Category Archives: Health

Aging, Asia, Garden, Great Work, Health

It’s Illegal

Leave a comment

Mid-Summer                                                                                             Waxing Honey Flow Moon

In to see Kate this morning after making some soup and killing potato pests by hand and soapy water.  Integrated pest management  suggests hands-on management for small crops.  It’s actually pretty straight-forward to keep pests in check if you inspect regularly.  Like the plastic bags for the apples.  The concept also allows that some leaves will get eaten, some plants will get lost, but that if you plan for these and don’t excited, you can keep pesticide use to a minimum.  I haven’t used any for years.

Companion plantings helps.  Crop rotation helps.  Regular surveillance helps. Replenishing soil nutrients helps. Every bit of positive input reduces the hold insects pests can get on your veggies.

Kate’s color looked normal this morning even though her hemoglobin is still a little low.  She’s ready to come home.  Her nurse yesterday tried to get her to wear little footies with a sticky pattern on the bottom.  Kate doesn’t like things on her feet.  “You don’t want to wear them even though it’s illegal?”  I knew who would win this contest.

Back home for a nap, read a little, then got ready for Tai Chi.  Kona had been injured in the morning, but I couldn’t find the problem.  She held up her right front foot, which I checked carefully, finding nothing.  Mark found the wound.  It was a tear in her side just above the right shoulder.

Uh oh.  This is the kind of stuff Kate makes easy. So. I called her and asked her if she could come home.  Nope.  Well, I figured.  Her advice though helped a lot.

After a snappy, biting 10 minutes or so, I figured out how to do what needed to be done, Kona stood quietly and let me put a gauze pad on the wound and wrap it on with a sticky bandage.

I missed the first hour of Tai Chi, but I made it for my class.  Be patient with yourself.  Relax.  Trust the process.  Cheryl, the teacher, is a calming influence in a learning curve that can be difficult.

By the time I headed home I needed some comfort food.  A peanut buster parfait later, I felt calmer myself.

Aging, Family, Health

Wind, Water, Wound

Leave a comment

Mid-Summer                                                                    Waning Garlic Moon

A groggy Kate called this morning to say she had a temp and they’d done a chest x-ray.  Maybe pneumonia.  The adage after surgery is wind, water, wound.  That is, look for an infection first in the lungs, second in the kidneys/bladder and third in the wound itself.  This seemed to fit.  My mind danced over the possibility of these superbugs, among them pneumoccocus strains. Let that thought dance right out again.  No need to worry about something I don’t know.

So, I canceled my Latin, did the errands and drove in to make sure I did know what was going on.  After a while, Dr. Stein came in, a good doc, a hospitalist we met a year ago when Kate had the other hip done.  He looked at her oxygen saturation and her temp.  O2 sat was fine; her temp slightly elevated at 102.  In his judgement the temp could be the result of the stress of surgery.  Her hemoglobin dropped to 7 though, so they ordered her two units of blood.

We ate lunch together, talked about this and that, the dogs, the bees, Mark, her friends.  She got some new drugs for pain and was about to head into lala land, so I came home for a nap myself.

Everything seems fine, given the trauma of the surgery.  Whew.

Aging, Health, Myth and Story

Kate’s Hip

Leave a comment

Mid-Summer                                                                     Waning Garlic Moon

The ritual masters of the American medical system had us rising with the sun at 5:00 am for the Admittance to the Hospital ceremony, then the Cutting of the Flesh.  By getting us up at a time far earlier than our usual 7:00-7:30 we knew this was a magical moment.  We proceeded through the rush hour traffic to Fairview University where attendants took our vehicle away, out of view.  After appeasing the money changers, Kate received the ritual accessories, bracelets of varying colors including one with the mystical words:  Fall Prevention.

They came for her, the blue-gowned deacons of this mega-church, and led her away where her clothes were removed and hidden away.  She received a lavender gown of paper, marking her as the morning’s sacrifice.  The high priest and his acolyte came in to see her and the acolyte initialed her thigh so the Cutting of the Flesh would be done in a way approved of by the medical gods.

As in many ancient rituals, Kate received a powerful drug that made her smile and seem goofy just before the blue-gowned ones wheeled her away to the secret chapels where the High Priests work their magic.

Satisfied that the gods had received the offerings of insurance and accepted them, I left for home.

Bees, Family, Health, Politics

A Reunion

Leave a comment

Mid-Summer                                                                                              Waning Garlic Moon

As the garlic moon wanes, the leaves of the garlic plants begin to brown from the bottom up.  When half of them are brown, I’ll pull a couple to see how they’re progressing.  I plant more garlic than we use; for some reason it appeals to me as a crop.  Partly because you plant it in the fall and harvest it in the summer.  A contrarian.

A Latin day today, perhaps tomorrow, too, after I see to the queen excluders in the colonies from which I removed them this weekend. I’m looking for movement of the workers up into the honey supers, starting to lay in honey there rather than in the hive boxes.

Into the city tonight to discuss the slightly revised issue selection process for the 2012 legislature.  We’re moving up our process by a month to allow for better campaign planning, gathering of allies.

My exercise commitment, once rock solid, has slipped in these past three weeks with many evening meetings.  I’m going to shift my workouts to the morning, see if I can get a new rhythm established.

At the end of July my sister Mary will travel here from Athens, where she gives a paper, then reverse field back through London to Singapore.  My cousin Diane, who stood up for me when Kate and I got married, also, by chance, will be in town for another reason, so we’ll have a Keaton and an Ellis reunion right here in Andover, star of the northern burbs.  Diane lives in San Francisco where she churns out a weekly newsletter, highly regarded, on the pulp and paper industry.

Family, Health, Humanities

A Day in the Life

Leave a comment

Mid-Summer                                                                                                   Waning Garlic Moon

“God has no religion.” – Mahatma Gandhi

If there is one, Gandhi has it right.

Another day of Latin.  This stuff, at least right now, is hard.  It requires holding several different ideas in the head all at one time, then juggling them to see how they all fit together.   Here are as many of those things as I can name:  word meanings in Latin and English (often multiple), noun declensions (usually multiple), verb conjugations, participle forms, adverbs, adjectives, conjunctions, clause types, infinitives, word order (often shuffled in poetry for metric purposes.  ovid is poetry.), flow of the narrative, many different grammatical rules and exceptions.  They float in the air like bubbles over a cartoon character’s head, as if, say, Dilbert couldn’t figure out what to say until he mixed and matched the diverse bubbles into a sensible sentence.

On the other hand, at times I’m able to do it, to switch the balls in mid-air and see the sequence fall into place, a sentence emerging from what James Joyce or William James called the “blooming, buzzing confusion.”  Then, it’s sweet.

Took Mark down to the Anoka County Work Force center for a morning’s class on resumes.  He seems calmer now, less agitated.

Kate’s in pain because she has to go off all her non-steroidal anti-inflammatories for 5 days before her surgery.  This leaves her arthritic joints free to express themselves, especially in her hip, neck and hands.  This Thursday, S-Day, will find her with a second new hip, a procedure that should reduce her suffering quite a bit by relieving the hip pain and making her body mechanics better.  I’m glad she’s getting the new hip.

Aging, Asia, Faith and Spirituality, Great Work, Health

That Old Achievement Bugaboo

Leave a comment

Beltane                                                                Waxing Last Frost Moon

Deciding to take a gamble on the weather, with the aid of the forecasters, Kate planted some frost sensitive plants today:  coleus, especially.  She also planted artemisia, Jacob’s Ladder, alyssum and purple wave petunias.  Mark weeded.  Meanwhile I was in St. Paul doing my next to last session with Leslie.

Tonight was Tai Chi.  When I arrived, there was no one else there except the first teacher I encountered and an advanced student.  Nobody else showed up, presumably due to mother’s day.  That meant I had a personal class with two teachers.  It was a revelation.  This teacher, the one I met the first night of class, has a style that connects with me.

She spoke about learning Chinese, listening to the words at night before she went to bed and in the morning before class and recommended, again, since she had done the same thing at the one class she taught, that I practice morning and night.  Just immerse yourself, she said.  We come to these things with such an achievement orientation and we have to jettison it, let go of mistakes, think of them as occurrences, concentrate on the process.

Tai Chi has 13 different moves, a vocabulary of movement, a style of movement rooted in another culture.  I’ve learned 5 of them so far.  Well, sort of learned them.

It was a good class. What I needed at this point.

Aging, Art and Culture, Asia, Bees, Health

Uh-Oh

Leave a comment

Beltane                                                           Sliver Bee Hiving Moon

Bees check this morning.  Colony 1 is queenright.  Colonies 2 and 3 were not queenright because I had improperly handled the indirect release.  The queens were in the cage still, being tended to by the colony so I direct released both of them.  At the next hive inspection, I imagine they will be queenright, too.  Pollen patties were not depleted, nor even used for that matter.  There was still honey in the frames from last year’s hives, so all looks good right now.   The bees were calm.

Had a last hurrah with the Titian show, docent colleagues who’d toured it showed up.  We discussed how we’d handled certain paintings, noticed things we hadn’t seen before, fun to rehash.  Afterward we went over to Rinata’s and had their $20 Sunday evening meal.  Tasty.

After that, tai chi, just down Hennepin five blocks.  Was I not ready for what happened tonight.  I positioned myself on the end of the line and, being alone, totally lost my place, forgot moves I knew well.  I’d practiced and practiced this week.

Dropping the moves out of my consciousness created a sense of panic, one I know well.  My brain tells me:  leave, leave, leave.  It’s a sort of red klaxon at work.  A tight chest.  I don’t like to fail.  At anything.  And this is for stress relief?  Well, not for me.  Not tonight.  I calmed myself down, changed positions and tried to keep my head in the class.  It was hard.

Afterward I talked with teacher.  She reassured me.  Told me chaos often proceeds a break through.  Told me that she was totally confused in her first ten weeks.  That she’d get me confident.  I felt flushed and embarrassed when she told me I had to concentrate on keeping my hips together.  I though I had been.  Again, I don’t like to be doing something poorly.  There is of course motivation here, yes, but there’s also fear and avoidance.

On the drive back I just drove, listening to Wolf Hall, a very good novel about Henry the VIII, Cardinal Wolsey and Thomas Cromwell.

Aging, Art and Culture, Health, Retirement

Adding One More

Leave a comment

Spring                                                       Waxing Bee Hiving Moon

Played space invaders again this morning.  My ophthalmologist insists on calling it a visual field.  It tests peripheral vision, a clue to advancing glaucoma.  I have already been treated with laser holes for narrow angle glaucoma, but now, in a not surprising development, my pressures have inched up past high normal, so I’m adding another drug to my list.  These bodies definitely have a sell-by date and mine is beginning to turn brown like the lettuce in an old batch.

In addition, to add insult to the diagnosis, my ophthalmologist, whom I’ve seen for twenty years or so, has decided to retire.  This is my last visit with her.  So, not only does the body begin to retire from its functions, so do the folks who take care of it.  My dentist retired two years ago; my internist left three years ago.  Pretty soon I’ll be the only one left.

Sculpture.  Here’s a peculiar lacunae.  I bought the Grove Dictionary of Art on sale.  It’s 30+ thick volumes of wonderful information.  But.  It has no sculpture section.  Strange.  Lots of stuff on individual sculptors, traditions, sculptures, but no general article.

Just finished the legcom call, now into Oceanaire for a birthday dinner with Mark.

Aging, Asia, Dogs, Health

Feeling the Burn

Leave a comment

Spring                                                        New Bee Hiving Moon

As the day draws to a close, many of the matters seem to have come to some resolution.  My brother will be coming here to live with us for awhile.  We’ll see what he needs when he gets here.

I’ve figured out a way to calm the doggy waters with crating two dogs, letting the others in or out, then crating the others.  Sort of a shell game, but it does the trick and has prevented any more teeth baring episodes.  We’ll see how it works tomorrow.

After the episode where I got bit, my adrenalin was so high I had to sit for a while to calm my body back down.  I haven’t been that far into fight or flight for a long time.

Tai Chi has begun to burn.  My thighs.  The lesson tonight, Guard Left, involves co-ordinating several parts of the body and some of my body parts resisted the lesson.  I’ll get it eventually.  I’ve needed, for some time, a physical discipline, one beyond the resistance and aerobic work I do just to stay healthy.  Tai Chi will teach me, I can see now, better balance, flexibility, body awareness and grace.

The old Burch pharmacy at Hennepin and Franklin in Minneapolis is empty now with Art Smart art work by kids and adults hanging in the windows that used to advertise drugs and cosmetics.  Over the pharmacy is a warren of rooms, offices for the Nancy Hauser Dance Studio, another for another dance company, an odd shaped room with various couches and chairs, some comfy, some designy, a threadbare carpet, windows with no blinds and a small digital sign overlooking Hennepin.

There is a dance floor, made of a composite material screwed to the floor in 4 X 8 panels.  It has a pinkish pastel pearl cast and serves the two dance groups, a Karate club and the The Great River Tai Chi school.  Tonight as we practiced a dance rehearsal was underway across the hall, so music with a big beat kept intervening with my Taoist serenity.

This is the city at its finest.  A decrepit building put to good use, providing creative space and space for strangers to meet and try out new activities.  I’m reading a book about cities now and it wants, so far, to celebrate cities for just this, people jostling up against one another, offering their passions to others, ideas sparking and new institutions being born as old ones die.

When I walked out past the Lowry Hill Liquor store and saw the lights of downtown and felt the Walker just blocks away, I agreed.

Aging, Health, Politics, Retirement

Boomers Crashing on the Beach

Leave a comment

Spring                                                        Waning Bloodroot Moon

“The only source of knowledge is experience.” -Albert Einstein

I’m not sure I completely agree with Einstein, since I would give abstract thought the potential for creating knowledge, too; but, it is true that without experience the thinker has none of the material necessary for understanding.  This leads to an interesting observation about life at any point.  As we remove ourselves from experience, whether by depression, illness or again, our capacity to develop new knowledge grows weaker.  We can fall prey to narrow perspectives, prejudices, knowledge built on weak foundations.

The silver tsunami, baby boomers crashing on the beach of old age with considerable force, runs the risk of making our politics out of balance.  That is, if the aging who have been active in the world pull back and reduce themselves to voting what seems to be in their self interest, those of us in that number might find ourselves on the sharp end of political reprisal.  Read Susan Jacoby’s fine book, Never Say Die: The Myth and Marketing of the New Old Age.  She outlines the case for intergenerational struggle if we don’t extend health care coverage to all citizens through a program similar in scope and kind to medicare.  With a smaller number of workers supporting an increasing number of seniors, remember tsunami waves keep coming, in this case for 25 years +, national health insurance will be critical to assuring the successful retirement of all those workers we need.  Absent a way to see their ways through to their own retirement these younger workers may rebel against the burden of carrying us on their backs.

Jacoby’s book has several other pertinent perspectives, among them reminding us to prepare for old old age, now sometime after 80, when 50% of those in that age bracket have Alzheimers.  50%!  And the rest of us will likely have some other debilitating condition or another.  A good read.  An important one.