Category Archives: Health

Kep’s Last Visit to Award Winning Pet Grooming

June 3, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Beltane Running Creeks Moon

No lumberjacking today. This old body needed time to recoup. Back at it tomorrow.

The elliptical we bought has spared my knee the throbbing and swelling of high intensity workouts on the treadmill. I can now do the same workout, but in a fluid, joint friendly motion. The old P90X workouts help round out the return to serious muscle and cardio-vascular exercise.

Took Kep over to Award Winning Pet Grooming in Bailey. Bailey is to the west on Highway 285. It’s the big city in Park County at 8, 859 souls. Amanda Gordon has defurred Kep several times as the alternating hotter and colder weather of this year’s El Nino winter has caused dogs all over the front range to blow their coats. This was probably Kep’s last visit to Award Winning since he will head to Georgia, early July. Kate and I both will go.

Kate’s been gardening today. She’s wanted to do some, finally decided to just do it. Her friend Hannah and her husband Seth ate lunch with Kate. They cleared out most of the logs in the front. There are about twice as many in the back, maybe 3 times as many.

Anoka County, Bees, Faith and Spirituality, Family, Health, Jefferson County, Latin, Memories, Minnesota, Mountains, Our Land and Home, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, Weather +Climate, Writing

Write It Out

May 25, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Beltane Running Creek Moon

freshman year — Freshman Year, Alexandria H.S.

Ever since the great iconoclasm, my voice has been muted. Not sure why. Topics don’t seem to occur to me. I’ve never had a theme, a particular ax, though felling and limbing the occasional political issue shows up once in awhile. Philosophical, quasi-theological pondering. That, too. Lots of did this, did that. The online continuation of a journal keeping way I’ve had for decades. Art. Yes, but not as much as I want.

Maybe there was a more intimate link between the images and the vitality of this blog than I realized. Apres le mitigation the whole copyright issue, the fate of images in an age of digital reproduction, will occupy some of my time.

Work on both Superior Wolf and Jennie’s Dead have been ongoing, though not yet much writing. Reimagining Faith occupies a lot of my free thinking time, wondering about mountains, about urbanization, about clouds that curve and mound above Mt. Evan’s, our weather maker. No Latin yet. Not until I can have regular time up here in the loft. Not yet.

Could be that underneath all this lies a reshuffling of priorities or a confirmation of old ones. It’s not yet a year since my prostate surgery and a friend of mine said it took her a year to feel right again. This year has felt in some ways like my first year here, a year when I can take in the mountain spring, the running creeks, the willows and their blaze of yellow green that lights up the creek beds, the mule deer and elk following the greening of the mountain meadows.

My 40 year fondness for Minnesota has also begun to reemerge, not in a nostalgic, wish I was still there way, but as a place I know well, a place to which I did become native, a place which shaped me with its lakes, the Mississippi, Lake Superior, wolves and moose and ravens and loons. Where Kate and I became as close as we could with the land we held temporarily as our own. Friends. Art. Theatre. Music. Family. Perhaps a bit like the old country, an emigre’s memories which help shape life in the new land. An anchor, a source of known stability amidst a whirl of difference. The West. Mountains. Family life.

So. There was something in there anyhow. Now, back to fire mitigation.

Dogs, Health, Our Land and Home

Wounded

May 24, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Beltane Running Creek Moon

Dogs. Gertie chased a critter yesterday afternoon. Fast. Paying apparently quite close attention to the critter, but not to the downed tree in the way. She ripped open her right side, a good tear. She’s at the vets right now getting sewn up. Again. Wounds are her trademark. Since we’ve had her, she’s been into the vet many times for torn flesh. Part of it is her go for it mentality, part of it’s her bite first, bark later attitude. We’re good customers at Sano.

Spent some time this morning cutting up downed trunks into logs for Seth. Lugging the peavey and the chain saw around wears me out. I’m not as strong as I was last fall. Restarted my resistance work with modified P90X workouts on Monday. Between the logging and the P90X, my strength will improve. Better than what I was doing last summer this time, fussing about prostate cancer.

Dogs, Health, Mountains, Our Land and Home, Shadow Mountain, Weather +Climate

Go-go girls

May 20, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Beltane Running Creeks Moon

Rigel and Gertie are the go-go girls. Whenever we leave the house, together or singly, they get big grins, bump us, start moving toward the back door, then back to us, repeat. Into the truck they go, bounding up and into the back. Only to lie down and often go to sleep. They don’t seem to care how long the trip. On the way home Rigel always gets up, starts looking around. They’re having fun, so we enjoy taking them with us.

Dr. Repine sweeps into the room with her white-gold hair. Her examinations are thorough, practiced. She sweeps the various magnifiers over my eyes, the ones that allow her to see the inner parts of my eye directly, dons a headlamp that would not look like out of place on a miner and picks up a thick magnifier. Look up. Look down. Look to the right. To the left. Good. Everything’s looking fine.

Eyeball pressures are 14. Which is in the normal range. Glaucoma held at bay by Latanoprost. Cataracts, however, are advancing, changing my reading prescriptions. She says if they get much worse we’ll just take them out. Oh. Just? The good news is that cataract surgery often helps glaucoma by lowering the pressure in the eye. Something to look forward to?

Kate went with me. We went over to Whistling Duck, a furniture maker, to discuss beetle kill pine dining room tables. Kate had her measurements. She talked tables while I wandered around looking at the displays. We’re still in the early stages, getting quotes.

And, the sun. The sun. Blue skies. Winter to summer. Down the hill, that is. It was 78 in Littleton yesterday, but as we drove back up into the mountains the temperatures dropped, 54 when we got home. Ah.

Aging, Dogs, Family, Health, Writing

Weather, Vision, Life

May 19, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Beltane Running Creeks Moon

This last round of snow, ice and colder weather got a lot of grumbles. Fortunately, we didn’t get the 5 inches predicted and the roadways were warm enough to melt what fell, but the part of our bodies that wants blue skies and somewhat warmer temperatures felt cheated. Not rational, I know. And the snow was pretty as always. But still.

Today Dr. Repine gets a look at my eyeballs, a glaucoma check, and a refraction. Might produce new reading lenses. After that we’re going to Whistling Duck, a carpentry shop specializing in beetle kill/blue pine. Our upstairs dining is still on the round bar table we bought as a temporary measure the month we moved in.

Life’s been eventful since our return from Asia with Vega’s death, the legal wrassling and the reluctant iconoclast moment. There’s another major event swirling in our lives right now, too, one I can’t write about openly yet. Not a health issue, not about Shadow Mountain or any of its residents.

Last night I got glimpses into the way forward on both Jennie’s Dead and Superior Wolf. That means my creative mind has emerged from the fog of image expunging. The Superior Wolf concept pushed me back to the origin idea, made me see that the way forward lay in the mythos, starting the story at the beginning. Solving a way for a magician to pull off a remarkable trick pushes the storyline of Jennie’s Dead past a road block. Feels good.

Aging, Family, Feelings, Health, Memories, Science

I heart heart

May 12, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Beltane Running Creeks Moon

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.

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

May 10, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Beltane Running Creeks Moon

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.

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?

April 30, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Spring Wedding Moon

The 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.

OK. 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.

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

March 30, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

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

March 25, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

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.