Category Archives: Health

Cherish the Time

February 11, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc Valentine Moon

An emotional week with Vega’s cancer diagnosis, then her radiography, ultrasound and chest x-ray yesterday. We got the best news we could have. The radiologist found no sign of metastases in her lungs or in her liver. This does not mean they’re not in her body somewhere, but it lowers the likelihood. It also means that amputation of her left front leg, where the tumor has grown near her foot, gives us a reasonable chance at a cure.

We’re still mulling our options, but we’ve scheduled the surgery for next week on Wednesday. She’s 7, so not a young dog, especially for a larger animal, but she probably has another 2-3 years, maybe more. She is, as Palmini, our vet, says, in great shape, not overweight and strong, so she should adapt just fine to three legs. Amputation sounds drastic, and it is of course, but dogs seem to get over the change quickly and get about their life.

There is a great and important lesson about human dying here. While waiting for the diagnosis and radiology results, we’ve been being with Vega as usual, perhaps a little more attentive. The lesson is this: she’s alive now. We can be with her now, love her now, cherish this time with her now. And, if you consider it, now is the only time we have to love each other. Our time ends. We know that. Just as we have confronted with Vega over the last couple of weeks. So, whomever you love, if they’re alive now, cherish the time.

Aging, Health, Politics, US History

OMG

January 31, 2016 Charles 1 Comment

Yule Stock Show Moon

My 2015 summary from SecureHorizons, our AARP medicare advantage plan, shows all you need to know that our healthcare system is broken, badly broken. In 2015 I had prostate cancer and as a result had a surgical procedure to remove my prostate, so it was an expensive year with biopsies, diagnosis, procedure and follow-up. I also had a series of physical therapy sessions for an arthritic neck and its left shoulder, elbow and hand sequelae.

Total billed to Securehorizons for the year: $101,000.

Total paid by Securehorizons for the year: $12,000.

Our share: $850.

First reaction might be, really good news! Look how little you had to pay, Charlie, for such an enormous bill. Uh huh. Look more at how little Securehorizons paid for such an enormous bill, about 1/8 or 12% of the total billed. This vast-$78,000-discrepancy says nobody knows what healthcare costs. Nobody knows what’s fair.

Take my very small piece of the total healthcare expenditures in 2015 and extrapolate these ratios. Say hospitals and physicians and other therapies billed $10,000,000,000 to insurance companies. Following the ratio in my 2015 report insurance companies would pay to those vendors approximately $1,200,000,000. That would leave a discrepancy of $7,800,000,000. What happens to the supposed expenses covered by discrepancy? Do hospitals and physicians and therapists go out of business? No, they live to bill another year when the whole sorry mess repeats.

It takes no analytical subtlety to smell the rot. We need to get out from under all these private insurance companies and their administrative rules, their negotiated deals.

Kate’s hair-dresser, to illustrate another problem with this mess, went to the ER when a partially removed splinter in her hand created swelling that made it impossible for her to use her scissors. No work, no money. She had the self-employed persons typical high deductible policy. An E.R. doc removed the splinter. Bill: doc=$1,500, e.r. admittance=$1,800. She refused to pay $3,300 for a splinter removal, stayed resolute and got an 80% reduction in her bill.

Colorado will have a referendum this year to create the first single-payer health plan in the United States. I’m voting for it.

Health, Jefferson County, Our Land and Home, Shadow Mountain

Pounding, Screeching, Whining

January 21, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Yule Stock Show Moon

Can you feel the tension creeping out from here? The (we hope) final day of our kitchen remodel is underway. The new countertop is in, the new broom closet (unprimed, however) is in, the microwave and sinks and faucets are in. Various items, punchlist items, are being taken care of. A couple of other custom cabinets are waiting to be installed. Saws whining, drills screeching, hammers pounding.

Todd’s multicultural crew, Michele (French) and Luis (Latino), is here and have been since 8:30 am. Todd’s a good guy, but he’s a big picture schmoozer in a small picture detail oriented business. We hired him and we’re riding the process out to the end, but we could have done better. The price however was right.

Kate left in the middle of the day for more hand/thumb physical therapy. She came back with black kinesiology tape snaking out from the top of her thumb midway up her forearm. Kinesiology tape? Yep. This gave her time away, a spa hour for her opposable digit.

Nextdoor Shadow Mountain, an electronic water cooler, had a woman on yesterday who wrote: “Any recommendations for an electrician?? The company we were using did not show up for a scheduled appointment, and no one has responded to texts, phone messages, or emails.” This is the story here at altitude. Over and over. In all trades and services.

Last week I wrote the heads of three local business schools and suggested there might be a business opportunity up here. No takers yet, but it’s early days.

That’s how we ended up with Todd. He actually showed up.

Aging, Family, Health, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

Tai Chi

January 16, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Yule Stock Show Moon

Over to Conifer Physical Therapy this morning with Kate for an 8 week course, Tai Chi for folks with arthritis. Our mutual infirmity bringing us closer together. How special is aging? Kate did Tai Chi when she was in medical school. I learned about half of a full form maybe 3 years ago, so we’ve both got some muscle memory. It never hurts to have more than way of approaching something. My physical therapy exercises are keeping my back and my shoulder/elbow/neck calmed down. Tai Chi will reinforce that work.

We’ll meet some other folks, too. Should be fun.

Health

Ordinary Time

January 15, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Yule Stock Show Moon

Amazing how ordinary a post-cancer operation visit can be. Of course, as long as the numbers stay good it will stay ordinary. That is the great gift of successful treatment, the opportunity to return to whatever life you had instead of checking out your will.

Anna Willis, a P.A., talks with ease about matters sexual, urinary. She’s a 30 something, maybe early 40’s, woman who dresses upscale and has a brusque, but not unpleasant professional manner. “Getting up 4 times at night? Oh, that’s too much. We’ll see if we can get that down.”

Mostly we focused on the .015 PSA. As good a number as possible, a royal flush of a lab result. The plan is to continue ultrasensitive tests every 3 months for 2 years, then every 6 months until year 5. “It’s about the same as breast cancer. the more time away from surgery with clean results, the better the odds. If you get past 5 years, the odds of recurrence are very, very low.”

Cancer season closed out as a time of high alertness in September with the first .015. The return to ordinary time will, I imagine, continue and become more solid if the tests keep sending me good news. Like having stood in the path of a fast moving train and having a good samaritan pull you out of the way just in time.

Family, Health, Third Phase

.015

January 14, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Yule Stock Show Moon

Tomorrow I have my third post-op appointment with my urologist. My new super sensitive PSA, done early this week, was .015. As I learned three months ago, when my PSA was the same, this is the equivalent of no prostate specific antigens, indicating that so far no stray prostate cells have found a home in my body far from their old place near my bladder. In essence this is a test for metastases and having it come back negative is a primary goal of any cancer treatment.

As I get further away from the surgery, the dramatic peak of cancer season, ordinary time makes a bid to return. In this case ordinary time is not the cessation of holiseason stimulated spirituality, but the relaxation of uncertainty and return to a less urgent awareness of mortality. There is though a deep impression left by the pressure of cancer season.

Cancer season began for me on April 14th, 2015 when Dr. Gidday noticed a suspicious hardness in my prostate, sufficient to make her refer me to Ted Eigner, the urologist. From April 14th until my surgery on July 8th and first super sensitive PSA the week of September 25th, cancer season pulsed with energy. It crackled with biopsy results, recommendations for treatment, visits to the this medical facility and that. The decisions made during cancer season were life-altering, even life determining.

There was anxiety and fear, of course, the presence of a fatal actor in my body was an unfamiliar and unpleasant experience. For the first time a part of my body was no longer onside with the goal of continuing the body’s existence. Betrayal. At its most intimate. But. There was also excitement. New information, new things to learn, to know. Things that had immediate relevance. Kate and I moved closer as we sorted through the maze of medicine, bureaucracy, treatment statistics and understanding my situation as well as we could.

Then, with one three hour surgical procedure, it was over. Sort of. Cancer season trailed on to the first super sensitive PSA because until then even the clear, negative margins of the removed prostate and the positive eyeball analysis of Eigner during the procedure were not definitive. Some cancerous cells could have escaped. Though there is still some chance of metastases, nothing is 100% certain in these matters, with each clear PSA it becomes less likely.

Now I have to decide whether to emphasize cancer season, become a cancer survivor, or whether to let it bleed into the background, a highly charged moment with a successful outcome but with little relevance for daily life. So far I seem to be choosing the let it bleed into the background option, though this post is, I suppose, contra that.

That is, I want to live my life forward, not returning to and chewing over the undigested lumps of the past. Not yet background, no longer foreground, cancer season has a fading, but nonetheless potent presence still. It will be interesting to see where I am on July 8th of this year.

Family, Health

Kate

January 10, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Yule New (Stock Show) Moon

The stock show weather arrived. It’s 7 degrees here this morning.

Kate’s face has lost all of its puffiness and most of the bruising has receded. Now she’s working on hand physical therapy to complement her thumb surgery from September. She’s using a tennis ball I bought for shoulder/elbow exercises and I’m using her cervical traction device bought when her neck had begun to give her serious fits several years ago. Our aging bodies have similar needs, just at different times.

Family, Great Work, Health, Holidays, Latin, Shadow Mountain, Translating Metamorphoses

Smart

December 11, 2015 Charles Leave a comment

Samhain New (Winter) Moon

The wind was calmer today so I got more tree trunks cut into logs. Used my smart holder for the first time. It works pretty well, but I’ve got to get more facile with placing logs on it. A learning curve. Lots of fireplace size logs stacked between two trees, three stacks in all. This is the last step in the fire mitigation process for this season. Now the wood will dry for a year, be ready to split next fall. As soon as I get all the front tree trunks cut into fireplace size, I’ll move to the back and begin felling and limbing.

Getting my regular hour of Latin, but boy it’s coming hard right now. Not sure why. Struggling. Back to regular exercise, too, though most of my resistance time is still spent with arthritis alleviating exercises from Dana. I backed off a bit on them, tried to work in some other resistance, but the tingling returned, the left shoulder began to ping. Struggling a bit here, too. Not anywhere near my pre surgery levels.

Tomorrow we’re going to Sushi Harbor with Jon and Jen to celebrate Jon’s 47th birthday. I met Jon when he was 21. 47. Realized another milestone birthday must be when your first child turns 50.

Our neighbor Jude came over to wish us a Happy Hanukkah. Sweet of him.

Faith and Spirituality, Family, Health, Holidays, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, Weather +Climate

Not the Thanksgiving We Got Ready For

November 27, 2015 Charles Leave a comment

Samhain Thanksgiving Moon

And so, we spent Thanksgiving on Shadow Mountain, watching the snow come down in lazy lines, thinking of Gabe and his second surgical procedure in a week, the roast and the pies and rolls in the freezer. It was downbeat, too quiet for a holiday.

Kate the clinician, a person with a bias for action, stewed. She wanted to do something, fix something, but the snow came down and no roast could be cooked, no salad prepared, no engagement with the medical issues of her only grandson. Impotence, or the feeling of impotence, is a terrible burden because it shrouds the capacity to act with an inability to do so. So many revolutions have been borne. So many political movements.

Later, after Gabe’s delayed procedure was over in the late afternoon, she relaxed. Jon had called and asked us not to come. The snow. The stress of the day. All made sense to me.

The holiday hung in the air like a sneeze not completed. Thankful, of course, for the good outcome with Gabe’s procedure. Thankful for the snow and the flocked lodgepoles, snowy Black Mountain, the dogs running pushing muzzles into the snow, rolling. Thankful that Kate and I were together, playing Bethumped, talking.

I ate too much of the sugar cream pie I made. Really more like a delicious pudding. It didn’t set up. No matter. We had shrimp with Bookbinder’s sauce while we answered questions about word origins, eponyms, general history, homophones and pushed our plastic markers around the board.

It wasn’t the Thanksgiving we had prepared for, but it was the one we had. And it was a good one.

In fact, this year we’ll have two Thanksgivings, yesterday and the delayed meal on Saturday around noon. Now, there’s plenty to do. Gabe’s better. Kate will have tasks to be done. And that prime rib roast. Well, I’m looking forward to that.

Family, Health, Holidays

Canceling Thanksgiving

November 26, 2015 Charles Leave a comment

Samhain Thanksgiving Moon

“Thanksgiving’s canceled,” Kate said when she called me on the intercom. I’d just finished my workout, was in a very different mental place. “Huh?”

“Gabe’s at the hospital. His port’s failed and is leaking into the site of the other port.” Oh.

Grandson Gabe has a port embedded in his upper left chest, its purpose to provide easy access for the regular infusions of clotting factor. His old one failed a week ago and was replaced last Thursday. Hemophilia makes many things complicated.

This new development means surgery today, Thanksgiving. The pies and the breads, the prime rib roast, all into the freezer. We’ll celebrate when Gabe’s better.