Four months ago I slipped in the kitchen and banged the back of my head on the floor, producing a subdural hematoma.. Thus began a saga that led me to the emergency room at UNC hospitals, and put me on a ventilator for five days. At one point the neurological team treating me were ready to give up, and were only dissuaded by the intervention of my son, Tobias and my doctor, Thomas Keyserling.
Now, three months later, I am much improved, although consigned to a wheel chair [as much by my Parkinson's as by the effects of the fall.]
There is one small problem: I failed my swallow test. As a consequence, I run the risk of pneumonia in my lungs if I eat or drink anything. Hence I receive all my food through a tube in my stomach. I have not eaten or drunk anything in three months. Sigh.
I have a good deal to say about one thing and another. But it will take time. I hope you amused yourself in my absence.
41 comments:
What a lovely thing to see as I open my browser for the first time today! Just yesterday I happened to read of “an important paper by Robert Paul Wolff” in Jonathan Bennett’s Kant’s Dialectic. The superstitious side of me is desperately hoping these are signs of more good to come in the next, oh, 24 days or so. Here’s hoping they prove worth sticking around for! ;)
It’s just so good to see you back here!
It is great to see your post here. I'm glad your doctors didn't give up.
It is great that you're back. We were starting to worry!
It's wonderful to have you back.
Extremely happy to hear you doing and feeling better. Wishing you all the best!
"Ditto", as Patrick Swayze's character said many times in the movie "Ghost"
This is welcome! In mid-August a friend (95 y.o.) suffered a similar injury and didn't make it. Hopefully your recovery augurs the same for the Republic.
The world was a lonelier place without RPW. I only checked in occasionally, mostly just to make sure that the universe was continuing as always with Dr. Mulvaney lobbing an occasional pseudo-insult my way. Four months is but a moment in real life, but an eternity in internet-time, which I mostly passed in a foxhole ducking the Harris-is-a-Joyful-Warrior memes whizzing over my head. The only other internet thingies I can remember of the past four months of the internet is the powerful artistic re-working of the presidential 'debate' by 'The Kiffness', and the recent piece by Justin Smith-Ruiu on why one should vote for Harris, which I link here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BrCvZmSnKA and https://www.the-hinternet.com/p/kamala-harris-for-president
welcome back! and sorry to read you still have some problems--that unable to eat/drink sounds dreadful. Best wishes.
Professor Wolff. There's no reason you should remember me but I was one of your students at Columbia right before you went to UMass. I just ran across Tobias's Facebook page and was very sorry to hear about everything you've been dealing with, but happy at the recent good news. Best wishes. Tom White
Echoing the above sentiments.
Very glad to read this. Best wishes for a speedy recovery.
He’s baaaack! And very glad we all are too.
Great news indeed.
Best wishes for continued recovery; so glad to have you back!
Welcome back Professor Wolff! Wishing you a speedy recovery!
I am so glad you are alright. I have been worried! Feeding tubes--while not aesthetically pleasing in the least--are an invention for which I have been grateful more than a few times. May you make a steady and long-term recovery. You have been missed!
Great to hear from you again. Looking forward to reading what you have to say about what's going in society.
Best wishes Professor Wolff. I am really glad that you are alive and functioning, though the stomach tube and the wheelchair sound like a bitch. You have an eager audience for your opinions on this blog but don't knock yourself out trying to cater to us. Your health should be your priority. So only opine it helps.
The last should be 'only opine IF it helps'.
Dear Professor,
It's very good to read from you. Good news in a crazy world.
So glad to hear that you're back. Wishing you all the best.
So glad to see you back online! Here's hoping to get to eat real food again before long!
Well, I'm a monkey's uncle! YOU'RE BACK!! Congratulations and I hope you can enjoy a delicious dinner, normally - soon!!!!
So glad to hear from you! Thank you for touching base
Hurrah! I knew you’d pull through! For YEARS I have been touting my pet theory re the health benefits of pure political hatred (much to the horror of those of my friends and family who subscribe to the soggily liberal consensus gentium). Simply put: hating keeps you alive, while being NICE (as we’re constantly advised to do) will give you headaches, piles, cancer, or worse. So here’s to the one thing we can thank Donald Trump for: keeping RPW alive and kicking!
I'm happy to see you back, Professor Wolff. Now I wish for you the enjoyment of being able to savor real mouth-pleasing food. I look forward to your resumption of wisdom about life.
Happy to see you back; you mean so much to us!
Happy to see you back and I hope you start to feel better - I've missed your posts!
Very glad you’re back. I’ve missed your blog, from which I’ve learnt so much over the years and enjoyed thoroughly to boot
I am sure that the esteemed Professor Wolff is both angry (I would not say hate-driven) and nice....
David Zimmerman, Agreed. Martin Luther King was angry, but not driven by hatred. I'd say the same of Professor Wolff.
The very little musing I've done about a possible connection of love--or--hatred and longevity has mostly been motivated by trying to understand the great resonance of Blind Lemon Jefferson's 'See That My Grave is Kept Clean'. What is it about last wishes--what love-or-hatred do they articulate?-- and that one in particular? Alexander Cockburn was of course the great recent advocate of joyous political hatred, but he was not long-lived by modern standards. I knew well an 89-year-old woman who died in 2017; her only (last) wish was to see Hillary Clinton become president, and likewise know one now who only wishes to live to see Harris become president. I gather that the current wisdom says the best bet for longevity is to be a shepherd who eats a Mediterranean diet and/or have lots of close friends and family, especially younger ones. RPW shows the way: if you, for example, hate apartheid, then lecture in South Africa and start a scholarship fund.
What a relief to see you back online, Professor! Some of the news we got early in the summer had us really worried. I am so glad you were able to pull through. And I don't think there could be any more convincing proof that the Flying Spaghetti monster really exists and answered my prayers!
Btw how is Susie doing?
It was a joy to see your post, Professor Wolff. Tiggers are not to be repressed! I look forward to hearing what you've been thinking about.
Re: love and hate, MLK is a singularly unillustrative example. As a preacher man, he was obliged by the employee handbook (a/k/a the New Testament) to pretend, on pain of termination of employment, that certain things (like proper, fitting, and appropriate HATRED) do not exist.
Anyway, I said this is just a pet theory. Speaking for myself, I HATE Trump, Vance, and the rest of that crew (for reasons which I’ll assume are obvious), while I’m merely angry with the Dems (ditto). In lieu of the NSF funding to allow me to turn my pet theory into academic research, I await RPW’s thoughts on the matter.
Great news. Best wishes.
I am so relieved to read your recovery is progressing. I know how difficult is to recover from this type of injury from my years in human services. The good new on the political front is the Harris campaign is beating up on Trump/Vance and though the polls are tight, I expect she will win big.
There is a certain symmetry in pseudo-analysis being met with a pseudo-insult, no?
Dr. Mulvaney, My dear fellow, don't you have anything better to do than to attempt to insult people on the internet? Here, as mostly elsewhere, I don't have a clue as to what you're trying to say. I'm not aware of having attempted here to analyze anything; rather, in a manner inspired by Wittgenstein and Walter Benjamin, I've assembled a little constellation of remarks around the idea of a political hatred as being good or bad for one's longevity.--You don't care for it? Okay, whatever. I've done what I can for your spiritual health by recommending a good dose of Fela Kuti.-- A pseudo-insult, by contrast, is someone attempting to insult another person, but the utterance is so vague, unspecific, unexplicated, inarticulate, wayward, etc. that it has something of the form and tone of an insult, but nothing of the determinate content. This is the last time I'll respond to any of your silly, petulant utterances, at least until you come to realize that I'm right about everything. If I were to attempt an insult of you, which I certainly wouldn't, it would be in the form of a song like this (with your vast knowledge of music, I take it that you know the tune):
Hi Diddly Dee, Mulvaney insults me!
He wakes all cranky from his nap.
Looks at The Stone, and thinks, “Oh, snap!
That dastardly Rapko won’t shut his yap.
I’ll add a dollop of my usual crap.”
Hi Diddly Dee, Mulvaney insults me!
Mulvaney’s the dwarf among commentators tall.
Over every discussion he casts a pall.
He’s got a Phd? Well that’s about all.
He doesn’t know his ass from a hole in the wall.
Hi Diddly Dee, Mulvaney insults me!
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