• Category Archives Aging

  • Home again, Home

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Winter and the waxing Imbolc Moon

    Sunday gratefuls: Kate at home. Atrial Fibrillation. Meds. Nurses. Wheelchairs. Swedish Hospital. Kate’s refuge. Kep, Rigel. Family home and complete. 3 days. On the way to Mar-a-Lago. Safeway pickup. Mary’s calendar gift. Precious. Thanks. Notes and cards from Kate’s friends. Evelyn Crane. Tom. His sister.

     

    Honey, harvesting

    Kate is home. An apparently leak free stoma site. Complete with circumferential suture. Grateful to the interventional radiologists. The pulmonologists. The cardiologists.

    This visit worried me. Her, too. Had me contemplating life without her. Of course, I can do it. I mean, I can do the tasks, the chores, the necessaries. She pays the bills and folds the clothes. Yes, I can.

    But.

    Who would share breakfast? Commiserate over the latest Trump outrage? Answer my medical questions? Who would hug me? Sleep next to me? Well, Rigel and Kep. Sure. But not Kate. Who would recognize when I slipped into melancholy and tell me? Our family would be very different without her.

    Not now. Now she’s here. And today is what counts. It’s all that counts. The rest is the idle occupation of a worried mind. Today I will see her at breakfast. Hug her. Grump about pardons-are-us in the West Wing. We’ll laugh. Do a money meeting. Wonder how Ruth and Gabe are doing? Think about Murdoch getting ready to head out for Hawai’i.

    I know. If you read these pages, it’s been a downer for the last week or so. Maybe longer. This is my journal, my record of being here. Sometimes it’s this, sometimes it’s that.

    Kate’s home. I can turn my mind to other things. Like the inauguration. Oh, wait…


    Aging Family Friends Health Shadow Mountain Woolly Mammoths

  • Childhood

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Winter and the Moon of the New Year

    Christmastide, Day 3: Holy Innocents, Children

    Monday gratefuls: The Ancient ones on wonder. Wonderfull. High humidity outside. Another weather change on the way. 23 days until he has to come on down. 4 days till 2021. Back to workouts today. Covid. Trump. The Absurd. Authenticity. Living into the abyss. Haislet’s poem.

     

    Murdoch’s last day at his birth home

     

    First. Don’t start anything important today. As was well known a while ago, nothing started on Holy Innocents ever turns out as hoped. In the Middle Ages kings would not be crowned on this day. Two kings, French King Louis XI and English King Edward IV would not conduct any court affairs.

    You have been warned.

    This day commemorated the children killed by Herod in his slaughter of the innocents and added, over time, an emphasis on all children.

    Ruth’s final day at Swigert

    There were odd rituals. Parents beat their children with fresh evergreen branches. Sometimes children would beat the parents. Masters, servants. And, servants, masters. They would say: Fresh green! Long life! Give me a coin. or, Fresh, green, fair, and fine, Gingerbread and brandy-wine! I don’t know. Go ahead if you want.

    Take this as a day to honor the children in your life. Grandchildren. Your own children. Text them. Call them. Let them know, again, what they meant to you. In the wonder and strangeness of growing up, both us and them, we can forget to acknowledge each other as individuals, as amazements. Let this day encourage you to do it now.

    Another facet. Childhood. Consider your children’s, your grandchildren’s lives when they were young. What was it about them then that made them special? That either prefigured traits they have today or that disappeared in the process of becoming older. Pleasant or precious memories. Hopes you had for them.

    Seeing Joe in Colorado Springs

    I remember Joseph at t-ball. Hitting the ball off the t and then the scrum of kids from all positions heading toward the ball. Many, many trips to baseball card shows. The rookie card of Kirby Puckett he bought when we took the train the wrong way out of St. Louis and had to wait for the next one. Driving with him into St. Paul from Andover. Picking him up from the plane. How he made and kept friends.

    Another facet. Consider your own childhood. Honor the child you. What made you special? Pleasant or precious memories.

    The garden spider mom and I watched for a whole summer. She had spun her web on the window frame just above our kitchen table. My stack of comic books I kept under my bed with some Superman comics hidden among them. (forbidden) Listening to the 500 mile race in the family car, rain pounding down. All those kids on my block. Games. The coal chute in the basement of our apartment. And the augur which fed the furnace. A dragon, I thought.

    Childhood. And, the folks who care for children, too. Like pediatricians. Teachers. Nannys. Their friends.

    At Domo

    Aging Family Friends Holidays Memories Minnesota

  • Truth

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Winter and the Moon of the New Year (and, Christmas Eve)

    Thursday gratefuls: Alan. CBE. Jamie. Marilyn. Tara. Kate. Rigel’s clean bowl this morning. Christmas Eve. Our best present only 27 days away! Nordic Advent Calendar. Santa Claus. Magic and wonder. Young children. Another big present only 7 days away. 2021.

     

    Kate’s had a long Sjogren’s flare. Started on Monday or so. Low grade temp. Fatigue. Little nausea, which is good. Drains away energy, leaves the slows. Unusual for it to last this long, often gone in a day.

    We had a tough, sad, necessary talk on Tuesday. It came after a scam call about our Amazon account, after Rigel’s refusal to eat, after Kep threw up, after Option Care failed again to deliver the bags Kate uses for her tube feedings.

    Pierced my calm. Frustration leaked out. Not angry. Momentarily overwhelmed. Got us to talking about this new normal. What we can reasonably expect of each other.

    The tough and sad part. I’m not getting better.  It’s taken me months to accept that, to accept this. She put her hand up, indicated a long, slow decline.

    I know. I just… I know, too. Wu wei. We flow with this. But, it makes me sad.

    Me, too. I used to wonder which of us would die first. Now, I know.

    Maybe not. Heart attack. Stroke. Car accident.

    Maybe not. But, probably.

    There it was. On the table. The dining room table, where, I imagine, most of these conversations happen. Laying things out, saying what’s been unsaid. Right where the plates and the knives and spoons and forks go.

    Acceptance, though. Has its own power. Increases intimacy. Clears the haze away. No one is dead. No one is dying quickly. And, we’re all dying anyhow, every day closer.

    OK. Not a cheery Christmas message. Maybe not. But the divine with us came out and walked the room while we talked. Reminded us of evanescence. Of the joy of being together. Of the time we have, rather than the time we don’t have.

    Brought us together, appreciating each other even more. A gift of a long ancientrail, marriage and love and steadfastness.

    It came upon a midnight clear, that glorious night of old.


    Aging Family Health Holidays Myth and Story Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant. Shadow Mountain Third Phase

  • Sad and Ashamed

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Samain and the Moon of Thanksgiving

    Saturday gratefuls: Alan. The Ancient ones. Venus in the sky with diamonds. Thanksgiving. Smaller, this year. Trump. Revealing how precious and how fragile our democracy is. Kate. Good days. All those who read Ancientrails. Thank you. The gas heater in the loft. La Nina. Keeping us dry. And, aware. Holiseason. Lighting up lives across the globe. Next up, an American Thanksgiving.

    Friendship. So important. At times so difficult. I made a mistake with a group of friends, introduced a close friend from another part of my life, and it didn’t go well. I misread the signals, assumed too much. Now my close friend and I will have to be embarrassed together. I feel ashamed and sad. Today I talk with the friend, a Colorado friend, and tell him that he’s no longer welcome, except as a possible guest. Tough duty. Lost some sleep last night.

    Friendship bonds. In this case the old and deep bonds between my group of friends are so significant that having another present changes the dynamics. In an unhelpful way. I missed this because I’m friends with all of them. I assumed and it did in fact make an ass out of me. 73 and still adulting. Gosh. I want to remain friends with everyone. We’ll see if that’s possible.

    The orange bother. Wonder if he uses a (very large) tanning bed or tan in a bottle. He’s trying to remove the loss lines from this bummer of an election for him. Don’t imagine the tanning salon will help. No amount of cosmetology, even if the stylist is the inimitable Rudy Giuliani, will make them disappear. Trump looks as foolish as tan lines in November.

    Thought I might be ready to analyze this mess of an election, but I’m not. Reading the commentary makes cringe. So far. That will pass. I want to consider what Trump’s depredations mean for our future as a nation. Not yet.

    Covid. Feels like the nation is Evel Kneivel. All we have to do is jump the time between today and next spring when the vaccine roll out will jumpstart the end to this episode of “Do You Feel Sick!” That’s a long time and there are many holidays ahead. Many college kids coming home. Many kids wanting Grandma and Grandpa. Many older folks who’ve been good about staying inside since March now look at holidays with no kids, no grandkids, no friends. This is hard.

    Winter squash. Wild caught salmon, Cook Inlet. Orange, tomato, onion, olive, and caper salad. A nice, healthy supper.

    Had a bit of weirdness yesterday. Got up from doing planks and pelvic raises on the ball. My heart rate jumped up and didn’t fall when I sat down. Called my medical expert on the intercom. Probably orthostatic hypotension. A blood pressure drop when suddenly going from sitting on lying down to standing. I’ve been exercising regularly since my early 40’s. Used pulse rate monitoring most of that time. Pretty familiar with how my body responds to exercise. This was different. Unless it persists I would write NBD in my chart. No Big Deal.


    Aging Coronavirus Friends Health Politics Third Phase

  • Oh, I See

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Fall and the Moon of Radical Change

    Sunday gratefuls: Snow. 8 degrees. More Snow, more Cold drooping down from the north, screaming in later from the west. Rigel and Kep. Kate. Our dialogue about doing things together. A warmer day yesterday. Happy Camper. Safeway. Ruby.

    A light Snow, crystalline, falls outside. The temperature has dropped to 6 degrees. We are in a belt, once again, that could get up to 12-14 inches. Any amount of Snow and cold comes as a relief, not only here on Shadow Mountain, but also for those affected by the East Troublesome Fire and the Cameron Fire, well north of us, up in the Rocky Mountain National Park part of the state. I hope it’s enough to douse them, or at least bring them under control.

    My favorite coffee mug has the Polar Express on it. I got it when Kate and I took then 7 year old grandson Gabe to an evening on board a Christmas train. He remarked, “We don’t celebrate this!” and huffed at the whole production. I got mad. Couldn’t he back off and enjoy the elves coming through with hot chocolate? Nope.

    Gabe is not an observant Jew, even now several years later at the age of 12. But, he held fast that night. I admire it. I can say that now, but then, I thought, you ungrateful little killjoy!

    You see this coming, right? What was really going on there? I loved Christmas. I loved the Polar Express. I did not associate it with Christianity by that point, but Gabe certainly did. Christmas is the great temptation for Hanukkah kids. Partly why Jewish children do so well at Hanukkah these days in terms of presents. Look! We have 8 days, they only have one night.

    Not Christmas. Nope, Dreidel, Dreidel, Dreidel. Not Silent Night. No Christmas Tree. No Santa Claus. No The Night Before Christmas. A clear demarcation line between them and us. Kate and I that night were them. Gabe defended his faith and his culture. Again, good for him.

    Fast forward to a Hanukkah at our house a year or so later. My knee replacement had just happened. I was home but medicated, morphine. Big pain.

    As Ruth and Gabe went through the stack of presents on the coffee table, I was hit with a sudden wave of despair. What was I doing here? Why was I celebrating Hanukkah? I’m a Christmas guy. How did I let myself get into this?

    The same kind of holiday dysphoria, I think, that Gabe experienced on the Polar Express. Huh. What goes around, comes around.

    Since that moment, which passed as the morphine went away and the knee healed, I’ve realized the exasperated finger needed to point back at myself. Both incidents indicated a deep longing, a childhood longing, for a holiday I knew as mine.

    I love Santa Claus, twinkling lights, hot chocolate, candy canes. And, yes, the Christmas Tree. I don’t love the hassle of the Christmas Tree or the materialistic orgy. No. That was easy to leave behind. What are the presents for anyhow? Proof of love? What kid needs that? Or, at least, what kid should need that?

    The whole mishmash of mistaking parental love for the giving of gifts let me walk away from Christmas. Kate helped of course because she got tired of decorating MY Christmas Tree. Can’t blame her for that.

    I don’t need the whole crass side of Christmas. Neither do you, I imagine. Maybe nobody does.

    But. Boy, do I need the songs and the lights and all that stuff about Santa and the North Pole. And, the Tree. This year I’m going to pick a Lodgepole in our yard as my Christmas Tree. No, I’ll not cut it down. Maybe I’ll find a living Evergreen Tree to have inside, a small one.

    Its that Evergreen connection that makes religious sense. Evergreen, a resurrected God. See? I’ll continue this, but I want to post now, so I can get breakfast before my time with the ancient ones.


    Aging Commentary on Religion Family Great Wheel Holidays Myth and Story Original Relation Weather +Climate

  • Fattening, Not Flattening

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Fall and the Moon of Radical Change

    Wednesday gratefuls: New wheelchair. #19! Better comfort for Kate. Covid days and Covid nights. With the flu on its way. Hunker down, USA. A gift from Ancient One, Tom Crane. Safeway. Picking up groceries in my jammies. Cool weather ahead. And, snow! Drive down that fire danger. Yeah.

    On the drive down the mountain to Safeway the Sun angle, the brown and gold Grasses, naked Aspen among the Lodgepole sent me back to trips to Aunt Marjorie’s house for Thanksgiving. Over the hills and through the woods.

    Picked up some squash today. Yum. Also, thought I indicated I wanted 5 tomatoes. Got five pounds instead. Chili tonight. Safety wise pickup is the gold standard. As it is in terms of limiting impulse purchases. However.

    The third surge of the first wave has come up hard against the rocky shore of pandemic fatigue. We have fattened the curve, instead of flattening. And, we are at it again. This time though with a broader reach in regions. That dovetails with three accelerants: the seasonal flu, cold weather and more indoor gatherings, winter holidays like Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah.

    By the time 2021 arrives two months plus a little from now we might be ready to skip ahead to 2022.

    The fall after college, 1969, Judy and I moved to Appleton, Wisconsin. My bakery job had me up at 4 am as my first Wisconsin winter closed in. The owner, almost joyous for a Norwegian (I now know.), used to sing, “I’ve got my love to keep me warm.” Yeah. But, he was the boss, you know. I can still hear him. Seems like the perfect song now.

    Or, this. The weather outside is frightful, the fire is so delightful, and since we’ve GOT NO PLACE TO GO, let it snow, let it snow, let it snow! (caps mine, ya know.)

    Did I forget to mention the election? An election is coming. Like winter. Vote. Vote. Vote. Vote. Vote. Vote.

    Local satellite gathers dust from meteor. The Lockheed-Martin works off Deer Creek Canyon Road celebrated as their designed and built OSIRIS-REX blew on asteroid Bennu and collected (they hope) dust in an extended ring.

    There is a robust space industry in Colorado and it will get much bigger if Trump’s Space Force decides to permanently locate its headquarters here. It has a temporary headquarters in Virginia but there are already several sites here: Buckley AFB, Peterson AFB, Schriever AFB with 10 of its fifteen units in the state already.

    Back to writing. Kate read the first half of Jennie’s Dead and her response to it jarred me back to the keyboard. I can’t exercise until next Monday so the time is easy to find. I feel good, like I know I should. Writing buoys me up.


    Aging Colorado Commentary on the news Cooking Coronavirus Family Feelings Friends Health Jefferson County Mountains Our Land and Home Science Shadow Mountain Third Phase US History

  • Mountain Recluses

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Fall and the RBG Moon. Orion, Mars, Venus, and the Great Dog

    Monday gratefuls: Ancient friends. Their journeys. Learning and education. Life. All those drops for my eyes. Peanut butter and Rigel. Carne asada, twice baked potato, and salad. Safeway pickup. That snow yesterday. Mom’s yahrzeit on the 17th.

    A bright, sunshiny day in the high 50’s. I worked at my computer. Turned around. A gray day. Snow blizzarding down, swirling. 39 degrees. Colorado. An hour later. No snow. Blue sky. Sunny. Black Mountain absorbed it all.

    My ancient friends keep talking about the Ground Hog day nature of their lives. Not so for me. Each day has its own challenges. Our meal times vary. Sure, there are equivalent actions at familiar times: feeding the dogs, a.m., coming up to the loft, writing this blog. Breakfast, change Kate’s bandages. Noon or so nap. Evening dog feeding, some television. In between these though I could be reading, painting, writing.

    Our life had a cloistered feel even before the pandemic. That’s intensified, for sure. We don’t have the occasional meal out. No movies. No CBE. Zooming with family, friends, synagogue classes. Yes, not the same as in person, as we all know now.

    Both of us though are introverts. Kate even more so than I. Happiness is a book, a project, a downtime hour painting or sewing, watching a movie. Of course we love our kids, our grandkids, our friends, the folks at CBE. We would like to see them more often. But, not too much more often.

    Mountain recluses. That’s us. Just got a novel, A Life of Li Bai. Either at retirement or upon banishment Chinese literati took up mountain living, usually as recluses. Li Bai, a Tang dynasty poet exiled in the time of the An Lushan rebellion is a mountain poet.

    Here’s one of his memorized by generations of Chinese schoolchildren:

    Thoughts in the Silent Night (静夜思)

    床前明月光，   Beside my bed a pool of light—
    疑是地上霜，   Is it hoarfrost on the ground?
    舉頭望明月，   I lift my eyes and see the moon,
    低頭思故鄉。   I lower my face and think of home.

    And another famous poem (in China) by Han-Shan, or Cold Mountain, Poem 302:

    出生三十年， I’ve been in the world for thirty years,
    當遊千萬里。 And I must have traveled a million miles.
    行江青草合， Walked by rivers where the green grass grows thick,
    入塞紅塵起。 And entered the frontier where the red dust rises.
    鍊藥空求仙， Purified potions in vain search for immortality,
    讀書兼詠史。 Read books and perused the histories.
    今日歸寒山， Today I return to Cold Mountain,
    枕流兼洗耳。 Pillow myself on the creek and wash out my ears.

    The pandemic has changed our lives, but not that much. Li Bai or Han Shan could have lived here.

    The Consolations of the Mountains. Our wild Neighbors. The dark night Sky filled with Stars and Planets and Galaxies. The Lodgepole Pine and the Aspen. The dancing, sparkling Streams. The sturdy Rock. The thinner Air. Shadow Mountain home.


    Aging Coronavirus Great Wheel Jefferson County Mountains Original Relation Our Land and Home Shadow Mountain The Move Third Phase Travel

  • Clarity

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Fall and the RBG Moon with Mars, Orion, and Venus

    Thursday gratefuls: Steady hands, Dr. Gustave. Cataract surgery, the new lens. Kate. Cool weather coming. Alan. Susan and Marilyn who will keep Kate company during my surgery. Aspen gold among the Lodgepole green.

    Right eye. Slice, dice, remove old lens, insert new. Clarity in both eyes. Cherry Hills Surgery Center is a standalone building just off Hwy. 285. Cataracts, corneas, other procedures peculiar to the eye. Alan will stay in his Tesla. He bought a new infotainment upgrade so he will be back home in his living room if he wants.

    This surgery will improve my eyesight in several ways. No need for glasses to drive. Sunglasses, I’ll still wear. No glasses for TV. Colors brighter. Cheaters for reading. As it looks right now, I will only need cheaters. I got three of them for $10. Much cheaper than my old ones. By a factor of almost 100. I suspect I will be able to see better in low light, too.

    Eventually cataracts cause blindness so improving my vision while preventing blindness offers something medicine rarely does. A body better than the one before.

    Kate had a tough day yesterday. Her rheumatoid arthritis kicked up, making her right wrist painful, red, swollen. Her upper arm became swollen, red, and hot. That subsided over night. I do not like leaving her when she’s having trouble. Surgery has its own demands. I’m glad Susan and Marilyn offered to be with her, at least by phone. Marilyn is close, in mountain terms, so if Kate needs medical care, she could take her.

    Did not watch the Presidential Vice’s debate. I could have streamed it through the New York Times or the Washington Post. But, no.

    Rigel refuses her meds and bites down when I try to open her jaw. Will need new strategies if we go the whole 12 weeks.

    The RBG Moon stands above Orion’s right shoulder while Mars, as close it ever comes to earth, twinkles over Black Mountain. Venus shines in the east. When warriors fight, they fight for love. Of country. Of family. Of an idea. This sky, this warrior sky, filled with love. A strong night sky.


    Aging Commentary on the news Dogs Family Friends Health Shadow Mountain

  • RBG and Mars

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Fall The Full RBG Moon and Mars

    Saturday gratefuls: Kate’s better breathing, stamina. Easy Entrees Oktoberfest meal today: Pork Schnitzel, Bavarian Pretzels, and German Cucumber Salad. Prosit! Sukkot. The Sukkah is up at CBE. Harvests all round the world. Confirmation on masks, social distancing, staying away from crowded enclosed spaces. My new lens. My new cheaters. Fall. It’s courage and sadness.

    The alignment this morning of the full RBG Moon and Mars happened just over Black Mountain, a bit to the northwest. Beautiful in the early morning sky. Mythic, too. The warrior God of ancient Rome and the warrior Woman. Anima and Animus. The full power of masculine and feminine writ large. A good time to remember that this miserable administration has only a few weeks to its reckoning.

    No. I don’t relish Trump’s struggle with Covid. Not when I view him as just a man. I neither wish nor celebrate suffering on anyone. Sure, I might joke about it, but in the end, no.

    As a scumbag President, cheerleader for the Proud Boys and the Klan, as a misogynist, a racist, a mocker of the disabled, and as an ignorant man in a job that requires learning though, I’m glad he’s sidelined. May he be out of the picture long enough to ensure his defeat.

    Saw Dr. Gustave yesterday. Still at 20/25 for distance. He seemed disappointed. I’m not. Things are so much clearer. Colors are brighter. The World has a certain freshness to it. It seems younger. Cataract surgery gives me a boost mentally.

    Had to sign permission for my right eye to get cut. Acknowledge that I still had blurry, hazy vision in it. Forms and checklists, scheduling. The usual morass of American medicine.

    I won’t rant. I won’t. Yet, for all the questionnaires, all the releases signed, the same ones over and over, the system, well, no, not a system, the chaotic, entangled delivery of medical care here in these United States, medical care itself is often thwarted rather than delivered.

    If you’ve followed this blog at all, you may recall my struggles with the axumin scan and subsequent imaging. Kate still has no wheelchair. She went in Wednesday and got prepped for an unnecessary procedure, called off before it was about to start. Why? What caused her shortness of breath that has now abated? Will we get a referral to Dr. Taryle to answer those questions? Unclear.

    The referral system demanded by insurance carriers is at the heart of all this trouble. It’s the way we curb medical costs. They say. It’s the way they guard their profit margin, I say. Wish we could just get Marine One to pick us up at our front door and deliver us to the doctor or the hospital. That we could get the same kind of care as the President. That all of us could get that kind of care.

    Delay, denial, and skepticism are the main tools of this failed institution. Sure, there are doctors who know what to do, hospitals that deliver excellent care, but how can we access them? The burden of making the system move too often falls to the sick one. This is cruel and inhumane.

    Hoping for a massive and radical change in how Americans receive medical care. Vote. That’s a start.


    Aging Commentary on the news Coronavirus Family Feelings Health Politics Shadow Mountain Third Phase US History

  • WTF

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Fall and the RBG Moon

    Thursday gratefuls: Family, near and far. Friends. Ancient and new. ADT. Androgen Deprivation Therapy. It’s not just Lupron anymore. For Charlie H. 27 degrees this morning. The Denver Post. Decompensation in full public view. The orange excrescence. Dez and the wheelchair. Kate. And her anger.

    What a long strange trip it’s being. Geez. Took Kate to Swedish for her thoracentesis. We found the ambulatory care unit hidden down a corridor tacked on to the main building, but leading further, past the ACU. Hospitals are often like English buildings with various floors built at different times, different buildings, too, then all stitched together with elevators and hallways.

    I wheeled Kate into Room 9, really a small stall covered with a curtain, where Alice, the nurse, cared for Kate. Alice. Hmm. They hooked Kate up to the hospital oxygen, took her blood pressure, and her O2 saturation. We’d already decided that I would go eat breakfast, so I left for the cafeteria.

    Where there had been a number of tasty options, there were now breakfast burritos wrapped in tinfoil, fruit in cups, some with yogurt, scrambled eggs in small plastic containers. I went with the breakfast burrito and blueberries buried in yogurt.

    Not bad. I stayed in the cafeteria awhile because it was big, airy, very few tables spaced far apart. Not many people. Safer. Weird to think about personal safety in the hospital, but. Covid.

    I find a place in one of those hallways connecting two buildings, no one there, but with a convenient, lonely chair. Kate called after about twenty minutes.

    Come get me. I’m done. Oh. It was before 10:30, the time of her procedure. Huh. I got up and walked down the ACU corridor again, past medical oncology, and cardiac testing reception. Wondered briefly what it was like to spend your working life in such a dismal looking space.

    When I got there, Kate surprised me. The ultrasound tech came and said there is no pleural effusion. What? She had an IV in, four pokes, she has terrible veins, and she looked angry. As well she might. We’d come in Friday evening, about an hour and a half round trip, for a drive up Covid test. Then we’d come Tuesday for the ct scan. Another hour and a half plus the contrast, and a long ride across other corridors and into other buildings to find an available cat scan machine.

    Now we’d come in a third time in six days. Parked. Gotten tested at the lobby with the temperature gun, received green and white pre-screened for Covid wrist bands, checked in, schlepped to the ACU. Kate had been hospital gowned. a sheet gotten for her to cover up, and a nurse had taken four tries with a very sharp needle to insert an IV. Then, nada.

    Alice. Indeed. We’d gone down the hospital looking glass.

    We have an appointment with Taryle for next week. WTF, doc?

    Also, still no wheel chair. We’re renting one. Though. Dez, Lisa Gidday’s nurse, says she’s on it. I believe her.


    Aging Colorado Coronavirus Family Health Jefferson County Mountains Shadow Mountain Third Phase