Summer cold interlude

Neighborhood snapshots

What's worse than a summer cold? It hit [The Man I Love] last Friday, just as we were finishing up our move out of our Topanga house, and organizing the trip to New Orleans, with all its complications - shipping the car, shipping Jack the dog.

When we arrived, he spent much of our first days sleeping, though we ventured out occasionally for meals.

The cold hit me this Friday - stuffy head and stuffed-up nose, raspy cough and an achy feeling.  I'll go for a few hours feeling marginally better, then I'll hit the wall, tailspinning into coughing jags, shivers, and spasm-like sneezes.

I alternately sweat between the bedsheets, and shiver in the air conditioning. Perversely the 99 degree heat outside is almost a comfort to the cold shivers - at least for a few minutes, taking Jack a short walk around the block.

I can tell the disease is evolving, My cough has taken on a hollow barking sound as things really come up. I've been coughing so much it hurts, my diaphragm muscles so sore it feels like there's a steel band around my ribcage.

Meanwhile, our new city awaits beyond the sickroom. It was a good idea to move a full month before my classes start - at least I can grant myself the luxury of convalescing without pressure. I'll get through this, and then be ready to start our new life here.

Daily Candy

Sigh. I'm getting old. With age come more medications, more maintenance.

I hate taking pills. It wasn't until adulthood that I had to think about taking pills, and that was just The Pill - oral contraceptives. And even that, I hated having to depend on them, and I hated having to remember to take them.

As my aging body changed, I resisted my doctor's attempts to put me on cholesterol and blood pressure medication, promising to lose weight and eat healthier to avoid taking more pills. But after a couple years of trying, I gave in. I now take three pills a day - and hope to keep it that low.

My aversion to pill-taking had also fostered another bad habit - I have never been good about taking vitamins and supplements that would also keep me healthy.

My recent knee problems gave me a wake-up call about Calcium, and how important it is for women as we grow old. But the pills I got at the pharmacy made me gag when I tried to swallow them.

But now I've found my solution - Gummy nutrition supplements!

There are calcium supplements like little sugary yogurt treats! And vitamins that look like Jujubes! My CO-Q-10 supplement look like Dots, and squish just as deliciously between my teeth! You can even get a fish oil gummy - it sounds yukky, but it tastes like fruit candy. You can get gummy fiber supplements, too, although the week I took them, my stomach growled like a beast, so I stopped.

When did these things go on the market? Why didn't I know about them sooner? For a sweet-tooth like me, it's my Daily Candy!

White out

The Edie and Lew Wasserman Building is a sleek white glass and steel new addition to UCLA campus, a stunning architectural work by Michael Palladino of Richard Meiers' group of notable architects, a new research and patient care facility for the Jules Stein Eye Institute at UCLA.

It took three months since my optometrist referred me to schedule an appointment, but last Tuesday I finally went in to consult with a doctor whether I have cataracts and whether they require surgery.

The building is structurally anchored by two concrete towers at its east and west end. These massive towers are spanned by six floors, open and airy with sheer glass walls facing south toward Westwood Village.

The initial impression upon entering the lobby is white and light. The building glows with light.

Upstairs, in the second floor suite of the cataract surgical unit, the examination rooms are disconcerting. White floors, white walls and ceilings, white cabinets, all the same pristine shade of white. The black-upholstered examination chair, the black and silver optical instruments seem to float in the whiteness as though unmoored in space.

When I took my contact lenses out for exams, it felt even more like I was floating in a world of white light.

The doctor is a hotshot - so renowned he has a phalanx of assistants to do the work for him. First a scrubs-wearing assistant gave me an exam. Then an associate doctor wearing a white labcoat came in, and administered a different set of tests. Only after this did I meet the doctor himself.

There seems to be a certain hierarchy among doctors - the really celebrated ones transcend the need for such conventionalities as wearing labcoats.  When my doctor entered the pure white room, he wore a tweedy sportcoat, shirt and tie, the earthy colors standing out in the whiteness.

He pronounced his diagnosis. I do indeed have cataracts. But they are not advanced, and unless they cause me impairment, he doesn't advise surgery at this point.  His assistants checked my prescription and he advised me to upgrade my lenses and glasses. "Give this a few months and see how you feel," he said. "If you really think you need surgery, just call us."

I put my contact lenses back in, and was ushered out into the bright white lobby. On the one hand, how nice that a building dedicated to human vision would celebrate brightness and illumination. On the other hand, with my eyes dilated, it was too intense, almost headache-inducing - blinding, in fact.

I found my sunglasses in my bag, to cut the glare of this magnificent edifice to vision.

Bravery

For the last couple of months, [The Man I Love] has been undergoing a challenging adventure with extraordinary grace and courage.

Tomorrow, he takes on the next chapter. My friend, my companion, my partner, I am with you all the way. 

Compassion

Curtained bed for patients, Hôtel-Dieu de Beaune, a medieval hospital for the poor, France

I've been following the Ebola crisis in the news, and the typical on-line article includes a comments section at the end.  If you want a window on the depravity of the human soul, just read one of these comment sections. The ignorance, fear, virulence and hatred will astound  and sadden you.

Inflamed by irresponsible radio talk shows or sensational TV coverage, there are conspiracy theories ranging from "Obama's trying to kill white people" to "the CIA created Ebola to kill black people." There are accusations, including the laughable notion that refugee children from countries where no recorded cases of Ebola exist are mass carriers of the disease into the United States. There are people who seem to think this is a sci-fi movie or a Stephen King novel, panicking that the disease will suddenly mutate and become as easy to catch as a summer cold.

There are xenophobic comments from people who can barely find Africa on a map, stating that the people of West Africa are "uncivilized" and "unclean" and who caught this disease from eating "apes." Some of these are well-meaning, though still racist, deploring the supposed squalor in these countries we enlightened Westerners should correct.

Some people question why any American aid worker would go to West Africa to help fight the disease. There are hateful accusations against the man from Liberia who died in Texas, accusing him of deliberately bringing the disease to the US. Some want to prevent everyday commerce and travel from occurring between these countries and ours. Yet others say we should nuke the whole region.

In fact, the way Ebola spreads is very well known to health professionals. It's spread by human contact. People who come into contact with a sick person's bodily fluids contract the disease if these fluids enter the system through broken skin or mucus membranes. It is only contagious when a person is suffering from the pain, fever, and racking sickness of the disease. Those at highest risk of infection are caregivers like health care workers, family members, mourners and people who handle the dead.

In short, this is a disease that spreads through human compassion.

And that's what's so heartbreaking about it. I heard an interview on NPR with some workers from Medicins Sans Frontieres, or Doctors Without Borders. They told a story about a woman who died in a hospital, leaving behind her infant child. The orphaned baby was kept isolated in a cardboard box, but the nurses could not keep themselves from comforting it. Seven of the ten nurses who cared for the child contracted the disease and died of it.

Mothers contract it from their sick children, wives from the husbands they care for. Daughters from the sick parents they clean up for.  Sisters from brothers whose bodies they tend, grandmothers from wiping the fevered brow of a stricken grandchild. The man who died in Texas helped a family take a sick daughter to the hospital. The family died and later he too fell ill.

It's hard to imagine the choices people are forced to make. If a spouse breaks a fever, do you turn away from him? If a child spits up, do you dare to wipe it away? If your brother soils himself, do you let him lie in his own mess, or do you give him the dignity of being washed clean? If your sister is racked with pain, do you turn her out of your house instead of comforting her?

We should understand how profound a challenge this disease is to our humanity.

Professionals who care for the sick and those who clean up after the dead are making a terrible but courageous choice. They put themselves in danger in the hopes of gaining control over this terrible scourge. Those of us who can't or won't, for whatever reason, should at least honor their sacrifices and bravery instead of condemning them for it.

The people making hateful comments on message boards and the cynical media figures encouraging the hatred should feel perfectly safe. They are in no danger. They will not contract Ebola from Central American refugee children, do-gooder missionaries, or immigrants from West Africa.

They will not put themselves in a situation where they will care for the sick, clean a soiled body, or comfort bereaved relatives.

You have to have compassion to catch this disease.

Feeling the burn

Mural on Vermont Blvd. in Koreatown. Click to "embiggen"

OK, now she's working me.

The first couple appointments with my physical therapist, we worked on little micro exercises; stretches with toes and things. She massaged my muscles and my knee-cap joint.

But today - ooh, today I put in time on the treadmill and then did some quadriceps exercises on a Nautilus-type machine. Yee-ouch!!!! I can feel the burn!

Self-improvement projects

This seems to be a turning point year for me. I am moving forward on a long-range plan to go to graduate school. At the same time, I'm working on repairing my knees, feet and legs, to maintain my mobility. Yesterday, I learned yet another piece of the machinery needs repair.

I went for my regular eye exam. It was time for a check-up, plus I wanted to get my contact lenses update - I've been wearing an old prescription lens in my right eye ever since I lost my lens down the sink in Paso Robles last month. 

My doctor was puzzled at how my prescription seems to have deteriorated, especially in my left eye. So he did a few tests, and dropped a bombshell on me. 

I have the beginning stages of cataracts in both eyes. He recommends surgery.

Oh, it's not urgent, and it's not even 100 % certain. But there's enough of an indication that he suggests I schedule a consultation in the next few months, at the UCLA Jules Stein Eye Institute.

My eye doctor says cataract surgery is simple and recovery is quick - and indeed, both my mother and my mother-in-law have had it, and have done well. The new lenses they would insert would correct my nearsightedness and astigmatism so that I would need only minor correction for reading or for driving. My mother was delighted with the results of her surgery.

If I do get accepted into an MFA program, I want to take care of this before I go back to school. So that would mean sometime next spring or summer.

It's unsettling to realize how my "physical plant" is beginning to break down. Whether it's my gut, my joints, or my eyes, aging is hard to deny.

Bones

Using this image again, because it's so right!

I had my first physical therapy appointment yesterday to work on my bum knee, and I got a surprise.

It's not my knees, it's my feet.

The therapist interviewed me and asked me questions about my knee pain, and then went on to ask about other pain - hips, back, feet, etc. She got very interested as I talked about my right foot, which has had some plantar fasciitis pain in recent years. She nodded, went "Hmmm," several times, and wrote things down on her pad.

The whole thing is like that old song, "Dem Bones":

 

Toe bone connected to the foot bone

Foot bone connected to the heel bone

Heel bone connected to the ankle bone

Ankle bone connected to the shin bone

Shin bone connected to the knee bone

Knee bone connected to the thigh bone

Thigh bone connected to the hip bone

 

To compensate for the weakness of my left knee, which I injured at the age of 22 when I fell off a trapeze, I have been favoring my right leg all these years, letting it take most of my weight. To firm up that right leg, I have been broadening my "base" by toeing out slightly on the diagonal, canting my foot in a way that has developed a strap of muscle on the outside of my knee - which under stress, pulls my knee out of whack.

I've been given some stretching and balance exercises, to realign my foot so the center of gravity is where it's supposed to be.  These are tiny, minute exercises; holding position for thirty seconds. Yet they are more difficult than I could have imagined.

Hip bone connected to the back bone

Back bone connected to the shoulder bone

Shoulder bone connected to the neck bone

Neck bone connected to the head bone

 

The hardest thing about it is THINKING about changing my walk, and REMEMBERING to do it. I will never totally get rid of knee pain, much of it is due to osteoarthritis. But if I keep working on it, perhaps I'll correct my stance, and keep this poor kneecap where it's supposed to be.

Dem bones, dem bones gonna walk around

Now hear the word of the Lord.

Knee capped

My knee pain has been diagnosed as a patellar subluxation - this is when the kneecap partially pops out of its place. Ice, ibuprofen and a knee brace help; I've also been given a referral to a physical therapist.

Infrastructure

I blew out my left knee in 1977, when I was about 22 years old. I tore my anterior cruciate ligament when I fell off a trapeze.

It's a pretty good story, if I do say so myself. I was working as the head electrician for a small urban circus in New York City. We were playing a tent show in a Hell's Kitchen parking lot for three months, two and three shows a day for six days a week.  The trapeze act, a guy named Warren, had a practice trap where he'd work out during the off times. It was a simple trapeze, about eight or ten feet off the ground, and there were athletic mats beneath it.

I asked Warren to teach me trapeze, and he did. This was single trap, not the flying trapeze. I loved the tricks, where you'd wrap your legs around the ropes so that friction would hold you. Warren was a good teacher. He emphasize two really important rules - 1) never practice without a spotter and 2) if you're getting tired, stop.

I broke both those rules, and one day I was coming out of a trick and my sweaty hands slipped off the bar and I fell - I was already upright, but I came down a little crooked and when my feet landed on the athletic mats, my weight distribution was wrong and I heard a sickening crack in my knee and I fell on the ground.

I had no health insurance, so I stupidly tried to deal with it on my own. Another circus artist - a Russian clown - insisted that what my stressed and sprained knee needed was HEAT - he advocated a hot pad. Since then, of course, I've learned that while heat helps a chronic injury, a fresh injury needs ICE, not heat.

Because young people are resilient, I healed. I was strong, doing the kind of work I do, and my muscles helped shore up my knee joint.  I worked for the next twenty years as a stagehand - climbing ladders, loading trucks, humping cable - and while I often had twinges and pains, ibuprofen, ice and elastic knee braces seemed to keep it stable enough for me to work.

Compensating for the weak knee sometimes seemed to throw the other knee into trouble, and by the time I was fifty, I had arthritis pain in both knees. A misstep on a mountain trail would cause a painful sprain, or a long day's walk on city streets would bring stiffness and aches. I'd have to ice down and pop more pills for relief.

But by then, I was working a desk job, and it didn't seem like such a big deal. I couldn't wear high heels anymore, but it wouldn't slow me down.

Today, [The Man I Love] stopped by my office and took me to lunch. We walked a block and a half to a restaurant. On the way back, while on the smooth, straight city sidewalk, without an obstacle in my path, something seemed to go "pop" and there was a sharp pain, so sharp I couldn't walk normally.

I will not bore you with the details. But just like in 1977, the first instinct was denial - "Oh, it's nothing, just a twinge!" - followed by a determination to carry on.  I urged [The Man I Love] to keep the after-lunch appointment he had. I finished my work day, limping from my office to pick up pages from the printer. I drove home, put an ice pack on my knee and popped a couple Advils. I poured a glass of pinot noir.

I've convinced myself it doesn't feel so bad right now. But I know that my infrastructure is breaking down, and needs some serious shoring up.

Tomorrow is my day off. I'm calling the doctor first thing in the morning.

Gather ye rosebuds

If you drive down Wilshire Boulevard in mid-city Los Angeles, you wouldn't expect to find an oasis of serenity in this urban setting, nor in the steel and glass corporate buildings that line this, one of the busiest streets in North America.

But there are a lot of paradoxes in Koreatown, and one of them is that this robust and vivid culture also values the quiet serenity of time spent in contemplation and conversation with friends. When you step in from the busy Wilshire sidewalk into Hwa Sun Ji Tea and Coffee, you feel your pulse slow and your mind ease.

It's all good

Here's a beautiful pastel sunset in the Santa Monica Mountains this evening.

I went back to the Imaging Center today, got squooshed and prodded and slimed. It's all good, nothing to worry about.

Sad sack

The beach at Castellammare, Pacific Palisades

 Sad Sack was an old comic strip character, dating from the 1940s. He was a lowly private in the U.S. Army, a poor dumb schlub experiencing bad luck, humiliation, and indignities at the hands of an uncaring establishment - and due to his own ineptness.

It's funny, though, to think of how one's sadness or depression would be something you carried along with you, in a sack, or a bag - a piece of scuffed up, awkward, burdensome luggage you can never check.

I've been feeling like a Sad Sack lately. It's 45 days until my job ends, and I still haven't succeeded in finding a new one. Job hunting is always a challenge, and I know from experience how much you have to deal with rejection and uncertainty when you job hunt. But knowing that doesn't makes me feel any less like a failure, and that makes me sad. I regret imagined things I might have done to deserve this; I think of opportunities I failed to rise to. I feel like I am carrying my sack of Sad along with me in everything I do, these days.

Need to know

Ladies room, Comet Tavern, Seattle

Do you use paper seat covers when you use public toilets?

In my adult life, I've used some pretty foul and sketchy toilets - particularly in my youth, in bars, in the louche quarters of lower Manhattan I frequented. Oh, and also in various aged and crumbling theatrical venues.

When I was 21, I worked in an office building in midtown Manhattan. My female office mates were an older lady who'd been working for the company for over 25 years, and a lady perhaps 10 years younger than the first, who'd only been working there for 10 years. The three of us shared a locked ladies room on the floor - sometimes female customers and clients used it, but it was mostly the three of us.

One winter day, I was in the stall, and Doris was at the sink. The custodian had left the window open, and it was cold. I said something foolish about how cold the seat was. With her hands in the stream of water, Doris froze. "You sit down?" she asked, incredulously.

I suddenly had a picture of Doris - then in her mid-fifties - for twenty-five years hovering over the seat in a bathroom she shared with two other people, her calf muscles flexed and trembling.

There's too many other things to worry about in life. I'm making a confession here - I don't use paper toilet seat covers. A quick wipe on the seat with a bit of toilet paper if there are some sprinkles there, but otherwise - I'm good. The way I figure, as long as the seat is dry and there is no discernible soilage, whatever's there is not going to penetrate my epidermis and immune system and infect me. If it's really bad, I'll go to another stall, or if it's the only option, I'll hover. But in a public toilet that appears to be regularly cleaned, I don't feel that squeamish.

But I can understand that maybe I came of age in an era before disposable toilet seat covers were regularly available. Maybe it is a norm for younger generations to use them.

I don't question other women's choices for hygiene. But what I want to know is - Why do some users of disposable toilet seat covers leave them on the seat for the next user to throw away? How can someone be so squeamish they must put a paper barrier between their butt and the plastic seat other people sit on, and yet be so inconsiderate they leave their used paper barrier for someone else to deal with?

I encountered this today in a high-end restaurant. I had to clean up some other fastidious person's mess. What do you think? Discuss.

Paging Lysistrata - please pick up the red phone

Magazine cover, 1913, showing women in ancient dress, bearing sign "We want our rights" - Library of Congress. Click to "embiggen"

 I don't normally do politics here, but....

Perhaps you have heard that late in January, the Obama Administration's Health and Human Services Adminsitration announced a rule that would require, under the Affordable Care Act, that every employer insurance plan - with some exceptions - would be required to include contraception coverage with no co-payment.

The exceptions include churches and houses of worship who, objecting to contraception on religious grounds, would be allowed to drop contraception coverage for their employees.

The exceptions did not extend to institutions such as universities, hospitals, charities and schools that serve the general public, even though they may be religiously based.  The principle behind this is that employees like custodians, nurses, landscapers, budget analysts, IT specialists, radiology technicians, cafeteria workers and all the other professional employees that work for these institutions should not be discriminated against on the basis of sex as regards their work benefits.

Slightly NSFW image below the jump

Too much of a good thing

Olive oil and water

You'll see Escolar listed on menus in fine restaurants. It's sometimes described as butterfish, because the flesh of escolar is known to be succulent and "buttery" tasting.

I recently ordered escolar at a fine Santa Monica seafood restaurant. I was presented with a 2" thick filet that was perfectly cooked and -living up to its reputation - deliciously flavored.

I have a small appetite, and couldn't finish my serving, so I are maybe half and brought some home and ended up serving it to Jack.

The following morning, I noticed something weird.

OK - you've all followed me through my ordeal with my colonectomy. You've all stayed with me through my preparations for surgery, my colonoscopy, all the discussions of the internal workings of the human digestive system. So, here we go again with something gross.

When I went to the bathroom, there was an oily, orange discharge in the toilet.

I was worried. Did my surgery take out some crucial portion of my lower intestine that digests oil? Have I failed to re-generate critical bacteria I need in my digestive system? What is up?

I also wondered what I ate that could have caused it. On Friday, a friend had bought me lunch at a local Mexican restaurant famed for its giant sauce-covered burritos. Maybe the cheese and carnitas had been too much for my system? Or was it the nachos that [The Man I Love] made from some chips we'd taken away from a place in Inglewood. Were they fried in Olestra, maybe?

So finally, I decided to google-research. I never even dreamed that the perfectly fresh, perfectly prepared fish filet would have caused this, so I googled a lot of other words, but in only a matter of moments, I saw that rising to the top of the search hierarchy were articles about how eating escolar causes digestive problems.

Escolar - though delicious - has been banned for consumption in Japan since 1977. The fish itself,  epidocybium flavobrunneum, cannot digest certain fats in its own diet, so it retains them in its body. We humans can't digest them, either, so when we eat escolar, which has an oil content of 14 - 25%, we have problems.

People who eat escolar sometimes experience diarrhea, stomach cramps, vomiting, and - worst of all - anal leakage. Me, I just had drops of orange colored oil appear in my toilet bowl. Apparently, it doesn't hurt you - it's just temporary. Maybe for some folks, it's worth it for the deliciousness of the fish. But I'm not sure. As a person who's experienced gastro-intestinal problems, it was pretty scarey even though it didn't make me feel bad.

I'm fine now, after a couple of days, and don't feel bad at all. But I wrote to the restaurant and let them know what I learned. I'll let you know how they respond.

UPDATE at 8:54 pm - Boy that was quick. The restaurant responded almost immediately, said they were suspending service of escolar while they researched it, and will keep me informed. Good for them!

Smile for the camera!

Health is serious business for everyone, and so after my experience with complicated diverticulitis and colon surgery this spring, I took my referral for a colonoscopy seriously.

The procedure was today. I spent yesterday preparing for the procedure, which, if you've had one, you already know isn't pleasant.

I last had a colonoscopy - my first - about six years ago. It was routine. I remember Our Son was the one who drove me there, waited in the waiting room and took me home. I remember being SO HUNGRY during the fasting part of it, and dreaming of where I'd ask him to drive me immediately after leaving the hospital, so I could eat. But actually, that time I was really really out of it. I don't remember a lot about the procedure or the aftermath. And when it was all over all I wanted to do was go home, not go eat.

This time, I barely knew that I was put under, although I must have been because they were halfway through the procedure before I realized it was taking place. It was at that point I put my glasses on and watched the monitor - something I hadn't done the first time. My doctor kindly showed me the site of my surgery, telling me it looked perfectly fine. Then I watched the little camera navigate the pink, corrugated tubes of my innards. You can see examples of what it looks like HERE.

Then it was over.

This time around, I was surprised. I felt pretty good. I felt awake. I felt HUNGRY. I asked [The Man I Love] to take me to El Cholo in Santa Monica, just a few blocks away from the hosptial.

Mmmm. Chile rellenos!

I have a clean bill of health. Everything's good. It didn't hurt, and it was only mildly inconveniencing. If you're due for one, and putting it off because you're nervous or worried - don't. Do what you need to do. Take care of yourselves, everyone.

Keep climbing

I still feel tender at the site of my incision. My gut feels....fine...but I'm hyper-aware of every movement.  I'm tracking my diet, actively choosing vegetables, fruits, and high fiber choices.

I walk every day, at least one mile, usually in the morning with Jack. The walk loops around and down, among oak groves, past viewpoints, and past rustic cottages. There is perhaps a 100 foot grade change from the lowest point of my walk to the highest point. I get tired more easily than I used to, but each morning I go out.

UPDATE: To Linda in comments - yes, although the eucalyptus trees are now frowned upon as being fuel for fires, there are several magnificent specimens here that smell heavenly - along with the smell of pepper trees, blooming oleander, and the sharp resin and herbal scent of native chaparral and sage. 

Along our walk we meet friends - other dog-walkers. Some we know well enough to stop and chat. Some we only know their dogs' name - but the dogs stop and play together. Some we know only to greet and keep walking. We say hello to other neighbors taking out their trash, or driving past on their way to work.

Lately it's been cool, damp and foggy - typical for L.A. in June. But once in a while, the sun breaks out.

I know it seems like an uphill struggle. But keep climbing toward the sun.

Checking in

Today saw my doctor for a post-operative exam. He says I'm doing great! I'll need to schedule a colonoscopy in the next couple of months, just to be sure, but he thinks I'm going to be just fine!

Here's some sweet summer lavender, in bloom in the garden.

Convalescing

Lounging in bed with a good book.

Or sitting out on the deck, watching the sunbeams dazzle.

I'm lucky to have an attentive nurse.