Category Archives: Health

Seeing the Surgeon

January 13, 2017 Charles 2 Comments

Winter Cold Moon

Final visit to my surgeon today. X-rays of the new knee will be taken. This whole process has been much harder than I imagined, though I admit my imagination didn’t have much information.

Was it worth it? The next few weeks will give a certain answer. Going back to the decision to have the surgery answers this question from another perspective. The only direction for my arthritic knee, 90% of its cartilage gone and bone spurs asserting themselves, was to get worse. Since it made hiking and working out difficult, the future for an active life did not look positive. In that regard even pain cessation and stabilization of the joint would be success. I’m hoping, and seeing, that the end result will be more, letting me back into workouts and hikes. So, unless something unforeseen asserts itself, the answer will be yes, it was worth it.

Would I recommend it? Not without making the recovery process clear. A month plus a little is a long time to be medicated and in pain. Healing, too, requires physical therapy which exacerbates, initially and for some time, the pain and the need for strong drugs. This is not an easy choice unless you really want fewer restrictions on your activity level. I did.

The aging process offers many character building opportunities. This has been one of them.

Asia, Family, Health, Jefferson County, Mountains, Shadow Mountain, Weather +Climate

Bought Just-In-Case

January 12, 2017 Charles Leave a comment

Winter Cold Moon

The full cold moon lights up the back, hanging above Shadow Mountain in the northwest sky. A dusting of fresh snow, maybe 1/2″, was easy to clear off the back deck. Minnesota cred should find me feeling warm at 23 degrees, but I’m slipping, beginning to absorb the local definitions of cold. If it’s in the single digits, down coats and Sorels. Well, I’m not quite there. Not yet.

Brother Mark is my Phnom Penh stringer right now, reporting live from the streets. He saw Hanukkah candles and a Chabad House, a crying Chinese girl, a naked Khmer boy playing with a string attached to his sister’s hand, a casino called Nagaworld where he found clean restrooms and lots of smoking. Mark also reports that the Cambodian economy is enjoying steady 7% growth, an increasing affluence he can see compared to his last visit ten years ago. I’m glad to hear this. I liked the Cambodians I met in 2004 during my trip to Angkor.

Apparently, my doc wanted to be sure I’d gotten off the bad drugs. We did my 6-month PSA, still following up after the prostatectomy and did a panel she wanted to see. Lisa cares about her patients and it was clear yesterday she wanted to be sure I was getting past the surgery. A good feeling.

Here’s a note from Pinecam.com to finish off. Just a glimpse into what’s out there:

“Selling a BNIB Radical Firearms AR15 rifle and a Radical Firearms 7.5” AR15 pistol. These are factory-built firearms, not garage builds. New in boxes, never fired.

I bought these before the election “just-in-case” but now I don’t really have a need for them. My loss, your gain.

$500 each. Comes with all factory swag and a few nice extras. Sorry, no mags included.

For some reason I can’t seem to upload photos to this ad, but do have a complete ad with more details and photos on Armslist under “Firearms”.”

Family, Health, Weather +Climate

Bringing You to Up To Date on Shadow Mountain Doings

January 10, 2017 Charles Leave a comment

Winter Cold Moon

The cold, just a bit of thickness left. The knee. Stiff in the mornings now, but becoming more supple. P.T. this morning at 7:30 am. Work. Still not back, though soon, maybe even today. Sleep. Sigh. Episodic and mysterious.

This new knee has been a difficult thing. Much more difficult than I imagined. Still, the positive elements of it have begun to assert themselves. It will take time to get my muscles back to their pre-surgery, pre-arthritic knee level, but that’s o.k. I have time.

I see my internist, Lisa Gidday tomorrow. She asked me to come in. Didn’t say why. It’s always a little disconcerting when your physician asks to see you. I’ll find out soon.

Kate’s in a much cheerier place now that the endoscopy came back normal. If momma ain’t happy, then nobody’s happy. She has Bailer Patchworkers today, a sewing group that meets at the Bailey Public Library. Very close to the library, but across 285 to the south, is The Happy Camper. Kate’s sewing days often end in a drug run. I’m getting another couple packages of Cheeba Chews, Indica (a strain of M.J.).

Ways the divorce creates upset. Through Jen’s lawyer Jon has been told that he can’t go to the Pontiac St. house to get the remainder of his things until closing. The kicker with this is that Jen has moved out to a condominium and no longer resides there. The restraining order specifically mentions the house, however, and without her permission he can’t get in. Frustrating. To put it mildly.

We had some snow last night, about an inch, similar amounts expected over the next couple of days or so. The cold has gone. Winter is firmly resident now, but in that peculiar Colorado way of snow, then melt. We had chinooks, snow-eaters, yesterday. These are warm winds that roll down from the continental divide toward the Great Plains. We’re in the way. Gusts up to 90 mph. More on them in a later post.

Family, Health, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, Weather +Climate

A Little Hegge

January 8, 2017 Charles Leave a comment

Winter Cold Moon

We had a somewhat snowy, somewhat cold introduction to 2017, but in the Colorado way, we will warm up into the high 40’s for today and tomorrow.

Organ recital: Knee. Up and down stairs, bend down (still creeky), little to no pain, swelling way down, incision looks good. Illness, a cold, receding. Outlook. Cheery, more energy this week. Ready for it.

We had a fire last night. Probably haven’t used the fireplace as much as we could. It was nice, a crackling fire and the new arrangement of furniture means we’ll use it more this year. Also, saw an article about hegge, pronounced hewgah, a style of Scandinavian comfort that seems to fit in with using the fireplace more. Maybe we’ll introduce it here.

Generally feeling up after a long grind. Knee surgery has a traumatic, car crash element to it with bone saws, drills, punches, inserted metal. Recovery from the trauma of the surgery takes the most time. Nerves have to awake. Muscles need to get prodded by the awakening nerves. The swelling, which creates a lot of the pain, takes a while to resorb. All this requires patience, narcotics and family members willing to put up with an invalid. Thankfully, most of this is in the past now.

Still wondering about the immediate future, what I’ll do when I pick up the keyboard again, the Latin dictionary, the Mesillat Yesharim. Not worried, just wondering.

About a year ago I began an effort to revamp my reading. I did the bibliotherapy bit with the lovely author from Australia. I thought long and hard. And it all resulted in…very little change. I’m still wanting to get some more direction, more purpose into my reading life. Not sure how that’s going to happen, but I want it to.

Since the Pontiac house goes on the market soon, that will reduce one major obstacle to both Jon and Jen literally moving on from the divorce. The divorce is already gradually receding as a part of our lives, even though its fallout will affect us for years to come.

Feelings, Health

Melancholy

January 7, 2017 Charles Leave a comment

Winter Cold Moon

Melancholy. It has a purple, gauzy purple backlit with a soft light, feel. The color invades each crevice of the mind, casting a haze. Feelings seem to gravitate toward the haze, not upbeat, let’s get on with this feelings, but sad ones, distressed ones, doubtful ones. These feeling seem to detach themselves from their referents and attach themselves to the thoughts arising now.

Example. At least I’m up here writing, 5:20 a.m. That’s progress given the last 5 weeks. Yes. Yes. It’s progress, but to what end? Who cares that you write this blog? Do you even care? Look around. See all those books, all those ideas and thoughts? What have you contributed? Ever? Oh. Yes, I do see. Could be pointless, right? A shiver of distress ripples across the future work that comes to the surface. Why finish the book? Why learn Latin? Why keep at things, anyway?

Pointless floats up, out of the sentence to which it’s tethered and becomes a prompt. Pointless? Absurd. Absurd. Existentialism. Of course. It’s all, always pointless unless we bring in meaning like a turkey at Thanksgiving. And I do.

This is my life, the one I’ve constructed over the years, the one that fits my history, my skills, my dreams. Is it the only or the best life for me? God, who knows? Is it a life with meaning, with contributions to the world? Yes. Well. There you go.

That’s how melancholy can contain within itself the seeds of its own dissipation. The haze lifts and the usual light, a soft light still, plays over the mind. This light soothes, encourages, spotlights possibility instead of despair. A better light to throw on the matter.

Family, Health

Sneeze

January 6, 2017 Charles Leave a comment

Winter Cold Moon

And then, just as the knee began to cooperate and be much less painful, I sneezed. That was yesterday. Last night and today I’m living with a full fledged cold. Kate and I both were dismayed.

Over the last week + I’ve gradually begun taking back daily chores: putting the dogs to bed, getting them up in the morning and feeding them, shoveling snow from the deck, that sort of thing. Now I’m backsliding on all that.

It’s been a long siege for my sweetie, punctuated in an ironic and awful way by the endoscopy on Tuesday. This cold is not forever, no, but it will be very inconvenient for 3-4 days. I’ll need to keep up my exercises, though I’m not sure whether I will today or not.

Looking forward to being clear headed, sometime next week, maybe? Till then, oh, wait a minute, where’s that Kleenex?

Dogs, Family, Health, Third Phase, Weather +Climate

Snow. Falling.

January 4, 2017 Charles Leave a comment

Winter Cold Moon

The snow has come. It started right on time at 9:30 am and continues now, at 5:30 pm. Not a lot of accumulation so far, but the forecast has the big shot coming tonight through tomorrow morning. After a quiet November and December, it’s fun to get the snow groove back. Here the weather forecasters gleefully predict the potential for lots of snow. Colorado is that sort of state.

The knee has calmed way down. I’m doing my exercises, three sets a day, and attending out patient p.t. twice a week. The whole pain, trauma, drug, rehab arc, while positive on the whole, has upset my body and refuses to let me come to a stable, yippee I’m better! place. Nausea, achiness, insomnia are hardly the four horsemen of the apocalypse but in the moment they can make a day miserable. This will pass.

I’ve also been a bit weepy today, crying (or about to) at silly stories on facebook, in the newspaper. You know the ones where the big, burly guys row out onto a fully iced lake, breaking the ice in front of them, to retrieve a dog hanging onto the edge of a hole into which he has slipped. Heroic things, compassionate acts, that sort of stuff.

I’m in that transitional phase between invalid and a returnee to normal life, neither one nor the other, pining for unremarkable days with routine moments, yet not far removed from agony and narcotics. Makes for an emotionally friable inner life. At least today.

Kate, I’m happy to say, has brightened since her normal endoscopy. She’s had a hell of a few months, especially December. She had me to care for, the grandkids here for 8 wonderful, exhausting days and the threat of some dire disease lurking under her constant fatigue. It’s enough to throw even this steady Norwegian into a bit of a spin.

Gertie loves the snow. She goes outside and immediately plunges her face into the snow, pushing along with her nose as a plow. Then she hops up, shakes off and falls over on her back, sensuously rolling this way and that, legs in the air, squirming like an overturned bug. Kepler and Rigel like the snow, too, but they’re not that enthusiastic.

Family, Health, Weather +Climate

Sleep. Gone.

January 4, 2017 Charles Leave a comment

Winter Cold Moon

Sleep has finally gone on holiday for me. Not sure why, maybe no reason. Over the weekend I did have withdrawal symptoms since I stopped my narcotics: chills, upset stomach, agitation, generally feeling lousy. Kate says lost sleep might be part of withdrawal, too. I hope so.

We’re in storm’s coming mode. Not much of a storm by last winter’s showing, but at least a bona fide winter weather warning. 6-12 inches at the outside. I like it. We have no where to go and can enjoy the snow as it comes. I’ll be cleaning off the deck, which is pretty easy, but if plowing is required Ted will do it, that’s Ted of All Trades.

The knee has largely quit hurting, moves with more ease and is easier to use to go up stairs. The recovery arc is positive.

Haven’t mentioned the divorce in a while. Final orders were cut, so the marriage dissolved officially on Nov. 28. The house is the big remaining obstacle. It needs to be sold because both of them need the proceeds to pay for lawyers and to buy new homes. The hot, hot Denver housing market suggests the house will sell quickly and for a substantial gain. I hope so.

Of course, with joint custody and decision making, as I discovered, you are really divorced to someone, rather than from someone.

Colorado, Family, Health, Judaism, Mountains, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase

Negative. Good.

January 3, 2017 Charles Leave a comment

Winter Cold Moon

Kate’s endoscopy is over with gratifyingly negative results. The GI doc was a right jolly old elf with white hair and a belly that shook like a bowl full of jelly. Swedish Hospital, where the procedure was done, is an old hospital, built in multiple oddly connected buildings of different ages. Some are brick, some the same tired modernist shtick that infests elementary schools. Overall the mood is mildly depressing.

Swedish is in Lakewood, the first ‘burb in the Denver metro after we leave the mountains headed east on Hwy. 285. Its massive ongoing construction, buildings separated from each other and a general confusion about what goes where, makes their offering valet parking a very nice gesture.

This one had Kate worried. Not me, but it wasn’t my alimentary canal being scoped either.

After Kate woke up, she got dressed and asked that I drive further east on Hampden (also 285) to the New York Deli. There we picked up a half gallon of CNS, one huge matzo ball and a pastrami sandwich. We turned back west on Hwy 285 and made our way out of the Mile High City and into the foothills, then the Front Range.

Each time we leave the Denver metro and head home into the mountains, one of us says, “I love living in the mountains.” Kate said it today. As we climbed into Conifer, flakes of snow began spitting around us, not much, but a reminder of the bigger winter storm scheduled to hit us tomorrow and Thursday.

As the storm comes, we have plenty of CNS and leftover pastrami sandwich to see us through. New York Deli has come to the mountains.

Aging, Cinema and Television, Family, Health, Holidays, Judaism, Latin, Shadow Mountain, Translating Metamorphoses, Writing

The Year of the Absent December

January 2, 2017 Charles Leave a comment

Winter Cold Moon

lion Two good friends, Allison and Tom, have recommended I see Lion, on my list for this week, especially now that I’m mobile, both on foot and behind the wheel. Yes, the knee is becoming much less painful though strength and stamina will take a while to regain. Not sure whether it’s the drug cocktails I’ve been taking or what, but sleep has become a precious commodity again, not easily found in batches long enough to feel rested. Ick.

2016 will be year of the absent December for me. My 20161203_083526 surgery was December 1st and much of the first two weeks + I spent in a narcotic haze. Or so Kate tells me. The remainder of the month has been physical therapy and figuring out how to manipulate the meds so they help me rather than hurt me. Not an easy task.

The good part was having the grandkids here for most of Hanukkah. When Kate and I returned them to Jen yesterday, Ruth came back to the car to say goodbye to me. We touched hands and she smiled, a furtive lightning of her face. I said, “Remember what I told you about your audition.” (that I have faith in you) She said she remembered. This is her audition for the Denver School of the Arts. She presents her portfolio and sits for an interview.

Next big medical event is Kate’s endoscopy tomorrow. This is a follow-up on an occult blood finding, so it could have serious implications, though I’m not expecting them. I have physical therapy at 7:15 a.m., then we head down the hill on 285 to Swedish Hospital for a 9 a.m. procedure.

A sequelae of the absent December is waking up from it to a New Year. What will I do in 2017? Will it be continuous with the first two years here? Or, will I rethink it all, maybe reshuffle the deck one more time? I’m leaning toward the latter. There will be Superior Wolf, yes. There will be workouts, yes. There will Beth Evergreen. There will, I decided yesterday, be Latin. I’m picking that project up again beginning this week. But, beyond those and how those fit with other potentials? I don’t know. I do know that taking a big insult to my physicality, even for a good cause, has got me in a contemplative mood, wondering, once again, about how life fits together.