AncienTrails

Eternal Tru Luv

Lughnasa                               Waning Artemis Moon

Kate’s at work.  Two months almost to the day after her hip surgery she has returned to the Allina Clinic in Coon Rapids for her last four months of full time practice.  I anticipate a successful evening and final four months for her, having seen a remarkable recovery in terms of her day-to-day pain.  The hip is wonderful, the back’s pretty good, the only clinker right now is her bursitis on her left hip.  Still, compared to the awful weeks just prior to her surgery, she’s a different woman and it’s great to see.

Having her home full time, practice retirement, helped us see the possibilities in the next phase of our life together.  We’ll manage our gardens and our orchard and our bees with greater ease, two persons engaged from the start of the growing season.  We’ll have time to go into art galleries, out to lunch, just wander around more.

Other people must find the one who gets them, around whom they can be their authentic selves, I’m glad to say I’m among them.  And that the experience is reciprocal.

Eternal tru luv, as we used to say.

Kate’s Doing Well

Imbolc                                                         Waxing Wild Moon

Joe called tonight.  Another 100 percent on a JSTAR exam.  He’s at 100% for the whole course right now with only  one exam left to go.  He was on  his way over to Jaimie’s place to watch the Olympics.  A member of the women’s luge team lived in Breckenridge and worked out from time to time at the Rec Center where he worked, so he hoped she might be on TV tonight.  Breck had several winter sports athletes as you might expect.

Kate came home tonight in good shape.  A little sore, but she has recovered from her painful Monday.  I’m beginning to think she may be getting more and more benefit from the back surgery.  The possibility of increased relief exists for up to two years post op, so she may be.  I  hope so.

Over the course of the last 8  or 9 years I have listened to Teaching Company classes as I drive back and forth to Minneapolis.  These are college level classes given by professors with excellent credentials and selected for teaching ability.  I’ve listened to a history of China, Rome, Egypt–each separate courses, 48 lectures each.  I’ve listened to courses on linguistics, literature, philosophy.  But, right now, I find myself rebelling at learning anything on the drive.  I want a story, some fiction.  These days I’m lucky enough to have the MIA, the Sierra Club, the novel and the Latin, each of which in its own way keeps the synapses firing, finding new pathways, generally exercising the brain matter.  Doing so on the drive in, right now, feels like too much.

I could have said something else. But, I didn’t

Christmas  Day                             Waxing Moon of Long Nights

Ever say something you wish had not left your mouth?  I do from time to time.  My most recent verbal faux pas came after Kate and I went to the Strickland’s party on Wednesday night.  Kate grew weary after standing for a good bit of the time we spent there and it was obvious to me.  Seeing her that way made me think back over the last two or three weeks about her stamina.  She seemed to have plateaued to me.

Over breakfast I said, “Kate, I’m not sure you’re going to be able to go back to work.”  The minute I said it I wished that I hadn’t.  It’s not my place to decide that for her in the first place.  My aim all along has been to facilitate her recovery in the best way I can.  Giving her that kind of message doesn’t help her be positive.

Tonight over dinner at Osaka she brought it up.  I’d forgotten about it, but it came right back when she mentioned the comment.  I apologized and told her basically what I’ve just said here.  I was concerned for her after that night.

She stewed about it for a couple of days.  It knocked her back a bit and I’m sorry.  She’s worked hard at getting her stamina back.  She’s now up to 35 minutes on the treadmill, up from 5.  She does most of the things she used to do, though we share some of them a bit more now.

What we say has consequences.  At 62 this is a lesson I keep on learning.

Thanksgiving Preparations

Samhain                               Waxing Wolf Moon

Kate’s feeling better with NSAID on board.  Her mood is great and we had fun today sharing the kitchen.

Vikings had an impressive showing against the Seahawks, including a drive and touchdown pass by Tavaris Jackson.  It is more fun to watch a winner than a loser, though I enjoy other teams, too, where I don’t care either way.

Today Kate made a brisket and I made a kale and white bean soup.  Soups, especially vegetable soups, require a lot of fussing and time, perfect for days like Sunday when there’s football on the TV.  We’ve got food made now for the next week, stuff we have ready for the guests we have coming.  Mary and Joseph–how about that–will be here over Thanksgiving weekend.  Annie will be here for Thanksgiving day.

(pic from an exhibition in Vienna MUMOK–Modern Art–titled Bad Painting, Good Art)

Due to Kate’s surgery we’re making ahead some items and buying some already cooked:  chicken gravy, stuffing, turkey, small deserts.  On Tuesday I will make a winter squash (one of ours) and pear soup for Thanksgiving,  on Thanksgiving day a fennel and white bean salad.  We’ll have mashed potatoes made from our own potatoes, our own carrots.

We’ve still got  a lot to learn about how much of various things to grow and various preservation methods, but we’re gaining ground each year.  Now with the fences up next year will find the gardens and the orchard unmolested.  He wrote hopefully.

Domestic Life

Samhain                              Waxing Wolf Moon

Fair warning:  Old folks talk for three paragraphs

8+ hours door to door yesterday wore me out.  A major part of that weariness is my nap habit.  At noon or one Kate and I take an hour or so nap.  That works well for us when we’re home, but if we have to be out and about over that time, it means feeling pretty draggy by the time we get back to the homestead.

The diclofenac (NSAID) Kate began a couple of days ago has begun to take effect. Her pain level has improved and her need for the narcotics has reduced.  She still has substantial pain in the morning that requires a percocet and getting an adequate nap sleep does, too.  The anti-inflammatory aspect of the NSAID acts, we now know, on more than just her back pain but on other sites where arthritis has invaded her joints like her hands.

The degenerative disc disease, which effects the vertebral discs weakening them, creates more bone on bone spots, vertebrae contacting vertebrae.  That, in turn, exacerbates the arthritic disease on those bones.  Not a pretty picture.

Today is a soup and laundry day.  I have a beet soup and a white bean soup with leeks to make.  Also, before Thanksgiving I have to make a squash soup for that meal.  A lot of cooking going on here.  Kate made a cauliflower slow-cooker dish last night that had 9 spices and tasted wonderful.  She’s also making brisket for supper.  All of these dishes have portions greater than 2 so we can freeze or refrigerate leftovers for more meals during the week.

Psst. Hey, Wanna See A Spinal Fusion?

Samhain                                                  Waxing Wolf Moon

After the visit to Schwender, the surgeon,  Kate wanted to go to Byerly’s.    Actually, she wanted to go to Lund’s, but I suggested Byerly’s off Duluth in St. Louis Park since it was on a more direct route home.  Her mood had lifted after we saw the film of her back.

The bone material used to replace the deteriorated disc had begun to heal, “a nice fusion.  Looks really good.”  Also, the titanium screws and rods –$26,000 worth–were well placed and already hard at work.

(this picture shows a lumbar fusion very similar to Kate’s)

Dr. Schwender said the procedure had gone well and produced optimal radiographic indications of its success.  Kate’s current pain relates to swelling and her wide-spread arthritis in other parts of her spinal column, hips and pelvis.  She has been unable to take her NSAID, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory for a couple of months now due to pre-surgical concerns about bleeding and post-surgery concerns about healing, but she can go back to it now.  That means the inflammation around the procedure and in other arthritic sites will decrease, easing perhaps up to 50% of her pain.  I think it might do more.

Full benefit from the fusion may take as long as 2 years to realize.  In view of the current level of pain Kate’’s experiencing, Dr. Schwender signed an extension of her medical leave through February 1st.  He said he saw enough pathology in her spine to justify immediate retirement, but he understood that work itself can be desirable.  This was Doc talking to Doc.

Back home now and pleased with the day so far.  Sheepshead tonight.

Aspects of Our Lives

Samhain                           New (Wolf) Moon

Kate and I had our business meeting.  It involved the always fun annual chore of signing up for benefits with Allina.  This is probably the last time we’ll need to do it.  Even though it’s an overly complex task, it does have significant repercussions throughout the year, so it pays to do it thoughtfully.

After the meeting we began our first (of what we intend to be continuing) weekly menu planning.  This week I chose a red beet soup and a white bean and winter squash soup.  Kate picked a vegetarian slow cooker recipe and the brisket.  Tomorrow we’ll make a grocery list and I’ll go buy the ingredients, then we’ll cook together for a day or half a day.  The grocery list will include fruits, one serving a meal, and ingredients for tabouli, which we both enjoy.  I’ll make the soups and Kate will cook the meat and slow cooker meals.  We’ll add in salad and fruit along the way.

Kate’s recovery seems to have stalled and I don’t know what to make of it.  I’m glad we have an appointment with Dr. Schwender on Thursday morning.  I’m feeling a need–and so is she–for some reassurance about the healing process and the eventual outcome.

Now, I have to make up for the lost hour of sleep last night while I completed my trip through hell.

$100,000 And Counting

Samhain                              Waning Dark Moon

A Saturday:  changing light bulbs, putting up stakes to guide the city snowplows away from our lawn, unpacking the hive box assembly kit, feeding the dogs.  And, of course, a nap.

Kate’s recovery remains on a plateau, her pain still high, her mobility still limited.  She’s not quite 4 weeks out from her procedure, so we cannot yet tell what the result was.

We can tell it was expensive.  Right now the tab as billed by the hospital stands at $100,000 plus.  That’s $100,000 as in 3 times what I made in the best earning years of my brief and glorious career.  That’s $100,000.  In case you haven’t gotten this right the first time:  $100,000.  A significant chunk of this is hardware:  titanium screws, rods and other paraphernalia related directly to the therapeutic objective:  reduce pain by stabilizing a slipped disc.

(pic:  example of titanium screws used in spinal fusion)

I don’t know about you, but I find this shocking.  Sure, if you compare the benefit of a good result for Kate, a significant reduction in the pain that’s been bugging her for over 20 years now, you can ask what’s price?   And of course on a subjective level you’d be right.  Our society however does not work on a subjective assessment alone, yes, as a culture we recognize the value of good health, but we all pay the bill, one way or another.  A $100,000 procedure here, a $100,000 procedure there and pretty soon you’re talking about real money to paraphrase former Illinois Senator Evert Dirksen.

Take this into account, too.  Kate’s was not the only surgical procedure of the day at Abbott-Northwestern.  They have several operating theaters and they go full bore during the day.  Now, not all were as expensive as Kate’s, but let’s say two or three were.  That would be $400,000 a day from 4 procedures.  Do the math.

At one and the same time we need to expand health care so all have medical insurance and we have to figure out some way to reign in runaway costs.  Now.

Garden Crusader

Samhain                               Waning Dark Moon

Welcome to another sunny, warm November day.  These are days I’ve come to expect from October, but, as Paul Douglas often says, nature tries to balance, so here we are close to Armistice Day with a 60 degree and bright day about to unfold.  That means time to finish what I hope will be the last Rigel barrier of the season, extending a wire across the top of our wooden orchard fencing to make it really, really hard for her to get a purchase.

Kate’s lying low for the next few days, taking care of that not yet healed back.  A wise decision on her part.  She’s most at risk just as she begins to feel better, chasing down dogs, picking up the mail down our sloped driveway, loading and unloading the dishwasher, making Danish pancakes.  These are all part of the routine of a normal  life, not important, perhaps even a bit annoying on a daily basis, until you cannot do them at all, then they loom large as important, even critical parts of identity.

A shout out here to Vicki Nowicki.  I met Vicki at the annual Seed Saver’s Exchange conference in July.  I ate dinner with Vicki and her husband.  We talked about permaculture, Celtic holidays, the odditys of American landscape preferences and the importance of becoming native to a place.   Vicki told me she’d won a Garden Crusader award from Gardener’s Supply Company.  The notice came today in a e-mail from them.  I’ve excerpted a bit from the interview with her.

When we spoke, and as I read this, I found myself speaking when she talked.  We were in synch.  She also has a Liberty Garden project that I admire.

2009 Garden Crusader Vicki Nowicki

Vicki’s life work has been to help people slow down, learn about the land they live on and take better care of it. “What I’ve been trying to do for 30 years is to glorify the place where you live,” she said. “I want to use food gardens to nail people down to their place. A garden helps to reveal the nature of your site and bonds you to the land,” she said. “When you have a garden instead of a lawn, you are now producing something, not just consuming at the maw.”

Liberty Gardens

Her newest project pulls together everything she knows and believes about gardening. It is a website called libertygardens.com. The site will include tutorials and garden journals and will be a resource for anyone interested in gardening.

Here is how she describes it:

“It’s for the 21st century and it’s about growing food at home in order to make it a home. Our lives will change and our world will change when we start to plant food gardens at home. It’s a simple act that each person can choose to do at any time without a new law being passed, or a feasibility study being run or a stimulus package being doled out. But talk about a shovel-ready project! If our land is worth caring about and if our families are worth caring about, we can each choose to create the food supply that we have been asking for. We have the liberty to choose what to grow and how to grow it. People have always done it.”

And with Vicki Nowicki’s help, more and more people will be joining in, and doing it too.

So Many Fences, So Many Gates

Samhain                      Waning Dark Moon

Leaving our truck gate open, the lawn mower guys let loose all five of our dogs, so Kate had to go outside and with the aid of our neighbor Pam, corral them.  The whippets responded quickly and came home, while Vega and Rigel, the wonder dogs, pretended to wonder why they should do the same.  When I got home, Kate was in bed, worn out from more walking than she’d done in the last week.  She’d already over done it this past week and felt the results, this put her over the top.  Ouch.

Ironic, of course, since we have the orchard fenced, the vegetable garden fenced, an electric fence around the chain link that encloses our back yard and woods, but we have no protection against human negligence.  On top of that, we paid these guys to be here. Geez.

Joseph reports to Robbins Air Force Base tomorrow.  You might think he would pick up the last four months of his training beginning some day soon, but you would be wrong. Instead he will go on casual time, a temporary worker, useful, but unfocused, wandering from job to job until April.  April.

(JSTAR is the jet in the middle)

In April he begins his flight training, taking his scope skills, learned at Tyndall AFB outside Panama City, into the air aboard a JSTAR plane.  The JSTAR is a joint command aircraft, carrying Air Force and Army personnel, tracking both ground and air assets in a combat zone, allowing for co-ordination with troops fighting in either Iraq or Afghanistan.  These joint commands may represent the future military as Defense Secretary Gates attempts to tone down inter-service rivalry.

This week Joseph has taken to the task of home ownership, applying skills he learned as a building maintenance supervisor at the Breckenridge, Colorado recreation center.  He had a list of things he wanted to get done before going back to work.  He also asked me for a check list of annual maintenance needs for a home.  He’s 28.  Let me see, when did I tumble to this kind of rational approach to a home?  Hmmm.  Never.  Maybe I still have time to learn from Joseph.