Sunday 11/08/2020

Slept to 6:30, very late arising for me. Pleasant Sunday morning. By 8:30 I was ready for a walk, so took one. Got out the door and went 50 feet into a 50º breeze, turned around, went back in and put on a sweater under my jacket. Out again for a walk.

Back to the room, slouch around. After lunch I went for another walk. 4.7 miles for the day. In the evening I watched One Man Two Guvners recorded off PBS. I’d seen it already at least once, I think twice.

There we go; that was Sunday.

Saturday 11/07/2020

So the whole goddam presidential thing wrapped up (well, there’s no doubt more to come, but wrapped up for now) and what a huge load off my spirit that was.

Patty and I had agreed to cancel lunch today and to go for a walk in the Baylands followed by picking up lunch from Armadillo Willy’s. The weather was nice, the air more clear than I’ve seen in weeks.

Lunch was nice, too. I have three more ribs and a cornbread muffin which I meant to eat for my supper but here it is 8pm and I’m not hungry. Maybe I can force down a muffin before bedtime. (Note that this morning I recorded my lowest weight in like forever, 159.8. Maybe junior in high school? Not since. But I don’t look emaciated or anything.)

Anyway after I returned, I took a trouble call from a resident with an iPad that she was sure had been “hacked” because suddenly it started showing her two keyboard images, neither of which responded, so she couldn’t do email. I think now she may be seeing a “split” keyboard which is an obscure iPad feature.

About 2:30 I lay down for a little nap and slept until 5pm. See above about “my burdens rolled away”. (Rolled away (treble ladies), Rolled Away (bass men), oh heck here, sing along: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntoGbhhESqk)

Friday 11/06/2020

Lordy lordy lordy I am so bored. I began the day by walking to PAMF for a 7:45 appointment. This was an echocardiagram to check on the operation of my aortic valve. The analysis, posted to my online account later, contained the fairly ominous note, “There is moderate aortic regurgitation. … Compared to prior study from 7/30/19, AR is new.” I have a video appointment with the cardiologist next week to discuss this.

Later I diddled with the model. Painting on primer by brush definitely works. I have a couple of small pieces where I will try painting the color coat with a brush to compare to the airbrush. But I’m pretty sure the clear coat will be better airbrushed.

Thursday 11/05/2020

Just a Thursday. Instead of morning aerobics, which was just a video recording, I went for a longish walk (3.8 miles for the day). Later I paid a bill, and generated the new sign-up sheets for the next week of volunteer activities.

One single piece of the MG model is holding up production. This is the one in which I discovered a short, deep scratch. Since this is one side of the bonnet, the scratch would be obvious, blatant, under the clear coat. It had to be filled. Days ago I stripped the primer off it, filled the scratch with plastic putty, sanded it smooth. Just like the guys on Bitchin’ Rides or Overhaulin’.

But then I got hung up on how to re-prime it. The thing is, each time I use the airbrush I have to clean it. So to spray this one piece, about 1 inch by 2, takes like five seconds. Then clean the brush and wait several hours for the paint to harden. And I screwed it up the first time and had to strip it down again (too wet, it ran). Spray. Clean up. Check it next day: there was some kind of divot in the prime coat, a little shallow crater an eighth of an inch across (in other words, fist-size at scale). Was it in the plastic, or had the primer somehow pulled back while wet? I tried sanding it but no, by the time it was smooth the primer was gone.

So today I stripped it, sanded it lightly, and this time primed it using a brush, just flowing on primer wetly and letting it flatten. Which it did. Not uniform color yet, needs another coat. But I’ll do that with a manual brush too.

I continue to regain appetite generally. I also got up the nerve to read up on the TAVR procedure that will likely be recommended if/when my prosthetic aortic valve breaks down: Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement. Note toward the bottom of that page, the procedure is for this, that, and finally “if you have an existing biological tissue valve but it isn’t working well anymore.” Note also in the animation, that they don’t always approach via the aorta. Sometimes they go straight in through the chest wall and the bottom of the heart! Which would be likely for me, I think, given my aorta is full of wire stents.

I should add about yesterday, that last night was the first time since the dissection, that I have not needed to take a couple of Tylenol before going to bed. No pains of any kind. While walking around yesterday I was consciously noting, “yup, feels normal”. With the one exception of stamina; I do get tired faster, and find myself thinking, OK, I did something, can I have a nap, now?

Wednesday 11/04/2020

No electoral decisions at 5am when I couldn’t stay in bed any longer. No blue wave; more a blue seep. That’s deeply disappointing.

I went for a three-mile walk. At noon I did the laundry. In the afternoon I ran the numbers on the Nest Egg. It remains down about 11% for the year, but still ample to keep me in luxury.

My appetite is coming back well; I’m hungry at appropriate times, and able to finish most of my meals. So that’s all good.

Tuesday 11/03/2020

First thing I drove to Piazza’s grocery for the 7-8am senior hour, stocking up on my drinks and snacks that I previously was getting via instacart.

At 11 we had the writer’s group. The topic was “election” and as I noted yesterday, I wrote a survey of the presidential elections in my life, and how alienated the many losses have made me feel from my country.

After lunch I took a 2 mile walk, ending up at CVS to pick up my prescriptions.

Evening I avoided television coverage of the election, periodically checking instead the Election Night Integrity Process with its terse summary of A.P. data. But I don’t plan to stay up past 10, so I probably won’t know the result until tomorrow. (I will say that as of 9pm, I am sad that both McConnell and Graham appear to have won their senate seats. I really thought there was a chance one of them would be out.)

Monday 11/02/2020

In the morning I walked the exercise route, feeling pretty normal. (3.5 miles total for the day.)

At 1pm I visited my PCP, Julia Marx. Dr. Marx is a friend; she was PCP for both me and Marian. It’s just not the same, though, talking to somebody wearing both a mask and a face shield. We talked about my weight loss. I’m at 161, so down about 11 pounds in two months, mostly because of no appetite. Appetite is coming back, though; I was actually hungry preceding both lunch and dinner today, although I did not finish all my dinner. I fill up quicker than before, and have no patience with things that aren’t appetizing, like the veggies that often come on the tray meals.

Nothing much else of note. One annoying thing: she had me lie back on her exam table, and then when I sat directly up from a prone position, I disturbed the Vertigo Demon, which gave me little swoons of vertigo the rest of the afternoon. Hopefully a night’s sleep will pacify it.

One of the four volunteers who have been delivering newspapers in-house for the past few months wants to take the holidays off. I polled the others and rather than trying to cover for him, the general feeling is to give it up and pass the job back to the paid staff. So I will arrange that tomorrow.

Sunday 11/01/2020

Another Sunday morning, yay. I did the customary things, and in fact absolutely blitzed the Times Sunday Puzzle at 28 minutes. Minding my own advice I left the room at 9:30 for a long walk, to the California Avenue farmer’s market. I ended up with 3.7 miles, 10K steps, for the day. This long walk was distinctly more effortful than previously. I stopped at two points on the return leg to rest on a bench, do a sudoku.

Back home I finished a piece of writing. The Writers’ Group topic for Tuesday is “election”. Yesterday and today I put together a summary of all the presidential elections I could remember, starting with Eisenhower/Stevenson in 1952. I do not remember what motivated me, but I have a bit of memory of advocating for Adlai Stevenson among my classmates, at recess, on the playground at Kapowsin Grade School.

This was a useful exercise because it reminded me of how bad things have been. Do we think the country is in political chaos today? It helps to remember Watergate and the turmoil before Nixon’s resignation. Fake news? How about when Nixon’s direct employee, Ken Clawson, forged a letter purportedly by Edmund Muskie, the strongest Democratic challenger at the time, using the epithet “Canuck”, a loaded word in New Hampshire. When it was published in a New Hampshire newsletter, Muskie lost his composure when denying the letter to the press. He might have shed angry tears (or possibly melting snow on his hat dripped down on his face), but media reports of “Muskie’s tears” destroyed his campaign. (It was 1972, when real men just didn’t cry in public.) The Democratic nomination went to George McGovern, a far weaker candidate, and Nixon won in a landslide.

Anyway, remembering that, and Johnson’s “Daisy” commercial, and other awful or despicable bits of campaigning was a good reminder of how often we’ve been in turmoil and uncertainty and seemed on the brink of chaos; yet here we are.

Saturday 10/31/2020

“1.325” means there are only 40 days left in this blog’s year. Wait, you say, there are more days left in 2020. But this blog started on December 2nd, which was “Day 1” in 2018.

I woke up feeling well and felt basically well most of the day. However, I did very little physical activity and by evening I really felt that. Feeble. Lower back pain. It all comes from not moving. I know this. And I keep not doing anything, and then feeling crappy.

In the morning I walked to the Farmer’s market and bought a new 1-pound bag of jumbo slab dried apricots, a favorite snack. Also a chocolate hazlenut swirl pastry. So that was a good start.

From 10 to 12 I was a “safety sitter” making it possible for people to use the tables on the 11th floor penthouse to meet. Nobody came to meet. Several people came through to walk laps around the outside roof, though. And most of them asked how I was. I was really touched by how many people were concerned when I was hospitalized. I got several get-well cards and everybody wants to know how I am doing.

After lunch I went to the CVS in Sharon Heights. Earlier in the week I had a robot phone call from CVS that seemed to be telling me that at least a couple of my hospital prescriptions (the hospital sent them to the wrong CVS, Sharon Heights instead of University Avenue) would be renewed and ready for me on Saturday.

They weren’t ready, because the hospital prescriptions had specified zero refills, and CVS had been unable to contact the doctor who issued the prescriptions. I don’t recognize the name on the label, it must be somebody on the C/T team that I never met. So the prescriptions were “on hold” which puzzled the first clerk, but when I got to a manager she explained it. I just said forget it. I went home and sent a message to my PAMF doctor asking her to please create new prescriptions for those two drugs at CVS on University. It’s Saturday, so that probably won’t happen until Monday or later. No matter, my pill cases are full through Wednesday.

Friday 10/30/2020

Felt normal most of the day. Went for a longish walk, the jogging loop, first thing. Juuuust maybe, next week, I will go out in shorts and jog some portions of that route. Well, no, I have meetings with two, three doctors over November, and I think I will wait until those are finished.

I did some practical things, for example I put together the sign-up sheets for the next week of three volunteer activities. Then I needed to get Marcia’s input on them, and found out that she and her husband were out camping this week. They own an Adventurewagen, very similar to the one we owned in the 90s and oughts. They were just coming back from camping on the coast at Aña Nuevo, and she was back in time to finish the job.

While at the hospital I had requested genetic screening for anything that affects aortic or vascular tissue. Today I had a call from a geneticist at Stanford. I definitely do not have Marfan’s or any other connective tissue syndrome. I do have a single “misspelling” in the FN1 gene, which relates to Marfan’s, but there is no evidence to suppose it would have any bad effects.

Patty and I walked out and picked up a pizza at NY Pizza, and ate it on chairs outside City Hall. She has excellent manners, she let me talk about myself a lot. <jk> Well, I let her talk about herself, too.

Her father was a major executive at IBM Endicott in the 50s and 60s. Very possibly during the time I attended weeks of IBM training school there.