Yesterday mom and dad were over in Hudson, Ohio, visiting some friends, and as they were about to leave, mom slipped and fell and landed on her shoulder. She knew immediately that something was wrong, but they did not want to go to the hospital over there, so dad, who has not driven in several years, had to drive all the way back to Weirton hospital. Devon drove down from Pittsburgh to meet them there, while I drove from Bethany with Landrea (Gerald’s wife and Breyana’s mom) to the hospital. Devon then stayed with mom, Landrea drove mom’s car and dad home, and I stayed and talked to the nurses for a bit before driving home.
At any rate, mom has a radial fracture right below the ball and has to immobilize it for eight weeks and is in excruciating pain. We went to the doctor this morning and they gave her naproxene, which is simply Alleve. Hopefully on Monday when we go to the orthopedic surgeon to see if we are certain there is no surgery needed, they will give her something stronger. She does have a cold therapy unit that my brother brought up.
In other news, decades of financial malfeasance and bad management is leading to an absolute bloodletting at WVU, with multiple programs discontinued including MS and PHD programs in mathematics, the MFA in creative writing, the ENTIRE Foreign Languages Department, 1/3 of the English department, and so on. You will be relieved to learn that no administrators will lose their jobs, and the consulting firm they hired will be paid in full.
So yeah, an R1 university without a math grad program or foreign languages. Interestingly enough, the administration says that they will be looking at addressing all the degree requirements for… foreign languages.
War for Ukraine Day 534: In Some Grieving Heart You’re Forever Eight…
Lapassionara
Gordon Gee?
Bupalos
There’s a straight line between the corporatization and hollowing out of education in the at-risk states and the growth of Trumpism there. This is so destabilizing to civil society in WV.
Spanky
Best wishes to your mom, and that all news will be good news.
On the WVU front, any danger of getting cut loose yerself?
CaseyL
You and your Mom can commiserate over the shared broken-shoulder travails. It’s awful that the doctors aren’t giving her The Good Shit for her pain, but since the opioid crisis we’re back to where we were before opioids: with pain therapy sabotaged by fears of addiction. I do hope the ortho surgeon puts a higher proirity on pain management!
I saw a story about UWV eliminating so many of its programs, but it looks like so far Communications isn’t one of them. IIRC, that’s what you teach (or taught; I’m not sure if you’re still working there).
Yes, Red States hate any education more than is necessary for proles to do as they’re told. I’m sorry to hear WV is tearing its colleges apart, but not surprised.
Yutsano
@Spanky: Cole’s at a private university I believe. But I could be wrong and often have been.
Suzanne
I’m so sorry to hear about your mom. I hope she gets some relief soon.
SuzMom has developed avascular necrosis after her hip surgery in April and is also in terrible pain. She will be getting a hip replacement on 8/22. She ran out of oxycodone today. Mr. Suzanne helped her get a medical marijuana card, which hopefully will arrive in the mail any moment now so I can take her to a dispensary.
Alison Rose
I sure hope they give your mom something stronger. Shoulder and neck pain can be absolutely awful, especially because it’s almost impossible to do anything, including sleeping, without causing it to hurt more.
This isn’t tagged as an OT but I feel like basically every post on this here blog is basically an OT, so: Ari Melber at MSNBC had a report about Jack Smith’s history as a prosector and some of the high profile cases he’s taken on, and he included some footage of Smith giving remarks at a conference in April 2011. I looked it up, and Smith turned 54 this past June, so in the old footage, he’s a couple months shy of 42…and he looks like he’s about 25. Maybe 30. On some dudes, facial hair really makes a difference! But also, it’s quite interesting to hear him, like, talk so much LOL. Thus far in regard to the cases against TIFG, we’ve heard Smith speak for like five minutes total.
Alison Rose
@Yutsano:
I’d nominate this, but I guess it’s too close to the existing tag “Consistently wrong since 2002”.
Redshift
Hope your mom gets some relief and some good treatment soon. Falling in my shoulder was my only serious injury of my adult life – broken collarbone and separated shoulder in my case, and much less painful, but I sympathize.
Betty
Sorry to hear of your Mom’s injury. Hoping she gets some pain relief and heals quickly. It seems as if pretty much all higher education news these days is depressing.
Jackie
Your poor mom! (And rest of the family!) Hopefully she heals quickly without any complications! And, glad you live right there to assist your dad and mom as needed!
PS: Good thing you didn’t bring that puppy home from the shelter! Wouldn’t have been a good time during this situation!
PPS: Can your mom get a medical marijuana card?
japa21
Assuming the football program was also dropped. //
geg6
Good lord. This is worse than the shitshow we’re dealing with. Good to know our administrative malfeasance is less bad than WVU’s.
Tell Mama Cole I’m thinking of her and wondering if she was naked mopping or something. No, don’t tell her the last part.
Suzanne
@CaseyL:
It’s freaking ludicrous. When I was delivering Spawn the Youngest, she was rotated in there and they couldn’t get her to roll over. I ended up with bone bruising from her head being ground into my pelvis for a few hours before she finally moved. Anyway, after the delivery, I was having bone pain, and my OB said that the hospital wouldn’t allow him to write a prescription for anything stronger than ibuprofen while I was there, so he had to have his office do it, and I didn’t get it until I was home. I get that addiction is a problem, but so is, you know, pain.
SiubhanDuinne
Oh, John, I’m so sorry about your mom. I hope she can get the good meds soon. What a bad week for your parents.
Curiously enough, I was just reading your post from January 2010 about your own shoulder surgery.
That really sucks about WVU.
Old School
Get well soon, John’s Mom!
NotMax
You don’t say but presume these are exempt from cutbacks.
Gin & Tonic
@Suzanne: Many years ago I fractured my humerus at Snowbird (Utah.) It was x-rayed and diagnosed at the ski area, but they couldn’t give me any narcotics because I had to drive back to SLC (down Little Cottonwood Canyon.) I was flying home the next day, so couldn’t see a doctor there to get a prescription. Arrived home late, on a Saturday, so couldn’t see anyone then or the next day. By the time I got to an orthopedist it was Monday, but I had to drive my kid to Ithaca the next day, so still no narcotics. By the time I was able to actually get anything, I was so used to the pain it didn’t matter anymore.
Spanky
@japa21: No sign of the football program, but this list shows what’s going, including the BFA in Puppetry! I didn’t know there was such a thing, and now there’s not.
Doc Sardonic
SpaceUnit
I grew up in Pittsburgh and went to WVU for my freshman year before fleeing in terror. It’s the university West Virginia deserves.
In other words it’s a total shit show.
frosty
I’m sorry to hear about your mom – that sounds excruciating.
Good to know WVU administrators and consultants are safe from cutbacks. All of academia would be adrift without their firm and steady guidance. //
BeautifulPlumage
Best wishes for Mom Cole, hoping the cooling unit helps with inflammation & pain.
kindness
John your retirement to AZ can’t happen soon enough.
scav
@frosty: Well, keeping those administrators and consultants occupied in place does reduce the contamination their employment elsewhere would entail. // only ??
Jackie
@kindness: I don’t see him leaving WV while his parents still need him. That’s not him.
marklar
If the hospital has it (and insurance covers it), see if you can request intravenous Tylenol. It has a high level of efficacy, and if you add an opioid you can get away with a much lower dose of the latter, which could decrease the hesitancy for physicians prescribing narcotics.
Mai Naem mobileI
I am sure she needs stronger stuff but has your mom tried ibuprofen instead of the alleve? Alleve doesn’t do crap for me even though it’s supposed to be the “stronger” pain med. Ibuprofen works better for me. As far as WVU, why the fuck would they cut the math masters and PhD programs. If for nothing else you’re at least bringing highly needed math instructors to your school with the grad programs.
Yarrow
So sorry about your mom. I hope they can give her something a bit stronger to help with the pain.
geg6
@Jackie:
Agreed. He may spend several months a year in AZ while the Senior Coles do their snowbird thing. But he’ll still live in WV most of the time. That family is too close to be away from each other for too long.
geg6
@Mai Naem mobileI:
I have the same issue with Alleve. Does absolutely nothing for me plus it gives me stomach issues.
Steeplejack
@geg6:
Opposite here. Aleve is the wonder drug painkiller for me. For the few times a year I take one.
twbrandt
OT: Anti-vax
docquack who claimed the COVID vaccine “magnetizes” people finally has her medical license yanked. FAFO.https://arstechnica.com/health/2023/08/ohio-doc-who-said-vaccines-magnetized-people-loses-medical-license/
different-church-lady
Does a university really need anything but a fundraising department nowadays?
different-church-lady
@twbrandt: Which raises the question: how the heck did she get a medical license to begin with?
Brachiator
Best wishes to Mamma Cole.
The university news is a damn tragedy. Will students have to leave? How does that work?
JaySinWA
So I broke down and requested a Bluesky invite code from their web page, in part because of Adam posting there. I am still not likely to spend a lot of time there. I tend to split time between Mastodon and the site formerly known as twitter.
So are any of you who Bluesky okay with what you have seen? Is the Nazi issue real?
I’m not sure they are sending out invites right now to random requesters, but seem to be giving them to current users to give away. There seems to be a lot of trafficking in invite codes currently, with scamming and spamming on Reddit at least.
JaySinWA
Meanwhile, Ugly news out of Kansas. Seizing the means of production of a local newspaper reporting on local politics and liquor licening.
https://kansasreflector.com/2023/08/11/police-stage-chilling-raid-on-marion-county-newspaper-seizing-computers-records-and-cellphones/
twbrandt
@different-church-lady: an excellent question
Doc Sardonic
Hoping for pain relief and a speedy recovery for your mom.
RevRick
@CaseyL: It’s not just concern about opioids. As age increases, so do extremely adverse reactions to pain meds, especially how it depresses respiration. Not knowing John’s mom’s medical history, we can assume that it’s not because her doctors have a cruel, sadistic streak. When I had my second hip replacement seven years ago, I was prescribed a narcotic for pain. At first, it did the job with no side effects, but then I started having very weird dreams. The last night I took a dose, I thought I was having a scary, bad trip. I might have been in deep trouble if I had cardiac issues.
dmsilev
@different-church-lady: An athletic department as well, surely.
MattF
Had a similar fall a few months ago— fractured humerus. ER prescribed me a week of opioid, stitched up my forehead, then I was on my own. Sling was useless because hand got numb when arm was held in sling. Healed, mostly, in about two weeks, faster than I expected.
ETA: Opioid was hydrocodone.
laura
Jeezus H Peezus, that’s a whole lot. The ice water circulator is so great- there’s not enough superlatives about its benefits and reduction in pain medication. Best wishes for speedy Mother Cole healing. And huzzah for the mighty Cole army- We All Need One in these trying times.
sab
Yikes! That is my neck of the woods. What were they doing there? Okay medical care there except is it in network.? They were older so medicare probably okay. But better to go home to nearby help. Don’t want to be driving to Hudson for months.
Hudson used to be in my youth a very cute Connecticut Western Reserve town ( when Ohio first got settled in the north by Connecticut, Massachusetts and New York westward ho folks.)
Lately it has become a hangout of seriously rich seriously obnoxious Republicans. Town is now filthy rich and totally obnoxious.
Kayla Rudbek
John, I would recommend getting Stimudents for Mom Cole so she can clean between her teeth with one hand. Also, she’s going to want to sleep sitting up, so make sure she has a recliner chair. My mom and my aunt had falls and a broken arm each this year.
sab
@sab: My brother in law from suburban Boston thought Hudson looked just like home ( i.e. New England.)
Ruckus
@SpaceUnit:
No place deserves a university that teaches jack and shit. Of course the world moves forward with practicable reasonable, positive education so any place with the shitty side of the political aisle in power is never going to spend the money and loosen control enough to actually have a practicable, reasonable, positive educational system.
sab
Thunderstorms on in the distance here. Pitmix dog just galloped to the basement. Cats are fine. A couple blinked with the last thunder, but mostly “weather, whatever.”
Ruckus
@different-church-lady:
She did the courses, took the test and bingo, she has a license. Takes effort and time and med school but being smart enough for that does not preclude one from being a political moron.
eclare
I hope your mom feels better soon!
SpaceUnit
@Ruckus:
You’re right. Who the fuck knows what they deserve but WVU is the university that West Virginia wants.
So glad I bailed out of that shit hole.
Llelldorin
Owwwwww!!!!
WVU’s gambit is depressingly familiar — the university I used to teach for played it too. “Only majors X, Y, and Z are profitable, so we should just stop offering all the others!” Except it turns out to be hard to actually recruit students to a university that’s very obviously only a farm for 3 majors.
Worked out so well for my old school that you can find the campus on loopnet.
Llelldorin
How’s the nomadic adjunct market in WV? (Out here in the Bay Area I have a lot of friends who adjunct for 2-3 schools, with seriously impressive filing systems in the back seats of their cars.)
Odie Hugh Manatee
Best wishes for your Mama and I hope they can do something for her pain real soon. Damned addicts, pill pushers and politicians have ruined it for those who really need relief from suffering.
Walker
I read that letter to the mathematics department informing them of the decision (it was posted on /r/math). Talk about patronizing. “Your self-study sucked so we are bringing down the hammer.”
And they want them to replace the MS, PhD programs with an applied math/data science degree when the letter already admits they tried to make these degrees at the undergrad level to mixed success.
Ruckus
@Walker:
The people in charge are not going to send their kids to the public schools or collage in WV. The people in charge want donations and bank accounts that impress. They don’t give 2 fucks about the majority, if it becomes better educated or whatever, They care that their taxes and their supporters taxes are not paying for the common citizen to learn how shitty they are as humans. It doesn’t make their state a better place but it makes their lives better. They are selfish fucks who are looking out for them and their benefactors. The only reason that the world knows how shitty they are is current day communications, such as what we are doing now. The last 30-maybe 40 yrs has seen a huge change from life and what might be called the before time. Some places are always going to be the last to change, every race has a leader, a pack and a bringing up the rear.
Gretchen
Sorry about your mom, John. I have had that fracture twice, and it’s very painful. Fortunately I had it back when they’d give effective drugs for the pain. They hit me up with codeine immediately. Now they’re so afraid of overprescribing that they underprescribe. I couldn’t believe that they sent my daughter home two days after having her abdomen sliced open for a csection with nothing but Tylenol. Not Tylenol/codeine. Just Tylenol.
Cathie from Canada
For a home-remedy painkiller, try extra strength Tylenol and Advil, taken together, every 4 to 6 hours — the combination of these two painkillers is stronger than some opioid painkillers. I have found it works well for my arthritis.
Or if anybody in the family has some codeine cough syrup around, this would also likely be helpful if she takes it with some tylenol.
When my ribs were broken in a car accident, I got Tylenol 3s prescribed (tylenol plus codeine) — my doctor was willing to call in the prescription to my pharmacy without me having to see her, thank heavens. So maybe your mom’s doctor would be willing to do this for her.
Good luck and hope she will recover soon.
Rebel’s Dad
@scav: Quarantine on the Kanawha
Rebel’s Dad
@Mai Naem mobileI: Don’t need higher math to shovel coal!
Rebel’s Dad
@Ruckus: All 50 states, plus Puerto Rico and DC, have “state” universities, usually via land grants but also from colleges like Rutgers becoming the state university. At one point, we actually valued education so much that a flagship university was deemed critical to a state’s survival. Unfortunately, we might be witnessing the demise of that. I can’t see Florida or Texas disbanding their state university systems, but West Virginia or Wyoming, someplace with like 300 students and an anti-intellectual streak a mile wide? In the words of Sarah, Our Lady of Wasilla, “you betcha”. Think of the $$$$$ they’d save!
Once again, blue states will be forced to pick up the slack. Oh, well, let them send their best and brightest to us. It sucks for the country as a whole, but in the long run, blue states like Jersey will be even richer and stronger.
Rebel’s Dad
@Llelldorin: You’d be amazed at how many files can fit on the back of a donkey!
Rebel’s Dad
@Ruckus: And in places like West Virginia, the majority doesn’t care, either. We don’t need no college larnin’.
lowtechcyclist
@different-church-lady:
The men’s football and basketball teams might as well be considered part of the fundraising program. //
More seriously, you’d think that leverage point would have been useful in dealing with big donors, the state government, and the general public: if they’d started off with “we’re in deep shit, if we don’t get a big cash infusion, stat, we’ll have to axe the football team” it’s hard to imagine that wouldn’t have been a very successful bit of extortion.
lowtechcyclist
John, I hope your mom gets pain relief soon, and good treatment for her injuries! And Suzanne, good wishes for Suzmom as well.
@Mai Naem mobileI:
I was wondering the same thing myself. Grad TAs in math are cheap labor for all those intro-level math classes that students in the physical and social sciences need to take. Without any math grad students, how does WVU plan to staff those classes?
Never mind, I know: adjuncts. But it strikes me that there might not be anything like a sufficient supply of those, these days. So Plan B is probably just getting rid of the math requirements for some of those other majors.
MomSense
So sorry to hear about your mom. I hope she gets some relief from the pain.
Freemark
@JaySinWA: Jesus! That is some third world dictatorship shit right there. DOJ needs to get involved with this one.
AnonPhenom
If we could avoid ‘falls’ I like to think we’d all live to be 100.
Start installing the grab bars when you reach 50 & make sure some balance exercises are part of ‘workout’ routine.
Llelldorin
@lowtechcyclist:
And if you stop producing math Ph.D.s, the supply of cheap adjuct labor also vanishes over time. If you stop producing MAs, you also lose instructors for remedial classes, so you end up stretching your math faculty much thinner.
Walker
@lowtechcyclist: The letter to the math department told them that they are to increase class size and all tenured faculty are to move to 3:3 loads (teaching faculty get 4:4 loads). The typical load at an R1 is 2:1. This means they expect the faculty to drop all research and pick up the grad student slack.
Math Guy
Expect pre-calculus courses to be taught in an online self-paced format. One faculty member and a handful of undergrads can run the whole thing.
dr. luba
My mom, who’s almost 91, had a root canal the other day. She was told to take Tylenol for pain. It worked great until the evening, when she was groaning from the pain and unable to sleep.
I was staying with her for a couple of weeks after back surgery, and had a some Norcos, so I gave her one. It killed her pain, she slept well, and the pain has been manageable since.
I don’t understand this–root canal can be quite painful, as I can attest from previous experience, and what is someone to do if, at night, the pain gets to be horrible?
The pendulum has swung too far in the opposite direction, with doctors/dentists being loathe to prescribe any narcotics at all. Do they really think my mom is going to get addicted, at 91, from a couple of pain pills?
Nettoyeur
Foreign languages. The late Senator Bilbo opposed foreign language education, because, as he said, “English was good enough for Jesus Christ, and it’s good enough for me.” In other news, WVU has a good physics dept, but to do physics, you need math, so I guess it’s good bye to all that.
way2blue
John, I hope the healing of your Mom’s fracture isn’t complicated by surgery. Meanwhile, your story reminded me of a time—hiking with friends in the Santa Cruz Mtns—when I slipped on a steep trail. Ouch. When it was time to head home, my spouse asked me to drive. And I said, ‘Um, I think I broke my arm… ‘. Yep. Distal fracture to the radius bone. And so it goes…
pluky
@lowtechcyclist: Get rid of the math requirements then one might as well print the diplomas on toilet paper for all they will be worth.