Samhain Thanksgiving Moon
That green cast? Gone. Kate’s left hand is free, free, free. She celebrated with a trip to Target and Nono’s, the New Orleans restaurant in Littleton. She’s happy; I’m happy. Over the next few weeks she’ll work on strengthening her thumb, but she’s already got good mobility with it. This quilter/handy woman needs her hands to be in full operating condition. A big step forward yesterday.
Samhain Thanksgiving Moon
I’m finally back into a mostly regular rhythm with my workouts. Feels good. I haven’t added back in the resistance work I was doing, the P90X exercises, but I’ll get back to at least some of them soon. Dana’s got me doing a suite of upper body exercises, some tailored exactly for the cervical arthritis, some for the tendinitis. They occupy one full workout every other day. I’ll be able to do leg and back work plus the minimal p.t. exercises on the other days.
Samhain Thanksgiving Moon
Grandson Gabe’s port finished its work a couple of days ago. Through it Jon and Jen infuse the factor that helps prevent joint bleeds, good for Gabe since he receives a prophylactic dose. That means he gets two to three infusions a week. A port is less painful than a needle stick.
The day the port stopped functioning Gabe had to be infused the old fashioned way, with a needle in a vein. Apparently he did not like that.
Kate and I went into Colorado Children’s yesterday to spend some time with Gabe and his folks. A real family thing and one I was glad we could do so easily. He had just come up from the recovery room, sort of groggy. A constant stream of nurses, nurses’ assistants, cleaners, doctors, hospital functionaries came in to probe him, ask questions, set up IV’s and o2 monitors, position the bed, bring water with ice.
Really, there’s gotta be a better way. In the hospital rest is important, but the pattern, the culture of the hospital works against it. Of course, you don’t want to be a hospital whose patients die of neglect, but there’s got to be a place between the current high traffic and the opportunity to heal.
This port lasted four years, some last six or seven, so he probably won’t have to have this done again until he’s old enough to really get what’s happening. The goal is for him to self-infuse but he dislikes needle sticks so it may be a while.
Samhain Thanksgiving Moon
That mattress guy. Randy. I called Mattress Firm, a location on Colorado Avenue, mostly because it was somewhat close to Groundswell, the cannabis boutique we wanted to see.
Randy was eager. “If you come in tomorrow, I’ll give you two free pillows, a free mattress pad, free delivery and the $300 off for the Veteran’s Day Sale.” We wanted a tempurpedic mattress, Mattress Firm sold them and Randy wanted our business. So yesterday we dropped by to see Randy.
Randy, 58, had a watch larger than a silver dollar with a band and case of a mother of pearl like substance, white. His face had a flattened, slightly toad like look, unusual. His clothing would have been appropriate in church save for lack of a tie.
He remembered me. “Charlie, good to meet you. And this is?” Kate.
Over the course of much lying down we learned a lot about Randy. This store had been Mattress King, but they got bought out about a year and a half ago, and Mattress Firm was “Much better. They really cleaned the place up. And I didn’t know whether I could stand the change. It’s been a tough year and a half.”
He went away and came back with two pillows, “Kate, you’re a side sleeper. You’ll like this latex pillow. Charlie, you’re a stomach sleeper?” Yes, I said. “You’ll like this one, you want your head close to the mattress. This one has bigger circles, means it flattens down more than the one with the smaller circles.” OK.
Like a magician, the Great Randy, he produced a pint size jelly jar with a blue liquid and a cloth stretched over its top. “See, this is the mattress pad. Zero dollars. Smell the windex? Now feel the top.” The top was dry. “Any accident, pet, other on this mattress pad, nothing gets through. Nothing. And, it breathes. That’s why you can smell the windex.” Randy throws it on the bed, letting it bounce around, seemingly ready to spill. Randy the showman.
“Kate, you’re petite, so you don’t need the firm. You won’t press it down. This one is softer, it will conform to you. And, it’s cool. Tempurpedics don’t sleep hot. Feel this tinsel mattress cover. Cool, right?”
Later Randy told us about his brother, “A bad guy. But he had an accident, wrapped his SUV around a pole. He was dead at the crash site, but they revived him. Then, he died twice at the hospital. Only one in ten would survive that, but he survived. And now he’s changed. He goes to church, is in the Knights of Columbus. A changed guy.”
“I had to learn the computer, the new process. I like the new process. It’s better. I’m glad I learned it.” This while Randy input our order. “I’m the Felix Unger of Mattress Firm. My store’s clean. My bathroom’s clean. Neat. And they keep it up. See that sign out there? New. Mattress King’s was bad.”
Randy also didn’t get his pick of his stores, but he was happy he ended up here. “My last store, you just sat back.” He tilted back in his big padded office chair, stared at the ceiling. “All I got there were customers from the Taco Bell. They ate their food in my parking lot. I didn’t mind. But when they threw their trash out? Meh.”
“I live up north. Moved in with my brother. Good for both of us.” He sighed, “I’ve learned if you poke the keys over and over, he doesn’t like it. Slows down. So, I just wait.” The big dell monitor divided Randy from us. I had a bottle of water, cold. He’d asked if I preferred warm or cold.
“So. Two pillows. Zero dollars. Mattress pad. Zero dollars. Delivery. Zero dollars. It’s all on here. $200 off the mattress. Rotate it every 3 months, the first two years, then 6 months. If you have any problems, just call the number. They’ll take care of it.”
At that point two women walked in. “Just finishing up here. I’ll be right with you,” Randy said.
Samhain Moon of the First Snow
Kate called up to the loft, “Do you want to go shopping for pot and out for lunch?” “If you still want to.” “I do.”
Down the mountain and into Denver. Broadway, a fascinating street filled with specialty furniture stores, vinyl record collections, funky restaurants and a block of marijuana dispensaries both medical and recreational.
We have to go into Denver because Jefferson County, where we live, does not allow marijuana sales of any kind. This conservative streak did not show up in the election results yesterday however when Kate and I and our fellow citizens of the county turned out a trio of right-wing school board members. They wanted our schools to teach only capitalism, American exceptionalism and a softer view of slavery. Oh, and they also treated teachers and teacher’s unions like pariah’s.
Still, though, no Mary Jane in Aspen Park or Conifer. We drove past the green block all the way to the Imperial Chinese Restaurant, a Chinese seafood restaurant we’d eaten at a month or so ago. Over shrimp, egg rolls, hot and spicy and egg drop soup, we discussed our pending purchase.
“This feels faintly illegal to me. Sort of guilty.” Like, I thought, I should be watching over my shoulder. Buying weed, after all, was a signal illegal act of the ’60’s.
When we got to Walking Raven, a premiere marijuana dispensary (as it says on its very own signs), it had a furtive appearance, much like the Adult stores of yore. No windows, nothing cheery about it, a block building, low and dull, as if embarrassed itself at what it did.
Stepping through the blue door above takes you into a narrow waiting area with a locked door in front of you and the entrance behind. A glass cage is on the left and a bearded young man looked at us. (His name is Matt and this is his picture.) A sign said, “No one under 21 admitted.” He asked to see, then take our driver’s licenses. “Do you really see us as under 21?” “You’ll get your licenses back when you’re called up.” Oh.
A door buzzed and Matt appeared on the other side. “There are three ahead of you.” We sat in comfortable chairs in the tiny waiting area. The three ahead of us were not Denver’s leading citizens. One man had the crippled walk of a person in permanent pain. Another sported a bushy red beard, jeans and a crumpled shirt. The third wore a Nepalese or Tibetan wool hat pulled down over bushy hair. He had on khaki shorts and displayed green socks sporting a marijuana leaf decoration. His tennis shoes were colorful keds. A hipster.
And us, two graying remnants of the ’60’s.
A young woman called us up in a bit, handed us back our driver’s licenses as Matt had promised. She had a leather glove on one hand and seemed confident. “We haven’t bought any pot recently,” I said. “Since the ’60’s,” Kate added. “No problem. We’ll make it as painless as possible for you.”
We told her we were interested in edibles. “Oh, they’re over here in the cooler.” The cooler was a small upright, maybe four feet high, but on a stand. It looked like a medical cooler you might see in a pharmacy. Inside were various colorful options: Edipure, Highly Edible Gummies, Cheeba Chews, Bhang Ice Chocolate, and Dew Drops among others. “The recommended dose is 10 milligrams. So the chocolate bars have small squares that are 10 milligrams, the gummies are 10 milligrams, one drop of the Dew Drops is 10 milligram.”
Kate chose Cheeba Chews*, a non-psychoactive blend of thc and cannabinoid. She wants to try it as a non-narcotic alternative to Percocet for arthritis pain. It was not cheap, at $55 for 8 chewable tablets. She’s not tried it yet, but I’ll let you know how it goes.
While waiting for her change, Kate noticed a second clerk reading things on the wall above the cash register. “I’m trying,” she told marijuana socks, “to tell how high I am.”
*A tasteful blend of chocolate taffy and CBD extract.
Each batch of high grade cannabis oil used to make Cheeba Chews™ is tested at three critical stages…The Flower, The Oil, The Edible…to ensure each individual chew is consistently infused. Individual 10mg chew in each bag.
Find a stocked Colorado dispensary
Ingredients: 10mg – CBD, Sugar, Glucose Syrup, Vegetable Oil, Skim Milk, Cocoa, Whey, Butter, Soy Lecithin, Flavorings | Calories: 10 cheebachews.com
Mabon Moon of the First Snow
This has been an aches and pains week. Pain, chronic pain, with which Kate is too familiar, can sap drive, make life difficult. This week we’ve both been hit by pains and accompanying disruption in our sleep. The combination of sleep deprivation and pain makes it very difficult for me to focus on anything that requires attention, thought.
Chainsaws vibrate. A lot. And, they’re noisy and dangerous. In addition the fast movement of the chain has a gyroscopic effect that makes the saw want to move in its own way, so part of using one is occasionally working against that force. Trees weigh a lot and the larger the branches, the more they weigh, too. Using the chainsaw results in heavy labor immediately afterward. All of which I like, for some reason.
There’s plenty more work ahead, moving as I will today into the southwest portion of our front woods. My goal is to get the front done and have someone come move all that slash.
Last week I punctuated my chainsaw work with a two hour up and down hike with Ruth. It was a wonderful time for the two of us, not so wonderful for my back. These are the constant third phase trade-offs. This I can do, but it will make my arm sing hot music. This I can do, but my back will claim its prize at the end. This I can do, but I’ll have to sacrifice sleep as a result.
The paradox, the contradictory part of all this is that if I don’t do something, I’ll soon be able to do nothing. So rest or desisting from exercise, manual labor is not really an option, not for long. The physical therapy aims to get me back to a spot where these trade-offs are not as acute, not as persistent and frequent. But, it too, has its price. Time.
This is not complaint, just observation. It’s all as much a part of the third phase as all-nighters were of the second, both with tests and later with babies. This reality defines a certain part of what it means to be older, at least for most of us; but, it does not define all of aging, nor does it define the most important parts.
Mabon Moon of the First Snow
P.T. this morning. Dana did some rotator cuff work that hurt like a summabit. Then it felt better. Learning more new exercises. Soon I will achieve that fated day when the things I do for self-care like working out, teeth, p.t. exercises, showering consume all my waking moments. Then the capacity to stay alive will meet futility. Nah. Not really. But it feels like it right now.
Gray days. Snow predicted tomorrow. More trees to cut down, but this old body isn’t up to it today. Tomorrow. In the snow. Like a real Minnesotan.
Vega, Gertie and Kepler all come up to the loft. Vega stands outside the door and gives a soft but insistent bark. Let me in. Gertie paws at the door, already scarring the metal door, scraping off the green paint. Kepler comes up and stands outside the door. If I see him, I let him in. Otherwise he waits as long as it makes sense to him, then he goes back downstairs. All three of them are up here now, snoring. Rigel will not climb the stairs.
Mabon Moon of the First Snow
Still have snow under the pines, but on the driveway, in the way of Colorado, the snow melted with no need for removal. Most excellent.
We had an interesting medical event yesterday. And why not! This is the year of bodies gone wild. At least here on Black Mountain Drive. Kate had her shoulders x-rayed. Instead of getting any information about the shoulders though, when the nurse called with the results she said the radiologist found that Kate’s pacemaker wires were loose, disconnected. OMG.
After a call to the electro-physiologist, Kate got forwarded to the device department. Not kidding, actual name. When the device department called back, they asked her to do a tele-trace. This involves putting a small electromagnetic disc over the pacemaker. The disc and its machine then interrogate the pacemaker, check up on how it’s doing.
While on her way into Denver to pick up granddaughter Ruth, Kate got the call. The pacemaker responded to the interrogation and reported in as active. So, no disconnected wires. OMG. Please come in for your regular checkup next year. They are, and I’m glad, calling the radiologist to see WTF.
Maybe now we can get back to the shoulders.
Mabon Moon of the First Snow
Kate’s progressing in her recovery. Her right thumb seems more and more usable. It got the platelet injection. Her soft bandage gets replaced today with a harder cast. Her ability to maneuver with one good hand and four fingers amazes me. She’s making curtains for the loft right now, for example.
The generator got installed last week. John the plumber came over yesterday and ran the natural gas to it. It needs tweaking since it’s now living at 8,800 feet rather than 900 feet, something like a 3% loss in efficiency for each thousand feet above sea level. You engineers who read this understand.
The kitchen remodel proceeds apace. The cabinets are chosen. The appliances purchased. Custom cabinets are under construction. I’m most excited about better light. My rods and my cones they fail me. Not gathering illumination like they used to.
Granddaughter Ruth will be here Friday, Saturday, Sunday while her parents attend a school conference. Jon and Jen now work in the same school district so they can go to these things together.
Slowly, slowly the new place is coming together. By the Winter Solstice we should have solar generation of electricity, a new kitchen, a working generator and a mostly finished loft. Too, the fire mitigation and solar panel shading necessitated tree cutting should be well along, or finished.
Mabon Moon of the First Snow
Not commendable, but true. I’m finding the pink ribbons, glowing reports of breast cancer survivors and the breathless joy of pink clad marathoners and professional athletes annoying. No, I don’t begrudge a single woman their successful treatment. Far from it. I’m glad.
It’s just that my own crew, prostate cancer survivors, have their cancer, get treatment, then get back to their lives. I don’t see blue ribbons (the color for prostate cancer. which makes some gender stereotypical sense) on cars, athlete’s sneakers, bedecking runners in the prostate cancer marathon. No smiling men surrounded by their buddies cheering them on.
This year the National Cancer Institute estimates there will be 231,480 new cases of breast cancer diagnosed, 14% of all new cancer cases. Over the same period it estimates 220,800 new cases of prostate cancer, 13.3% of all new cancer cases. Breast cancer will cause the death of 40,290 women and a small number of men, 6.8% of all cancer deaths. Prostate cancer will account for 27,450 deaths, 4.7% of all cancer deaths.
The numbers, then, are very similar though breast cancer does occur somewhat more often and causes more deaths.
Still, when I saw a woman celebrating her survival of stage 1 breast cancer being feted like a celebrity, a slow wave of rancor pulsed through me. I had stage 2. This is childish, I understand that. My cancer was worse than yours and you get all the fun. Geez.
A woman I know, when I confessed this emerging feeling, said, “Well, breasts are visible, more important to a woman’s sexual identity.” More important than sperm to a man’s? I thought this, but didn’t counter. The childishness part repressed there, thank god.
Would I want to have my face with a victorious I put prostate cancer in its place expression made available to public news services? Probably not. But I’m sure there are men who would be delighted.
Not quite sure what I want from this conversation, but I needed to put it out there.