being a good girl, flowers, another harbinger

You might remember I wrote about getting rid of a few pieces of Pam’s furniture including the old cash register chest that she used for jewelry of which my sister had a lot. The day I published that post I got an email from a reader who lives in the city that wanted to purchase it. We struck a deal and she’s coming out today to pick it up.

The weather has continued to stay out of the 90s, overcast today with rain predicted off and on the first part of the week, with lows in the 60s and next weekend two nights maybe even in the 50s! So says the weather app but we know how quickly the forecast can change. Such a contrast to last summer which was brutally hot and dry and lasted for months, even into October. Another sign the season is changing…

The yard is liking these less hot temperatures and a few things are blooming…the plumbago, the morning glory bush, a few double orange day lilies are have a resurgence, a white rain lily popped up.

A few scattered cosmos blooms but they haven’t put on their full bloom yet. They are taking over the flower bed they’re in and so I’m going to have to get aggressive when they finish blooming and pulling up next year’s volunteers to keep them in their end of the bed. 

I’m still being a good girl and not doing anything so we’ve been streaming From on Prime. It’s from the same people that did Lost and is similar in many ways while being completely different. The first season was due to stop being available yesterday and having started it before my procedure we powered through the rest of the 10 episodes and are now into season 2. The premise is a nightmarish town surrounded by a forest where the residents are trapped, any attempt to leave circles them right back to the town, where they try to survive from creatures that come out at night and other spooky things while trying to find a way out. The residents have come from all over the US who are out traveling when they encounter a fallen tree across the road. When they turn around the road leads them to the town.

Today and two more days of basically sitting on my butt and then I go volunteer at SHARE on Thursday. And yoga Thursday night and then Monday I begin to start back to my normal life. I should avoid strenuous exercise for several weeks the All Knowing Oracle tells me. I looked up strenuous exercise...running, jogging, swimming, dancing vigorously, aerobics, biking, jumping rope, basketball, tennis, etc, none of which I do. Some forms of yoga can fall into that category but not what I do so I think I'm safe starting back up. 

over the hump

I think I turned a corner Sunday. I did not start the tomato sauce but I did get the biggest room in the house vacuumed…all good. Cleaned up after breakfast…all good. Drank lots of water, got up and moved around between episodes of GoT, picked up four more handfuls of sticks, did some yoga before bedtime…all good. I did still have some episodes but they were low key, infrequent, and ended fairly quickly.  

Monday was even better. I had one episode in the morning when I received a message from the neurosurgeon’s patient portal addressing a message I had sent two weeks ago when I was worried about whether or not my insurance would cover my appointment or any procedures by him, an issue I resolved that same week so I called their office and was reassured that all was well, they already had approval for my appointment next Monday. And then the afib stopped and I don’t think I had any other episodes besides maybe a blip or two all day.

And so I put myself to the test and cleaned the bathtub and the three walls that surround it. It was really horrible and really needed to be done and even after that vigorous activity, all was well. And I drove to El Campo for yoga class Monday night. The restriction on not lifting anything heavier than 10 pounds has passed and so I am back to my regular activity, which now that it’s summer does not include doing anything out in the yard for most of the day, basically an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening.

So, a month or so ago, little moths started showing up in the house, more and more as the days went on. Could not figure out where the fuck they were coming from. Checked the pantry, nope. Could not think of any other possible source. Well, when I vacuumed the big room, my office/workplace in the house, I found the source. Right before the place that buys/sells/cracks pecans closed towards the end of February I took one last bucket of pecans from the box I withheld when I sold mine and had them cracked but I never shelled them. I was so over shelling pecans by that time so they have just been sitting under the small work table. When I bumped the bucket with the vacuum cleaner a flurry of little moths rose up. Damn. Carried it outside and dumped it under the bird feeder for the birds and squirrels. Later I saw a young squirrel very timidly approach the pile and finally pick one up and started eating. I still have a bunch of moths in the house but at least they’re a declining population now.

My grandson was here when I got back from yoga last night. He’s coming back this evening after he gets off work to fix our truck which has been dead since a pulley that has something to do with the power steering, I think, fell off. I’ll be glad to have my truck back so I can move all those piles of sticks over to the burn pile at one time instead of multiple trips with the garden cart. I gave him my canoe a couple of weeks ago finally putting the last nail in the coffin of my guide and river running days even though it’s been maybe two decades since I’ve been on the water. It’s been leaning against the side of the barn for most of that time and the thwarts rotted and one of the supports for the seats as well. He’s going to make a trade with a woodworker to replace all that in exchange for mechanic work. Once he gets the canoe back in shape I’m going to get him to take me out in it this fall on a nearby lake. 

Since Mikey has it now, this is a picture off the Old Town website of what my boat looked like new only mine had cane seats, not webbing.

I don’t know where all my river days pictures are. I found one folder with a few. This is on the Pecos River and that's me running a rapid. 

This one is hiking in Boquillas Canyon on the Rio Grande in Big Bend.

Marc and I on a different trip on the Pecos River.

Oh, those were the days.

not so good at time management, unexpected rain, and please don't ask me to lead

It's becoming apparent that I can do little drawings or I can work on designs and models for the cast glass. This latest one took two days. Mostly because I waste a lot of time. One day for the drawing, one day for the coloring. This one is 4 1/2".

Also, I had a mountain of dirty dishes in the kitchen. I did make a little progress on the full size drawing for a new panel and started thinking about the hummingbird piece I'm supposed to be doing for a friend. And when I say 'little', I mean tiny.

And oh joy and surprise! It rained yesterday afternoon! Not as much as we need but enough to give everything a good dousing and to cool it off a bit. I had told myself I would get out there and weed one of the flower beds next time it rained and so I did this morning and while I wouldn't exactly characterize it as cool, it was definitely not hot. So yeah, I got muddy before I even had any coffee! And yes the edge of the flower bed is in desperate need of trimming And yes, it's not only hot out there now but steamy to boot.

Another short day today, my second yoga class of the week. Abby, our instructor, won't be there as she is on vacation this week, but the girls meet anyway, taking turns to lead different poses. Last week while discussing Abby's coming absence they wanted to know if I was going to come Wednesday, which I told them I would if everyone else is going to show since I didn't want to make the 25 minute drive and then be the only one. No, no, we'll all come. I hope they don't want me to lead the class because while I can do the poses, I'm not a great leader and I have no desire to spend my day coming up with a routine. The reason I go to class is so that I don't have to decide what poses in what order.

Plus, I've been dealing with some muscle pain and aches in the biceps of my right arm and to a much lesser degree my left arm. It's been going on for more than a month, some days ache worse than others and when I get a day that is relatively pain free, why then I go do something that uses those muscles and boom, the next day my arm is complaining. Since it's not going away on it's own I guess I'm going to have to take steps. First on the list of remedies is a massage. If that doesn't help, the chiropractor and if that doesn't produce results I guess I'm going to have to go to the doctor and submit to tests. I don't think it's a torn rotator cuff (I looked it up) but there is definitely something going on in my shoulder/upper arm.

more stuff that isn't about the job

It never seems to fail that I finish whatever book I am reading either Friday or Saturday nights usually in the wee hours. This time it was Friday night. So no going to the library since I work on Saturday and they are closed by the time I lock up. I am once again on overload from FB so no entertainment there. I don't really watch TV but Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back is on so there is that.

My wound continues to heal. I got my stitches out a week ago last Wednesday and the doctor was satisfied with the healing process. The point of entry and the most jagged side was pulling apart so he put surgical tape strips over it but by five days later it was looking pretty icky since it continued to seep and weep and ooze icky stuff that had no way out so I took the tape off and cleaned it up. 

But since the most jagged side still wasn't completely stitched back together, I put on three strips which I wore for another 5 days. 

I took those off last Friday. So now it's mostly the point of entry that is still healing and I may not have much of a scar beyond a small triangle. We'll see.

Our bodies are pretty amazing things. Meat suits, as my friend Dee calls them, organic ever evolving renewing regenerating (to a point, we don't regrow things that get cut off) repairing healing...alive, the vehicle that allows the mind to interact with the physical world...breath, circulation, elimination, sustenance. Strong and fragile all at the same time. They grow, mature, wear out, and release the rider.

One thing I didn't mention about meeting up with Dana last week was that the butterflies were migrating through that area. I must have killed hundreds driving up there and back. I really hate driving when the butterflies are migrating. Birds get it and will get out of the way but butterflies, well, maybe they just aren't fast enough. I kept exhorting them to fly higher, fly higher. I was out in the yard earlier and there was a frittilary, a big bright yellow sulfur, a long wings, and then a swallowtail fluttered up and another big sulfur. 

   

I've never before seen that many different butterflies in the yard out here at the same time so maybe my gardening is starting to take hold. I've been trying to plant for bees and butterflies.

The skies have been pretty dramatic the last couple of weeks.

And then this happened.

And I guess I lied because here's a picture of Marc's progress on the first panel as of the end of day Sunday.

And the second panel with the stencil cut and marked.

biopsy and the selfie

Early September, I had an appointment with the dermatologist to look at a spot on my nose that had a tendency to bleed. Not often, maybe a couple times a year.

I had already been to her previously about it about 4 years ago. She looked at it and determined it to be a vein that had migrated to the surface. Sounded plausible to me. She gave it a shot of that freezey stuff and it went away. For over two years. But then it came back so I made another appointment.

She sliced it off and sent it in to be biopsied. The results were basal cell carcinoma and she wanted me back in for further treatment. I've had one of those before and have a small circular scar beside my nose under my right eye because the dermatologist I went to back then wanted to send me to a plastic surgeon to have it cut out and stitched up so it wouldn't leave a scar. I declined. This current one healed into a nice little divot on the end of my nose.

My follow-up appointment was Wednesday. Before the doctor came in, the nurse?, attendant?, said the doctor would either scrape and burn or use a medication and I needed to sign this consent form first. Personally, I thought going to the doctor to get treated was consent but, whatever.

Anyway, the doctor, who is a really nice young thing, came in and said there was still some bad tissue, that the biopsy had not got it all and I actually had three options...scrape and burn which would leave a bigger deeper divot on the tip of my nose, I could use a medication that costs $800 (yeah, that was my reaction too), or she could use a little tool to take a deeper plug out of my nose and then stitch it up which would leave a little line of a scar. The cost of that was barely more than my first visit with the biopsy.

So that is what she did. She injected the spot with a deadener, much like the dentist does, waited for it to numb up, used that little tool to extract a plug of tissue, and then stitched it up. Then she put a spot bandaid on it which wasn't doing a very good job since it was still weeping blood and the ends of the sutures were sticking out (I was holding a mirror).

She took the little bandaid off and I got a good look at her handiwork. I have a little spider with wonky legs. Seems appropriate for the season. I'll just tell everyone I got my nose pierced and this is my stud.

I told her I didn't need a bandaid, that I was fine but she insisted.

It will make me look bad if you walk through the waiting room bleeding.

Because a 3" long bandaid starting on my cheek and over my nose, tucked into my nostril, looks so much better.

But I can take this off, right?

Which I did as soon as I got in the car.

earth day

Image via http://blog.sfgate.com/sfmoms/2009/02/02/where-can-kids-get-their-hands-dirty/

Today is Earth Day and instead of my annual screed against plastic, that all pervasive material that does not biodegrade but only breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces causing birds and fish to starve to death, creates islands of trash in the oceans, fills our landfills to the point where our trash has to be shipped out elsewhere, and leaches toxic chemicals into the food and drink stored in them; we're gonna get dirty.


But first...

We already recycle everything...plastics # 1 – 5 and 7, paper and cardboard, aluminum and tin and steel and glass. We compost our kitchen waste. We take our own shopping bags to the store. We buy products in glass containers preferably. We wash out and reuse ziplock bags. We don't buy products that are over packaged and the two of us still end up with a large size grocery store plastic bag of trash about every four or five days and most of it is plastic or is coated with plastic.

OK. I had to get a little one in there.

This year I'm thinking more about the earth and our connection to it and how, as we separate ourselves from it more and more, we suffer physical and emotional ailments. I've thought for a while now that the human race is going insane from this modern life and our immune systems are suffering. Surrounded by concrete and buildings and artificial lighting, we spend our days and nights in artificially conditioned air, rarely coming into contact with the natural world.

Oh, the cities have parks and green spaces and the occasional tree studded along the sidewalks but mostly we only see them as we zip by in our cars, our lives too rushed to take the time to stand amongst the beauty of nature, barefoot, in actual physical contact with the planet, to breath in the scent of growing things.

We seem to have forgotten that we are not separate from nature, that we evolved out in the natural world and that our health and well being is still dependent on continued contact with the earth.

We prevent our children from playing outside out of fear of injury or lack of time to supervise them, we discourage them from getting dirty. We tamper with our food spraying it with poisons or genetically modifying it or adding chemicals and colors that were never meant to be ingested. We sterilize our environments with anti-bacterial cleaners. We eschew any kind of physical labor or exertion preferring a machine to do the work. We pump pollutants in the the very air we breath and the water that is essential for life.

The result is that although we have conquered certain diseases like small pox and polio, we have seen cancer, asthma, allergies, autism, diabetes, obesity, and depression, among others, skyrocket. Our immune systems are compromised. We are living longer but are we living healthier when we have to take a handful of pharmaceuticals everyday to maintain the balance of life?

Finally, studies are being done to show how dependent we are on the natural world for our health and well being, something that I have known instinctively, something that we should all know instinctively.

In the last several years I have read articles about studies supporting the importance of contact with the earth. Most basically is our immune system. We need to be exposed to bacteria and dirt to be healthy. It is how our immune system builds up it's defenses to disease and illness, how it learns to ignore germs and pollens.

The lungs of toddlers who don't go outside to run and play and instead are kept quietly indoors do not develop fully and are much more likely to develop asthma. Children who don't go outside to run and play and get dirty have weakened immune systems and tend to get sick from every bug they meet. Girls especially are at risk of this because while our society expects boys to go and rough and tumble in the dirt, we expect little girls to be clean, quiet, and lady-like.

Another recent study has shown how important dirt is to our emotional health as well. There is a bacteria in the soil that helps produce serotonin in our brains. Working in the soil, getting dirty, gives us a natural high. We feel better about the quality of our lives and are happier. Working in the soil has always been my favorite part of gardening and now I know why. But even a simple romp in the park will help you with the beneficial effects of dirt.

Most important is how we have adulterated our food supply. It wasn't enough to turn our food into a chemical soup, now we are genetically modifying it to disastrous results. Study after study is linking GMO foods to infertility, immune system disfunction, accelerated aging among other things. Europe has started banning GMOs but unfortunately the US is still being bought by the GMO big business.

So go outside today. Embrace your Mother, literally. Get dirty and start a garden. Boost your immune system, eat real food, be happy and healthy.

Remember...refuse, reuse, recycle.

links to previous earth day posts and anti-plastic rants:

2010 earth day

2011 earth day

2011 plastic awareness challenge

2011 death by plastic

links to articles referred to above:

GMO health risks

get dirty to get joy

chemicals in plastics linked to obesity and diabetes

hospital bill

We got our bill from the hospital for the emergency room treatment I received the night I got snake bit.

Right here is a perfect example of why I resisted going to the emergency room.  This is also a perfect example of how our health care system in this country is broken. We are uninsured, though that doesn't necessarily mean unable to pay for general treatment as long as it is reasonably priced for value received.

It's the catastrophic things that would do us in, but as I understand it, the catastrophic things undo you financially whether you are insured or not.

We arrived at the emergency room 6:30ish and they started the process of sending me home about 11:30.  During that time the doctor examined my foot, they drew blood for tests and hooked me up to an IV, started fluids, gave me a tetanus shot,  hauled my ass to the bathroom when I had to pee, gave me the minimum dose of morphine, drew more blood, doctor came in and talked to me, more morphine, and sent me home.

Because we are uninsured, they voluntarily brought us the paperwork for the charity that helps pay for medical care and they did, in fact, pay for most of it, or rather, most of the amount was deducted from the final bill. (I don't know if I will get a separate bill from the doctor, haven't so far, but I do know that that is SOP.)

Here's the bill:

Description                               Unit                                 Amount

Tubing admin 2C6537                  1                                     $119.50

I think this must be for act of giving me the IV

Tubing ext 2 N3378                     1                                      $21.25

this is for when they drew blood the second time

SOD CHLOR INJ 10MLAM          4                                     $81.00 (20.25 ea)

they injected a small amount of sterile saline solution in my IV prior to giving me pain meds and I guess they used it the two times they drew blood as well

HYDROCODONE 5MG                4                                     $37.00 (9.25 ea)

contrast the exact same pills we bought at the pharmacy the next day 15 for $12 (80¢ ea)

VENIPUNCTURE                         1                                     $13.39

the needle for the second blood draw

CREATINE KINASE                      1                                     $233.50

blood test looking for an enzyme or the effects of the enzyme important in muscle contraction

TSH                                             1                                     $337.25

blood test looking for thyroid hormone levels because I am on meds for that but when I get my blood test done at the doctor's office, this test with a cholesterol test usually runs me about $150 including the visit to get my blood drawn

CBC W/ AUTO DIFF                   2                                     $428.00 (214.00 ea)

complete blood count including the different types of white blood cells, done by a machine

PROTIME                                   2                                     $231.50 (115.75 ea)

blood test to determine how long it takes blood to clot

ER VISIT LEVEL 3                        1                                      $962.75

apparently if they take you back and put you in a room you've automatically racked up nearly $1000

IV INF HYDR EA ADD HR          4                                      $762.00 (190.50 ea)

intravenous nutritional fluids which they have listed as 4 but they only used one bag so maybe it's not priced by the bag but by the hour

IMMUNIZATION ADM 1 VACC   1                                      $97.75

I think this is the charge for giving me the tetanus shot, for the act of sticking the needle in my arm and pushing the plunger

KIT IV PREP                               1                                      $46.25

the stuff they used to give me the IV

CATHLON 20GA                        1                                      $66.50

I think this must be the tubing that went with the IV and nutritional fluids

TD INJ, 7YR/>                            1                                      $48.75

the actual tetanus/diphtheria vaccine

MORPHINE 2MG/ML TUBEX     2                                    $19.50 (9.75 ea)

the pain meds injected in the IV

SALINE 1000ML 2B 1324             1                                     $171.75

not sure as there is already a charge for saline solution, perhaps this is the actual stuff and the previous charge listed for was the act of using it. seems pricey for sterile salt water

COMPRE METABOLIC PANEL      1                                   $472.50

blood work for kidney function, liver function, and electrolytes

CK MB                                         1                                    $288.25

another blood test for creatine kinase but more specifically involving the heart muscle as it relates to myocardial infarction

TROPONIN QUANT                   1                                      $295.75

blood test for three regulatory proteins of the heart muscle

FIBRINOGEN ACTIVITY              2                                     $287.00 (143.50 ea)

a blood test for the protein that is essential for blood clot formation

PTT                                            2                                      $293.00 (146.50)

another test to see how long it takes blood to clot

TX/DX IVP EA ADD SAME          1                                      $83.00

some sort of re-do of the item listed below?

TX/DX IVP INIT DRUG               1                                      $323.25

if I've decoded this one correctly it means treatment/diagnosis IVP - intravenous pyelogram is a type of x-ray examination specifically designed to study the kidneys, bladder, and ureters by injecting a dye into a vein. They DID NOT do this.

PATIENT PAYMENT CHECK                                             - $100.00

TOTAL CHARGES                                                               $5,720.39

FINANCIAL MEANS ASSISTANCE                                     - $5,148.35

ACCOUNT BALANCE DUE FROM PATIENT                        $ 472.04

So, my father was a pathologist and I know that these standard blood tests are done by machines. Yes, they need the lab techs to put the blood in the vials or tubes or whatever and put them in the machines and push the start buttons, but these are basically automated actions. There is no legitimate reason for these common tests to cost so much. Judging by the fact that they charged me $9.25 for a pill we paid 80¢ for at the pharmacy and the almost $150 for the tetanus shot and the $337 for TSH (thyroid) that costs me less than half that and includes a cholesterol panel as well when I get it done at the doctor's office, I think I can say with certainty that these charges are way over-blown.  Not to mention the $400 in charges for something I don't think they did.

And they wonder why poor people can't pay their medical bills.

update

Wednesday (today) about mid-day.

On the ninth day (Wednesday) after the bite, this morning I was able to start hobbling around unaided by bearing my weight on my heel. I've been mobile more or less since last Saturday when Marc ran down some crutches for me, but my leg and foot was still pretty swollen. Today, my leg from the knee up is feeling good, swelling down and skin no longer sensitive to the touch. From the knee down, the swelling is mostly gone and the skin sensitivity is mostly from mid-calf down. Ankle and foot still swollen but not nearly as bad. But it's all discolored. My calf is a sick shade of yellow green while my foot is an unhealthy shade of reddish brown with some weird red splotches that showed up several days ago.

Tuesday evening.

Of course, the snake bite sort of put the monkey wrench into our plans for getting the city house ready for our son and DIL who are scheduled to arrive on Saturday, so nothing more has been done...no repaired floor, no second toilet, no repaired plumbing under the bathtub, no unstopped kitchen sink, no furniture moved around or boxes and left over stuff figured out what to do with.

Next week is going to be pretty stressful while we try to organize the house, get them unloaded, figure out what to do with all the crap we still have there at the city house, and get ready for a meeting next Wednesday with the people we have been negotiating with for the two 20' x 9' walls.

This will be our first face to face, meeting with 2 representatives from the international company whose building these will go in, the project manager, the graphic artist, and the lady I have been dealing with re the proposals and samples. They want to meet us, see the shop where the work will be done, work out design details, and generally assure them that we are competent to do the work. I have no idea when they will fund the projects though but I hope it's before the weather gets too unbearably hot as the shop we will be working in will not be air conditioned.

We will have a lot of preparation to do also to get the warehouse ready for us to work in that I've made arrangements about with my installer, a large space and men available to help move the panels around. We are considering building a temporary blast booth there as well so we don't have to truck the stenciled panels over to our shop for blasting, which means moving our large heavy air compressor over there. But since it will be the first decent job we have had in the last couple of years, we're not complaining.