Category Archives: Health

Aging, Family, Feelings, Health, Memories, Science

I heart heart

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Beltane                                                                           Running Creeks Moon

Raffles Town Club breakfast: Singapore
Raffles Town Club breakfast: Singapore

The things life splices together. Yesterday Kate had an appointment with her cardiologist. I went with her. She showed me the report of her echocardiogram, we discussed the cardiologist’s finding. All very clinical. Yes, the heart is a muscle and one which can be graded and observed at many levels. It has ejection fractions. leaflets, diffusions and profusions, valves and chambers. The fine tuning of the heart’s care is a substantial branch of medicine.

On the bus to Gwangju
On the bus to Gwangju

The heart is also, and perhaps more importantly, a metaphor. For love. For feeling. For courage and persistence. For essence. For intimacy. The metaphor can, too, be graded and observed at many levels. Heartless bastard. In my heart. I heart NYC, you, my dog, my honor school student, my rifle, my concealed carry handgun. That gets right to the heart of things. My heart is heavy. You have heart. My heart belongs to you.

Why might the metaphor be more important than the muscle? Because love lives on past the stilling of the muscle. Kate and I spliced together the cardiologist appointment with a visit to DazzleJazz, hearing the Keith Oxman quartet and Dr. Diva, a singing professor from Nebraska. We sat next to each other, she rested her head on my shoulder. We whispered and touched. My heart belongs to her. And that muscle so closely examined a few hours before? No match for her true heart, the one that belongs to me.

BTW: usual aging heart stuff for Kate. Blood pressure meds now. Attention to diet, keep up with the tai chi. Some upper body resistance work. We can push back against the dying of the light, but it goes out anyhow. Something, sometime. Yet love remains.

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

This, that

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Beltane                                                                       Running Creeks Moon

Front, May 6th
Front, May 6th

The snow is mostly gone in the front, south facing yard. In the back though there are still long drifts of snow punctuated by even larger patches of soil, rock and the tufty grass we have up here on Shadow Mountain. The days are warmer but the nights remain cool. They will remain relatively cool and dry even during the summer.

I’ve had a time consuming blog related project that has eaten up days of time and is not done yet. It has given me an opportunity to go back over all the wordpress entries: 2016-2007, which has been fascinating. Some 8,000+ now.

Back, May 9
Back, May 9

Kate has Bailey Patchworkers, a sewing/quilting group, today and will make a run to the Happy Camper for cbds. My elliptical comes this morning. I’ll be able to get back to working out at a high intensity with the elliptical’s knee joint friendly motion. The treadmill will stay for walking at a moderate pace.

Once this blog project is over I plan to start regular hikes in the woods and a return to the fire mitigation work I began last fall. Kate is currently doing cross stitch for a very cute baby blanket. The baby blanket comes, naturally, after the wedding quilt.

Much to my chagrin, since I stopped adding salt to my meals, my weight has dropped, my blood pressure has dropped and I’m sleeping much better. Of course, I’m happy with the improvements. Still. Imagine me slapping my forehead with my hand.

Aging, Art and Culture, Commentary on Religion, Dogs, Faith and Spirituality, Health, Original Relation, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Third Phase

Too Much Salt?

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Spring                                                  Wedding Moon

Ruthandgabeuppermax300The snow has been less than predicted, a good thing. Still, it’s the wet, heavy, slushy stuff that makes snowblowers clog up.

Jon, Ruth and Gabe are coming up tonight. Jon and Ruth will go skiing tomorrow and Gabe will stay with us. Ruth and I plan to take in a Fiske Planetarium (Boulder) show on black holes this evening. Kate’s making Mississippi Pot Roast. This is the sort of thing that, no matter how much we might have wanted to do it, was impossible when we lived in Minnesota.

Got rid of 4 bookcases bought long ago at Dayton’s warehouse in Minneapolis. They’d seen me through the house on Edgcumbe and in Andover. Most of these got sold off in Minnesota, but the remaining four held some books while the built-ins were under construction. That opens up space in the garage. It’s a priority as soon as the weather warms up. Would’ve been last year if it hadn’t been cancer season over the summer.

saltOK. I have a confession to make. I’ve been putting too much salt on my food for years. Big surprise, I’m sure, to all of you who have witnessed it. In fact, I was following an approach suggested by my internist, Charlie Petersen. His opinion was that once you passed a point where a problem, blood pressure in this instance, required treatment, you didn’t need to modify your behavior if the treatment worked. And it did. For many years. But, not now.

Over the course of the trip to Asia I stopped adding salt to my food. My blood pressure, which had been labile before the trip, suddenly fell into line. Damn it. Empiricism is such a bitch. And, not so small side benefit. It’s easier to sleep through the night since my fluid retention has significantly decreased.

Yamantaka 13 Deitykat1

There is no doubt that I have a self-destructive homunculus in residence. Smoking and drinking took me several unpleasant years to put into the past. Just why this little guy is so interested in my demise, I don’t know. Maybe he’s the death wish that Freud believed we all have. He doesn’t give up. If I start one of these activities again, I quickly go back to the maximum use. I learned this while quitting smoking, several times.

It’s tough getting him to just sit still. You would think that, having visited Yamantaka (the slayer of death) many times over the years, he would calm down. Yamantaka is the Tibetan God of death itself. To worship him one thing you can do is look your own death straight in the face, imagine yourself dead, meditate on your own corpse. In this way Yamantaka helps us to accept death for what it is, a natural and not to be feared part of human existence.

Seems like that would get this homunculus to quiet down. Oh, it’s going to happen anyway and it’s ok, so why do I have to speed things up? But, no. Doesn’t appear to work that way.

Aging, Faith and Spirituality, Health, Memories, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Science, Third Phase

One Year Ago

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Spring                                                                                   Maiden Moon

Had blood drawn yesterday for my third post surgery PSA. Right now they come every quarter, routine surveillance. The first two have showed .015 which is the clinical equivalent of none. Since the results have followed the best hoped for pattern, I’m experiencing no anxiety about them.

Today is my second annual physical with Dr. Lisa Gidday. This physical revisits a key moment from cancer season. The start of the season. It was last year at my first physical in Colorado when Dr. Gidday found a suspicious hardness in my prostate. I count cancer season as having begun with that physical on April 14th and ending in late September with my first follow up PSA.

It was a short time compared to my image of what cancer is typically like. It went: initial suspicion, see urologist who confirmed Gidday’s finding, biopsy, diagnosis, decision on treatment, surgery, recovery, first PSA after surgery. All this in six months.

There is the question of a cure. Does this mean I have no more prostate cancer? Did the end of cancer season mean the end of the cancer threat? No, it does not. Things look good, very good, but the clinical reality is that a few cancerous prostate cells could have escaped and are dormant right now. My gut says no, that is not the case. I feel rid of the traitorous bastards.

In fact, I feel very healthy right now. Yes, I have this damned knee, lower back and shoulder, but they’re nuisance level. Yes, I have chronic kidney disease, but it seems stable. In fact the numbers that gauge its severity actually improved in my last blood work done in October. Yes, I have insomnia, but it’s just one of those damned things.

My point here is that aging means an accumulation (for most of us) of chronic conditions. We can choose to focus on those as ongoing problems, become obsessive about them and drown ourselves in anxiety or we can recognize their inevitability and, if not embrace them, at least accept them with grace. Most of the time.

The anxiety is unnecessary. That is the point of Yama, the Tibetan deity. To worship Yama we envision our own death, see it coming, embrace its part in our story. When we can truly accept the reality of our own death, anxiety about what may deliver it to us becomes redundant. We may not know the particulars, but we do know the outcome of our life. It’s the same for all of us.

 

Health, Politics, Weather +Climate

Good Weather, Bad Weather

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Spring                                                                            Maiden Moon

Exercised last night for the first time after the cortisone injection. Much better, not twinge free, but almost. This is hopeful to me, suggesting I may have, at least for a while, a means of calming the arthritis in my knee. Until it was gone, I didn’t realize how much pain and discomfort my knee had caused in my whole leg. Better living through chemicals.

There are different metrics everywhere for what constitutes good and bad weather. More snow on the way today here and more in the forecast for next week. All this is good news for the snowpack and for wildfire suppression, at least for now.  Even the dreaded hurricane has good news, too. It serves an important meteorological function, distributing fresh water over large swaths of land. I’ve not see a positive remark about tornadoes and having lived around them for a third of my life I can’t come up with one on my own. Drought seems to be like tornadoes. No good word for excessive dryness. The monsoons and their torrential rains are seen as a blessing in India.

Heavy snow in Colorado is usually a good thing, even if it causes traffic snarls and power outages. In Minnesota really heavy snow could be an inconvenience for a long time.

If the worst should come to pass, and I’m convinced it won’t, and Trump or Cruz becomes president, going to Canada or elsewhere won’t be a real option. Either of these guys would need to be fought and those of us with time and inclination will be needed. I still see no reason to doubt that Trump will get the Republican nomination-and break the party as he does-and Hillary will both get the Democratic nomination and win the presidency. Still.

Aging, GeekWorld, Health, Jefferson County, Mountains, Shadow Mountain, The West, Weather +Climate

Knee, Snow, Travel

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Spring                                                                                         Maiden Moon

The knee, 20 hours later. Feeling pretty good. Almost normal. A bit creaky, a little twingey, but otherwise, pretty damned good. The cortisone effect can last from weeks to months. I’m hoping months. The big issue with the knee, beyond Asia, is my regular workout. High intensity workouts, which I’ve been doing for a while, require some speedier, more stressful moments on the treadmill. The cortisone will make them easier for now. Worth it.

In other news here on Shadow Mountain we’re getting what may well may be another foot of snow. And this stuff is wet. And therefore heavy. Of course it’s Wednesday, when the trash goes out. Gonna get the yellow Cub Cadet out, but if it plugs up all the time, I’ll wait for the solar snow shovel or find somebody to plow us out.

Up here the forecast can change quickly if a system moves a bit further north or south. Last night the forecasts were for 2-7 inches. But in reality.

Today, and maybe tomorrow, is going to be largely trip related. Finish photographing our stuff. Get necessary information onto a flash drive for portability. Open a dropbox account to put my writing in the cloud. Get our emergency box of important papers put together. Sign up for international cell phone plans. Figure out how folks can contact us when necessary. Fussy stuff.

 

Asia, Dogs, Family, Health, Travel

Today

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Imbolc                                                                                        Valentine Moon

Tai chi finished up today. Just in time, I think I got it. Still plan to use the form I’ve learned as a mid-morning break from work. Gotta get it into my routine though. Not yet.

Vega continues to get better, move around more. She’s not drugged up and that helps a lot, but she’s also determined to get things back to normal. Her spirits are wonderful, tail thumping, her signature move.

Kate and I have sleep deprivation from the last week plus. Long nap this afternoon, more sleep tomorrow, too, I imagine.

Beginning to get an Asia focus, thinking about Korea, Singapore. Mary has found a place for us to stay at the Raffle’s Town Club. This is an offshoot of the larger, historic Raffles Hotel in downtown. The Town Club is close to her home.

 

Dogs, Health, Politics

Vega, Trump, Knee

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Imbolc                                                                          Valentine Moon

Vega’s culture for the source of an infection in her wound has given her what we hope is the last hurdle in her recovery from the amputation, an antibiotic resistant form of e-coli. It’s only sensitive to two rarely used antibiotics, one $400 for a tiny vial, the other one $40. Guess which one we chose.

She’s feeling much better and once this infection gets resolved and her wound closed, today for the wound, her path goes back to the original one with four weeks or so to stitches out.

The Donald is similar to this e-coli. He’s an establishment Republican resistant organism and the micro-biologists of the GOP strategists have not yet found the antibiotic that will work against him. Like such organisms in medicine he represents a genuine, serious threat to the well-being of the party. Super Tuesday seemed a good breeding ground for the infection as the lab reports came in from states in the south. At some point overwhelming sepsis may result and the host organism may succumb. More to come.

And, in personal organ recital news, my doc yesterday told me I had osteoarthritis in my left knee and “will probably require a new knee at some point.” I’m channeling my buddy Mark Odegard’s path. First prostate cancer, then a bum knee. Sigh. Anyhow a cortisone injection is in my immediate future since my kidney disease means no nsaids. I hope it works because I want to be mobile for the Asia trip next month. Full disclosure: the thought of a needle probing my knee scares me a bit.

Dogs, Health

Vega. More.

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Imbolc                                                                          Valentine Moon

feed me2Yesterday Kate and I went into the operational area of the vets to watch Vega’s wound get bandaged. Kate will have to replace the bandage three times over the weekend.  The surgical wound had an opening next to it about 3 inches in diameter, revealing muscle underneath.

Kate asked to help and was directed to the drawer with the gloves. She put one on and held the bandage in place with one experienced finger while the vet put in anchoring stitches that would hold tie downs for the bandage. She looked so complete there, familiar with the operating room as she is from years as an operating nurse and nurse anesthetist. It was a pleasure to see.

She and the vet talked medicine while he sewed, putting in six anchoring stitches around the wound. He explained that dogs metabolize anesthetics differently than humans. They have, he said, sticky blood, so the dosage of, say, dilaudid, used in a dog would do serious injury to a comparably sized human. When giving Kate some injectable dilaudid, he also explained there was no need to swab the injection site with alcohol. No way to sterilize fur.

Vega500Vega meanwhile was under a blue paper cover, a hole cut in it approximating the area around the site where the vet worked, and on a metal table about chest height. As the vet put in the 5th of the 6 stitches, her tail began to wag. She had begun to come to.

She’s been through a lot since the amputation. Visits to the vet. Probing and debriding of the wound and it’s recent opening. I can tell she’s tired of it and wants a return to normal life. Unfortunately, not for a while.

Asia, GeekWorld, Great Work, Health, Third Phase, Weather +Climate

Saturday

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Imbolc                                                                             Valentine Moon

 

Not used to being the slow one, but in our tai chi class, now in its 6th week of 8, I am. It’s ok though. I need repetition and once I get it, I’ll have it, so speed of learning is not so important here as quality over time. Physically co-ordinated things have never been my shining moment.

The weather has been warm and in mid-winter on the eastern slopes that means chinooks. Warm = windy at this time of year. Still learning the weather patterns. It has made for outstanding electricity production. Yesterday’s output is below.

Feb 19 2016