Savage Gulf, Fall Creek Falls, and Icy-Hot

I really should post something, since it has been awhile, but there's no big news or story to share. Life is really good right now. Scary good. I say scary good because deep down I'm cynical enough to believe the possibility that if life is this good, something horrific must be right around the corner. Since life is so good at the moment, it must be something biblical, like locust or boils. Neither of those sound like fun.
Anyway, there's no overarching theme to this post. I really enjoyed posting the Colorado pics a few weeks back so I thought I'd put up a few more local ones:
A couple of weeks ago on a post-call day (the best days ever, by the way) I went out to Savage Gulf and spent the afternoon hiking. Savage Gulf is a wilderness area about an hour and a half southeast of town. It is formed by a couple of creeks and rivers flowing off of the Cumberland Plateau and eroding deep canyons (or gulfs, according to the locals). I hiked about eight miles around the rim. It was easy hiking since staying on the rim meant the terrain was relatively flat. You could also hike into the gorge, but hiking nearly 1000 feet in meant having to hike nearly 1000 feet back up, which would have made me sad.
The pic on the right is looking off the rim at the Stone Door entrance into the wilderness below.
On the left is Savage Creek going over the originally named Savage Falls. Since it had been very dry, the waterfall was actually very unsavage.
Finally, last Saturday Kate and I went up to Fall Creek Falls for the afternoon. The picture below is courtesy of her, since her picture turned out better than mine. Supposedly, at 260 feet, that's the tallest waterfall east of the Rocky Mountains, though I've been to a waterfall in North Carolina that made the same claim. If you look closely you can see people cavorting at the base of the falls.
It was a beautiful afternoon. The weather was cool, and the leaves were changing. The only problem was that I had woken up that morning with a sore neck, which I assumed was from just sleeping wrong. However, as the day progressed I started having neck spasms. It was similar to having someone stab you in the shoulder with a blunt screwdriver at random intervals. Fortunately, the next day was a little better, and by Monday I was basically cured. Thanks to Kate for driving and putting up with my whiny spasmness. Thanks to Icy-Hot and Tylenol PM for helping me sleep. By the way, everyone should go out and get an Icy-Hot patch and try it, even if you aren't sore at all. Its wonderful. When you snap the patch to activate the iciness, you just know life is about to be better. Next summer when I go running I'm going to wear one on my forehead just to cool off. Except you have to time it right and rip it off before it goes from icy to hot. Ripping it off hurts, by the way. That's Icy-Hot's one flaw: It is overly sticky. Removing it also removes the top layer of skin.

Another reason I felt I should post is that come Friday I'm off on vacation and will be away for awhile. Its my own personal tour of Places I Once Lived. On Friday its off to Houston for the weekend to visit friends and see some band called U2 in concert on Friday night. A few days later its off to that most fantabulous of cities, New York, for more friends and fun, and perhaps video-racing, which I of course will dominate, in much the same way as every country at one time or another dominates France. In between the two will be a couple of days in glorious New England, specifically the White Mountains of New Hampshire.
Be back in a week or two.

Me and Betty Jo

I got to meet Betty Jo several weeks ago while I was on call. Sometime in the past Betty Jo had a bit of an accident. She either fell and hit her head, or she was hit in the head, or something; I never really found out. However, unfortunately for her, she developed what is called a subdural hematoma. This is basically bleeding inside your skull, which builds up pressure in the brain and causes headaches, then seizures, then possibly death.
Fortunately for Betty Jo, she went to a hospital. She then had an operation where a hole was drilled into her skull and then the blood clot was sucked out. Betty Jo recovered nicely, went home, and felt better, at least for a while.
Then the headaches came back. Nothing that Betty Jo did made the headaches any better. I assume that Betty Jo considered going back to the hospital, but never got a chance to ask her. What I do know, however, is that Betty Jo got herself a wonderful idea.
It is here that I must interject a few facts about Betty Jo. Betty Jo drinks a little bit, anywhere from a dozen to two dozen cans of beer a day. She also smokes a bit of pot. Oh yes, she also seems to have a small problem with crack cocaine. Perhaps this combination of recreational drug use affected her decision-making ability. Again, I didn't get a chance to ask.
A day or two before I met her, Betty Jo got to thinking back about the last time she had such awful headaches, and how she had a little operation, and how that cleared those headaches right up. That was when Betty Jo had this wonderful idea.
Betty Jo, apparently, went to the kitchen, grabbed herself a knife (butter? steak?) and preceded to bore into her own head in an attempt to cure herself from the headaches. I guess that it seemed like a good idea at the time. Maybe, when the surgeon was explaining the previous surgery, he made it sound like a simple task. Amazingly, this attempt did not succeed.
That's how I got to spend some time with her. I say I never got the chance to ask her any questions because by the time I saw her she was having seizures from either the alcohol withdrawal, the raging infection in her head (seems as though she didn't disinfect that knife), or from any new bleeding she might have caused. She was very far from coherent. We fixed Betty Jo up the best we could, however neurologically she was in much the same condition than when we found her.
I don't know what became of Betty Jo, or if she even survived. I don't know how anyone could think I'll bore into my skull with this knife! could ever be a good decision, no matter how drunk/stoned/coked-up you might be. I don't know what kind of desperation might lead to the consumption of 24 beers a day, much less the other drugs. I can't begin to imagine what her home life was like.
I'd like to think that if Betty Jo recovered she realized that something had to change. Maybe there was a reawakening. Maybe she recognized she got a second chance and made good on it. I'd also like to think that maybe I could be a bit more compassionate towards people like Betty Jo. Nobody in that room, including me, saw her as much more than an annoyance, an interruption to an afternoon where we could all be doing something better with our time. We did our job well, and we saw her safely through. The compassion wasn't there, though. It wasn't there when I told this story to friends. It wasn't there when I typed the first few paragraphs of this post. It isn't here now, really, except that the more I think about Betty Jo the less funny the story is and the more sad it becomes. I guess she deserved better, after all. She sure didn't give it to herself. I don't guess I gave it to her, either.