One day out from home
While dawn rose with lurid color over the flat part of Colorado outside the train windows, I shared breakfast with a Navajo gent exactly my age. He is an artist in a number of media, though he mainly earned his living as a graphic artist. during the course of conversation he explained that he was on his way back to New Mexico to get traditional treatment. He fought in Vietnam, and was exposed to Agent Orange and everything else, which has caused him health problems, more recently back problems, on top of a diagnosis of PTSD. He and his family live in Michigan, where he had been undergoing extensive tests; when an MRI showed nothing wrong with his back, he went home to try the medicine healers.
we talked about that. He says that they have different ways of looking at the human body when they diagnose problems. I asked about the treatment plans, and he said it was a mixture of herbs, singing, and so forth. I wanted to get into the "and so forth" but I didn't want to be obnoxiously nosy. So I let him define the conversation, but I found it interesting that he said he gets more relief from the traditional treatments that he has from the painkillers, etc., from his doctors in Michigan. Especially since his docs cut him off from the pain meds though his back still hurts. Maybe they don't believe him because the MRI showed nothing, but I could tell by the way he sat down and then got up that it is not all in his head with the PTSD nightmares.
It was interesting talking to someone exactly my age with such a completely different background and life. we talked briefly about big events that we both had shared, stemming off from the Vietnam War - which of course I had heard about and protested, but he had been right in the middle of the hell.
we talked about that. He says that they have different ways of looking at the human body when they diagnose problems. I asked about the treatment plans, and he said it was a mixture of herbs, singing, and so forth. I wanted to get into the "and so forth" but I didn't want to be obnoxiously nosy. So I let him define the conversation, but I found it interesting that he said he gets more relief from the traditional treatments that he has from the painkillers, etc., from his doctors in Michigan. Especially since his docs cut him off from the pain meds though his back still hurts. Maybe they don't believe him because the MRI showed nothing, but I could tell by the way he sat down and then got up that it is not all in his head with the PTSD nightmares.
It was interesting talking to someone exactly my age with such a completely different background and life. we talked briefly about big events that we both had shared, stemming off from the Vietnam War - which of course I had heard about and protested, but he had been right in the middle of the hell.