Imbolc Valentine Moon
Oh, my. Physical yesterday and a visit for Kate to see Lisa, too. We often go for each others appointments, especially with Lisa, our internist. I got a clean bill of health though I have to have labs drawn today. My follow-up chest x-ray was clear. Clear. No pneumonia, no disease process. Just clear. Wasn’t expecting that after the first one, but hey…
Kate’s situation continues to be problematic. From her most recent hospital visit Kate got a referral to a pulmonologist. While treating her for the pneumothorax, collapsed lung, the pulmonologist at Swedish saw signs of what might be interstitial lung disease. Could be another complication of Sjogren’s.
When Desiree wheeled the ekg machine out of the room, my heart’s fine, too, Lisa turned to us. “You’ve got to think about moving.” Oh. My. “I don’t want to. I like where we are. And the last move was awful.” “Health is number one, right?” Right.
As I wrote a few posts back, the thought has occurred to both of us. Kate’s suffering more from the altitude than I am. However. My O2 saturation hovers around 90 here, just barely enough to consider healthy. There’s a case to be made for my being helped by a move to lower ground, too.
Move. The word makes me clench. Spent a lot of last night in bed trying to figure out how to cope with this. Severe cognitive dissonance between my love for our home, for Shadow Mountain, for the Rockies, and my love for Kate and for my own health. In the end, no contest. We gotta move. Hate to say it. Feels like a failure of sorts, though I don’t know why.
Just how low do we need to go? Don’t know. That will be important. Several factors will converge to create a sweet spot for a new place: altitude (low enough for easier breathing for both of us), enough room for the dogs, quiet, and no more than approximately 30 minutes from Evergreen. I’d also like to see a single level and forced air heat. Not to mention that a new place has to fit our budget. Oh, joy, another mortgage process.
When? Not sure. Maybe in the next three months.
I will not pack anything this time around. I’m packed out from the last move. I’ll have to dramatically reduce my library, I’m sure. Maybe it’s time. A lot to consider, a lot to do. Just when we’re both at our tip top physical best, too. But Lisa’s right. Health is number one.
The woes of the body, our lamentations here on Shadow Mountain, are of the tactile world, the one bound up in life and death; but, they are not of the soul, the spirit, the ohr, the imago dei. No. In my soul (a word I’ve come to use more freely of late, meaning that part of me that bows to the god in you, namaste.) I can hear the sweet, though often very far-off hymn. It hails a new creation coming into existence even now, one shaped by the lamentations, but not determined by them.
Two saline flushes, then the heparin lock. Clamp the picc line. Half of the thiamine bottle, one each of the white cap and blue cap bottles, all injected into the tpn bag of milky, 950 calorie nutrition. The thiamine is yellow and floods into the bag creating a branched, river like stream. Shake the bag so that the vitamins and other additives mix up. Spike the bag with the plastic spike that connects to the tubing. Clamp the tubing. Connect the cassette that holds the tubing to the pump. It slides in and locks. New battery for the pump. Turn pump on. Wait, go through the pump’s programming. Unclamp the tubing. (lots of alcohol wipes in here. sterile technique required since the picc line ends just above the heart.) The tpn nutrients gradually, a milliliter at a time, snake up to the connector. Saline flush. Wipe. Connect tubing to picc lock. And, voila, breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Three weeks ago I drove through Denver around 8 pm exhausted and wondering why I was so damned tired. Getting home was hell. Today, thankfully, I’m able to be up and get things done. Still operating at about half to three-quarters power, stamina not great, but improving. Stronger today is my day phrase.
I’ve known for years that something like this could come up. If I could go back and change the choices I made while my chooser was broken (grief, alcoholism, lack of wisdom, plus general youthful stupidity), I would. But, I can’t. In my own vernacular, those problems are bought and paid for. That is, I did things that may cause serious problems for me physically, now, later in life. Can’t deny it, ignore it, or wish it away. It’s not clear right now of course whether this will be a serious issue or not, may not be clear for some time, though I imagine there will be a follow-up CT to more closely i.d. the causes of the atelectasis.