Category Archives: Health

Aging, Commentary on Religion, Friends, Great Wheel, Health

Mabon

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Lughnasa and the Harvest Moon

Autumn days come quickly, like the running of a hound on the moor.
–Irish proverb

Mabon grasses, ripe with seed. Hwy 285 near Morrison

Getting close to the fall equinox. It’s late this year, Sept. 23rd. Meteorological fall began on September 1st. Mabon, the second of the Celtic harvest festivals, is today. And, the whole next week.

Here the last several days have been dry, low humidity and higher temperatures. A red flag day yesterday. Fall colors are running behind, about a week or so. The trees with color have slightly withered leaves and the fainter coloration of moisture deprivation. Makes this old horticulturist sad because it means stressed trees.

Felt worn out, exhausted yesterday. Couldn’t get up the energy to go to Gabe Herman’s shabbat last night. His dad, Dan Herman, is the President of the congregation and a bee keeper. Gabe had his bar mitzvah in Israel this summer; this was a night for him to sing the parshah and give his dvar torah, literally the words of torah. Each bar or bat mitzvah must learn their parshah in Hebrew, sing it, and comment on it. Kate represented both of us.

Drove to Baily in the a.m. for our monthly supply of indica chewables. Met Dana, my budtender. I think budmonger would have been better, classier. Sell cheese too and you could have a cheesemonger and a budmonger working together. Not sure why that appeals to me, but it does.

Later, we finally got the O2 concentrator in the mail to Georgia for warranty work. And the illuminated manuscript page on vellum off to Idaho for BJ’s house there. Birthday gift.

Could have just been a long, engaged week. Or, could be the Lupron. Maybe both.

Aging, Family, GeekWorld, Health, Jefferson County, Mountains, Mussar, Third Phase

Simcha

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Lughnasa and the Harvest Moon

Hmmm. A bit over eager again. For all my equanimity about cancer I’ve made some moves that reveal a reservoir of anxiety. When I wrote my urologist initially about my PSA rise, I convinced myself that I’d overstated it, moved the decimal point in error. I said this out loud to Dr. Eigner and his PA, Anna Willis. They had to call me a couple of weeks later and say, nope. It’s ten feet high and risin’. Oh.

Apparently I bounced out of the blocks ahead of the gun in the PSA I mentioned below. Supposed to be at three months. I imagine they told me that but when I got the lab order in the mail I went in to do it now overdrive. So I got’er done. It is three months, almost, from the start of the Lupron, but it’s only a month and a half from the end of the radiation. Not sure if it I’ll need another one later. Maybe.

Got reassurance yesterday from Carmela. She said, “Those are great numbers!” Feeling a little sheepish here, but it does speak to my eagerness to have information about the state of my cancer. Forgivable, I think.

Kate and I are on the lookout for joy. Simcha. Been in short supply here for a while and we’re both missing that middah. This PSA result brings me joy. Kate’s going off to the CBE board meeting last night, on her own, brought me joy. Rigel’s nose this morning as she pushed against my hand. The softness of Kep’s coat. Gertie’s wiggly desire to get outside. The waning gibbous Harvest moon this morning has shining Aldebaran beneath it. Orion is there, too. The night sky with Black Mountain below lifts me into the broader universe. Joyful.

Drove down to Caliber Collision. Got there at 7:30 am. The guys were still in a conference so I had to wait a bit. Ryan came out, beefy guy with a thick beard. Hmmm. We’ll have to replace those three panels. And, good news, it looks like the dent in the door hasn’t impacted the rest of the door. Back in five minutes.

Coulda been worse

Ryan returned bearing several pages stapled together. It looked like a hospital bill. Now this number is before we’ve looked inside. If there’s any damage to the robotics, for example, there will be supplemental work. Traveler’s requires review of all supplementals.

How long once we’ve got approval? 7 days, I’d say. That’s without supplementals. If we have to do more? Ryan shrugged. The work and the bureaucracy. Yeah. I get it.

Back up to Evergreen where I had breakfast at the Dandelion. Home. New workout in the home space. Oh, those one legged squats. My quads burned. And, those bicep curls into a shoulder press? Shoulders feeling it.

Dr. Gidday said the other day, “You have to retire to have enough time for all the doctor appointments.” All this other stuff takes time too and my stamina is not what it once was. I’m feeling crowded in my schedule with fewer things to do.

Health

First Post-Radiation PSA

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Lughnasa and the Harvest Moon

First post radiation psa is in: 0.03. Very low, the test becomes inaccurate at 0.029. Had to get the number at my primary care doc because nobody called me with the result. Think I’m between the cracks right now. Done with radiation and out of Anova Care, but not seeing Eigner, my urologist, until November. Just sent a note to my oncologist asking him his interpretation of this result.

In my mind any result other than zero (which is frustratingly hard to define) would have been bad news. Since the Lupron suppresses PSA and I’ve just had radiation to kill the cancer, anything other than zero would mean trouble. IMO. Problem is I can’t tell if this is effectively zero or a very slight signal of still existing cancer. Probably just anxiety based thinking.

I’m able to retain my equanimity, that is hold space for this moment rather than get embroiled in what might be or what could have been, but in the initial moments after new information I can easily swing into OMG mode. What I’m doing here.

This ride is not over, not for several months, perhaps longer. Cancer seems to have a habit of not giving up. Me, too.

Cooking, Friends, GeekWorld, Health, Mussar, Our Land and Home

Old Guy. New Tricks.

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Lughnasa and the Harvest Moon

Old guy. New tricks. Took our 2018 Rav4 into the shop yesterday for an oil change. Waited in the Toyota temple as I always do, this time reading Neal Stephenson’s newest: Fall, or Dodge in Hell. These waiting areas are third spaces in architectural parlance, places where strangers gather and potentially meet. Not much meeting going on here as folks tap on tablets, punch the keyboards on laptops or look at their phones. The ubiquitous TV has lost much its allure to the handheld screens.

Alex, my Express Service guy, came in, found me, gave me my keys, a printout of what they’d done. All free because we’re still in the two year Toyota Care period. Back in the Rav4 I looked at the printout, double checking as is my habit. Huh? No oil change.

Walked back to see Alex. Nope, no oil change, just a tire rotation. Uh? Your car had an oil change at 4,750 miles. Oh? Yes. And that means the next oil change isn’t until 14,750 miles. Synthetics go ten thousand miles between changes. I was at 10,100, so I just thought…

The sticker, that little reminder beloved of car service centers everywhere, now lists mileage between tire rotations, not oil changes. What?

After 50 plus years of oil changes and service visits based on 5,000 mile intervals, this old dog was left shaking his head. Not to mention all the strange and wonderful features on this internal combustion engine powered computer. The only constant.

Driving back home through Evergreen, I saw a small herd of elk strung out along Maxwell Creek just after the turn from 73 onto Brook Forest Drive. Some were lounging, others drinking. We’re in the rut now and we’ll see more and more elk as it progresses. No bugling yet.

Back home Kate had managed the installation of our new dryer. Don’t think I mentioned that our old one died last week. The motor. $500 and a one year warranty. Nope. This white Speedqueen with a ten year warranty, a promotion, looks retro. It’s white enamel, sitting low to the floor, with an opaque door. No peeking at the socks as they tumble. Did two loads yesterday. Works fine.

A nap. Then off to On the Move for the second round with my new workout. I needed the second run through. Several of the exercises required me to do things my body found awkward. One of them, a lunge with a set of bands, Dave changed so I wouldn’t get off balance every time.

Over to King Sooper, not far from On the Move, to pick up my online order. In this case King Sooper employers pick your groceries, then bring them out to you on a small wagon filled with plastic totes. I pull into a slot marked Pick Up, call the phone number on the sign, tell them which slot I’m in, “#1.” and a worker brings out the groceries, loads them into the back. Slick.

Back home I cut up the watermelon I’d just bought, put it in a plastic container for Mussar Vaad Practice Group. Kate and I have gotten back, at least semi-back, to the rhythm of Beth Evergreen. I like that because we see friends, talk about ideas.

Cooking, Family, Health

Under the Harvest Moon

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Lughnasa and the full Harvest Moon

You can imagine the old reaper and threshing machines working throughout the night, the dusty project lit by the harvest moon. A moon that stays up a bit longer, is often fuller and brighter than a normal full moon. Now the combines (combine reaping and threshing) move through the wheat fields with horse power generated by an internal combustion engine, headlights and floodlights for use if necessary. Contractors come in droves to bring in the nation’s wheat harvest.

Up here on Shadow Mountain the full Harvest moon makes hunting easier for predators like the mountain lion, the ferret, the bobcat. No fields flat enough for a reaper though I did see a guy mowing alfalfa at the bottom of Shadow Mountain Drive where it hits 73. There’s an irregularly shaped piece of land, beloved by deer, elk, and moose, that has grass, hay. Once a year a small harvest.

Kate and I went to see Gabe yesterday. Much improved. Talking, holding a plush baboon. “Did you fart yet?” “Yes.” “Good.” That’s important. He had bowel surgery and the intestines have to get back to work after a shock. He will be at the hospital until he poops, showing they have full function.

Afterward we ate at a small restaurant, The Hungry Wolf. Southern cooking. Ribs, pulled pork, greens, red beans and rice. Peach cobbler and sweet potato pie. Our waitress, a co-manager, was as attentive as if we were at a fine dining restaurant and more kind. She let these two old folks move to a booth that opened up, getting us off the rickety high chairs.

Forgot to mention in all the news from yesterday that I took my lab order to Quest laboratories, sat down in the phlebotomist’s chair, rolled up my left sleeve, and received a painless stick. My first post-radiation PSA.

Family, Health

You Know the Words

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Lughnasa and the Harvest Moon

Gabe and his dog, Sushi

It wasn’t a set of magnets after all. What the surgeon found in Gabe’s small intestine was, wait for it, a rubber glove! When asked how it got there, Gabe said, “I don’t remember.” I texted Ruth, figuring she’d have an idea, “Don’t know. We’re all confused by that.”

At University of Colorado Children’s yesterday afternoon, Gabe was still in first day post-op pain. Not very happy, as you can see in this photograph. Ironically, just above his bed on the wall of his room were three boxes. Three sizes of rubber gloves.

We moved to Colorado to be here for family. Ruth’s tonsillectomy. Gabe’s appendectomy, port change. School events. Jon’s divorce. His art shows. To be in their lives in a direct, immediate way rather than one mediated by phone calls and videos.

In the morning Kate and I went to see a new pulmonologist, one from National Jewish Hospital, renowned nationwide for its pulmonary expertise. What a contrast to Colorado Pulmonology Intensivists. The nurse was upbeat, kind, knowledgeable in gathering vitals and other information. The doctor, David Taryle, had the air and appearance of a wise gnome.

He had read all of the charts, seen the cd of her cat scan. Yes, she has interstitial lung disease. No, we don’t know which of the two kinds. Diagnosis is especially important because the treatments are very different. He decided to redo her pulmonary function test and the ct scan. Get another data point. But, when asked, “Yes, I’ll probably want a lung biopsy.”

A funny moment. Dr. Taryle was explaining things in the lungs, using medical nomenclature. I don’t recall the exact terms. Kate responded to him with a couple of terms of her own. He looked up, mildly startled, “You know the words!” She had outed herself. “Yes, I’m a retired physician.”

Jackie also cut our hair yesterday. I left right after mine was done and went to the hospital. Kate came home and rested. Going all the way to Aurora and back would have been too much for her after being out all morning.

Another day filled with physicians, parking lots, and family.

Aging, Cooking, Friends, Health, Minnesota, Third Phase, Woolly Mammoths

Get livin’ or get dyin’

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Lughnasa and the Harvest Moon

The Sword of Damocles

New workout. Met with Dave, personal trainer at On the Move Fitness. He’s a thin, muscled guy, a bicyclist’s physique with a hearty, but haunted manner. The curving scar from just above his left temple to parallel with the middle of his left ear explains the haunted part.

He’s an outlier in the world of glioblastoma patients. His surveillance scans were, up until this April, clear. It looked like he had been cured. Then, boom. A seizure. Then, another one. Trips to the E.R. Another scan. The cancer was back.

Since his journey and mine share a lot of similarities, we’ve bonded. Seeing him yesterday was a chance to catch up. He’s been at home most of the time since his surgery, taking chemo and getting his mojo back. I mentioned the awful decision he and Deb had to make about whether to radiate after surgery.

I didn’t want to take all my cards off the table, he said. Meaning he didn’t want to become cognitively deficient, yet alive. A real possibility if he chose radiation. Not radiating made it more likely the cancer could return. Hobson’s choice*. There are instances when living itself becomes a problem. I talked to a lot of smart people. The chemo is a slow trickle. He shook his head, I didn’t want to take all my cards off the table.

We agreed that this cliche has real meaning for both of us: get living or get dying. There’s a choice even here. Do you face toward your life and the world or do you face the disease and death? How you choose matters. The irony of our being together to make my body strong was not lost on me.

Lodge skillets

Afterward I drove over to Evergreen, where I bought a 12″ cast iron skillet. Been wanting one for a while, mostly to sear steaks and roasts. I had a tenderloin roast in the fridge. Tony’s Market, again. Went to the King Sooper next to the Village Gourmet and picked up some potatoes for the evening meal.

Stopped at Congregation Beth Evergreen and made copies for my bagel table on Saturday. I like that we’re merging back into congregational life there.

Guess who was coming to supper? The eminence grisé of the former Crane Engineering. He even has a card, designed by mutual friend Mark Odegard, that says so. Tom’s here for a visit.

Speed Queen 7000 series

Before that though there were matters domestic to take care of. Had to order a new dryer. A Speed Queen. 10 year warranty. These folks trust their work. Appliance Factory. Buy new sheets for our bed. Amazon. Also had to get the malfunctioning O2 concentrator ready to go off for repair. Harder than it could have been. Or, should have been.

Plopped that tenderloin roast on the heated to high cast iron skillet and seared away. Worked well. Coulda been on a chuck wagon on top of Shadow Mountain instead of in our kitchen.

It was good to share the table with Tom. The dogs clambered around him, saying hi. We caught up on his life. Saw each other as only long time friends can see each other.

He and I head over to Bailey this morning for breakfast. We’ll plan, in a very loose sense, our day. Friendships require nurturing. Tom’s excellent at it.

Thomas Hobson

BTW: The phrase is said to have originated with Thomas Hobson (1544–1631), a livery stable owner in Cambridge, England, who offered customers the choice of either taking the horse in his stall nearest to the door or taking none at all. wiki

Aging, Asia, Feelings, Health, Our Land and Home, Plants, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase

Waiting

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Lughnasa and the Harvest Moon

Hard to lean into life right now. My ikigai is faint, a shadow flickering from the last log on the fire. Whether it’s lingering effects of the radiation, the Lupron, or the dismal psychic space of too much stress for too long, my motivation level looks like the bathtub ring on Lake Mead. I can see where it used to be and can’t imagine what will fill up the lake again.

The feeling is not despair or depression, rather it’s like I’m witnessing my own life right now. Not a full participant.

October, 2016, Mitigation round 1

Fire mitigation entails a lot of manual labor. Which I like. Work with the chain saw. The peavey. Wheel barrows. Lifting, pushing. Moving rock. The heat we’ve had and the weakness I feel in spite of continuing my workouts has made it seem too hard. I can feel the pressure of fall turning into winter pushing back at me, reminding me that this work is seasonal and that season is now.

Ancientrails, two million words worth, sits in year stacks on a long desk/table. I got that far, but haven’t done more. The years need to get drilled and put into binders. Superior Wolf, too. I want to revise it, take it apart and put it back together, but when do I do that? I just turn away from the task.

Cooking is fun again. I’ve done some painting. My bagel table prep work has gone well. I’m ready. This blog gets written, every morning. I read. Finished Second Empire, the fourth in Isaac Asimov’s Foundation novels. Listening to books on my phone, through blue tooth in the car. I have meals with friends.

Even with these though I feel like I’m waiting for something. Something else. Something more. A new pattern of life, a new enthusiasm.

The trick is, waiting is wu wei. Sitting beside myself as my life flows on around me. At some point my ikigai will resurface or reform. I know it will. But waiting? Still hard.

Aging, Commentary on Religion, Family, Friends, Health, Jefferson County, Judaism, Mountains, Mussar, Myth and Story, Original Relation, Third Phase

Transmutation

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Lughnasa and the Harvest Moon

painting on the near side, sumi-e on the other

Reorganized my art cart (Jon’s name for it) so I could do sumi-e on one side and oil painting on the other. Finding myself more willing to engage physical tasks like this reorganizing, the fire mitigation, making art than writing. Is this my ikigai trying to surface? Don’t know. Waiting. Going with the flow of my life.

Phone appointment with Dr. Gilroy. Spoke with Amanda, his nurse, and Carmela, the friendly receptionist, too. A follow-up for side effects. Some mild urinary urgency, nocturia ( getting up more than once at night to pee), and hot flashes. None of them bad.

After telling me to make an appointment for eleven months from now, Dr. Gilroy suggested that I might be on the Lupron for a year, not six months. Sigh. Of course I want to do what gives me the best chance of a cure. Silly to resist. But. I’d like to know whether this is over or not. A year of Lupron would mean I couldn’t get that defining PSA until mid-September of 2020. I feel cured. I’d like to find out if I’m right.

Ah, it only two paragraphs for me to stop going with the flow. Again, sigh. Good lesson. I’ll wait.

After talking with Dr. Gilroy, I left for Evergreen and a bowl painting party. What’s that? We go to this crafty shop where they sell blank ceramic objects from bowls to plates to teapots to bumblebees. The nice lady there explains how the various glazes work.

After finishing. Kate and Marilyn, the organizer (the green one is Kate’s bowl)

The bowls raise money for the Mountain Resource Center, a multi-pronged social service agency that serves the Conifer/Evergreen area. Volunteers like our mussar group get together and each person creates a bowl of their own design. The craft shop fires the bowls. Later on a silent auction is held at two gatherings.

My appointment made me a bit late so I chose basic black for my bowl. From the bowl painting we went on to CBE for our regular Thursday mussar group. Fran, women in the black t-shirt above, led a discussion on aging.

In the conversation I introduced my third phase idea, ikigai, and a thought I had after an e-mail from Charlie Haislet. He’d been to several funerals of late and said, “The golden years suck.” “Yeah,” I wrote back, “often more lead than gold.”

Light bulb went on. The main task of the third phase is alchemical. We must somehow transmute the lead of anxiety, illness, slowing down, deaths of our friends and loved ones, into gold. How? Different for each of us, but some tools for the aging alchemist: acceptance, wu wei, gratitude, greeting one’s own mortality as a friend and not an enemy, friends, and family.

Kate was out and about with the bowl painting and mussar. Her stamina has improved a lot. She did get short of breath near the end. We’re both looking forward to the National Jewish appointment next week. She needs a diagnosis, a treatment plan, and a prognosis.

Aging, Asia, Health, Mussar, Myth and Story, Original Relation, Third Phase

Pupating

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Lughnasa and the Harvest Moon

Work out yesterday. Wore myself out. Guess that’s the point. I made a promise to myself that I would hit all of my workouts during the radiation treatments. I did that. Ready for the new set of exercises. See Deb on Tuesday at 10 am.

Made spaghetti bolognese last night. Tony’s bolognese sauce and an Italian durum pasta. Vegetables. Easy. I’m enjoying cooking again. It’s not the slog it was during the early weeks of radiation.

The post below outlines my current dilemma. Hanging from the yardarm, neither on the boat nor in the sky. The ocean beneath both. Won’t last. Just like my current, I’m a TV critic level of watching won’t either.

Serious illness spins a chrysalis around us, a secluded darkness in which matters of previous importance drop away. All energy focuses on transformation, altering the sick person and his past, imaginal cells bending and twisting, changing. What will he become?

Zhuangzi

I’m impatient for my wings. Guess this is a good opportunity to practice the middah of the month, equanimity. Back off the accelerator. Lean in to the healing, transformative moment, even if the moment lasts months. Practice wu wei. Yes.

I’m not impatient for angel wings. So, yes, the chrysalis moment is necessary. The caterpillar can’t envision the butterfly.