Dancing, Camping, Cycling, & Hiking on our Public Lands....living in the valley of love and delight
Modern medical advances are amazing—actually a miracle.
Four and a half years ago Dan had open heart surgery to fix a problem that would have caused his heart to explode within a few months..or weeks....or days. His tricuspid valve had fused into a bicuspid leaflets. The doctors don’t know why. This caused him to have regurgitation (leakage) from his heart, and resulted in an aneurysm in his aorta that was ready to burst. His heart is now “fixed” with a valve from a cow. He is now my Cowboy!
Then two and a half years ago, he was diagnosed with serious prostate cancer. After 2-1/2 months of radiation every single morning, followed by two years of nasty medicine with severe side effects, he doing so well that his doctor said, “It is a miracle." Good news, but kind of scary that we needed a miracle for him.
My dear Danny, has gone through hell and back again to stay alive for me. Thank you Danny.
Finally this year it was my turn to take the limelight. I needed some relief from my back pain. Thirty years ago a truck rear ended my car on the state highway on Whidbey Island. I was stopped behind another car that was making a left turn. The truck was going 60 mph, and the 80-year-old man driving didn’t try to stop. He said, “I didn’t see you." I expect it was time for him to loose his keys and put his truck in his garage.
Anyway, as a result of this crash, I had a concussion, whiplash, and a serious lower back injury. Four years later, after multiple treatments and physical therapy, I had back surgery, with two titanium discs inserted into my spinal cord. That was 25 years ago.
Last summer the pain in my back became unmanageable. I couldn’t take Naproxen anymore to lessen the pain. Every night I would wake up after a few hours of sleep in excruciating pain. The only thing that lessened the pain was to get up and walk around….and walk, and walk, and walk. Sometimes I could fall asleep again, but often not.
So we went off to the back doctor—had an X-ray, and the doctor said, yes you have some arthritis in your lower back, and will need to go to physical therapy before an MRI (or anything) can be done. Two months later of failed physical therapy, our insurance FINALLY allowed me to get an MRI.
Then things started moving, I was referred to a pain clinic for a possible ablation—where they would burn the nerves in my lower back that were causing the pain…..YEAH!
Again the miracle of modern medicine. But before an ablation, the doctor was required, by my insurance company, to do a procedure called a medial block. This means that he inserted needles in six places (L-1, L-2, and L-3), and shot in something that temporarily kept the nerves from transmitting the pain from my back to my brain.
I had to have this medial block procedure done two times. If I experienced at least 80% pain relief, then the doctor would know that he was in the right place for an ablation, and our insurance would pay for the procedure.
Everytime I went into the Surgery Center, I was anxious and scared. Dan stayed with me the entire time… until they wheeled me into surgery. And right as the nurses wheeled me away he surprised me with a card. Each card told me that he was in the room with me, holding my hand.
And every time, I read the loving, sweet card, I cried. I held the card next to my heart during the procedure…..the whole time, and I could actually feel my Danny with me, holding my hand.
The nurses and all the staff in the Surgery Center loved it. I think that they took extra good care of me. They knew that I was very important to someone, my husband.
Finally six months after I went to the back doctor last summer, an ablation was approved. If successful, this procedure could bring my back pain under control.
Dan and I headed to the Surgery Center. I was more anxious than ever. And very scared that this may not work and may not even lessen the pain any at all. Dan understood this fear. He is my rock….always there, always steady.
The nurses, anesthesiologist, and doctor talked to me. Dan was beside me every minute and held my hand. Surprisingly fast, it was time for my surgery. Dan gave me a kiss, and they wheeled me away, but at that exact moment he slid me something….and the nurses said, “give her back her glasses.” They knew that Dan had given me another card. But there was something else too…
I did cry, but I was laughing too. I forgot to be anxious or scared. All I felt was intense love for my Danny. And I held the tissue and card next to my heart the whole time.
Here I am being wheeled out of the Surgery Center by our friendly nurse, Delores. I don’t know who is happier….me, Danny, or Delores!
The good news….after 30 years of pain, I slept most of the night after my surgery. The pain was greatly diminished, certainly something I can live with. It is a miracle!
The temperature on the top is in the refrigerator…..and the bottom temperature is outside!
This blog post is a trip down memory lane for us. That trip, as it frequently is, concerns music from years ago that we remember...well.
A song that has great meaning to me (Dan) is Heart and Soul. It's a song by Hoagy Carmichael, a great composer and performer of the 30s and 40s.
Why, you may ask (probably not....that's OK) is this song so meaningful me?
Well, I'll answer that question. Simply put it is the song that really got me playing the piano.
How, you may ask (probably not...that's OK too) did it do that?
Well, it happened at church camp in the early 1960s.
Heart and Soul was a song that we kids played on the piano as a duet. The chording was very simple--it was the do-wop Major, Minor, Fourth, Fifth that I mentioned in a previous blog post. One kid would play the bass and the other would play the melody.
It was fun.
Then one day, I don't remember when, but probably at home I got the absolutely brilliant idea that maybe I could play the duet by myself with my left hand playing the chording and the right hand the melody.
And that's how I have played piano ever since. Chords with the left. Melody with the right. It has brought me great pleasure and satisfaction over the years.
The rec center where we played Heart and Soul. The basement had the dorms for boys:
Up the road was the girls' dorm. A photo with a friend of mine at the time, Eddie:
And the church, between these buildings:
So, with that, here is Heart and Soul, with me singing one of the verses. I could remember it after all of these years--it was that important to me. Besides, it's beautiful. Hoagy Carmichael playing it on the piano (he does it better than I could.....ha ha):
Dancing is so very important to us. What a thing to do to be able to dance to our memories and history.
Bobby Darin was a well-known singer from the 50s. His big songs were Splish Splash, Dream Lover, Mack the Knife, and Beyond the Sea (his best song).
A film was made of his life starring Kevin Spacey titled Beyond the Sea.
He died young, in 1973, at age 37. He was never a healthy person after having rheumatic fever as a child.
The song Beyond the Sea was a re-do of one recorded years earlier by Charles Trenet called La Mer (The Sea). The words are completely different from the Bobby Darin version.
Trenet wrote the song in 1945 and someone else recorded it. He recorded a version in 1946 which has become the standard.
We think it is one of the most awesome and beautiful songs ever.
We dance to it frequently. One of the major features of the song is that it is sort of in three parts.
The first part is a beautiful song, sung sweetly, with amazing piano chords to accompany it.
The second part is bouncy and jazzy, simply overflowing with joyfulness.
The third part is exuberant. Trenet almost seems to shout to the world "THE SEA!" "CELEBRATE THE SEA!!!"
Here we are dancing to the very famous and very wonderful La Mer....The Sea.
Click on the photo below to see the video of us dancing to this fantastic and beautiful song:
Vicky has always loved the Desert Rose dishes. This pattern has a lot of meaning to her because her family had them when she was a child. Coincidentally, my mother had a set that I had purchased for her many years ago from an antique mall in Mesa. All of us have liked this pattern, for many years--my mother, me, and Vicky.
My mother had given Vicky a couple of her bowls for a Christmas gift. She treasures them.
Since Vicky likes them so much, we decided to purchase a few more of the dishes on eBay. Here they are:
After purchasing them, I realized that the seller's location was Mesa. What a coincidence (another one), I thought. I emailed him and told him that if he wanted to he could drop them by our home so he could save several dollars in shipping. Mentioned that we lived in Leisure World.
He emailed back. Said he lived in Leisure World too!
Next day he dropped them by, and lo and behold, we knew him already. We sometimes see him walking when we are cycling (all of us have waved to each other dozens of times), and a couple of years ago he stopped by to talk with us about our Turtle (pickup camper). We had even given him a tour of it.
Small world.
Candice is still running 50K a day. She started on November 5th, and broke the previous record before the end of November. But she’s like the Energizer Bunny, so she’s still running. So this week she left Colorado where she had run an ultramarathon for 68 consecutive days regardless of how snowing or cold it was….
…..Candice headed to sunny, warm Hawaii to run the HURT 100, an ultramarathon trail race through the mountains towering over Honolulu. She's with Adam, who is pacing and crewing for her.
But to continue her world record streak she had to run a 50K (32 miles) every day even when traveling. The Guinness World Record requires that the run must be done on consecutive days, outside, and with breaks of no more than five minutes an hour….regardless of rain, snow, or multiple delayed airline flights in Boulder AND Los Angeles.
So in mid-November we started our “streak.” Cycling in Leisure World before dawn(meaning in the dark) every morning….
Our parents were children during the Great Depression. They learned to waste nothing. Everything that broke was fixed or jerry-rigged and used for years, clothes were mended and handed down to younger siblings or neighbor children, and socks were darned. Food was precious and scarce. Families grew gardens, kept some chicken and other livestock just to try to survive one season, one year at a time.
Houses were small. All the children slept in the same room. A family was lucky to have indoor plumbing. Dan’s father grew up in middle Iowa. They had a well for their water and an outhouse for their bathroom.
Dan’s mother’s family had a nice farm in the area of the Dust Bowl. In this area the land dried up, the wind blew, crops failed, and cattle and livestock died. People starved and died. Her family lost their farm and had to move. This during the same time as the depression. From that time on, they to survive they farmed land that they rented. Mom Graybill taught me to save butter wrappers to use when “buttering “ a baking dish. This is one of the many things that her family did—save and reuse a useful item, to save spending money on waxed wrap.
I have saved and reused my butter wrappers ever since she told of this. I feel that it honors her, all our parents, our grandparents and family….all all those who lived through the Great Depression.
My mother and father were lucky. My father’s dad sold meat for Swift & Co. in the midwest. People needed to eat, so he didn’t loose his job during the depression. But pay was poor and money scarce. My mother’s father was a lawyer in Seattle. He was paid for his services with produce or, if lucky, a chicken.
Both Dan’s and my grandparents scraped together every spare penny, scrimped and saved, so my mother and father and Dan’s mother were able to go to local schools and get a college degree.
Dan’s father worked selling popcorn for the local movie theater in Carson Iowa while in high school, and he continued to work while going to college so he could afford college. World War II interrupted his schooling. He enlisted the day after Pearl Harbor was bombed. After the war, with the help of the G.I. Bill, Dan’s father earned his college degree.
My mother’s grandfather had also been a lawyer, as was her father. But my father and Dan’s mother, father, and his aunt were the first of their family to get a university degree. These were very hard times, during the ten+ years of the depression and World War II. Families were lucky to have enough food to keep them alive. They had nothing frivolous or extra. Just the bare necessities….and that is, if they were lucky. Our grandparents and parents had to sacrifice much to attend and graduate from college. We are very fortunate and so proud that this is our legacy.
Our parents scrimping and saving every penny when we were children has influenced us greatly. We were both told many times as children about the “starving children in China,” and to eat all our food. “Those poor children in China would love to be eating our dinner.”
To us it has always seemed like a crime or morally wrong to waste food. So we scrape our plates and eat our leftovers the next few days. And often I freeze these little bit of leftovers in small containers.
Look at all the food Americans waste!
