Category Archives: Health

Family, Health

In the Hospital

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Spring                                                        Bee Hiving Moon

Mentioned Kate’s cellulitis the other day.  Got worse.  She went to the doc today, her regular doc for over 30 years.  Kate called at noon, “I’m going to the hospital.  IV antibiotics.”  Oh.

This had me worried because not long after we were married Kate developed a very serious infection, it turned out to be her first ever herpes simplex to which her body way overreacted.  She damn near died with that one.

So, I’m relieved she’s getting full bore attention for this.

Only one problem.  She has our car.  We talked about my taking a cab in but decided it was too expensive.  I don’t have anything until Wednesday since I passed on the Woolly’s tonight.  If they can knock this back in a day or two, I’ll stay here and take care of the home front.

If she needs me, she’ll call and I’ll get in there.  I could take the Northstar in tomorrow or Wednesday morning.

An unforeseen occurrence in our one car plan.  Weird, huh?

She leaves Friday for Denver, at least that’s the current plan.  Hard to say now.

Aging, Health

Trust Your Senses?

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Spring                                                  Bee Hiving Moon

I’ve reached the age when hearing that I have mild cataracts counts as a good thing.  Eye exam today.  Playing space invaders (visual field), still good in both eyes in spite of the glaucoma (eye drops).

My ophthalmologist of 20+ years retired last year so this is only my second time with Dr. Brown.  She’s about 5 feet tall.  That’s with platforms.  She’s bright. “I see a stable eye today,”  she said.  A stable eye.  A good thing at any age.

Every time I to go the ophthalmologist (which I cannot spell) my thoughts turn to epistemology.  Today I got to thinking about medical specialties that focus on senses.  ENT.  Dermatology. (sort of) Ophthalmology.

Dr. Brown said to me today, “This visual field test tells me that your optic nerve is in good health.” A lot of ink has been spilled in philosophy over the degree to which we can trust our senses–since they stand between us and the world out there–but it occurred to me today that we never consider less than optimal senses.  What kind of information does an unhealthy optical nerve give me?  Does the degradation of visual stimuli correspond to a diminished or corrupted reality for me?  Ditto for olfactory, taste, touch, hearing.

I know my world is different from yours acoustically.  With only one ear bringing in sound data I cannot easily find the source of sound.  My aural world is less rich than yours.   I don’t know that it’s less real, but it’s different.  In some critical instances, very different.

Two examples.

Emergency vehicles.  When I hear a siren while I’m driving, I can’t tell where it is.  That’s different than the experience of a person who hears normally.

Vehicles approaching in a manner other than customary.  In England where they drive on the left I had to constantly remind myself to pay very close attention.  From the left is where I don’t hear.

Anyhow, I’m curious about sensory data.  And what it can and can’t tell us.

 

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

Saturday

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Imbolc                                   Woodpecker Moon

Did my workout last night so I have Saturday and Sunday free.  Feels very luxurious.  This short burst workout economizes time while maximizing result.  What a deal.

We had our business meeting.  Still tinkering with the budget.  We’ve got the large outline and the big expenses well in hand, now we’re looking at other areas where we spend less per transaction, where the patterns are not yet obvious.  Kate’s learning Excel and grumbling all the way about it, but I can tell she’s proud of her progress.

Kate made pumpernickel bread.  It has molasses, espresso and chocolate among other things.  Who knew?  A moist tasty bread.

I’m feeling good about the start on reimagining.  I want to get a little looser, more free-form with the words and their implications.  Over time certain things will begin to clump together.  Right now, this writing aims toward a presentation on April 1st at Groveland UU.  It is also the first essay of maybe 10-12 that will constitute Reimagining.  At least as I imagine it now.  Ha, ha.

Off to the grocery store.  Using that former exercise time for the common good.

 

Art and Culture, Bees, Garden, Health

Time Marches On

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Winter                                  Garden Planning Moon

Kate sent the check off for the bees.  Two two pound packages of Minnesota Hygienics.  They should come around tax filing deadline.  A happier thing to hive bees.

We also decided on the plantings for our garden this season.  I’ll wait a bit on sending out the order.

In other news:  yes, I left the honey I intended to take Roy Wolf on the counter top.  Here. Yes.  I left the rug I intended to take to American Rug Laundry in the garage.  Here.  Yes, I apparently sent a test back to my doctor without my name on it.  And that’s just this week.

Who’s turning 65 soon?

On a different note.  Two fun groups of kids today.  Asian art tours.  One kid said, “I have a wonder.  I wonder whether the Chinese see our living rooms as weird?  Like we see theirs?”  Don’t know about you but I imagine either one would see our living room as weird.

The museum has artificial turf and tropical plants, brightly colored metal outdoor chairs and outdoor umbrellas up in the lobby.  Called a popup park.  One kid asked, “Is this art?”  Geez, how would I know?

 

Aging, Health

Man On Fire

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Winter (?)                              First Moon of the New Year
Kate’s off at work.  The dogs are quiet and I’m finishing up some work before I work out.  Just mailed the Sierra Club legcom’s agenda for next week’s meeting.  Moved Gertie and Kona’s crates up stairs.  Read a couple of chapters in The Art of Fielding. (Bill Schmidt, this novel takes place in a college that reminds me of St. Norberts.  You might want to take a look.  Mine is an e-book or I’d lend it to you when I’m done.)

(This is what I think I look like while I’m doing short burst training.)

Now I’m drinking my cup of Awake tea, two tea bags worth.  I read somewhere that caffeine helps workouts and I can report that it’s true.  I don’t get nearly as exhausted 

(This is what I really look like when I’m done.)

These workouts are known as short burst training.  You run or bike or do push-ups, whatever, as hard as you can for 30 seconds or a minute.  Then, you quit and do resistance work, stretching, balance work until your heart rates drops back to base-line.  At which point you do another minute at hard as you can.  You keep this up for four or five short bursts.

The advantage to it is that in between you get all your resistance work done and, when you’re in peak shape, you can do the whole work out in 30 minutes.  It takes me 40 + right now, because my heart rate takes longer to drop back down after the third burst.  But that will change.

 

Aging, Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Health, Humanities, Myth and Story, Politics

The Death of an Honest Man

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Samain                                      Moon of the Winter Solstice

Christopher Hitchens died.  An honest man, Diogenes would have stopped searching.  He faced death as a non-believer, a man whose God Is Not Great made him a name in the theist–anti-theist debates of this millenia’s early days.

His angry anti-religious bias fit in well with the Richard Dawkin and Sam Harris crowd, agreeing with their totalizing, methinks-they-protest-too-much screed.  If religion is so bad, why has it persisted for so long?  A scathing atheist has backed himself into a metaphysical box, one much like the box he insists all religionists occupy.

To adamantly claim God’s non-existence is just as silly and unwarranted as the claim of God’s existence.  Neither can have, by definition, empirical validation, so, in each case we enter the realm of faith, of conjecture believed because it feels right, true.

Faith in its purest forms is a beautiful aspect of human culture, allowing us to transcend the often bleak realities of the day-to-day, finding a blissful reality where others see only pain and boredom.  Marriage, for example, requires faith in another human being, another human being as wonderful and amazing as yourself and as awful and horrible.

Monotheism as practiced in the dominant Western religious traditions is only one item on the menu of faith as offered by human culture and even it comes in three flavors:  Christian, Jewish and Muslim.  The ancient traditions of the West synch up better with the pluralist pantheons of India, Nepal, Tibet, Africa and the indigenous Americas.

Monotheism, rather than religion per se, seems the better target, since it makes definitive and often absolute claims, claims which sometimes pose as divine law, unbreachable and final.  The nature of monotheism’s claims rather than its actual content or institutional form are the problem.

With one deity and one book the temptation to sure knowledge, certain dogma too often overwhelms these believers, though in all three traditions there are, too, the more measured, more humble ways.  In fact, strange as it may seem given the all too charged dialogues of the past twenty years, the liberal orientation–former mainline Christianity, reform Judaism and the Sunni/Sufi mainstream Islam–is numerically dominant.

 

Aging, Health, Weather +Climate

It’s Beginning To Look a Lot Like…March?

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Samain                                 Moon of the Winter Solstice

It’s beginning to look a lot like….March.  Geez.  Rain?  In mid-December?  47 degrees.  Come on guys.  We need that climate deal now.

(this was the scene out my study window on December 11, last year)

How would Robert Frost write “Stopping by Woods on A Snowy Evening” for the Winter Solstice?  Somehow the carriage sunk in mud while the rain beats down just doesn’t carry the same poetics.

Annual physical finished.  Tom Davis, the internist whom I see, enters the State Fair art contest every year in photography and has never got admitted.  He has one of his pieces in his office and it’s pretty damn good.  A pensive work in Galena, Illinois.

Each year after the physical, since fasting is required, I go to Hell and have breakfast.  Hell has its Minneapolis location in the basement of the building next to the Medical Arts parking ramp.  An all punk wait staff, classic movies projected on a big screen and broadcast over TV’s, and an imaginative menu make Hell a bigger draw than you might imagine.

 

Aging, Commentary on the news, Health, Politics, Retirement

One Last Physical

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Samain                                       Moon of the Winter Solstice

As 65 nears there is one more physical left under the old, private insurance model.  COBRA, which allows extension of private medical insurance for up to 18-24 months after loss of employment or retirement, if you can afford it, has kept the Health Partners plan in place until February 14th, when this baby boomer adds another droplet to the silver tsunami.

So, one last time under the private health care insurance model that has bankrupted and made more ill hundreds of thousands in this the wealthiest of all possible countries.

Tom Davis has seen me now for four years or so since Charlie Peterson took off for Colorado, Steamboat Springs.  Tom collects native american pottery and hopes some day to become a docent at the MIA.  He’s a good doc, a geriatrician in the mix.

Each year.  Downtown to the Medical Arts Building.  Park in the ramp, find the skyway.  Take the elevator.  Yes, nothing to eat or drink other than clear liquids since midnight.  The blood pressure cuff, measuring my major health problem.  Once by the nurse.  Then again by Tom.  Maybe yet again.

The ritual questions.  Any difficulty swallowing?  Any changes?  And on.  Probing with words while the eyes watch, looking for signs, fleeting symptoms.  Diagnostics at work, the differential tree now second nature, honed by so many patients.

Disrobing. The paper gown.  So cute. Poking, coughing.  A reflex tested.  Prostate checked.  Prescriptions refilled.  Blood work drawn.  Urine sample.

After visit summary in hand, back out through the lobby.  Others wait.  For the blood pressure cuff.  The ritual questions.  The disrobing.

Next year though it will be socialized medicine and a local HMO taking care of the visit. Medicare is not the problem, it’s the solution.

The ritual question for solving the problem:  for whom will you vote?

Aging, Commentary on the news, Health, Politics, Retirement, US History

Grocers and Beware of Abstract Ideas

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Samain                               Moon of the Winter Solstice

Kate and I went to the grocery store together.  OF alert!  As I do most of the grocery shopping, I often notice older couples on what appears to be their big outing of the week.  Buying food.  And here we were, wandering the aisles of Festival Foods, a Kowalski burb grocery name.

It was nice to have her along and she prefers to drive the cart.  Read:  she always drives the cart.  Just like I do the car.  Gender insensitive on both our parts, I know.  Still.

We loaded up for the week, going over budget some, probably because there were two sets of eyes to be sucked in by the clever marketers behind grocery stores.  Low margin business along the walls:  veggies, fruit, meat, dairy, bread.  Higher margin grocery items in the center aisles:  soda, cereal, coffee, baking goods, oils and mustards and mayo and pickles.  Highest margin items on the endcaps of aisles and the impulse purchases parked conveniently by the checkout lanes.

Message here.  Just shop the outside walls.

Still reading Scorpions, about the Roosevelt star Supremes:  Felix Frankfurter, Hugo Black, Robert Jackson and William O. Douglas.  The big news to me so far is the astonishing reversal of roles evident from this court to the current one.  Let me give you two examples, but first one thought to undermine them all

As the book reminded me, there is no place in the constitution that empowers the Supreme Court to decide cases in the way that it does.  Go back to Marbury vs. Madison, a hoary lesson from US History at one level of education or another.  Marshall created judicial review.

Example #1:  Judicial restraint.  Felix Frankfurter was an early, liberal, advocate of judicial restraint.  He specifically wanted the reigning conservative notion of liberty of contract, a legal idea that kept unions down and decided all cases in the interest of individual property rights, struck down and its source, a judicial interpretation of the 14th amendment stoppered.  In order to advance progressive ideas, Frankfurter said, justices should restrain themselves from intervening in matters decided by Congress and state legislatures.  Guess who’s in favor of judicial restraint now?

Example #2:  Originalism.  Hugo Black, a former radical member of the senate, known for his populist agenda, contended that justices should not make up ideas that were not in a plain reading of the Constitution.  This was aimed at the conservative invention of liberty of contract, also Frankfurter’s target.

Both Frankfurter and Black continued to expand their Constitutional philosophies as their terms extended.  Now, it is the Scalia’s and the John Roberts of the current court who advocate judicial restraint and originalism.  Beware of an abstract idea, it may not produce the result you expect.

Said he, an abstract thinker.  Me.  Beware.

Art and Culture, Cooking, Health, Travel

Empanadas

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Samain                              Moon of the Winter Solstice

Empanadas.  Kate and I came to enjoy this Latin perogi, or pasty, so we decided to make some ourselves.  This former baker did the dough while Kate made the filling and baked.  Cooking together is fun and I think we’ll do more of it as Kate eases in to full time retirement, possibly as early as March of next year.

By making more than we need we can then freeze some and have meals later from one morning’s work.

Whoa.  Ratcheted myself up about that presentation.  This happened because I agreed to do it before we left on our cruise, knowing I’d have barely a week to put it together when we got back.  It began looming as we hit Tierra del Fuego and turned north, the turn that in almost all my trips means heading home.

That meant I came home ready to cram, which I did.  After years of deadlines in college, papers and tests alike, I adopted an I’d rather get it done ahead of time attitude, so I prefer a relaxed pace, finishing something like a week before a due date.  I didn’t have that luxury this time.

The church did send me a nice e-mail a moment ago, so I feel good about that.

Since getting back from the cruise, I’ve begun a short burst training regimen.  That entails working at maximum effort for 45 seconds to a minute, I run on the treadmill at about 6.5 mph at 5% elevation right now, then getting off and doing resistance work or stretching, getting back on 4 minutes later, going full tilt boogie again, then off, until 4-5 minutes of maximum intensity have accumulated.

It’s fast and crams a lot of work into a short of period of time, plus, according to the literature I’ve read is much better than traditional workouts lasting much longer.  Even so, I also do a 50 minute low intensity treadmill workout on the off days.  I do the short burst three times a week.

Now, if I can figure out how to cut my calories in half.