Spring Recovery Moon
A visit to the pulmonologist. Dr. Gupta, looked very medical in blue scrubs, said Kate’s pulmonary function test wasn’t helpful. He didn’t say why, “Looks like a bad test.” He postponed the j-tube surgery yet again, instead ordering a hi-resolution ct scan. This will look for evidence of interstitial lung disease, in particular inflammation or scarring. It will also help them identify the cause of any lung disease, which, in the case of interstitial lung disease, is critical to its treatment though I don’t recall why. Short version. Another week before we know anything definite. Kate says she feels suspended.
On the way home we drove further west to a suburban outpost of Maria’s Empanadas and picked up a dozen, 6 mushroom and cheese, six Argentinas (meat). When we get them home, I put them in individual sandwich bags and Kate uses them as instant meals. I picked up a Larkburger.
Having my own issues with o2 stats. I imagine it’s largely sequelae to the flu/pneumonia/cold/sinus infection couple of months that I’ve had, but we’ll have to see. Ever since we moved here my o2 stats have been just in the normal range up here, pretty good down at the drs. office. They’ve moved a bit lower, which puts them in a range that can cause problems like light-headedness, shortness of breath, hypoxia, in other words. I might need to go see Dr. Gupta, too, at some point. Oh, joy.
We have three days now of no doctor appointments, no pt/ot visits, no nurse visits, nothing on the calendar. Feels like bliss. I plan to rest. Again, still. I’m mostly over the last few weeks of sampling various respiratory illnesses. Head feels almost clear. Lungs still produce the occasional cough. Stamina improving, but not back to 100% yet.
This steady beat of health news is, I know, tedious. Yet, it is our reality now and has been for quite some time. It is an ancientrail, perhaps one of the most ancient. Life is oddly unremarkable from a health perspective until it’s not. Then, life revolves around returning to the unremarkable state. In the third phase, however, we are aware that returning to the unremarkable state may not be available to us.
I’ve mentioned what I call mortality signals before, those moments when you become aware your body will not always function normally, a signal that eventually it will cease to function altogether. Those are mostly second phase. Though they still occur in the third phase, by this time the lesson has been repeated many times and you’ve heard it and accepted it or in solid denial.
This realization that the body may not return to the unremarkable state we enjoyed in our adulthood can be an existential crisis depending on the severity of the deviation. This is why folks so often say getting old is not for the weak-hearted. Kate has been deep in this crisis for a long time now, coping with it in a mostly positive way. I’m in some level of denial since I keep believing that exercise, good diet, and now deep-breathing will fix me. At some point it won’t.
More on this when it occurs to me.
A full recovery moon on the spring equinox. Lot of powerful juju in the air. The season that announces the return of life (except in Nebraska) begins as the moon swells into its most potent form. Of course, this is only meteorological spring, the date we agree on to name the season’s start, so you have to check local listings for time and channel. Here in the mountains spring’s another month away at least. Probably more like six weeks.
Alan Watts has a book I like a lot called The Water Course Way. It describes the tao as like water, going around obstacles, over obstacles, not stopping, going on its way regardless of what’s in its path, not troubling itself over temporary stoppages, boulders, canyons, even lakes. Soft wins over hard. The soft water slowly picks away at mountains of granite, basalt, gneiss and takes them a grain at a time, over centuries, millennia, eons back to the oceans.
Kate’s tpn feedings have given her energy. She’s finishing our taxes, for some reason she likes to do them, and in doing so has walked up and down the stairs to our third level twice. She hasn’t done that in months. When I compare where she is now with the dark days just after the bleed in September and the hemicolectomy, she’s a new woman. Is there a distance still to go? Yes. And a significant distance, too, but that doesn’t diminish the gains she’s made. Go, Kate.
Happy Pi day! I know it’s irrational, but pi’s got that kind of attitude. Will you be going to a recitation of pi? Some people will. Yes, that’s a thing. I like this day devoted to a mathematical phenom. I mean, who hasn’t heard of pi? And, it’s another holiday.
I suppose it was growing up in Indiana. We supplied many things to Detroit, lights, batteries, and alternators in the instance of Guide Lamp and Delco near Alexandria. These two factories alone employed 25,000 when I was growing up and most of my friend’s fathers worked at one or the other. Then every May, the greatest spectacle in racing: The Indianapolis 500. Cars and racing were prominent.
Today is chicken soup day. I have a simple truth organic chicken thawed in the refrigerator. It comes out to warm up to room temp. All the ingredients are here. I had to go buy some peas yesterday since I used the original pack in the fried rice I made. Friend Bill Schmidt looked up the Gold’n Plump Chicken 
Mary, she persevered. Sister Mary. When my father died, she insisted that he had a portion of an oil well that should come down to herself, Mark, and me. It took her some time and some legal work, but I got in the mail this week three letters from Roan Resources detailing how we make our claim legitimate.