Monthly Archives: April 2013

Feelings, Friends, Health

In the Company of Old Men

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Spring                                                                            Planting Moon

A full moon tonight.  And good cards.  Fortuna walked with me throughout the evening, giving me winning hands including one lay down.

Ed, a regular, came in tonight and said he’d made driving mistakes twice, once on his way to his house and once on his way back and wasn’t sure he would make it through the evening.  He did, but I thought it was brave of him to acknowledge his anxiety, sharing it rather than fussing about it the whole evening.

Dick’s PSA, after 37 radiation treatments, is 0.0.  A good report at the same time his wife, on a recheck for a nodule on her thyroid, was told it was no longer there.  A good day all round.

(trump in sheepshead)

Bill continues to walk straight in his life after Regina’s death, acknowledging her absence and the profound effect it has had on his life, yet he reports gratitude as his constant companion.  He waits for a clear signal as to what comes next in this changed life situation.  He says, like Ram Dass, Still Here.

Weather +Climate

A Return to Regular Programming

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Spring                                                                           Planting Moon

According to my weather station, we stand at 49 degrees.  And this time there seem to be no winter storms with plowable and shovelable snow wrecking their way through Nebraska on their way here.

Nope.  Now it’s tornadic super-cells, derechos and life altering hail.  Like I always say, I’m glad I don’t live on the coast or near an earthquake fault or volcano.  Those people must be nuts.

Kate’s home, taking a nap.  I took mine in the chair well before lunch.  We will now return to our normal programming.

Aging, Health, Third Phase

Ah. He said.

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Spring                                                                       Planting Moon

I apologize for the long series of posts on my back and my shoulder and my angst.  In part they come because this blog has replaced my long habit of keeping written journals, so you get what happens, if you’re a reader here.

In part they come because they track my progress (regress?  slide?  decline?) into the later years when the body repairs itself less quickly.  In part they come, mostly they come, because they are what is foremost to me at the moment.

Still, I know such posts can turn off readers who also suffer from their aches and pains, their own flurries of difficult to handle matters, their own angst.  All I can say is that this an ancientrail, too, one followed by so many, most, maybe, probably by all.  So it is not about me I write, but us inflected at the moment by an Oklahoma born, Indiana raised, Minnesota preferred man and his 66 year old body.

Though my back feels somewhat better I am now weary, tired from the last week plus, probably allowing myself to be tired because Kate’s on her way home.  Now I will be able to  focus on recovering, not recovering, reinjuring and managing.  Looking forward to it.

Family

Kate

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Spring                                                                       Planting Moon

Got onion sets in the mail yesterday.  Planting will be in order over the next few days, at least the cold weather crops.  Glad Kate will be here to help.  It will go faster.

On missing my partner.  I had one day of sudden in a funk blues shortly after Kate left and one conversation with her turned my spirits around.  Then, until my back began to assert its anger at my abusing it, I got into rhythms with the dogs, my work, some projects around the house.  Even then, I was ok, fine with handling matters as they came up.

After Kona started her downhill slide Sunday morning until yesterday afternoon when I got back from the eye doctor though, I was pressing on, coping.  I missed her then, a lot.  Of course, in general, I miss my life partner and soul mate when she’s gone.  I also enjoy the time alone, to a certain point, but when the pain increased and the amount of things going on also increased and the snow fell.  Well.  I would have been very happy to have her here.

These last matters were unexpected and somewhat over the top, increasing my desire for Kate’s valuable insight into medical phenomena, yes, but also into me.   Could I have handled them on my own?  Yes.  I did.  Did I handle them as well as I could?  Hell, I don’t know.

She chose a long time with the grandkids, whom she loves, which they need and which I totally support.  I’m glad she went, glad she went this time and glad she stayed as long as she did.  I’m also glad she got to see the International Quilters Museum.

I’m also glad she’s turned the corner to the left and got headed in my favorite direction:  north.

 

Aging, Dogs, Health

In Other Medical News

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Spring                                                                                   Planting Moon

Knobby is now knobless.  She ate well last night and this morning. went outside on the leash, front and back, has a spark in her eye.  All good to see, especially the day after a significant procedure.

In other medical news I feel small signs of improvement in the back.  Not enough to hop back on the treadmill, but some.  My in house doc prescribed prednisone for four days, a course I started yesterday.  And, of course, the tincture of time.

I feel less woozy today, less out of it.  That feels really good.  Along with the sun, Kona’s improvement and my back’s, that’s enough to push the needle back into the good headed toward joyful segment of the dial.

A fun trip into the ophthalmologist, then a quiet afternoon and evening.  Sounds perfect to me.

 

Dogs, Family

She’s Homeward Bound

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Spring                                                                          Planting Moon

Kate’s in Lincoln, Nebraska.  She’ll see the international quilt museum tomorrow, then head east into Iowa. That’ll put her home on Thursday.  I’ll be really glad to have her back.

Our plan about vehicles works well.  We have one at home, the Rav4 and when we need a car for a long trip, we rent one.  Usually now from Enterprise.  That way we put the mileage on the rentals and the Rav4 stays home.

Feels like I’ve floated through the last three days, seeing the vet with Kona three different times, John Desteian, picking up and hiving the bees, taking meds that make me feel weird.  I’ve set aside my exercising–too much pain–and my writing and my Latin–too hard to concentrate.

That’s life at times, one foot in front of the other, getting through the day and on to the next one.  I don’t feel bad about it.  At all.  Just what’s required right now.

Tomorrow I see the eye doc.  Get my glaucoma surveilled and check those flashes of light I’ve begun to have in the upper left quadrant of my left eye.

 

 

 

Bees, Dogs, Health

Kona. No longer lopsided.

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Spring                                                                              Planting Moon

The tumor removal went well; it came off easily.  Kona was sitting up after the procedure, probably wondering if she’d have to go back to the vet tomorrow.  In 20 minutes I’ll find out when she can come home.  It will be today.

(Kona, Vega and Gertie wanting to be on the other side of the fence.)

I took a long nap aided by Mr. Tramadol and Ms. Oxycodone.  Though both of them have worn off by now my lower back and right hip feel better, not well, but better, which is a victory.

Enough that I went out and gingerly moved the remaining frames of honey from the hive boxes where I’ll put the package later this afternoon.  Just lifting two hive boxes with four frames of honey each did challenge the back though I tried to make my form a perfect 10.  Finding these ordinary, common chores painful does not make me happy.

Getting the bees hived is important and the weather is nice, sunny and no precip.  Have to wait until later this evening so the temps will be cooler and night will be coming, both induce the bees to remain at home for the first day.

 

Dogs, Health, Weather +Climate

Woozy

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Spring (so they say)                                                      Planting Moon

Kona’s at the vets getting her tumor removed.  Gertie’s down here in the study, lying down close to the desk.  Rigel has begun to worry about her mama, looking through the gate in the morning toward the bedroom.  Where could she be?

Kona will come home today, probably late in the afternoon.  She’s been to the vet three days in a row and is not a particularly happy dog at this time.

The meds I’ve been taking for this damned back make me a bit woozy, between that and the pain, my capacity to get things done has diminished quite a bit.  I’ll be glad when the back decides to calm down and I can resume exercising.  It’s also effecting my sleep.  Considerably off.

We did not get 8 inches of snow here.  More like 2 or 3.  Now the forecast has 76 for Sunday.  76.  Maybe some 80’s next week.  No spring this year.  Winter into summer.

Aging, Dogs, Faith and Spirituality, Great Work, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Third Phase, Weather +Climate

Cancer in the morning, the numinous in the afternoon

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Spring                                                                                 Planting Moon

Got up with the sun this morning, needing to pick up Kona between 7:00 and 7:30 am in Blaine.  Having the sun out and being up early both put my mood into high in spite of the significant cash outlay for Kona’s needed care.

Imagine my surprise when I looked at the weather report.  6-8 inches of new snow.  Tonight!  Then, maybe 70 by the weekend.  OMG!

Had Kona over at the vets by 9:40 am where I got the good news that her heart murmur has disappeared and the bad news that her tumor was cancerous.  Kate was in the room from Denver, Colorado via Verizon wireless and my Droid phone.  We discussed the options with Roger and decided to go ahead, as I wrote below, to have it removed.

Back home.  Nap.  A long nap since my back, unconvinced by the meds and the rests I’d taken, continued to ouch.  A lot.  Couldn’t take the best meds because I had to drive out to Stillwater, then into St. Paul and home after that.

Stillwater was the bee pickup.  My two pound package of Italian hygienics are now buzzing on top of the dryer in the basement.  I sprayed them with sugar water, will do so again before bed, once more in the morning, then again just before I hive them around 6 pm tomorrow.  That way they have full tummies when hived and are less likely to go adventuring. Which would serve no good purpose right now anyhow.  I had planned to hive them tonight, but the snow.  Comes down hard and wet right now.

St. Paul was to see John Desteian, my longtime Jungian analyst, I started to see him in 1986 or ’87 and saw him for a long time after my divorce from Raeone.  I’ve seen him off and on over the years, last in 2006.

I want to see what I’m trying to tell myself through my dreams of loss and being lost.  As I imagined, we headed in the general direction of faith, though not retrieving a lost faith so much as redefining faith, Reimagining Faith, in light of the pagan, existentialist, flat-earth metaphysics of my current world view.

As always, John asked the good questions.  Pointed me, this time, toward an essay by Heidegger called “The Last God” and understanding the essence of the numinous.  I’ll have a month to ponder that since my next appointment is on May 23rd.  He’s been a useful, valued guide and Jung my chief spiritual adviser.  Sounds like that run will continue.

Back home to an oxycodone, spraying the bees with the sugar water, crating the dogs and relaxing.  Quite the day.  Cancer in the morning, the numinous in the afternoon.  A lesson there.

Oh.  Had a vicarious feeling of pride when I learned John now runs an international training institute for Jungian analysts based in Zurich, the Mecca and Jerusalem of Jungian thought.  Here’s the link.