Category Archives: Health

Family, Garden, Great Work, Health, permaculture

Dinner Straight From the Plant

Leave a comment

Summer                        Waxing Green Corn Moon

Dinner with vegetables straight from the garden is a treat and can be a surprise.  It was tonight.  We had potatoes, new potatoes-709042potatoes, dug just before cooking.  They had a distinct flavor, a nutty earthy  tone unfamiliar from the long since harvested potatoes typical of both home and restaurant cooking.  This meal included our garlic, our kale and chard, the potatoes garnished with our flat parsley and a bowl of sugar snap peas as an appetizer.

Digging potatoes involved a spading fork to loosen the soil, then searching around under the earth for these lumpy  treasures.  They grow well in the sandy soil here in Andover.

(pic:  potatoes before harvest)

Kate takes off for the Grand Teton’s tomorrow, a CME conference.  BJ is also out there, playing in the Grand Teton music festival as she has for the last several years.  The Tetons have an incredible beauty, the American Alps, a very young mountain range.  She’s back on Wednesday, then we go to see a micro-surgeon who has perfected the technique for cervical vertebrae.  He’ll evaluate Kate’s candidacy for that surgery.

Lots of weeding today and more tomorrow.  A normal task in late July, early August.

Health

Root Canal. The Sequel.

Leave a comment

Beltane                   Waxing Flower Moon

Root canal sequel.  My one month check-up today.

Got in the car and drove 50 minutes south to Bloomington, exited on Pennsylvania and took it to the Penncrest Professional Building.  I got in about 10:10 for a 10 a.m. appointment.  Not bad.

The dental assistant came in, masked and wearing floral pattern scrubs that looked like a designer of motel interiors had found another outlet.  She stuck a plastic gadget in my mouth, had me clamp down.  A whir and a click later I spit out the plastic piece and saw the image pop-up directly on the lap-top screen to my right.  Pretty damned slick.  No film.  No wait.

Dr. Erickson followed her.  With a practiced flick of his wrist he moved the long dangling light over my face, gave it a twist to turn it on and began snapping on a pair of rubber gloves.  How is it?  Good.  Hmmm.  Looks good.  You’re ok.  If there’s any problem, I’m sure your dentist will call me.

That was it.  I had driven almost an hour for less than 5 minutes of surveillance. Worth it, of course, because nothing beats a professional eye and hand, but 2 hours + on the road.  Geez.

On the way there and back I listened to a recorded book.  This time a Clive Cussler thriller titled Plague Ship.  Entertaining.

Family, Great Wheel, Health, Holidays

Beltane Has Begun

Leave a comment

Beltane                Waxing Flower Moon

As is the case with all Celtic holidays Beltane began at sundown.  Over the years that I have kept the Celtic calendar, now 14 years at least, Beltane signals a real shift from the getting going of spring to the active growth of summer.  Some years that’s more obvious than others and this year the change has been slower than the recent past, yet the emergence of the daffodils, tulips, garlic and the blooming of our magnolia all point toward summer.

Kate’s back from work with new rules for influenza A(H1N1) novel.  They had a sick hallway at the Coon Rapids clinic tonight and they were, again, swamped by persons concerned about the flu.  She said a case has been reported at HCMC.  Tomorrow, however, her attention moves from pandemic to garage sale, the sort of odd shifts we all make between our work and domestic lives.

Family, Health, Politics

Baby Plants, Nuclear Energy, and Influenza A(H1N1)

1 Comment

Spring                  Waxing Flower Moon

All my baby plants have moved from the nursery into big plant pots.  Now we have to wait until May 15, the average last frost date here, and all these babies can go outside into the garden.

The Minnesota House refused to repeal the moratorium on the construction of new nuclear plants citing waste storage and transportation as primary issues.

Kate’s off to the frontlines of the Swine flu (or, as it will be called from now on:   influenza A(H1N1) pandemic.  This has put some new energy into her practice as she approaches retirement, a real crisis which requires her medical skills.

If the pandemic moves to level 6, there will be a division between sick clinics and well clinics.  Doctors in the sick clinics will have to wear hazmat like protective gear when treating patients who have risk factors for the disease.

Health, Weather +Climate

Kate’s Ready

Leave a comment

Spring            Waxing Flower Moon

Rain.  We had a red alert, a fire danger warning over the weekend, but now we’re soggy.  Soggy is better.

Kate came home with information from the Minnesota Department of Health on how to handle potential swine flu patients.  We’ve had no cases here yet, but the protocols for patients with high indices of suspicion are very clear.  It’s impressive.  The level of detail has been planned some time ago and gets implemented in a reasoned way in response to evidence, not panic.

Kate has a sense of eagerness about it all.  She likes the edgier aspects of medicine:  arrests, lacerations, dealing with a possible pandemic.  I’m glad it’s her doing it and not me.  I’d be edgy myself rather than professional.

Aging, Faith and Spirituality, Family, Health

Two Colorful People Together

Leave a comment

Spring                  Full Seed Moon

Yes, we need no appraisal, we need no appraisal today.  Our bank, Wells Fargo, decided we do not need an appraisal to refinance our loan.  Something about our loan balance, equity and that it would be a roll-over instead of a brand new loan.  OK.  That means we can refinance sometime next week.  A good thing.

The last week and a half, since the root canal, has had dealing with the infected jaw, then one organ after another taking up my mornings.  All important to my long term health, but it has left me tired and with a sense of little accomplished.

This need to accomplish, to achieve continues as a backdrop.  Kate says when she retires she’s ready to rest on her laurels, sit back and reflect on her life.  “We can just be two colorful people together,” she said.  I’m not sure I can give up the hope of something over the horizon, a realization, a book, a political action a defining event for this stage of my life.  If not, I may find the last two decades or so of life a struggle. Or, I suppose, they might be very productive.

Drifting right now.  The melancholy at bay, but not too far away, ready to bring a tear or a heaviness to my now.  Feels empty.

Health

Aurals

Leave a comment

Spring           Full Seed Moon

The audiologist works in a 17th floor suite in the Medical Arts Building.  Downtown Minneapolis spreads out toward the west and the smaller buildings look faraway.  Todd has very white teeth, a bright blue and white striped shirt, black  pants and shoes.  There is no one else in this oddly empty space.

After clucking a bit about my deaf ear and gathering some pertinent information, Todd took back to a small room within a room.  It has acoustical tile on the walls and ceiling, a small window through which I can see Todd and a chair for me.  Todd puts a red earphone on my right ear and a taupe earphone on my right ear with a careful, practiced movement.

“Click this if you hear a sound,” he says, handing me a small plastic device with a button.  Then he closes the thick door.  Oops.  A bit of claustrophobia.  I close my eyes.

Warbling sounds, the aural equivalent of sine curves ping out of the headset.  Then, spaces of time when I wonder if he’s not sending me anything or if I’ve lost whole chunks of hearing. Ah.  A sound.  Another.   Now a sonar like ping.  Then a washing noise with the warbling sounds fainter under it.  In giving myself over to the test I’ve forgotten my claustrophobia.

That was my right ear.  He then puts a static noise, like cellophane crumpling over and over, in my right ear so it won’t help out and give a false reading.  In my left ear, nothing.  Then, mild pain that I feel, but do not hear.  One or two low warbling sounds, faint and far away, but heard in my right ear in spite of the static.

“Let’s look at the results.”

As I thought, I’ve lost hearing in the high ranges in my good ear.  The sibilants are harder to distinguish in challenging environments, s, f, th.  Yes, I’ve noticed that.  In my left ear, “You have no functional hearing.”  Oddly, this pleases me.  I guess it confirms my reality, again.

There are options for me, but not really bang on good ones, at least not at the level of difficult I have now.  Maybe later.

Friends, Great Work, Health, Woolly Mammoths

Feelin’ Glum

Leave a comment

Spring              Full Seed Moon

Today was the second organ day in a row.  Yesterday, eyes.  Today, skin.  Tomorrow, ears.  Doing fine on all counts so far.  Even so, I find visits to the doctor a bit stressful.  The waiting room.  The waiting for the doctor.  Their evaluation/assessment.  I have a good relationship with all of my doctors and intend to keep it that way.  Bill Schmidt and I had lunch today and I told him I view doctors as health consultants.  I’m responsible for my health, but they help me stay healthy and intervene if something gets out of whack.

After seeing Dr. Pakzad I came home and had a sit down with Kate.  I’ve been feeling glum, an unusual state for this time of year and unusual in intensity for me over the last couple of years.  It’s a little difficult to sort things out.  In part the Sierra Club work may be more of a challenge than I anticipated.  In part I found myself counting up all the little insults that make me realize my age, no, not really my age, but my sense of competence.  Do I have it anymore?  A tough question to answer from the inside and one always colored by mood.

Kate thinks that may be the wrong question.  I’ve prodded her several times over the last year about retirement and whether she’s ready for it.  She turned the question around on me, “I wonder you’re ready for retirement?  To let go of the need to have to have it?”

Hmmm.  Projection isn’t just a machine in a movie theater.  She may well be right.  Pondering this pushed me to wonder about the last regression I had where I got credentialed for the UU ministry.  I did that during a time when I was down about the writing.  But, John Desteian said, in a regression, you always go back to pick up something left behind, or unresolved.  Stuff to bounce around.  Enough for a coup contrecoup injury.

Good lunch with Bill Schmidt.  We covered a lot of ground from genetic modification of seeds and nuclear energy to motorcycles and dealing with difficult personalities.  I came away still opposed to nuclear energy, but willing to hear arguments about how to handle the waste.

Health

Stars In My Eyes

Leave a comment

Spring                 Full Seed Moon

I have stars in my eyes.  Literally.  The opthamologist dilated them and I forgot to ask for the reversal drops.  I see little extra rays of light if I look at something bright.

My suspicious nerve has not changed, looks good.  Yeah.

Kate and I plan to try a new Vietnamese restaurant for lunch.  Sounds fun to me.  I always like dates with Kate.

The Dow continues to hop around, uncertain of this or that.  Investor psychology is the whole deal on Wall Street in spite of the fancy numbers and elaborate formulas, even those generated by theoretical physicists.  The  gyrations and chaos of the market make it more appealing to me than it would be otherwise.  I like its tendency to defy expectations.

If something as straightforward, relatively speaking, as the market confounds us, why do we expect life to come in a easy to understand form?  We have many more transmutations than the market.