Key to the Highway    PLEASE READ;  no shows ‘til September                                                   

Since your health is more important than my trivial little show, I am starting with something I heard about recently in hopes you will all read it.  I very much trust the CBS news and they had a New Hampshire ER doctor who had just served with the New York hospitals and came back with a conclusion I had not thought of.  By the time anyone admitted themselves to the hospital in a condition serious enough to be put on a ventilator, their blood oxygen content was already down to 50% (normal being 94-100%), a level comparable to being on top of Mount Everest.  It was only then that they had started to feel difficulty in breathing and, had they known their O2 level was declining below the normal level, they might have been able to act more quickly.  There is an inexpensive tool (about $50) that will easily inform you: a pulse oximeter, so named because it registers both your pulse rate and oxygen level.

If you have ever spent any time in the hospital, you likely had a device clamped onto one of your finger ends (they open the jaws and close it on the last knuckle or two) and that is the oximeter, a simple and totally painless procedure.  I believe it works through infrared readings and definitely does not penetrate the skin so it is good for your entire household.  At the end of the doctor’s approximately five minute dissertation, the news anchor said they were available at your drugstore but that is in error.  I went to Walgreen’s and they were out and the clerk told me customers had said they had been to several other drug stores with the same result.

I had already been online but figured Walgreens would carry a quality product as opposed to choosing from several brands offered on Amazon, but after calling back the next day I was informed they had been out for more than a month.  I immediately went back to Amazon and ordered one for myself and one for my son’s household, even paying an extra $40 to expedite shipment to about one month’s delivery time as opposed to about two months otherwise; still, it only came to $111 total, about what two would cost at a drug store.  I will continue to call Walgreens every Wednesday and Friday around noon (their delivery days) until mine come in order to get it as early as possible.

I am not paranoid about the Coronavirus but am prepared to take prudent steps to avoid or diminish it.  This is certainly not as good as actually getting tested but it might at least set your mind at rest to a degree.  Knowledge is power!  Hopefully you guys are already aware of all this but I strongly recommend you at least consider purchasing one as quickly as possible.  After all, as I’ve said recently, I can’t afford to lose any of my listeners.

And regarding my show, I doubt that KSCU will open its studio before the Summer semester and, since it closes on Sundays at 7PM those months, unless I do a fill in to help the Blues department  I will not be back on the air until September, hopefully between 7PM and midnight two Sundays a month.  Stay safe and please make the best of your situation.