AGING

Peter

A Tough Job

It’s been 8 months since one of us has needed a visit to hospital. I think all is well at the moment but an incident with Peg sent us to the E.R. over the weekend; we need to do some followup, but an overnight stay wasn’t necessary.

Still, the experience of 6 hours in an E.R. reminded us of the plight of both patients and hospital staff in these days. And by extension to the greater society.

We haven’t spent that long in an E.R. in quite some time. Our other visits were deemed serious enough that we quickly left the waiting room and were assigned a team and a room. This time, thankfully, the issue wasn’t deemed life threatening and we ended up watching other people come and go and come and go in and out of the E.R. while we were waiting. That sounds terrible, but in fact within precious few moments of our arrival fluids were taken and dispatched to the lab on another floor so that even though we were waiting we weren’t waiting.

The E.R. at our nearest hospital has recently been remodeled. We both were struck that there was more treatment space, but significantly LESS waiting area. Late in the afternoon at the end of the week might not have been the best/worst time to be there but the walls were bulging with patients like us, just waiting. And, to the credit of the staff no one in the waiting room appeared to be in desperate straights or bleeding all over the floor or anything.

Still, it’s obvious that there weren’t enough staff to keep the situation under control and that’s not unlike so very many businesses in town at the present time. From restaurants to service facilities to daycare to cleaning crews it seems that every business around has a “Help Wanted” sign out front, or online, or with a recruiting company. Given that so many people are struggling to make ends meet it’s a conundrum that so many jobs are out there and so few are being filled.

And of course that’s the problem. In pursuit of profit every business out there is trying to minimize costs and maximize the inflow of cash. But it’s easy to see that you can push your employees to a point where the pay isn’t worth the hassle.

Peg & I both are the kind of people that even though we may not be super social, we still like to engage with people we are having interactions with. It’s amazing the things people tell you when they are supposed to be helping or serving you and you show an interest in them in some way other than the context of their job. Oh, the life stories we’ve heard while waiting on a phlebotomist to draw a few tubes of blood, or why an ultrasound person is setting up or cleaning up that gungey stuff they put on your skin to make the machine “see” better. And people aren’t bashful about telling you what they really think if you are sincere about your interest in them and they don’t fear reprisals.

The people that took care of us in the E.R. were wonderful. But they are way over worked. Some years ago we had a tenant in one of our apartments who had been an E.R. tech for 15 years. He was a strange person — personally — but boy did he know his job and did he love it. I often wonder if he’s still on the job today because the difference at the same facility from the time we knew him to today is almost unrecognizable and the hours and schedules and the demands that medical staff have made upon them are superhuman.

Almost every time we visit our G.P. I am struck about just the mundanity of the life of a family doctor — the complete opposite of the E.R. situation we were in recently. We finish a visit and immediately we are told to schedule our next visit — 6 months or 1 year ahead. Gosh… I can’t imagine knowing a year in advance that I’m supposed to be in a little consulting room at a set time with someone. I appreciate all that doctors go through to qualify, but I can’t imagine spending my whole working life going from room to room to room seeing people for 5 to 25 minutes and then moving to the next room. Our family doc who retired at the end of last year had been our go-to person for 30+ years — so we came to know her pretty well. We shared family stories, and vacation plans, and anniversaries and such — but I’m sure not all their patients were as much the chatty-cathy’s that we were and I can’t imagine going from sullen, miserable person to nervous grumpy one, to frightened and bruised person all in an hour.

I am always amazed at how cheerful people can be even when they are pushed against their limits. People really are wonderful. Most of them — at least in our experience. If you give a person a chance most of the time they will surprise you in positive ways. Still, moving quickly from one emergency to another does weird things to your brain. I’ve had jobs where I had to react to changing circumstances but not every day after day, hour after hour, minute after minute. My challenges were more spaced out — and I feel so much compassion for the courageous people who manage to cope for an entire career and remain happy to have their job — THAT job — it’s wonderful.

It really is important to try to be kind to people you interact with. Not only for your own sake, but also for the sake of whomever might be their next interaction. One of the things I noticed — and who can blame someone if they are in pain or scared when they might lash out or be hard to get along with — that’s part of being human and it happens to all of us. But if, when we ARE NOT that person, and we are dealing with people who work in that situation, if we can be easy to get along with, and not a pain-in-the-butt, then when they go on to the next person not only will OUR experience with them have been good, but also we are sending the employee off to deal with someone in a good, happy frame of mind and much better enabled to do the best job they can for whomever they are tending to next in the queue.

Ok — that’s it for today. We’re as OK as we can be until we have our consult, and I hope you are too. Cheers, and talk to you again soon. :-)

Peter

Wavering Faith

I hesitated using this as the title for today’s post because it sounds too much like a sermon title, and that’s not what I want. Instead I want to talk about aging, about being “not-a-robot”, and changes.

We all exercise faith all the time. No on ever steps off a ladder from the top step expecting that for once gravity will not pull us catastrophically down to earth, breaking some bone or another. We tend to “isolate” the idea of faith as if it were ONLY a religious concept when in fact we have faith in our partners, in our job, in the cost of goods, in the approximate time the sun will rise, etc., etc., etc..

Since retirement I have a lot more time to think. Without the need to corral my thoughts in one specific line so as to earn money, my mind wanders to all manner of topics that I wished I’d time to think about, or research, in my younger days.

Not all chances to think result in positive conclusions. Sometimes thoughts make a wrong turn and you end up pondering things that trouble you, or disturb you in ways you couldn’t have expected. Recently when we had a medical situation come up I have to admit that my mind went to all sorts of places that I would just as soon not have visited. The train of thought didn’t last all that long, but the fact that it popped up reminded me that we aren’t machines, we are desperately human and we are subject to the whims of electric impulses floating around in our brain and the thoughts that they generate. We are great big chemical factories that sometimes send out great clouds of black smoke when they should be whips of white.

Even in religious thoughts I find that my free time often goes to pondering the immensity of the universe and the corresponding minuteness of us as individuals. The concept of sustaining a lifelong relationship with some creator that we can ill understand just boggles the mind — yet I am far from alone in my convictions and no matter how great or troubled your faith might be we are but human and we are subject to glitches and wonkiness and the need to re-boot our way of thinking.

I HAVE learned over time that just as my computer needs a good re-boot, sometimes my brain does too. A walk in the woods, or along the shoreline, or a glance up at the stars when you can see them through the light pollution does wonders to help with a reset.

Whatever your belief system, and even atheists have a “belief system,” it’s only realistic to realize that doubts and fears are part of being human. Many times fears save us — from immediate danger, from longterm mis-steps, from all manner of undesirable things. So “fear” isn’t a bad thing. It’s a tool that we have developed through maturation to protect us. And I think fear and doubt which is strongly related have to be accepted as a part of life that is necessary but doesn’t need to be permanent.

Being afraid, or doubting something for a period of time produces changes in un. Being afraid or doubting something continuously and never letting go becomes debilitating and unhealthy. We recognize that about activities, but we often stumble over it when it comes to the fleeting thoughts that cross our consciousness.

Coming to terms with the value of doubt, of a wavering faith enables us to push forward. It also helps us steel our courage to do the things needing doing. Pressing forward in illness, or because of changed circumstances takes on new meaning when we realize we have done so IN SPITE OF our doubts. In effect, doubts strengthen our faith, doubts strengthen our resolve. doubts move us forward even when they appear to hold us back.

It’s a sunny day here, but still cooler than I would anticipate for the calendar date. We have yet to get to our “summer place” but I hope soon.

That’s it for today. Take care of yourself and your loved ones and I’ll be back soon. :-)

Peter

That Wonderful Peace Between Couples

Back in the day I used to marry a significant number of couples and the one thing I was always amazed at was the ‘peace’ that each couple had found between themselves even though they might — or usually WERE extremely different personalities. This morning my wife decided that even though it’s early in the season, and even though we would have preferred a No-Mow spring, waiting until mid May wasn’t going to be in the cards this year as the grass and dandelions got a head start on their growing season.

I knew that there was a scant little gasoline in the mower after Mike tuned it up for spring, so I’d need to purchase gasoline before she could mow so the day got off to a more active start than our usual Saturday mornings.

Yes, I said, “before she could mow.” That’s one of the curious compromises / understandings / preferences that mark our couple-ness. And every couple has them. One part of the couple likes to do some things, in a well-tuned marriage hopefully the other party likes to do the things the first party shies away from — but in a working relationship there are always trade-offs between the partners as to WHO does WHAT.

When I agreed to marry a couple I always insisted upon several sessions of “pre-marital” discussion. Not so much “counseling” — I have no license as a therapist of any sort. But before I would do the deed I insisted that we get to know each other and that they spend time actually THINKING about marriage and what it might mean in their circumstances. I even asked them to separately write down a list of the things they DIDN’T like about their future spouse — and sneakily we talked together openly about what was on each person’s list — which produced some very interesting discussions — but never put the brakes on the intended marriage. So, at least they had an idea going in that there were things that might not be hunky-dory and the cause for some angst.

Between Peg and I — well, frankly it’s hard to remember all that way back — we married in 1968 after an engagement of 3 months, after I had proposed to her by mail before we actually went out on a “date.” We’d seen each other at church events, and spent some time together doing group things but there had been a specific event that marked her out as THE girl for me and I acted on that realization rapidly. We were living 4 states away from each other and we had just parted after seeing each other at a conference and I didn’t want to wait several months before a scheduled event I expected we would both attend. In fact, by the time that event took place we were already married.

She is from a small family — mother, father, and 7 year her senior brother. As you know I’m an only child so it was just the three of us at home — and my dad worked rotating shifts for the local electric utility so my time with him was a bit odd. Sometimes he was on days, sometimes on afternoons, sometimes on nights and every month he had 4 days off in a row at the end of the cycle and 2 days split apart in the middle of the week on other weeks. It was confusing to say the least but he was a good dad and made up for peculiar absences in other ways.

My point being that we had similar backgrounds. Both father’s were union men — her dad a painter, mine a boiler operator. My mom didn’t work outside the house, but hers did in the latter years shortly before we married. And her mom passed quite young — at age 50, while the other three parents lived to their early 80’s.

In spite of our similar backgrounds we were still very different people. She was sporty — I was not — am not. I loved food and had learned a lot cooking with my mother, aunts, and grandparents — my paternal grandfather was quite the bread and pastry baker. Suffice it to say that many of the daily chores that go along with living a life together just sort of magically happened to work out. What I wanted to do, she didn’t, what she loved doing I didn’t care so much about. We found a peace between us that just magically worked.

I’m sure that’s not the case for many couples. And I wish it could be. I’m saddened when I see couples who struggle to find that peace between themselves — and horrified when it drives them apart even though I understand that sometimes being away from the other person is really the only right end to a relationship.

I’ve recently been made aware once again of couples where one party assumed that they could change the other party. You know, make those annoying bits go away. That’s a tricky thing. Not only do people rarely change in significant ways — without some major trauma or event that causes the change — but also almost everyone I know really, really, really resents being FORCED to change. That does terrible things to the trust that is needed in a working relationship.

Whatever “love” might be it amazes me beyond words. Whether it happens in an instant, or takes years, there can be a melding of personalities that is truly amazing. When I look back to 1968 and think about the people we were then, and who we are now I’m not sure I ever would have expected to be where we are today. In a lot of ways.

And during much of our marriage I had jobs that forced me to travel extensively while she had a job that kept her tied to the same desk. We spent weeks apart, with nothing but phone calls and often not even all that frequently. There were times I had do stop alongside the highway and find a high spot on a hill to get enough of a signal to call home. There were times when our daughter or she were ill and I was going out of my mind with worry. But we got through all of those times and separation brought us closer together. Today — 15 years into retirement we don’t go anywhere alone. Well, almost no where. This morning I DID go to the gas station to get 2 gallons of gas for the mower. I did that 6 or 7 months ago too, and that’s about the only time I have gone anywhere without her.

She had a follow up doctor’s visit yesterday and we both went. Aging has taught us that we don’t remember as well as we once did so two sets of ears listening to what the doctor has to say is better than one set of ears. (by the way the followup to the E.R. visit went just fine and we think the problem is resolved) We just don’t care to do things alone. We married to be together and a half century later that’s still what we want. I know that’s not the case for everyone, or even for a majority, but it has worked for us and made life an awful lot easier.

I have no idea how “love” works. I do know that it does truly exist. In spite of what nay-sayers may think. Just because someone hasn’t found it for themselves doesn’t mean it exists for no one. Still, I expect that it takes some effort — hopefully not effort that one minds exerting — but still the desire for both of you to be happy and fulfilled in your couple-ness.

That’s it for today. I’ll be back again to chat soon. :-) Cheers.

Peter

Four Inch by Twelve Inch

A couple days ago I threw in this photo as part of something else. Today I’ve been playing with my plants and thought maybe I might talk a little about “gardening in advancing age.” :-)

In December of 2024 I was looking for a better way of keeping my mind active and giving myself some sort of hobby to take the place of interests I formerly had but which my body isn’t so keen on continuing. I started out with one “As-Is” purchase from our local lawn and garden center that I paid $25.00 for. That was a 4 foot tall clump of Ficus Benjamina — or fig. They are a popular indoor plant and 40 years ago we grew a 6+ foot on in our then apartment on the second floor, beside a humongous window that the tree loved. Life has its in’s and out’s and that poor tree went to the great garden in the sky. But, the species was familiar and I knew how to care for them so it was a pleasant, non-demanding start to a new “hobby.” 18 months-ish later and that clump of trees is still with me, except now they have divided into three plants not seen in this photo.

In my younger years I was interested in the art of bonsai, but never stayed home long enough to become a true practitioner because I wasn’t around to water them once or twice a day — which is the regimen a REAL bonsai requires. Real practitioners of the art don’t take vacations; they have local jobs that don’t require extended travel; they are basically tree nursery attendants. That was not what I wanted now, in my 70’s, even if I am not traveling as much as in former days.

BUT…

Isn’t there always a “but” ?

I like(d) the idea of intervening in the design and growth of plants. So, I started reading and watching a bunch of YouTube bonsai videos. And I sucked up all the goodness and knowledge I could — and still am. Learning is my thing. It’s probably what I love more than most “hobbies” I’ve ever had.

I tried propagating my ficus from cuttings. They are easy to propagate. Soon I had a dozen smaller ficuses. Still do. In the process I learned about leaf and branch pruning, root pruning, defoliating, and all sorts of other things. Gradually I accumulated pots of various things, all bought at rock-bottom prices which meant that most of what I had was small. Which was fine with me.

WE have a compact city lot, A decent size but not a place I would want to put plants in pots out all summer; I quickly realized that the “hobby” I wanted was about INDOOR plants, not an outdoor garden. I don’t get down on hands and knees very much nowadays — when I do I have a hard time getting up and I walk really funny for a while. So, it had to be indoor plants.

And then I realized what I was doing to myself. Ficus’ are tropical plants — in zone 5 they will grow year round, but a lot of other plants are not tropicals and in fact they NEED a dormancy period if they are to survive. Just like humans who don’t constantly grow — but put on growth spurts at various times in our development — plants too need to sleep and build up energy so that they can explode with growth at the right time.

So, I started looking for other plants that might fit my “need” for year round plants. I bought a few different things; immediately killed a couple of them, but most of them survived for a year or more, some of them I still have. But gradually I began to realize that the solution to my plant problem was: ta da! — trumpets please — SUCCULENTS!

But cactii are boring, and I know nothing about most any cactus as we only ever lived in an arid climate for 1 year — In far south Texas. And I wasn’t gardening then.

A lot of videos later I sort of found my niche: Jade plants and what are called “dwarf jades” — which aren’t actually Jades at all, but rather are Portulacaria Afras — otherwise known as Spekboom (in S. Africa where they are native) and “Elephant Bush” because — you guessed it — elephants like to eat them! They are tropical. As succulents they can go a while between waterings. And, they can be grown and still come to look like “trees” in confined spaces.

By this time I had accumulated a lot of pots with cuttings and plants in them. So, I made a commitment to an idea. I was going to concentrated on succulents within the indoor space I had available. Moreover, we bought a couple tall shelving units (which style my “friends” at IKEA have now discontinued — GRRRRR) and my plants came to live there. Eventually I moved bedrooms and moved my plants into a different room where I could now put loose shelves between the two manufactured shelving units and added another 4 shelves.

So now I have 14 shelves crammed with tiny plants. The shelves are only 12 inches apart and I keep a bunch of 4 inch nursery pots in little IKEA tubs called NOFIG which allow me to bottom water and space them out on the shelves.

You can see where I’m going with this, I hope. I have created a little world just for small plants. My sort of limit is plants 12” by 4” and I’m happy as a pig in mud.

The downside of growing plants in small containers — which any gardener will tell you — is that the plants figure out they are in small containers and self-regulate their growth. I now have jades that I bought with 3 inch long individual leaves and 2 inches between leaf nodes which are producing 1/4 inch long leaves and 3/8 inch long internodes. The higher they reach towards the under shelf lighting the smaller the internodes and leaves become.

If you talk to a bonsai person they will tell you if you want your tree to bulk up, get a thicker trunk, or branches, put it in a big pat and leave it alone for a couple years. The bigger pot will signal the plant to go hog wild —voila!.

Conversely, putting plants in small containers restricts their growth and signals them to think compactly. And they do.

All of which I am enjoying immensely. With over 100 little pots with one or multiple plants in each I get to actually watch them grow. A few minutes each day and blank spots become leaves and branches. It’s fascinating.

The interesting thing is that advice for regular bonsai artists doesn’t really work when you are working on really, really small plants. Typically one might wait until there were 8 or 10 leaves on a stem before pruning it, in the miniature world I prune after the first of second leaves. The idea of creating ramification — or branching to regular folk — is compacted and condensed into ever smaller spaces. I’ll never had a big tree, but I’m not interested in big trees — I don’t have time left on this earth to GROW BIG TREES!

The list of bonsai classifications

You can see from the adjacent chart that there are such things as teeny tiny bonsai — but, as I mentioned early on I’m not trying to create true bonsai. A real bonsai will have carefully developed surface root and that is impossible in my sort of potting scheme. Also, they are grown in extremely fast draining aggregate (not even soil — more like rock, and fired clay pellets) which helps stunt growth and develop roots. There are a number of things I’m not doing “right” if I wanted bonsai — but I don’t — so what I’m doing fills my needs and that’s all I care about at present.

In so many ways, I am finding that “aging” is all about adaptation. Years ago I watched the movie Heartbreak Ridge, and the words of Clint Eastwood stuck in my brain: Adapt, Improvise, Overcome. I have no idea if that is an actually U.S. Marine thing or not, but it surely is an aging thing. The world goes on in spite of what happens to us individually and we all need to

  • Adapt
  • Improvise
  • Overcome

That’s it for today. I have plants that need attention. Take care of yourself and I’ll chat again soon. :-)

Peter

The Invitation

If you’re paying attention you’ll have figured out that my mind has been focused on one are of life, perhaps the life of the aged or aging, but still, one aspect of life.

I thought I’d share this as it eloquently skirts along the topic of recent thought.

by Oriah Mountain Dreamer

It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.

It doesn’t interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love for your dream for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow if you have been opened by life’s betrayals or have become shrivelled and closed from fear of further pain.

I want to know if you can sit with pain… mine or your own without moving to hide it or fade it or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy mine or your own. If you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful to be realistic to remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself. If you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul. If you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see beauty even when it is not pretty every day. And if you can source your own life from its presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure yours and mine and still stand at the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, “Yes.”

It doesn’t interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair weary and bruised to the bone and do what needs to be done to feed the children.

It doesn’t interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the centre of the fire with me and not shrink back.

It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.

I heard last evening that my son-in-law’s parents are both having health issues. One is in hospital as I write, there other visited Urgent Care with a case of Pneumonia and was sent back home with meds. I’m not sure I get that, I’d have thought that if you had pneumonia that doctors would want you getting more care than just quaffing a few pills, but that’s medicine for you.

The message arrived to my phone in a round about way. Communication about ANYTHING isn’t always easy with some people and I don’t know how you can function that way. But, hey, I have enough problems living my own life to second guess why other people do what they do. But, perhaps it’s because of their infirmity that I was reminded of this snippet and wanted to share.

Take care of yourself and your loved ones and I’ll be back soon to chat. :-)

Peter

The Lonely City

There are really times when talking is best avoided — at least so it seems to me — at THIS stage of my life. I have gradually realized that over the past several years I have been increasingly been less interested in conversation than I had been in the past. ( I know that’s a backwards sort of sentence, “increasingly less interested,” but “decreasingly interested” doesn’t seem to cut the mustard)

I used to wonder about old people who sat on park benches not talking to anyone. I won’t say I thought it weird about not talking; I thought it weird that they were just SITTING there not doing anything. Now I realize that “doing something” has nothing to do with body movement. :-) But, seriously, I find myself just sitting with my mind going a million miles an hour — and I do that quite often. Partly because my body doesn’t seem to want to DO things as much as it used to. The desire is there, but the energy, not so much. Yesterday I had it in mind to take a 2 day driving trip. I had a couple ideas in mind, but after a bad night with not much sleep I woke this morning with minus zero energy and went BACK to bed at 5 a.m. got up after a couple hours of fitful sleep, had breakfast and puttered around for 2 hours and then laid down again for another hour nap. Finally I feel ready for the day and it’s 11 a.m., but too late to leave for any kind of trip I had in mind.

I could blame my lack of interest in conversation on bad sleep, but if I’m honest it’s not about that at all. Even though Peg and I chat a lot about a lot of topics and I find our conversations welcome and worthwhile, when it comes to other people the effort to truly communicate simply doesn’t seem worth the reward.

Let me share this little snippet:

Adventures in the Art of Being Alone

By: Olivia Laing

No doubt it was ridiculous to be so sensitive. But there was something almost agonising about speaking and being misunderstood or found unintelligible, something that got right to the heart of all my fears about aloneness. No one will ever understand you. No one wants to hear what you say. Why can’t you fit in, why do you have to stick out so much? It wasn’t hard to see why someone in this position might come to mistrust language, doubting its ability to bridge the gap between bodies, traumatised by the revealed gulf, the potentially lethal abyss that lurks beneath each carefully proffered sentence. Dumbness in this context might be a way of evading hurt, dodging the pain of failed communication by refusing to participate in it at all. That’s how I explained my growing silence, anyway; as an aversion akin to someone wishing to avoid a repeated electric shock.

I am truly glad that there are all sorts of people in this world. Please, never misunderstand when I talk about relationships. I’m glad there are sociable people. I’m glad there are sports fanatics, and music buffs, and gear heads, and dancers and surfers. And, when I am around them I am almost always happy to watch them and hear them. I love the sounds of people having a good time. I may not be quite so happy to have to LISTEN (intently) to what they are talking about, as frequently their conversations have little interest. I’d rather talk about philosophy, or ethics, or the universe, or nature — but I rarely find people in my circle of acquaintances who are interested in those things. But I’m glad that they are in the world doing things that make this life exciting and fulfilling for themselves.

I will admit that I increasingly am aware that a great many conversations have only the vaguest connection to reality. People have ideas — or sometimes “memories” — that depart from the real world. People are willing, eager even, to be misled, and lied to. We humans love to complain, but I quickly tire of complaints and fantasy worlds. I know that a great many people want to escape from the world they live in — otherwise alcohol and drugs wouldn’t be in high demand — but for all my weirdness I happen to like the world we live in and though I cannot fix things I find lacking I would still rather live in the world as it is than in a figment of my imagination.

And so we come to the feature image. I have no idea if this was said by anyone of note, or if it was two lines from some movie or whatever but boy, do I understand the attitude! Somethings are just not worthwhile engaging in.

I don’t know whether if I had more energy I would feel the same. Time was when I loved the ins and outs of a lively debate. That being said, I do find that today people SEEM TO BE more interested in winning a disagreement than in understanding one another, or furthering their understanding of the world. Lively debate about ideas, not about who’s right, doesn’t seem to be in vogue. The lines are already drawn between sides and it’s not about finding common ground, it’s about winning. Winning. The ultimate goal of a society that values sport more than philosophy. Combat more than compassion. You can fill a stadium with enthusiasts who want to see a car crash or a wrestler bashed around or the favorite team beat the visitors, but host a debate about greenhouse gases and I dare say your active audience will be slim or non-existent.

I don’t think I’m depressed and I don’t think I’m being ridiculous. There was a time when the things I remember happened. It’s not all in my head, a figment of imagination. But just because other people aren’t interested doesn’t mean I have to change to accommodate their newer, better, more wholesome way of being.

That’s it for today. Take care of yourself and your loved ones and I’ll be back soon to chat again. :-)

Perspective
Peter

Perspective

It is hard to maintain perspective about life in the midst of chaos. It’s easy to think that everything has gone to hell and there is no hope for the future. I don’t know about you, but I find it crucial to being able to function to FIND some sense of balance with the world.

Like a lot of retirees, I suppose, I watch more TV than I should. That being said we no longer have cable tv — we get along quite nicely with a feed to the interWebs and with YouTube and Prime we fulfill pretty much all our needs/desires/interests that we can’t find in any other way.

I don’t think I have watched any commercially produced U.S. television except for a very very few news broadcasts in… well, at last since we moved into this house and for quite a while during the 5 years before in Franklin. On Prime I mostly watch foreign language TV. I find the languages challenging and my comprehension is growing in French, German & Spanish, and I am still totally confused by Swedish, Norwegian, and Finnish. Mostly I rely upon subtitles — so it’s a family joke that we don’t “watch” tv, we “read” it.

The interesting thing — to me, has been that programs produced by other countries end up telling you subtle things about their cultures that you don’t get in “news stories.” Attitudes about social problems, for example, come infinitely clearer than we might expect from U.S. News stories about other culture. Yeah – if you are watching some fictional story about, for example, police procedurals, you have to realize that they too exaggerate various ideas to make their point, or their story — but the run of the mill life of characters, and living conditions that pass by your eyes as the camera pans from one place to another are telling.

We also tend to watch videos on YouTube about bike packers, through hikers (people walking a LONG trail or series of trails to a destination many miles distant). Sure, the scenery is interesting, we’ve gotten to see many places on this planet we’ll never get a chance to visit. But in addition to. scenery there are also the interactions between the biker/hikers and local residents of wherever they may be traveling. We’ve watched, with fascination, on every continent and been fascinated how humans are just that — human. We all have our joys and sorrows, we have troubles that we do our best to overcome, we interact with family, but we also interact with absolute strangers and there are millions of folks out there who are kind, and loving, and eager to help, feed, get to know strangers — just because. They have no ulterior motive. They aren’t greedy or miserly. Often, it seems that the poorest among them, among us, are the most generous and giving.

It’s important not to believe everything you see or hear. I remember being in my 20’s or younger and first coming across a scripture in the bible that exhorts people to “try the spirits, whether they be of God” — well, “Trying the Spirits” is pretty much the best advice you can give anyone. You always want to know whether you can trust the people you are dealing with, not everyone is wholesome and caring, some people are just jerks, others are pure evil, and “trying the spirit” is a good way to stay alive.

Here in the U.S. we are living in a bubble, and ugly, angry bubble — perhaps about to burst — or not. But we can easily be blinded to the fact that millions of people outside this country are getting along nicely, humanely, cooperatively together. No — not everywhere. There are wars and rumors of wars — there always have been. Humans seem unable to live together in peace for very long. Greedy people are impossible to satisfy and wars and poverty have been a constant in human experience. But not everywhere, at all times, for all people.

I don’t know how YOU maintain perspective. I wonder about what others are doing to maintain a level head in a very un-level world.

I hope you’re doing well — as well as can be expected. I know that’s always my comment back to my doctor on my 6 month visits: Are you depressed? Why sure, I’m depressed, anyone who is paying attention to the news HAS to be depressed, but no, I’m not having feelings of self-harming and I’m living the best life I can. It’s IMPORTANT to talk about the elephant in the room — world affairs. But never let the elephant stand on your toes!

So, enough for today. I’ll be back soon to chat some more. Take care of yourself and your loved ones. :-)

Peter

On Meds

Yesterday was may annual visit with my heart specialist. It was also the day when Peggy’s first shipment of meds arrived from Mauritius! And there begins a story.

The both of us have “loop recorders” installed in our chest. Me, after a suspected stroke related temporary blindness in one eye, and Peggy after an aneurysm in the brain was discovered. After 2 years of no events being recorded she had a long episode of AFIB which caused her doctor to urge her to go on blood thinners.

The protocols nowadays as we understand them give one two choices. Warfarin which has been used for donkey’s years and requires regular frequent bloodwork, and Eliquis which requires no followup bloodwork but costs an arm and a leg. We tried the first couple months doses of Eliquis — one with a free one time coupon, and the other with an out of pocket payment of $400 something. Her doctor suggested that we use a pharmacy in Canada where we could get the same med (generic) for approximately $50.00 for the same number of pills. With all the hubbub over tariffs and Canada we were concerned about the complications but thought, why not? Well, Yesterday we finally received the first shipment from the Canadian pharmacy — a product that they have shipped from Mauritius in the Indian Ocean — and which took 10 weeks to arrive. All their info says that shipments should arrive in 4 to 6 weeks, but this one certainly didn’t. At 6 weeks we called the company and they sent out a second shipment — and from the packaging material I can’t actually tell whether we received the second or the first shipment — we’ll just wait to see what happens from here — maybe there’s another shipment on the way, maybe there isn’t.

So, back to the main story…

The day started out on the theme of new or different medicines, and when I met with my doctor after the usual echocardiogram and EKG we talked about my meds. I’ve been pretty much on the same doses of the same meds for 10 years now. One of them is really pricey, but is also unreliably available. The manufacturer had a fire in the plant, and there aren’t other producers, so there’s been a nationwide availability issue. My condition is Hypertrophic CardioMyopathy — and if you remember Jim Fixx (I think that was his name) — a marathon runner who up and died for no apparent reason while appearing in perfect health — that’s what HE had. It’s a condition that affects heart valves and interferes with blood flow, and guess what, blood flow is kind of important.

Anyway… after talking about the availability of my primary medicine the doc broached the subject of changing meds. Oh…. Scary… They put me in hospital to get me on the first one under controlled circumstances. Not sure I like the sound of a change. Even though I freak out when my med supply gets close to being gone.

Turns out they have a new med that they have been using for a couple years. It’s approved for use by the FDA, but it’s also on the REMS protocol — meaning Risk Evaluation and Mitigations Strategy — an FDA program that monitors patients to insure that it’s safe and prescribed for the right patients. That physicians office has over 100 patients on the protocol and is the only “center” in Wisconsin doing so.

I need to jump through some hoops — which really means that the doctor’s staff and the pre-authorization teams are doing all the work — but it potentially will involved fewer meds to be taken, that are easier on my liver and kidneys with fewer side effects — but which also cost more. Supposedly they have ways to have the net effect to me be zero dollars out of pocket but we’ll see what happens. And if it doesn’t work out right I can always go back to my current regimen. So, I guess I’m going on a medical adventure.

The two events happening on the same day were interesting. I don’t handle stress as well as I used to, and I’m not as quick as I once was. Listening to all the explanations — and the staff there are top notch communicators — and thorough — was a bit overwhelming. A few things I’m not sure I caught, but I know how to ask questions and I will be doing so. But after 10 years of same-oh, same-oh, same-oh it’s exciting and scary both.

The new drug is Camzyos, or mavacamten, for those who may be interested.

That’s it for today. Talk again soon.