Category Archives: Family

Family, Health, Mountains, Shadow Mountain

Still ongoing

October 4, 2018 Charles 1 Comment

Fall Harvest Moon

Clouds have begun to creep down Black Mountain while sunlight bathes its slopes facing us, lighting up the golden patches of aspen. Another of Black Mountain’s infinite looks. She’s a lady who dresses for the season and often appears mysterious, as she does right now.

Kate had an abdominal x-ray, an ultrasound of her arm, and began to receive nutrition through a mid-line. I’m glad because she’s had no food, except one clear liquid meal, since last Thursday. Her hemoglobin was up yesterday though some bleeding was ongoing. Contradictory (at least to me), so not sure what to make of it.

Learned yesterday that she’ll not be coming straight home from the hospital but will go to a subacute (whatever that means) rehab center, probably one in Littleton. Again, not sure why, though I imagine it’s because she’s been in bed so long and will need some physical therapy.

I’m cautiously optimistic though so far it seems to be forward and backward with her. We’re still not sure why she bled or from where. The nausea, which has been a cruel insult given her past six months or so, seems to be from her bowels not functioning.

The surgeon ordered a sort of lidocaine bath for the surgery site, surrounding the bowels in this non-opiod pain reliever. She’d been getting dilaudid, but any opium derived pain reliever tends to impede bowel function. Complicated and tricky caring for her.

And, yes, I’m pretty weary. Annie, sister-in-law, will be here tomorrow. She will be able to manage the dogs so I’m not feeling I should be home when I’m at the hospital and at the hospital when I’m home. I have been eating well, sleeping as much as I can, trying to create a regular routine so the dogs have a semblance of normal. But, that’s all I’ve been doing. At some point I have to pay bills, exercise, do grocery shopping. I have done some laundry.

One really big plus this time around is that we have a functioning dishwasher. When Kate went in for shoulder surgery in April, our dishwasher had just died and it took almost her entire recovery period to replace it. Having dirty dishes in the sink was a drag on the heart.

That’s the Shadow Mountain report for yesterday, October 3rd.

Aging, Family, GeekWorld, Health, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase

Still ongoing

October 3, 2018 Charles Leave a comment

Fall Harvest Moon

Not sure what’s happening to Kate post-op. Her hemoglobin has dropped some. She may have bled a bit, though whether the bleeding represents old blood or new seems in question. An important distinction.

She’s down. Makes sense. Since Friday morning she’s had 8 units of blood, had her miserable veins explored too often by needles and IV’s and now a mid-line, a CT, a colonoscopy, a nuclear imaging test for bleeding in the her bowels, an attempted embolization of the bleeding site which failed, then on Sunday, the bowel resection. Too much for anyone. Except to keep them alive. Which is, unfortunately, the situation for her.

I created a caringbridge website for her if you want more updates.

I got my first normal night’s sleep since last Wednesday. That feels good.

Jon’s car blew an engine and he’s having a rebuilt one installed. Means he has no vehicle right now, riding his bike to work. I picked him up yesterday and we went over to the hospital to see Kate. He’s worried about her. In order to get home in time for a good night’s sleep (achieved) I bought us take out at Katsu Ramen, then took him over to his house on Florence in Aurora.

20181002_110908 Had an experience yesterday that opened my eyes a bit to the world of micro-aggressions. Due to all the driving in and out I ate up the miles to my next oil change, but couldn’t get an appointment at Stevinson Toyota, so I went to a Mobile Express here in Conifer. It’s run by a former Jefferson County Sheriff’s captain. I ponied up keys, said no to synthetic oil, and went over to the chairs along the wall.

The Captain said to a customer who asked how long he’d have to wait, “Sorry. The geriatric crowd is working today. Everybody’s over 50.” Folks laughed. He continued to make slighting comments about his own employees, all in this ageist vein. I wanted to speak up, point out that I was right there, being 71, but exhaustion and a desire not to be seen as a complainer kept my mouth shut. Those of you who know me well know I’m not one to be silenced, yet here I sat, embarrassed by my age, embarrassed that others saw me (us, really) this way. And I stayed quiet.

Family, Health

Surgery

October 1, 2018 Charles Leave a comment

Fall Harvest Moon

Geez. Since Thursday evening when Kate started bleeding until now, she’s had only one tray of a clear liquid diet. Some sorbet, chicken broth, decaf coffee. It’s now Monday.

Yesterday was another tough day. She called me at 6 am saying she was being prepped for surgery. I fed and positioned the dogs, Gertie in the loft with Rigel and Kep outside, then drove in. She’d misread the situation. I stayed with her until noon or so, during which time she received her 8th unit of blood. And continued to bleed.

The waiting was to see if they could preserve the section of her colon with the bleeds. Though the embolization failed Saturday night, these bleeds do apparently stop on their own, sometimes never to restart. Hers didn’t.

Just as I walked out of her room, Kathy, her nurse, waved me back in, phone to her ear. The surgeons and the New West Physicians’ hospitalist had made a decision. A bowel resection. (From the Latin resectus, from resecare, meaning to trim, prune, cut back.) Dr. Streeter told me the surgery would start at 3:00 pm and last at least an hour and a half.

I had to get home to feed the dogs, let them all outside, lie down a bit. Did that. Back in. Up the third floor and the surgical waiting room where I’ve spent several hours over the past three days. The surgeon came out and explained to me that they had removed a section of her right colon and reattached the two ends. This is big because it means no colostomy.

However. He said, “When we do surgery on the bowel, we see it only from the outside. I don’t know if we got all the diverticuli.” WTF? Medicine is much more imprecise than we’d like to think. The nuclear imaging she had on Saturday found the bleeds in the right segment of colon, but it’s very general. That’s why, when the surgeon went in though a groin artery to emoblize the bleeding sites, he was able to find the right colon easily, but could see no bleeds. They had either stopped or they weren’t in the right place.

It’s possible, then, that the surgery didn’t cut out all the bleeding sites. Only time and Kate’s recovery will let us know. Not what I wanted to here.

BJ, Kate’s sister with the house in Idaho where we saw the eclipse last August, and her s.o., Shecky, flew in on Saturday for a long planned visit to see our house, see Kate and me. Instead they saw Kate in the hospital and took me out for sushi while Kate was in recovery after her surgery. It was really good to see them again and to have some family present.

The surgeon said Kate could be in the hospital another three to fourteen days. The bowel has to restart and her hemoglobin has to stabilize. After that, six weeks or so of recovery at home.

Three difficult, very difficult, days and more to come. I’m a little fried right now, but the CBE folks will help in any way they can. I’m not used to organizing folks to help with domestic life, something I’m going to have to figure out. Though. Since Kate’s shoulder surgery, I have picked up more and more of the household work and have routines that should make this transition less of a jolt.

Family, Health, Weather +Climate

Progress!

September 29, 2018 Charles Leave a comment

Fall Harvest Moon

So. A source of the bleed, diverticulitis. Probably multiple episodes over the years. Good news.

To come home she still has to get her hemoglobin up and may have a surgical procedure related to the diverticuli and maybe the gall bladder. Not home tonight or tomorrow night, if surgery, then longer yet. We both feel cautiously optimistic about resolving the nausea and very happy about locating the source of the bleed. We also know, thanks to the multiple scopings of her GI tract, that she has no cancer anywhere from mouth to, well, the other end.

I’m home, taking care of the dogs now. Unless she calls, I’ll go back in tomorrow. She’ll see the GI doc that did the colonoscopy and a GI surgeon. Finally, a bit of progress.

A beautiful, red flag day in the neighborhood. High temps, wind and low humidity. A perfect combination if you’re a forest fire.

Aging, Family, Health

Kate News

September 29, 2018 Charles Leave a comment

Fall Harvest Moon

1000Kate and Charlie in Eden Yesterday was tough. Kate’s still losing blood. She spent most of the day yesterday, from about 6:30 am to 2:30, in the E.R. They’re short of beds and wanted to see which department was the best for her. No word yet on the cause of the bleeding. G.I. doc ordered a colonoscopy for this morning at 10 am. She’s not able to eat though she did have a clear liquid meal while I was there in the afternoon. Delicious, she said. And, apparently meant it.

She’s remained in reasonably good spirits since she’s in an environment that she understands with people and procedures she also understands. That relieves a lot of hospitalization’s stress. Which is not to say that she’s happy or comfortable. She’s not. She’s been in and out of procedures for the last six months, the most recent one only this last Monday. No results from it yet. Too much poking, scoping. Except. No definitive explanation for her weight loss, nausea, and now the blood loss.

We both hope that this hospitalization will put enough focus on her to finally discover what’s been making her life miserable.

Her sister B.J. and her significant other Shecky are, by happenstance, coming into town today. Schecky has family in Aurora. B.J. will probably come to the hospital today.

Since I woke up at 3 am yesterday worried about Kate, then took her into the e.r. at 6, drove home, took care of the dogs, rested but didn’t sleep, and went back in at 2:30, returning here around 7 pm, I’m exhausted. Did get a very good 9 hours of sleep last night.

This is a marathon and requires pacing and attention to self care. I’m following, for now, the internal policy of not worrying about what I can’t control and about things I don’t know. So far that’s working well. I’m able to stay focused on what needs to happen. May that continue.

Fall seems to have settled in, at least for the moment, but we’re still without precipitation. The fire danger remains high to very high. Stage 1 fire ban went back into effect yesterday.

Family, Health, Mussar

E.R.

September 28, 2018 Charles Leave a comment

Fall Harvest Moon

Took Kate into the E.R. this morning. Unexplained blood loss, enough to make her woozy. May have exceeded the speed limit occasionally. When she got there, a good team took care of her and her color brightened. Nobody seems especially worried. Something to deal with. She’ll be in the hospital at least one night. Getting a blood transfusion right now.

This is getting old, she said. Yeah. More than that even. My hope is that this will result in enough investigation to finally nail down what’s been causing her nausea. She’s very thin and has little stamina.

On the upside we did our mussar session on rachamim. It was a glorious blue Colorado day so we were in the sukkah. Lots of examples of compassion, a lot of tears. It was a heartfelt time together. Some us really needed it.

Kate and I had our usual Vienna beef sandwiches from the Chicago joint in downtown Evergreen. This is a Thursday after mussar dinner for us. Something she can eat; something I really like.

Back home now. Fed the dogs, will wait until I get word from Kate as to where she’ll be. When I find out more, I’ll post it here. Right now, we know very little.

Art and Culture, Cinema and Television, Commentary on Religion, Cooking, Family, Friends, Humanities, Humor, Jefferson County, Judaism, Music, Third Phase

Mostly Musical

September 24, 2018 Charles Leave a comment

Fall Harvest Moon

Wow. Had a lot on my mind yesterday. Sorry about the length. More yet, too.

Anyhow. Met with Tara yesterday. Director of Education at Beth Evergreen. I said, Help. She gave me lots of ideas on classroom management, help. She’s delightful. Bright. Straightforward. Open. An example. How you arrange the classroom is very important. Oh yeah? Where the kids sit, what’s on the table when they come in. Having a separate table for attendance. A close by table for snacks. OK. Would never have occurred to me.

Later in the day Kate and I went to see Funny Girl. It was interesting, very, comparing the tech rehearsal we saw a week ago Wednesday with the full production. The show yesterday had none of the rough edges we saw then. Props ended up in their places. And there were a lot of prop changes. Lines were crisp and the dancing, singing were good, too. It went on about an hour too long for me, but I’m not a fan of musicals. The first act had energy, pop. The second act had some, but to my tired butt, not as much.

Musicals are the cotton candy of the theater world, at least most of them. Lots of sugar, easy to consume, then all that’s left is sticky fingers. I came out humming People Who Need People, so there’s that. I guess I’m more of a drama guy. Beckett. Friel. O’Neill. Wilson. Kushner. Still, it was a nice change up.

Also, it was community theater. Not the high production values of the Guthrie, for example, but pretty good. And the casting depends on a limited pool of volunteers though in spite of that the voices and acting abilities were even better than pretty good.

The director had some great ideas about staging, including opening and closing scenes that showed the cast playing to backstage on which was painted a theater. We were back stage ourselves, watching them perform. That meant the entire story took place between opening and closing of one of Fanny’s shows. A show between shows about show business. A bit of a fun house mirror effect.

One especially nice piece of staging was a solo by Fanny, leaning on the piano. Behind Fanny and the piano, in half light, a couple danced. It was a view (at least I saw it this way.) inside her mind as she sang. The effect was wonderful.

We knew people in the cast, saw folks we knew in the lobby, and were greeted by the costumer as we left. He remembered us from our visit to the tech rehearsal. In other words this was also a moment of immersion in community, our community. That’s not the same as a visit to the Guthrie or to Broadway, but has lots of other, ancillary benefits.

Back home at 6:30 (it started at 3:00!) I made Kate a fatty meal for her gall bladder ultrasound today. Oh, boy, another procedure.

Finished the Netflix limited series Maniac last night. You have to have a quirky aesthetic to like it, but I did. It may bear watching a second time. Lots in it and a great cast: Jonah Hill, Emma Stone, Gabriel Byrne, Sally Field, for example.

Family, Travel

Expats

September 20, 2018 Charles Leave a comment

Lughnasa Harvest Moon

Being an expatriate is unfamiliar territory to most citizens of all nations on earth. Though we were a nomadic species in our early development, political changes have tended to wed people to a place and its boundaries. Globally. Even here in the often depicted as unusually mobile U.S. it turns out folks don’t leave home all that much*. [The big exception here, of course, being forced migration whether for economic or security reasons.]

Yet, some do. Both my brother Mark and my sister Mary have lived the bulk of their adult lives abroad. Mary lived in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia for several years, then moved a good while back to Singapore, where she has remained. Mark lived a long time in Bangkok, spent time in Phnom Penh, and several years, including this upcoming one, in Saudi Arabia. He has circled the globe many times, as has Mary. Both have traveled extensively from their homes abroad. Mark once took the Trans-Siberian Railway from Vladivostok to Moscow.

452158 While Mark’s visa application (always a hitch in the get along) for his upcoming work in Saudi Arabia undergoes review by the Saudi embassy, he and I communicate by e-mail. He’s currently living in Amarillo, Texas. I sent him a note that said the expat life has many oddities. He replied with the below which I found fascinating:

“Indeed, it does. I find it rather well exemplified in Martin Sheen’s opening performance in “Apocalypse Now.” He is rather drunk, in then Saigon. He starts thinking of his ex-wife. He gets really wired, and starts smashing the mirror in the hotel. Martin, “When I was there, I wanted to be here. When I was here, I wanted to be there.” He then really smashes the mirror, and passes out. All the time, a fan is whirling above him. Coppola captured, I feel, the expat dilemma superbly.”

*”Internal migration has fallen noticeably since the 1980s, reversing increases from earlier in the century. The decline in migration has been widespread across demographic and socioeconomic groups, as well as for moves of all distances…Despite its downward trend, migration within the US remains higher than that within most other developed countries.” NBER

Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Family, Holidays, Jefferson County, Judaism, Myth and Story, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Third Phase

Deep in the soul

September 19, 2018 Charles Leave a comment

Lughnasa Harvest Moon

yomkippur Today is Yom Kippur, the day of atonement, the day when God seals the book of life for another year. May you be inscribed in the book of life (for the coming year) is a greeting we will hear today. It completes the ten days of awe that began back on September 9th, Rosh Hashanah, New Year’s day and by rabbinic logic the 6th day of creation, the New Year for humans.

The whole sweep of the days of awe reach deep into the soul; the month of Elul prepared us for the chesbon ha-nefesh, accounting of the soul, that culminates today on the metaphorical turning of a page in the book of our life, closing off the last year and opening a blank one, ready for a renewed person, returned (teshuvah) to the original, unique, best we are.

Of course there is no need for the ten days of awe to do what the Jesuits would call examen and I’m sure there is no book on a divine table that determines whether I will live or die in the upcoming year. I am equally sure that schmuz gathers on the soul like creosote gathers on a fireplace chimney or plaque in an artery. From long life experience I know there is no holy chimney sweep I can hire to clean me out, no heart bypass operation for the soul. The examined life requires an inner examiner. The high holidays are a communal reminder to do serious inner work and to give that work outer expression through worship and apology. I’m grateful for the prompt, aware of its necessity not because I believe I’m a deeply damaged person in need of unconditional forgiveness, but because I know I’m an ordinary human with the tendency to shift away from my best person.

1000Kate and Charlie in Eden Kate and I had a sweet moment, a grace filled moment, when I sat down with her and asked her forgiveness for the times I’ve wounded her in the last year, for the times I’d been short, thoughtless. Sure, we could do this at any time, but these holidays encourage it. We rested our heads together, aware of the reality that we’re just two folks traveling our journey, doing the best we can. “I’ve not always been at my best.” “Neither have I.”

Aging, Art and Culture, Asia, Commentary on Religion, Dreams, Faith and Spirituality, Family, Feelings, Friends, Myth and Story, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Third Phase

I have been myself

September 16, 2018 Charles Leave a comment

Lughnasa Harvest Moon

Friday was a domestic day with laundry and groceries, a workout. Saturday was one of those days when I couldn’t get traction, took two naps, felt tired all day. In the afternoon, after an email from friend Mark Odegard featuring a sumi-e youtube video, a friend of his showcasing some of his work, I told Mark I was going upstairs and pick up my favorite large brush. I did.

Somehow draining my self of current concerns, holding the brush, and then in one stroke laying ink down on paper helped me, gave me the sense that the day was no longer chaotic.

A familiar fall feeling had begun to make to itself known. Melancholy. Sleep had not been good for a couple of nights. We’d had a busy week, tiring. The religious school class was emotionally draining. And, we’re heading into the time period, now 54 years ago, when my mom had her stroke and died. I was also feeling my side of Kate’s predicament, the uncertainty, the frustration.

But. Gone after my session with the sumi-e. Art therapy?

Individuation Got that old debil feeling in this mix. You know. What I have done with my life? Here I am 71 years old, with much less time. Much less time to do whatever it is that floats like a dark cloud out of reach. Too little discipline. Too much fear. Too little desire. Too much distraction. Oh, look, a new book! A movie. TV. Yet this has been my life. Always. Work hard, rest, work hard again, rest.

Things have happened in my life. Housing has gotten built. Greedy corporations turned back. New businesses started. Unemployed folks got jobs and paychecks. Immigrants got enough cash for a green card application. Books have gotten written, stories, too. Gardens have flourished, bees kept, an orchard maintained. Two boys raised into men. A steady, soul supporting love. Friends for life made and retained. New friends made, too. Religion has passed through me like a fire, burning down old values, letting me peek into the world beyond, challenging my ethics and pushing me to be better. Perhaps, no, not perhaps, certainly, this is enough for one life.

So why does what have I done with my life arise then? It’s not fear of death. Yamantaka and I resolved this. It seems to emerge when other matters press too hard against my soul, deform it. Then, I’ll look at someone else, like DaVinci or Richard Love or Herman Hesse or Rilke. Look at what they did. Look at what I’ve done. Oh.

Might keep Rabbi Zusya on my computer for a while, just to remember. Rabbi Zusya, when he was an old man, said, “In the coming world, they will not ask me: ‘Why were you not Moses?’ They will ask me: ‘Why were you not Zusya?’

I have been and am being Charlie.