Wednesday, June 14, 2006
Tuesday, June 13, 2006
Monday, June 12, 2006
Bougainvillea! Bougainvillea! Bougainvillea!
A while back, an old friend of mine got married. The marriage is one of those well-deserved happy endings. This woman went through so many trials and tribulations, and finally fell in love with a genuinely decent man, who truly loves her back. So I have never been able to stop being especially happy for her.
She loves plants, and before the wedding, she planted him some special bougainvillea in their new place. He's not the plant freak she and I are, but like Walter, he's an excellent Admirer of the Gardener's Endeavors.
So much so, he listened well to her describing how the very word, bougainvillea, is a beautiful word on its own. Bougainvillea. When you say that word it rolls around in your mouth, you savor its touch inside. It's so evocative of the grace and strength and brilliance and gorgeousness of that plant, of the virile life of a flower that bursts forth with great natural beauty.
He listened so well that one night, after they were particularly well blessed with that natural joy of union between two true lovers, he said to her softly -- Bougainvillea.
--What? she drowsily replied.
--You were screaming so much it was like you were saying, Bougainvillea! Bougainvillea! Bougainvillea!
She loves plants, and before the wedding, she planted him some special bougainvillea in their new place. He's not the plant freak she and I are, but like Walter, he's an excellent Admirer of the Gardener's Endeavors.
So much so, he listened well to her describing how the very word, bougainvillea, is a beautiful word on its own. Bougainvillea. When you say that word it rolls around in your mouth, you savor its touch inside. It's so evocative of the grace and strength and brilliance and gorgeousness of that plant, of the virile life of a flower that bursts forth with great natural beauty.
He listened so well that one night, after they were particularly well blessed with that natural joy of union between two true lovers, he said to her softly -- Bougainvillea.
--What? she drowsily replied.
--You were screaming so much it was like you were saying, Bougainvillea! Bougainvillea! Bougainvillea!
Cat's Eye via pepektheassassin
Anyone who's read more that one or two posts here has probably figured out that I hold mother nature in great esteem, on many fronts. One of those is just her sheer and pure beauty.
Check it out:
http://myunclepepeksjournal.blogspot.com/2006/06/cats-eye.html
Check it out:
http://myunclepepeksjournal.blogspot.com/2006/06/cats-eye.html
Sunday, June 11, 2006
Bad Tooth Out
When you're getting anesthesia, you can't drive yourself to and from surgery. Since all my usual people were out of state, my wonderful new neighbor across the street, D, offered to take me. I didn't even ask. This guy is something else.
I had to be there at 10:30 for pre-op. I met my neighbor late and embarrassed myself. We were early to the hospital, but he was barely on time at the vet's.
(His dog went to the vet. I was the one who went to the hospital.)
The procedure itself was to start at 12:30 and take 1/2 hour. Recovery - 1 hour. Then I could go home. I told D, I'm the last patient because of the MRSA. So if there's any delay I'm the one who's gonna feel it most. Better come at 2:30 not 2:00.
The surgeon told me he may have to do some fairly extensive reconstructive surgery on that tendon. OR, none at all. When I woke up? Check the bandage. If it went to my fingertips, that meant more extensive surgery had been done. If the bandage only went to my knuckles, cool.
At 2:30, when I still hadn't even started surgery yet, D came. He left his phone # with the nurses and went home. Good boy. He is sanguine.
I woke up around 5 pm. They told me the surgery took 70 minutes, not 30.
But the bandage only went to my knuckles.
Hmmm.
The docs were gone, no one to fill me in on the details.
All I knew was, that awful nagging shooting pain was gone. The minute I woke up it was gone. The surgery part hurt like hell and I didn't mind a bit. That heals.
I woke up feeling so much better Saturday morning, I didn't elevate it enough. The hand swelled up and hit the unyielding plaster cast. Saturday night, I finally called the doc - he'd been very, very sweet about insisting any of us do that if we had any concern at all. He always takes his own calls from his patients.
He asked me questions: I told him the whole pinkie was completely numb, most of the other fingers too, and I couldn't get the swelling down.
He said: While the tendon was in pretty good shape, there was a huge amount of inflammation wrapped around the nerve that runs through that part of the hand.
That's why it was so painful, for such a long part of the arm - fingertip to elbow. A shooting pain. The nerve was being choked half to death.
And why he'd had to spend so much time in there. He was picking diseased inflammatory tissue off the nerve just forever.
So, even though I'm supposed to keep using this hand as much as I can, it's not easy. Not working too good, and not much sensation in it beyond pain. He told me how to cut away part of the bandage to loosen it, and the swelling is better now. But whether, or how much, that nerve will recover is up in the air.
Well. Posting's gonna be iffy. And my spelling and such may slide some for now. Could be we'll look into that voice recognition software miss pepek mentioned, too.
But...I saw my neighbor Peter, as we picked up our yards a bit for the coming storm, Alberto. He studied my face and said - this extraordinary portraitist said - --You've changed. You look different. Like a person who just had a bad tooth out...This was good for you, wasn't it.
And my response, adamantly, was --Yes.
I had to be there at 10:30 for pre-op. I met my neighbor late and embarrassed myself. We were early to the hospital, but he was barely on time at the vet's.
(His dog went to the vet. I was the one who went to the hospital.)
The procedure itself was to start at 12:30 and take 1/2 hour. Recovery - 1 hour. Then I could go home. I told D, I'm the last patient because of the MRSA. So if there's any delay I'm the one who's gonna feel it most. Better come at 2:30 not 2:00.
The surgeon told me he may have to do some fairly extensive reconstructive surgery on that tendon. OR, none at all. When I woke up? Check the bandage. If it went to my fingertips, that meant more extensive surgery had been done. If the bandage only went to my knuckles, cool.
At 2:30, when I still hadn't even started surgery yet, D came. He left his phone # with the nurses and went home. Good boy. He is sanguine.
I woke up around 5 pm. They told me the surgery took 70 minutes, not 30.
But the bandage only went to my knuckles.
Hmmm.
The docs were gone, no one to fill me in on the details.
All I knew was, that awful nagging shooting pain was gone. The minute I woke up it was gone. The surgery part hurt like hell and I didn't mind a bit. That heals.
I woke up feeling so much better Saturday morning, I didn't elevate it enough. The hand swelled up and hit the unyielding plaster cast. Saturday night, I finally called the doc - he'd been very, very sweet about insisting any of us do that if we had any concern at all. He always takes his own calls from his patients.
He asked me questions: I told him the whole pinkie was completely numb, most of the other fingers too, and I couldn't get the swelling down.
He said: While the tendon was in pretty good shape, there was a huge amount of inflammation wrapped around the nerve that runs through that part of the hand.
That's why it was so painful, for such a long part of the arm - fingertip to elbow. A shooting pain. The nerve was being choked half to death.
And why he'd had to spend so much time in there. He was picking diseased inflammatory tissue off the nerve just forever.
So, even though I'm supposed to keep using this hand as much as I can, it's not easy. Not working too good, and not much sensation in it beyond pain. He told me how to cut away part of the bandage to loosen it, and the swelling is better now. But whether, or how much, that nerve will recover is up in the air.
Well. Posting's gonna be iffy. And my spelling and such may slide some for now. Could be we'll look into that voice recognition software miss pepek mentioned, too.
But...I saw my neighbor Peter, as we picked up our yards a bit for the coming storm, Alberto. He studied my face and said - this extraordinary portraitist said - --You've changed. You look different. Like a person who just had a bad tooth out...This was good for you, wasn't it.
And my response, adamantly, was --Yes.
morphed
Last weekend, the long, semi-mushy Thing on the Hand morphed.
For 6 months it had been hanging there more or less unchanged. It was around 2.5" long - from the wrist to the base of the pinkie - .75" wide, and stuck out about .5" high.
Suddenly it became, instead, a big round hard ball. Like a jumbo marble.
Of COURSE this never happens during the week. No, it HAS to be on, say, Friday night. All the docs are home for the weekend.
Monday, naturally, all hell broke loose. Was it an abscess? Or just a cyst, forming on the tenosynovitis?
After many phone-callings and running-arounds and Fitting You In to the Doc's Schedule, it was determined to be a harmless cyst. No need to do the surgery any earlier.
WHEW.
please excuse very poor typing
But hey, what a kick-ass job of bandaging, huh?
Underneath all the cotton and tape and Ace bandage, they embedded a cast.
The plaster cast is actually glued on to the other material in places. It's all constructed together like a work of art.
I hated like hell to cut into this beautiful piece of medical sculpture.
But...
Poor Mr. Hand's just aawllll swole up. Gotta be done. So I did.
Saturday, June 10, 2006
Desert Cat, meet pepektheassassin
Since my response to their comments http://ksquest.blogspot.com/2006/06/ok.html got post size, I decided to post it.
hee hee! oh, happy day! DC, meet a nice assassin!
Miss Assassin, Desert Cat isn't quite my mom - he's my blog dad. I went trawling for a good debater, one fine day, on my blogmom's blog (Little Miss Attila). I left some mildly provocative comments about the tsunami volunteers, things that were at odds with LMA's general readership. I wanted to discuss issues with someone who held different views than mine, but held them THOUGHTFULLY and sincerely.
And who should take the bait but this one. He was one of the very few non-friends&relatives who went on my email list back when I was still *closet blogging.* We have so many striking similarities in our histories, our personalities, our likes and dislikes, that I feel like he's a long lost brother or a male alter ego. Even though we still disagree, even profoundly, on many things. Eventually he became my blogdad, and the rest, as they say, is history. In our tiny way.
DC, I've been meaning to ask if you've dropped by pepektheassassin's site yet,
http://myunclepepeksjournal.blogspot.com/ . She is a pheeeeenom. A published poet and poetry instructor (professor, perhaps?) and lover of all kinds of other art, including that gorgeous art of mother nature - eg, quantum physics...so see her marvelous pix from deep space, via the Hubble telescope. Check it out. You will be blown away. She puts my art sense into fits of ecstasy. Here, this is a particularly fine post for you personally: http://myunclepepeksjournal.blogspot.com/2006/06/hubble-photo-for-sunday-morning.html
DC, she even likes my blurry pix!
pta, DC has a great intuitive layman's grasp of medicine. E.g.: He understands various distant sequela of these chronic MRSA infections - like that this surgery, not such a big thing on its own, but badly complicated with the allergy etc. problems, is actually fraught with only one great danger: infection.
That's why, when I tried to release him from his prayers for my safety, he said he's not done yet.
And since I have a powerful impression that his prayers are exceptionally potent, I won't say nay. I'm conscious of the fact that I still need all the help I can get. And I may not know otherwise for as much as three weeks.
That's a long time to hold my breath.
This way, I can breathe.
hee hee! oh, happy day! DC, meet a nice assassin!
Miss Assassin, Desert Cat isn't quite my mom - he's my blog dad. I went trawling for a good debater, one fine day, on my blogmom's blog (Little Miss Attila). I left some mildly provocative comments about the tsunami volunteers, things that were at odds with LMA's general readership. I wanted to discuss issues with someone who held different views than mine, but held them THOUGHTFULLY and sincerely.
And who should take the bait but this one. He was one of the very few non-friends&relatives who went on my email list back when I was still *closet blogging.* We have so many striking similarities in our histories, our personalities, our likes and dislikes, that I feel like he's a long lost brother or a male alter ego. Even though we still disagree, even profoundly, on many things. Eventually he became my blogdad, and the rest, as they say, is history. In our tiny way.
DC, I've been meaning to ask if you've dropped by pepektheassassin's site yet,
http://myunclepepeksjournal.blogspot.com/ . She is a pheeeeenom. A published poet and poetry instructor (professor, perhaps?) and lover of all kinds of other art, including that gorgeous art of mother nature - eg, quantum physics...so see her marvelous pix from deep space, via the Hubble telescope. Check it out. You will be blown away. She puts my art sense into fits of ecstasy. Here, this is a particularly fine post for you personally: http://myunclepepeksjournal.blogspot.com/2006/06/hubble-photo-for-sunday-morning.html
DC, she even likes my blurry pix!
pta, DC has a great intuitive layman's grasp of medicine. E.g.: He understands various distant sequela of these chronic MRSA infections - like that this surgery, not such a big thing on its own, but badly complicated with the allergy etc. problems, is actually fraught with only one great danger: infection.
That's why, when I tried to release him from his prayers for my safety, he said he's not done yet.
And since I have a powerful impression that his prayers are exceptionally potent, I won't say nay. I'm conscious of the fact that I still need all the help I can get. And I may not know otherwise for as much as three weeks.
That's a long time to hold my breath.
This way, I can breathe.
Hey Kids! Tired of Dead Terrorists? Of Surgery? Of Awful Stupid Human Tricks?
WELL then! How's about a nice tropical storm?
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/southflorida/sfl-609tropical,0,1614717.story
Weather system off Yucatan could become season's first tropical depression
By Ken Kayesun-sentinel.comJune 9, 2006, 12:42 PM EDT
An area of disturbed weather in the northwest Caribbean, a couple hundred miles east of Mexico's Yucatan, could turn into the season's first tropical depression on Friday or Saturday, the National Hurricane Center in Miami-Dade County said. A hurricane hunter aircraft is being dispatched to investigate on Saturday.
If so, the season would be starting almost as early as last year, when the first depression formed on June 8 and became Tropical Storm Arlene. That system produced squally weather in South Florida and pummeled the Gulf Coast near the Florida-Alabama border on June 11.
This one appears to be heading toward western Cuba, and even if it doesn't form, Belize and Honduras, the Cayman Islands and Cuba can expect to see heavy rains, the hurricane center said. It's too early to say if South Florida would be in its path.
Despite its close proximity to land, forecasters said upper level winds have become conducive for storm development. If it were to grow into a tropical storm, it would be named Alberto.
Copyright © 2006, South Florida Sun-Sentinel
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/southflorida/sfl-609tropical,0,1614717.story
Weather system off Yucatan could become season's first tropical depression
By Ken Kayesun-sentinel.comJune 9, 2006, 12:42 PM EDT
An area of disturbed weather in the northwest Caribbean, a couple hundred miles east of Mexico's Yucatan, could turn into the season's first tropical depression on Friday or Saturday, the National Hurricane Center in Miami-Dade County said. A hurricane hunter aircraft is being dispatched to investigate on Saturday.
If so, the season would be starting almost as early as last year, when the first depression formed on June 8 and became Tropical Storm Arlene. That system produced squally weather in South Florida and pummeled the Gulf Coast near the Florida-Alabama border on June 11.
This one appears to be heading toward western Cuba, and even if it doesn't form, Belize and Honduras, the Cayman Islands and Cuba can expect to see heavy rains, the hurricane center said. It's too early to say if South Florida would be in its path.
Despite its close proximity to land, forecasters said upper level winds have become conducive for storm development. If it were to grow into a tropical storm, it would be named Alberto.
Copyright © 2006, South Florida Sun-Sentinel
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