and I probably make decisions impetuously.  I think a decision is an obstruction that needs to be passed, it’s what you do afterwards that proves your mettle.  Yes, I’m still proving my mettle, maybe less now than before.    

I live in apartment on Lake Merritt with my partner Suzette and our incredible daughter, two year old Paloma Duggan.  “I am not Boo Boo,” she informed us yesterday.  “I am Paloma Duggan.” 

I have three grown sons and six grandchildren.  Son number one is a set designer and jack of all trades for commercials and TV in Los Angeles.  Number two son is a newly minted professor at the University of Oregon teaching political science.  Number three son is a fashion photographer and sometime artiste recently moved to Manhattan.  He makes a good living at it.  My eldest grandson is in high school and says he is the only honor student on his Junior Varsity football team.  My youngest grandchild is three years older than Paloma. 

I am an English major. We know who we are.  After two years of mediocre study at Loyola University before it became Loyola Marymount, I was nearly drafted and joined the Air Force.  I had the incredible good fortune of being stationed in England for over three and a half years.  I became a staff sergeant. Afterwards I got to attend UCLA and graduate.

After UCLA I found a job in banking and I found out I liked it.

I stopped drinking at the end of 1983.  I did that the usual way, joining a group of likeminded people who supported each other in learning to live a sober life.  I don’t struggle with alcohol any more, but I don’t take it for granted either.  I don’t drink, it’s one of the principles I live by.  Before 1983 life happened to me and I acted very badly in a number of circumstances.  After 1983 life continued to happen but I was present at all times and whatever I did; I made the best decisions I could at the time and when I’m wrong I try to promptly admit it. 

I joined a mountaineering group and climbed the north face of Mt. San Jacinto, Mount San Gregornio in midwinter and Mount Rainier from the North side.  I became a leader in community development in South Central Los Angeles in the early 90s and participated actively in the effort to rebuild LA after the Civil Insurrection.  I’ve been a volunteer and mentor to a number of young men growing up.  I have a couple of sober alcoholics who claim I’m their sponsor but don’t call me much. 

In 1995 I moved up to the Bay Area.  It was a real dislocation to leave Los Angeles, a city I knew as home for nearly fifty years, but the Bay Area is an incredible place to live.  For many years I felt like a visitor but when I started working for the City of San Francisco I realized I’m here.  This is home.   

In 1999 I quit banking and tried writing for a year.  When I went back to work I became a counselor at San Francisco Juvenile Hall and then a union steward and then a Ranger with California State Parks.  I’ve been married twice and divorced twice.  I have a two year old daughter who is incredible.  I had a heart attack a year and a half ago and I have six stents in my coronary arteries.     

I’m retired.  

Cardiac Risk?

So why did it happen to me?  Could it happen to you?  I don’t know.  I lost my faith in righteous living equals healthy.  Being righteous, at least the way I was, wasn’t effective.  I may have been able to do things differently.   Should I have stuck to a Lipitor regimen 10 or 15 years ago when I first took it?  That might have helped.  Less French fries and hamburgers? Yes, that would have been good too.

I ate a pretty healthy diet, brown rice, a lot more food from the plant kingdom than manufacturing plants, more chicken than beef.  Since my 30s I’ve tried to stay in good condition.  I’ve always been a little overweight, but still in what I thought was good cardiovascular condition.  A week before my heart attack I paddled a kayak across Raccoon Strait against the tide into a headwind for a good hour of strenuous work.  I didn’t feel bad afterwards.   

Here are my numbers, before and after:

                      Date                                     5/2009                            1/2012

                      Blood Pressure                    141/81                            112/79
                      Total Cholesterol                     205                                154
                      Triglycerides                              61                                 97
                      HDL                                           55                                 46
                      LDL                                          138                                 89

The afternoon of the heart attack, May 3, 2010, my blood pressure was 157/89

I quit smoking cigarettes and cigars in 1984.  I went back to smoking cigars in 1999 and smoked cigars off and on until 2008. 

So I probably should not have gone back to cigars.  I should have curbed my enjoyment of hamburgers and French fries.  I probably should have taken cholesterol medication before.  I could have worked on my closet Type A personality, not taken things too seriously, a little more letting things go and meditation. 

I give myself credit, my conditioning was probably the difference between a fatal heart attack and a minor heart attack.  And as one doctor said, “You sure have a talent for making plaque without that much cholesterol.  That’s genetic.”

I had a heart attack at 63, which now days seems way too early.  My good friend in high school Joe Quattropane died of heart attack a year later.  If you smoke or eat poorly, I’d recommend you stop smoking and eat decent food, less fat, more vegetables.  If you’re overweight or out of condition, do something about it.  And if your numbers are bad talk to your doctor. 

It’s been a real shock for me.  I am trying to live more healthily.  I take medicine for my heart, Lisinopril, asprin and simvastatin.  After the heart attack for a year I took Plavix and Metoprolol.  I try to walk vigorously every day for a half hour or more.  

I hope I live a healthy life for another 30 years give or take.  And I hope you do too. 

FRIDAY, MARCH 16, 2012

Have a Heart

I borrowed an image for this poem from Jimmy Santiago Baca’s poem “As Children Know.” 

I used to be a banker

not known for my generosity.

have a heart

sure, of course I do,

don’t I cry at Disney movies?

and then it failed

choked off as it were

clogged from lack of attention

it began to die on me

an infarction

sounds like something in the bowels

a plumbing glitch

was the problem

not enough blood

I had heart

but not enough blood. 

and so I stood there dying

but I didn’t. 

Moment stopped

no tunnel

just a half a minute or so

maybe longer

that I stood dying

clutching my chest

wondering why I couldn’t

breathe. 

And children leave toys

in the sandbox

overnight

abandoned

waiting

the early morning

sun rising

dew drying

And so it’s been

for two years since.

I don’t take my heart

for granted
as I once did

but I don’t trust it

anymore.  

Heart Attack, Months Later

A couple of months ago I was having lunch with my Ranger friend Denis Poole.  Denis and I went through the Academy together.  He is three months younger than I am and as the two old codgers in the class we helped each other get through.  I think Denis is a better Ranger than I am.  I’ve always felt smarter than Denis but he knows it’s not true and so do I.  He is a very good friend and has a much more subtle sense of humor than I do. 

Retirement was the main topic of our wide ranging conversation.  I was retiring shortly after our lunch and Denis is thinking about it.  I shared with Denis my anxiety about having enough income.  I have Social Security, CalPers, and my own funds and I didn’t know how much the net checks were going to be from each of these.  I worried, maybe it wouldn’t be enough, and Denis said I should think about drawing down on the principle of my savings, amortizing it over a 30 year period.  Denis like me was a banker before he became a Ranger and the two of us were familiar with actuarial tables and the concept of stretching money out over the life expectancy of someone.  Denis was right; I don’t realistically expect to live beyond 95 years. 

Toward the end of our lunch, he asked me how my heart was after the heart attack.  How was I doing?  I told him I was OK.  Everything was fine.  He knew I had gone back to full duty as a Ranger three months after the heart attack.  I shared with him I had no problems, nonetheless I was so much more aware of my heart.  Every time I thought about it, I could feel an ache in my chest and I thought about it frequently.  Everything checked out fine, it was just a psychosomatic awareness of the vulnerability I felt around my heart.  I even thought I could feel the stents vibrate or quiver sometimes.  I know I’m OK.  I told him I thought it was just natural to worry about it, no real cause for concern.      

Denis looked at me, shrugged and said, “Well maybe you can amortize it over 20 years.” 

Heart Attack Part II

The story they tell on the island is that after I had my heart attack, I drove the Ayala across Raccoon Strait, dropped Suzette off, and came back with Paloma and then drove myself to the hospital.  The way I heard it later, it sounded stupidly macho.  It’s true I did have a heart attack and it’s true afterwards I drove a 30 ton crew boat back and forth to Tiburon, and it’s true I drove myself to the doctor that afternoon.  In my defense I didn’t know I had had a heart attack.  Later when I knew what happened I just felt really lucky. 

That morning of my heart attack, I took the boat across the strait and with Paloma, my 7 month old daughter,  I came back.  We left the boat at the dock and drove back up to the house.  She had a cold and we were keeping her home from daycare that day.  Going up the stairs to our second floor I felt tired and took it slowly.  I made up my mind to call Kaiser and see someone.  I thought I had pneumonia.  Even after I got my breath back on the boat that morning, breathing wasn’t that easy.  I felt like I had weights on my chest and there wasn’t enough oxygen in the air

I called the advice nurse and she made me an appointment for 3:15 in the afternoon.  I took it easy that day.  I think Paloma and I were both under the weather and rested together.  She didn’t give me a bad time.  She had an appointment to see the pediatrician for Wednesday.  After I called the nurse, I thought maybe I would stack my appointment with hers.  I didn’t feel like making the trek to the mainland that day driving up and down the 101 freeway.  But then I thought about it and her appointment would be at the medical center in Terra Linda and mine was in the downtown San Rafael medical office.  By the time I schlepped between the two I’d be frazzled.  It was probably easier just to go for my appointment the nurse made for me in the afternoon.   

I look back on that day and think how close I came to just not going.  Thank god my heart attack wasn’t as serious as it could have been, I didn’t die.  But who knows if I had stayed home I might have had another heart attack.  I don’t know if I would have survived the second one.     

So I trekked down to the ferry dock, took the ferry to Tiburon, walked to the parking lot and drove to San Rafael all carrying Paloma and a bag of her supplies.  I found a parking space in the basement and went upstairs to wait for my appointment. 

The receptionist offered us a conference room to wait in so Paloma didn’t have to be exposed to whatever was in the waiting room.  It seemed like a parade of Kaiser people came in to see the baby.   Paloma by this time was feeling herself, very charming and very cute. 

We went in to see Dr. Pont, a young woman with long blond hair.  She did a physical exam, listened to my story and then my lungs.  She left the room and came back.  She was very interested to know what I had been doing and asked me if I had been travelling.  She made sure I hadn’t been flying at all or a long time waiting somewhere.  She said I didn’t have pneumonia, my lungs were clear, but she thought I might have had a heart attack. 

Some time ago I had described my heart burn to my doctor then using a clenched fist near my chest.  I had to go for a series of tests after that.  I learned later that a pain described with a clenched fist to the chest is a common symptom of a heart attack.  This time I didn’t need to clench my fist to describe my pain.  I didn’t have any pain.  I just couldn’t breathe.

Dr. Pont said she wanted me to go to the Emergency Room in Terra Linda.  I said I could do that and take Paloma along.  She said, no I should call Suzette, and she would arrange for a ride.   Suzette works 35 miles away in San Lorenzo in the East Bay; in mid-afternoon probably a two hour drive. 

A nurse came in and gave me aspirin and they might have given me nitroglycerin.  We waited, Paloma and I, and maybe I took some more aspirin.  Time passed.  And then I heard a siren.

A nurse came in and said, “Your ride’s here.” 

I spent six hours in the emergency room with a nurse.  Somewhere between the ambulance and my cubicle someone was taking care of Paloma until Suzette arrived.  The nurse kept coming back to me and checking my pain.  Ask me enough times and I could feel something in my chest, tightness or something.  I got nitroglycerin and morphine though the morphine seemed unnecessary and I was mildly disappointed I didn’t even get a high from my medical narcotic.

After hours in the emergency room, the results came back from my blood test and showed I had troponin in my blood.  Troponin is an enzyme produced by dying heart muscle.  It was a very small amount indicating very little damage but it was there.  Results in, they sent me upstairs and I got to go to sleep. 

The next day they told me I would have an angioplasty to see what my arteries looked like.  In the early afternoon I went into surgery at Terra Linda.  From that surgery I was taken directly by ambulance across the Golden Gate Bridge to Kaiser’s Cardiac Unit in San Francisco.  From the ambulance they wheeled me down another hallway.    

Laying on the gurney I looked up at the ceiling.  They were doing some sort of repair work and acoustic tiles were missing with electric wires sticking out.  All along I had been trying to hold on to the normal. No one around me was treating me normally but I wanted to say, it’s me, I’m here.  I’m just a regular guy, not just a cardiac emergency.  I make jokes when I’m nervous.   I told someone that I had expected a long white hallway but I had imagined the ceiling would be in better shape.  I either didn’t get it out very well or that person had no sense of humor.  I was disappointed when I got no reaction. 

I went into surgery, there were a whole group of people there, and another catheter was inserted into my femoral artery.  “You’ll be awake, but don’t worry,” they said.  After what seemed a long time I had a panic attack.  I wanted to get out of there.  I was afraid if I moved I would damage my own heart and the next few minutes were excruciating and then they were done. 

The next day a physical therapist came to help me walk around the ward.  A nurse from the surgery told me I had six stents; I had had 90% blockage in both my right and left coronary arteries.   She gave me a prescription to have filled.  That was it, they were done.  Suzette came, we went to the pharmacy downstairs and walked slowly to her car and went home. 

It was like I had been the center of attention for a lot of very humorless people for two days; humorless but warm, capable and efficient.  Just about the time it had sunk in, that I had had a heart attack and everyone around me had been watching me to keep me alive, I was told to go home.  It was all over.   I was OK. 

Heart Attack?  Even two years later it’s still hard to say the words without a feeling of unreality and gratitude that the heart attack was so minor, the people at Kaiser so good and that I am alive.      

Heart Attack

If I had imagined having a heart attack, it wouldn’t have happened at 5:30 a.m. on a Monday morning on Angel Island.  I wasn’t thinking heart attacks at all, of course.  I had been a Park Ranger for the last 5 years.  I made it through a physically demanding Academy and kept myself in pretty good condition after that.  I wasn’t overweight or much overweight, a few pounds more than the Academy.  Sure I had higher than normal cholesterol, but not too high and a few years before my blood pressure had climbed to 145 or so, but it wasn’t too bad.  I had regular checkups and my nurse practitioner didn’t seem worried about it.  Being a cardiac risk was not part of my self image.  

Angel Island is a special place, maybe not so good for a heart attack.  Getting on and off the island is no easy task and even harder if you’re trying to make a mainland schedule.  The Angel Island Ferry runs on an island schedule and the State boat runs on the island’s time as well.  I liked living on the island, an 800 acre State Park, 25 of us, employees and our families, in the middle of the San Francisco Bay within sight of downtown San Francisco.  When the visitors leave, it is a ghostly Army post closed for over 65 years.  The interior of the island is wonderful California coastal oak and chaparral.  During the summer a few thousand visitors come on the weekends, fewer during the week and off season.  They come late and leave early.  It is a very quiet and isolated place within sight of nearly 7 million people.       

What I don’t like about the island is that going anywhere requires a boat trip across Raccoon Strait followed by a four block walk to the parking lot where we park our cars.  Ferry schedules are based on visitors’ needs and during the winter severely curtailed.  We have two State Park boats, a big 50 foot crew boat and a 5 meter inflatable with a 90 horsepower engine on the back of it.   It had taken me a year with island politics and a difficult learning curve to get to drive the crew boat.  Convincing Suzette to move to the island with her 15 year old son had required that I commit to a 5:30 a.m. run to the mainland every weekday morning to get Arom to school and Suzette to work.

There I was one more time at 5:30 on a Monday morning on Angel Island getting the Ayala ready to go for a run.  I had gone below decks, down a ladder to the engine compartment and switched on the power before firing up the two diesel engines.  I climbed back up and went forward to the pilot house to turn on the electronics.  In the pilot house suddenly I couldn’t breathe.  I bent over trying to get a breath, I rested my right hand against the instrument panel and I tried to will myself to breathe.  I was frozen; I couldn’t even make an effort to breathe.   

The moments tick slowly when you can’t breathe and each tick is a step further from the ordinary.   My lungs wouldn’t work, I couldn’t pull the air in, I stood there waiting for it to be over, hoping it would be over.  I wasn’t panicked, I just couldn’t breathe.  Somewhere in the back of my mind it occurred to me if I didn’t breathe soon, it would be the end of me.  I just needed to take a breath.  I knew whatever was going on was serious.  I had never been like this before, short of breath yes, but not like this.   I just couldn’t breathe.

And then I could.  I took air in like a drowning man.   I was relieved.  Suzette was beside me asking what was wrong.  Finally I was able to say, nothing, I’m OK, I just couldn’t breathe for a moment. 

In the following weeks I thought about how these moments could have been my last in this world, how inconsequential it had seemed, no warning, something as simple as breathing.  I thought about how things had gone on around me; how Suzette, Paloma, the whole world seemed alive.  I was frozen for those few moments between them and nothing.   I couldn’t move, I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t say anything.  I was walled off from everyone and for those few moments time stopped.  And then it started again.    

A Posting

It was my intention to post weekly.  And here it is Monday and I am posting.  I had an essay ready to post, one I wrote on my heart attack that occurred nearly two years ago.  I liked it.  I gave it to Suzette to read.  Suzette  has a degree in English Literature from UC Berkeley or Cal as they call it up here and an MFA from the New School in San Francisco.  Like a musician who can read and write music, she knows what makes good literature and when she performs herself, she writes poems, it is beautiful.  And she’s willing to read what I write and say positive things about it. 

She read my piece; she said she liked it but that it’s too factual, not enough narrative, it doesn’t feel like I’m telling a story.  I have a degree in English Literature from UCLA.  But my degree unlike Suzette’s  was the last step to a course that started when I was in the first reading group in primary school.  For me it was less a degree in Literature than it was a degree in Reading.  I never quite understood threads, arcs, themes, leitmotifs and all that stuff.  I just like reading and I wish I could write. 

My writing doesn’t satisfy me.  It’s not the story telling I enjoy reading, it doesn’t have the artistry I admire. But I think of myself as being good at taking direction.  I’m willing to try something new and see if it works.  I’ve learned a lot of things I didn’t expect to be able to do with that attitude.  So if Suzette is willing to suggest I’m willing to listen though I'm feeling stumped on how to add that sense of narrative to my writing.    

I was trained to write police reports: I saw, he said, this happened, this time, this place, only the facts, no opinion, no conclusions.  I have to admit it didn’t take a lot of effort to train me to be pedestrian, calm, and factual.  It suits me.  It seems like it ought to be good writing, but it isn’t.  Too dry.  What did you think?  How did it feel?  What was going on with you?  Explain this. 

So I’m trying to incorporate these suggestions into my essays.  I’m trying something different, learning a new step, a new skill.   I have the phrase in my head, “ Writers write, good writers revise.”  So I’m revising my essay. 

In the meantime I’ll share something I heard on the radio last Friday.  Garrison Keillor on his radio program Writers Alamanac talked about E.L. Doctorow and said, “E.L. Doctorow once asked about his writing routine, said here’s how it goes.  I’m up at the stroke of 10 or 10:30.  I have breakfast and read the papers and then it’s lunch time.  Then maybe a little nap after lunch, and out to the gym, and before I know it it’s time to have a drink.”   

Daddy at 65

“Your granddaughter is so cute.”  Or sometimes people ask, “Is that your granddaughter or your daughter?”  It’s my daughter.  At age of 65 I find both situations a little uncomfortable.  Early on I decided to be directly honest about it and not let it go.  I don’t want my daughter to ever hear me equivocate on whether she is mine.  I have to admit I’m still a little sensitive to the question.  Yes, I am 65 years old and I have a two year old daughter. 

I think my problem is that my own judgments on elderly daddies were not all that kind.  On the other hand, I have Paloma and she is the gift of my life.  She is the most incredible person I know and I am the luckiest guy in the world to be her Daddy. 

In the 4, 000 year old epic, the goddess tells Gilgamesh:

When the gods created man they allotted to him death, but life they retained in their own keeping. As for you, Gilgamesh, fill your belly with good things; day and night, night and day, dance and be merry, feast and rejoice. Let your clothes be fresh, bathe yourself in water, cherish the little child that holds your hand, and make your wife happy in your embrace; for this too is the lot of man.

I am a fortunate man, though I have to admit one of Paloma’s quirks is she doesn’t like to hold hands.  She strains against it to maintain her freedom.  That’s my daughter.  I do get the same or better feeling with her arms around my neck when she asks to be carried, something she frequently does.  I have been fortunate to feel that love and trust from a small child four times now.  My three sons range in age from 42 to 36 and it was a long time ago with them, but a feeling I still cherish in my heart. 

Back in the sixties I heard the arguments for ZPG, zero population growth, two children is enough for anyone.  Intellectually I agree, but circumstances gave me three sons.  And now I have a daughter.  The feeling I have is this side of embarrassment.  I haven’t acted exactly according to my beliefs, but it wasn’t a conscious decision.  Thank God, I don’t have full control of everything that happens in my life.  Before Paloma I judged older men with small children harshly.  I think children are for young people and I love and enjoy the children of my sons, but I have a daughter. 

I remind myself that Picasso and Chaplin had daughters late in life who have been a blessing on everyone, beautiful gifted children.  I am still judgmental, but my judgments are tempered by the results.  The world is fortunate for the lives of Paloma Picasso and Geraldine Chaplin.  And the world and I are fortunate for the existence of Paloma Ida Duggan.