Wednesday 10/18/2023

Big thing today was to run the AV for session 2 of the End of Life series. My part was to set up the mics, and to smoothly show three different videos on the big screen, and to record the proceedings, including aiming the camera at hopefully the right thing when people were speaking.

It all went quite smoothly. I have the recording but haven’t looked at editing it. I could have started on that this afternoon, but I was a lazy dog and didn’t. One of the videos was a 25 minute documentary from Netflix, Extremis. This is a well-made peek at doctors and relatives trying to des]al with the need to let go and let their loved ones die. Take her off the ventilator? Or do a tracheotomy and put her on a full breathing machine? Tough decisions, and very well shown.

I spent some time with the guitar and it is getting quite clear that my left hand loses sensation in the thumb, first and middle finger, after about 5 minutes of playing. Sensation comes back if I rest it for a couple of minutes.

The questions are: one, is the radial nerve being pinched or inflamed at the elbow? Or in the carpal tunnel? More important: do I want to bother to get a medical person involved? A neurologist? An orthopedist? Or just say, fuck the guitar, I was never that good anyway?

Tuesday 10/17/2023

Took a medium walk because I hadn’t yesterday. (didn’t you used to go to the gym on tuesday mornings? Shut up.) Disposed of a pile of little things on my desk. Credit card bill. Deciding when to do a docent tour this week, and signing up. Sharing an updated zoom event checklist with the AV team.

Then it was writers meeting time. Some really well-written pieces this week on the subject of “changed mind”. I had nothing. Played on the guitar some.

At a certain point I sat down to try to add to that novel. And I just couldn’t. I know what it needs next and I just can’t write it. Which is a stupid thing to say; but it’s a fact. Just very strong resistance to even thinking about it. I must explore this.

Monday 10/16/2023

Started the day, instead of with a walk, by going to the auditorium and practicing some AV things I will have to do on Wednesday in support of the End of Life lecture series, session 2. I also practiced using the new rack-mounted media player to play music through the system using Bluetooth. There is a dance troupe coming in a week or so and they want to bring their music on an iPad.

Then to the Event Coordinators’ meeting. Left that early because my annual nurse’s wellness checkup was at 11am. Or so I thought. When nobody had showed up by 11:15 I called and no, it never was scheduled. They claimed they never got my email acknowledgement. Reschedule. Well, during the time between 9 and then I got Pru’s Sunday@Home video edited and ready to upload.

Then down to FOPAL. Triaged my shelves to remove the books that had seen 4 sales, 3 boxes of them. Also rearranged the shelves a bit, and counted: I sold 66 books at the sale. There were no donations to process, so back early. At 4pm it was time for Rhonda’s monthly open meeting. She mainly talked about the annual budget process that starts this month. But also had a surprise announcement: we are going to try out serving robots from Bear Robotics. That should be entertaining. From comments by others I learn that they are already using them at The Sequoias and other places.

Sunday 10/15/2023

Nothing much today. Usual Sunday morning. At 3:30 I supervised Ian as he set up for an event in the auditorium. The event, a “Sunday at Home” which is a series of talks by any resident who has a trip or anything else to talk about. In this case, Pru, who is just back from a 17-day Road Scholar trip around southern Japan: Tokyo, Kyoto, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, some other stops.

The talk was good and the tech worked fine. Ian is trained, I say.

Saturday 10/14/2023

So after I wrote about my hand nerve last night, I did some internet reading. To summarize:

Two nerves provide sensation for the hand. The ulnar nerve serves the ring finger, little finger, and outside edge. The radial nerve serves the thumb, forefinger and middle finger. The radial is my main concern, based on my occasional symptoms.

The two nerves take slightly different paths down the arm, but both pass around the outside of the elbow. (Query to evolution: why? Much better protection on the inner side of the joint!) Stand with your arms hanging, palms forward, thumbs out. The ulnar nerve curves around that sharp bump on the inside of your elbow (the “medial epicondyle”), just where you can smush it by leaning on elbow. The radial comes around the outer bump.

Whatever, both pass through sleeves of tissue at the elbow, and again on the inside of the wrist (the famous carpal tunnel), that can become inflamed. Inflammation seems to be key to most problems with these nerves. Thus NSAIDs are the first line of treatment, and rest and ice. But I discovered there is also stretching exercises called, for no clear reason, “nerve glides” or sometimes “nerve flossing”, I suppose because it’s a boring thing you are supposed to do often, like tooth flossing. But there are tons of articles and YT vids on “glide” exercises for different nerves, and a radial nerve glide is a pretty simple thing (example) so I’m going to do some.

I had no symptoms from my two shots yesterday. Normal temperature. Slight tenderness in each bicep. Well that was this morning. In the evening I feel just the tiniest bit under the weather. Think I shall go to bed early.

On this quite open day, I joined Dennis for lunch. We went to The Lazy Dog, which turns out to be a chain (I checked online later), specializing in comfort food from all sorts of cuisines. It was a bit too noisy for comfort, and they messed up Dennis’s order, so — not recommended.

Friday 10/13/2023

Took the standard walk, ending at CVS on University at 10am, early for my appointment. But after a short wait I got my Covid shot in the left arm, and an RSV shot in the right.

At 12 I took off for Shoreline near the CHM, to meet Scott and Denny for lunch and nostalgia talk. Their past lives are SO much more interesting than mine. Although they agreed that by not having to be in the military, I was fortunate. Fortunate, maybe, but with a lot fewer amusing recollections.

A couple of times today I played on the guitar. This is going well in one sense, in that stuff I used to know is coming back, and my left hand calluses are reforming making it a lot less painful to fret the strings. I’ve also been exercising my left hand with an exerciser thingy to increase grip strength, and as a result I can almost do barre chords again. Playing “Puff the Magic Dragon” and I can do the G-B♭-C-D sequence as barre chords. Almost. Sometimes.

But there’s another problem. I’ve got some kind of nerve entrapment going on in the area of my left elbow. After about 10 minutes of playing, my left thumb and forefinger and middle finger lose feeling, “go to sleep”. I have to straighten my arm out to get feeling back. The same thing happens when I use my computer propped on my stomach, with my arms bent up to the keyboard. I’m not sure what I want to do about this. Seek medical advice I suppose. Sigh.

Thursday 10/12/2023

Tidied the apartment, then drove to the Shustek center in Milpitas. I and Steve spent most of the day cataloging the many parts of a development prototype of the Amazon Echo. One of the engineers who developed the Echo donated two prototypes, one complete and the other torn down into its various parts, and we had recorded an interview in which he explained each of the parts and how they fit together. So we were able to do a thorough job of cataloging all the bits.

I was impressed with the quality of the parts in the Echo, and the depth of the engineering in it. I’ve never owned one, never said “Hey, Alexa”. But the machine is built very well, especially the audio parts. They put a lot of thought into getting decent sound out of a 3-inch-wide, 8-inch tall cylinder. There is a woofer, only 3 inches across but with a magnet that weighs over a pound in a tuned acoustic resonance tube; plus a midrange speaker also with a chunky little magnet. There are seven tiny little microphones, little gold cubes no more than a 16th of an inch on a side. And other nice details.

Wednesday 10/11/2023

The big deal today was to run the event of the End of Life series, session 1. My part in it was to run the tech, including two videos to run. Both of which I screwed up somehow. They would start and have no audio. Restart them and they did have audio. Must work out the cause of this before session 2, next Wednesday. No real harm done, but I was embarrassed.

The session, which was very well attended, was the decision of whether to go “DNR”, or “No CPR”. The videos, and the panel of experienced doctors, went into the details of the CPR process in detail. The shocking statistic was that only 15% of attempted CPRs result in people coming back. Only 8% of CPRs on people over 70. And some of those have some brain damage from oxygen deprivation.

At 4:30 it was the monthly 6th floor meeting. No special news. Then dinner together.

Tuesday 10/10/2023

This week I had contributed the cue for the writers group. It was “Home Run: when someone should have, or did, flee back home, and what came of it.” Since it was my cue, I thought I had better write to it, and I did. I’ll attach it at the end. It produced some quite strong pieces. Dr. Margaret wrote a powerfully emotional account of when as a second-year med student, she had an emotional breakdown and had to go home and crash.

After lunch I went to the auditorium and went over everything I need for tomorrow’s event. This is the first of four events in an “End of Life Planning” series being put together by Peter, Joanne T, and that same Dr. Margaret. Panel discussion, then a video, then more talk. They want to zoom it. I’m pretty sure I know how to go smoothly from the talk to the video and back, with a good experience for both the auditorium audience and the zoom audience.

Later I realized I’d forgotten to buy coffee when I was down at FOPAL (next door to Peet’s) yesterday. So I walked over to the Town & Country where there’s another Peet’s, bought coffee for home and had one there.

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Monday 10/09/2023

First thing was the Resident Association monthly meeting. The agenda was packed, but I was the 5th item, asked to report on the auditorium upgrades. I’d prepared a 2-minute video to demonstrate what our camera can do. I’d meant to talk about the missing parts of the upgrade especially the big side-monitors, but Lennie, the RA prez, asked me not to. So I didn’t, but I primed Jerry to raise that issue when I opened the floor to questions. But the first person to ask a question, ahead of Jerry, was Joanne, who said, “what about the plan to have big monitors on the side?”

Also there was a presentation by the Vance Brown project manager describing what they have been doing to install a new emergency generator in the back parking lot. This seems to involve completely gutting the back lot down to dirt and building it up again. Major job, but needed so that the passenger elevators retain power in an outage.

Later I went down to FOPAL, stopping on the way to drop off the TiVo at Fedex for its return. Tidied up my section, counted all the books, and took pictures. There’s a guy who posts pictures of all the shelves before a sale. There are apparently people who like to browse the shelves from home before coming in. Don’t see it, myself. Less trouble to come to the sale and browse the shelves in real life. Anyway this took half an hour so I spent another half hour cleaning up the sorting room, sorting out a bunch of small boxes that people had dumped on our porch.

Back home, took one tech squad call. Played some guitar. Had supper with the Allens.