Beltane and the 1% crescent Shadow Mountain Moon
Wednesday gratefuls: IV’ed. Radioactivated. Scanned. Freddie’s. Being kind to myself. Wild Trees. Coastal Redwoods. The tallest Trees on Earth. Steve Sillet and Michael Taylor. Timber cruisers for the Trees. Marie Antoine. Climbing Trees like an arborist. Treeboats. Forest-Canopy science. Redwood Crowns. Whole Biomes. My Lodgepole Companion. Pinus contarta latifolia.
Sparks of Joy and Awe: Shekinah
One brief shining: A butterfly I.V. attached to a vein in my forearm, saline introduced, then a closed lead canister opened, and a syringe pulled out with 5 milliliters of liquid radioactive agent in its barrel, connected to the IV, a push, and $13,000 worth of a cancer discovery tool went into my bloodstream, after that I sat back and read Wild Trees while it distributed throughout my body.
See my tilt? Spinal stenosis. My t-shirt got a laugh from the P.E.T. scan nurse and tech. I told the tech doom and gloom would not get me through all this. But humor sure helps.
Proud of myself. I fought the phobia and the phobia didn’t win. This machine is optimal for me in that its doughnut hole is relatively short in length and the top of the hole leaves room above my head. Most important for me: I could see out the whole time. (ha) I ran through several iterations of inner dialogue about fear. The only thing you have to fear… Thanks for that, Winston. Face your fear. I am. I didn’t take drugs. Yeah? Then open your eyes. I did. The doughnut hole was above me, but I could see the room beyond. And I felt calm. A major advance for me.
Still couldn’t do a bone scan without drugs. The distance between face and machine is much narrower and the slot for the body is much longer. And the procedure is very slow. Hopefully no more bone scans.
I don’t like to do drugs because they require that I have a driver. It’s a long time for a friend to wait and someone has to clear their schedule. Though. Alan did say I was very amusing after my first P.E.T. scan. Valium, if I recall correctly.
Results in two or three days. Have to get signed up for Rocky Mountain Cancer Care’s online patient portal. Then I can see the radiologists report for myself. Don’t talk to Kristie until next week.
Oh, the places I’ve been.
Just a moment: Been reading Wild Trees. A wild Tree is, in the slang of arborists and tall-Tree climbers, a tree that has not been climbed. Up until the 1990’s that included all the Coastal Redwoods. Climbing these tall Trees requires a high degree of technical climbing knowledge plus athletic climbers. Until Steven Sillet climbed Nameless, no one had ever been in the Redwood Canopy. His rash and dangerous efforts not only made him the first, but started him on a career as a Forest-Canopy Botanist. He and his wife Marie Antoine, also a climber, teach at Humboldt College in Arcata, California to this day.
