Archive for December 2024
Gathering Facts
Taking advantage of Cyndie’s reduction in activity, we spent some time while she rested yesterday, creating a chronological outline of the medical issues she has experienced throughout her entire life. If each one were a chapter in her autobiography, the book would be more than 40 chapters long.
We came up with 15 surgeries and 3 or 4 medical procedures, starting with one before she was even a year old and not counting two pregnancies or the time she stepped on a rake and split her eyebrow open. In some of the occurrences that have happened since I started blogging, I was able to hunt for and find exact dates, including pictures.
I wonder if I have a picture for every surgery.
After searching, we couldn’t find evidence that I had blogged about the concussion she had that took us days to figure out because she didn’t remember what happened when she hit her head. She picked up a friend the day after and remembers telling her of having a severe headache. The day after that, Cyndie was home, and we were hosting a visitor. Cyndie looked fine in the morning, but in the middle of the day, I noticed Cyndie had developed a profound black eye that extended from her forehead to her chin.
Why I wouldn’t have written about that is a mystery to me. I was also hoping to find a picture of how vivid her bruised-looking face had become. That led Cyndie to make a doctor’s appointment, which resulted in her getting an MRI of her head.
She loves telling the story of the technician asking ever so gently if he wasn’t also supposed to get a view of her face since it looked so bad. Both of us laugh about her having already signed up for a Master Gardener class that she tried to complete despite the concussion but, in the end, wasn’t able to remember much of anything she learned.
It was a very interesting day-long exercise of dredging up past events and then trying to compile a chronological outline with dates so we could have all the information in one place. So many stories that we’ve told and re-told over the years, but never before locking in dates or the order of events.
It paints quite a varied portrait of incidents, both dramatic and mundane, in her medical history.
Now that we have the outline, I’m eager to capture some of the interesting details that can present a fuller story about what her experiences were like for each of the different incidents.
Maybe I’ll end up amending the subtitle of this blog to “*this* John W. Hays’ take on Cyndie’s experiences.”
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Results In
The doc says Cyndie has pneumonia in her right lower lung. Whaaat? She was tested for both types of flu, got a chest X-ray, and had a blood panel done. Interestingly, she learned she has a partially collapsed lung that is a possible residual from one of her surgeries with general anesthesia in the past.
They’ve prescribed an antibiotic and told her she should expect to feel better in 36 to 48 hours. It feels like a deja vu from my experience when I returned from our Iceland adventure. Based on that, I hope she is able to feel better as quickly as I did. I had assumed it would take me weeks to clear my lungs, but that wasn’t the case.
Now, I just need to convince her to behave like a lazy person so her body can recover without delay. That’s not going to be easy. While I was picking up her prescription in River Falls with Asher and then feeding the horses, she went downstairs and took the laundry out of the dryer, and then had dinner waiting for us when we got in.
See what I’m up against. Her excuse for making dinner was that she needed to take her medicine with food and wanted to take the first dose as soon as possible. Okay, dear.
Asher is doing his best to show her what to do to make it easier for her body to recover.
If she won’t listen to me, maybe she’ll pay attention to the examples he’s been demonstrating.
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Numb Fingers
Are you familiar with Raynaud’s phenomenon? It is a reaction where a drop in temperature can trigger blood vessel spasms, usually in the fingers and toes. Cyndie’s hands have reacted to cold in this way for a while, but on Saturday, she was surprised that it triggered so quickly in temperatures that weren’t that drastically cold. Also, it was only happening to one finger on her left hand and a small portion of two fingers on her right hand. Usually, it’s all the fingers.
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It was so dramatic that I asked her if I could take a picture of the colorless digits.
She looked up information on why it might afflict only certain fingers and one possibility for that situation pointed to torqued wrist positions. She realized she had been holding her hands tucked under her crossed arms as we walked with Asher for a bit before heading to the barn. Maybe that would explain it.
We are hoping for a more informed assessment of all the issues Cyndie’s experiencing after she visits with a doctor at our clinic this afternoon. She had been feeling off for almost a week before it finally manifested with the fever the last two days, which took things to a new level and got her to stop trying to carry on with normal activity.
After driving from the Cities in the worst of that snow burst we experienced, one of her legs cramped up in a wicked knot as she was trying to walk from the car into the house. It was so intense that she couldn’t walk, could barely stand, and it had her sobbing in pain.
She has been struggling to keep her core warm and was spending every opportunity with a heating pad on her torso or feet.
At this point, I have not experienced any symptoms similar to hers, so we have that to be thankful for. Asher, the horses, and I are all carrying on and keeping calm. Well, most of the time, anyway. When I stepped out of the barn to tend to the horses yesterday afternoon, they were in a tizzy about something that I couldn’t identify.
It had them racing around, jumping and rearing, and generally acting like the sky was falling. It made poo pickup a little more adventurous than I wanted. As soon as I served up buckets of grains, the usual calm settled over them. Food coma arrived soon after.
Then, I went back to being Nurse John, in addition to being a fine dining chef for the evening. I heated up some homemade chicken noodle soup that Cyndie had pulled from the freezer. For the record, no fingers went numb as a result of her doing that.
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Nurse John
Personally, I don’t find that my nursing abilities offer all that soothing a touch, and now our head cook has called in sick, so I am faced with pretending I’m a chef in addition to her nurse. No pressure. Only, I’m going up against the comparisons to a person who has nursed and fed me better than one could ever imagine whenever I’ve fallen ill.
It just seems like such an unfair circumstance for Cyndie when she gets sick. Laid low by a fever, she is currently confined to quarters and stuck with me as her primary caregiver. Luckily, she is a very patient patient, and repeatedly tells me I’m providing everything she needs. It never feels like enough to me.
Plus, there’s always the battle against her trying to do things for herself so as not to trouble me as I struggle to anticipate her next move and cut her off in the nick of time by getting her the ice pack or warming her heating pad in the microwave.
Nurse John is not that much fun when he gets grumpy as he is trying to soothe what ails the patient and serve Malt-O-Meal and toast before it gets cold.
I am thrilled with how sensitive Asher is to Cyndie’s not feeling well. Instead of being a pest and demanding more roughhouse play, he has chosen to mirror her as a way of showing his support.
Right up until he hears something outside that requires a rant of “big boy” barks followed by some half-hearted “woofs.” I’m sure that does wonders for her headache. At least he gets back to the mirroring part in short order.
That allows me to practice a little of that mirroring support of my own, although I suspect that technique is not included in the practices one would find in the nursing handbooks, not to mention that it leaves the kitchen looking a frightful mess.
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Paw Prints
As a result of the fraction of an inch of snow coating surfaces outside, we get new opportunities each morning to see where all the nocturnal visitors have tread around our grounds. The other day, I found some decent-sized canine prints on Paddock Lake that could easily have been a coyote passing through.
Lately, I’ve been thinking that the neighbor’s cat that practically lives on our property might be polydactyl. This morning there were some very clear prints on the driveway that revealed I was probably seeing double.
What I was seeing in most cases is the result of the hind paw landing in the same spot as a front one. When they don’t align so closely, it becomes much easier to see what’s happening.
What I haven’t been seeing in numbers like years past are hoof prints from deer. Maybe that explains why we saw so few hunters in the woods around us this year. No deer, no reason to hunt.
If the weather forecast proves accurate, we will probably lose what little snow cover we’ve got by the end of the weekend.
Then it returns to Asher being the only one to know where the critters have traveled in the hours before we show up on our morning walks. When tracks are fresh, he becomes maniacally obsessive about urgently following the scent. I don’t remember seeing “bloodhound” in the list of breeds identified by his DNA, but it sure seems like he thinks he is one sometimes.
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His Idea
Asher was insistent. He wanted me to take him outside. I wasn’t interested in venturing out into the cold wind, but Asher persisted long enough to defeat my resistance. When I got out of the recliner to get suited up against the elements, I caught a glimpse of a surprising amount of falling snow.
Really, dog? I’m not sure he even noticed how hard it was snowing. His primary interest continues to be getting to the barn to snatch up pigeons that behave too lackadaisical in his presence for their own good. He has such a one-track mind about catching pigeons lately that he doesn’t seem to notice how many walks we take where I don’t let him go to the barn.
His hope is unfazed. He veers toward the barn at every opportunity until his leash snugs as I continue walking straight ahead.
When we got down by the labyrinth, the falling snow was pretty and it was fun to be out in it.
I took a chance at capturing the fresh snow starting to cling to the tops of the seedheads of the Japanese tall grass, trying to lean with it as the wind swung it to and fro.
A moment later, the precipitation kicked up a notch and I noticed I couldn’t see the barn when we turned the corner on the path around the back pasture fence.
Asher picked up his pace a bit and pulled me along as the thick blowing snow pelted us. Suddenly, I got the impression I was on more than just a figurative expedition. This walk was becoming a literal expedition. I hoped we would make it back to some shelter before either of us perished.
When we reached the mailbox, I grabbed the three envelopes we’d received and didn’t resist when Asher chose to take the driveway instead of continuing along the north loop trail. He picked up his pace again, and I was able to slide my boots a short distance on the icy pavement as he pulled me along.
He let me stop him for a moment as I tried to get a photo of the tall grass by the shop garage, but I don’t think he was happy about it.
“It was your idea to go out in this,” I told him.
“Can we go back in the house now, Dad?”
We made it back to the front door before either of us succumbed to the elements of this blustery snow burst, barely worse for the wear. Thankfully, Asher was much more agreeable about lolling about indoors with me for the rest of the afternoon.
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Feeling Small
Last night, Cyndie and I finished the 5th episode of the streaming Apple TV+ documentary series “The Me You Can’t See,” about mental health, hosted by Oprah Winfrey and Prince Harry. There are so many issues people live with that we cannot know about unless the person chooses to talk about them.
It’s been so many years since I gained control over my depression that I don’t talk about it so much. That documentary makes me think I should discuss my experience more regularly than I do. The folks who participated in the series exposing their struggles to the world showed laudable courage in sharing what is traditionally kept secret.
Three thoughts of my suffering spring to mind instantly when I contemplate the years when I was sliding deeper toward clinical depression.
- Triggered beyond my ability to cope, I stepped outside one of the basement doors of the lake house into a dark winter night wearing no outdoor clothing and laid down, curling into a fetal position in a snow drift, desperately yearning to vanish from existence.
- A Monday morning when I couldn’t muster the resources to get out of bed, finding I wasn’t able to do more than utter a grunt in response to a query from my wife as to whether I was going to get up or not. It was later that morning, alone in the house, that I sat on the end of the bed, called our clinic, and asked to be seen. When the voice on the phone asked for a reason, I choked on the words, and she made the appointment available for as soon as I could get there.
- Some period of time after treatment with Prozac and Psychiatrist visits had occurred, I found myself sitting downstairs by the door to the garage with car keys in my hand. After years of imagining suicide as a way to fantasize my way out of the doom and gloom I was drowning in, this was the first time I took a physical step toward acting on the idea. Luckily, in realizing that, I seemed to scare myself straight.
I was already aware that the onset of treatment didn’t automatically stop depression instantaneously and that sometimes things can continue to get worse before they get better, so I used having car keys in my hand as the turning point from the worst to a blessed incremental improvement toward freedom from the beast.
Early in the talk therapy sessions, I learned that my suicidal fantasies needed to be banned. That was a habit that had been perfected starting when I was very young, and it took a while to break it. Eventually, when visions would pop into my head, they came across as comical to me and carried no weight. It got easier and easier to banish them as quickly as they came. In time, it just stopped happening.
Hoping to free myself from living on Prozac for the rest of my life, I asked my psychiatrist to let me stop taking it. She pushed back and convinced me to stay the course. I agreed to respect her wishes if she agreed to consider it a future possibility. The next time I asked, she agreed to wean me off under close supervision.
Compared to the mental health challenges depicted in the documentary, mine feel small, even though I know it’s illogical to measure one person’s experience against another. We are all seeking a resolution of our burdens in a way that works for us.
One way is to look directly into the eyes of whatever monster is looming and which you’ve been avoiding. It (in my case, depression) doesn’t have the power over you that you think it does. Marshaling the courage to look right at it cuts it down to size and can make it much more manageable to address, especially when you have trained professionals for support along the way.
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Forest Labyrinth
With few hints revealing the intended course of our forest labyrinth at Wildwood, Cyndie and I navigated our way around the circles and found the stones in the center undisturbed.
If we want this to remain usable throughout the winter, we’re going to need to place more rocks to define the route for others to see.
I really like that we were able to lay this out so the path winds around mature trees and travels across flat rocks that fill a shallow ravine. There was just enough snow cover to make it easily walkable, but it was tricky to know when we were on the intended pathway.
I liked the way the snow had shaped up around these stones. When I looked at the image on my computer, it struck me how much that top one looked like a baked potato. Didn’t notice that when looking directly at them.
We drove home in the afternoon and found a similar amount of light snow covering our property as there was up north. The horses all looked well and the barn appeared orderly after several days of a volunteer doing the feedings for us.
I’m happy to report, no evidence of mice was found in drawers or bedding in the house at home.
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Flurries
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all day long
flurries of flakes floated down
where were they coming from?
there was nothing visible on radar
yet flake after flake kept falling
barely enough to cover some surfaces
but turning the brand-new lake ice
white
if falling as rain
it would have been a mist
maybe a sprinkle
but only barely
just relentless white flakes
floating from the sky
one after another
from sun up
to sundown
picture postcard perfect
for sitting by the fire
gazing at large white swans
busy in the open water
creating idyllic scenes
out the window frame
ushering in December
all day long
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Relative Something 