Harleys, Cars, Girls & Guitars

We All Fall Down

Three surgeries in the past two months! Two months of enforced physical inactivity, opiate pain medications and not even being able to babysit my grandkids. I'm seeing the surgeon on Thursday, and if he gives me the OK, I will be able to resume my normal physical regimen of bicycling, yoga and weight lifting.

Kids fall down all the time. My grandkids, ages 1 through 3, are still learning how to control their bodies. The one year old twins fall down every 30 seconds or so. The three year old is starting to get her act together.

The worst part of my two month long struggle with health is that I haven't been able to get down on the floor with my grandkids to play and rough house.

Every aspect of my life is at a standstill because of the physical inactivity. Can't wait to get started again.

We all fall down.

Kids take it all in stride. If you don't get up when you fall and try again, you'll never learn how to walk. My grandkids fall down, scrape their knees, cry and show the boo-boo to grandpa. I kiss it and we start all over again.

I've been through this picking myself up and putting myself back together so many times. I no longer get depressed or angry about it. It just seems to be the reality of life. People get sick and die. Economic disasters strike from time to time. Completely unexpected problems overwhelm us.

My midwestern upbringing and Catholic indoctrination taught me stoicism. In rural Illinois in my day (the 50s and 60s), nobody wanted to listen to your whining, your excuses or humor your bitch. My family's background is hard ass Irish and German peasantry. I was taught from childhood that nobody was going to help me and that, if I wanted anything, I had better get it for myself.

This is quite a sensible philosophy.

I know how to put myself back together. I'll start out slowly with the physical exercise so that I don't hurt myself... the first consideration for an old fart. I'll get back down on the floor to play and rough house with the grandkids. Today, I got started playing music and drawing. (Even those things went by the wayside, since the opiates put me to sleep for most of the day.)

The biggest smackdown of my life was, of course, Myrna's death. Took me years to want to go on with life. It's still a struggle without her. 12 years ago, the money was flowing in from two big paychecks and we were thinking we were on the verge of retiring to travel the world in luxury.

Everything changed in a few moments.

Then the grandkids came along. I'm not ashamed to say that they gave me a reason to enjoy life and to be positive and enthusiastic again. Caring for them has become my full time job in retirement, and I'm happy with that. In a few months, I'll be moving into an in-law apartment in a new house I'm buying with my daughter and son-in-law so that I can be full time Mr. Mom to my grandkids. Goodbye, Woodstock! (A good thing. It's time to become un-Woodstuck!)

That will come to an end to, but experience has prepared me for that. I already know that the day is not so far away when my grandkids will have other things to do than hang out with grandpa.

Surgery Prep Day

One of the reasons I decided to drive cross country to Chicago last week... I'm facing serious surgery. I wanted to indulge myself with a little adventure. Might be the last time in my life that I'm physically capable.

I made it to 66 in very good health, so I'm lucky. 

Today will be purge day. I'll be downing a solution of MiraLAX and water until I poop out my guts. Can't eat. Can't drink coffee. I'm restricted to clear liquids.

I learned from experience when Myrna was in the hospital that surgeons are far too impressed with their skills and tend to always predict positive results, so I'm skeptical of my own surgeon. What can I do? I don't have the knowledge to really evaluate his diagnosis. I've been through three doctors, all of whom disagree to some extent about possible treatment.

Oncologists tend to be much more blunt than surgeons, but I'm not yet at the stage of needing an oncologist. When Myrna was dying from cancer, we shopped around for an oncologist who was willing to treat her. The first was a woman who told us bluntly that Myrna would die in a few months and that the best we could do was to make her comfortable.

In desperation, we worked our way through several oncologists until we found one who promised to cure her, at least temporarily. That only led to what the surgeon described as "butchery." I had to pull the plug. The oncologist, who had been charging the insurance company $750 for each visit to Myrna's room, was furious.

Am I afraid? Worried?

Yes. I'd like to live long enough to see my grandkids reach adulthood. I don't know if I want to live with a colostomy bag, if it comes to that. My mother is almost 90. I just visited her in Illinois. She wishes that her doctor would recommend the colostomy bag no matter whether she has cancer. She's fed up with old age induced incontinence.

Yesterday at Mass, my priest anointed my hands and forehead and prayed for my recovery. I don't know whether that helps.

I retired four years ago, even though I could have continued working, to focus on doing the things I enjoy and to contemplate my mortality and my relationship with God. I've enjoyed this long period of rest and reflection, and I'd like for it to continue.

Only six weeks ago, I went through two surgeries for kidney stones. So, I know the drill. No much drama, really. You go to sleep and then you wake up, and somebody tells you the results. That's about it.

Both the diagnosis and outcome of my physical problems are unknown. CAT scans taken during my hospitalization for kidney stones revealed some abnormality in my appendix. All three doctors I've consulted disagree on what that abnormality might be. Everything from a cyst to a tumor. 

So, my surgery could just be an appendectomy, or it could be major resection of the bowel. Won't know what happened until I wake up.

Internet Enemies... Letting Go

Chat boards and weblogs really took off in the late 1990s, although the tech for them had existed since the early 70s. Those early chat boards tended to be pretty gentle places inhabited by computer geeks. By the late 90s, the furious arguments and name calling that we now associate with chat boards and weblogs had become standard.

After Myrna died in 2004, this internet chatting and arguing became a source (a mostly horrifically negative source) of companionship. There seems to be no topic to chat and argue about on a day to day basis except for politics.

So, I speak here as a sinner. It is only since I retired that I've mostly let go of ferocious internet arguments with long standing enemies. Why did I let go?

First, I wanted peace of mind. Fixating on the next argument with one's internet enemy leaves very little mental space for doing anything else. You just can't let that bastard who insulted you on some doofus weblog win!

Second, the reasons for intense fights on the internet faded away with each successive year of retirement. Political fighting is really a turf battle over who gets what, and my status in that regard is not going to change for the remainder of my life.

One of my most ferocious long term enemies was a hothead named Ritmo, who still continues to say the most awful shit he can imagine on Althouse's weblog. He, I think, originated the tactic of announcing in his opening comments that he considers himself a brilliant intellectual, so that anybody who disagrees with him is obviously an idiot.

"Go read a book!" is one of his favorite jibes.

Ritmo's quickly shifts tactics once he's challenged and loses ground. Then he resorts to the great internet atomic bomb... "You're a bigot!"

I particularly enjoyed baiting Ritmo and setting him off in a frenzy. For all his self-announced intellectualism, he flew off the handle and started raving with very little prodding.

Watching him explode was amusing, but even that got boring and took up too much energy I could spend doing something else, like playing music.

Another long term enemy was a former editor of Time Magazine who, inexplicably, loathed everything about Christianity but had a weak spot for Islam. And, this guy grew up near Springfield, Illinois. The editor was another manic bigot hunter. Every disagreement with him was one sort of bigotry or another.

I kept arguing with this guy for a long time out of sheer amazement that somebody that crazy could occupy such a prominent job. But, that got old, too.

One of my siblings even volunteered to be a fierce internet enemy. Her life has been destroyed by drug arrests, failure of her children and failure to figure out how to make a decent living. So, she needs a scapegoat. She's tried out various members of the family. I've tried everything I can do to shut off access to any of my websites, Facebook account or weblog. She's resorted to using fake names so that she can get through to rant at me about how I'm responsible for the mess of her life.

I take the Sabbath off from internet discussion now, partly to observe God's day, and partly to stop the long running arguments and name calling. It works, too. Say nothing. Don't respond. Don't be baited.

Pay attention to what's really important in one's own life.

The End is in Sight

Got some unexpected news from my visits to the hospital. I had three CAT scans of my entire body. The radiologist who read my scans found something quite alarming. I'm not going to go into detail about that for a while, but the message was pretty clear. My days of assuming that I'll be in good health are coming to an end.

I'm not panicking, nor am I depressed. I thought that I had another 10 to 15 years of good health ahead of me. Could be that I have considerably less.

I retired for a number of reasons. One was to have the time to contemplate my mortality and my relationship to God. Another was just to have my time to myself to do as I pleased. Then, grandkids came along and my daughter needed all the help she could find, so I volunteered for the part time job of babysitting the kids.

I have no complaints about either the quality or length of my life. My life was a preposterous adventure, full of excitement, fascinating people and romance. Who could ask for more? 

The eternal questions, however, remain unanswered. Who will remember me when I am gone? What will become of my consciousness? Will I really be reunited with my loved ones, like my father and Myrna, when I move onto the next life? Is there really a next life or will my death simply be the end of the story?

I don't have any answers.

The only part of this process with which I'm pretty unhappy is the delivery of my body to the healthcare and nursing home businesses. Loss of dignity and autonomy... well, that's going to happen. We all fear and loathe that, but there appears to be nothing to be done about that short of committing suicide or hitting upon the luck to die suddenly in one's own bed. I'm not going to leave my children or grandchildren with a legacy of suicide. They don't need that.

How much disability can I tolerate? That question is also coming into sight. I guess that the answer is that I'll have to tolerate disability to the extent that I suffer it. There appears to be no way to avoid it.

My children and grandchildren will be the only ones to remember that I was here. I'll leave them a little bit of money... not enough to make a serious dent in their lives, but enough to help a bit. They aren't going to need much help, or so it appears now. What will they remember about me?

One legacy that I will leave is a family tradition of higher education. I am the first member of my extended family to graduate from a four year college, the University of Illinois. My grand-nephew will be enrolling at Illinois next fall and he will be the fourth generation of my family to do so. My entire extended family is now quite well educated and prosperous, and I'm proud of that legacy.

I'd like for my artistic work to survive, but that appears unlikely. In the time I have remaining, I'll attempt to place all of that work in a permanent site on the internet.

But, nothing is permanent, is it? 

No Health Insurance in the Philippines

My girlfriend's brother, Robert, who lived in Cebu, died of a massive heart attack a couple of days ago. He had visited a hospital earlier in the day. The doctors told him that he needed double bypass surgery. 

Filipinos don't have health insurance. So, doctors and hospitals demand cash payment in advance of performing any procedure. Since Robert didn't have the cash to pay for the bypass, he was sent home. The extended family was in the process of gathering up the funds necessary to pay for the surgery when he died from that heart attack.

"He never would have been sent home from the hospital in the U.S.," my girlfriend said.

Filipino funeral customs are quite different from ours. The family parks the coffin in the front room or on the patio for a seven day wake before burial. Church and family members visit every night for dinner and to comfort the family. As you can see in the photo above, it is common for there to be a window in the closed coffin so that the family can view the deceased's face.

Filipinos in the U.S. constantly talk about retiring and dying back in the Philippines. One of the most important reasons is that your family will tend and visit your grave.

"Here in the U.S., they just throw you in the ground and forget about you," the girlfriend says.

Robert was only 66... my age. 

I don't have a sermon to offer here. There are good and bad things about living in an over insured society, as opposed to living in a society in which nobody is insured.

On the plus side, Filipinos aren't litigious. People accept injury and death in accidents with a shrug and go on with their lives instead of engaging in a vendetta for money. Few people have the money to hire lawyers.

I'll be forgotten when I die. Nobody will come to pray over my grave. I don't know whether that matters. Filipinos think that it does. Then again, most Filipinos are seriously religious.

Ave Maria

I'll break my vow to maintain internet silence on the Sabbath to publish this, my little version of the great classical rendition of Franz Schubert's Hail Mary. Put on your headphones, please!

Happy Mothers' Day!

Pooping My Pants

Sickness has overwhelmed my life in the past week. I tried to continue my normal activities for a day or two, but collapsed. Bone crunching persistent pain from a kidney stone, plus a huge dose of opiates prescribed by physicians, sent me to bed for 20+ hours per day.

The kidneys regulate your heartbeat and body temperature in a delicate chemical interaction with the heart. During my visit to the ER, my heart rate fell to 45 as the vagus nerve tried to shut down the pain crashing through my body. In the aftermath, I've struggled through hot flashes followed by cold flashes. I wake up from my narcotic induced sleep only when I'm overheated or chilled.

Finally, I couldn't stand the pain and I agreed to my internist's suggestion that I should submit to surgery to remove the kidney stone. After a week of blasting, intense abdominal and lower back pain, I was close to delusional.

So, off to the hospital this morning in the hope of finally ending the torment and just living normally again. To be able to take a bicycle ride or to work in the garden!

The pain decreased dramatically in the hours before my surgery, so I hope that the stone had passed.  The pre-surgery x-ray, however, revealed the stone still in place, so my urologist insisted we do our best to remove it. As I started to go under from the prep anesthetic, somebody shoved a consent form into my face and I signed it. I think I said a complete Lord's Prayer before I went under.

The news in the recovery room was pretty depressing. While trying to remove the stone, an infection had been discovered in the urethra, and the operation had to stop. According to the attending room RN, trying to operate in the presence of the infection could have been life threatening. So, my urologist treated the infection with an antibiotic, inserted a stent (where I don't know) to help the stone pass and... it's on to another day.

For one reason or another, the pain has substantially subsided.

My daughter gathered me up from the hospital with the twins in their baby seats in the back of the SUV and I returned to her house to rest. The twins were in no mood for rest. They wanted to play. So, grandpa sat on the couch and they took turns bouncing up and down, and climbing on me. I guided them ever so gently to prevent them from delivering a severe kick to my groin.

My condition improved sufficiently in the past day and a half that my appetite has returned. I ate a half bowl of soup and a banana yesterday. Today, I went all out, with a couple of slices of buttered toast, a banana and a dinner of meatballs with sauce and pasta. Bowel movements started immediately, which I considered a good sign.

With so many opiates in my system, however, my poops are hard as a rock and unstoppable once in motion.

When bath time neared for the kids, I decided that I was sober enough for the trip home. But, within 15 minutes of the 30 minute trip home, I realized I was in trouble. I had to poop. Not only did I have to poop, but I was going to poop no matter how hard I tried not to poop. With all the other various malfunctions in my plumbing, trying to hold back the poop would probably have undone what little driving skill I had left. My doctors had been telling me for a week to stop driving under the influence of opiates. Although they were undoubtedly right, I live in a rural area. Waiting out rides would lengthen a 30 minute trip to one that might take 3 hours.

Continence is a surprisingly large part of personal pride. Children enter the public world of kindergarten once they've learned to go potty. Giving up the potty for diapers is, or feels like, the first step out of the social world of adult life into the loss of personal autonomy that is the nursing home. I dreaded pooping my pants, more for what it symbolizes than for the immediate result.

The cleanup was no big deal. Threw everything into the washing machine. I've been cleaning poop off babies' and toddler's butts for three years, so nothing new there. I'm not incontinent... at least habitually... just this one time.

The great tragic/comedy of life entered a new stage. No doubt that I am entering the Final Act before the demise. At least, the pain has subsided dramatically. 

Dramatic Entrance at the ER!

My first kidney stone attack, and I knew what was happening immediately.  The pain quickly became unbearable. I called my daughter and asked her for a ride to the Kingston ER. By the time we arrived, I was gasping. I walked up to the reception desk and damned near collapsed. While I tried to convey my basic information, I was heaving.

"We'll take care of the pain first," the young woman doctor said. The RN put me on a morphine drip.

Massive doses of morphine eventually took the edge off the pain. I was completely incoherent, watching my vital signs on the board above my bed. My heart beat had dropped off the 45! My RN, pretty young black woman didn't seem very concerned, or at least as concerned a I wanted her to be.

"You're having a vagus nerve event," she explained. When you're in excruciating pain, the vagus nerve tried to shut your body down. Here's a little pic of the vagus nerve and the organs it services.

I spent all Saturday morning in the ER getting hydrated and saturated with pain killer. As I said, my black woman RN was quite attractive and I almost motivated myself to flirt with her. Every time I tried, the pain returned. We men are such animals!

For the past 4 days, I've slept 20 hours per day, tried to fill up on water, and I've eaten very little. My appetite is non-existent.

At my age (66), one always worries that the onset of a new disorder is the big one that will finally take me out. I missed Mass on Sunday, but I called and asked Father George to pray for me.

I hope the kidney stones don't become regular occurrences. My dad suffered from them. I don't think you can ever acclimate to the pain. Doctor says drink a lot of water and take my calcium and magnesium supplements.

Happy Easter!

The Good News today is that Christ has arisen!

Painting by Peter Paul Reubens (1577-1640).

Silence

How to silence one's mind? In the midst of an onslaught of media chatter, how does one find complete mental silence?

That has been my goal for Holy Week... to be free of the pointless chatter of controversy engendered by media.

I'm trying to attain this silence in a number of ways. I practice my yoga routine to this YouTube video of a Gregorian chant recitation of the Rosary in Latin.

I do not attain pure silence of the mind through this exercise because I count breaths during each yoga pose. The rosary is a meditation upon the divine male and the divine female. But, the necessity of counting and meditating does drive almost all distracting thoughts from my mind.

In this age of media glut, we pride ourselves on constant conflict and on having an opinion on almost every issue in every corner of the world. I am so tired of that. I want to focus solely on that which takes place near me and is actually pertinent to my needs and self-interest.

An interesting thought from an essay on silencing the mind

A deeper introspection reveals that in ordinary life, our thoughts usually dwell in the domain of the trivial and the mundane, are nurtured by culturally ingrained stereotypes and socially compatible conventions and go on rotating in what is best described by the Aurobindonian adage “The Wheel’s circling immobility”. We go on brooding over the past, trivialise the present and indulge in anticipating or day-dreaming about the future.

Over the past six months, I've returned to playing classical music on piano and organ. That is another discipline for silencing the cacophony of daily nonsense. Focusing on accurately playing the notes, correct fingering, and attempting to stay perfectly within the beat blocks out the background noise of daily life. Whenever I am really struggling to maintain my focus, when I am really drawn to angry conflict on the internet, I play my classical repertoire.

I begin with my scale practice... yet another routine for quieting my mind. Throughout my scale and classical practice, I most often use a metronome so that my attention is riveted in the here and now. 

I crave silence now. I often sit at my house in the Catskill Mountains for days without talking or communicating with anybody. When Myrna died, I was so terrified by the loneliness of her absence. As time has passed, I've accepted that I will never against experience the one-ness with another that I experienced with her and that I must learn to find contentment being alone and silent.

I have learned to be content with being alone. But silence of the mind continues to evade me.