April 2026 A Criminal Waste of Space - Retired Justice Contracts Dread Disease

by Justice William W. Bedsworth

Omigod, I’ve got scurvy!

And give me an eye patch and a sword while you’re at it. I thought scurvy died out with the pirates, but according to the internet, it’s been lurking out there, just waiting to pounce on me.

Let me explain.¹

Let’s start with the MCLE portion of today’s column: It turns out the longer you live, the older you get, the more skills you lose, the more likely you are to develop sleep apnea. That’s right; even the skill you thought you had perfected can desert you.

And sure enough: I’ve been diagnosed with sleep apnea.

This was no great surprise, I guess. After seven major surgeries and some very aggressive arthritis, my body is pretty much held together with chewing gum and chicken wire.

We’ve more or less reached the Murphy’s Law, “Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong” point—except for the fact that there’s very little organic room left in me for new problems. My body parts have been so thoroughly scrutinized, medicated, altered, and replaced by the medical profession that there is very little unguarded acreage left for new disease processes.

Sleep apnea kind of snuck in past the guards. Like a thief in the night. In fact, just like a thief in the night. While I was sleeping.

The good news is that I don’t need a CPAP device. I’m about up-to-here with all the petty indignities of the aging process, and I was not about to add that to them. ²

They were able to address my sleep apnea with a mouthpiece device and a weight loss drug. Here’s the first MCLE portion of the column. You can have sleep apnea without snoring, and it can sometimes be addressed without a CPAP.

MCLE in this case stands for Mandatory Continuing Life Education, which is much more important than the other kind and requires more effort. You can lose your license if you neglect the State Bar kind; you can lose a lot more if you neglect the life kind.

So anyway, they put me on Zepbound for weight loss. Worked like a charm. My doctor was pleased; I was ecstatic. Until this morning, when I read that, “Although there is no evidence that GLP-1 drugs directly cause scurvy, a potential indirect pathway exists.”

My weight loss drug might have given me scurvy? How does that work? How in the world does that work? How do you get from the Twenty-First Century to galleons and buried treasure?

Scurvy! What’s next? A peg-leg and a tri-cornered hat? Am I gonna start yelling, “Avast, ye scurvy dawg,” instead of “You kids get off my lawn!”?³

Because it’s clear I am getting it. That “indirect pathway” led straight to me!

“Indirect pathway.” Have you ever heard a medical term that sounded more like a legal term? “No, your honor, it’s not but/for causation. It’s not direct causation of any kind yet recognized in the legal literature. It’s more like an indirect pathway. It’s more like you’re going from Santa Ana to Denver by way of Saskatoon.”

Well, I haven’t been to Saskatoon for years, so I was a little dubious. The whole “indirect pathway” from a weight-loss drug to a disease of seventeenth century sailors seemed like a stretch.

But I looked it up on the intertubes,⁴ and here’s what they said “It takes at least a month . . . for scurvy to develop. Symptoms can include irritability, fatigue, weakness, and joint pain in the early stages.”⁵

I’ve got all of those!

Fatigue? I’m taking naps. Yeah, I’m 78, but I wasn’t taking naps two years ago when I was on the bench.⁶

Weakness? I’m using multiple grocery bags instead of just filling one all the way to the top. And I’m definitely weaker than I was when this magazine began publishing me.⁷

Joint pain? Man, I’m the king of joint pain. My shoulders complain more than an Angels fan looking at the Dodgers roster.⁸ When I bend over to pick up the cats’ water dish, my knees can be heard in three neighboring counties.

The only symptom I don’t have is irritability.

Oops, check that. Kelly tells me I am irritable. She says I make Captain Hook look like Tinkerbell on the Pirate Irritability Scale.

Wonderful. Just what I needed, a pirate joke. Jeez, she’s been irritating lately.

So that pretty much cements it, right? I’ve got all four of the early warning symptoms. The Grand Slam of Scurvy.

This is what happens when you start looking up symptoms or disease processes on the internet. You start out with a runny nose and end up at death’s door in Saskatoon.

So if you’re taking a weight loss drug, start throwing down the orange juice. The vodka is optional, but you need the orange juice. Especially if your spouse tells you you’ve been irritable lately.

I’m really sorry to be laying this on you. I’m well aware that those of you unfamiliar with my column probably thought you were going to find humor here.

Instead, I’ve merely added to the number of boogeymen hiding under your bed. But trust me, you’re better off contemplating your chances of getting scurvy than contemplating the real world right now.

So enjoy this short interlude. Then make a doctor’s appointment for whatever non-scurvy symptom you’ve been denying. You don’t get the MCLifeE credit for reading this column if you don’t.

Then get back to fighting to protect the rule of law. We need you healthy for that.

BEDS NOTES

1. You knew I’d have to explain, right? I mean, they can’t just fill this space with my picture (although that might get a laugh). Words are required.
2. He said. As if he’d ever disregarded medical advice in his life.
3. Which, come to think of it, sounds like an improvement.
4. I mean, that’s where you go if you want medical information—or misinformation—right? The internet: Repository of every idea—good, bad, and indifferent—that’s ever been thought up by anybody—sober or drunk as a skunk—anywhere, anytime, ever.
5. You don’t want to hear about the later stages.
6. I’ll pause here so you can insert the snide remark of your choosing.
7. That would be forty-five years ago. The only other thing I’ve done consistently for forty-five years is eat things that steered me toward Zepbound.
8. You talk about pain . . . .

William W. Bedsworth was an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal until his retirement in October 2024. He's written this column for over forty years, largely just to get it out of his system. A Criminal Waste of Space won Best Column in California in 2019 from the California Newspaper Publishers Association (CNPA). His last book, Lawyers, Gubs, and Monkeys, can be obtained through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Vandeplas Publishing. He can be contacted at heybeds@outlook.com.