Category Archives: Back Pain

Back Pain, Dogs, Family, Health, Holidays, Politics

Black Friday

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Samain and the Radiation Moon

Friday gratefuls: Chart House. Thanksgiving. Ruth. Shadow, the rascal. Hip pain. The National Guard. Our weakened nation. Colorado. The Rockies. Wyoming. The Wind River Range. Yellowstone. The Druid Pack. Wolf 21. The West. Bison. Elk. Mule Deer. Lodgepole and Bristlecone Pine. The Krummholz line. 14’ers. Skiing. A-Basin. Aspen. Vail. Steamboat. Telluride. Crested Butte. Breckenridge. Copper Mountain.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Waxing Moon

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei    Shadow, my Wu Wei mistress

Week Kavannah:  Gevurah      “While Chesed is associated with flow, Gevurah provides the structure that allows this flow, acting like river banks to channel energy. It is seen as essential for establishing healthy boundaries, creating space for important work, and preserving what is most valuable.”

Tarot: Being a metaPhysician

One brief shining: The Chart House sat me at a four top, the last in a full house, where Great Sol’s presence came through a window wall; Mackenzie from Florida, my server, was cheerful and kind asking me if I was ready to order: Caesar Salad, Filet Mignon rare with Garlic mashed Potatoes, and Key Lime Pie which I quit halfway through the Filet, got a box for the rest, and trudged up hill to Ruby, my hip no longer quieted. Happy Thanksgiving.

 

Just a moment: Trump calls out the National Guard. Of West Virginia. To D.C. Where a judge rules their presence illegal. Ignored. Meanwhile a former CIA trained counter terrorism Afghani who lives in the state of Washington decides to drive cross country. Adding tragedy to tragedy. A living remnant of our failed war intersects violently with the idiocy of saving our cities by occupying them.

What does our rotund Dear Leader conclude from this? We need to tighten immigration. No, Donald. You need to stop using military force as a tool of repression and suppression. Instead of following the judge’s order red tie guy wants 500 more troops.

You need to, oh hell, I’ll just say it, resign and take Vance and Hegseth and Noemi and Kennedy with you. You can all live happily in MAHA/MAGA world at Mar-a-Lago while the adults get back to the serious business of governance.

Happy Thanksgiving.

 

Dog journal: Shadow has me looking at animal behavorists. Her behavior baffles me. She continues to hold back from coming inside. No treats, no cajoling, no sweet talk works. She does come inside, on her own time. Where she enjoys her meals, treats, toys, time with me. As if the back and forth of only moments before never happened.

She also, in spite of trying several different methods, will not let me put a leash on her. When I have, rarely, succeeded, she doesn’t seem to mind walking with the leash.

Other than those two behavioral quirks-major ones, I admit-she remains a sweet, loving girl who sleeps curled next to my pillow, enjoys treat play, toys, visitors both canine and human.

 

Health: The hip steroid injection does not seem to be holding. Disappointing since I had it just last week. The ablation, on the other hand, has relieved my pain on the left side. Wearing the neck brace when I drive helps fight fatigue. Too early to tell on the radiation with seven more sessions to go.

Art and Culture, Back Pain, Cancer, Friends, Health, Music

All Alone Behind the Lead Lined Door

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Samain and the Radiation Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: Todd. Alise. Varian. Clinac. Warm blankets. My plastic guide. Sniper rifle beams. Radiation entering my body, headed toward T4 bone marrow/lesion. Only nine sessions to go. Pain still gone. Hip, too. Wearing neck brace when I drive. My treatment November. Chart House. Luke and Leo coming today. Shadow inside. Yeah!

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Medical Engineering

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei    Shadow, my Wu Wei mistress

Week Kavannah:  Gevurah      “While Chesed is associated with flow, Gevurah provides the structure that allows this flow, acting like river banks to channel energy. It is seen as essential for establishing healthy boundaries, creating space for important work, and preserving what is most valuable.”

Tarot: Being a metaPhysician

One brief shining: No Cyberknife moving in its calculated dance around my body, this time a Varian Clinac iX, which Alise controls from a multi-screened room on the other side of the thick lead door that closes quietly, leaving me alone with a linear accelerator hulking behind me, and the precision locating beams-red and green-reading my location as the Clinac moves, buzzing and clicking.

 

Cancer: This session of radiation, my third, has a single target, the lesion in my bone marrow at T4. Instead of going all the way to Lonetree, I hop off 470 at Broadway and head up to Rocky Mountain Cancer Care (RMCC).

Most of the treatment in this case involves positioning my body accurately, using green and red lasers plus the plastic mesh that fits under my chin and over my bare upper thorax. Alise put it in place using the tattoos, small black dots inked on the sides of my chest by Todd during the CT planning procedure.

Since precision in aiming the beam of radiation is key both to killing the cancer cells and not damaging the rest of me, I get the need for multiple ways of saying go here, not there to the radiation. In and out in twenty minutes, less than five of which involved actual radiation.

 

Back and hip pain: The ablation continues to give me a pain free left lower back and upper left. The hip feels mostly good, too. Just a bit of tweak if I move in an odd angle.

Lower back right still has significant tightness, a little pain. Since the ablations only work on the arthritis, Kylie told me to expect pain from the bulging discs to continue. She was right.

Even so, a huge improvement. My driving stamina, which I will test each day going to RMCC, has improved, too, but not nearly as much as I had hoped. I was not in agony on the drive home, but I was still pretty uncomfortable. That’s with a fifty minute drive out, some sitting and then a drive back for fifty minutes.

I’m going to up my resistance work, stretching, see if I can do better with stronger core muscles.

This sort of adaptation, relief and its limitations, continue the journey of an aging body/self.

 

Opera: Not usually my thing though I love Wagner. I know, I know, an anti-semite, but what an artist! Watched an opera initiated by Yin, of Scott and Yin, with other members of the Chinese Heritage Foundation and staged by the San Francisco Opera.

An amazing, engaging, important work. The Journey of the Monkey King. If you can see it, take the chance. It will not disappoint you. Both libretto and the staging are, in my opinion, genius.

Back Pain, Health, Politics, US History

25th Amendment?

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Samain and the Radiation Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Shadow of the morning. Artemis in late fall. The bare Aspens. The duller green of the Lodgepoles. Gray, cloudy Skies. Recovering from the ablation drugs. Still no pain except for one area over the right hip. Remembering this man, the one before the pain. Ruth coming up the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. With a sugar cream pie. Winter Solstice less than a month away. Holiseason well underway.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: My son’s sophisticated ethical reasoning

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei    Shadow, my Wu Wei mistress

Week Kavannah:  Gevurah      “While Chesed is associated with flow, Gevurah provides the structure that allows this flow, acting like river banks to channel energy. It is seen as essential for establishing healthy boundaries, creating space for important work, and preserving what is most valuable.”

Tarot: Being a metaPhysician

One brief shining:   With the still new sensation of a largely pain free lower back, all manner of things withheld came flooding back: that trip to Korea, maybe by way of Taipei to see the National Museum, even Melbourne in far away Australia, back to Mussar and Bagel Table in person, local travel in Colorado, New Mexico, yet I have to wait, wait until weeks go by and the relief from the ablation and the steroid prove durable not ephemeral. May it be so.

 

A little giddy. A little, not skeptical, but aware things could change. Right now. Yesterday. This morning. No pain bending over, getting out of bed, going upstairs. Not quite true. There is a spot above my right hip that still flares, but I’m sure a lidocaine patch would calm it down. I’m reluctant to feel as good as I want to feel. Protection against disappointment.

And yet. I feel pretty damned good! Since Korea in September of 2023 I’ve lived with chronic pain that seemed only to get worse. With the hip injection and the ablation I can be hopeful of at the very least a much lessened pain experience.

I’m still weak from months of favoring my back, working out, yes, but not at full strength. I can get some strength back though I’m not sure how much.

The fourth leg of medical treatment starts tomorrow.

 

Just a moment: Let me count the ways. Favoring a larger, stronger state in its war against a smaller one. Misogynism with no shame, even bruited as a sign of honesty. Huh? Making millions from deals involving foreign allies. Even ordering the Justice Department to repay hundreds of millions of dollars in doubtfully earned restitution. Pardoning citizens investigated and convicted of insurrection. Directing the department of Justice (note that word) to go after rivals, persons seen as enemies. Having close ties with a man whose ability to tempt and seduce made him a human simulacrum for the devil. Denying food, medicine, and birth control to citizens of poor nations. Blowing up real boats, with real people and calling it an act of war when no war has been declared. Using the military to occupy American cities.

None of this is invisible or in question. Yet it’s wrong on its face, blatant, egregious. All from the President, our President. Why hasn’t the 25th amendment been invoked?

Back Pain, Denver, Health, Post Polio

Belay Glasses

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Samain and the Summer’s End Moon (a very faint waning crescent)

Wednesday gratefuls: Tom. His path. Shirley Waste. Joanne. Working out. Great Sol illuminates us all. Shadow, who goes outside when I’m done talking on Zoom. This strange trip we’re on. Ripple. Sugaree. The Weight. Ain’t No Grave. The Night They Drove Ol’ Dixie Down. Tambourin Man. Don’t You Need Somebody to Love. That teeny Mule Deer not quite a fawn anymore.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Morgan, rock climber and orthotist

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei    Shadow, my Wu Wei mistress

Week Kavannah:  Hakarat Hakov   Gratitude.    “Who is rich? Those who rejoice in their portion.” Perkei Avot 4:1

Tarot: Being a metaPhysician

One brief shining: Still in the dark, I picked up the white plastic trash bags filled with two weeks of refuse, some garbage, some recyclable, opened my kitchen window which begins about a foot and a half off the floor, tossed the bags in their respective bins, opened the front door, and went out to pull them with a sound like muffled thunder to the edge of my driveway where Seoah and I went as the last ritual of Kate’s shiva.

 

Tuesday, Tuesday. Drove down the hill into Denver near Denver Health to the Evergreen Orthotics office where I once again discussed braces for my wobbly, sagging head. Morgan, my orthotist, a fit young woman in her late twenties, early thirties with an engaging smile and warm persona showed me the possible braces. Both soft, one identical to one I purchased on Amazon, another larger.

I told her about my problem standing and talking with people taller than I am. At 5’5″ that’s a lot of people. She said, “This is sort of a joke, but you could get belay glasses.” She’s a climber and explained the principle. Belay glasses have a prism that lets you see your climbing partner without straining your neck back.

So I could have my soft neck brace on, then in a social setting I could flip my belay glasses on my readers when encountering a taller human. That wouldn’t be weird at all.

There’s a transition here, similar to getting my handicap placard, where I have to publicly acknowledge my troubles with assistive devices. I don’t like it. Yet most old folks wear both glasses and hearing aids…assistive devices. So. Transist me up, Scotty.

Inadequate solutions at best, yet better than having the charming medically described head drop.

 

Turned around and drove back toward Golden. Panorama Orthopedics. Saw Abby who numbed my hip and jabbed a needle through my skin. Steroids again.

“So,” I asked, “if the injections don’t work and you can’t do surgery, where does that leave me?”

She shrugged a bit, a slight tilt to her head, “Well, then we’re between a rock and a hard place.” Which made me think of Morgan.

Oh, I also thought. Whaddya’ mean we whiteman? It’s me that’s stuck. That bridge we all agree we’ll encounter later. You know, when we come to it.

Left there and drove forty-five minutes back home. A lot of pain setting in as I headed up into the Mountains, willing myself back home, driving sometimes with gritted teeth. Too much for one day.

Back Pain, Cancer, Cooking, Coronavirus, Politics, Post Polio, Sport, US History

How Great an America is This?

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Samain and the Summer’s End Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Dodgers win the World Series! Rabbi Jamie’s hug. Joe. Alan. Jim. Corey. Irv. Matt. Torah study led by Luke. Bagels and schmear. Joanne in rehab. Back to real time, standard time. Dark Winds. Everwood.  Heather. Tramadol. The boiler. The mini-splits. My breath. Sight. Touch. Taste. Hearing. Smell. YHWH.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Home

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei

Week Kavannah:  Histapkot.  Contentment. Acceptance.                       I’m comfortable with who I am and with what I have.

Tarot: Being a metaphysician

One brief shining: Sitting in regular chairs, my head unsupported by a back rest, fasciculations begin, muscles straining and flexing, moving under the skin, distracting me from the words of Hagar and the Angel, from El-Roi, the God who sees, I don’t notice it, the wobbling, at first, until my shoulders get sore and I’m no longer able to concentrate, be sharp, as my head tilts right, polio wreaking one last not so subtle blow.

 

So. I’m taking notice. Part of my fatigue, maybe a big part, follows from my increasing inability to hold up my own head. Dr. Eunberg diagnosed it, post-polio syndrome. I’ve been to an orthotists’ office and been told my situation has no other instances. They’re going to modify soft collars for me. We’ll see.

Beginning to feel like my body’s falling apart literally from the neck down. A tumor on T4 needing radiation. Arthritic L1-L5 nerves needing ablation. A right torn labrum possibly needing surgery. I mean, geez.

I’m so far ahead of my insurance company with expensive cancer drugs, pet scans, mri’s, and radiation. That makes me feel somewhat good. Even so…

 

Food: Had the last of the sheet pan meal with my Cherry Tomatoes and Beets. So. Good. Planning more sheet plan cooking, easy, quick, lots of Veggies. Of all the health maintenance matters, cooking for myself has proved the most challenging. Just hard to pull off.

CookUnity has been ok, but just ok. Pricey and with time constraints that make it difficult to use. Some of the meals are tasty, many of them edible, but only edible.

May not be getting enough calories, protein.

 

Sport: What a world series! Game 7, extra innings, Dodgers behind with two outs in the ninth…and Rojas hits a home run! Tie game. In the 11th, the 11th inning of Game 7 of a world series with a historically long game 3, 18 innings, a double play ended the Canadian’s dreams. Dodger’s repeat. Not since the Yankees 1998-2000 run has a world series champion repeated.

Meanwhile, back in forlorn football country, JJ McCarthy returns from injury absence. Will he play like a future franchise quarterback? Or, will he rip out the hearts of a Twin City’s fan base already inured to the breaks never falling their way. If the Vikings didn’t have bad luck, they’d had have no luck at all.

 

Just a moment: SNAP. Medicaid. Obamacare. Taking money literally from the mouths of the poor, taking away their final recourse for medical care, raising health care premiums to the    sky for even middle class Americans. Funneling the money “saved” into the pockets of oligarchs. How great is this America?