To The Rescue

Yesterday I used some of my VTOP (Volunteer Time Off with Pay) time at the Denver Rescue Mission's warehouse.  I brought a friend, a management consultant from Accenture, and together we packed boxes of canned goods from piles and piles of donated items.

The good:  we put together perhaps a dozen boxes.  I am grateful to my employer.  VTOP is not necessarily common in the corporate world, and if each employee's fully-loaded cost runs $50/hour and each of the 2000+ employees donates the alloted eight hours per year my employer is donating $800,000, a pretty nice chunk of change.

The warehouse acts as a distribution center.  Volunteers sort items into boxes (for example, 48 cans of vegetables) that are loaded onto pallets and then onto trucks and then onto food pantries throughout the Denver metro area.

People donate all kinds of things.  For example, glass jars of pasta sauce, or those cardboard soup containers (just add hot water).  Those items cannot be safely shipped, so they are used in the local kitchens.  Some people donate bottled water.  This is not useful; Denver's water is clean and plentiful and basically free, bottled water can come from anywhere and contain anything; most importantly, water has no nutritional value.

The Rescue Mission uses an automated, though puzzling and isolated, scheduling system.  The web-site presents a customized, Javascript-free form that displays volunteering opportunities and allows folks to register.  The opportunity that interested me showed 18 open slots a month back.  I signed up and indicated a party size of one.  Then a few days before my shift I decided to invite my friend.  I returned to the website and tried to increase my party size to two.  The website rejected my request, informing me the offering was full.  I sent an email to the address on the page asking for special dispensation, which was granted the next day.  When we arrived at the warehouse we were by ourselves.  I wonder what became of the other 17 people?  And, the shift manager had no idea we were coming.

The not-so-good:  I'm not sure how valuable my contribution was.  I helped pack a dozen boxes, perhaps a week's worth of food for a few families.  The warehouse was full of pallets of from-the-factory boxes of food, such as Campbell's soup.  Maybe 10% of the food in the warehouse was from the one-off contributions that folks drop in cans and boxes scattered throughout the metro area.  My friend and I wondered whether our volunteer hours would not be better spent hounding the Campbells and Krafts of the world to donate more food, such food already being uniformly boxed and labeled and ready for distribution.  Or better spent lobbying Congress for larger food stamp benefits, so families can shop for exactly the kind of food they want to eat, when they want to eat it.

And, even if the drop-boxes are worthwhile, my friend and I were eager to apply our professional skills to the problem.  He dabbles in supply-chain management and has colleagues who have been doing nothing but supply-chain fifty hours per week for the last twenty years.  I enjoy wringing efficiencies out of anything.  The packing was complicated.  Vegetables go in this box, but tomatoes go in that box, and tomato _sauce_ goes in a third box, and the 15 ounce cans cannot be mixed with the 25 ounce cans, except for soup, where the 25 ounce cans are loaded on the bottom and are topped by 15 ounce cans.  Beans are separate, and pork and beans are not beans.  Sloppy joe mix is neither.  Could bar-code scanners and gravity-fed chutes streamline the effort?

My Lip

When I was a young man little was known, or at least little was spoken, about the dangers of sun exposure.  We knew that too much exposure meant sunburn and the goal was to stop right before reaching that point.  I remember debating between Coppertone 4 and Coppertone 6 at the CVS.  I do not recall ever seeing sunscreen for ones lips, perhaps it was available.

I mention sun exposure because the sore displayed on my lower lip in the photo above is the result of in-office Mohs surgery I endured three days prior, to remove a squamous-cell carcinoma.  77-year-old Dr. Schleve performed the procedure.  Nice guy.  I have no choice but to trust him and no reason not to.  I mention his age because he offered the information and because he is the oldest practicing doctor I have met.  He could have said "67" and I would have believed that, too.

During the surgery the surgeon removes the tissue that appears cancerous, sends you back to the waiting room, and tests the removed portion.  If those tests show cancer on the edges then you return to the operating chair.  This continues until the tests no longer show cancer; I required the initial and a subsequent sit-down, roughly thirty minutes apart.

I have a low tolerance for pain and blood.  I can and have given blood and that is probably my limit.  I have fainted or nearly fainted three times.  One, when giving blood for the first time.  Two, watching the OB/GYN insert the epidural needle during the birth of my first child.  Three, watching the oral surgeon insert the needle before the removal of my daughter's wisdom teeth.

Recall that Mohs surgery can consist of one or more "sessions" and that I had two.  During each the surgeon used heat to cauterize the blood vessels that were bleeding.  I could hear the sizzle and smell the burning.  Between sessions I sat in the waiting room.  I could hear the office sound system:  a portable boom-box tuned to KOSI 101, which plays only Christmas music (without a DJ) between Thanksgiving and Christmas.  I do not object to Christmas music, but I object to listening to a radio station when the office can subscribe to ad-free internet radio for ten bucks per month.  I think they should be able to manage that expense.

My wife accompanied me because I wanted the company and did not know if I would be feeling well enough to drive (it was borderline).  That I was here at all was her fault.  My lip had been chapping on-and-off for six months, always in that one spot, even during the Summer when the air is moist.  She repeatedly asked me to have a doctor look at it, and I did.

That dermatologist identified the spot on my lip, and two other spots on my face, as possibly basal-cell carcinoma.  Her recommendation, which I accepted, was to freeze them off.  While that diagnosis was ultimately incorrect I find no fault with her.  At the time she said it was not a firm diagnosis, that additional tests would be necessary if the symptoms returned, and there was no risk to the treatment.  So, because of my wife, a stranger was applying liquid nitrogen to my lip.

That took a full week to heal and a few weeks later my lip again started chapping.  I scheduled another appointment, then another with a different office because the original office had a one month wait.  In this second office the dermatologist recommended a biopsy.  That seemed reasonable, so I assented, and he took a chunk out of my lip for that purpose.  So, another week of recovery.  His office called to alert me to the finding of squamous-cell carcinoma and scheduled me with Dr. Schleve.

It is now fifteen days after the surgery.  For pain relief I have been taking ibuprofen:  six, 200mg tablets each day, tapering off but also fluctuating higher.  After three days the pain was reduced to the point that I was able to enjoy Thanksgiving with the first brined turkey I had ever made.  However, a few days later it increased to the point that I was miserable.  It decreased again for a few days, now it is a little worse.  I visisted Dr. Schleve yesterday for a routine follow-up and he said it will be another two weeks, though I recall he originally said a total of three weeks of recovery time.

For most of my adult life I have been pretty diligent about applying sunscreen, though less diligent than my very fair-skinned wife.  I imagine this experience will keep me on the wagon.