Category: health

Tueday’s Theme Music

Mood: Bureausilized (when activities are rendered useless by bureaucracy and become fossilized)

Good morrow, gentle folk and fellow coffee guzzlers. Today is Tuesday, May 14, 2024.

For the record, we’re fully overcast in Penn Hills, PA. It’s comfortable out, 61 F, with rain and thunderstorms chugging our way. They’re scheduled to arrive noonish. Today’s high will stroke out at 72 F.

Trump on Trial (the hush money/business fraud business) holds my family enthralled. Details are reiterated and explored. They’re also enjoying Trump’s latest tax issues, whereby he seems to be on the hook for $100,000,000 in taxes.

But doubt has been expressed that anything significant will emerge from either of these matters. Trump is white, male, and wealth, even if he may not be as wealthy as he claims. He’s also an ex-POTUS and the woeful GOP’s current candidate. Looking at the crime and punishment Venn diagram, significant punishment and karma don’t seem likely. The lesson reinforced for most of us, I think, is that the U.S. has a tiered justice system that mocks ‘and justice for all’.

The Hunt for Mom’s Caregiver goes miserably. All agencies contacted have suggested other agencies to contact. It’s a quagmire of links and promises, but little of substance is ever found. Others have found caregivers, so it is possible. Just need to moving out of expectations that any government agency will be useful.

Likewise, there’s no movement on Mom’s hospital bed request. In his case the road goes through her PCP’s office. Calling it is like shouting into a sewer. There’s not even an echo in response.

Today’s theme music veers to remembrance of David Sanborn’s work. The saxophonist died this week, robbing us of another wonderful musical talent. While more talented musicians keep emerging, the ones who marked us with their style should remain recognized and appreciated.

One of the first songs The Neurons pulled up for David Sanborn was David Bowie’s “Young Americans” from 1975. Then, as I read appreciations about him, many more people mentioned this same song. Sanborn’s body of work was much better than that, though.

I like this video which I found to showcase Sanborn. Not the best sound quality, but there’s a lot of talent on display here beyond Bowie and Sanborn. So many of them have passed.

Stay positive, be strong, lean forward, and Vote Blue in 2024. Meanwhile, create and adhere to a vision of a better world. We make it happen, yes, we can make it happen.

Coffee is being chugged. Here’s the video. Cheers

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

Mood: thwumpy

Thwump thwump thwump thwump

The helicopter — there’s just one, despite the traveling, echoing sound — continues its cleanup action. Good news: it isn’t black. No one rappels down from it.

Other than the chapter, Wednesday, April 24, 2024 in Ashlandia, offers up a mild and attractive spring day. 55 F, hunting for a 68 F high. Scanty clouds are mixing it up with the blue sky and sunshine.

Depressing news on the Mom front. She returned home but is suffering a lot of pain. I’m flummoxed. After days of being mostly upbeat, she’s in pain, angry, snapping at everyone.

Why is she in pain again? What’s the source? It seems to be a culmination of issues. She’s eighty-eight. Systems, muscles, joints fail. Pain ensues.

I try mounting context around her situation. She wasn’t allowed to go to my nephew’s eighteenth birthday party. Arrangements were made so she could join via Facetime to sing happy birthday. She was a no-show. When contacted, she said she saw how she looked on the screen and didn’t want anyone to see her like that.

Meanwhile, there were miscommunications and misunderstandings when she returned home. The facility offered her a wheelchair. Mom said, no, because she has one at home. The sister with her didn’t say anything but the rest of us responding, “What wheelchair? She doesn’t have a wheelchair.” So that opportunity was missed.

Her home stairlift quit functioning. Turns out that it needs a new battery. There are claims that it’s been beeping for weeks. Why didn’t someone notice that and do something about it? That would make sense, wouldn’t it?

Mom’s live-in boyfriend and my two sisters who live near Mom are emotionally exhausted. They’re struggling with their health and life matters. Mom calls for them to come help her but their balance is broken. It’s become harder for them to rise to the moment. They’ve been doing so for about five years.

A third sister leaves near Mom. Her husband has just been diagnosed with prostate cancer. No other details are being leaked. They’re a secretive couple.

My fourth sister, the oldest sibling, now 70, lives in Georgia. She works, but her finances are tight. Going to help Mom would be a huge financial challenge for her from what I know.

And I, I sit across the country in my world, frustrated, guilt-ridden because I’m not there to help. I feel selfish. I want to go to help them.

I am selfish. I’m trying to pursue my long-delayed writing dreams. And I have my wife, house, and cats to take care of, along with a bunch of other issues. If I go back to help Mom and the rest, that puts a lot on my wife. She’s dealing with her own matters.

I feel like I know what I must do. Sacrifice and go. But also load it on my wife. And that causes more stress, more guilt, more depression.

Bit of a rant, wasn’t that? I know so many others have gone through like situations. I watched and helped as my wife went through this with her mother for several years. Other friends and relatives have gone through it or are going through it. This is part of modern American life.

On to music, okay? The Neurons have loaded ELO’s 1977 song, “Turn to Stone”, into the morning mental music stream (Trademark overdue). I get that. I feel paralyzed by demands, choices, and the need for decisions. Yeah, I’m turned to stone. Need to suck it up and move.

One other matter on my morning agenda. A toast to Voyager 1. NASA has restored contact with it. Launched back in 1977, a friend of mine was involved with its mission planning with NASA. He passed away from a brain tumor a few years ago. He said that he was only involved in a small degree. His expertise was measuring plasma composition in different regions of space. But even a little involvement is something. So, to Voyager, NASA, and Ed.

Be positive and keep strong. I know it can be a struggle. I’ve already launched some coffee into my body but I’ll probably add another round. Here’s the video. Cheers

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

Mood: Wonstalgic

Thwump thwump thwump thwump

The copter continues the watershed cleanup. I can watch him manuever through the kitchen window. Sounds give clues of his comings and goings. Right now, he’s resting in the air above the peak of a conifered-blessed mountain.

Looks like a good flying day out there on Tuesday, April 23, 2024. Sunshine gleams off windows and cars. Full-fledged green leaves on trees dapple lawns and houses with shadows. A few clusters of cloud islands hold steady on the western horizon.

It’s 17C outside, about 62 F. We’re heading for a 76 degrees F high. Rain has a chance but it’s less than 40% chance. Usually at those odds, we don’t see it.

Mom is supposed to be heading home today. She should actually be there, per the schedule, as she told me she was being released noon Eastern. Which was almost an hour ago. I find that most hospitals are optimistic about when things will happen. Like the military and DMV, there’s a lot of waiting at a hospital. I’m living on a hope that she’ll go home today and be relatively healthy and happy for a while and put some of these health scares to rest.

With that thinking, I tripped down the trail of what it used to be like back home, when I still held the flowers of youth in my appearance. The Neurons responded by conjuring a jazzy Stevie Wonder song that speaks to that essence, “I Wish”. The 1977 song is echoing through my morning mental music stream (Trademark drifting). I found an online offering of him doing the song live in 1982. Sweet. I hope you enjoy it.

Here we go. Stay positive and be strong. Vote Blue in 2024, and let’s see if we can stem the retreat of rights and sanity. Coffee is brewed and ready to be introduced to my body.

Here’s the video. Cheers

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Tuesday’s Wandering Thoughts

Always amazes me how I arrive home and suddenly need to urgently pee. It’s not like I was driving home and had the urge and ignored it. No, it strikes after I get into the house.

It’s not just me, either. My wife usually reacts before I do, walking into the house, greeting the cats, and then announcing, “Oh, gotta pee.”

I always wonder if it’s another case of event boundaries. Like, oh, you’re home, so you pee. Or is it conditioning built up over the years: you come home, you pee.

Don’t know. Maybe there’s something in the house air that triggers it.

Or are we the only ones like this?

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Sunday’s Theme Music

Mood: Sunsy

Another spring day of entangled weather. Descending clouds obscure the western ridges’ face with rain threats. Sunlight powers through in the east and attempts to buck the temperatures up. Wind sometimes gambols like a newborn foal.

Temperatures rose to 50 F from 38 F but have now slipped back to 48 F. 55 F is as how as we expect thermometers to climb around most of Ashlandia.

Today is April 7, 2024.

Papi, my lean, lanky ginger floof, played nine solid innings of Let me in/let me out. Do you know this game? This is when a house floof makes noises to rouse their servants to let them in and out of the house. It’s scored by how many times they can make it happen and how fast it happens.

I think Papi scored a perfect score. There was some swearing involved, as he didn’t even take a seventh inning stretch. Bored, hungry, restless, frustrated, lonely, disappointed in the weather…I think it was all of these things. Started at 5:30 AM and went on past 9:30.

Mom continues recovering from her appendicitis. Late update was that the appendix had ruptured ‘some time ago’. Gangrene had set in. She was lucky, the medical folks declared.

I was surprised. Several years ago, they mentioned she’d perforated her appendix and had gangrene but then backed off and claimed something else. I was always dubious of that shift. As for surviving, ‘survivor’ is one of many words I’d immediately apply to her. ‘Tough’ is another.

Staying with family medical situations, my aunt just had her colon removed. Well, all but an inch, is the claim passed to me. My father’s sister, she and Mom are the same age and have been friends since they were nineteen. They’ve been through a lot together and remain friends even through Mom and Dad divorced back in the early 1960s.

My aunt has been intermittently battling colon cancer for a while. She was declared clean on a January follow-up. But she went back in March because “something didn’t feel right”. At that visit, they declared she had a mass as large as a cat. That description had me visualizing a cat curled up, sleeping in her colon. Like Mom, my aunt is tough, survived the surgery despite a bad heart, and will be discharged, wearing a bag, in a few days.

Texting with sisters, thinking about Mom and my aunt, I wasn’t overly surprised when The Neurons introduced “Those Were the Days” into the morning mental music stream (Trademark setting). I’m remembering the Mary Hopkins version from 1968. I seemed to have heard it a great deal in my youth but I don’t think I’ve heard it in years. It’s amusing that The Neurons pulled it up out of memory.

Stay positive, be strong, lean forward, and Vote Blue. I’m on my second cup of coffee, and the day is moving on, with or without my involvement.

Here’s the music. Cheers

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Monday’s Wandering Thoughts

I hate taking my floofs to the vet. I recognized that today. I’d put off taking Tucker for a long time, probably to his detriment.

Veterinary offices and animal hospitals harbor bad memories. Cats hit by a car and dying in a room, waiting for treatment. Feline fur friends taken in to see what’s going on to learn they have cancer. Nothing to be done. Four friends over seven years, three spread over a four-year period, nine altogether in my lifetime.

I know. Shame on me. I should be stronger. A better human for them. Accept that death, injuries, and pain are part of life.

I do understand. Doesn’t appease my feelings of loss at their demise. It’s not all ’bout me, though. It’s about what my little friends ended up enduring, even before their illness was diagnosed. Vets always validated that they’re suffering.

We took Tucker back today. Check on his thyroid. Those numbers look good now. Other numbers don’t. He has high blood pressure. He’s gained weight, which was good, but his kidney numbers are worrisome.

A prescription was given for the hyperthyroidism. Another for the high blood pressure. Nothing for kidneys – yet. Monitor them for a bit more. See if it’s a side effect of meds or situation. Meanwhile, we continue his pain meds and his thyroid meds. Twice a day, twelve hours apart.

He goes in for surgery on Wednesday. Dealing with refractory stomatitis gingivitis. All his teeth are to be removed. Well, all which remain. Many of his teeth are already gone.

All this came to mind because my wife interpreted some comments made by the vet at Tucker’s last appointment as dismissive of us as pet mates. I didn’t see it myself. I saw it as being weak on my part. A coward, really.

Now, fingers crossed that all goes well for my black and white buddy. He remains upbeat and loving.

I hope I do right by him.

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Saturday’s Theme Music

Mood: sunergized

This. Is. March. 16. 20. 24.

Sunshine began painting Saturday’s morning sky a bright blue. Clouds fled the scene; not for them, they decided, dragging cooler temperatures away with them. The bedroom walls and then the living room were painted gold with sunlight as Earth rotated and its orbit crossed Sol’s path, shifting the sun south across the eastern sky. Spring edges closer with kitty steps. We struck a high of 72 F yesterday when they called for less; meteorology speculation indicates we’ll strike a high of 70 F today. I think my house will see 74 F.

TL/DR: We use RLT and just purchased a pod.

My wife and I began using red light therapy about two years ago. This involves leaping out of the car and releasing a primal scream whenever we’re driving and stop at a red light. It’s a great relief although other drivers and their passengers seem to freak out.

Ha! Just kidding. Red light therapy (RLT) is photo biomodulation. That explains it all, doesn’t it? The gear we buy uses diodes that transmit red light and near infrared at 660 nm and 850 nm. Supposed to help with skin issues, inflammation, muscle damage, and speed healing. That’s what began drawing my wife to it. I became intrigued after I learned that celebrities and athletes swear by it. Both wife and I have swelling and inflammation matters. Some of her problems were side effects of meds she took to combat her RA and generally deteriorating health.

So, first we bought a RLT mask. It worked pretty well so we upped our involvement to a RLT belt. Made by Life Pro, it ran us about $150 with discounts. FedEx delivered it November 8 last year, so we’ve been using it for about four months.

The belt is about 50 inches long and seven inches wide. My wife uses it for various RA flares in her hips, back, shoulders, arms, hands, along with Renaud’s syndrome. Renaud’s causes her fingers and hands to become cold and numb. They turn white and bend out of shape. This RLT kicked its ass.

I use it for blood circulation. I began experiencing edema a few years ago after a BHP closed my urethra and blocked my ability to pee. They’re not certain what’s behind my edema. Venous insufficiency in my ankles and lower legs is usually cited but it could be a problem with my lymphatic system.

I find that thirty minutes with that thing each day provides major relief to my edema. It is used in conjunction with other changes. I elevate my legs and massage them each evening. The skin is treated with EB40. EB40 is made by Ebenal and has 40% urea cream 40% plus 2% Salicylic Acid. I exercise but I’ve always exercised. At this stage, I do light free weights with stretching, wall sitting and planking, jump-roping (which I suck at), and walking. I walk about 7 to 8 miles a day.

After we experienced success with the RLT belt, my wife began telling friends about it. Bottom line, they’ve bought it for arthritis in their hands and wrists, back problems, old injuries, feet problems. All are amazed by the results after just over a month of use.

So, we’re escalating. We bought a TLR pod. Looks like a sleeping bag with red lights lining its innards. Over 2400 in all. Cost us a grand and will be delivered this week. We’ll see what happens.

Today’s music is by Fitz and the Tantrums. Their 2013 song, “Out of My League”, occupies the morning mental music stream. Nothing that I know triggered it. I inquired of The Neurons but they stayed mute. Fitz and the Tantrums are categorized by most as pop and neo soul. I think that’s an apt description. Amazing how pop, rock, soul, jazz, blues, and progressive morph to reflect new ideas, tastes, and needs. Keeping up is a challenge. I fail at it pretty miserable. I last played this song five years ago.

Stay pos, be strong, and lean forward. Register and vote, too, please, if you’re part of a democracy somewhere. Coffee has been gliding into my gullet. It’s 64 F outside. Look at that sunshine.

Here’s the music. Cheers

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Monday’s Wandering Thoughts

Heard from my wife, who heard from a friend that other friends have been stricken with COVID. See, the annual Easter brunch planning is underway. We’re invited. So are the COVID couple. The wife answered the evite that they have COVID now but were hopeful they’d be better by the end of the month. She — the wife — has it worse.

Concerning, yes. As concerning are the ration of natural questions which come with COVID announcements. How’d they get it, and when? When did they test, and how are they both doing? What are their symptoms?

It’s basically the standard COVID script.

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Friday’s Wandering Thoughts

A woman pushing a stroller with two infants down the sidewalk stopped to make adjustments. The sweet children looked less than a year old. A large pickup truck idled beside her, waiting for the light to change. He couldn’t help but think of the potential damages those poor children might be enduring.

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Wednesday’s Wandering Thoughts

I’d earlier reported that a friend was diagnosed with dementia.

That’s changed.

He doesn’t have dementia. Instead, he has blood cancer which affects his blood flow and the oxygen in his blood. His brain doesn’t get enough, causing cognitive issues.

It’s early days. While the news has changed, we’ll continue doing what we can to help and support him and his family and hope for the best. It’s all we can do, and it is so frustrating.

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