A New Chapter in Life

 

 My last post was titled "How the time does go by." Well, that was posted nearly eight years ago, and how the time does go by. 

For several months, I have been struggling with health issues. It all seemed to begin last August, when out of the blue I came down with a case of sciatica. It was the worst case I have ever had. There was fire in my leg and no amount of stretching or exercise would help. After a few days and a few visits to urgent care, I noticed that my right foot (same side as the sciatica) was swollen. 

This time I went to the ER, where I was diagnosed with Deep Vein Thrombosis (DVT), which essentially means I had a blood clot in my right lower leg. I was given a prescription for anticoagulants to prevent further clots, and sent on my way. 

Eventually, I was able to get relief from the pain in my leg by visiting, perhaps, the world's best chiropractor. He diagnosed the cause of the sciatica as a spasm in a little tiny muscle in my hip called the pyriformis muscle. Two quick treatments with TENS and ultrasound, and the pain began to resolve. 

Fast forward a few months: I began to notice that my stamina wasn't what it had been, and I often felt light headed when I would get up out of a chair. This progressed to the point where I felt short of breath and fatigued after the least little exertion. Along the way, I had lost my favorite primary care physician (PCP), who selfishly moved away to pursue his own little life with never a thought that I needed him. 

I began working with a new doctor, who was far less invested in my problems. When I complained of my light-headedness and fatigue, she prescribed statin drugs, which are typically prescribed for high cholesterol, in spite of the fact that my cholesterol levels typically run low. 

After I made enough noise, she ordered a cardiac monitor, which I wore for a month 24/7.  I had also complained of some visual aberrations and was referred to ophthalmology. Dr. O, the ophthalmologist, who is very thorough, ordered an MRI of my brain, to rule out cerebral aneurysm. That came out normal. When the results of my cardiac monitoring came back, the cardiologist said everything looked normal. 

I kept trying to think of other things that could be tested. By now, I think the new doctor thought I was a kook. She stopped replying to my emails and instead had other doctors or nurses reply. I got so frustrated that I became rather passive-aggressive and decided to just "live with it." 

Finally, the symptoms worsened to the point where I needed someone who could figure out what was going on. I found a new PCP who took a real interest in my symptoms. He got me right in for an exam that included extensive blood work. The results came in late the same day. That was last Friday: I am anemic, my white blood cell count is elevated, and my blood platelet count is alarmingly low. I was advised to go directly to the ER.

If you've ever been to an Emergency Room/Department, you know it is an agonizing process to wait your turn as all the other people, who seem to believe their problem is worse than yours, get called in one by one for their turns. We arrived at the ER about 4:45PM. At around 9:00pm, after x-rays and blood draws and a urine sample, I was finally placed in an examining room. The ER physician came in promptly and took my history. She returned a short while later and said that the pathologist had looked at my blood samples and found abnormal white cells. She said, "It looks like it could be leukemia." 

After Jill and I had taken a moment to gasp and try to take in this impossible information, the doctor said she was going to admit me, but there was a wait for a room to be ready. It was after midnight when we were finally settled into the room. Then began a night of taking my vital signs (CNA), doing assessments (RN) and taking more blood samples (phlebotomist).  I had no idea that so many blood samples could be taken and the well not run dry!

The staff was wonderful. I felt as if I were visiting royalty. Jessica, the RN who came on duty at 7AM was so efficient, professional, and at the same time sweet and engaging, that she quickly won our hearts. She treated Jill with as much care as she did me. As I reflect on that 8 or 9 hours that we were there, I can't believe it was such a short period. I received a transfusion of red blood cells, which made a huge difference in my light-headedness and shortness of breath. I even made a couple of laps around the hospital floor. 

Because we live in Dallas, Oregon, and Kaiser Permanente, our health coverage provider, does not have a hospital nearby, the above scenarios took place at Salem Hospital, with which Kaiser has an arrangement for just such situations. In the end, though, Kaiser would have me transferred to their Sunnyside hospital, which is a bit more than an hour from home. 

When the time came for me to make the transition, an EMT came into my room. I was sitting fully clothed in the recliner in my room. I got up to greet him, and he said, "Are you Tom?" Now this was said as if he was surprised, nay dumbfounded, to see a well-looking man greet him. He excused himself and went out to the nurses' station. When he came back, he said, "I thought there was a mistake. I was expecting someone barely alive. You look great." 

"Thanks," I replied. He thanked me and said this was going to be the easiest run of the day, for which he was grateful. The time came for us to leave, and Jill and I bid a literally teary farewell to Jessica. 

I sent Jill home so she could get a good rest and help Tara, our eldest, celebrate her 43rd birthday. Meanwhile, I had a nice ride in an ambulance from Salem to Sunnyside. Since my condition was stable, there was nothing for the EMTs to do, so I had a lovely chat with the fellow who rode in the back with me. He did take some vital signs (by now, I think I must be the most vital person in America), but mostly we chatted about his career and mine and hobbies and the heat. (It was 106 degrees when we got to Sunnyside). 

I was trundled to my room, 455, where I was greeted by Morgan the RN charged with my care. She got me settled in, did my assessment and then had a nice long chat with me. She and Jessica are cut from the same cloth. Morgan is efficient and professional, but warm and engaging. I felt as if I were with family, being treated like royalty...again. God bless the nursing profession. 

About 9 PM, the admitting physician came in to get me oriented and let me know what the game plan includes. Today, the hematologist, Dr. Mansoor, came in for a consultation. He had reviewed my chart and remarked how healthy I am, other than the blood dyscrasias. "Yes," I said, "I'm disgustingly healthy for someone who is so sick." He said I can expect to get a bone marrow biopsy tomorrow, which will provide a definitive diagnosis. Then I will have a consultation with the oncologist who, I hope, will be able to answer my remaining questions. After that, I expect to be started on chemotherapy.

So, I have been at Sunnyside for about 16 hours now. I got a really good sleep last night. I've had at least four or five blood draws and a similar number of "assessments," which amount to listening to heart and lungs and doing a visual scan for signs of change in my condition. The staff are all wonderful; even Jason, the RN who awakened me at 5 AM from a sleep so deep that I was disoriented and incoherent. When Morgan returned for the day shift, Jason brought me a cup of coffee. I have therefore forgiven him for the rude awakening!!

Jill will be here soon. I was able to have a shower and a lovely breakfast. So, I am ready for a visit from my true love. Stay tuned for further details.

How the time does go by!

Eight years ago today, I put Jill on a plane to San Diego.  She arrived eight hours after our first grandchild, Josiah, was born.  We have the indescribable privilege of being in San Diego today to celebrate his 8th birthday.

The day started with his mom treating him to doughnuts, one of his favorite foods. His special request was for a bacon maple bar.  I can tell you, it was a good choice. Auntie Tara, who got up at zero dark thirty yesterday and flew down for the occasion, was snoozing this morning, and Laura and Judah had to go out. So, Grandma and Grandpa hung out with Josiah, playing games and watching Phineas and Ferb.

When Laura got home, we spirited Josiah away for an afternoon of fun.  First we went to In 'n Out Burger for lunch. Yumm! Josiah was presented with an official In 'n Out Burger hat.  Then it was off to Toys R Us, where he got a helium balloon, a paper crown and the chance to pick out his own birthday present. 

Later in the afternoon, we were invited to Mr. Don and Ms. Char's house.  They are across-the-street neighbors who treat our Josiah and Judah like their own grandchildren. They had ice cream sundaes and presents for both Josiah and Judah, whose birthday is on the 19th, i.e., next Monday. Over the years, Jill and I have become very friendly with Char and Don. I expect we will go out for lunch or dinner with them next week.

We came home and found that Tim had come home from work a bit early to celebrate the birthday.  We had Tim's dad's recipe pot-roast for dinner, at Josiah's request. Then we had Baskin Robbins ice cream cake for dessert, complete with self-relighting candles.  Josiah got a kick out of that.

So, now it is bed time for the boys, and the adults are ready to hunker down for the evening. The best part of the day, for my money, was that Josiah was a perfect gentleman.  He was patient with his little brother and grateful for his gifts.  There was never a hint of self-importance expressed.  Thank you Tim and Laura, for giving us such wonderful grandsons.

Annual family getaway at Pacific City.

We are at Pacific City for our third annual family gathering.  We have all of our kids and grandkids with us.  It's the best time of the year. We arrived yesterday to find the funky little beach house has been renovated. We knew there was a new owner who was upgrading, but we didn't know how it would look.

Well, it looks good. It's still funky, but it is more liveable.  The floors are all new. The formerly locked hot tub room has been turned into a game room with a pirate theme. It is really cute. And wonder of wonders, we have wi-fi!  The kids who have to do work can do it, and the rest of us can post on blogs, etc.

I took Pogo out for her morning duties and met up with our dear daughter-in-law, Katie. She had taken her dog, Brillo, and all the kids out for an early morning stroll on the dunes.

After grandma Jill made breakfast for everyone, the kids had fun playing with the iPad.  Even the not quite 2 year old enjoys wi-fi.

Later, grandma and grandpa and Pogo took a walk on the beach.  It is beautiful here.

 After hiking back up the dunes, we sat on the warm sand.

After a while, the rest of the family showed up.  Of course, grandpa forgot to get pictures of that.  I'll try to do better.

Ubuntu to the rescue!

I have been toying for some time with the idea of installing Ubuntu (oo-BUNT-too, a Linux OS) on my older laptop computer. So, last week, I did just that.  So far I am impressed. It is very stable and very fast (reboots in under a minute!!).  The only problem I am having is that, to date, I have been unable to get the Ubuntu machine to "see" my  Windows OS machines on the home network. They can see the Ubuntu machine, so I am sure it is some setting on the Windows machines that needs tweaking.

At any rate, one of the things I like about Ubuntu (aside from the fact that it is FREE) is that it comes with just about everything you need on a computer.  Firefox browser is included along with an office suite called Libre Office, which is almost a duplicate of Open Office, the suite I use on my Windows computer. Both are compatible with MS Office; and both are free. There is a good music player, a DVD player, a photo viewer, an application called Ubuntu One, which is very much like iTunes. You can purchase music, and it allows you to store everything you need in the cloud and sync with mobile devices.

In addition to all of that, there is an app store with various kinds of programs that are either free or priced under $10 (most under a dollar). I will admit that there is a bit of a learning curve, although, for those of you familiar with Mac, there are a lot of similarities, since both systems are based on Unix OS. So, all in all I can't find anything about this OS to complain about. I'm sure there is a fix for my network problems; I just have to find it.

Ubuntu, like other Linux OSs, is open source software, which means that anyone can make changes to the software, without fear of copyright infringement.  It is this open source feature that makes the software so inexpensive.  The Ubuntu community as a collection of individuals is constantly developing and improving the software as a labor of love, so there are no stockholders who have to be paid to support the work (although, you can donate to the cause, if you like).

If you are a computer geek (I am a very minor geek), this OS may be just the thing for you. Even if you are not, but you would like to have one computer that can do everything you want on a stable and speedy platform, give it a try.

NOTE: I am not a sales rep for any OS, and no gigabytes were harmed in the writing of this post.

The United States of America died this week

First the Supreme Court of the US (SCOTUS) shot down Arizona's immigration laws by eviscerating them.  Then the President, by executive order, said that what SCOTUS left of the law is not to be enforced, or the police of Arizona will be held criminally liable. Furthermore, FBI and Homeland Security are not to take calls from Arizona law officers who are trying to do their duty.

That means that, essentially, the US government told Arizona, "You are not a sovereign state. You have no right to defend yourselves against the onslaught of thousands of people pouring across your border, intent on stealing your jobs, your land and your livelihood." Done.  There are no longer any sovereign states to be united. There is just a malevolent dictator and his henchmen, who will now rule with an iron fist from Washington, D. C.

Now, today, SCOTUS has upheld the abomination called, ironically, the Affordable Care Act, popularly known as "Obamacare." The outcome of that decision will be less healthcare at a higher price. In addition, the taxes contained in this massive Federal Government power grab will surely sink the ship of state.  Between the outrageous debt run up by this administration ($5 trillion and counting) and the onerous burden of Obamacare tax increases, there is no way the U.S. economy can recover. We are in for an economic depression that will make the one in the 1930s look like a bad day at the Blackjack table.

Add to those effects the fact that Obamacare doesn't recognize the right of a physician or pharmacist, whose conscience tells him that the taking of a human life through abortion is a crime against humanity, nor does it recognize the right of millions of Citizens, whose consciences and religious beliefs tell them that abortion and birth control are not the business of man but of God to opt out of the culture of death.  The result is that the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights has been eliminated. The other nine will fall like dominoes.

As the result of the decisions SCOTUS has handed down in the past week, the noble experiment in freedom and personal and economic liberty that was these United States of America is dead.  There can be no economic liberty, when the government can tell us we must spend our money on specific goods or services. There can be no personal liberty, when the government can tell us what we must believe. There can be no freedom, where there is no economic and personal liberty.

Who is responsible for the death of The United States of America?  Is it the nine people who comprise SCOTUS? Is it the President? Is it the Congress? No, it is you and I.  Because we have elected fools to powerful offices; because we have seen the Federal Government not as a body with limited power, designed to take on those few tasks that the sovereign states could not (national defense, disputes among the states) but rather as a sugar daddy, who should provide us with all the things we don't want to pay for; because we have allowed control of our schools to be removed from the local school district to ever more remote places (state and federal government bureaucrats); because we have failed to demand that our children be taught truth, instead of the fairy tales that the government has fed them in preparation for the very demise of the nation that we have been treated to this week; because we have placed self-esteem ahead of self-sufficiency, political correctness ahead of reason, the "wisdom" of man ahead of the wisdom of God, the responsibility for this death belongs to you and me.

I suppose that this post is a little like closing the barn door after the horse is gone, but I believe that reasonable people can reverse these mortal wounds to our nation.  The iron curtain fell, because people of courage stood up to the dictators in the Soviet Bloc.  Let us not wait 70 years to stand up and say, "No, we will not cede our freedom to tyrants." It is not too late to revive our beloved country, if we will pledge our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor, as the Founding Fathers did in the first American Revolution. For the sake of America; for the sake of your children; for the sake of your grandchildren, stand up and be counted in the new American Revolutionary Army.

Ta-li-hoe

Click the photo for a slide show.

Another terrible day in paradise today as we traveled from Lone Pine, CA to Incline Village, NV at the north end of Lake Tahoe.  The weather was beautiful, and the driving was pleasant.  Jill, in her usual inimitable manner, acted as ship's photographer as we traveled along our way. 

We noticed over the last two days that as we passed from the Mojave desert to the northern Sierra Nevada mountains, the landscape and plant life changed dramatically.  You will notice in the slide show that we started out with some pretty barren looking mountains, but the further north we drove, the more we encountered trees, and especially lodgepole pine.

We also encountered three lakes of note along our route. First we came to Mono lake, which is a large and by the looks rather shallow lake in California.  Then just as we were approaching the Nevada state line, we came upon the deep blue of Topaz lake.  This lake appears to be much deeper, and there was a lot more recreational activity along its shores and out on the lake itself (think water skiers).

Finally, we came to our destination, which was the incomparable Lake Tahoe.  I say incomparable, but for us Oregonians, it is impossible not to compare this beautiful lake with our own Crater Lake.  They are different in size and nature, but the color of the water and the surrounding mountainous terrain at both venues is remarkable similar.

We arrived early enough to do some exploring along the lake shore, before we settled in at the Parkside Motel. This facility is an older motel that obviously caters to skiers during the winter.  It is cozy and comfortable, but it is not spectacular. Nevertheless, off of our private deck, we have a view into the pine forest that surrounds the area.  It is quite lovely.

We went to Azzara's for dinner. It is a modest Italian restaurant with a quaint ambiance.  We ordered a pizza that included caramelized onions, sweet sausage and fresh tomatoes.  It was wonderful... and I believe we can reproduce it!  For dessert we shared a cannoli filled with a creamy riccota and chocolate chips. Molto bene!

Tomorrow, we are off to K Falls, but more about that later.

Lepus californicus

Today, we left San Diego, bidding a tearful good bye to our daughter, Laura, her husband, Tim, and their boys, Josiah (6) and Judah (2).  Surprisingly, they didn't throw us out sooner. We had been with them for 13 days!  We always enjoy each others' company, and it never feels uncomfortable or as if we are in the way, while we are with them.

We drove up I-15 to the junction with US 395 and then continued on through the Mojave desert, finally arriving in Lone Pine, CA.  This little town is the first one of any real size we encountered since Victorville.  It is done up as an old western town and has the main drag along US 395.  We toured some of the residential area. There are some lovely homes.

We are staying in the Comfort Inn at the south end of town, although I turned in here:

My better half, nixed that one, so here we are at the Comfort Inn, enjoying a tall cool drink on the private balcony that looks out on this:

 Below us on the lawn, I can count about 18 black-tailed jackrabbits (Lepus californicus...Ahh, so that's where you got that cryptic title for your blog!) who are just nibbling at the grass and having a splendid supper.

Lepus californicus

Anyway, those wascally wabbits are not having any more fun than we are, even if the temperature is 94 degrees at 6:38 PM.  Below you will find a photo, and if you click on it, you will be treated to a slide show. So, enjoy, and stay tuned for more fun along the way with the old pilgarlic. 

By the way, the odd looking trees are Joshua trees, and that Red Mountain, I presume, is the source of the name for the town of (you guessed it) Red Mountain, CA.  The map shows a portion of the road we drove today.  These pictures were mainly taken along that stretch.