Category Archives: Health

Aging, Family, Health

Kate on Tuesday

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Fall                                              New (Dark) Moon

Back from the hospital to visit Kate.  She has the blue plastic line with its black plunger next to her at all times so she can get in the morphine drip for her current fifteen minute period.  Aside from the bout with nausea during standing at around 8:30 am, she seems in reasonable, if not great spirits.  She did stand without nausea later in the day, a big step, but the pain is still intense while upright.

The People magazine I brought for her has a picture/picture puzzle where you have to identify the things that change from one picture to its near-identical twin below.  I gave it to her and she found 6 right away (out of 10).

We chatted off and on about the dogs, Ruth, her sisters, hospital care and the every dependable quality of hospital food (mediocre).  She feel asleep from the morphine at one point.  I wandered off and got supper, takeout from McDonald’s.  This seemed appropriate to me since the spine folks share floors with the Minneapolis Heart Hospital.  I figured my meal could bring me back to those very precincts. When I got she back, she had her meal:  tomato soup, chocolate pudding, a fruit drink and, best of all, Coffee!  We ate together while a cold rain fell and a mist settled over the skyline of Minneapolis.

She doesn’t like the condition she’s in right now, but in her words, “I signed up for it, so I need to suck it up.”  Hmmm.

That’s all the news from Lake Woebegone for today.

Aging, Health

Second Day at Abbott-Northwestern

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Fall                                             New (Dark) Moon

Kate called.  “Hi, I called to say I’m miserable.”  In Kate talk this means something made her nauseous.  She tried to get out of bed around 8:30 this morning and nausea struck.  This sends her in a downward spiral much more quickly than pain.  The second day after surgery is the pits.  No matter the results or reasons on the second day things hurt and the immediate hurt out flashes whatever rationale the surgery had in the first place.  This will pass, but it’s no fun while it lasts.

After I feed the dogs, eat lunch and nap I’m going into see her.  She feels yucky so I think some iris are in order.

Fortunately this week is pretty light expectation wise, so I can focus on the homefront and Kate’s needs.  Right now I’m cleaning, decluttering, making things cozy for her return home.  We’ll get her healed up and functional.

Oh, I got approved by Allianz as a preferred client for long term care health insurance.   This means they predict, based on my health records, that I won’t need their money.  On that basis they’ll sell me some insurance.   Geez.

Aging, Health

Kate’s Progress (and mine)

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Fall                                       New (Dark) Moon

I went back to the hospital last night to see Kate.  She was loopy with her finger on the PCA, patient controlled anesthetic.  It adds a hit of morphine when she decides she needs it.  She has a dilemma:  the pain is intense (to be expected with work on bone) but she does not like the way the morphine makes her feel.

Current plan has her in the hospital through Wednesday with Thursday a possibility if the pain has not subsided.  Pain management and the danger of infection are the primary reasons for her stay.

When I got to the hospital around 7:20, she had just arrived her in room.   It was a long recovery.  She was happy to have the procedure finished and the healing process underway.  Around 8, when the visiting hours are over, I left a very quiet hospital.  Kate had her fingers on the TV remote.

To continue for just a moment in the vein of pathology my vertigo hangs on, not too bad, but present.  It seems to return at some level after I lie down for a bit.  What’s left now is a woozy feeling on the periphery and the sense that I might pass into nausea.  In other words the symptoms, or their ghosts, hang on though the initial insult has waned.  No fun, but it’s not back surgery either.

Aging, Family, Health

Kate’s Big Day

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Fall                                                 New (Dark) Moon

Speaking too soon.  Vertigo returned last night, stronger than at any point during this last spell.  Damn.  An annoying experience.  This morning, so far, I feel uneasy, but ok.  Hope that continues since we have a lot going on today.

Kate’s big day.  We go in around 11:00 for her 1 p.m. procedure.  Once she’s out of her surgery and in recovery, that is, after I know for sure things have gone ok, I have to come home to feed the dogs and take a nap.  She’ll be at Abbott-Northwestern in Minneapolis for the duration, estimated at 2 days.

Cinema and Television, Health

Vertigo Comes Again

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Fall                                          Waning Blood Moon

Vertigo is a famous Hitchcock movie, one of his best the critics say.  Maybe so, but I wish it was something I experienced only in movies.  Unfortunately, it has come to visit me again.  I turned my head yesterday morning just after I woke up and said, “Oh, damn.”

This episode was neither as dramatic (I knew what it was.), nor as intense as the first one.  Kate had an opportunity to take care of me, which she liked.  I will have an opportunity to return the favor very soon.

I suppose vertigo was among the spells that visited my ancestors.  With no explanation this would start out as terrifying then gradual descend to a major nuisance.

This morning I have to go into St. Paul to do an organizational development (or de-development) process for Groveland UU.   It will be important to maintain my balance.  (ha, ha)

Aging, Garden, Health

Surgery and Rigel Back Home Pics

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Lughnasa                                     Waning Harvest Moon

Kate’s decided to have surgery.  A scheduler will call tomorrow or Monday to set up a date, probably mid-to-late October.  She’ll have 2 days in the hospital and 4-6 weeks of basic rest for recovery.  The surgeon believes this will alleviate up to 80% of her current lower back symptoms.  The neck will remain for now.

Kate used our dehydrator last night, drying roma tomatoes.  We’re experimenting right now, seeing what we like dried.  All part of the grow it, store it, eat it plan.

Rigel minutes after her return home.

rigelathome

Vega and Rigel, happy to be together again

rigelaround-vega

Vega has a swimming pool, but she likes the watering bowl, too.

vegainwater

Faith and Spirituality, Family, Health, Memories

Surgery?

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Lughnasa                        Waxing Harvest Moon

This was a doctor day.  Kate and I went to see a spine surgeon she has seen before.  She leans now toward some surgical intervention since the various palliatives:  drugs, nerve root and facet joint blocks, exercise and stoicism no longer provide sufficient relief.   Surgery is the last option and in the case of matters spinal one usually chosen as such.  Her surgeon is positive about the chances for success, success measured as a substantive reduction in pain, though not cessation.

We stopped at Burger Jones for a delayed lunch.  3200 block of West Lake Street.  If you want a trip back to the late 50’s early 60’s, but updated with booze and choices in shakes and burgers you didn’t have back then, Burger Jones is the place.  Fun.

Long nap.  Just now getting roused for the remainder of the day.

Liberalism and the liberal tradition is much on my mind since  have to write a sermon for the 6th of September.  Reading, reading, reading.   Thinking.  Pondering.  Like that.

Dogs, Health, Woolly Mammoths

My Dog Ate My Remote

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Lughnasa                                 Waning Green Corn Moon

OK.  In previous episodes of the Vega/Rigel saga our heroines have:  escaped multiple times, eaten the recently installed netaphim, chewed up various hoses and their inside beds and, most famously, eaten my wedding ring.  All that, but now they’ve done something serious:  revealed the insides of the dvd player remote.  Yike.  Can you imagine manually inputting every command to your dvd player?  I thought not.  Sigh.

Kate’s back and she’s glad to be back.  It allowed a day to rest and today we’ve begun work on the meal for the Woollies.  I dug potatoes and pulled beets and carrots (three colors–white, purple and orange)  while Kate brined the two free-range chickens I bought yesterday at the grocery store.

While filling the dogs pool (yes, they have one in addition to the water container.), I squatted down to hold the hose, the shortened bit Vega has left me.  Crack, snapple and pop.  Not rice krispies.  Nope.  It was my lower back.  Owee.

Kate is a great resource on how to handle back pain so I have been her apprentice since then.  She also gave me some pain meds that helped, too.  I wanted to go out to the Marsh in Minnetonka to see the opening of Moon’s art show, but I can’t make it.  Moon is Scott Simpson’s 92 year old Cantonese mother-in-law.

I do have to go to the grocery store for the stuff we decided we need for the meal.

Aging, Dogs, Family, Health

Eureka!

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Lughnasa                                 Waning Green Corn Moon

Got some sleep.  Feel better this morning.  A busy day ahead.  Groceries, recycling, straw, more weeding.

Kate comes back from Denver today.  I  had a bit of a snit yesterday when she wanted to stay an extra day.  My Woolly meeting is on Monday and she’s a big part of the get ready for it plan.  Also, her birthday is Tuesday–65!–and I have an evening ready for us.  I wanted her back her with me, but felt conflicted because she wanted to stay with Jon.  He had a bad ride home from the hospital.  A moot point as it turns out, since it would have cost around $500 to change the ticket with $150 airline fee, $30 Orbitz and $320 in additional ticket costs.  Not proud of myself over this, but I’m glad she’ll be home today.

Vega or Rigel, remember them?, ate my pocket moleskine diary and a current novel I’m reading, Consider Philebas.  By eat I mean shred and coat with drool.  The diary’s pages are recoverable and Consider Philebas, though badly mauled and wet, contains the pages I’ve not yet read, which is good enough for me.  Just one more of the V&R stories.

Over the last few days I have dutifully filled the large rubber water container we have outside.  And refilled it.  Those big dogs, I thought, drink a lot of water.  Then, shortly after I filled it yesterday morning, I put the hose away, turned around to see Vega curled up in the water container.  She was happy.  Archimedes could have had his eureka moment watching her.  90 pounds of puppy displaces a lot of water.

The Denver Olsons have had a rough summer.  Hirschel their 6 year old German Shorthair developed cancer and died.  hirschJon’s surgery has created the kind of upset recovery from any surgery always does.  Next up is Gabe’s surgery to install a port for his prophylactic factor.  That comes on the 27th.  Not to mention that they started back teaching two weeks ago.   A lot for a young family to absorb.  Why I was conflicted.  (pic:  Hirschel)

Family, Health, Memories, Weather +Climate

Fall

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Lughnasa                              Waning Green Corn Moon

Even though summer seems to have arrived, or returned this week, I can already feel social rhythms beginning to change.  Fall has begun to peek up over the calendar.  Ads for school supplies have begun to appear.  I remember getting a  mimeographed sheet (remember mimeographs?) in elementary school of the things we would need:  lined paper, #2 lead pencils, paste, a paint set.  Those are the things that remain in my memory.

They achieved totemic value for me.  These simple items carried the promise of learning, of new areas to explore, a new year away from home and in the company of other kids, at least for most of the day during the week.  Mom and I would go to Danner’s or Murphy’s 5 and 10 cent stores.  To this day I love going into office supply stores.  They bring back that anticipation and wonder.

Many of our vegetables have matured and others are well on their way, the harvest season has begun as the celebration of Lughnasa marks.  The angle of the sun has begun to change and the days have continued to grow shorter since the Summer Solstice.  At the Autumn Equinox we will be halfway between the Summer Solstice and the Winter Solstice.

Jon and Jen have started their new school years, back with the elementary school kids in Aurora, Colorado.  There’s news in their family, too.  Jon has partial shoulder replacement surgery this Wednesday, still fixing a skiing injury now three years old.

Gabe has had 13 bleeds in the recent past, including a spontaneous bleed on his back and a swollen hand.  In trying to get factor into him he has suffered many sticks.  He has small veins.  He will get an internal port on August 27th so he can  receive factor infusions prophylactically instead of acutely.  This should give him a normal childhood and relieve the anxiety for Jon and Jen.  There is, though, one potential problem.  It is possible the body will develop antibodies against the factor.  That would make things tougher.  A balancing act.

Kate’s going out there on Wednesday and will stay through Saturday.  We go see a neuro-surgeon tomorrow morning, still trying to track down more effective treatments.  She’s done very well with this degenerative disc disease, but it has not been easy.  She’s tough.