Category Archives: Health

Aging, Dogs, Health

In Other Medical News

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Spring                                                                                   Planting Moon

Knobby is now knobless.  She ate well last night and this morning. went outside on the leash, front and back, has a spark in her eye.  All good to see, especially the day after a significant procedure.

In other medical news I feel small signs of improvement in the back.  Not enough to hop back on the treadmill, but some.  My in house doc prescribed prednisone for four days, a course I started yesterday.  And, of course, the tincture of time.

I feel less woozy today, less out of it.  That feels really good.  Along with the sun, Kona’s improvement and my back’s, that’s enough to push the needle back into the good headed toward joyful segment of the dial.

A fun trip into the ophthalmologist, then a quiet afternoon and evening.  Sounds perfect to me.

 

Bees, Dogs, Health

Kona. No longer lopsided.

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Spring                                                                              Planting Moon

The tumor removal went well; it came off easily.  Kona was sitting up after the procedure, probably wondering if she’d have to go back to the vet tomorrow.  In 20 minutes I’ll find out when she can come home.  It will be today.

(Kona, Vega and Gertie wanting to be on the other side of the fence.)

I took a long nap aided by Mr. Tramadol and Ms. Oxycodone.  Though both of them have worn off by now my lower back and right hip feel better, not well, but better, which is a victory.

Enough that I went out and gingerly moved the remaining frames of honey from the hive boxes where I’ll put the package later this afternoon.  Just lifting two hive boxes with four frames of honey each did challenge the back though I tried to make my form a perfect 10.  Finding these ordinary, common chores painful does not make me happy.

Getting the bees hived is important and the weather is nice, sunny and no precip.  Have to wait until later this evening so the temps will be cooler and night will be coming, both induce the bees to remain at home for the first day.

 

Dogs, Health, Weather +Climate

Woozy

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Spring (so they say)                                                      Planting Moon

Kona’s at the vets getting her tumor removed.  Gertie’s down here in the study, lying down close to the desk.  Rigel has begun to worry about her mama, looking through the gate in the morning toward the bedroom.  Where could she be?

Kona will come home today, probably late in the afternoon.  She’s been to the vet three days in a row and is not a particularly happy dog at this time.

The meds I’ve been taking for this damned back make me a bit woozy, between that and the pain, my capacity to get things done has diminished quite a bit.  I’ll be glad when the back decides to calm down and I can resume exercising.  It’s also effecting my sleep.  Considerably off.

We did not get 8 inches of snow here.  More like 2 or 3.  Now the forecast has 76 for Sunday.  76.  Maybe some 80’s next week.  No spring this year.  Winter into summer.

Aging, Dogs, Health, Third Phase

Help!

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Spring                                                                             Planting Moon

Kona will have her tumor removed tomorrow.  Roger Barr, our vet, says it is cancerous, which surprised me because she’s been so sturdy and active in spite of the tumor.  A chest x-ray though showed no metastases, a good thing.  We’ve opted to remove though the emergency vet bill and the removal costs will debulk our capital reserves.  Which means we’ll have to find a way to build them back up again.

After our appointment with Dr. Barr, I tried to lift Kona up into the Rav4.  Usually, no problem.  I can lift her 40 pounds. However.  Last week I wrenched my back cleaning out the bee hives in readiness for the new package, which I will pick up today.  As I struggled with what would have been an easy task, a woman came along and asked me if I needed help, “Yes.  I do.”

Between us we got Kona up on the blanket in the back.

“Her and me, we’re doing it together.” I said, nodding toward Kona, “Thanks.”

“Bless you,” she said.

I recount this conversation because it reminded me of a third phase thought.  A thought important for an all men’s group like the Woollies.  We must learn how to recognize when we need help, how to ask for it and how to graciously receive it.  It’s not easy for me to ask for help and I imagine many of us are the same.  As we age, infirmity and illness will increase the probability, the likelihood that we will need the help of others.  Fellow Woollies.  Family.  Other friends.  Medical professionals and home health care assistants.

Health

That Shoulder Thing

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Spring                                                                       Planting Moon

A Vikings jersey #4 with Favre written on it hung in the corridor.  There were other jerseys too not any one I recognized.  Kate found me a shoulder doc and this was a sports medicine clinic.  And here I was.  #66.

The shoulder quieted down after three weeks of rest and return to resistance work has not caused it to flare again so this appointment didn’t seem as urgent as when I first made it.  Still, I wanted to know what was going on and what I might do if it got problematic again.

The short answer.  Aging body.  Maybe some nerve impingement from arthritis in the neck.  Maybe some tear in my rotator cuff.  At my age 20-30% have some.  Maybe some asymmetry from the polio long years ago.  After several x-rays there was no sign of arthritis in my shoulder area.  “The bones are healthy, especially for someone your age.”

I have “an open invitation” for an MRI and further imaging to run down with some certainty the rotator cuff and nerve involvement, but there’s nothing that can be done about them now.  So I passed on the imaging for the moment.

A bit of physical therapy, maybe two sessions.

Got what I wanted.  Nothing immediately urgent or long term important going on.  It may never flare again.  If not, all to the good.  If it does, I’ll take Dr. Lervick up on his invitation and see him again.

Feelings, Friends, Health, Woolly Mammoths

Being. Together.

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Spring                                                                   Bloodroot Moon

The Woolly Mammoths met tonight at the Red Stag.  Stefan, Lonnie, Bill, Scott, Frank, Warren, Mark, Tom and me.  We talked of grandkids and blood sugar levels, the first days of retirement and the career of Teddy Roosevelt.

Some time ago I learned that these kind of gatherings are therapeutic in and of themselves.  By that I mean there is no particular therapeutic strategy in play save the most ancient one of a gathering of friends, yet that one, the ancientrail of friendship in a group, has curative powers.  My shoulder feels better.  I have a smile lurking just around the corner of my mouth.

Here we are seen by each other.  Our deep existence comes with us, no need for the chit-chat and polite conversation of less intimate gatherings.  The who that I am within my own container and the who that I am in the outer world come the closest to congruence at Woolly meetings, a blessed way of being exceeded only in my relationship with Kate.

Now over 25 years of being together.  Then, in the second phase of work and nuclear family, now mostly in the third phase.  What will we be to each other as this life change gradually envelopes us all?  We suspect it will be more than it has been up to this point and up to this point it’s been very good.

Aging, Health, Writing

My Left Shoulder and How It Communicates

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Spring                                                                       Bloodroot Moon

On Saturday the class with Scott Edelstein on marketing and selling books happened in a typical classroom setting, a meeting room of the Loft at their space at Open Book on Washington Avenue.  The room had a blackboard, a white board, exposed beams and brick walls, the usual rectangular tables and plastic chairs with backs.

In the morning, fresh and eager, I leaned in or sat up, entranced by Scott’s revelation of a new world, publishing in the high electronic age.  At breaks I stretched and at lunch I visited the small deli cum coffee shop downstairs for lunch.  Another plastic chair.

The time after lunch was long.  My nap went missing as the clock hit 1, then 2, then 3.  By 4 my shoulder had begun to ping me.  I don’t like this anymore.  Let’s leave.  Get outta here. Scram.

Since the last part of the class involved romancing the agent, my intentions overrode my bodies urgent signals.  I stayed through the last word.  But I left immediately after it, went downstairs and headed home.

Back home the shoulder felt like a small knife had been inserted just below the clavicle, nestling up next to the shoulder joint and pressed through all the way through to my back. It didn’t hurt in  sharp, glancing away sort of pain, but more in a subdued ache with–small flames like you used to use to decorate the model cars of your youth– flickering around the knife.  It’s agony, a soft agony, spread throughout the body, inviting other muscles to tense up, join in the attempt to isolate the pain, make it stay up there.  Having, of course, the opposite effect.

Not fun.  Kate heated up a neck wrap and after two applications my shoulder settled down, rejoined the rest of the body and allowed as how I might go on with the rest of the evening.

Garden, Health, Latin, Translating Metamorphoses

Sowing A Fallow Field

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Spring                                                                                Bloodroot Moon

And the Latin keeps on coming.  I’m sure I’ll reach a plateau here at some point, but I seem to be learning faster and faster.  Of course, it’s taken me 3 years to get to this point, so it’s not like it’s an overnight phenomena.  Still, it feels good. Session with Greg tomorrow.

Jason plowed a fallow field, seeded it with dragon’s teeth and an army sprung up, only to take after each other with weapons grown with them.  Men.

My shoulder pain retreated a good bit while in DC.  That was after the third week of rest, including two before I left.  Today I started back with the same exercise routine, trying to discover exactly what’s going on so I can have good data for my visit with the orthopedist on April 17th.

Kate and I have on our calendars garden clean-up starting April 1.  April fools!  We’d have to shovel snow off it to get started.  We may straighten up the garden shed, clean and sharpen tools.  That we can do now.  Of course, I still have that book and file moving/removal project that’s about half done.  No dearth of things to do.

 

 

Art and Culture, Faith and Spirituality, Feelings, Health, Third Phase

The Undiscover’d Country

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Spring                                                                          Bloodroot Moon

At times my past bleeds into the present, creating small emotional events, upsetting my inner equilibrium.  Right now is one of those times.  Many of us are heir to understandings of ourselves as malformed in some way, not quite right.  I certainly am.

(Dante Gabriel Rossetti    Hamlet and Ophelia 1858 pen and ink drawing)

These irruptions come in the OMG I’m not doing enough form or OMG I have not done enough or OMG I’ll never do enough forms.  My anxious self underlines and bolds these self-declarations as my mind races back to find the not enoughs in the past–no graduate school, no published books, never made it to Washington, the not enoughs in the present–Missing not revised, Loki’s Children not started, no time for serious in-depth reading, not helping out enough at home or making enough time for friends and then uses both of these information streams to predict a dire future:  no books published ever, no friends, no concrete results of any kind, then, wink out.

If this line of thought continues, I’m going to have to visit my analyst, John Desteian.  In touch with him (and, now, Kate) I’ve been able to dispel these strong phantoms, learn to live with facts not illusion and get on with what is a good life.  This is, I think, as much due to faulty wiring as anything else, my family coming with a strong genetic pattern for bipolar disorder, though I don’t believe my issues rise to that level of dysfunction.  I know, not enough even there, eh?

Not long ago I re-read Hamlet’s speech in Scene I, a scene I had memorized long ago for a dramatic presentation contest.  It’s baldly existential view surprised me, even shocked me. A line from it came to me as I woke up this morning and it captures my feeling tone right now:   “…the native hue of resolution is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought.”  This exactly describes me when I get into these episodes.

In the lines just before this one Shakespeare refers to death as the undiscover’d country from which no traveler returns and identifies the dread of that journey as producing the pale cast of thought, thus rendering a person unable to act.  To be or not to be neatly summarizes all this.

 

Aging, Health, Travel

Ancor Impari

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Spring                                                                       Bloodroot Moon

Ah.  Just back from Mt. Vernon.  Learned some things about traveling now.  Now, that is, in the third phase when I’m no longer as resilient as I used to be.

1.  Use a cab or public transportation to a location, then walk back.  Or, the reverse.  Don’t walk both ways, especially on concrete.  (An example this trip would have been the Lincoln Monument.  I could have walked back and seen the Whitehouse and the Willard on the way home.)

2.  If tired, stop.  Rest.  If hungry, eat.  (I have a tendency to want to keep going when I’m moving, wait until meal time if I’ve worked up a hunger.)

3.  When wool gathering about enough this or enough that get out and do something.  Don’t forget 1 & 2.

4. Take at least one vacation a year where the whole point is to relax.  I know this may seem obvious to many of you, perhaps most of you, but I typically have a goal, an intent.  This time, for instance, it was immersion in the pre-Raphaelites and learning about how to work with art post-MIA.  Did it.  But.  I kept needing to turn the hamster wheel one more time.  Stop that!

5.  Vacations are more fun with Kate along. (I knew this one already, but it never hurts to write things down.)