• Tag Archives back surgery

  • Eternal Tru Luv

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Lughnasa                               Waning Artemis Moon

    Kate’s at work.  Two months almost to the day after her hip surgery she has returned to the Allina Clinic in Coon Rapids for her last four months of full time practice.  I anticipate a successful evening and final four months for her, having seen a remarkable recovery in terms of her day-to-day pain.  The hip is wonderful, the back’s pretty good, the only clinker right now is her bursitis on her left hip.  Still, compared to the awful weeks just prior to her surgery, she’s a different woman and it’s great to see.

    Having her home full time, practice retirement, helped us see the possibilities in the next phase of our life together.  We’ll manage our gardens and our orchard and our bees with greater ease, two persons engaged from the start of the growing season.  We’ll have time to go into art galleries, out to lunch, just wander around more.

    Other people must find the one who gets them, around whom they can be their authentic selves, I’m glad to say I’m among them.  And that the experience is reciprocal.

    Eternal tru luv, as we used to say.


    📂This entry was posted in Aging Family Retirement 📎and tagged

  • Aspects of Our Lives

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Samhain                           New (Wolf) Moon

    Kate and I had our business meeting.  It involved the always fun annual chore of signing up for benefits with Allina.  This is probably the last time we’ll need to do it.  Even though it’s an overly complex task, it does have significant repercussions throughout the year, so it pays to do it thoughtfully.

    After the meeting we began our first (of what we intend to be continuing) weekly menu planning.  This week I chose a red beet soup and a white bean and winter squash soup.  Kate picked a vegetarian slow cooker recipe and the brisket.  Tomorrow we’ll make a grocery list and I’ll go buy the ingredients, then we’ll cook together for a day or half a day.  The grocery list will include fruits, one serving a meal, and ingredients for tabouli, which we both enjoy.  I’ll make the soups and Kate will cook the meat and slow cooker meals.  We’ll add in salad and fruit along the way.

    Kate’s recovery seems to have stalled and I don’t know what to make of it.  I’m glad we have an appointment with Dr. Schwender on Thursday morning.  I’m feeling a need–and so is she–for some reassurance about the healing process and the eventual outcome.

    Now, I have to make up for the lost hour of sleep last night while I completed my trip through hell.


    📂This entry was posted in Aging Cooking Health 📎and tagged

  • Garden Crusader

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Samhain                               Waning Dark Moon

    Welcome to another sunny, warm November day.  These are days I’ve come to expect from October, but, as Paul Douglas often says, nature tries to balance, so here we are close to Armistice Day with a 60 degree and bright day about to unfold.  That means time to finish what I hope will be the last Rigel barrier of the season, extending a wire across the top of our wooden orchard fencing to make it really, really hard for her to get a purchase.

    Kate’s lying low for the next few days, taking care of that not yet healed back.  A wise decision on her part.  She’s most at risk just as she begins to feel better, chasing down dogs, picking up the mail down our sloped driveway, loading and unloading the dishwasher, making Danish pancakes.  These are all part of the routine of a normal  life, not important, perhaps even a bit annoying on a daily basis, until you cannot do them at all, then they loom large as important, even critical parts of identity.

    A shout out here to Vicki Nowicki.  I met Vicki at the annual Seed Saver’s Exchange conference in July.  I ate dinner with Vicki and her husband.  We talked about permaculture, Celtic holidays, the odditys of American landscape preferences and the importance of becoming native to a place.   Vicki told me she’d won a Garden Crusader award from Gardener’s Supply Company.  The notice came today in a e-mail from them.  I’ve excerpted a bit from the interview with her.

    When we spoke, and as I read this, I found myself speaking when she talked.  We were in synch.  She also has a Liberty Garden project that I admire.

    2009 Garden Crusader Vicki Nowicki

    Vicki’s life work has been to help people slow down, learn about the land they live on and take better care of it. “What I’ve been trying to do for 30 years is to glorify the place where you live,” she said. “I want to use food gardens to nail people down to their place. A garden helps to reveal the nature of your site and bonds you to the land,” she said. “When you have a garden instead of a lawn, you are now producing something, not just consuming at the maw.”7150-nowicki-bench

    Liberty Gardens

    Her newest project pulls together everything she knows and believes about gardening. It is a website called libertygardens.com. The site will include tutorials and garden journals and will be a resource for anyone interested in gardening.

    Here is how she describes it:

    “It’s for the 21st century and it’s about growing food at home in order to make it a home. Our lives will change and our world will change when we start to plant food gardens at home. It’s a simple act that each person can choose to do at any time without a new law being passed, or a feasibility study being run or a stimulus package being doled out. But talk about a shovel-ready project! If our land is worth caring about and if our families are worth caring about, we can each choose to create the food supply that we have been asking for. We have the liberty to choose what to grow and how to grow it. People have always done it.”

    And with Vicki Nowicki’s help, more and more people will be joining in, and doing it too.


    📂This entry was posted in Aging Dogs Family Friends Garden Great Work Health 📎and tagged

  • Kate

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Samhain                                         Full Dark Moon

    Kate’s recovery has, as she expected, plateaued.  That means she’ll have time without the rapid gains she made over the last two weeks.  According to her, the physical gains will not be lost, but the hope engendered in the immediate post-op will erode, since the body does not, at least for awhile, continue to send positive signs.  Psychologically the matter may be more problematic.  Without care the slowed or even apparently stopped healing can make the long time since getting ready for the procedure, the blur of the first couple of days on the morphine drip and the joy of increased mobility afterward add up to disappointment, fear of a failed outcome, or a weariness with the whole no longer countered by good signs.

    Out for errands.


    📂This entry was posted in Aging Family Health 📎and tagged

  • A Good Day

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Samhain                                     Full Dark Moon

    Rigel and Vega spent much of the day defending us from visiting neighborhood dogs.  Of course, thanks to our record setting fence-lines no battle could be joined, but jaw-boning was much in evidence.  This evening they came in, flopped down on the couch and went to sleep.  That is except for the show on birth and babies in the animal kingdom.  Rigel turned her head toward the TV and watched a mule-deer born, penguins enfolding their single chicks and musk-ox turn to face down the white wolves of the Arctic.  Would loved to have been inside her head.

    Kate worked outside today, weeding the blue-berry patches and other parts of the orchard.  The good news is the clover has become established and has choked out the weeds.  The bad news is that the clover threatens to choke out the blue-berries.  Sigh.  She is only two weeks out from her procedure tomorrow.  Amazing.

    Our defended (defenced?) vegetable garden can now be worked without fear that a Rigel or a Vega will come along later and try to emulate any digging I might have done.  Their work is not up to my exacting standards.  The last greens came out today with the exception of some Swiss Chard that still has vitality.  All that’s left in the garden now are strawberry plants, asparagus, garlic, parsnip and carrots.  The first two are perennials, the latter three crops from this year that can stay in the ground for a while, carrots, or need to over winter, the parsnip and garlic.

    I couldn’t bring myself to patch the damage from the dogs.  It is quite extensive and I find myself reactive when I work on it.  It will keep until next spring.

    Then of course there was the Vikings-Packer game.  Our defense had a bit of a let down late in the third quarter and the first part of the fourth, but they played brilliantly otherwise.  So did Favre.  At one point a Packer named Jennings fell on the Viking sideline very near Favre.  Favre’s concern and his action, bending down to see how Jenning’s was, moved me.  He seems to genuinely care for his team mates both current and former.  He also plays like a little boy, jumping and waving his arms, picking up players who’ve just scored a touchdown.

    After the game he had an interview in which he spoke warmly of the Packers and the fans there.  It was a mature and sensitive moment.

    It’s fun to see him play as a Viking.  Didn’t think I’d feel that way, but I do.


    📂This entry was posted in Aging Dogs Garden Health Sport 📎and tagged

  • Fencing

    Posted on by Charles 1 Comment

    Fall                                          Waxing Dark Moon

    Dan the fence guy came and measured the fenceline for our garden.  He hopes to finish by tomorrow and I hope he does.  Rigel will then be relegated to digging holes in the woods and the backyard rather than the garden and the orchard.  This home’s most expensive dog greeted Dan with a lot of energy.

    Kate’s doing a bit more each day, though she still tires easily.  She walks without her walker for short distances and stood up for a good bit last night to cook the Danish pancakes.  Her recovery is a testimony to Viking pillaging genes, I think.  No Viking would let a bad back stop them from raiding a monastery or sacking a castle.

    Dan has had back troubles, too.  In fact, he goes in to see the top spine surgeon at the U on Monday.  He had surgery on L-5/S-1 twelve years ago and now has trouble there again and in his neck.  He keeps telling Jake, his cousin, that he can have the fence business, but that he needs to protect his back.

    After burning through the majority of the new toys I bought yesterday, Rigel and Vega seem enchanted with the frozen peanut butter Kongs.  A good sign.

    Here’s a link to a fascinating Scientific American article on economics titled Does Economic Violate the Laws of Physics? It raises issues I would put in the conceptual arena of the commons.  It makes a ton of sense to me.


    📂This entry was posted in Aging Dogs GeekWorld Great Work Politics 📎and tagged

  • Caution: Old Person

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Fall                                Waxing DArk Moon

    Kate said this morning, “I have the zombie walk down.” She referred to her walker and its clump, clump rhythm.  I suggested we have her greet trick or treaters.  We could hang a sign on the walker that said, “Caution:  Old Person!”   Talk jen-kate-ruth-gabe300about scary.  (pic:  Halloween 2008, Leadville, Co.)

    Yesterday she altered the periodicity of her drugs and  had a great improvement in her overall attitude.  Instead of taking 2 percocet every 4 hours, she now takes one every 2 hours.  I can tell advances in her movement and attitude each day, sometimes hour to hour.  She’s tough and stubborn, a good combination for recovery.

    “I just thank Jesus for this fine Norwegian.”  A line I read in a newspaper article a couple of years ago.  Me, too.

    On a more Y chromosome note.  Vikings vs. Steelers.  The line gives the Steelers the edge with three points.  Maybe.  Antoine Winfield is out with a bad ankle.  Rothelisberger has great stats this year in the passing game and Winfield out will put someone inexperienced out there.  Even so, my idea is that the Viking’s d-line will keep Ben on his heels enough to neutralize the Winfield problem.  If they can do that, Favre can score points with screens and mid-level passes since the Pittsburgh d will concentrate on All Day Peterson.  Let’s call it more like even.  Whichever team has the better day.


    📂This entry was posted in Aging Family Health Sport 📎and tagged

  • Kate is home

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Fall                              Waxing Dark Moon

    Hospitals are not homes.  Neither are they more than medically outfitted hotels.  Abbott-Northwestern is a good hospital, but the gap between a good hospital and a healing environment is vast.  Kate is now home, a healing place where her body will continue the work assisted by the surgeon.

    She’s tired, but mobile, walking unassisted, though at times she may use a cane or a walker.  I’m surprised at how able she is considering the the surgery was done Monday afternoon.

    Home feels more substantial now.  More after we both get a nap in, much needed.


    📂This entry was posted in Aging Family Health 📎and tagged

  • Changes

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Fall                           Waxing Dark Moon

    The leaves have finally changed color in our yard.  It happened almost over night.  Many went dry before they turned, but more have become red, gold, yellow.  The colors of fall are as much a part of our landscape as the snowdrops and daffodils are of spring.   Fall’s color gives us one last Times Square moment from the vegetal world before the emphasis moves to the monochromatic grace and elegance of winter.

    Sounds like Dr. Mary Ellis may visit over Thanksgiving.  The Singapore government nixed an earlier visit due to the H1N1 virus.  Mary’s had a lot going on over the last four years.   Working and finishing a dissertation has never been easy; it consumed extra time and holidays.  This would be the first Thanksgiving I can recall in a long time that she would be here.  It’s always good to have family around during holiseason.

    Kate comes home today.  Her primary exercise for the next bit of time will be walking.  Yes, she’s up and about.  No 100 yard dashes in the near term, but moving is good, real good.  She cannot twist, so no Chubby Checker’s music on the CD player.  She also has to bend at the waist, no flexing of the back.  She will need percocet for a few weeks.

    Fortunately hand work is how Kate spends time while listening to lectures at continuing medical education so she has projects to keep her busy.

    As soon as she’s able (maybe right now), she can also start using the treadmill.  5 minutes at first, then more as she heals.


    📂This entry was posted in Aging Family Health Holidays 📎and tagged

  • Kate on Tuesday

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Fall                                              New (Dark) Moon

    Back from the hospital to visit Kate.  She has the blue plastic line with its black plunger next to her at all times so she can get in the morphine drip for her current fifteen minute period.  Aside from the bout with nausea during standing at around 8:30 am, she seems in reasonable, if not great spirits.  She did stand without nausea later in the day, a big step, but the pain is still intense while upright.

    The People magazine I brought for her has a picture/picture puzzle where you have to identify the things that change from one picture to its near-identical twin below.  I gave it to her and she found 6 right away (out of 10).

    We chatted off and on about the dogs, Ruth, her sisters, hospital care and the every dependable quality of hospital food (mediocre).  She feel asleep from the morphine at one point.  I wandered off and got supper, takeout from McDonald’s.  This seemed appropriate to me since the spine folks share floors with the Minneapolis Heart Hospital.  I figured my meal could bring me back to those very precincts. When I got she back, she had her meal:  tomato soup, chocolate pudding, a fruit drink and, best of all, Coffee!  We ate together while a cold rain fell and a mist settled over the skyline of Minneapolis.

    She doesn’t like the condition she’s in right now, but in her words, “I signed up for it, so I need to suck it up.”  Hmmm.

    That’s all the news from Lake Woebegone for today.


    📂This entry was posted in Aging Family Health 📎and tagged