Category Archives: Health

Bees, Family, Health

Bee Diary: July, 2011

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Mid-Summer                                                      Waxing Honey Flow Moon

All three colonies now have honey supers.  I put two on the parent colony for 2012 today after a full reversal of the three hive boxes.  The other two colonies now have four honey 640flying-bees-july-2011supers on over two hive boxes, the management practice for them will let them die off naturally at the end of the season.  I’m looking forward to a better honey harvest than last year, but we’ll see. It’s still early days.

Next year I’m going to move all new packages into hive boxes set out at the perimeter of the current location which will put them all in the sun while maintaining their protection from the wind.

So far this whole season I have had one sting, the result of working all three colonies a week ago with no gloves and only the veil.  These are friendly, or at least incurious, bees.

Shifting my workout back to the morning, where I had it for many years, has gotten the desired result, more consistency.  The downside is that I wander around in the afternoon and early evening ( like now) not knowing exactly what to do.  I’ll have to mend this somehow, and I will over time as I adjust to this new routine.

Kate and I went out today while I did the banking and picked up meds.  She stayed in the truck until we got to Applebees, her new favorite restaurant.  Not mine, but it’s not bad.  A little down market for my taste.  Having Kate out a week after her surgery is both amazing and pleasing.  She’s my sweetie and I like spending time with her.

Brother Mark has begun to get some job nibbles.  He got a haircut and beard trim today that cost him $28.  That seemed high to his Bangkok tuned financial sensitivities.

Health, Humanities

More Art Than Science

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Mid-Summer                                                                              Waxing Honey Flow Moon

Gotta get back to those core exercises.  Back went ouch again today.  Sympathy for the Doctor?

Healing is much less science and much more art.  Most of us see medicine covered in the glittering wrap of science, tested hypotheses, proven procedures, well-understood drugs, but in fact the science is often in deep background during a patient-physician encounter; where the most important work, diagnoses, is done often without the patient’s awareness.  Diagnoses, taking a given person with a particular list of symptoms and identifying what’s actually causing a problem, begins a this/not that path that then includes various treatment protocols.

Will they work?  No certainty.  My former internist, Charlie Petersen, used to say, “We’re all  a bit of a black box inside.”  The difficulty faced by the physician is not only the variability in human bodies, but the inexact reporting of patients.  We often don’t know how to express ourselves to the doctor, aren’t always aware of what’s important and what’s not.  Ask anyone who thought that headache and funny vision would pass, then ended up in an ER getting treated for a stroke.

I experienced this dilemma with Kona.  She presented with a right front leg held gingerly and a real grimacing when it moved.  I checked her front leg, feeling up and down its length, pressing at each point to see if there was a sprain or a break.  Nothing.  I felt no scars, found no blood.  I wasn’t sure what had happened but could find nothing wrong.  I never looked up and under her right shoulder where the wound was obvious.  I took her lead, followed the symptom she presented.  Doctors, of course, look beyond the first symptoms we present, but if we don’t mention something, they’ll not know to check.

It occurred to me, given all this, that practicing medicine is an incredibly brave thing to do.  No one knows the limitations of western medicine more than physicians, yet they show up in exam rooms anyway, willing to use what they know to benefit the rest of us.  They work with us as knowledgeable experts, of course, but also as skilled listeners, both to our stories and our bodies.  The older I get the more respect I have for this, one of the oldest professions.

Aging, Dogs, Health

Medicine

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Mid-Summer                                              Waxing Honey Flow Moon

Kate showed up at the breakfast table this morning, the Zimmerman walker nearby.  Her friend TJ Zimmerman gave her this fancy cherry red walker before her last hip surgery.  It’s a speedy contraption, should have flames and streamers.  When I went upstairs a moment ago, she was at her computer, old habits at work.  I bought her an I-pad2, an early birthday present, and it’s right by her bed.

The last few days have had a lot of this and that, into the hospital and back again, Kona’s injury, groceries, gardening.  Now with Kate home at least all of them have a home-based locus.  Much easier.

Kate’s hospitalist called, delivering what he thought could be seriously bad news.  She has a nodule in her lungs.  But.  We had our anxiety over that one several years ago when we thought it might be cancer.  Nope.  Some kind of hardened mass.

Medicine much on our minds here right now.  Will be happy when it subsides to the background where it belongs.

Aging, Dogs, Family, Health

Bandaged

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Mid-Summer                                                                                 Waxing Honey Flow Moon

Picked Kate up at a very quiet Fairview-University.  She got into the truck cab under her own steam, stands on her new hip and walks short distances with the aid of the walker.  Her progress from last Friday amazes me.  She tires quickly, of course, but she’s already on the mend.

Now the fireworks.  Rigel, who hates thunder, doesn’t distinguish between thunder and fireworks.  She becomes agitated, barks.  No fun for her.  Or us.

I discovered a new sensation with Kona’s injury yesterday.  I put the bandage on, wrapped the coban around her thorax to hold the bandage in place, and the dog who had been snapping and biting, shrieking and limping, bounded up the stairs as if nothing was the matter at all.  Today, after Kate got home, I checked it for heat or tenderness, both signs of infection and it felt cool, plus she didn’t flinch.  Being able to help her move from a limping, snarling state to a normal carefree state in just a couple of minutes gave me a lot of satisfaction.  Made me realize what Kate feels in the urgent care.  It’s a rush and a pleasant one.

Gertie, who almost certainly bit Kona, is asleep at my feet, looking innocent.  In this instance my guess is that Kona snapped at Gertie and Gertie bit back.  Kona has become a bit crankier as she ages.  I don’t think this will be a long term problem.

It’s going to be a busy July.

Aging, Asia, Garden, Great Work, Health

It’s Illegal

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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.