Written sometime last summer.
It is raining today, for the first time in a few weeks. The weather has been cool yet not the freezing weather we expect this time of year when the rains stop. It is during the transition from oceanic rain to continental blue skies that we usually get our snow, or worse still - ice storms. During the ice storms snow falls at night then melts and freezes on all the shrubbery, dragging everything down under the weight and sometimes breaking trees completely off their roots.
Last summer we had a few weeks of hot dry weather. It was making me apprehensive about maintaining my garden. The garden was looking good after a long cold wet summer. I have come to understand that cold wet weather is the weather preferred by rhododendrons. I am weak in faith. I always assume that the current weather is what I will experience for the remainder of my life. So now I firmly believe that it will always be dark and rainy every day. It is four PM and the light is already fading. The impulse is to hibernate in some warm cozy bright cubbyhole, a place such as my home office. It would seem that I am not a rhododendron, however much I might wish to spend my days standing in the rain with my roots buried in earth and mulch, waiting patiently through the centuries for each ecstatic moment of sudden bloom.
I have been touring my garden and many of the rhododendrons are covered with flower buds. If the winter is not too harsh my springtime will be extravagant with flowers. At my age (not even one of the centuries of rhododendrons) the anticipation is almost as good as the event itself. Things happens just as they have happened for millions of years before my birth and I greet them as if I were one who has been here all along. "There you are," I think. "You are back again. It is just as though you had never left. Nor have you been forgotten while you were gone. In my faithless way I wistfully thought that you might never return, yet somehow the world has come back to life." Is this what they meant when they spoke of the return of Christ. Perhaps some people of great faith understood that perfectly.
Last summer after a couple of weeks of bright hot dry weather I was pretty sure the whole world was going to dry up and die - even though everything was yet looking good from all the previous wet weather. I could feel my skin burning and cracking even though I never exposed myself to the weather and we had (newly installed) air conditioning to protect me from the heat. I was prepared to linger and suffer for a time after the end of times. After that time when the sun grows into its red giant phase and engulfs the earth. I will need a stronger bubble and better air conditioning.
Then the ocean returned, rising up from the Puget lowlands and threading its way among the trees. I imagined that I could smell the salt and the seaweed in the air. It was a small change actually. I went outside and enjoyed the wetness and the coolness. I pulled alien weeds from my patch of forest and planted more exotic and more difficult aliens in their place.
The summers of 2017 and 2018 were very hot and dry. Our water bill was extravagant. Certain people with less climate sense than mine predicted the extinction of the Western Red Cedar (with its love of moisture). Certainly there were a lot of dying trees in the forests: both hemlocks and cedars. All of my larger trees are well. I believe that the Western Red Cedar is safe for at least fifty years in this area, even with climate change. Someday perhaps it will grow happily on the shores of the arctic ocean, and probably as an immigrant in many other northerly and southerly locations. Perhaps even across the southern sea where now only glaciers and ice bergs grow.
Saturday, November 9, 2019
Monday, October 14, 2019
Monotheism
Let us suppose that there are more than two worlds. In fact, let us suppose that every person lives in their own individualized world. A person with great insight would immediately recognize exactly which world each person inhabits. If that person were somewhat insensitive he might also characterize each world, categorize it, cut it, dry it, and sell it by the ounce. I am not that person. I am neither so good nor so bad. One my great virtues is the occasional ability to avoid the effects of my own intense curiosity or idle meddling. I can take on a combination of compassion and resignation at key moments to avoid innocent insult or injury to someone else. I wish that I were better at it.
Objectively, of course, there is only one world that we all inhabit - knocking elbows and politely finding our ways - or not. Such is the source of much drama, much suffering. It starts small and grows. One wants something. One wishes for something. One accepts a gift. It is something small and innocent or else perhaps it is great and beautiful. Or something else...
Suddenly I am writing about the wonderful multiplex world of the spirit (subjective reality). One has not really lived until one has experienced obsession. A small obsession might be sufficient as a "sign and a wonder", a warning. It is the stuff of addiction. But never mind about that for now. I have enough material for a whole blog entry on addiction.
I have experienced the effects of abruptly cutting off an obsession (neurosis?). What else can we call grief? I have not experienced the more usual drug induced addiction. From time to time I have been obsessed about someone, but that is not usually considered addiction. It is not addiction when there is an inevitable cure, when the process ceases to be mechanical and takes on a life of its own. The greatest potential obsession may be exercise of the power to make a change in the world. This, too, has an inevitable cure - even if only death at some point. By this, I know that there is a greater suffering than death and it all starts with a wish, a desire, or consenting to accept something (perhaps as a gift).
But I digress.
In monotheism (leaving aside all the multiple and infinite definitions of God) all the values that motivate us always hearken back to one supreme value, from which all meaning falls out and which informs the various pieces and aspects of our lives. This, of course, is my own personal definition. Ideally, as we move through our lives and the necessary projects and actions mutate to fit circumstances, there is still that one unchanging guiding principle that causes everything to make sense. To lose that guiding principle is also to risk death, either by suicide or else from a broken heart. So monotheism is one of those things with a price to pay. Is the price we pay for meaning worthwhile? I think so. I would pay a lot to see all the way to the heart of the world.
There is just that one small worm eating away at it. I have the certain knowledge that my understanding is not perfect. In the best of circumstances it may only be accurate to the nearest quarter inch. Such a small error could easily be critical.
So. What is the supreme first cause in your life? Should we even have one? I never had a choice.
Objectively, of course, there is only one world that we all inhabit - knocking elbows and politely finding our ways - or not. Such is the source of much drama, much suffering. It starts small and grows. One wants something. One wishes for something. One accepts a gift. It is something small and innocent or else perhaps it is great and beautiful. Or something else...
Suddenly I am writing about the wonderful multiplex world of the spirit (subjective reality). One has not really lived until one has experienced obsession. A small obsession might be sufficient as a "sign and a wonder", a warning. It is the stuff of addiction. But never mind about that for now. I have enough material for a whole blog entry on addiction.
I have experienced the effects of abruptly cutting off an obsession (neurosis?). What else can we call grief? I have not experienced the more usual drug induced addiction. From time to time I have been obsessed about someone, but that is not usually considered addiction. It is not addiction when there is an inevitable cure, when the process ceases to be mechanical and takes on a life of its own. The greatest potential obsession may be exercise of the power to make a change in the world. This, too, has an inevitable cure - even if only death at some point. By this, I know that there is a greater suffering than death and it all starts with a wish, a desire, or consenting to accept something (perhaps as a gift).
But I digress.
In monotheism (leaving aside all the multiple and infinite definitions of God) all the values that motivate us always hearken back to one supreme value, from which all meaning falls out and which informs the various pieces and aspects of our lives. This, of course, is my own personal definition. Ideally, as we move through our lives and the necessary projects and actions mutate to fit circumstances, there is still that one unchanging guiding principle that causes everything to make sense. To lose that guiding principle is also to risk death, either by suicide or else from a broken heart. So monotheism is one of those things with a price to pay. Is the price we pay for meaning worthwhile? I think so. I would pay a lot to see all the way to the heart of the world.
There is just that one small worm eating away at it. I have the certain knowledge that my understanding is not perfect. In the best of circumstances it may only be accurate to the nearest quarter inch. Such a small error could easily be critical.
So. What is the supreme first cause in your life? Should we even have one? I never had a choice.
Thursday, September 19, 2019
simultaneity
Of course, as we all know, the universe is an amalgamation of massively parallel quantum entanglement. It follows that, of course, this is associated with a whole fun-house of emergent phenomena. This is what the "systems" people would say.
It is out of all this quantum entanglemen that the possibility of a notion of simultaneity emerges. I see no other possibility for even as much seamlessness and continuity as is visible from my tiny little knothole view on the All. It is all part of God's Ineffable Plan.
I was hugely disappointed when I discovered that "simultaneity" was a victim of that major constraint on cosmic cause and effect: the speed of light. In a way it makes sense that there is a maximum speed at which cause and effect propagates. It locks everything down into a matrix of relatedness. You know - time, space, energy and all that sort of thing. We could, I suppose, call it relativity. It is physics and it is what makes the world go around - and everything else.
It is out of all this quantum entanglemen that the possibility of a notion of simultaneity emerges. I see no other possibility for even as much seamlessness and continuity as is visible from my tiny little knothole view on the All. It is all part of God's Ineffable Plan.
I was hugely disappointed when I discovered that "simultaneity" was a victim of that major constraint on cosmic cause and effect: the speed of light. In a way it makes sense that there is a maximum speed at which cause and effect propagates. It locks everything down into a matrix of relatedness. You know - time, space, energy and all that sort of thing. We could, I suppose, call it relativity. It is physics and it is what makes the world go around - and everything else.
Friday, August 16, 2019
Awareness 1
I notice that I have not been systematic in my writings. It is likely that I am repeating myself. That is something that I will have to accept until such time as I harvest and delete this blog, gathering all the trains of thought and only speaking to particular subjects a limited number of times using some other tool (perhaps a book, perhaps a wiki).
So the three graces are love, hope, and faith. At one time, when I only knew the three graces and did not know the commentary (that immediately follows) I would have said that faith was the most important one. I considered that faith was the starting point, the way that we make the connection (the leap) across the gap from the "world within" to all of exterior reality. I was never one to assign much value to blind faith. The conceptual framework that we build around the elements of our faith is very important as to content and structure.
Last night I watched an hour-long interview between Stephen Colbert and Anderson Cooper. One would not expect to find much in common (aside from politics) but it turns out there are many parallels between their lives. The interview turned out to be more of a conversation than a one-sided exposition of remarks from one person.
They both lost their fathers just before becoming teenagers. My father lost his mother at about that age, with potentially greater consequences based on my understanding of his father. For Colbert and Cooper the loss marked a major transition for each of them. The word "shattering" (as in broken glass) was used. Today I read an unkind review of the works of Conrad Aiken (a poet I have read) where it was noted that at roughly that age his father murdered his mother and shot himself, leaving the bodies for Aiken to find. Cooper's brother killed himself ten years after his father died during open heart surgery. Two of Colbert's brothers died in the same plane crash with his father.
I was able to wait until my mid-thirties before I experienced that kind of world-shattering grief. Of course, every subsequent death (of which there were many) is just another blow to the open wound. We move on, with the realization that the bubble we always took for granted is now deliberate. Colbert has a strongly developed appreciation for the innate suffering of human existence. It may be that most of that comes from his strong commitment to Catholic faith (there is that "faith" word again). Much of the appeal of christian faith comes from the pathos of human existence, as symbolized by Christ on the cross or (alternatively) by the suffering of our lady, Mary.
So Colbert knows about the "grace" of love but that is not what he kept coming back to. He kept coming back to gratitude, to being thankful for God's gifts and in particular for the gift of life. Colbert says that everything God dishes out to you is a gift.
GOD: "Here, take this!"
GOD: "You like that? Well how about this?" (Out of compassion I have omitted the Youtube video.)
Until finally one is destroyed, either physically or psychically or else in the depths of one's soul. The one thing we know is that we will be tested to our utmost destruction - either by events or else by sheer change to the world until we no longer know who we are or why we are what we are.
So then I am forced to say that these blows are the elements of the meaning of our lives, the self-evident result of cause and effect. For Colbert gratitude is the proper response. For me it is to be caught up in the beauty, which is synonymous with truth (and so on). But perhaps they are not so much different. Either way, we are engaged with the world around us, whether we perceive it as a gift from God or whether it is seen as the amazing result of an intricate process full of awe, stretching out across aeons of time. My own vision fills in a lot more of the details but is it really necessary to pursue all that research?
I do not need eternal life to know that my life is not meaningless. The events of my life are woven into an eternal chain of cause and effect. I am a participant.
So the three graces are love, hope, and faith. At one time, when I only knew the three graces and did not know the commentary (that immediately follows) I would have said that faith was the most important one. I considered that faith was the starting point, the way that we make the connection (the leap) across the gap from the "world within" to all of exterior reality. I was never one to assign much value to blind faith. The conceptual framework that we build around the elements of our faith is very important as to content and structure.
Last night I watched an hour-long interview between Stephen Colbert and Anderson Cooper. One would not expect to find much in common (aside from politics) but it turns out there are many parallels between their lives. The interview turned out to be more of a conversation than a one-sided exposition of remarks from one person.
They both lost their fathers just before becoming teenagers. My father lost his mother at about that age, with potentially greater consequences based on my understanding of his father. For Colbert and Cooper the loss marked a major transition for each of them. The word "shattering" (as in broken glass) was used. Today I read an unkind review of the works of Conrad Aiken (a poet I have read) where it was noted that at roughly that age his father murdered his mother and shot himself, leaving the bodies for Aiken to find. Cooper's brother killed himself ten years after his father died during open heart surgery. Two of Colbert's brothers died in the same plane crash with his father.
I was able to wait until my mid-thirties before I experienced that kind of world-shattering grief. Of course, every subsequent death (of which there were many) is just another blow to the open wound. We move on, with the realization that the bubble we always took for granted is now deliberate. Colbert has a strongly developed appreciation for the innate suffering of human existence. It may be that most of that comes from his strong commitment to Catholic faith (there is that "faith" word again). Much of the appeal of christian faith comes from the pathos of human existence, as symbolized by Christ on the cross or (alternatively) by the suffering of our lady, Mary.
So Colbert knows about the "grace" of love but that is not what he kept coming back to. He kept coming back to gratitude, to being thankful for God's gifts and in particular for the gift of life. Colbert says that everything God dishes out to you is a gift.
GOD: "Here, take this!"
GOD: "You like that? Well how about this?" (Out of compassion I have omitted the Youtube video.)
Until finally one is destroyed, either physically or psychically or else in the depths of one's soul. The one thing we know is that we will be tested to our utmost destruction - either by events or else by sheer change to the world until we no longer know who we are or why we are what we are.
So then I am forced to say that these blows are the elements of the meaning of our lives, the self-evident result of cause and effect. For Colbert gratitude is the proper response. For me it is to be caught up in the beauty, which is synonymous with truth (and so on). But perhaps they are not so much different. Either way, we are engaged with the world around us, whether we perceive it as a gift from God or whether it is seen as the amazing result of an intricate process full of awe, stretching out across aeons of time. My own vision fills in a lot more of the details but is it really necessary to pursue all that research?
I do not need eternal life to know that my life is not meaningless. The events of my life are woven into an eternal chain of cause and effect. I am a participant.
Saturday, July 13, 2019
Footsteps into the Future
This post was started Jul 13th, 2019
I am going to use this posting to gather some notes about evidence of selective sweeps in the human genome, which is to say evolutionary processes. There are a few caveats assocciated with this posting. One is that it operates on the assumption that human evolution is an ongoing process (I would say at the Hand of God). Another is that it skirts around the subject of eugenics, which is rife (Rife! I tell you) with both classical and christian hubris. Being a romantic, I deny any association with the eugenicists. When the time comes for "natural" (or otherwise) selection within the human race, I prefer the hand of God.
I will add to the discussion of "selective sweeps" some of my own speculations about how changes in medical expertise may also have an eventual impact on our genomes, assuming that there is any normality in the ways that our genomes change or are edited in the future. We may already be a long ways past the usual understanding of Natural Selection when we talk about the human genome. I strongly distinguish between selective sweeps that may be permanently incorporated into the human population genome and selective sweeps resulting from external agents such as infectious diseases.
So here are a few interesting links from Wikipedia:
http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~peicheng/newVersion/pdfs/plosGenetics2007.pdf
Geneticists are always suspect from a political viewpoint for this reason (the assignment of "value") and also because they have been associated with the eugenics document "The Geneticist's Manifesto" written by Hermann Muller in 1939. As you may guess there were a lot of things wrong with the timing and the politics. It is hard to find a copy of this document online, perhaps because it is still under copyright protection, and also possibly because no one would consider it politically correct since WWII stamped out Aryanism for a generation.
I have a few comments about the Manifesto:
One other major change in culture, at least in developed countries, is the prevalence of caesareans as a way of giving birth. It is estimated that something like thirty percent of the births in the United States are by caesarean section. Caesareans happen for many reasons, but one factor is the size of the baby's head at birth. When I worked in the X-ray department at Community Memorial Hospital in Ventura, California, one of the procedures that we regularly performed was a "pelvimetry". There would be an image of a baby's head fully engaged in a woman's pelvis. Measurements would help to determine whether it was going to work or not.
At one time, many women died in childbirth (and there were many reasons for that). At least one reason was that the baby's head was too large to pass the birth canal. The incidence of caesareans removes that constraint to the tune of some value less than thirty percent of all births. In evolutionary terms this is huge. In usual evolutionary processes the selective pressure may be as little as .1 percent or less. It acts over time, over many generations.
If the current rate of caesareans continues for as long as ten generations. I predict that few women will be able to give birth normally and that the human race will embark on a new wave of selective sweeps based on the lack of a constraint on the size of a baby's head at birth.
I am going to use this posting to gather some notes about evidence of selective sweeps in the human genome, which is to say evolutionary processes. There are a few caveats assocciated with this posting. One is that it operates on the assumption that human evolution is an ongoing process (I would say at the Hand of God). Another is that it skirts around the subject of eugenics, which is rife (Rife! I tell you) with both classical and christian hubris. Being a romantic, I deny any association with the eugenicists. When the time comes for "natural" (or otherwise) selection within the human race, I prefer the hand of God.
I will add to the discussion of "selective sweeps" some of my own speculations about how changes in medical expertise may also have an eventual impact on our genomes, assuming that there is any normality in the ways that our genomes change or are edited in the future. We may already be a long ways past the usual understanding of Natural Selection when we talk about the human genome. I strongly distinguish between selective sweeps that may be permanently incorporated into the human population genome and selective sweeps resulting from external agents such as infectious diseases.
So here are a few interesting links from Wikipedia:
- ASPM (gene)
- DAB1 (among Chinese)
- SV2B (among African Americans)
- Selective sweeps In humans (more generic)
- Microcephalin (potentially introgressing from non-modern human race)
http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~peicheng/newVersion/pdfs/plosGenetics2007.pdf
Geneticists are always suspect from a political viewpoint for this reason (the assignment of "value") and also because they have been associated with the eugenics document "The Geneticist's Manifesto" written by Hermann Muller in 1939. As you may guess there were a lot of things wrong with the timing and the politics. It is hard to find a copy of this document online, perhaps because it is still under copyright protection, and also possibly because no one would consider it politically correct since WWII stamped out Aryanism for a generation.
I have a few comments about the Manifesto:
- I have a copy which, as usual with learned documents, I have not carefully read. I could scan it and put it online but I fail to find the motivation since it may be a copyright violation.
- Leonard Darwin (Charles's son) at the age of 89 wrote an article for Nature magazine in 1939 about the manifesto, an article which he also called "The Geneticist's Manifesto". It was only a review of Muller's manifesto without much discussion of the contents of the manifesto. Note that he pretty much endorsed the manifesto and that he was a known eugenicist (and military man).
- The manifesto was written before the existence of the gene as a physical entity was demonstrated by the description of the DNA molecule in 1953. In those days the "gene" was purely a hypothesis of Mendelian science experiments. In Charles Darwin's world there was no rigorous science of inheritance (Mendelian or otherwise) at all, only ad hoc observation. This means, in the light of current science, that Charles Darwin was all but prophetic - along with the malarial fever dreams of Wallace.
- In 1939 it might have been possible to form some clumsily obvious goals (smarter? tamer?} for a eugenics program. In our era things are not so clear cut and I can see many problems for a nation that attempts to enforce genetic conformity or even just to offer a genetic standard as a so-called "improvement". We do see some efforts with regard to certain obviously harmful genetic diseases. This seems reasonable but nothing is certain. Deaf people are now organizing against treatment since eliminating deafness will also eliminate their unique culture.
- We live in a time when genetics may become "fashion". It is possible that "fashion" will lead us into all the same problems that the disgraced science of eugenics might have given us. Even now people in India and China are adjusting the sex ratio of their populations in ways that may lead to disaster (or perhaps merely to extreme weirdness).
One other major change in culture, at least in developed countries, is the prevalence of caesareans as a way of giving birth. It is estimated that something like thirty percent of the births in the United States are by caesarean section. Caesareans happen for many reasons, but one factor is the size of the baby's head at birth. When I worked in the X-ray department at Community Memorial Hospital in Ventura, California, one of the procedures that we regularly performed was a "pelvimetry". There would be an image of a baby's head fully engaged in a woman's pelvis. Measurements would help to determine whether it was going to work or not.
At one time, many women died in childbirth (and there were many reasons for that). At least one reason was that the baby's head was too large to pass the birth canal. The incidence of caesareans removes that constraint to the tune of some value less than thirty percent of all births. In evolutionary terms this is huge. In usual evolutionary processes the selective pressure may be as little as .1 percent or less. It acts over time, over many generations.
If the current rate of caesareans continues for as long as ten generations. I predict that few women will be able to give birth normally and that the human race will embark on a new wave of selective sweeps based on the lack of a constraint on the size of a baby's head at birth.
Selective Sweeps due to Disease
What the Lord giveth can also be taken away. I consider disease related selective sweeps to be contingent on the ongoing pressure from the disease. This is especially true since there is often a price paid in genetic fitness for the benefit of resistance to infectious disease. A classic example is genetic resistance to malaria. Malaria is a big deal, which is under a steady attack from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, but is still a big killer around the world. HIV-1 resistance is also found in a small proportion of certain western populations. That is guessed to be the result of infectious disease-related selective sweeps. The sweeps were not driven by HIV since that disease entered human populations relatively recently. It takes a relatively strong sweep to get to 10% (heterozygous) frequency in the short estimated time since the origin of the gene (~2k years before present). With the extinction of Smallpox and HIV we could expect a reverse sweep on this allele since it carries significant drawbacks in terms of other diseases (such as West Nile virus and tick-borne encephalitis).Barb's Medical Adventure - Disgruntled Bob
Early April 2019
Barb has recovered from her latest bout of digestive upset. This one lasted three and a half days and it was precipitated by the procedural inflexibility of the staff at the UW Medical Center. She was referred there by the staff at Valley Medical for surgery on her hiatal hernia. Now that all of the (I think) unnecessary tests are done the UW staff has announced that eighty percent of her stomach is above her diaphragm. In order to find that out they took her off all of her medications and ran tubes down her nose, including overnight, checking the Ph in her esophagus. Then they did fluoroscopy with barium. All of this involved multiple trips to the UW through rush hour traffic (the way they scheduled it) - over an hour each way.
Then they pointed out that she has a hiatal hernia. That was the diagnosis when she was originally referred there for surgery. She missed her appointment with the surgeon when she was down throwing up all day after all this nonsense. They could have just believed the CT scan from Valley Medical. Her next window to see the surgeon is April 4th. Even this was delayed when someone decided to indefinitely delay the phone call that was scheduled to get her medical history way back in the beginning. Have I mentioned that Valley Medical is a part of the UW Medical System? So far, the UW is looking far worse, substituting their own procedures for a known diagnosis.
Barb finally had her surgery May 3rd. She recovered remarkably fast. She has had no further vomiting episodes. This is a great blessing since I rely upon her so heavily and in so many ways. It is also good for her.
Barb has recovered from her latest bout of digestive upset. This one lasted three and a half days and it was precipitated by the procedural inflexibility of the staff at the UW Medical Center. She was referred there by the staff at Valley Medical for surgery on her hiatal hernia. Now that all of the (I think) unnecessary tests are done the UW staff has announced that eighty percent of her stomach is above her diaphragm. In order to find that out they took her off all of her medications and ran tubes down her nose, including overnight, checking the Ph in her esophagus. Then they did fluoroscopy with barium. All of this involved multiple trips to the UW through rush hour traffic (the way they scheduled it) - over an hour each way.
Then they pointed out that she has a hiatal hernia. That was the diagnosis when she was originally referred there for surgery. She missed her appointment with the surgeon when she was down throwing up all day after all this nonsense. They could have just believed the CT scan from Valley Medical. Her next window to see the surgeon is April 4th. Even this was delayed when someone decided to indefinitely delay the phone call that was scheduled to get her medical history way back in the beginning. Have I mentioned that Valley Medical is a part of the UW Medical System? So far, the UW is looking far worse, substituting their own procedures for a known diagnosis.
Barb finally had her surgery May 3rd. She recovered remarkably fast. She has had no further vomiting episodes. This is a great blessing since I rely upon her so heavily and in so many ways. It is also good for her.
Saturday, June 22, 2019
Five Days at the UW Medical Center or "Here's Your Hat, What's Your Hurry?"
My first distinct memory after waking up was being moved from the gurney into my hospital bed. All beds and patient support devices have wheels so the reasons for moving people from one device to another are not clear to me. I suppose that beds are better than gurneys for longer term stays.
The hospital room had a builtin patient crane on the ceiling. Dangling from a cross member was a funny looking (Art Deco) mobile, which turned out to come apart and provide individual support for the body and the various limbs so they could lift me up and set me down gently in the bed. Every day I would see that mobile hanging in the corner of the room and wonder about it until I would remember. The patient handling system had similarities to the material handling systems used on the Boeing assembly lines to move around airplane parts (and entire fuselages).
I discovered that my grip on reality had become more fragile. Sometimes when I woke up during the night there would be Maya glyphs covering the ceiling in a regular grid pattern. Sometimes there would be fish scale patterns overlaying patches in my field of vision. When my imagination created faces or figures from features in the wall plaster I would sometimes discover that I could anticipate their movements, their transformations, the changes in the expressions on the faces. I would not be surprised to learn that this was a symptom of the pain killers. I also had optical migraines without the headaches (blind spots) every few hours. Waking up became more of a process as I sorted out the dreams from what was somewhat visible around me.
The staff had their processes well estaablished. I was handed a list of five goals they needed me to accomplish in order to be discharged. Their goal was to have me out of there in five days, or seven at the most. During daylight hours there was a stream of professionals coming through with information, training sessions, equipment for me to take home, or else asking me to get out of bed and walk around the floor. I think that I had a right to be tired before they even got to work on me.
It was worrisome that that first night Barb took over an hour trying to drive to a hotel that is five minutes from the hospital. We should have practiced that trip ahead of time because, like many urban areas around hospitals, the streets are a maze - trying to accommodate both the needs of a major university and the needs of a major hospital. In desperation she finally called me but fortunately, perhaps at random, she was just arriving down the street where the hotel was located at that moment. Barb was very fond of that hotel room. It was her refuge.
They got me out of bed the the next day, the first morning. An occupational therapist came to visit me. There was also a physical therapist, asking questions about the height of our bed at home. When I told her it was "hip high" she sighed with relief because she was not going to have to give me pointers for lowering myself into bed.
There was a pair of MD pain experts who visited every morning to see how my epidural was working. I thought of them as a comedy team. One of the goals was to get me off of direct pain medicine administration (epidural or IV) and get me to be eating opioids instead. Those two guys were quite disturbed and puzzled when my epidural came out after only a few days. They were also the ones to try and solve the problem of my (dry heaves) nausea that started getting to be a problem after a couple of days. They added a rainbow assortment of anti-nausea meds to what was available to me.
There was also a small group of Urology residents that came around every morning. I came to think of them as a flock (a murder?) of crows. Their chief was very goal oriented. She was mostly interested in assessing my overall status. I could see her mentally checking off each goal as it was (even marginally) achieved. I was not well. Something serious had happened to me and I was adjusting to a new state of being. (I still am adjusting.) There was not much sympathy from her.
My own urologist/surgeon, Dr. Dash, showed up a few times - usually after hours. Once he fit me in after visiting his mother. I like Dr. Dash. I want to make things as easy as possible for him. At the same time I sometimes have questions for him. The second time he showed up he mentioned that the pathology results were back on the organ that had been removed. The pathologist reported that he found no sign of living cancer in my bladder, only some scar tissue. So my odds of a cure suddenly went way up.
After that, later, Barb said that for the first time in a long time she was waking up without a panic attack. It would seem that she likes having me around.
I liked the nurses. The daytime nurses were hard workers with agendas. They were sympathetic yet relentless. I noticed that there was a fairly high level of morale at the UW Medical Center. People seemed to be happy. That helped my own morale.
The night of January 5th/6th a powerful windstorm hit western Washington. I was awakened by the sound of the winds slamming into the side of the building. I might have supposed that a large truck on the street below my window was revving its engine on high for several minutes. Then it would stop. Then it would start again. During the night the house in Maple Valley lost power. Power did not return until Thursday the 10th.
So then the welfare worker came around offering funds to put us up in some dump for one night upon discharge from the hospital. There were no funds for more than that and Puget Power email notifications were making it clear that would not be enough. The welfare hotel definitely would be the wrong hotel.
Meanwhile, there was this brand new little opening in my belly that I had to learn how to tend. I am sorry for all those people who live alone after the surgeons have done their work. If Barb had not been there I doubt that I would have been able to get through the three lessons we received from the UW ostomy nurses. My eyesight was not good during the time I was in the hospital. There is fine detail that has to be seen in tending a urostomy. So we had three one hour test runs before being on our own.
I did not sense that I was getting much better. I was now making the circuit of the floor without a walker but it was extremely tiring. After five nights in the hospital I was told that I would be discharged that day. We still had two nights reserved in the hotel where Barb was staying so that is where we went. The nurses brought in more supplies to take home. I was offered a walker but the idea of having that thing sitting around the house was too much to contemplate. I received a box of 28 shots with instructions to inject myself in the belly with one of them each day. With great effort I pried myself into my clothes and them lay exhausted on the bed with my hat on. One of the aids loaded me in a wheelchair and took me down with Barb to the Forester in the parking garage.
Barb and I sneaked/trudged into the hotel through the lobby, with me carrying my urine bag in one hand but otherwise bundled up against the chill. She must have carried up all the stuff the nurses gave us. In spite of my misgivings I was much happier to be out of the hospital. Barb had stocked the mini refrigerator with some sandwiches. It was not until later, after Barb started one of her nausea bouts that I sneaked out of bed and stuffed my face, kneeling in front of the mini frig, hiding from her so that her nausea would not be worse. It was far more than I had eaten in the hospital. My own nausea was gone for the time being. It returned a week or so later, but that is another story that I probably will never tell.
Barb was sick for two days in the hotel while we waited for power to return to our house in Maple Valley. She recovered in time to take me home, driving slowly on the freeway, the two of us consulting about directions. In retrospect, I am reminded of various older couples where the romance is no longer really physical but all about shared goals, shared memories, and shared expertise. I know such a couple in their nineties, not that I think both of us will live that long.
The hospital room had a builtin patient crane on the ceiling. Dangling from a cross member was a funny looking (Art Deco) mobile, which turned out to come apart and provide individual support for the body and the various limbs so they could lift me up and set me down gently in the bed. Every day I would see that mobile hanging in the corner of the room and wonder about it until I would remember. The patient handling system had similarities to the material handling systems used on the Boeing assembly lines to move around airplane parts (and entire fuselages).
I discovered that my grip on reality had become more fragile. Sometimes when I woke up during the night there would be Maya glyphs covering the ceiling in a regular grid pattern. Sometimes there would be fish scale patterns overlaying patches in my field of vision. When my imagination created faces or figures from features in the wall plaster I would sometimes discover that I could anticipate their movements, their transformations, the changes in the expressions on the faces. I would not be surprised to learn that this was a symptom of the pain killers. I also had optical migraines without the headaches (blind spots) every few hours. Waking up became more of a process as I sorted out the dreams from what was somewhat visible around me.
The staff had their processes well estaablished. I was handed a list of five goals they needed me to accomplish in order to be discharged. Their goal was to have me out of there in five days, or seven at the most. During daylight hours there was a stream of professionals coming through with information, training sessions, equipment for me to take home, or else asking me to get out of bed and walk around the floor. I think that I had a right to be tired before they even got to work on me.
It was worrisome that that first night Barb took over an hour trying to drive to a hotel that is five minutes from the hospital. We should have practiced that trip ahead of time because, like many urban areas around hospitals, the streets are a maze - trying to accommodate both the needs of a major university and the needs of a major hospital. In desperation she finally called me but fortunately, perhaps at random, she was just arriving down the street where the hotel was located at that moment. Barb was very fond of that hotel room. It was her refuge.
They got me out of bed the the next day, the first morning. An occupational therapist came to visit me. There was also a physical therapist, asking questions about the height of our bed at home. When I told her it was "hip high" she sighed with relief because she was not going to have to give me pointers for lowering myself into bed.
There was a pair of MD pain experts who visited every morning to see how my epidural was working. I thought of them as a comedy team. One of the goals was to get me off of direct pain medicine administration (epidural or IV) and get me to be eating opioids instead. Those two guys were quite disturbed and puzzled when my epidural came out after only a few days. They were also the ones to try and solve the problem of my (dry heaves) nausea that started getting to be a problem after a couple of days. They added a rainbow assortment of anti-nausea meds to what was available to me.
There was also a small group of Urology residents that came around every morning. I came to think of them as a flock (a murder?) of crows. Their chief was very goal oriented. She was mostly interested in assessing my overall status. I could see her mentally checking off each goal as it was (even marginally) achieved. I was not well. Something serious had happened to me and I was adjusting to a new state of being. (I still am adjusting.) There was not much sympathy from her.
My own urologist/surgeon, Dr. Dash, showed up a few times - usually after hours. Once he fit me in after visiting his mother. I like Dr. Dash. I want to make things as easy as possible for him. At the same time I sometimes have questions for him. The second time he showed up he mentioned that the pathology results were back on the organ that had been removed. The pathologist reported that he found no sign of living cancer in my bladder, only some scar tissue. So my odds of a cure suddenly went way up.
After that, later, Barb said that for the first time in a long time she was waking up without a panic attack. It would seem that she likes having me around.
I liked the nurses. The daytime nurses were hard workers with agendas. They were sympathetic yet relentless. I noticed that there was a fairly high level of morale at the UW Medical Center. People seemed to be happy. That helped my own morale.
The night of January 5th/6th a powerful windstorm hit western Washington. I was awakened by the sound of the winds slamming into the side of the building. I might have supposed that a large truck on the street below my window was revving its engine on high for several minutes. Then it would stop. Then it would start again. During the night the house in Maple Valley lost power. Power did not return until Thursday the 10th.
So then the welfare worker came around offering funds to put us up in some dump for one night upon discharge from the hospital. There were no funds for more than that and Puget Power email notifications were making it clear that would not be enough. The welfare hotel definitely would be the wrong hotel.
Meanwhile, there was this brand new little opening in my belly that I had to learn how to tend. I am sorry for all those people who live alone after the surgeons have done their work. If Barb had not been there I doubt that I would have been able to get through the three lessons we received from the UW ostomy nurses. My eyesight was not good during the time I was in the hospital. There is fine detail that has to be seen in tending a urostomy. So we had three one hour test runs before being on our own.
I did not sense that I was getting much better. I was now making the circuit of the floor without a walker but it was extremely tiring. After five nights in the hospital I was told that I would be discharged that day. We still had two nights reserved in the hotel where Barb was staying so that is where we went. The nurses brought in more supplies to take home. I was offered a walker but the idea of having that thing sitting around the house was too much to contemplate. I received a box of 28 shots with instructions to inject myself in the belly with one of them each day. With great effort I pried myself into my clothes and them lay exhausted on the bed with my hat on. One of the aids loaded me in a wheelchair and took me down with Barb to the Forester in the parking garage.
Barb and I sneaked/trudged into the hotel through the lobby, with me carrying my urine bag in one hand but otherwise bundled up against the chill. She must have carried up all the stuff the nurses gave us. In spite of my misgivings I was much happier to be out of the hospital. Barb had stocked the mini refrigerator with some sandwiches. It was not until later, after Barb started one of her nausea bouts that I sneaked out of bed and stuffed my face, kneeling in front of the mini frig, hiding from her so that her nausea would not be worse. It was far more than I had eaten in the hospital. My own nausea was gone for the time being. It returned a week or so later, but that is another story that I probably will never tell.
Barb was sick for two days in the hotel while we waited for power to return to our house in Maple Valley. She recovered in time to take me home, driving slowly on the freeway, the two of us consulting about directions. In retrospect, I am reminded of various older couples where the romance is no longer really physical but all about shared goals, shared memories, and shared expertise. I know such a couple in their nineties, not that I think both of us will live that long.
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