almost over, bloomers, and the Fourth

the buddha is reminding me to keep it serene

I’m bored. All this waiting for this procedure and that procedure and then recovering from this or that or preparing for this or that, trying to stay as healthy and hydrated as possible before and after, not getting over tired or heat stressed or dehydrated. I want my veins and arteries as plump as possible for all this. I don’t ordinarily mind getting hot and sweaty, getting out in the yard and weeding and watering and pulling out gone by stuff and pruning back and fertilizing with rolled up bandana for a headband, hat and another bandana for wiping off the sweat on the rest of my face. I’ll come in hair drenched, headband soaked and sit under the fan while drinking cold water til I cool off enough to take a shower. But basically the last six weeks all I allow myself is 45 minutes to an hour first thing in the morning and then the rest of the day just sitting around reading or playing games on my phone or streaming some show or other. All well and good but I’m used to being more active and the yard has gone almost completely feral. And the shop yard and Pam’s plantings, totally. If it weren’t for for Joe and Mary who come mow and trim over there twice a month it would be up to my chin. And even so the wild grape vines, virginia creeper, poison ivy, and briar are making great headway. 

Finally, I’m approaching the end. Tomorrow is the pre-op, some bloodwork and I don’t know what else, for the cerebral angiogram scheduled for next Tuesday, four days from now, as well as the pre-op for the Watchman procedure the following Monday which entails another transesophageal ultrasound to measure that little pocket or bulge off the left atria of my heart that the procedure will close off, preventing blood from pooling and clotting in there, so that they have the proper size screen, not too small, not too big. So another dip into twilight sleep for that.

The heat lovers are blooming…the rangoon creeper is coming into full bloom, the mexican bird of paradise which had a rough start with some sort of deformity has recovered and is blooming, the pink plumerias, and the night blooming cereus is putting on buds.

Tuesday night the evening air had a pink or orange quality to it, couldn’t decide which, so pinky orange. 

Of course, it’s the Fourth of July today. I've put out the flag. It may be the last true Fourth of July if Trump gets elected again considering the Supreme Court’s disastrous ruling about presidential immunity from prosecution of criminal conduct regarding ‘official acts’, which they did not define, all to protect one man. Trump is already calling for military tribunals and jailing of his perceived enemies; Liz Cheney, President Biden and VP Harris, Schumer, and Pence specifically. He’s made no bones about using the DoJ to retaliate against his detractors and still talks about rounding up millions of residents and putting them in detention camps, giving Ukraine to Putin and promising to prevent nations bordering Russia from being admitted to NATO. And so many things so much worse. Essentially, what the Supreme Court has done is remove all the guardrails that the Founders put up to prevent a president from becoming a de facto king. And those bastards on the Court deciding this issue, during their confirmation hearings, claimed that this nation was based on the rule of law and no one, not even presidents, is above the law.

I’ll leave you with the last paragraph of Heather Cox Richardson’s newsletter from July 2, 2024:

“The Second Day of July 1776, will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America,” Massachusetts delegate John Adams wrote to his wife, Abigail, on July 3. While we celebrate the signing of the final form of the declaration two days later, the adoption of the Lee Resolution marked the delegates’ ultimate conviction that a nation should rest not on the arbitrary rule of a single man and his hand-picked advisors, but on the rule of law.

the week in review

rangoon creeper

I can’t believe it’s Saturday, that a week has gone by without a post or even time to read others and comment. I wrote the following yesterday with every intention of getting it posted, and this is kind of long, but we all know about good intentions and the road to hell. Not that I’m on the road to hell, at least I hope not or not yet anyway.

It’s been a busy week and I was gone three out of the last four days. Monday I went with my friend to her two doctor appointments in Galveston, a two hour drive from here. M was diagnosed with breast cancer last April and it has proved to be aggressive and spreading and they have yet to start any treatment. She’s had every type of scan and imaging you can imagine and more than once, just a constant series of doctors’ appointments. Usually her husband accompanies her but he needed to work so she asked if I would keep her company. I said yes and we left at 7 AM. Now she needs another biopsy, this time on spots in her lung and another lymph node. She met with the oncologist last Tuesday and they finally signed all the paperwork to start chemo in July. My own heart and brain problems pale in comparison. 

Speaking of which, I removed the heart monitor yesterday morning, boxed it up and sent it back. It had come with 4 sensor strips and I ended up using three of them. When I removed the last one in the shower Thursday morning this is what my skin looked like…

and these were supposed to be the ones for sensitive skin. It’s shiny because I had put antibiotic ointment on it before I took the picture. I’m glad I only had to wear it for a week.

Tuesday was grocery shopping for the week and my night to fix dinner. I made tostadas and a mango/peach/a little orange juice fruit salad.

I had a follow up appointment with the electrophysiologist Wednesday morning. He’s still not happy with my blood pressure even though it’s not terribly high so added another med to help bring it down some before the two upcoming procedures. He didn’t want to increase the dose of the one I have been taking because he felt it would slow my heartbeat too much. I asked him if I would still have to take the afib medication, too soon to tell, he said. Maybe lower the dose I asked, too soon to tell and really it’s only been a little over three weeks since the ablation. Feels like it’s been longer.

I usually get in within 30 minutes when I go see him but once in a while it takes longer. Wednesday was one of the long waits and it’s a small waiting room, only 10 chairs for two doctors and about half the people bring a spouse or adult child. My appointment was for 10:45 and I got the last empty chair and then a constant stream of people started coming. Nowhere to sit so they waited out in the hall. I have no idea why they were so backed up but it happens. Maybe there was an emergency earlier, who knows. I had brought a book so I just sat and quietly read while I waited. After a while an old guy with a walker (most of the patients were old and using walkers or canes this day) and his daughter came in and sat down and then another old guy with his walker and his wife with her walker came in. He sat in the only available chair and she went out in the hall. There was already one lady grumbling about the wait to whoever would listen and then this guy came in and he talked non-stop and LOUD, engaging the woman and the guy with his daughter and two other men waiting, talking about their individual heart problems and bitching about everything, the doctors scheduling too many people and making them wait eventually getting around to the bullshit nobody wants to work cause the government pays them to stay home (a total MAGAt). I just wanted to yell would you please SHUT UP! I mean, really, every time there was a lull of a minute I’d think finally and then that old fart would start up again about something else. I could have told you his whole life story, his medical history, and everything else he didn’t like if I’d have paid attention. I didn’t get in the room til 12:30 and was so thankful for the peace and quiet.  On my way home Abby texted me to see if I would lead the class that night so I did that.

Thursday of course was SHARE and then three errands and always feeding the not so wild wildlings every day unless I get Robin to do it for me, and yoga. Wednesday when I went to feed them Minnie slipped out and ran over. I always leave her at home because she will want to chase the kitties when I’m there to feed them. But she was a good dog so I’ve been letting her come with me the last two days albeit on a leash which I hook around a post to get her used to the kitties and the kitties used to her. 

Twin trying to keep cool under the back porch

I refused to watch the debate Thursday night, it would just have made me angry, waited instead to read about what people were saying. Apparently part of the rules were that the moderators would not fact check the candidates in real time which allowed Trump to lie relentlessly. And I read that Biden had a cold but got better as it went. if all people are going to look at is how they looked and spoke instead of what they said it does look bad. Biden is a measured and thoughtful speaker while Trump is bombastic and everything he said was a lie, projecting his own criminality and intentions on Biden, took credit for things that Biden has accomplished, continually trashed the country, didn't answer any of the questions. I don't think either candidate lost any votes, or gained any for that matter, as a result but I do wish certain democrats and news outlets would stop harping on Biden’s age. Trump is 78, so basically just as old as Biden, and in recognizable severe cognitive decline and if he gets elected again he will also be in his 80s during his term. Why does no one ever point that out? They want Biden to step aside and allow another candidate except there’s a big problem with that. No one else is running. It doesn’t matter who you would prefer or support, if that person doesn’t want the job you can’t make them be the candidate just because you want it. Everyone that has been suggested has said no, they support Biden. Fortunately, this is early still and will be long forgotten. And Biden on Friday gave a speech to a group where he admitted he may not debate as well or speak as strongly as in the past but he knew one thing, he knew how to tell the truth. Perhaps if he had prefaced his performance in the debate with ‘folks, I’m still recovering from a cold I got in Europe last week so forgive my raspy voice’, certain democrats wouldn’t have gone into a tailspin. His speech on Friday when he wasn’t being bombarded by one lie after another proved that Biden is still the man we need. Let’s give him the House and a bigger margin in the Senate so that he can finish what he has started and then a younger candidate can carry it on next.

red periwinkles

 

creeper, monitor, and unwelcome house guests

The rangoon creeper, always one of the last things to come back after freezing to the ground, has finally started to bloom.

I’m starting this post with a picture because FB had removed three of my posts updating on all these medical procedures for going against their community standards accusing me of trolling for likes and sympathy. What?! The one thing they had in common was no photo. 

The first tropical storm of the season, Alberto, has been causing flooding all along the Gulf Coast. We’ve had rain every day this week so far with Wednesday raining all day but fortunately is was just a gentle rain with occasional bouts of heavier rain and really really windy all week. My neighbor Gary says we’ve gotten some over 4” cumulative this week. Only a 42% chance of rain today so we probably won’t get any. Oops, I take that back. It's raining.

The heart monitor came late Wednesday afternoon so I didn’t attach it until Thursday morning before SHARE, getting up a half hour earlier than usual to make sure I had enough time to get it on and functioning. This will be the fourth time I’ve worn a heart monitor and all the previous times it was the kind with multiple leads attached to a box that had to be worn in a pouch around your neck. This time though it’s one lead with the monitor attached to it, so no wires, and a phone.

The monitor sends the data to the phone and the phone sends the data to the doctor. And it’s waterproof so nothing has to be detached to shower. The phone needs to be within 10 feet of the monitor so I can just keep it in a pocket or set it on a table nearby. This is so much better! Also, the Watchman procedure to get me off the blood thinner has been scheduled for after the angiogram since trying to get them both done the same day would have been a scheduling nightmare and involving two different buildings and I’ll have to go under general anesthesia again and spend the night in the hospital with another week of recovery. I’ll be glad when these last two procedures are done and if the angiogram does show an aneurysm, just have to face/deal with that. Though if it shows no aneurysm, taking a blood thinner shouldn’t be a problem except it’s a fucking expensive drug and even with Medicare it costs about $140 a month ($700 a month if I had to buy it over the counter). So, we’ll see.

The weirdest thing happened this morning. I have two hooks that I hang my yoga clothes and day clothes on when I go to bed. When I got up this morning and put on my capri length leggings I felt a couple of little pinches. What the hell? Stuck my hand down in there and felt something so I took them off, turned them inside out and there were ants in my pants! Checked every piece of clothing hanging on those hooks and there were ants in every single one of them. Looked all around and did not see any ants anywhere else. I have no idea how they got in my clothes or why they were in my clothes.

And last, oh joy, I discovered I have a nest of armadillos under my house. Went out with Minnie yesterday afternoon and she ran straight to one of the openings to the crawl space and started barking hysterically. 

When I could get her to stop and pulled her away I saw two little armadillo faces poking out and the ground around one of the azaleas was thoroughly rooted through this morning. 

Ordinarily I don't mind critters under the house, I usually have possums living under there but armadillos can carry leprosy, though as long as I don’t eat them or have one as a pet in the house, I should be fine. Still, I don’t really want armadillos nesting under my house and I have no idea how to get rid of them as they are nocturnal animals. If I was on a slab I could just flood their burrow and when they ran out fill it in and while half the house is on a slab, that's not where I saw them.

disturbing dream and anxious anticipation

Wednesday night as I was laying in bed I was thinking about my sister, about her ability to see ghosts, mostly strangers that gathered around. She would never engage them and could block off that part of her consciousness or psyche or whatever part of her that allowed her to see when it became too disturbing. Her husband appeared to her three times after he died that I know of, there was a ghost cat that she could feel jumping onto her bed at one of the houses she had lived in, a poltergeist that threw things off her wall once, and she told me one time she saw our father walking down the beach where our family beach house was after he had died suddenly from a stroke, the same way that she had died. I was thinking about all this and wondering why her and not me and why had she not come to visit me, you know, just to say goodbye at least. Anyway these were my thought when I went to sleep. This is the dream I was having when I woke up Thursday morning crying:

My sister and I were at a restaurant for breakfast to discuss something. The first table was too noisy so we moved to another table in the back where a man was already sitting. We were talking and the man made a comment about our conversation sort of supporting what we were talking about. It was still noisy so we moved to another table in front. The server came to take our order. My sister ordered french toast. Looking over the menu I couldn’t decide so I just said to bring me french toast too but before our food came we decided to leave and go to her apartment (this was a place where she had never lived in life). Later in her apartment we were sitting on the floor and talking and she was being very unkind towards me. I got up and walked over to the table. I said to her, you don’t like me very much do you and she said no, which really hurt. She told me to call our aunt (someone I do not know in life, all three of our aunts have been dead for sometime) who was at my house and see if she wanted to come there and give some input to the funeral we were planning so I went in the next room and called her and when I was trying to give her directions on how to find the building my sister’s apartment was in my sister grabbed the phone away from me and gave our aunt the directions as if I was incapable of being clear. Then a woman and her two kids, a young boy and a younger girl, a neighbor in the apartment next door, came in and the boy was just a wild child running around and yelling. I told him to stop bothering me and he punched me in the stomach with a stick like a broom or mop pole. Leave me alone I shouted and left the apartment to wait for my aunt outside. The little girl followed me out the door and into the vestibule and gave me a hug, never saying anything and then went back in the apartment. I continued outside and when my aunt arrived she had brought my dog Minnie who was being a happy dog greeting the other people out there like she does. We headed back in to my sister’s apartment walking through two vestibules, one after the other, and when we went in my sister’s apartment she was having a big party like maybe a Christmas party. There was candy and other refreshments on the table. Everybody was having a good time except for me. I was very sad. My sister asked me if I wanted her to get Minnie but not in a way that conveyed caring, more like indifference, and I told her no, she would just bother everyone and be underfoot and I started crying. 

That’s when I woke up and I was crying and so sad. I couldn’t believe my sister had been so mean to me and it took some effort to stop crying after I woke up. Had to tell myself that was not my sister in the dream although to be honest, she could be pretty condescending when people didn’t behave the way she thought they should and she had lashed out at me than once when she thought I was butting into something she thought was her prerogative. To her credit, she would usually apologize to me later. Maybe she’s mad that I kept her on the breathing machine for 7 hours after it was apparent she was mostly dead already while I waited for all the family that could to get there and say their goodbyes.

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I went to SHARE on Thursday but I think I overdid it a little. Not at SHARE because although the first hour was pretty much non-stop after that it slowed down and I had plenty of time between food orders to sit. It was really after when I was running my errands…taking the cardboard to the recycling location, giving a book to the little library across the street from the Post Office, returning a book to the big library, carrying a watermelon up the stairs to Pam’s/Robin’s house, taking leftover milk and another watermelon to my neighbor down the street all in the heat of mid-day so I was in afib pretty much from about 1 PM to about 4 when it had calmed down. Wasn’t sure if I was going to go to yoga last night but by the time I had to leave I felt fine and so I did and have been fine since.

The nurse never did call me back on Monday but I wasn’t concerned because whatever had been going on those first four days after the procedure had settled down but she did finally call while I was at SHARE. My doctor wants me to wear a monitor for a week just to check and see what is going on with my heart. I told her it had all settled down and I was feeling pretty good but, you know, if that’s what he wants, OK. I asked if he still wants to do the Watchman procedure (closing off that little pouch where blood pools during afib), she said yes, and if he still wanted to do it the same day as the cerebral angiogram which has not been scheduled yet. My appointment with the neurosurgeon is Monday and I’m to call my electrophysiologist’s office and let them know when the angiogram is scheduled. Fortunately both doctors have offices on the Memorial Hermann SW hospital campus. If both procedures can be done on the same day it would be one less trip in and I'd have both those behind me at one time. The angiogram goes through an artery but the Watchman goes through a vein which I guess is why both procedures can be scheduled the same day. Then all the heart stuff will be behind me (for now anyway, the afib could come back or not be completely repressed). The angiogram will determine if the neurosurgeon just wants to keep an eye on the aneurysm, which I gather is having MRIs on a regular basis, or if it needs immediate attention. I’m not sure how he would repair a fusiform aneurysm and I’m resisting the urge to google it again. I’ll find out soon enough on Monday.

I will be so glad when I finally have some resolution and have something to talk about than my heart and my brain. Like the unbelievable whackadoodle clown show cult that the GOP has become. Boats, and batteries, and sharks; bitcoin mining? The outright adoration shown by the republican House and Senate when he visited yesterday? What the actual fuck!

 

not much to say

The red crinum lilies are in full bloom. They are some of my favorites and I dug them up from the Houston house when we moved out here. 

I haven’t felt like writing, sick of this whole thing and the weird afib episodes I’ve been having, one episode Friday morning about every 5 beats or so there would be a long pause, not like skipping a beat but as if my heart had stopped beating. And then it would again and then it wouldn’t. This went on for, I don’t know, 45 minutes. Scared the crap out of me. Talked to the nurse and she said it sounded like my heart was converting, trying to reset itself, not to worry but she decreased the dose of one of the statins they have me on.

Plus I haven’t done a goddamn thing since I got home on Wednesday but lay around in bed or in the recliner. We’ve been bingeing on Game Of Thrones, sort of our go to when we don’t feel like searching for something to watch. We’ve both read the books and have seen it all before so it’s something we don’t have to pay a lot of attention to except for the story lines we really like, like Arya’s. We’re trying to get through it before the new seasons of Outer Range, The Bear, and The Boys start.

So last evening, my heart rate was so low, low 40s, I figured all this laying around was not doing me any good and when we switched off the TV and went to bed I rolled out my yoga mat and did about 40 minutes and I felt so much better afterwards. So I determined that I was going to start doing stuff regardless of what was going on with my heart and went out this morning to pick up another pile of sticks, or really just added to an already big one, this morning. 

Just one of the 4 piles of sticks I’ve picked up and I still haven’t picked up all the sticks and small branches that came down in the storm the week before my procedure. 

We’ll still watch more GoT today. Arya and Bran are back at Winterfell, the Lannister army had their first encounter with a dragon, and Jon and company have gone beyond the wall to capture a wight.

I have tomatoes in the refrigerator that need making into tomato sauce so I might start that today. And more yoga. I did finally dig up my potatoes the day before my procedure, a disappointing harvest. They only made potatoes in the first bottom layer. And while I thought I had one tub of white and one tub of red it turned out they were both white.

There were two whistling ducks in the native pecan at the back of the property Friday morning.

So now at 10:30 AM it’s already too hot to be outside for more than just a few minutes. 85˚ and sunny, no breeze to speak of, 71% humidity, high of 93˚ predicted.