By RON MALY
Today's all-day rain made it great for the lawns, bad for yard work, tennis, golf and Little League baseball.
Diane, the wife of My Neighbor Al, the Health Nut, was holding an umbrella over her head when she rang my doorbell late this afternoon.
Diane had called me on the phone earlier in the day, wondering if we still had this morning's paper.
"I've got it, but I haven't bothered reading it," I told her. "The Monday paper is a throw-away deal. Wire-service stuff, left-over stories from Sunday, stories from other papers in the state that have already been on the Internet. Pretty sad, really."
"I know," Diane said. "Al, of course, read the paper at Hy-Vee early this morning. We dropped our subscription a year ago. Al mentioned to me that there was obituary in the paper about a woman I knew. If you don't mind, I'll cut it out the paper and mail it with a card to the woman's family."
"Sounds great to me," I said. "Come on over, have a cup of something and get whatever you need out of the paper."
So, when Diane got to the house and began drinking a cup of decaf [she stays away from the Italian Dark Roast that Al craves], she asked if I knew "anything more about that Brubaker guy."
She was referring to Randy Brubaker, the 55-year-old member of the paper's editing staff who died the other day of heart problems.
The sad thing was that Brubaker had survived a heart attack two weeks earlier, and had a stent put in an artery in his heart.
I guess his cardiologist thought that would be enough to keep his heart ticking for a while.
Unfortunately, it wasn't.
In recent days, I've been writing about Brubaker and the lack of a decent health section in the paper at which he was employed.
I've been wondering why the paper doesn't do more in the health section other than stories about bicycling and dieting.
In my estimation, the paper should have more stories dealing with what can go wrong with a person's heart, kidneys, lungs and liver, and how to prevent problems.
The only time the paper writes much about hearts is prior to Valentine's Day.
The editors think that's cute.
They took a tiny step in that direction today by doing a story on high blood pressure and how it influences the heart, but no new ground was broken.
"They're obviously reading the columns you've been writing about the crappy health section," Diane said. "I'm glad you're getting after them."
In answer to Diane's earlier comment wondering if I knew much more about Brubaker's situation now than I did earlier, the answer is I'm still looking for answers.
I mentioned to her that I'd been told some of Brubaker's relatives had heart problems, and at least one person in the family had undergone coronary bypass surgery.
I'd wondered earlier why cardiologists chose not to do open-heart surgery and bypass Brubaker's heart, but I don't know enough about his medical history to draw any conclusions.
Brubaker's death came about four months after the death of his wife, who had fought Type I diabetes and heart problems.
I'd heard that his wife's arteries and veins were too small to permit cardiologists to do bypass surgery on her.
That's a tough one.
Someone named Estela Villanueva-Whitman wrote today's story on page 1 of the health section about blood pressure, and she also authored an even better story on page 3 about stent grafts to treat aortic aneurysms.
Her byline didn't refer to her as a staff writer of the paper. It said the stories were "special to the Register."
Which likely means she's a freelancer or parttimer.
And that's just one of the problems with the health section.
