Guest Post: Fort Myers Beach a paradise lost by Dr. Dave Davis

You may not recall the event that devastated our beach. To be fair, we’ve had more than our share of outside-normal climate events this year, writes Dave Davis

Two Fort Myers business owners embrace in the midst of the wreckage of their small town, devastated by Hurricane Ian less than a year ago. Dave Davis shares his experience, as a part-time resident of the popular vacation destination.

Amy Beth Bennett / Torstar file photo

“Oh, my God,” my wife said, under her breath, not once but dozens of times.

Two weeks ago, we were driving along Fort Myers Beach, roughly nine months after it was hit by hurricane Ian. No, not hit; “hit” implies a glancing blow, a side-swipe; better to say overwhelmed. On our drive, we saw dozens and dozens of homes, virtually every one of them — some in the several million-dollar range, some under a hundred thousand, devastated. Mounds of debris. Many lots cleared entirely, empty of all but the pylons the houses sat on. Restaurants — all gone. Churches, too. Plazas and shops, gone. Many condominiums, some as high as 20 stories, look fine a block away as though residents could step right back into them. Up close, we saw right through them, from the road to the beach; residents wouldn’t be returning any time soon. I stopped and took a picture at the north end of the island, a kind of honky-tonk downtown, previously filled with colourful T-shirt and surf shops, little cafés, ice-cream and pizza places, and a giant pier reaching out into the Gulf. All gone, the gift of hurricane Ian. Tears crept into my eyes, clouding the picture.

We are 35-year owners of a tiny slice of this former paradise, not able to visit it since the hurricane.

You may not recall the event that devastated our beach. To be fair, we’ve had more than our share of outside-normal climate events this year — drought, floods, forest fires, record-breaking temperatures, and Ian — a Category Five hurricane, the third-costliest weather disaster on record (over 100 billion dollars and counting) and the deadliest hurricane to strike Florida since 1935.

On Sept. 28 last year, residents along the Gulf Coast were advised that Ian was headed toward the southwestern reaches of Florida. They had days to watch it as it made its way across the Atlantic from West Africa, striking Cuba among other locations. Some models had Fort Myers Beach, a seven-mile-long island just off the coast, as its target. Many models did not, and many residents decided to ride it out. The upstairs neighbour in our condo was one of them. He video-recorded the landfall of the hurricane as it inundated the entire island, drowning it in seven feet-plus of water, tossing boats and cars like toddlers’ toys, bending the palm trees in two, ripping out foundations and plantings and trees, breaking over seawalls, smashing through windows and walls.

Two weeks’ later and near the end of our holiday, I drive up the island, on my own this time. I notice some things that, overwhelmed initially, we didn’t notice on our first drive. Perhaps my cheerier, post-holiday mood allows me to see them. Construction workers are everywhere. A couple hotels have reopened; another one, brand new, will soon accept customers. Bulldozers have cleared much of the debris — the beach is almost pristine, many houses gone. A handful of food trucks replace the little restaurants and cafés. I see a giant “FOOD PANTRY” sign, marking a huge tent, located where a church once sat. And there’s this: as I drive by a severely damaged house, I notice a woman emerging from her swimming pool, towelling off. A small bulldozer, manned I think by her husband, is clearing the property only feet away from her. She waves and smiles, as though saying, “We’ll get there, just give us time.”

For a second, the pessimist in me thinks she doesn’t know what’s ahead for her, or for that matter, the planet. The optimist in me sees resilience and hope in the wave and the restoration, a symbolic hope in the meaning of nine months. On this day, in this moment, the optimist wins.

Dave Davis is a retired family doc and writer. His novels, A Potters Tale and The Last Immortal have won international awards. His latest, Two Page Tales, cowrote with the Writers in Paradise, is an anthology of short stories. All of them are available on Amazon. Visit drdavedavis.com

via The Hamilton Spectator

Guest Post by Dr. Dave Davis Author of "A Potter's Tale"

Take a gander at the old guy in the mirror ... 

It kind of creeps up on you, doesn’t it? Aging, I mean. Until the arthritis hits, or the dosette starts to fill up, you hardly notice it, writes Dave Davis.

The secret to aging well, to living healthily as long as we can is laughing every day, according to Dave Davis. - Gary Yokoyama,The Hamilton Spectator file photo

The cake was as big as a little kid's toboggan, large enough to hold a long greeting, something like, "Happy Birthday to a Grand Old Man!" with little candy-grams of fireworks, and champagne bubbles on top. There were dozens and dozens of candles, too many to count, enough to warm the room. They certainly warmed your heart. We were in one of Burlington's first modern nursing homes, and the birthday celebrant was a much-loved grand old man, my patient. I'll call him Mr. Andrews.

He was turning 100, as in a hundred years old. Quite a milestone. He was triple my age at the time.

He was a little guy, maybe five-foot-nothing when I got to know him, the burr in his voice telling me he had grown up in Scotland (the wee north he said; the Shetlands, I think). You could almost see him wearing a kilt. I loved talking to him. The day before he joked with me that he had achieved a lifelong dream — to be a "dirty" old man, easily forgiven for off-colour jokes and even behaviour because of his age. He wasn't a dirty old man, not off-colour or inconsiderate of others in the least. Instead, he was one of the nicest, with-it men I've known, without an unkind bone in his body. And funny. His conversation was peppered with phrases that began with, "Have you heard the one about ..." His daughter, then in her late 70s, said, "He laughs every day. That's the secret."

The secret to what?

The secret to aging well, to living healthily as long as we can. That year, I watched a famous geriatrician as she demonstrated the hoped-for lifeline of the elderly — the goal of geriatrics, maybe all medical care. It was a graph, with two axes, the horizontal displaying years of life, and the vertical, which portrayed quality of life and freedom from illness or disability. The goal, she said, was to keep the quality of life line as high as possible, as long as possible, into our 90s or, like Mr. Andrews, even beyond. The evidence is stronger all the time about longevity and maintaining that vertical line: don't smoke; watch your diet, particularly red meat, sugar and salt; and, especially, exercise. Studies vary but the bottom line (pun intended) is get up off your duff. Walk. Don't take the elevator if it's only one or two flights. Leave the car at home when you head to the corner store. Take yoga or tai chi. Get a dog and walk him. Park as far away from the Costco door as you can. Like that.

For sure, there are lots of stories of the old that don't abide by these rules and live to be centurions like Mr. Andrews. You've probably read about some guy who lived to be 150 somewhere in the Ural Mountains. The guy who smoked like, I don't know, a dozen cigars, and knocked back 12 fried eggs and a large pig, all before lunch. Every day. OK, maybe 10 eggs. They're the exception though, and maybe they count years differently in the Urals, who knows?

It kind of creeps up on you, doesn't it? Aging, I mean. Until the arthritis hits, or the dosette starts to fill up, you hardly notice it. Out of the blue (well, kind of) my grandsons are now as tall as their grandma.

And I have other reminders. This summer, I met up with a handful of my former med school classmates, all guys (50 years ago, guys were just about all you got in a med school class; pity). We had a great lunch, one-part reminiscing (remember the surgeon who used to ...), one-part catching up (what ever happened to old Harry?). I enjoyed the lunch; these are awesome guys, friends from The Day. As the meal progressed though, I indulged in a little internal bragging. There they were — older, balder, greyer, heavier — as I was thinking, "Damn, Dave, look how they've aged. You, on the other hand, you're still looking pretty good!" Until, that is, we stood up to leave. I happened to glance in a mirror I hadn't seen when I was sitting down. There, in the mirror that framed all of us, I saw a new guy, standing with my old classmates — an older, grayer, balder, fatter guy — right in the middle of the group. A little stooped. Me. Damn.

Old Mr. Andrews would probably have made a joke about the guy in the mirror.

PS: By the way, I'm pretty sure Mr. A. got to celebrate his 106th birthday, though maybe my memory doesn't resemble reality very much. It happens when you get older.


Dave Davis, MD, is a retired family doc and medical educator. His first novel, "A Potter's Tale," published by Story Merchant Books, Los Angeles, is available on Amazon in Canada, CA and the US. You can visit him at www.drdavedavis.com, or follow him @drauthor24.


Dave Davis, MD, is a retired family doc and medical educator. His first novel, “A Potter’s Tale,” published by Story Merchant Books, Los Angeles, is available on Amazon in Canada, CA and the US. You can visit him at www.drdavedavis.com, or follow him @drauthor24.

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Guest Post: Prevention — the goalie of the health care world by Dr. Dave Davis

My worry is that the current provincial government may reduce health-care costs without consideration for long term, down-the-road consequences

Hospital staff during the 2003 SARS crisis. Dave Davis worries that the current Ontario government could be putting cuts in place that jeopardize our ability to handle the next SARS-like crisis. - NYGH Archives

On the phone, my patient sounded as though her nose was plugged. Nasally. She said, "I've been sneezing, you know, Doctor. Runny nose, sore throat. Coughing a lot. I feel silly calling, but I heard about that poor nurse who died this week."

There was something else in her voice too: worry. The patient's daughter was a nurse, one of many who worked at the hospital where a second outbreak of SARS had claimed a staff member. Her daughter was unaffected, but she, my patient — well, you hear her.

I want to tell you two things about the call. Maybe three. OK, three.

The first: it was 2003, toward the end of the outbreak of Sudden Acute Respiratory Syndrome or SARS. Apart from the killer commute, I loved working in the large University of Toronto teaching clinic, seeing patients, teaching (and learning from) students and residents. I was as sleepless as my patient I think, but for a different reason: I was angry, frustrated that we had to close the clinic. And frightened too, a bit.

I still am. I'll tell you why in a second.

It was surreal: the clinic was closed for weeks, the product of the sinister, infectious, cold-mimicking SARS. Based in outpatient clinics and doctor's offices, most Ontario physicians were tied to their phones, as frustrated as I was. When we did return to work, we were gowned like astronauts, strangers in a strange land, our temperatures recorded outside the building before we were allowed in. SARS was a tragic thing: 40-plus deaths, many seriously harmed. It held many lessons, perhaps best captured by the calm, competent, late Donald Low:

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK92467/

It was also, to a large extent, preventable.

Ontario didn't fare so well with SARS at the outset: our public health and regulatory framework had been seriously damaged by an overly cost-conscious government in the late nineties. In the town of Walkerton, for example, fiscal conservatives had reduced or privatized many inspection services, compromising water safety: seven people died, hundreds became ill. A false economy, a tragic outcome.

And something like SARS could happen again: take MERS for example. Middle East Respiratory Syndrome is a viral illness with a fatality rate of over 30 per cent, especially among the young. Caused by direct physical contact with camel saliva (so, pretty unlikely to affect us), this virus, like many, can morph into an illness spread by sneezing or coughing. That spread would be something to watch (and watch out for), like a wildfire spreading across the globe. Not a probability, but clearly a possibility: from the camel markets of Oman, to the huge nexus of Dubai, one of the world's busiest airports, to every point of the globe.

That brings me to the second thing — anxiety. In 2003, my patient and colleagues had reason for worry: patients made seriously ill from something that started out like a harmless cold; health-care workers and others dying from contact with patients. I remember one death in particular, a family physician who attended our University of Toronto's continuing education events. Like the firemen of 9/11, he was a brave first responder, who, as they say, "had to go back in," to look after his patients.

Anxiety is important, so much so that we teach family doctors to be aware of the one — diagnosis trap: identifying and treating only the biological or medical aspects of a patient's illness may be necessary, but certainly not sufficient for complete patient care. For almost any problem, there's an accompanying (often underlying) emotional component — worry, anxiety, depression. Even a broken arm has psychological and social implications: will the patient be able to work? Will she be able to afford her rent? How, exactly, did the broken arm happen?

Many of us carry that second element with us, silently, often unaddressed, bringing me to the third point. Today, a decade and a half after SARS, my worry is that the current provincial government may reduce health-care costs without consideration for long term, down-the-road consequences, without the awareness of the false economy of Walkerton. SARS speaks to us today as clearly as it did then: prevention, the unsung hero, is not sexy. It's also crucial. It's easily ignored or reduced to denigrating important things like restaurant inspections.

Prevention is the goalie of the health care world.

Let's hope — maybe demand is a better word — that no patient has to worry that a common cold, or any other virus, can kill her.


Dave Davis, MD, is a retired family doc and medical educator. His first novel, "A Potter's Tale," published by Story Merchant Books, Los Angeles, is available on Amazon in Canada, CA and the US. You can visit him at www.drdavedavis.com, or follow him @drauthor24