Category Archives: Health

Colorado, Health, Our Land and Home

Miracles

Leave a comment

Winter                                                           Settling Moon

The half settling moon is in the sky. We’re not half done, but the reading room, living room and the two bathrooms resemble their future counterparts. The kitchen though remains mostly with king cardboard, as does Kate’s sewing room, my loft, the garage, the dining room, the home office, the grandkids room and the guest room.  We’re both excited about our progress, steady and considerable, especially given altitude acclimatization.

The body, our bodies, the dog’s bodies, are miracles. Here we are living where the available oxygen is, at first, inadequate for our needs. After several days with lack of adequate oxygen though, these mammal bodies say, huh. We need to do something here. We need to produce more red blood cells so we can take in more oxygen with each breath.

And so it is that we’re not quite as winded as we were this last week, our sleep is not quite as disturbed. Both of us can feel our bodies changing, adapting to this semi-alien environment. Amazing. All part of the adventure.

 

 

Colorado, Health

Settling Tasks

Leave a comment

Winter                                                Settling Moon

Settling task of the day so far, cut the tape joining a copper rod and my favorite snow shovel, then clearing the small deck off Kate’s sewing area and the stairs up to the loft. Settling task of the mid-morning. Crank up the bright yellow cub cadet two-stage snow-blower and clear the driveway. Oh, and retrieve the newspaper.

I’m having a mild case of acute altitude sickness, mainly shortness of breath on exertion and poor sleeping. It will pass.

Breakfast. Then out to find a new dryer and washer.

GeekWorld, Health

TTT

Leave a comment

Samain                                                                                     Moving Moon

The ritual of the oil change was performed upon the Rav4 this morning and its tires too were rotated. As if they did not rotate enough each time they carry us. We acolytes of the Toyota oil change cult sat in our waiting room with the holy messenger disk near us so the technopriests might summon us in case our wallet was needed. Fortunately this day no summoning came and only the normal charges applied. Thank thee Toyota. TTT

After that I lay back in the dental chair and allowed Stacey into my mouth with short pointy instruments, rapidly oscillating water and. Floss. Clean teeth. Fresh oil. I’m ready to hit the road for the Rocky Mountains.

 

Health

Do You Know Where Your Sleep Is?

Leave a comment

Samain                                                                              New (Moving) Moon

3:30 a.m. Do you know where your sleep is? I don’t know where mine is. Occasional middle of the night insomnia makes me think.  Before the electric light a normal night’s sleep consisted of sleeping 3 or 4 hours, then getting up for an hour for a bit of food, sex, reading, then back to bed for another 4 hours of sleep or so. Tom Crane brought this to my attention.

Sometimes I wake up, hit the bathroom, then, for some reason can’t return to sleep. Or, no reason. Not ruminating tonight. That is, thinking through stuff in a manner that does not lead to action. Chewing the psychic cud I suppose from one of our mental stomachs where we store not fully digested experiences or fears or projects ahead.

Just. Awake. The rhythm of waking up, not sleeping for a period of time, then returning to sleep till morning may well be the normal one. We assume, because each of us need 8 hours or so of sleep each day, that we should get it all at one whack. Maybe not.

My afternoon naps supplement my nightly sleep, for example. Perhaps 3 to 4 hours at a time is what our bodies prefer.

Health, The Move

More Getting Ready to Go Stuff. (medical)

Leave a comment

Samain                                                                            Closing Moon

Went to the Nicollet Mall today to see Dr. Corrie Massie, my third internist in the last seven years or so. Charlie Petersen moved to Steamboat Springs with his wife. Tom Davis retired to collect native American pots and otherwise enjoy life. Corrie is a good doc, one I would have been happy to see longer.

Instead, this morning she printed my annual prescription refills so I could carry them a new pharmacy in Colorado. She also explained my stage 3 kidney disease diagnosis. “I get the most questions about that diagnosis of any I put on patient’s charts,” she said. Turns out that with the most normal kidney functions you qualify for stage 1 kidney disease. Stage 2 kidney disease is the domain most folks inhabit most of their life and Stage 3 represents a situation not unusual as we age. “It’s a filter. As the filter gets used, various insults degrade its function. Disease. High blood pressure. NSAID’s.”

As we get older, our kidney function deteriorates. The third phase sell-by date. At some point the universe follows the dictates of my long time ago grocery store boss who always reminded us to “rotate the stock.”

As became my practice when I transferred back to the Nicollet Clinic to start seeing Tom Davis, I went straight to hell from my doctor’s office. Hell’s Kitchen that is. A good breakfast, no matter what time of day.

 

Colorado, Health, The Move, Weather +Climate

Minnesota!

Leave a comment

Samain                                                                               Closing Moon

And the award for first roads driven while snowing goes to… Minnesota! Colorado, at least Conifer, is still blessedly shy of snow which means the fence posts will get in. It won’t last. Conifer gets 90″ of snow compared to Andover’s 45. More snow falls there, but the sun, closer by 8,800 feet, also melts the snow faster and the colds don’t get as intense, at least on south facing surfaces like our driveway. The result is more snow, but less snow cover.

The roads on my way to the eye doc this morning were icy, but plowed. Folks drove sensibly for the most part though there were the occasional frozen minds talking on the phone or even texting. A few also followed too closely for dry pavement. The laws of physics will not be repealed, no matter how confident a driver you are.

Not bad for the first storm, really.

At the front desk, on the way out, I signed a release for my medical records so they can be transferred electronically to the next ophthalmologist  The same will happen when I visit Dr. Massie in a couple of weeks. This is much more convenient and better for me as a patient, too. Thank you, difference engine.

 

 

Health

Rheum

Leave a comment

Fall                                                                                         New (Falling Leaves) Moon

BTW: I originally named this the Leaf Change moon, but saw that the Ojibway call it the Falling Leaves moon. I liked that better.

Kate had an appointment with her rheumatologist this morning. As I often do, I wondered about the rheum part of this word. So, from my favorite online etymology dictionary:

rheum (n.) Look up rheum at Dictionary.com“mucous discharge,” late 14c., from Old French reume “a cold” (13c., ModernYou can’t control the Universe. You are the water, not the rock French rhume), from Latin rheuma, from Greek rheuma “discharge from the body, flux; a stream, current, flood, a flowing,” literally “that which flows,” from rhein “to flow,” from PIE root *sreu- “to flow” (cognates: Sanskrit sravati “flows,” srotah “stream;” Avestan thraotah- “stream, river,” Old Persian rauta “river;” Greek rheos “a flowing, stream,” rhythmos “rhythm,” rhytos “fluid, liquid;” Old Irish sruaim, Irish sruth“stream, river;” Welsh ffrwd “stream;” Old Norse straumr, Old English stream, Old High German strom (second element in maelstrom); Lettish strauma “stream, river;” Lithuanian sraveti “to trickle, ooze;” Old Church Slavonic struja “river,” o-strovu “island,” literally “that which is surrounded by a river;” Polish strumień “brook”).

(this stream really flows if you click on it.)

Notice in there that rhein meant “to flow.” So, if your child wants to grow up to be a rheumatologist, tell them to start paying attention to discharges from the body as well as rivers, streams, floods, even rhythm, anything that flows. If it’s got a good beat, you can code to it. (medical humor)

 

Cooking, Health

A Small Thing

Leave a comment

Lughnasa                                                                               College Moon

Kate’s got some kind of malady that made her want my chicken noodle soup. It’s my signature dish. And the recipe is an old family recipe, maybe. The soup recipe is on the Golden Plump chicken label.

Making it is a small thing. Cut onions (ours) one cup. Cut carrots (ours) one cup. Put in a full clove of garlic cut and smashed (ours). This last is my addition. A cup of celery. Some olive oil. Sautee for five minutes. Then add the chicken and the corn (frozen). Bring to a boil, reduce to simmer and cook for one and a half hours. Remove chicken. Remove skin. Cut chicken meat into small pieces and restore it to the pot with the egg noodles and peas (frozen). Boil for ten minutes. Freezes well and since there are ten cups of water, makes a bunch.

Growing the onions and the carrots and the garlic is a small thing, too. These sort of small things are our lives. Yes, there are the grand gestures: winning an election, bringing home a fat paycheck, building a business, designing a house, getting a degree. Yes, there are these. But without the small things, done by someone, there is no body, no energy, no health for the grand gesture. And the small things must be done every single day while the grand gestures occur only occasionally.

So this is a nod to the small things that make our lives.

Dogs, Family, Garden, Health

Fire and Raspberries

Leave a comment

Lughnasa                                                                          College Moon

Finished the fire pit repair this morning, spreading mulch over the landscape cloth. The IMAG0751landscape cloth covered the sand that filled the hole. The cobblestones from an old Minneapolis street in front of a former Kenwood mansion are clear of soil. We can now summon fire.

Picked raspberries, too. The golden berries have begun to ripen and they are abundant. Fewer red berries, but they are large and fat, juicy. Most of the garden is in now, a few tomatoes, all the egg plants, some peppers, the third planting of beets and carrots and the leeks are all that remain. When the leeks come in, I’ll my chicken and leek pies which we’ll freeze for over the fallow months dining.

Vega has returned to her tail wagging, bouncy self just as the vet feared when he wrote guarded on the prognosis. We have to keep her from running. She’s supposed to go out on a leash, but we never leash our dogs except for trips to the vet and the kennel. Otherwise they have free roaming rights to our woods. This means  that keeping a dog quiet whose surgical wounds need to heal can be difficult. So far, though, the wound has begun to close.

Kate’s down with a stomach bug I had last week. Used to be she shared all the illnesses she contacted at work with me, now I’ve done it to her.

Aging, Friends, Health, Third Phase, Woolly Mammoths

How Can We Live Until We Die?

Leave a comment

Lughnasa                                                                    College Moon

After taking a rug into American Rug Laundry in Minneapolis, I drove back through the campus of the University of Minnesota. It was move in day. Trucks with back doors thrown open, mattresses being handled through door-ways.  Clutches of stunned looking freshmen, on campus and on their own, gathered at street lights. Now what?

It felt good to see that moment, relive my own and feel renewed as a cultural ritual continues, looking much the same as when I did it myself back in 1965.

That was the morning. In the late afternoon I drove over to Maple Grove, to Biaggi’s and met Tom Crane, Bill Schmidt and Warren Wolfe for our Woolly first Monday restaurant meal.

Warren closed on the sale of his second house in Minnesota last Friday and was in a celebratory mood. Bill had come from playing cards with friends, happy to be. Tom had an off work weekend beard and spoke of cleaning the garage floor in anticipation of guests soon to arrive.

The ease of our conversation, the common reference points, so many now, was in its fluidity, healing. (not, I should say, from recent pain or anguish, but from the deeper burden of life lived fundamentally alone) Seeing and being seen is the essence of human interaction yet it is so often blurred by wanting something from the other, or anticipating something else. This evening, as so often with the Woollys (though not always), we were with each other, there, at that table.

One profound question arose, how can we live until we die? This dips into the existential reality of bodies going infirm-Warren and I have glaucoma, Tom’s thumb, Frank’s heart and back, Ode’s knee. It also, and I think more profoundly, raises the question of self-hood, of what makes us who we are. What is necessary? Is walking necessary? Sight? The lack of serious, even terminal illness? What is indispensable?

Perhaps a clue came to us in the person of Cheryl, our waitress. When she drove north from Santa Rosa to San Francisco to see her father, she would drive through Gilroy, the garlic capital of the U.S. She wound crank her windows down and enjoy the aroma. Some of her friends thought her eccentric. No, she was Cheryl, taking in what she could as she had the opportunity.

That is, I would guess, a secret to living until we die.