Category: Health

TOM’S CATARACT SURGERY – BY ELLIN CURLEY

Recently, Tom’s cataracts started to give him problems driving at night. He began seeing large halos around the headlights of the oncoming cars, which made driving a challenge. He went to the eye doctor who told Tom that his cataracts were ‘ripe’ and it was time to get cataract surgery in both eyes.

Now, no one looks forward to someone slicing and dicing their eyeballs, but Tom was borderline phobic about anyone touching his eyes. We had two close friends who had recently had the surgery and they both reassured Tom that they had felt nothing during the procedure and little if any discomfort afterward.

Tom listened to them but didn’t believe them on some level. So he procrastinated about scheduling the surgery – and procrastinated, and procrastinated.

When he finally scheduled it, he didn’t feel good about it. He worried more and more as the surgery date drew near and he reached a peak of panic the sleepless night before D-Day. On the ride to the surgery center, as well as in the waiting room, Tom kept repeating that he really didn’t want to do this. I began to worry that he might make a run for it.

Of course, Tom had to wait endlessly at the doctor’s office before he was finally taken in for the seven-minute procedure. So by the time he saw the doctor, his blood pressure must have been off the charts. Fortunately, along with buckets of numbing drops, they gave him some ‘good drugs’ to relax him.

I waited anxiously in the waiting room for an hour before he came out the other end. During that time, I saw a veritable parade of post-surgery patients, smiling in their identical pairs of unfashionable sunglasses. I relaxed as I realized that no one seemed freaked out or even stressed.

So I was not surprised when Tom reappeared, gushing about what a weird but not unpleasant experience it had been. As he had been told, he felt nothing but water being pumped into his eye. He saw strange lights and heard psychedelic music, which made it all feel like a mini acid trip.

Tom in his ‘cataract sunglasses’

Fresh out of surgery, his eye was blurry and totally dilated, and he felt like he had a grain of sand in his eye, but he could already tell how much better his vision was. Everything was brighter and clearer, especially colors. Tom said it was as if he had been looking at the world through a yellow filter and suddenly now he was seeing everything in vibrant, living color.

We bumped into an old friend in the waiting room who was coming in for the same surgery. Tom went on and on about how awesome his vision was now and told his friend not to worry but to get ready to be amazed at how colorful and sharp the world is.

By the next day the dilation was gone and even though only one eye was fixed, Tom’s vision was dramatically improved. He no longer needed his glasses for distance vision but will still permanently need reading glasses. Not a big deal. He also could see that our sunroom was painted bright blue, not green or teal.  And he was telling everyone what a miracle he had just experienced!

Tom seeing great without his glasses for the first time in decades

Now Tom can’t wait for the second surgery!

NATIONAL AND PERSONAL TRAGEDIES – BY ELLIN CURLEY

Everyone who was over the age of five on November 22, 1963, remembers where they were when they heard that President Kennedy had been shot. It was a seminal moment in most people’s lives.

I was in a ninth grade math class taught by my crusty, no nonsense math teacher, Miss Rosenthal. It was the last class on a Friday and I was sitting next to the window in the front row.

Me around ninth grade

I suddenly heard shouting outside on the front walkway and saw kids gathering and talking animatedly. Miss Rosenthal got annoyed at me for looking out the window and told me to face front and pay attention. I protested that something was going on outside but Miss Rosenthal didn’t care. She insisted I stay focused on the class and ignore the crowd growing just a few feet away from me. When we went back to school on Monday, Miss Rosenthal apologized to the class for preventing us from hearing the breaking news sooner.

As soon as class was over, we were accosted by kids in the hallway with reports of JFK’s shooting. In a haze, I went to my locker, got my coat and went outside. By the time I got to the front door, everyone was hysterical because JFK had died.

We were all crying on the car ride home. I spent the entire weekend watching the round the clock coverage of the death and the funeral. I saw Lee Harvey Oswald shot on live TV. I shared this grueling experience with most of the country – the first time we all went through a national crisis together in that way.

Oswald getting shot on live TV

In contrast, my mother was out shopping that Friday afternoon. She was looking at sets of China and fell in love with an expensive set that was way above her budget. She reluctantly left the store but was proud of her frugality. She immediately heard the news about JFK’s assassination. Her reaction, after horror and sorrow, was “Life is short”. So she turned around, went back into the china shop and bought the china! That’s my mom in a nutshell – a president’s assassination translates into the purchase of something beautiful.

My mom around 1963 all dolled-up to go out

I actually saw John F. Kennedy up close, in person, twice. The first time, his car slowly passed ours on the FDR Drive. He was in a convertible with the top down and his hair was blowing in the wind. He was charismatic. The second time, he was president and his motorcade was driving up Park Avenue, in New York City, the street I lived on. I was about twelve and was walking home. I stopped and stood in the street to catch a glimpse of his car. I saw him clearly through the window and I waved to him. As I watched the car drive past me, Kennedy turned around and waved back at me. There was no one else there that he could have been looking at! I was thrilled and I can still see his face in my mind.

JFK

Later in high school, I had a different experience with death. My best friend, Anne, lived a few blocks from me and we spent a lot of time together. One day, Anne’s father pulled me aside. He told me that Anne’s mother had been diagnosed with terminal cancer and he wanted me to be the one to tell her. I was in eleventh grade! I was shocked and terrified. But he pleaded with me and said he just couldn’t do it himself.

When Anne was visiting, I sat her down in my comfy chair and gave her the bad news. As I had expected, she wanted to go right home and be with her parents. Her mother died a few months later.

My friend Anne in her Senior Yearbook photo

Unbelievably, this scenario repeated itself the very next year! In our senior year in high school, Anne’s father was also diagnosed with terminal cancer. Her Aunt Edna, her father’s sister, was very close to the family. She came to me and, again, asked if I would tell Anne that she was losing her sole remaining parent. I protested but Edna said that she and her brother didn’t want to be the ones to break the news to Anne.

So, again, I sat Anne down and gave her the life-changing news. This was devastating for me as well as for her. We both cried. When her dad died later that year, Aunt Edna moved in with Anne and became her permanent mother and father.

My senior yearbook photo

Anne and I stayed friends through college but then lost touch. We only reconnected, by email, after our 40th high school reunion, over ten years ago. She was a lawyer, was married and had two grown daughters. She seemed content with her life and I felt relieved to know that she had landed on her feet after her early tragedies.

So my high school years had different but powerful brushes with death that helped shape who I am and how I deal with tragedy and death.

SIZE MATTERS, ESPECIALLY IF YOU’RE GODZILLA – Marilyn Armstrong

Fandango’s Provocative Question #13
“Do you believe that size matters? Please explain your response.”
Yes, it does.
No, it doesn’t.

It matters from a health perspective because not being heavy is healthier than carrying too much weight. You also look better in fashionable clothing. If you have arthritis, bad hips, or a damaged back, less is more.

That’s all the difference it makes. Being fat doesn’t make you a slob, disgusting or any of the words people use to describe fat people. No one is fat from simply overeating. You also need the right genetic structure. I have been so thin it was frightening and I have also been very heavy.

I look better in-between. My brain didn’t change when I gained weight or lost it. The last gain was because of all the medication they gave me when I had cancer that knocked my metabolism through the floor. Now I’m losing a little weight again, so maybe it’s “coming up” again. I don’t worry about it anymore.

When this was taken, I weighed 93 pounds. An XXS was too big for me. I wore a size zero and it was loose. It was not an attractive look.

I wear a lot of loose clothing that will fit me whether I’m fat or thin or whatever. Garry proposed to me when I was at my heaviest after which I lost a lot of weight and then gradually gained more, then lost a lot and then a lot more … and then so much that I was hospitalized. At which point, they removed most of my innards because of the ulcers that were eating my stomach and my small intestines.

So I can’t eat much at all because I don’t have a stomach, despite which I’ve put on 25 pounds and it certainly isn’t from overeating. It’s because I have no metabolism.

Big? Little? The difference? My back feels better when I weigh less. Everything else is the same.

IS THIS A BLOG OR A PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT? – Marilyn Armstrong

Weekly Word Prompt: Flu Shot

Flu shot as a prompt? Don’t take this the wrong way because I am very much in favor of flu shots, but it sounds like a public service announcement. Still, I don’t mind being a public service announcer.

Since we started getting flu shots every year, we haven’t gotten the flu. Not once. It doesn’t mean I don’t get sick with other stuff, but not the flu.

Don’t forget your flu shot …

Actually, I tell everyone to get the flu shot because the flu is not your everyday cold. It’s a big deal that even if you are young and healthy, will keep you out of work for a couple of weeks and has a knack for becoming the gateway for pneumonia and other breathing problems. And it really makes you feel like holy hell.

So I’m all for it.

We get flu shots every September and with the except of one year when there was another flu going around — yes, they are human and don’t always get it 100% right, but they do pretty well.

Now, all we need are people who don’t believe the anti-vaxxers more than they believe in science and doctors and we are home free!

SPORTS: NOT NECESSARILY THE HEALTHIEST ACTIVITY – Marilyn Armstrong

RDP Sunday–Gridiron

Unlike baseball, which I enjoy regardless of who is playing, though I admit I prefer seeing our team play when they let us, we aren’t going to discuss how MLB has made it nearly impossible to see one’s home-team without buying a mega cable package or owning season tickets to the sport. That’s another issue which gets a separate cover.

Today is Super Bowl day when the winners of the National and American leagues in football play each other for unbelievably expensive rings and the option of being the talking heads for who knows how many products on television. At least we can still see football on the regular network and not have to pay hundreds of dollars extra to watch our own teams play.

Although most non-football-addicted American think that football is like it used to be 20 years ago, it isn’t. Excessive roughness is a call made constantly on the field. The giant pile-ups of huge guys to destroy the quarter or running back are illegal now. It isn’t like it used to be which I think is very much for the good of the game.

Photo: Garry Armstrong

If you have been not watching football because the last time you saw it was the Disney cartoon starring Goofy, you have missed a lot of the changes that have come to the game. It’s still a rough game because sports are rough. All sports are rough, even the ones that don’t look particularly rough.

Take, for example, baseball. Do you know what pitching hundreds of balls over the course of 160 season game does to an arm? Or even the sliding and running … or that crouching the catcher does … do to a human body?

How about horseback riding? Do you know how many jockeys end their lives in wheelchairs? And how many are killed from falls that no helmet will fix?

Sports are hard on humans. All sports are hard on humans. Even sitting at a computer all day long is rough on parts of your body.

So if your reason for not watching football is that it’s too rough for a mortal humanoid, consider warfare and many of the “easy” sports we all are required to learn in school. Volleyball (tore my ankle up on that one), running (how many knees needed rebuilding after that?), shot-putting, pole vaulting, tennis (does your elbow still work?) … all of which take a serious toll on the person playing it.

English style riding and jumping

I know that we all think it’s healthy that our kids get up and go out in the world enjoy physical activity because that’s healthy, right?  Healthy activity comes at a price. Knees and backs are destroyed and many are never repaired.

Some folks are stronger than others and can withstand the battering better than others. Some can simply take more abuse, but others can take a lot less and don’t know it until it’s too late.

Like me, for example. I fell off a few horses. I didn’t even fall very hard, but I fell right on my butt. Or more to the point, I feel on the base of my spine. After a while — not a long while, either — I couldn’t walk properly anymore. I didn’t stop riding, even after the surgery which should have stopped me.

How about downhill skiers? And hockey and figure skaters?

There IS no sport that does not take a serious and potentially life-threatening toll on the body performing it.

Players have multiple surgeries on shoulders and elbows and spines and knees and get clobbered badly enough to end their life with sports-induced Alzheimer’s disease.

FOXBOROUGH, MASSACHUSETTS – JANUARY 13: Tom Brady #12 of the New England Patriots throws during the first quarter in the AFC Divisional Playoff Game against the Los Angeles -Chargers at Gillette -Stadium on January 13, 2019, in Foxborough, Massachusetts. (Photo by Maddie Meyer/Getty Images)

Don’t be fooled by thinking if something “looks easy” that it is easy. Ballerinas destroy their feet while male dancers crush their spines. The life of a professional dancer is shorter than that of an NFL player. And that’s not even sports. That’s ART.

BOSTON, MA – October 24: Boston Red Sox’s Andrew Benintendi catches a fly ball hit by Los Angeles Dodger’s Brian Dozier during the fifth inning of Game Two of Major League Baseball’s World Series at Fenway Park on October 24, 2018, in Boston, Massachusetts. (Staff photo by Christopher Evans)

Does any of this mean we should all stop doing anything risky? Of course not. But we should also be aware that when our kids complain that something is hurting them, to make sure that there’s no serious damage and to get that possible hurting checked by a doctor who actually knows the difference between bruising and serious damage.

I do not even know how many people are twisted into wrecks by middle age from sports they played when they were teenagers.

THE SCISSORS ARE GONE – Marilyn Armstrong

Two nights ago, the kitchen scissors disappeared.

I hadn’t used them and Garry is certain he put them where they belonged, which is in the kitchen scissors slot in the wood block where we keep all the knives. He is absolutely positive that he put them there.

I’m never absolutely sure I did or didn’t do anything. As often as not, it’s what I meant to do, but somewhere along the line, I got distracted. I had the item in my hand, but something happened and I went somewhere else — like maybe the bedroom or the bathroom — and I just put the item down. Somewhere. I have no idea where.

But at least I have the sense to never swear I know where I put whatever it was because so many times, it never got there. It went somewhere, but not where it was supposed to go. Garry’s sense of total certainty aggravates me. Because the scissors aren’t there.

They also aren’t anywhere else in the house and we’ve done a pretty thorough search of the premises including bedroom, offices, bathrooms, basement, bedroom — AND the freezer and refrigerator. Don’t laugh. I’ve found all kinds of things in the freezer.

Not just Garry looking, either. This is both of us looking. The thing is, these are kitchen shears and the were expensive. They don’t travel far and in the years we’ve had them (like three years, I think) they’ve never wandered outside the kitchen. I have box cutters that I use for unpacking stuff from Amazon. I actually have three box cutters: two in the kitchen and a third in the basement.

Note the scissors in the front slot. These are now missing.

We will continue looking for the scissors, but wherever they are, they shouldn’t be there. I can’t in all honesty blame this one on the dogs. They don’t have the digits to make the scissors work and anyway, that’s what fangs are for.

The spare scissors from the bedroom now occupy the scissors slot.

It could be those pixies again, but they tend to lift shiny things like jewelry. Earrings. Necklaces. I’m sure they are the ones that put my favorite necklace in the sock drawer of Garry’s dresser because I would never put it there nor would Garry.

I could be sleep-walking again. I have done some very odd things while sound asleep … but even so, what could I possibly have done with them, asleep or not?

At our age, it’s never a good idea to say you are 100% sure you did something because the truth is, maybe we didn’t. I usually blame the pixies or the dogs, depending on whether it’s glittery (pixies) or plastic (dogs) or paper (also dogs).

Assuming sleep-walking wasn’t involved.

The man who absolutely positively put the scissors back in their slot.

I’ll let you know should we ever find the scissors.

On another subject, I’m not feeling well and I’ve got doctors appointments on two different days and I have to get blood tests, too.

I’ll try to fit in writing and picture-taking, but I have a headache so bad my eyeballs hurt. I’ll do the best I can to provide new material, but honestly, I’m feeling not-so-great and it’s hard to be my charming self when my eyeballs hurt.

I was sufficiently sick that Garry opened a cookbook — VOLUNTARILY — and figured out how to cook swordfish with rice (he already knew how to use the rice cooker). It came out perfectly and tasted excellent. I needed a meal. I hadn’t eaten in 24 hours and I was hungrier than I thought.

I ate it. It was good!

The scissors are still missing. I ordered a much less expensive pair. The other ones might yet reappear in some strange place. Maybe the dogs DID do it.

DETERMINATION CAN GET YOU THROUGH, BUT IS IT WORTH IT? – Marilyn Armstrong

FOWC with Fandango — Determined

I can relate to determined.

It was that kind of day. We needed some food, but no money comes in until next Thursday, so we are flat broke … but prescriptions still need to be filled. I sent Garry to the store with a list and a reminder that we are seriously broke, so ONLY get what’s on the list.

Also, I had to reschedule a hospital appointment because they’ve deferred me so often, the original tests are two months old and I don’t even know if I’m still anemic or it has bounced back to normal. I’ve been on the edge of below or slightly above anemic most of my life so it wouldn’t surprise me if I was now back in the normal range.

University of Medicine and roads

I have no complaints about the medical care at UMass Memorial, but getting an appointment in a reasonable amount of time is crazy. Garry got in fast because … well … he knew someone. That’s right. He had an old connection from his working days. I, on the other hand, do not have a connection. Worse, UMass is the kind of place where they don’t listen to you.

I have seizures. Short, limited, with a quick bounce back — but still frightening. I thought, after the last one, I should see a neurologist. Garry, who has the hell scared out of him, agreed. My doctor agreed. We all agreed, but I could not convince any neurologist at UMass to see me without requiring I get a head MRI first.

My doctor and nurse couldn’t convince him either. He was dead set on that MRI, even though I would probably have all my problems solved because following the MRI, I’d be dead.

You see, I have a metal pacemaker in my chest. Even being in the room with MRI equipment would kill me. Literally, would tear the pacemaker out of my chest and leave me gored, bloody, and dead. I can’t prove it because apparently, I’m not mentally equipped to explain my medical problems on my own.

So I never saw a neurologist. Never talked to one. Never heard from anyone. It has been months, maybe close to a year. Every time I get a bit dizzy, I’m terrified I’ll have another seizure, but since I can’t see a neurologist without dying, I figure I’ll have to live with the seizures.

And now, it’s time to change cardiologists because Garry and I are getting too old to haul our asses into Boston. I need a local doctor. Even though I can and did completely describe my heart surgery — all of it — I still have to prove it. PROVE IT?

How do you prove heart surgery? Can’t they just call Beth Israel and get the records from them? I may have the records somewhere, but they aren’t “legal” if they don’t come from the hospital. But we have all these medical privacy laws, so they can’t GET the records without a lot of transferring of paperwork.

Medical Building and ramps

Meanwhile, I still have to go to the lab and get my tests redone and maybe  (MAYBE!) they will be done before I go to the hospital where they will take my entire medical history again and it will be the same as the ones they’ve taken before including all my medications.

ALL of this information — everything that has ever happened to my body — is in their computer including the heart surgery, both replaced heart valves, the bypass, pacemaker, and cardiomyectomy. They have the serial numbers for each implant (I am full of serial numbers) and serial number for both of my breasts that are ALSO implants. I will never be an unidentified corpse on a slab because all of my body parts have their own USB code. Unless they fix that computer, too.

Everything has been put on their computer. But, since they “fixed” their software program, they can’t find anything.

And then there was the telephone which doesn’t work and the ten pounds of mail I have yet to finish sorting.

That’s been my day. How has yours been? You have to admit that only a determined 72-year-old woman could make it through this sort of day.  When I was done, I cooked dinner. Mussels with spices, tomatoes, Worcestershire Sauce on angel hair pasta. And I cleaned up, too.