Still Here

We decided against the move to Geezer City.  It would get us out of the swamp for the winter, but living there would involve more work than living here.  Both of us are trying to make our lives easier, not harder.  Our helper lady has two more clients besides us, and one of them is planning to move away, so we might be able to engage her for more hours per week.  We still plan to move to an assisted living facility if we manage to outlive the people ahead of us on the waiting list.  Assisted living is something between those geezer apartments and a nursing home.  They feed you, do your laundry, and clean your apartment for you.  They also have nursing care available if the time ever comes when you need it and are still alive.  We aren't that far down the road yet, but let's face it, we're not getting any younger. 

All our stuff will remain on the Freehold until such time our daughter decides to sell the property.  Then it will all be hers to dispose of as she sees fit.  She has requested that we put the land in her name before we get too senile to make that decision.  We might do that somewhere down the road, but we're not there yet.  We have owned Beaglesonia since 1986, but we have only lived here since 2000.

We have both tried to minimize our medication.  I take two pills for blood pressure, one for fiber, and one for dizzy spells.  I also use two kinds of prescription eye drops for glaucoma, and another OTC one for dry eyes.  My wife only takes one blood pressure pill and Tylenol.  Different doctors have tried to get us to take more stuff, but we have managed to evade them so far.  We have read that Americans are generally over medicated, and we tend to believe it.  

cormorants.

 

Posted this in fb about a week ago, inspired by this spring's invasion of the Chicago River by cormorants.  Beagles responded:

Cormorants arrived here decades ago. They had not been seen here in living memory, and everybody thought it was a good thing, but it wasn't. They ate up all the fish and pooped them all over the place. Since they were federally protected, it was illegal for even the state DNR to use lethal controls. Fortunately, a loophole was found. They started coating their eggs with vegetable oil. This insured that the eggs would never hatch, but the cormorants didn't know that, so they wasted the whole breeding season trying to hatch them instead of laying more.

The treadmills in the exercise room face south over the river which is good because the treadmill is very boring.  I liked to watch the birds, in this case gulls. To me they kind of knit the city together diving and rising on columns of hot air, beautiful and graceful birds.  

But then a two or three years ago I began to notice other birds flying along the river east to west.  They were darker and  flew like they were in a hurry, no gentle gliding like gulls, they had long necks and looked like Stuka jets.  I googled around and turkey buzzards seemed a likely candidate, this is their turf, about the same size, but the resemblance was a little off.

This year they came in force.  They are native birds and they are in the burbs, but the Chicago River is new territory for them.  Well it was so filthy, and now it is pretty damn clean.  The second annual swim meet in the river is later this year.  

As you know I face the lake and in the mornings I could see them entering the river from the lake and flying in like a fleet of Stukas or those helicopters in Apocalypse Now.  (You could almost hear The Ride of the valkyries.)

Unlike gulls, who are not averse to a handout from a human, the cormorants ignore us completely.  They fly close to river and then dive beneath the surface and chase a fish a considerable distance before they emerge with a glint of silver.

Well I am smitten, but you will notice our county cousin is not.  Well we slickers are inclined to view all pigs as Porky and ducks as Donald.  So adorable.  

Google agrees that they have terrible and acidic poop which can kill trees and weaken steel bridges.  But as for eating fish, not so bad a thing because you are getting rid of old sick fish (just like us) and make way for younger fresher fish (those jerks wearing shorts when the temp is in the teens), culling the herd so to speak.  Nature is cruel.  The rabbit is happy when Mother Nature gives it more hoppity feet to outrun the fox, but not so happy to see her give the fox sharper teeth.  But I know Beagles used to fish the Cheboygan River and bring back dinner and I guess to a fisherman every fish a cormorant catches is one that the fisherman doesn't get to

I guess they are passing through on their migration, and only a few stay all year, though in time like Canada geese have learned, this is a nice town to toddle around in.  In the meantime I will be awaiting their return in the fall.

What's up?

Almost May, two months and a few days away from John Meis's fabulous Fourth of July party in Urbans, brats and beers, and fellowship among my fellow beer drinking buddies.  I am guessing this is the 50th.

I'm not going to give an estimate of the turnout, but back in the day it was two kegs of beer and then a hat was passed around and we got a large car full of beer just before the liquor stores closed.  Anymore I get a case and a half of beer and when I leave there is still beer.

Well as Kurt Vonnegut was fond of saying so it goes.  

I remember a time, maybe when the party was at its one keg and a car almost full of package stage and the conversation drifted to conditions and pills.  Geez-a-loo they were all off and running, everybody was talking about all the pills they take and it sounded like listening to the grandparents talking when I was a kid.  I would never be like that.

Well I guess you guys have a similar pill armada.  Got two new ones with the stent, one of which if I forget to take it for awhile I will be dead, and one that I have to take twice a day.  My memory is not too hot but I can easily remember once a day, but twice a day, a little iffy.

I wonder if Beagles has moved into that swinging geezer apartment building.  How many years did you live in The Freehold?  What happened to all your junk?

Too be honest I was scared to take the Aztec route of Old Dog, and the stent sounded somehow, um, safer.  But now I have to get another stent.  They tell me I will be on the table for four hours and will have to stay overnight.  Shit, when the subject of stents came up I thought I would go in in the morning, out in the afternoon and ready to resume all my bad habits.  Now I have to do cardio rehab for maybe three months.  

Speaking of bad habits.  I was down to maybe one cig a day.  But now none at all.  I fantasize about maybe a year down the road if I am all hunky dory.  Maybe having a puff, but probably not.

Well.

So it goes

   

Water, Water, Everywhere but Here

 Y'all might have heard about all the flooding in Northern Michigan, but you'd never know it looking out our window.  Our water table hit a peak about a week ago, and it's been downhill ever since.  Even at the peak it was no wetter than usual for this time of year.  Turns out that the Freehold is not in the same watershed as the Cheboygan River, which is only two miles away as the crow flies.  All the flooding seems to be concentrated along the waterfronts of our major lakes and rivers, and the Great Beaglesonian Swamp is not directly connected to any of them. 

Last I heard, youse guys both seemed to be recovering nicely from your medical problems.  Hope that is still the case.  My wife and I, not so much.  We are on a waiting list for a local assisted living facility.  When I asked the lady how many people were on the list ahead of us, she couldn't say exactly, but that it didn't matter.  It seems that, when a vacancy occurs, the next several people in line are often dead, so we could move up very quickly.  Meanwhile, our daughter has found a geezer friendly apartment complex close by in town.  They have a vacancy right now, and we are going to look at it on Friday.  It's not the same thing as assisted living, but at least it would provide us with a safe haven for this winter. 

April Fool

"It could be worse"

No kidding!  On March 31st the Aztec priests took me to the top of the pyramid, raised their obsidian knives to the heavens and tore out my heart.  Just kidding, just another routine triple-bypass; no drama but I'll have an impressive 9.5 inch scar in the middle of my chest.  Things went so well that they cut me loose on Easter Sunday for my own Resurrection and am doing a recuperation at my sister's home in Niles, a clash of realities but I can deal with it.  No complaints except for the healing part.  And the follow-up appointments, therapy sessions, and paperwork, lots and lots of paperwork.  No need for a cane or walker, nice to be on my feet walking around.

So that's how my month has started; how you guys doing?

It Could Be Worse

 That's what I say every time I start feeling sorry for myself.  Sounds like both of my esteemed colleagues are in worse shape than I am, at least heart wise.  I don't know about my shortness of breath issue.  I always figured that was connected to that bout with rheumatic fever that I had as a kid, but now I'm not so sure.  They said they fixed my heart issue when I was in the hospital last summer, but my breath is still as short as it ever was.  I am sucking on my nebulizer as we speak, and I have purchased a portable oxygen concentrator, but I can't seem to find the time to get into a reliable routine with either one of them.  That's why we are looking into assisted living.  If we could get someone to pick up some of our household chores, it might free us up to spend more time on our health therapy regimes.

Meanwhile, as Red Green used to say, "Remember, I'm pulling for you.  We're all in this together."

The stent

 Common alternative names for urgent care centers include immediate care, convenient care, walk-in clinics, and acute care clinics. These facilities provide prompt, non-life-threatening medical services, often with extended hours and no appointment necessary. 

We have three of them downtown, one for Rush, one for Northwestern and one for UChicago.  It is nice living downtown where we have all of them and the big factory hospital at Northwestern.  

The urgent care I went to was UChicago east on Grand maybe a half mile from my house and I walked it also walked to Northwestern from there.  My only symptom was that pain in my chest and left arm and I never had that pain when I was doing normal stuff.

Anyway I went in Monday morning for my stent and everything went pretty smooth.  One bad moment was when one of the docs dropped in just before surgery and told me that the operation is successful 9 times out of 10, like this was good news, that I only had a one in ten chance of never getting off the gurney?  Chatz had told me my odds were more like 99.99%.  I asked my primary doc about this later, and she kind of laughed and said that what he was talking about was that about ten percent don't follow the rules afterwards and those are the people who didn't make it.

The operation took a couple hours but it was like a colostomy where you are half in the bag and time passes easily.  Then they put me in the recovery room and told me that I would have to stay there six hours to make sure that my groin where they put the balloon in did not start leaking, or spurting, or whatever.

But that was ok because I was assured that I would be going home right away after it was done.  But then with about an hour to go the nurses discovered what they thought was a leak in my groin.  They couldn't figure it out and the clock was running and maybe I would have to stay overnight.  But then a friendly doc dropped by and said, "Oh that?  That's nothing."  And I got to go home and see my cat.

I guess I could be pissed at those nurses for keeping me there because they could not figure out that it was nothing.  But you know, it could have been.  Northwestern, they treat you like a piece of meat, but do a pretty good job of making sure you get home alive.

I will still have another stent put in in about a month, but it should go easier, I think.  Anyway it's a month away.

And I got more pills to take.  And the doc stressed that if I don't take them every day I will die.  I tend to be forgetful so now my bathroom is adorned with post it notes to remind me.

The other thing is something called Cardiac Rehab which I will go into in the next post.