Category Archives: Health

Dogs, Family, Health, Holidays, Judaism, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, Third Phase

The Holidays

December 31, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Winter Cold Moon

The grandkids have been here since December 23rd, with the exception of one day. That means a full house, lots of zigging and zagging. Adding Hanukkah to the mix leaves empty boxes, unfurled wrapping paper and gifts cluttered in the living room. Lots of watches this holiday: Ruth, Gabe, Kate all got watches. Too. There were legos, several games like Pandemic, Mexican Train, Rock of Archimedes, Mille Bourne, an assortment of clothing items like socks, ski jackets, t-shirts and the odd book or dvd.

While their presence here is a blessing and one of the really good things to happen as a result of the divorce, it gets pretty stressful with five people in the house, two under 11. Not to mention that Kate has had a wounded me to care for, in addition to the other work she does for the grandkids like laundry and cooking. We will miss them when they leave tomorrow, but both of us will require some time to decompress and get back to our usual, slower old folk rhythms.

Gabe enjoys the dogs, sometimes too much. Yesterday he squeaked and squeaked and squeaked a nerf football at Kepler. Eventually, Kepler told him to stop that. He did.

Ruth and Jon went skiing again yesterday, a wonderful warm day with reasonable numbers of folks at A-Basin even though it was New Year’s weekend. Ruth loves to help. She offers to get the mail, feed the dogs, help make supper, buy presents. And then does just that.

Her audition for the Denver School of the Arts is January 7th. She has an hour before an admissions committee. By herself. At age 10. She has a portfolio of work she’s done, a lot of work, much of it prints. That weekend I’m going to take her to this place, The Inventing Room. She’s been there and loves its emphasis on nitrogen fixing of food.

The knee. So much better now. Still achy, but not bad. Biggest problem now is that it still interrupts my sleep. My workouts for p.t. are a lot of bending the knee, straightening the leg, strengthening muscles that support the knee. I have to do 3 sets. Since my p.t. is scheduled at 7:30 a.m., I’ve shifted my workout from the afternoon to the mornings. I’ll likely keep it there since it’s much cooler then in the summer.

Art and Culture, Asia, Beyond the Boundaries, Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Great Wheel, Health, Myth and Story, Original Relation, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

Yamantaka for the New Year

December 30, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Winter Cold Moon

Existentialism is a philosophy for the third phase. No matter what other metaphysical overlays you may have the tick-tocking grows louder as you pass 65. When this clock finally strikes, it will take you out of the day to day. Forever. Strangely, I find this invigorating.

In case you don’t get it the occasional medical bomb will go off to make sure you pay attention. Last year, prostate cancer. This year, that arthritic left knee. Kate goes in for an endoscopy on January 3rd. She’s waiting approval for a biologic drug to help her rheumatoid arthritis. All these are true signs of the pending end times, but they are not the end itself. These medical footnotes to our lives press us to consider that last medical event.

I’ve followed, off and on, the Buddhist suggestion about contemplating your own corpse. I imagine myself in a coffin, or on a table somewhere prior to cremation. This is the work of Yamantaka, the destroyer of death, in Tibetan Buddhism. I’m not a Buddhist, nor do I play one on TV, but I became enamored of Yamantaka while learning about the art of Tibet and Nepal at the Minneapolis Institute of Art.

This mandala is a profound work of art on view in the South Asia gallery (G212). Adepts of Tibetan Buddhism use this mandala as a meditation aid to make the journey from samsara, the outer ring representing the snares that keep us bound to this world, and the innermost blue and orange rectangle where the meditator meets the god himself. The impact this work and the portrait of Yamantaka that hangs near it have had on me is as intimate and important as works of art can evoke.

Death is more usual, more understandable, more definitive than life. Life is an anomaly, a gathering of stardust into a moving, recreating entity. Death returns us to stardust. Yamantaka encourages us to embrace our death, to view it not as something to fear but as a friend, a punctuation point in what may be a longer journey, perhaps the most ancientrail of all. Whatever death is, aside from the removal of us from the daily pulse, is a mystery. A mystery that has served as muse to artists, musicians, religions and poets.

Yamantaka has helped me accept the vibration between this life and its end. That vibration can be either a strong motivating force for meaningful living (existentialism) or a depressive chord that drains life of its joy. I choose joy, meaningful living. Perhaps you do, too.

Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Family, Health, Judaism, Shadow Mountain

P.T. and Hanukkah

December 29, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Winter Cold Moon

Katie, my physical therapist, is young, only a year and a half into her career. She’s thin and a somewhat recent transplant from Florida. Colorado and its mountains, its snow, even its trout streams are her playground. She went snowshoeing on Hoosier Pass yesterday, the road from Fairplay goes over Hoosier Pass to Breckenridge. It’s high, you can access altitude above the tree line. She did, being out there “a few hours.” Afterwards, she said, she fished. Fly fishing. Which she took up a year ago with classes and a membership in Trout Unlimited.

She tells me my flexion and extension are remarkable. She says, too, that the stiffness and achiness that I have is typical. “It’s not scar tissue or anything else like that, it’s the body’s reaction to the surgery. It will pass. You’re doing very well.” That was nice to hear.

As the day winds down and night falls, the knee begins to kick out pain again. Feeling better, I’m going up and downstairs more often, walking more, generally putting the knee to work. By day’s end it’s tired of the effort and says, “Slow down. Stop.”

We’re on the sixth night of Hanukkah, many candles have burned to get us here. Lots of wrapping paper and delighted squeals. Opened boxes litter the coffee table and the couch, gift sign. Ruth got skins for her skis today. These get put on skis when you want to go up the mountain, rather than down. Gabe got Pokemon cards and a sketch book.

Hanukkah requires some discipline, apportioning presents so there are some left for the end of the 8 days. Jon enforces a strict two-present openings a night rule for both kids. Kate recites the Hanukkah blessing in Hebrew while Ruth and Gabe try to follow along.

Our three generation household runs pretty smoothly in spite of the usual sibling rivalry.

Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Health, Memories, Minnesota, Mountains, Shadow Mountain

Rambling

December 29, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Winter Cold Moon

When I worked for the church, the days between Christmas and New Years were an enforced break. No church wanted Presbytery executives in that time frame, everyone was coming down from the Advent, Christmas Eve, Christmas push. I took to using the time for research, usually on one topic. In those days it was organizational development, urban politics, a political issue coming to prominence, matters related directly, in some way, to my work.

This might be a way to use this enforced down time. Until the knee pain goes away and I’ve returned to a more normal routine, I could use the time to research a given topic. Not sure what yet, but something will occur to me.

Realized the other day that I’ve gone from an office halfway underground in Andover to a second story loft on a mountain. The Andover house was a walkout. The basement was open to the outside on two sides and built into the earth in front. Here on Shadow Mountain I look out at Black Mountain to the west and can see the sunsets. In Andover I saw sunrises.

Weary of the whole pain, stiffness thing. I know it’s part of the healing process. I know it’s going to recede and eventually vanish. Yet yesterday it got to me. Too damned long with a painful knee, reminded of its presence at every step, every sitting and rising. I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t get comfortable sitting or lying. Next morning now and I got some sleep last night so feeling better.

Health, Mountains, Shadow Mountain, Weather +Climate

Not Snowed

December 28, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Winter New (Cold) Moon

Though our Shadow Mountain winter has had little snow so far, west of the continental divide has had substantial storms. Snowpack is at 115% of normal. Important for us in Colorado and nine other states. These storms have also put snow on ski resort runs, already late in their opening.

Jon and Ruth skied A-Basin yesterday. She wore a new winter coat received the night before for Hanukkah. Jon fell and whacked his head, torqued his neck, but fortunately no concussion, no broken bones. They both remarked on the high winds up slope. “They take the fun right out of it.”

The snow here will continue melting under moderately warm upcoming weather. No big snowstorms in the forecast either. So far, very slow.

I drove for the first time a couple of days ago. Weaned off the narcotics. Felt good. Trouble sleeping. Still have aches in the knee, can’t figure out a good drug regimen. Of course, I had trouble sleeping pre-op, too. I might be returning to my usual sleep challenged life.

Family, Feelings, Health, Holidays, Judaism, Shadow Mountain

Illness and Recovery

December 26, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Winter Moon of the Winter Solstice

The ancientrail of illness and recovery continues here on Shadow Mountain. Yesterday it brought an unusual moment, a highly emotional tidal wave crashing through my early Christmas morning consciousness.

The immediate trigger was, I think, the pile of Hanukkah presents on the coffee table beside me. The Christmas spirit that still flows around this secular, pagan heart saw them. And rejected the moment. What followed was a period of dislocation, the closest analogy I can give is culture shock.

What was I doing in this house with this holiday underway? Mom, Dad, Mary and Mark rose up. I missed them all, a lot. Further the friends from Minnesota. Why was I here in cold Colorado, in the mountains, when my family and friends were dead or far away?

The logic of these feelings did not account for Kate, who worked the New York Times crossword across the room. Nor did it account for Jon, Ruth and Gabe. Nor the dogs. These were dramatic, histrionic feelings, slouching toward despair and isolation and loneliness. I cried for the distance I felt from the house, from my life here.

In talking with Kate about this later in the day she offered an interesting perspective. After my Minnesota trip in September, I began to forego my workouts which had become too painful. The decision to replace the knee had been made not long before that trip. Oddly, at some point the act of sitting became painful which made using the computer in the loft all but impossible.

Then on December 1st I had knee surgery. Since then, 3 weeks plus, I’ve lived with pain and meds, often so disoriented that I lost track of sentences midway.

Kate thinks I may have lost my self. The self that cut down the trees, cut up the slash. The self that writes. The self that hikes. The self that engages easily with the world. That self was lost in the last few months, diminished, then vanished. The journey from the trauma of surgery to healing and beyond has displaced at least my sense of self.

All this came to a confluence yesterday. Still not sure what to make of it though the crying felt cleansing. I’ve not had the same feelings since then.

Faith and Spirituality, Health, Holidays, Judaism, Memories, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

Roots

December 24, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

frosty-santa-1951 Winter Moon of the Winter Solstice

Christmas eve. I could measure my distance from my roots by the casual, almost unaware attitude I have to these two days. When I was a child, I had the same Santa dreams, the sleepless nights, the hopeful journeys downstairs to the Christmas tree that now infect millions of children worldwide. Tonight we celebrate the first night of Hanukkah. It’s not the Jewish ritual that marks the distance but my overall lack of engagement in Christmas music, decorations, gift buying, church going.

Though there is one way that I am not distant from my roots, not distant at all. It came to me yesterday. I got a heart level glimpse into the mind and will of my two-year old self. It was that two-year old who ignored, because he couldn’t understand, the doctors who said he’d never walk again. Paralyzed on the left side for six months and spending some time in an iron lung, the conclusion was that I’d missed the chance to walk, could not relearn it.

polio-poster My mother and my Aunt Virginia helped me. At the family farm in Morristown, Indiana I drug myself along the sofa, my head often collapsed on the floor, getting rug burns as I pulled it along with the rest of my body. They helped, but it was only that young boy who could move his legs, drag his body along. He did it. Since then, I have identified walking upright in the world as a major theme of my life.

The connection came during my physical therapy, walking for the therapist so she could check my gate. That little guy, so far away now in time, brings tears to my eyes. I’m grateful to him for the chance I have now at 69 to regain use of my left knee.

Faith and Spirituality, Family, Health, Judaism

137 degrees. Yowza.

December 23, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Samain Moon of the Winter Solstice

New physical therapist this morning. Measured flexion in my left knee at 137 degrees. A lot of people at my stage can’t bend their knee at all. Many work hard to reach 120. When I acknowledged my surgeon, Katie said, “We’re not supposed to say this, but the surgeon matters. A lot.” I believe it.

She put me through some new work. First time on a Pilates machine. Some balance exercises. I liked her. I may go the whole 12 sessions just to learn new exercises.

Our coffee table has Hanukkah gifts for the kids and, starting tomorrow night, will have menorahs. This is Hanukkah showing up very late in the year. A few years ago we had Thanksgivukkah, a combination of Thanksgiving and Hanukkah. We’ve moved pretty far into the Jewish home ritual world, lighting shabbos candles occasionally and always celebrating passover.

So, no matter how you take your holidays, straight or bent a bit, have good ones.

Family, Health, Writing

It’s Alive!

December 23, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Samain Moon of the Winter Solstice

karloff-history-science-and-frankenstein So. The old computer, dead to me when I went in for surgery, has shown signs of life. I’m very glad because there are many things on here I want, need to keep. It’s six years old though, past its sell-by date, and I no longer trust it, so I’m going to buy a new one after the holidays. I’m glad to have it available now, however, because it means I can visit the loft again in the early morning, expand my daily circuit, get me out of the house for a while.

Had a very sweet moment yesterday. I took a nap, slept peacefully for an hour, and woke up with no pain. It was as if, for a moment, that the surgery was long past or never happened at all. Then I got up. Oh, well.

Progress is good, not swift, but good. My second out patient p.t. today takes care of my workout for the day. No more three a days as I was doing up until now. Though. The new exercises are harder and I have to do more sets. I’m a fan of p.t. It’s cheap. It’s non-invasive and it puts me in charge of my recovery.

(just one of the tools used in my surgery. this one drills the hole in the tibia. Inserted in the hole is a titanium rod. Hello, TSA.)

The grandkids are here for the holidays. Hanukkah begins tomorrow. Lots of energy buzzing and blooming throughout the house. Jon and Ruth have been printing a lot using Jon’s found metal method. In case you don’t remember he finds crushed metal on the road side, retrieves it, takes it home, cleans it up, inks it up and prints it using a rotary printing press. (like the one we used at the Highpoint Cooperative for docents and Woolly readers.)

I’m so happy to greet you all from my loft here on Shadow Mountain. Have a wonderful holiday season.

Health

Yeah.

December 20, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Samain Moon of the Winter Solstice

I want to report major progress. With the help of the railings I can go foot over foot up stairs. Not down so far, but up. This is a major goal for post-op time and it had me throwing my arms up in the air. Yes!