Posts Tagged ‘health’
Quick Turnaround
It was a novel adventure to hop Asher into the car to scoot up to the lake with little fanfare on Sunday afternoon and then return home the following morning. Cyndie met with a contractor to request a quote for some fixing up that is needed on the dwellings. The trip also gave us a chance to assess the status of the feared mouse infestation we discovered the last time we were up.
A mousetrap I left in a drawer had caught one, but the other trap did not snap despite obvious activity all around it. On the bright side, we found no other evidence of activity, particularly in the bed that was a mess when I climbed into it last time.
Asher was a very busy guy, scrambling to leave his mark everywhere we walked. I let him romp on the ice for a short distance, and he was thrilled to sprint around on the slippery surface, sliding, turning, and leaping in gleeful doggy fun. It’s too bad that our little ice patch in the paddock at home doesn’t offer him the same opportunity. It would be easier for him to leap over it than slide on it.
There were trace amounts of snow up north, but after we got home and went for a walk, it made the absolute lack of snow really stand out to me. Our property feels bone dry. Freeze-dried. Last winter, when we experienced a similar lack of accumulating snow, the temperature frequently rose above freezing. After our recent bout of extremely cold temperatures, the 10-day forecast shows a continued run of normally cold days and no hint of precipitation. This will be a very long spell of below-freezing, yet very dry weather.
So much for the prognostications of a snowier winter this year. At least for now. I have a suspicion there will be a couple of snowstorms here before winter is over.
The later in the season it comes, the greater the likelihood of a quick turnaround after a significant snow event.
In the meantime, I will admit to appreciating the lack of needing to plow and shovel. However, I’m at risk of developing an unhealthy attachment to sedentary pursuits on couches that lend themselves to easy snacking on deliciously salty and crunchy processed foods.
My quest for optimal health has developed a bit of a wobble, dare I say.
I should probably have a serious talk with myself one of these days about putting a quick turnaround on that trend.
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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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Feeling Feverish
I’m a hot mess. Right in the middle of sharing descriptions of our adventures in Iceland, I find myself in a foggy fever-induced sleep for hours on end, with no appetite and my lungs congested in the worst way. Is this a souvenir I picked up during our trip?
After starting as a nuisance cold, my symptoms settled into my lungs, which is typical for me. For days, I bounced between seeming better and then feeling worse. Yesterday morning, I woke up with a fever and made an appointment to be seen by a doctor.
Her diagnosis was that it had become pneumonia.
Let’s review:
- Lingering shoulder pain has led to an MRI and diagnosis of a small tear in my rotator cuff.
- Pain down my left leg was attributed to pressure on the nerve in my lower back.
- Tuesday morning, my right hand and wrist are punctured by thorns bad enough I consult with a nurse at our clinic.
- Thursday morning, I am diagnosed with pneumonia.
I have an appointment on Monday for a consultation with an orthopedist regarding the information in the MRI of my shoulder. I’ve had two sessions of physical therapy to learn new exercises I can do for my shoulder and back. The puncture wounds on my wrist haven’t shown any symptoms of infection, and the pain is subsiding, so the threat from those wounds is waning. I have started antibiotics to treat my pneumonia and the incessant coughing has calmed considerably.
But, really, I’m starting to feel like I’ve suddenly been jinxed by some gremlin that has a grudge against my good health.
Pardon the interruption in my descriptions of our Icelandic adventures. I was just getting to one of the big highlights that happened on our second day. Here’s a hint:
I’ll tell you all about it if my health continues to improve and I can get myself up out of bed.
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Difficult Simplicity
Why did I come up with that silly two-word combination for today’s post title? Physical therapy exercises, that’s why. Yesterday morning I received a phone call before 7:30! Who calls anyone that early? My doctor had news about the MRI of my shoulder confirming a small tear in my rotator cuff. He has referred me to an orthopedic specialist for consultation.
Regardless, I’ve already started seeing a physical therapist to address the shoulder and (not necessarily related) sciatic pain radiating down my left leg. The initial exercises the therapist has prescribed are along the lines of “flossing” the nerve. Inherently simple. They involve only slight motions to be repeated ten or twenty series twice a day.
For something so simple, I am finding it really difficult to accomplish. It’s too easy and doesn’t feel like I am doing anything perceivable in the way of progress. It bores me and I am easily distracted from the task. I find myself inclined to rush things. The 3 or 4 routines for the shoulder and then the same number for my leg/lower back issue are no match for the energizing effort of my long-duration planking or strength poses I regularly do.
Some simple things are difficult to do.
At the same time, I am doing something very easy this weekend.
Guess where we are.
The weather is supposed to become steamy hot for a few days and there is no better place to cope with high heat than on a lake.
Maybe I’ll see how many of my simple flossing motions I can pull off while floating half-submerged in the cool water of Round Lake.
Don’t look now, but there is something going on with the trees up here that hints of a change a-coming.
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Modest Wealth
I saw a headline referring to MN Gov. Tim Walz as having “modest wealth” and it struck me as a good description for the luxury Cyndie and I enjoy of having enough retirement income to cover our very comfortable lifestyle. I would also apply the modest wealth phrase to my physical and mental health. Staying just healthy enough to function effectively, but short of excessive riches in either realm.
What average person doesn’t feel some covetousness for the physique of Olympic swimmers, divers, or gymnasts’ bodies? I’m probably more active than the average 65-year-old but still maintain more of a “dad-bod” middle than the sculpted exposed torsos we get repeated views of every 4 years of the summer games.
Mentally, I’m happy to have learned the value of hearing the tone of my self-talk and quickly altering the direction when it slants toward the dysfunction of depressive thinking, but the fact I need to repeatedly practice the skill reveals a shortage of infinite mental health wealth, as if there were such a thing.
I like the concept of modesty when it comes to wealth, wherever it is measured. Today, I feel extremely rich in entertainment value because I get to watch the US Women’s Gold Medal Olympic Football match. It wouldn’t surprise me if such a simple joy were overlooked by others for its wealth.
It’s all relative, but the measurement of “modest” is one that I like as an offset to any embarrassment of riches.
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Not Necessarily
Things are not always what they seem, especially when we allow our unconscious biases to run willy-nilly throughout our activities unchecked. Cyndie and I now think there may have been a flaw in our testing procedure last Wednesday that allowed for cross-contamination of our results.
She continues to try testing with kits that are beyond their shelf-life between occasions when using new tests. Last night her results were clearly negative. We both agreed that her symptoms that showed up almost instantaneously upon seeing that positive result on Wednesday could well have been psychosomatic.
In a parallel to that, last night’s negative result had her feeling surprisingly healthy. Her mind can be very persuasive.
So, if your gut has been telling you something a little different than what I describe happening in our lives, your intuition is worth acknowledging. If you have been reading my writing for some time, you may sometimes know me better than I know myself.
This morning, we finally have an appointment to retrieve Asher from the training kennel. After tending to horses, we are going to take fresh tests in separate rooms to find out if I should stay home and how careful Cyndie should be about contact with people at the kennel.
If she gets an all-clear, we will assume she never was infected. If I get a clean result, I will be baffled about how the virus works and how/when I have been shedding the virus at a measurable level. Granted, research we have reviewed indicated most people are no longer contagious after 10 days.
It is expected that my vaccinations would have significantly shortened my infection time, along with the length of time I was contagious.
I have no concept of how my sudden flare-up of a bulging disc and subsequent few days of head cold symptoms interrelate to the COVID infection that showed up in the middle of May.
I am ready to put all of it behind me. It is a new month and I am beginning to feel like my old self again, emphasis on old.
My, how quickly a few extra doses of sugar, suddenly becoming sedentary, and plenty of Cyndie’s lovingkindness in the form of “eating therapy” thickens my middle. I’ve got just two weeks to get into biking shape for the Tour of Minnesota week.
That’s not necessarily a hard thing for me to achieve, but past experience does not guarantee future results. Be assured, you will be able to read the play-by-play with each passing day.
Happy June Everyone!
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Double Punch
Out of the frying pan, into the fire. I have done what I could to put the COVID infection behind me and resume normal activity but putting it behind me wasn’t supposed to be literal. I now find myself about as far away from normal activity as I have been in years.
There is something terribly wrong happening in my lower back that feels in every way as if one of my discs is bulging against the nerve that generates incapacitating waves of pain. My poor brain automatically leaps to a conclusion that the timing of these two latest physical maladies are entirely related, but I have no knowledge that this might be true.
All I know is that I am now one week away from the day my health insurance ends with the company that covered me for the first five months of the year and starts with my new choice under Medicare. I was hoping to get through the transition with a clean break from activity on either account.
Today, it is shockingly difficult to avoid stabbing pain when I cough at a time when my asthmatically reactive lungs are teetering on the backside of a virus notorious for negatively impacting breathing.
I am not a pretty sight.
If I could walk without fear of losing my footing, I’d wander down among the horses and bask in their late spring serenity.
We are fast approaching the end of Asher’s on-site training session at a kennel up north. The trainer has scheduled a call this afternoon during which we expect to learn how Asher has been faring during the previous week and what the plan is for picking him up to continue the training at home.
It would really mean a lot to me to be able to walk without pain by the time of Asher’s return.
Walking is once again the exercise that will become my primary focus.
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Our Realities
There are as many similarities between us all as there are differences. I don’t ever want to forget those differences when I write about my experiences. In the time since I retired from a day-job, my world has shrunk significantly to the 20 acres around our home for weeks at a time. A month can pass without a reason to drive my car.
That isolates me from lives that are dealing with issues that involve complications that rarely enter my mind. I don’t worry about where I am going to sleep at night. I don’t need to communicate with attorneys to solve spurious accusations. I don’t hear about problem bosses or annoying coworkers. I’ve yet to need to make doctor appointments for consultations about scary test results. I no longer struggle to get out of bed in the morning due to depression.
When I wax poetic about our experiences in the great outdoors with pets and nature at Wintervale, imploring others to seek health and cultivate love in their lives, I mean no disrespect to anyone who finds themselves struggling to cope with heavy demands consuming their precious energy.
We all have our own realities. I hope that on some level, the stories I post provide a brief escape to another place and a peek into one person’s life who strives for better health with a goal of inverting pyramids of dysfunction.
We watched the Grammy Awards Show last night and I got a heavy dose of reality about songs and performers whom I know nothing about. Those are worlds that are a mystery to me.
At the bottom of all things in our lives lies our commonality. In fact, one thing we all have in common is that we are all different from each other.
I recently found a quote about love from an interesting man named Wim Hof, a Dutch extreme athlete and motivational speaker:
Love is compiled by happiness, strength, and health.
If you radiate good energy because you are healthy, happy, and strong, that’s love.
Today, I am sending love to all who are experiencing stress that I know nothing about.
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Long Term
Thinking long-term has become a key component guiding my choices in pursuing a rewarding, healthy lifestyle. In line with my desire to invert pyramids of dysfunction, I look at unhealthy practices and consider the results of not just ending bad habits but replacing them with something helpful.
Specifically, I like to pay attention to the types of behavior that are known to contribute to problems over time. An unhealthy diet is pretty straightforward in this regard. Eating a serving of anything that is obviously unhealthy won’t kill a person but if they did that for years, negative outcomes result.
Seems logical to avoid a prolonged habit of eating poorly. So, take it a step further and replace unhealthy food with nutrition-dense food as a long-term habit.
A person who eats poorly doesn’t check the next day to see if they are less well. In the same way, a person who eats healthy food shouldn’t expect to become healthy in a day. Many people check their weight every day as a monitor of their health. Cyndie and I don’t own a scale. My weight gets checked whenever I have reason to visit the doctor.
My day-to-day weight fluctuations don’t concern me. In the same way, I don’t check my retirement account value every day. It’s the long-term trends that indicate how I’m doing against my goals.
Most people know that it’s good to avoid dehydration, but it is common for people to allow their hydration to regularly fluctuate. I tend to think it is more helpful to my body to consistently function at a healthy level of hydration. What’s the worst that could happen if I’m wrong ten years down the road?
You might think my kidneys would get worn out but my practice is beneficial to them in preventing stone-forming crystals from sticking together. One bout of kidney stones was enough for me. That pain was off my scale.
When I’m well-hydrated, I feel more confident about stretching my muscles. Do you stretch every day? Does your dog or cat stretch almost every time they get up after a long lie down? It’s fun watching the horses do cat-like stretches.
I’ve learned to be patient and allow my body time to process a thorough stretch. It always strikes me as surprising that each time I prepare to stretch, I discover that my body has returned to the same limits of movement as the day before.
When I lay flat on my back and bend at the waist to lift my legs with my knees locked and bring my feet as far as possible toward my face, the stopping point is always the same and surprisingly limited. Then I do a hamstring stretching routine. After I have stretched, I revisit that first exercise of lifting my legs with knees locked and my back flat against the floor to see how much closer my feet come toward my head. The change is dramatic.
What do you imagine the long-term impact might be of regularly stretching for the rest of a person’s life versus not stretching?
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Oops, Snowy
You’d think I would know better. In my post yesterday I gushed about the fact we had dodged the snowfall that places north of us were getting. Sure it was a day of messy, wet precipitation with temperatures hovering so close to freezing it felt challenging to set foot outside. But, at least it wasn’t snowy, I wrote.
Such a naive suburban fool. (Tim Curry lyric, Paradise Garage, 1979.)
Reality was hard to ignore this morning.
Thank goodness, Cyndie offered to allow me to stay in bed while she did horse chores this morning. This is the first time she has taken on the morning routine all by herself since she broke her ankle last November. I’m experiencing a feverish reaction to my shingles vaccination shot administered yesterday morning.
On Thursday, I received notice via email that it was time for my annual health checkup with my doctor. Using their online system, I found an available appointment for the following day and filled out all the questionnaires remotely in advance. I was in and out with ease in about 45 minutes but walked away with a jab in each arm. One was to draw blood for my glucose and cholesterol level checks and the other was the first of two shingles shots.
I am thoroughly impressed by the efficiency of our clinic. They sent notice before the day was out that my test results were already available to view. Blood glucose and cholesterol numbers continue to run a little high, which is normal for me, but I am pleased that all of the cholesterol readings had improved since a year ago. My methods are slow but progress in the right direction serves as validation that my good habits are paying off over time.
Knock on wood.
I don’t want my choice to write about the good fortunes of my health status to go the way of my rejoicing over not getting more snow in April.
Who knows what tomorrow might bring? How about we visualize sunshine and warmth for a little change of pace for a few days. And continued good health, too!
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Relative Something 