Missing in (or out of) Action

After my serious attempt at restarting, I hav had some interruptions.   On March 1, while getting ready for church, I had a stroke.   Not a BIG stroke but big enough to make  some interruptions.  After four days in the hospital, they sent me home with a dragging left foot, a walker and a visiit every day or so with a therapist or a nurse.  a day or so later the checkked out some of the stuff from the hospital and put me back in for a catherization (where they go itough an artery into the middle of the heart and take pictures.)   they found a floppy valve, so I  went into another hospital where they took out the floppy valve and replaced it with a used one that had been removed from a cow.  I am now part cow, but have promised my wife not to moo in my sleep.  I plan to post fairly oftenif I can re-teach my fingers to find the “home keys” and thus quit having to erase long sequences of gibberish which included intlligible words while they in still in my fingers but found their way into gibberishe between key board and screen.   ANy way happy summer to you all.

still here insspite of anyhting modern medicine can see,m to do.

A stroke in March , and now a heart cauterization in APRIL.  I made it through the heart test with semi-flyng colorss.  All my arteries seem to be clear in spite of everyone’s expectations.  I seem to have a serious flopping heart valve that they ting I should have repaired soon, so we’ll see how that comes outs.  am sdchedled for serous rest for the next couple of days but will get back so sesrious posting ASAP.  Wish me well.

Here again =sort of

I started the return enthusiclly, but ran into a couple of snags.  On March 1 I got up and got ready for church, and as I was tying my tie, I felt a sharp  pain in my neck that seemed to run up inot my head and down to my feet.  I shook it off and finished the tie thing. but when I turned to get my jacket, my left foot seemed stuck to the floor.   As I tried to more it I discovered that my left leg was completely paralyzed.  I askd my wife to help me get to church, and she did, but we made a semi- spectacle and I realized that I had had a stroke.  

AFter a couple of days in the hospital where they shot me with blood thinners and told me I was stupid not to come to the hospital immediately because the three hour window in which a stroke is best treated was almost up.

I was diapered for the first time in my memory because Icouldnt get up stop urinate, and I was miserable and scared the heck out of my family.

I spent most of three days in the hospital. but they got my right leg to more on its own and using a walker I got home.

Things are still a bit weird, but with a rolling walker I can stand and walk, and yesterday, I got approval to drive the car, (but not by myself).

I will get back to the posting/blogging business as things even out, because there are some things that I wasn’t to write about while I still can.  I am pooped our right now though, so goodnight.

.  Richard

NOW, FOUR SCORE and less.

I haven’t posted for a long time and probably those who read me frequently have moved, died-or changed their names.  I ran out of ability to post when, in my ignorance of the internet began ot use a new email address without realizing that it was a gmail address, the my password on this email became my password for blogspot (a Google business and my password to this email  became the password for my blog.  When I tried to post the posts were refused.  At the same time I began to forget all kinds of things and some of my doctors decided I was a candidate of Alzheimers or some other mental mud puddle.  I am now taking all the things you see advertised on TV.  In the midst of all this, I figured out how to post so I will begin to do so with some regularity.  One of the things that happens when you become worried about your brain is that You begin to analyse what is going on around you in a number of   different ways, and ideas crop u[p that you cant to tell somebody about.  I did this on Facebook , but discovered that sometimes when you deal with things that seem serious to you, people, with whom you would like to stay in contact with unfriend you, and you don’t get any news from them any more.

Well, it is late and I am tired. I spent much of today with a doctor who is planning some esoteric nerve block in my left shoulder so that I can begin to shut the drivers side car door with my left hand instead of reaching across my body with my right hand.  Here’s to pain relief.

Richard.

Getting Old—or Older- Or

1. I started this thing about eight or nine years ago, thinking about recording the process of getting older.  Soon after I began, my brother started a blog about the same thing, calling it something like “Reflections of a Depression Baby”.   Before it got too deep, he passed away.  My brother in law, who was a computer expert,  did most of his computer business researching genealogy, but he started  losing his health, gradually leaving the computer, and last week he died.  Sometimes I wonder that I am still around.  Strangely enough, except for shoulders that give me pain all the time (My rotator cuffs are worn out.  The doctor recommended shoulder surgery –replacement- five or six years ago, and I decided I was too old for that stuff so I didn’t do it. If I had known how much worse the pain would get, I would have done it, but when I suggested, a couple of weeks ago, that I would like to reconsider, he told me that I am now too old and frail.), but strangely enough, except for the shoulders, I feel better than I have in a long time,

I worry a lot about my family (they in turn, worry about me).  My oldest son has passed away from lung cancer, another son is doing sell but he has the same problem with weight that I used to have (I have lost about eighty pounds in the last couple of years),  One daughter us coping with severe plantar fasciitis her delightful daughter just lost part of her leg from diabetes.  One grandson has been on a Mormon Mission for the last couple of years in Ukraine (In Donetsz  where things are very tense, so I have worried about him—I found out yesterday that he has been transferred to Mesa, Arizona, so I am less concerned about him.  I am taking care of another son’s delightful three legged dog while he fights through personal problems,  Roxy, the dog, loves to be taken on walks, but walking him is lkie walking a forty pound mosquito, he walks in every direction at the same time.  The secdnd time I  walked her she tipped me over and blacked my eye.  ( I was using my walker at the time, I have found that without the walker, I can control her for a short walk, and we are both exhausted but exhilarated when we are through,)

At any rate, as I get older ife is still interesting—what I can remember from day to day.  I was reading the diagnostic from my cardiologist the other day, and he states that “I  deny having any chest pains”, like he doesn’t believe me.  Getting older is certainly interesting.

Two posts in a week --wow

I once was a supporter of the Patriots Act and much that it included.  Recent events in my life have made me pretty cynical.  Without being too specific I have really become worried about the Homeland Security people. 

I am old enough to remember that there was a lot of resistance at the founding of the FBI There was a Constitutional argument about a national   police force vs local law enforcement so when the FBI was carefully limited to interstate crime, violation of Federal rather than local or state law, etc.  Any watcher of television has seen the tension arise between local law enforcement and the FBI when the FBI takes over a case that began in local jurisdiction (as well as the occasional relief felt by local law when the FBI has assumed jurisdiction when a case is going badly or when a serial killer is involved.

Homeland Security was sold to the public as an agency designed to protect the country from terrorists, spies and that sort of thing..

We are beginning to find Homeland Security involved with totally domestic crime and they are clearly not as careful of how they operate as are the local and state law enforcement.   Beyond Homeland Security, we see from the recent events in Nevada the Bureau of Land Management seems to have swat teams or military groups enforcing law with the appearance of military attack on US citizens.   WE have a Posse Comitatus (my spelling is down the tubes) that keeps the US army from enforcing the law within the borders of the US. but it seems  that the Federal Government is by passing the historical and constitutional basis of law enforcement and oozing toward a National Police Force of some kind or kinds.  When I think of a National Police Force it brings to mind the Gestapo or the NKVD….  Iiiiick  

Back again, back again jigety jigl

I haven’t posted for almost a year.  It isn’t that I havent’ had things to say, but I found myself doing something that I considered “whineing”, talking about my ailments and stuff like that.  I shifted over to face book and mostly commented on things that my former students and family had to say.  The other day I reflected on the reason I started the blog and remembered that it was an attempt to talk about the things that happen as one piles on the years—some of them funny some of them scary  and some, just stuff.

Among the things that have happened is that my typing skills have deteriorated a lot.  My hands get off the base keys and if I am not watching the screen as I type, up comes gobbledygook.  You may be faced with a decoding task.  Of course, as long as it has been since I posted, there is probably no one out there to read (which makes some of my weird thoughts safer)  

At any rate, I will be eighty in a couple of months, and neither the body nor the mind are as frisky as they were just a little while ago .  My various doctors are medicating me and testing me to see how fast and where my body and mind are going.   Everybody has memory lapses, but when you can’t remember the name of the person you called on the phone it is scaryl  The other day, I took out my upper plate, cleaned it in hot water, put it in its little case with a cleaning disk and went to bed.  When I got up in the morning, I went in the bathroom and found that the hot water was still running and we had no hot water for showers.  That sounds funny on the face of it, but what if I had been boiling eggs instead of washing teeth.  I could have burned down the house.   Things like that bring one up short.

I spent much of Tuesday this week up at the Medical College in Augusta having an MRI of my brain.  The neurologist is trying to find out if the problems in my brain come from atrophy, entropy, or have a physiological base. I am taking Chinese medicine pills  from my acupuncturist, and two kinds of pills from family doctor that are supposes to help the brain dead or dying.

I feel like I am in a dangerous world (think of Crimea and Russia and remember the parallel with Germany and Czechoslovakia and one wonders how long before world war III.)  I have no more shoulder rotator cuffs so my wife had to help me put on a coat or shirt,  with my neuropathy I can’t feel my feet and my balance is crummy so I fall down if I try to do much without a walker, but I am still married to the most wonder woman in the world,  five of my six children are living, and I have seven grand children and five great grandchildren. so it aint all bad.