“I’m late! I’m late!
For a very important date!
No time to say, “Hello,” goodbye!
I’m late!”
And that, dear friend, is not Lewis Carroll’s writing but rather songwriter Bill Thompson’s song for Disney’s 1951 movie. Disney, back in my childhood, had the ability to make stories stick in the brain – they even replaced the source material oft-times in our memories. Will the Disney movies of today hang around in my grandkids’ memories so long? I doubt it, but let’s check back on that in 50, 60, years.
And “yes,” if you’re thinking I have started another blog sometime in the past with that text. While I don’t wish to be repetitive, it fits today. This note from me to you was due two weeks ago, but instead of being disciplined and getting it done, I chose to go to the hospital (once again) and let the docs remove about 1/4th of my left kidney in a new and exciting way for me to get cut up.
When asked (no one ever has except my hopeful but clueless kids) if I have a vacation home somewhere, I plan to respond, “No, but my surgeon has a nice one I paid for. Like Joe Walsh, I’ve never been there, but they tell me it’s nice.”
Good news on the biopsy – yeah, it was a malignant tumor but not one that typically spreads, and the margins were clear.
It was as good as it gets, considering I had to go through the process. So not to worry, I’m here and back in the saddle watching the insanity that is tariffs and trade wars.
A quick word for reassurance: don’t stress over the market.
We are long-term investors, remember? We planned for markets, good and bad, and this, too, shall pass. A number of years back, when a different regime was in place, they wouldn’t let me say, “This too shall pass” because it was “promissory.” I am nothing if not recalcitrant, so here I try once again. I fully acknowledge that I nor anyone else can promise what the future will bring, but I am confident in my assurance that whatever is going on today will pass and a different state of affairs will arise. What that “state of affairs might be” is unknown, but we do the best we can with the knowledge we have and march on.
As to not knowing what the future brings, I told my kids on or about January 1st of this year that one of my New Year’s resolutions was to stay out of the hospital and to not have any more surgeries this year (after two last year). Well, that dog has flown the coop.
I counted last night as best I could, and I came up with a total of 14 surgeries I’ve had since 2004, more than 14 if you count surgeries on wives 1 & 2 – those were a different sort of pain.
Here’s hoping they don’t read this and find unintended insult, but I believe I’m fairly safe…they had/have more than enough of my wit in real-time without seeking out more in print. Also, thanks be to Providence for health insurance. Sometimes, even a so-so plan is a great one to have. I’m not so in love with homeowners’ insurance – mine’s up 25.7% over last year. Are we still saying that inflation is transitory?
But lest you be alarmed to hear I’ve been under the knife and might be thinking, “Oh my, is he going to die on us? Do we need to start looking for another financial advisor in case LB kicks the bucket?”
JUST STOP THAT RIGHT NOW!
Do you think I went through the pain and agony of 14 surgeries so you could kick me to the curb? I did not. Besides, if you leave me, it will certainly kill me, and then you would be (hopefully) burdened mercilessly for the rest of your life with nearly unbearable guilt.
Another note that is probably interesting to me alone is that in the first twenty-four hours after surgery, when they were still giving me intravenous Dilaudid, I could relax and know that it was working when I observed the smoke detector on the ceiling starting to move on its own power. It is odd to me that when you have pain, it is often hard to tell when the pain passes. “Has the pain gone and I’m just remembering the feeling and holding onto it, or is it still doing its devilish work?” Best to take the pill with confidence and move on as best you can.
Suggestion for you: help yourself to this trick to tell if the painkillers are working, but don’t share it with any medical professionals in the room. They will think you are nuts and then start dialing down the pain meds. This is not a happy occasion when they start dialing back too soon. Been there, probably about 35% of those 14 surgeries, but who’s counting? Oh yeah, me.
I do have a voodoo doll of a nurse from last August that has about 247 pins stuck in it. She said, “You need to try to cope with the pain because we don’t want you to become dependent on the opioids.”
“Lady, they wheeled me out of the OR 4 HOURS AGO! Send in the charge nurse.”
Speaking of opioids and their addictive tendencies, you can scratch that worry off your list for me, too.
I love the “make the pain” go away drugs after somebody has stabbed holes in me and turned some of my innards into display pieces in Dr. Frankenstein’s (it’s Frănk-uhn-steen!) labs. But I don’t like ’em after that. They make my head fuzzy and my digestive pipe inert. Neither of these is a happy condition, and spare me the comparisons.
After I got home from the hospital 10 days ago, I have taken only one Percocet. I recently told my daughter that I was grateful I did not have the addictive gene that makes these medicines so dangerous. She replied, “Dad, go into the kitchen and eat one chocolate chip cookie.” A good dose of reality, that.
In other humbling news, some weeks before, and unrelated to the hospital stay, I was feeling down. My wife came upstairs and asked me how I was feeling. “Like a big, fat loser.” “You are no such thing,” she replied. “Okay, short fat loser.” After the perfect amount of silence, she quietly said, “You forgot bald.”
Proud of her, I was.
So now that I have taken you on a road to nowhere, let’s get out the GPS and see where we are.
I’m going with:
Be it markets, health concerns, dark clouds or even tragedies, take the pill for the acute pain and then start moving forward. Move fast enough to leave the pain behind. Today will, eventually, become tomorrow. One might even say, “This, too, shall pass.”
PS: This month’s word is bolus.
As in: To provide financial relief after COVID, the administration asked for an across-the-board bolus for the American people. My brother wrote something like that in a message to me. Surely, he did think I would have a clue what he was talking about.
May 2025
The opinions voiced in this material are for general information only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual. Economic forecasts set forth may not develop as predicted and there can be no guarantee that strategies promoted will be successful.
