Category Archives: Fourth Phase

Family, Fourth Phase, Health, Shadow Mountain

Getting Buff

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Yesterday  I put pills in organizers as a test of my ability to manage my own meds. I passed.

Next I stood on plastic foam, spelling words with letters posted at random on the wall in front of me. Having to reach up and down to tap the letters tested my ability to balance. The plastic foam added to the difficulty. Hard.

Later I did squats, abductors, calf raises, leg extensions while standing. Wore me out.

O.T. and P. T. I feel good about my progress. We’ll see how it works at home.

Joe has several projects going. Checking on long term care insurance. Looking at assisted living places. Co-ordinating with Mt. Evans home health care. Finding out when I can restart my drug trial. Investigating a check engine light on Ruby.

Mary continues her clean up, spiff up work. She’s done so much. She came voluntarily and has stayed, steady, dogged. Familia.

 

 

 

 

 

Fourth Phase, Health, Shadow Mountain

Pulling My Head In

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Hot days in the mountains. Means scorchers down the hill. We can’t complain though when considering the heat dome and wildfire smoke that has troubled the east.

My room has remained in reasonable temperatures in spite of its morning sun exposure. I’m glad. Heat and I do not have a good relationship.

Waning days here at chez Life Care. Get as much therapy as possible. Going home. Each transition has had some level of anxiety for me. ICU to step down, step down to Life Care Center, now Life Care Center to home.

I’m still weak though I walk and move pretty well. Will continue rehab at home. How much my daily life will be affected I don’t know.

I’m grateful to so many for help over the last two weeks. Doctors. Nurses. Staff. Joe. Mary. Visitors. It takes a village, always.

I’ve not yet recovered from pulling my head all the way into my shell. Interacting with others has been hard, most of my ability to do that spent in encounters with medical and rehab folks. Little left over.

I will get back to my old routines. Maybe another week or so.

Fourth Phase, Health, Shadow Mountain

Changes

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Got into O.T. early yesterday. Forgot to write.

I’m in my last week at Life Care rehab. Go home Sunday. At that point Mt. Evans home-health care takes over. A lot less frequency.

Questions. Stay at home. What I prefer. Assisted living? Maybe. Shadow. The house. Not ready right now to answer these questions.

Life Care center rehab has been a good fit. Caring staff, close to home, decent rooms. A soft landing after I crashed and burned at St. Anthony’s E.R. Needed it.

A transformation of some kind is underway. What it will be I do not know. Stay tuned.

Family, Fourth Phase, Health, Mountains, Shadow Mountain

In Evergreen

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Located at Life Care Center Evergreen I’m only a short walk from Congregation Beth Evergreen. Elk often fill the driveway, mountains on the horizon outside my room. I love being in the mountains, near home, while I work rebuilding my strength.

Occupational therapy. Activities of daily living. Increasing standing stamina. Moving plastic cones from one spot to another. Using a hand crank machine to rebuild arm muscles. Learning ways to work around a stiff leg.

Physical therapy. Walking with the walker. Feel strong. More standing stamina. Using a device that makes me rotate left, then right.

Speech therapy. Cognition. Difficult word finds. How to make sure my voice can be heard.

In theory I’m eager to do each one because it moves me closer to home. In fact, due to fatigue I often find myself wanting to pass. Fatigue=low T, head drop strain on back, the cellular level hit my body took from the pneumonia. I tire quickly, find the work onerous instead of challenging.

Mary and Joseph (oh, Mary and Joseph. Ha.) have been so wonderful. Working on matters related to home coming. Cleaning. Finding things I need. Visiting. Being the buffer between home and my absence. So necessary right now.

Still unsure how this will all workout. A significant part of me wants a simpler, less demanding life. I feel that in my bones. Another significant part of me loves Shadow Mountain, my home. The memories.

Fourth Phase, Health, Shadow Mountain

Moving Parts

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Life Care Center: Evergreen, day 8

5:30 am:   Charlie. Charlie. I have your synthroid.

6:30 am: Have to get your vitals. Blood pressure. O2 saturation. Temperature. Heart rate. A brief whir. Contraction. Release.

In between I lay with my hands on my chest, eyes closed. Drifting. Sometimes considering nothing. Dozing off. Wondering about the purpose, the meaning of this end of the trail life. About family. Friends. Dogs. Mountains.

Breakfast. Biscuits and gravy. Scrambled eggs. Oatmeal. Pretty good.

Brittney stops by. Time for physical therapy. Needed.

Over now. The day stretches out ahead of me. Languid. Outside mountain summer heat builds.

What happens next? Return to Shadow Mountain. Assisted living. Unsure. Joe’s on it with Rich for the assist.

My feelings are in flux. Jettison the house. Keep the house. Be alone. Seek some help. What will I be physically capable of? Unclear.

Moving parts. So many.

Fourth Phase, Health, Politics

Peace?

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BJ looked at a lot of houses yesterday. She and Pammy working through the web of matters that create an interstate move. Good luck to them. Not easy.

Feeling better each day. Still need the improvement that comes only with regular exercise. My walking ability, sharpened on our driveway, proves I have the capacity. Mary, I think, may be the key here.

Cool again this morning. Slept very well.

A peace framework which puts the Straits of Hormuz back to the status they held pre-war. So, no gain there. Nuclear program of Iran to be considered in future talks. So, no gain there. A 60 day cease fire. We already had one. So, no gain there.

With these kind of victories we’ll soon be a colony of Great Britain again.

Did you watch the cage match?  No, not the mighty Dopy against the Iranian crusher. I mean the literal cage match that will be better remembered as a footnote to a ruinous administration. Nope? I didn’t either.

Shadow Mountain out.

 

Family, Fourth Phase, Health, Shadow Mountain

Mattering

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A visit from my rabbi.

A month ago, not sure if I would ever feel better, I asked Jamie to come see me. At the time I’d had thoughts of dropping out of the trial, going into hospice. Tired of all of it. Feeling sick. Life on the line with unproven drugs. Too. Much.

By the time we synched our calendars a month had passed. A month in which I hired a housekeeper, started getting better nutrition, sleep. I was no longer feeling from a mood of weariness.

I wondered now about my purpose in these last years of my life? Jamie told me of some material he’d been reading about mattering. I found it intriguing. Here’s a quick Gemini summary:

  • Significance (or Importance): Feeling seen, essential, and having the small things about you remembered by others.
  • Appreciation (or Recognition): Being valued strictly for who you are, rather than exclusively for what you achieve.
  • Investment (or Ego Extension): Knowing that others are genuinely invested in your well-being and that you are mutually invested in theirs.
  • Dependence (or Reliance): Having people in this world who safely trust and rely on you, without overextending you.
  • Attunement: The feeling that you are worthy of being understood and responded to meaningfully by your community. [1, 2, 3]

I like this because it wraps the question of purpose-self extended outward-in a broad context which includes family, community, and the inner experience of being human. And, in particular for me right now, it shows that purpose can be showing others that they matter.

Not, imh, strikingly new or revolutionary, yet a full advance over achievement and accumulation as life’s purpose. Also, it does not denigrate those, rather it sets them in what seems to me their appropriate context.

I’m focused now on mattering, especially the ways I can help you, reader, know that you matter.

On a health note I have walked unaided almost the full length of my driveway and back. Mary is my wingwoman in case I falter.

Mary has been a kind and helpful presence since she got here. Setting herself things to do like eliminating expired food, cleaning the fridge, and all my kitchen cabinets. Most of all she has come, showed up as my friend Paul likes to say. Family at its best. She matters to me.

Family, Fourth Phase, Health, Politics

The Toad Prince

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Mary. Cleaning. Culling. Making breakfast, a snack basket.  Helping with Shadow. Helping me with workouts. Kind. Good to have family here. Links to the past and the future.

She expressed surprise when I told her mom wanted me to read only Tarzan comic books. “But mom was so open minded.” Not when I was seven, eight.

While we’re approaching the Summer Solstice, Melbourne is well into fall. Headed toward the Winter Solstice. Down under.

Liz, occupational therapist, came yesterday. Bubbly, easy to talk to. Both she and Carol, p.t., had to do assessments. Then submit those to United health, see how many sessions they will allow. Work with both of them starts next week.

With Mary alongside I’m walking unaided on the driveway. A little further each day. Feels good. Challenging. Small workouts start today. Legs.

I can feel the progress, slow though it may be.

 

Meanwhile the Toad Prince dreams of a Trump promenade. Talks of leaving the UFC platform on the Whitehouse lawn. Like the French did with the Eiffel Tower. What a strange man.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fourth Phase, Friends, Greenhouse, Memories, Politics, Shadow Mountain, US History

Decoration Day

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Shabbat. Melissa came, drove Ruby to Mangy Moose Trail, and picked up my six heirloom tomato plants. Healthy and strong, straight out of the Heirloom Tomato Farm greenhouse.

Not sure if they’re gonna live. My heater didn’t keep them warm enough last night. 47 degrees. Way too cold for tomatoes. I’ll have to check on them today. A long walk in my current weakened condition. I do have the Inogen charged so I can carry my O2 concentrator.

If they’re ok, I’ll give them a drink. Artemis drawing me into movement. A good thing.

Janice planted the tomatoes. Coming back in occasionally with pictures. Sweet of her to do that.

Ginny, her partner, helped with thin skin wound treatment. She’s a nurse. And an opera singer. And a theater director. And a student of Torah and mussar.

Monday entry

Tanks wrinkling hot asphalt. Last year’s homecoming queen riding on the back of the realtor’s Cadillac convertible. The color guard wearing uniforms that fit them long ago, now bulging, showing a bit of white skin.

The Decoration Day parade in Alexandria. We waved tiny flags and cheered the baton twirlers. The whole town lined Harrison street, baby boomers like me still in elementary school.

The official start of summer. The pool in Beulah Park opened. I still remember the small pool of chlorine laced water we all had to step in before we could enter the swimming pool itself.

I skipped the long speeches and decorating of veterans graves. Pretty boring for an eight year old.

Long after I left Alexandria, Decoration Day became Memorial Day and shifted in time from May 30th to the last Monday in May. In my mind Memoria Day remains on May 30th as does the annual running of the Indianapolis 500. I still occasionally miss the Indy 500 for this reason.

School ended the week before Memorial Day and began again the day after Labor Day. It shocked me to learn that schools in Colorado routinely begin in mid-August. Seems cruel and unusual.

 

Dopy struggles his way toward a deal with the Iranians. Number one? Opening the Straits of Hormuz. Which weren’t an issue until we invaded. So Dopy brokers deal to solve a problem he created, one which was never listed as a war aim. Go, Team America!

 

Dogs, Fourth Phase, Friends, Garden, Greenhouse, Health, Politics, Shadow Mountain

Heirloom

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Today is a red vegetable day. I get my heirloom tomato plants from the Heirloom Tomato Farm. Rather, Melissa will get them for me. Still not up to an outing.

Gotta plug in the heater, warm up the greenhouse. 39 degrees, this morning’s temp, is way too cold for tomatoes. Ginny and Janice will get them planted today. Still pretty chilly through the next week though not this cool.

My Minnesota preference for cold weather now gives way to my gardener’s sensibility. Bring on the Beltane heat. Well, at least Beltane warmth. My mini-splits stand ready to cool the house if need be.

Tara came yesterday with Eleanor. Even though Eleanor’s twice plus her size Shadow initiates most of the rough and tumble, jumping up toward Eleanor’s front, paws out, all let’s play, let’s play, let’s play! They wear each other out.

Tara has worked hard between benai mitzvah classes on Zoom on the complicated logistics of their move to Costa Rica. Dog crates. Getting the house ready to rent. Selling, donating, throwing away decades of accumulated stuff. A lot.

The new microwave is here, ready to go on top of the small fridge. I’ll be able to retrieve my meals and warm them up without having to go upstairs. My recovery depends on two pillars: more and regular meals, a return to some level of exercise. Calories and protein, movement.

My recovery is in stasis right now. Not regressing, but not much forward movement either. There is this. As my body has healed, my mood and attitude have followed. I’m wanting to live, not just exist. Adjusting to my new reality requires challenging myself physically. Not there yet.

Hey, anybody heard about the Straits of Hormuz? How about that slush fund for insurrectionists? What? You’re focused on that “triumphal” arch? Me, I’m wondering if Wemby’s Spurs can takeout the Thunder.