Moving on, or trying to

I've spent the week NOT responding to people who emailed me, asking how my cardiac catheterization went, or just sending them very short messages, because my right arm still hurts and I can't use the hand fully yet. It's getting better, but I still have a little ways to go. I have a lot of things to say today, though! I want to write down everything I remember. Maybe I'll just take a lot of breaks, work on the post throughout the day.

So, let's see. Last Sunday when I blogged I was still freaking out over Rocket Boy's latest illness, hoping he would be well enough to drive me to Loveland on Tuesday. He got steadily better and did drive me, but he's not out of the woods yet -- even though he's back in St. Louis now.  

The question of which of us was the patient was an issue all week.

We had planned to cook Easter dinner on Sunday -- a plan that I was not onboard with, but which I was trying to be onboard with, on account of the fact that Rocket Boy had been in the Emergency Room on Saturday night. But I finally told RB that I just wasn't up for it, at least not my part (I had planned to make a vegetable tart from The New York Times cooking section). And surprisingly he agreed that it might be better just to go out. So we drove out east to a Village Inn -- not very special, but it was fine. I had fish & chips, which perhaps was a little too greasy for me. In any case, I got very nauseated the next day (Monday) and after we got the kids off to school, I went back to bed. I seem to have this new condition: Monday morning nausea. 

But I felt better in the afternoon, and we cooked our Easter dinner on Monday night -- I made the planned vegetable tart (this is the NYTimes' photo, but mine looked somewhat like this) and it was good. I also made a tasty salad, and RB cooked the salmon. I was very nervous about my procedure, so it helped to have something to do, even though cooking is usually pretty low on my want-to-do list.

Tuesday, we got the kids off to school again, making sure they brought a house key, and also texted one of the neighbors to be sure she still had a key, so she could be their backup. I packed a little overnight bag, in case I had to stay overnight, and all my meds, and a few other things I didn't end up needing, like a book (Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass). We left around 10:40 and drove to Loveland -- I drove, because it gave me something to do besides be nervous -- and even though our exit was blocked due to construction, we arrived before 12. Definitely easier than driving to Aurora, which would have been another possibility.

UCHealth has a huge installation in Loveland. We entered the main building, checked in on the first floor, and they sent us up to the cardiology department on the second floor, where we checked in again. Then we were sent to a little waiting room, where we sat for a few minutes until they took us back to the pre/post-op area and I met my nice nurse, Dawn. The first thing I had to do was take all my clothes off and put on a gown and some gigantic yellow socks that they let me take home (I'm wearing them now -- cozy!). Then they hooked me up to a blood pressure cuff and put the thing on my finger that records respiration and pulse. Different people came in and talked to me -- I told them about how I throw up after anesthesia, and they agreed to give me something to prevent that (I think Zofran and benadryl). One young woman came to shave off my pubic hair, in case they ended up putting the catheter through my groin. I said to her, "Oh, you're the shaver," and she said, "Esthetician, by training." And I thought, oh right, this is something that some women have done by choice, not for surgical reasons but for beautification. We had an interesting conversation about that. 

Rocket Boy was horribly embarrassed by the shaving, and the next item of business was going to be inserting an IV, so I told him he didn't have to stay any longer, I would be all right. He left with alacrity, off to have lunch in the cafeteria, and I felt a pang that was not just from hunger -- like, now I'm all alone and they're going to put a wire in my artery. But what could I do? I'm a big girl, an old girl, no crying allowed. Dawn put the IV in, very expertly, and soon it was time for some other nurses to push my bed into the cath lab. I tried not to feel a sense of doom.

In the cath lab, I had to scooch over onto an operating table that seemed too narrow, and then they painted my arms and legs with iodine and stuck an oxygen cannula in my nose. The terrible thing about a cardiac catheterization is that they don't put you to sleep -- they give you Versed and maybe fentanyl to make you dopey, but you're still awake. I could feel it when they stuck the wire in my right wrist. That's the one part of this experience that I would really prefer not to repeat, so I hope I never have to, but once you're on this train, I'm not sure you can get off. But after I got the first dose of Versed in my IV, I closed my eyes and was able to zone out to some degree. It seemed as though the doctor and nurses were doing nothing but telling jokes, but then I heard someone mention a "lesion," which I thought sounded bad, and then I heard the doctor reading off numbers to a nurse, and the numbers sounded good, all in the 90s. At one point I felt more awake and I heard the doctor say something about my arteries closing up, so they gave me more Versed and I calmed down (and presumably the vessels opened wide again).

A few weird sensations that I remember: when they flushed my IV with saline they told me I might taste it, and I did -- so weird. Later, when they put dye or something in the catheter, I felt a brief burning sensation in my arm, almost unbearable, but then it was gone. And later, something else went through that gave me a warm, wet feeling across my whole trunk -- I felt like I'd just peed myself -- but a moment later that feeling was gone, too. I look at my body now and think about how connected every part of it is, how quickly, how immediately connected it is. So strange.

Then they took the wire out, bandaged me up, and pushed me back to the room I'd been in before, returning me to the care of Nurse Dawn. The doctor came by and said it was good news -- I hadn't needed a stent and my coronary artery disease could be treated with meds. Rocket Boy was brought back in at one point and told the good news, and he called my sisters and told them. 

(Later I read the results of the procedure online and they were a little more complicated than just "Good News!" My LAD artery is 50% blocked -- that's that "lesion" they were talking about -- but the other arteries are all clear. This is about as good as it could be, given the results of the stress tests.)

It took hours before I was ready to leave, because we had to wait to see if my artery was going to burst open again (it had started leaking when they moved me back to the main room). Nurse Dawn told me a lot of horror stories about people whose arteries burst open -- I think mainly so I would be careful with my arm. Her warnings were effective: I was very careful and my artery has not burst open since we left Loveland. 

While we waited I slept some, but even after I was awake, my vital signs were crazy low. Perhaps that is normal after Versed? I kept setting off alarms -- my pulse was too low, my blood pressure was too low, my oxygen was too low. Dawn would come back in, frown, and push buttons. At one point she observed that I was "very Zen." I kept wanting to say that maybe they should have taken me off my blood pressure medicine before the procedure! At one point when Rocket Boy was there, I was getting cross with him because he kept leaving his backpack in the waiting room, which I thought was a really bad idea -- someone might steal his wallet, or for that matter MY wallet, which I had given to him for safekeeping. "There are so many thieves in a medical center," he said, teasing me. "There could be!" I said. This had no effect on my heart rate. It varied from the mid-40s down to 39, all of which set off the alarms. I couldn't understand why my pulse was so low if I was angry! My blood pressure kept going down to 90 over 50. My oxygen level got down to, I think, 87.

Finally, around 5 pm, we were allowed to leave. Dawn helped me get dressed -- Rocket Boy found my bra terrifying -- took me downstairs in a wheelchair and put me in my little red car. Rocket Boy drove us home, where the twins were waiting, on their stupid devices, pretending? to be unconcerned. I can't remember what we did for dinner -- it must have been leftovers. One of my book group friends had offered to bring us dinner, but RB objected because he thought she would bring something with meat. I didn't want to have to mediate between a helpful friend and an ungrateful husband, so I told her we didn't need meal help. I was cross with RB about that all week.

I think I spent most of Wednesday resting, but by Thursday I was pretty much back to normal, except that I still couldn't use my right arm very well. This photo shows the lovely bruise on my arm as it looks today (and the tiny pinprick at upper right where I think the wire went in). I have never been so aware of having an artery before! I don't seem to be aware of the one in the left arm, but oh boy, that right arm artery is my new buddy. Or something. I think it was on Thursday that I made dinner (which I was already cross about, see above), but it required that I open a can of corn and I realized that using our handheld can opener was very painful. I had to get Rocket Boy to do it, and this upset me terribly, partly because the pain weirded me out and partly because I kept thinking about how my friend had wanted to bring dinner but instead I had to make it and I couldn't even get a can open!

All week I kept getting upset because I felt as though I wasn't being cared for. And yet, who was going to be doing this caring? The twins? They were anxious, they needed me to be there for them. As for Rocket Boy, fresh out of the Emergency Room, here are some of the things he did this week: replaced the three burned-out lights in the kitchen (none of which I was capable of fixing, all of which required weird bulbs from McGuckin's), unclogged the bathtub drain (it was full of my hair), and not just unclogged but actually replaced the bathroom sink drain, which was at least 50 years old and in bad shape. He also worked (at his job) quite a bit, and took Teen B to his orthodontia appointment on Wednesday.

That's how he shows his love and caring: by fixing things. And I really appreciate everything he does. I just wanted more. Life's tough.

The twins had Friday off, so we went to the Denver Botanic Gardens, just so we could do one fun thing during a very un-fun week. As we drove toward the US36 entrance, we saw great clouds of smoke -- the vegetation next to the on-ramp was on fire! And a fire engine was parked there and a firefighter was spraying the fire! We just drove right past it, and as I looked back, I saw the fire engine turn on its lights and siren. It was a very windy day, but to have another fire start just as we were leaving town -- I was nervous the whole time we were gone. But it was nice to go to the Gardens. There was a wedding taking place that day, as there often is, and it was a two-bride wedding. Both of them were in fancy long white dresses. I pointed it out to the twins -- seemed like a nice thing for them to see.

I was wiped out when we got home, but I was glad we'd gone. We ate leftovers for dinner, watched the 1935 film of A Midsummer Night's Dream, and then it was time for Rocket Boy to start packing up to go.

I always hate it when he goes back to St. Louis, even when I know he'll be back soon, even if it's been a nice long visit. I always get irritable, so I try to stay out of his way. I did some errands in the morning -- went to the library, the grocery store, the gas station. His flight left at 5:05, the last flight from Denver to St. Louis that day, so we would leave home at 2 pm. I was nagging him about what he was bringing, or forgetting, and finally I got annoyed with both myself and him, so I said I would wait in the car. Teen B came too -- he likes to see Dad off at the airport. He and I waited in the car and eventually Rocket Boy came out with his last bag, and off we went.

Around the time we got on Pena Boulevard (the last leg of the trip), Rocket Boy remembered that he had forgotten to bring his antibiotic, the one he'd been taking since Monday. I got very upset -- how could you forget that, you need that, etc., etc. While I was yelling, he remembered something worse -- he'd forgotten his phone. Which had the effect of silencing me, it was so horrible. Without a phone, he was very screwed. Though not as screwed as he would have been if he hadn't driven himself to the airport the previous Saturday. He couldn't have ordered a Lyft home without his phone.

I still feel guilty about this. If I'd gone on nagging him, if I hadn't gone out to sit in the car, I think I would have asked him if he'd had his phone, and maybe his meds too.

But he gets himself to the airport with everything he needs when he's alone in St. Louis! Why did he need me to nag him that day? His excuse was that one of the cats, Sillers, had thrown up in four different places that morning, and he'd been busy cleaning up the vomit right before he left. Maybe that was it.

Teen B looked up FedEx places in Boulder on his phone and discovered that one was open until 6 pm. So after we dropped Rocket Boy off at the airport at 3:15, we hurried home to mail RB's phone to him. Oh, but first we stopped at Starbucks, as we almost always do, as a little reward to Teen B for accompanying me. That turned out to be important later.

On the way home, on 104th in, I think, Thornton, we drove right by another fire. It was burning a shed in someone's backyard and the fire trucks weren't there yet. They showed up about half a mile later, sirens screaming as they zoomed past us toward the fire. It was another high wind day. I swear, this string of fires is freaking me out.

At home, I gathered up the phone, charger, and bottle of antibiotics, and headed off to FedEx Office, where a nice man helped me get them ready to mail (for $132). Only thing was, I'd just missed the pickup -- thank you, ill-conceived Starbucks stop. And there's no pickup on Sunday. The phone will go out on Monday and Rocket Boy will get it on Tuesday morning. He'll just have to manage until then. We did manage to Skype with him this afternoon -- he's doing OK. He picked up a new prescription from his St. Louis doctor, so I didn't really need to send his Boulder prescription via FedEx. It's a different drug, so he'll just start this one and take all of it, forget the Boulder drug.

So here (and there) we are. We survived our week. My arm is getting better, though I keep having mild chest pain -- they told me I would -- the whole artery is a little bit irritated and is probably spasming. I'm having a problem with nausea, though -- not sure what from. Maybe it's because I had to stop taking metformin for four days and then restart it. The only thing I want is cereal and milk and tea, plus the occasional piece of chocolate. I've got to get back to normal cooking soon. My book group was supposed to come here tomorrow evening, but I finally put them off, asked if we could do a zoom call instead (which we also did last month, when I was sick and had just gotten my braces and was in pain). This month we read the novel Pachinko, so I really should have served Korean food, and the thought of even ordering takeout and having it in the house made me want to vomit. Hopefully by next month, I won't be having this problem (and maybe we could read a book with a less spicy/fragrant cuisine). 

I don't see my cardiologist until late May, so I'll just go on taking the same pills until then. I hope he takes me off the beta blocker, but he probably won't. I'll just have to get used to it. Rocket Boy is going to try to come back in a few weeks, be here for the twins' middle school graduation in late May. We'll see. Meanwhile, there will be lots of things that need doing. Mostly I'll need to pull myself together and stop being the patient. Maybe just a couple more days.

Crazy Easter

I'm almost too tired to blog today. Maybe I am too tired. Maybe this will just be a short one today.

It was a quiet week, at least the first part of it. I did some of the cleaning I'd planned, not all of it. Teen B stayed home sick the first three days, and I made him help a little. We got covid tests on Tuesday, and they were both negative, so that was good. The reason I got a test was that I woke up nauseated on Monday and started the day throwing up. That was also the reason we didn't get covid tests on Monday -- I slept most of the rest of the day.

But other than that I didn't get sick. I never caught Teen B's cold. So I can be thankful for that.

I was feeling really happy as the weekend approached. Rocket Boy was flying in Saturday, we were going to celebrate Easter together, the house was at least somewhat clean, I wasn't sick -- everything was coming up roses, in other words. And then Friday he called to tell me that he had cellulitis again. He wasn't sure how bad it was -- maybe he'd be OK if he got some sleep -- but with cellulitis you can never be sure. He needed to be on antibiotics, but there wasn't time to get any. He'd play it by ear the next morning, whether to cancel his flight or not. I went into panic mode. I did manage to sleep that night, but probably not enough.

Saturday morning he felt better. He drove himself to the airport and flew to Colorado. But I knew we weren't done. I had a zoom call that morning, and then I did some more cleaning. Teen B and I drove to the airport and met his plane, and he didn't look great. He admitted, on the way home, that he should probably go to Urgent Care. We got home too late to do that (they close at 5 pm on Saturdays), so around 5:30 pm, after bringing his suitcases into the house and greeting Teen A and the cats, we headed for the Emergency Room.

There's something very sweet about being in the ER waiting room together. It's nice to know that someone will be taking care of you soon, but it's also very sweet to go through adversity as a team. I always think about how one of these days -- years, whatever -- we'll do this and then it will be the end. Many people's lives end in the ER, or maybe they make it to the ICU and things end there. I'm always very grateful when it isn't the end and we get to go home.

Rocket Boy's leg looked absolutely terrible -- red and swollen and hot. The foot hardly looked like a foot, just like a big red blob with little white toes sticking out. They insisted on doing an ultrasound to look for blood clots, even though Rocket Boy explained carefully that he didn't have a blood clot, he had cellulitis. "Have you had lymphedema for a while?" various people asked him. "Thirty years," I answered for him, over and over. 

They gave him IV antibiotics and then we got to go home, with four pills to take today, and a prescription to get filled on Monday, since all the pharmacies are closed today except for one in east Longmont, where I didn't want to drive. I realized when we got home that I was exhausted. But Rocket Boy and the twins (who had been home alone, worrying) were hungry, so I fixed a can of soup and made scrambled eggs. I ate some leftover pasta that was in the fridge. The whole time I was fixing dinner, though, I still felt really happy. I kept thinking about how much I loved my family and what a wonderful thing it was to have a family to love.

Then I walked back to the desk room to do something on the computer and I somehow banged my foot into a chair leg. I still don't know how I did that! The pain was instantaneous -- aaah! And just like that, all my joy evaporated. I thought, oh my god, I've broken a toe. I wanted that moment back! How could I have broken a toe on the leg of my chair?!?! I wasn't even walking fast. I was so tired, I was just kind of shuffling along. I think that was the problem -- I kind of lost my balance right at the end and careened into the chair leg.

Hurting my toe reminded me that I'm the patient too -- I was spending the day looking after Rocket Boy (and the kids), not myself, but I needed not to forget about myself too. This is what my doctor was fussing at me about back in February, women paying attention to their family members' needs and ignoring their own. I actually think that I devote a great deal of attention to my own needs -- certainly this blog is all about me and my supposed problems -- but in real life, I probably spend more time on my family's needs than my own. Certainly yesterday that was true.

We wrapped my toe with the one next to it -- I knew to do that from having broken a toe on the other foot three years ago. There isn't much else you can do. We got the kids to bed, finally, quite late. But then we still had to do Easter! I pulled out all the candy I'd bought. It seemed excessive. Rocket Boy had also brought a lot of candy from St. Louis. I realized this was probably going to be the biggest Easter in our family's history. I filled all the old baskets. Some of the candy didn't fit and I had to set it aside for later. Rocket Boy handled the jelly beans (we fill our collection of plastic eggs with jelly beans). I stumbled out to the living room, back and forth, hiding baskets in various places. Rocket Boy hid all the plastic eggs. It was a little bit fun, but mostly we were just so tired.

Bedtime was a relief. Rocket Boy took a shower, I iced my toe, and then we turned in. We both slept like zombies, not waking up until around 8 am. (I could hear Sillers meowing somewhere and I didn't care at all.) The kids were good, waited until we were fully up before starting their hunt. And then it turned out to be a lot of fun, because despite being 14, they were still very competitive, desperately needing to find every hidden thing, and especially MORE than their brother. 

After breakfast we decided to go to Urgent Care and have my toe looked at, but the PA I saw didn't think it was a serious break (if it's a break at all). She suggested I deal with all my heart stuff first, rest my foot as much as possible, and then go see my podiatrist in a few weeks if things don't get better. I thought that was an excellent idea, and since the toe already doesn't hurt as much as it did yesterday, I think I'm going to be OK. 

The best news is that Rocket Boy's leg looks 100% better today. What a difference an antibiotic makes. The redness is gone, the swelling is greatly reduced, and his foot looks like a foot. 

So now it's 4:30 pm, Rocket Boy is taking a nap, and I'm trying to get interested in making Easter dinner. If it were up to me, we would go to Mcdonald's. Seriously. I don't want to cook anything. I'm absolutely wiped out, despite that good night's sleep. My energy level is approximately zero (when we went to Urgent Care my oxygen level was only 91, and that's about how I feel). But we bought salmon, and I said I'd make a vegetable tart (sigh -- why do I come up with these ideas?) and a salad. Easter dinner is important to Rocket Boy, and to the kids too, even though they're full of candy.

The kitchen needs cleaning and the dishwasher needs emptying before I can do all this cooking that I don't want to do. I'm in the middle of the kids' laundry, which I always do on Sundays. They go back to school tomorrow, Rocket Boy is supposed to see his regular doctor, and I have to start my prep for Tuesday's procedure. It looks like that's going to happen, and Rocket Boy should be able to drive me.

Why is everything always so complicated? 

It's OK. It's life. Which we get to spend another day enjoying, and with any luck a whole lot more days too.

Waiting

I'm waiting for my cardiac catheterization on April 19th. That's all I can really say this week. That's all that's going on.

While I wait, I'm now taking a beta blocker and it's messing with me. Different side effects on different days, but basically I don't feel good. Dizziness, spaciness, tiredness, sometimes it feels like I'm feverish but I'm not. Nausea, constipation and diarrhea, often heartburn, a cough which might be a heartburn cough but might not be. I'm hungry all the time, for junk food, just when I'm supposed to be eating a plant-based diet for my cardiac problems. If in fact I do have cardiac problems. Have to wait for the cath to know for sure.

I think the beta blocker is also making me feel depressed, but that one's tricky, since obviously my situation could be making me depressed. I read that this particular drug, metropolol, can cause depression, but then I read about a big study that supposedly showed that beta blockers don't cause depression. But then I read that the study did not include any participants with known mental health issues. So what does that show? How stupid. OK, maybe beta blockers (in general) don't cause depression in people who've never had depression, but what about people who are prone to it? Is it possible that this one particular beta blocker that I'm taking can nudge people with persistent depressive disorder over the edge? Of course it's possible. Or at least, the study doesn't show at all that it isn't possible. Stupid.

***

Rocket Boy will be here on Saturday! I should think about that, because it's coming up sooner than the procedure, and it's a happy thing. I should work on cleaning the house this week before he comes, but that's tricky too. I don't have much energy and I shouldn't push myself. I'll try to give myself a small assignment each day and let it go at that. Some possibilities:

• Vacuuming
• Washing the sheets and blankets on our bed
• Cleaning up the living room
• Getting rid of a few piles of files
• Cleaning the bathroom -- not a full cleaning, just sink and toilet and whatever looks awful
  

That's five things -- it might be enough. I think for Monday I'll work on piles of files, Tuesday could be the living room, Wednesday the bathroom, Thursday the vacuuming, and Friday the bedding. Whatever I get done will be enough. Oh, somewhere in there I have to go to Longmont to get labs done before the procedure. Thursday, I think. Well, I can probably do that on Thursday and still do the vacuuming. Or I can do the vacuuming on Friday and wash the bedding on Saturday. It'll all work out. I have very low expectations for myself these days.

Oh, but I forgot -- Teen B is sick. Just a cold, probably, but he's sounding worse and worse. Maybe I should keep him home tomorrow and take him for a covid test. It's unfortunate, because they're in the middle of CMAS testing, but his next test isn't until Tuesday. Maybe I'll give him some cold medicine tonight, see if that helps at all. And if I have to keep him home on Monday, well, I'll just have less time to work on files. It doesn't matter that much.

On the other hand, if I catch what he has, and Teen A gets it also, we'll probably pass it on to Rocket Boy when he arrives on Saturday, and by Tuesday the 19th either I'll be too sick for the cath or he'll be too sick to drive me to Loveland and we'll have to reschedule everything!!!!!

I am not going to think about this right now.

***

I don't know if this is an effect of the beta blocker, or maybe some of my other meds, but I'm less interested in reading right now. By the end of March I had read 30 books, on track to read 120 books over the course of the year. But my pace is slackening. I read 10 books in January, 14 books in February, but only 6 books in March, three of which were books I read to the kids. So far this month I've finished 2 books. I've started three others, but I may not finish two of them (I have to finish the third because it's for the book group). When I climb into bed at night, I read for a few minutes and then I get tired and turn off my light. I'm also taking a lot of naps during the day. 

I think this must be depression. I am also not interested in my Barbie dolls right now, nor do I want to write anything.

***

I don't think I mentioned that I had my second orthodontia appointment, a week earlier than scheduled because I broke some of my braces. Dr. Walker told me, "Adults don't break braces," but it turns out that adults can and do, especially adults who have some crowns in their mouths, because braces don't adhere to crowns the way they do to real teeth. 

I managed to pop the braces off three different teeth (I think) and I also broke a wire on another tooth. I had two wires sticking into my gums, and I filled my mouth with dental wax to block the pain. To stick the braces back onto my crowns, they put the horrible things in my mouth that they use when they first put the braces on -- I don't know what they're called, but they make your mouth look kind of skull-like and they hurt. 

So now I'm trying REALLY hard not to break any more braces. But it's difficult. 

Still, I'm encouraged by the fact that a month has gone by. I got the braces on March 10th and it is now April 10th, so I've had them for one month, actually 31 days. I'm supposed to have them on for two years, i.e., 730 days, which means I have only 699 days to go. (Of course, if I keep breaking braces, it will take longer.) I can feel that my teeth are already moving, though, which is very encouraging. Already, there is not enough room in my mouth for the tooth that was pulled. The space is getting smaller.

***

I'm sure there was something else I was going to write about, but I can't think of it. It's OK. I'm just in waiting mode. Getting through the days with the kids is challenging, but at least they're mostly too wrapped up in their own worlds to worry about me. They know I have some stuff going on with my heart, but I think that's too abstract for them to grasp. They've never known anyone who had a heart attack. Their experiences of death have been elderly neighbors (two, now) who lived to be 100 or more. 

I, on the other hand, have plenty of experiences of death, too many. But I am trying not to share my worries with the kids. Trying just to have happy times with them, nothing special, just low-key pleasantness. Wordle, Quordle, Octordle, Sweardle, Heardle. Playing with the cats, going grocery shopping, making dinner, reading to them at bedtime. Normality.

At first, after I got the bad test results, I was afraid I would die suddenly. Every night I would wonder whether I'd wake up the next morning. Now I guess I've calmed down about that a little, partly because my diagnosis is up in the air, and partly because it's hard to stay scared for too long. I probably will NOT die in my sleep anytime soon, because of the beta blocker and the baby aspirin and the statin and all that. And if by some weird chance I do, well, that's life.

Spring quarter (and an update)

It is April! A new month and a new quarter: April-May-June, which is our spring and early summer. Grass is starting to turn green, bulbs are poking up out of the ground. March went by quickly, but it had so many things packed into it: Rocket Boy's long visit, the twins' birthday, our shared illness, my tooth pulling and braces, Teen B's band concert, our lovely trip to Nebraska, the scary fire... a long list and I feel like I'm forgetting something even so. 

Well, on top of all that was one other thing I haven't talked about in the blog yet, and that's the results of my second stress test. To recap, back in early February I was shoveling snow and I felt a weird pain in my chest, unlike anything I could ever remember feeling before. I paused, the pain stopped, I resumed shoveling, and I felt the pain again. It was right in the middle of my chest and somehow did not seem related to a muscle. So I set down the shovel and walked around a little, talked to the kids (who were helping shovel), talked to our next-door neighbor, and after a while resumed shoveling -- very carefully. I did not feel the pain again, but a few days later, when I had an appointment with my new doctor, I told her about the pain and she flipped out. She ordered an EKG right then, which showed nothing, but she also put me on blood pressure medication and referred me to the cardiologist.

I saw the cardiologist a week later, and he decided that because of all my risk factors (diabetes, being fat, high blood pressure, bad family history) that we should do an echo stress test. That occurred on March 1st, but it was somewhat inconclusive because I couldn't last even a minute on the treadmill. Consequently, I was rated Class IV Functional Capacity, which is very bad. But because we still couldn't really tell what was going on with my heart, the cardiologist ordered another stress test, a nuclear stress test, where they inject you with a radioactive tracer and look at your heart before and after you walk on a treadmill again. I had that done last Monday. And the results were... bad. According to what was posted on "My Health Connection," it was:

Abnormal myocardial perfusion scan, findings consistent with obstructive CAD with ischemia in the territory of the proximal LAD. Additionally there is a fixed inferior defect without prone imaging performed. There is normal wall motion and thus may represent attenuation artifact over inferior MI.

That was not what I was expecting.

I saw my regular doctor the next day, and she wasn't happy with these results. She started me on a statin, with CoQ10 which I guess is supposed to counteract some of the side effects of the statin, and then I got a message from my cardiologist putting me on low dose aspirin as well. So I now take 8 pills a day, not counting the occasional calcium and vitamin B complex (I've stopped vitamin D for now, since the calcium includes it).

In the morning with breakfast I take

• 2 metformin
• 1 rosuvastatin
• 1 coq10
  

In the evening with dinner I take

• 2 metformin
• 1 losartan potassium
• 1 baby aspirin
  

I figured out quickly that CoQ10 causes insomnia, so I moved it to the morning. The statin I'm taking can be taken any time of day. 

I don't like being a pill-taker, but I like the alternative (heart attack? stroke? death?) less. So I take my pills.

I see the cardiologist again tomorrow (Monday) to discuss next steps. My regular doctor thinks the next step will be a cardiac catheterization, possibly with a stent put in, depending on what they find. A cardiac catheterization is a fairly serious procedure and might require an overnight hospital stay. Even if I get to go home the same day, I will need to take it easy for a few days -- which basically means that Rocket Boy needs to come home when I have this done, because the kids are so unhelpful. I thought of asking the cardiologist if we can delay this until May, when Rocket Boy was supposed to come home for another month. But now his new boss is making trouble, disagreeing with HR's decision to let him spend every other month in Colorado. So I may just go with whatever the cardiologist wants to do, whenever he wants to do it, and ask Rocket Boy to fly home for a few days, using family medical leave. That, at least, I don't think his boss can object to.

***

So I don't know yet how bad the news is, and yet, it's clearly bad. Even if there's actually no "fixed inferior defect," it was just an "artifact" of the scan, I've still got "obstructive CAD with ischemia." I read somewhere that if you have that, and it's bad enough to show up on a stress test, you can assume you've got at least a 70% blockage. 

While we were on vacation in Nebraska, I took my blood pressure religiously every morning and night. On Wednesday and Thursday nights I took it after swimming in the hotel pool with Rocket Boy and the kids. Both of those times, my heartbeat was irregular, which my blood pressure monitor duly noted and told me to report it to my doctor. "It could be nothing," the blood pressure monitor acknowledged, "or it could be something very serious."

BEFORE, I would have thought, oh, it's nothing. But now, of course, I'm freaking out. Anyway, BEFORE, I wouldn't have had a blood pressure monitor and so wouldn't have known my heartbeat was irregular.

All this past week, since the stress test, I haven't exercised. No walks at all. Each day I have a different excuse, and one day, Thursday, I did do some raking (because compost pick-up was Friday). But no walks, after nearly a year of regular walking (interrupted, more recently, by all our snowstorms). The weather is fine now. I need to start my walks again -- people with obstructive CAD with ischemia can still take walks, in fact they SHOULD take walks. But I'm freaking out. I keep thinking I'm feeling chest pain, or shortness of breath. I think, what if I go on a walk and I start feeling chest pain? Both of my doctors told me that if I feel ANY chest pain, I must go to the emergency room immediately. "Call an ambulance," my regular doc told me. Jesus Christ.

***

One thing that particularly freaked me out about my test results was the mention of the LAD, which is the left anterior descending artery. What it reminded me of was Joan Didion's memoir, The Year of Magical Thinking, about her husband's death and her daughter's illness. Her husband dies of cardiac arrest, just after sitting down to dinner, and almost a year later she learns from his autopsy that he had an "acute infarct in distribution of left anterior descending artery."

It seems funny that I would remember something so specific, but I did. The LAD is called "the widowmaker," not only by Joan Didion's husband's cardiologist, but by every cardiologist, apparently. According to the website Medical News Today,

The authors of one 2018 study found that widowmaker heart attacks led to the highest increased risk of death, heart failure, and stroke in comparison with other types of heart attack.

I thought of Didion's book the moment I saw my test results, but I didn't pull the book down and re-read it until yesterday. I was afraid to. But actually, when I paged through it, I was slightly reassured. Her husband didn't have a LAD heart attack out of nowhere. Seventeen years previously he had an angioplasty, and in the months preceding his death he had increasingly uncontrolled arrhythmia and a pacemaker inserted. In other words, he'd been dealing with heart disease for a long time. I, on the other hand, just found out about mine this week.

Of course, they say about 50% of people find out they have heart disease when they have their first heart attack.

***

I don't expect that I will be this freaked out about my health news forever. Eventually I'll get used to my new normal. But I have to admit that right now I'm pretty freaked. Even though I know I have good doctors and good insurance and it's a wonderful thing that this was caught before something awful happened.

It's actually a little bit like what I was dealing with last weekend, when we had that fire. Walking around the house, deciding what to bring with us if we evacuated, deciding what was important to me, what really mattered.

Now there's no fire, but there's a sort of disaster happening inside me, and I'm doing some of that same sort of evaluation. Something along the lines of, if I died tomorrow, what would I want to have accomplished? What do I need to do before I die? Interestingly, it's apparently not important to me to have written or published anything. I guess I knew that already. I really like to write, and I've always felt bad that I never pursued that more seriously, but when confronted with my own mortality, doing some more writing is not high on the list. I have thought a little about writing a life story, an abbreviated one, and maybe I'll work on that, I don't know. It's certainly been nice to have my mother's life story available to refer to, and also Uncle Bob's. 

But the big thing, the big screaming thing that's keeping me awake at night is my kids! What can I do to help my kids, if something happens to me? Yes, they'd still have their father -- assuming nothing happens to him, and given what occurred last summer I don't think I can assume that -- but how terrible for two 14-year-olds to lose their mom. Even a totally inadequate mom like me. Nobody loves you like your mom loves you, nobody takes care of you like your mom takes care of you. The thought of leaving my boys motherless is terrifying. 

Anyway, I guess I'll stop here. After my appointment with the cardiologist tomorrow I'll post an update, just so I don't leave people hanging.

***

Update: Well, I saw my cardiologist today and it was interesting. He said he and a colleague reviewed the results of my stress test and both came up with the same answer: they don't know what's going on. I might have serious heart disease and I might not. He said with a "diagnosis" like this, studies show that treating me with medication has just as good an outcome as doing a cardiac catheterization and putting in a stent (I had read this too, and wondered about it). So he could just put me on medication for the next 30 years and that's it. However, he would much prefer to do a cath so that we actually know what's going on with me. And I agreed. I hate the mystery. I want to know whether I really do have heart disease, and if so, what it looks like.

So, I have an appointment to do this on Tuesday, April 19th, two days after Easter. Rocket Boy is going to fly in that Saturday, which is kind of fun because it means he'll be here for Easter for the first time since 2018. He'll stay a week to be sure I'm OK -- if the cath shows nothing, I'll go home the same day and all will be well, but if the cath shows something serious I might end up staying in the hospital overnight or for a few days, so it's best to be prepared. The procedure will be done in Loveland, so we'll send the kids off to school that morning and then drive to Loveland, which takes about an hour.

And in the meantime I have to start taking a beta blocker twice a day, oh joy, more drugs, and not do any strenuous exercise. Just in case. And after the cath, if they do find something and put in a stent, I'll have to take Plavix and something else for a year -- so he asked me if I had any elective surgeries planned, because if so, I'd better postpone them. I said no (good thing I've already dealt with my parathyroid problem).

I feel better. Of course, now I have to get nervous about the cath -- but just the thought that maybe I'm actually OK after all is like a window opening. And if I'm not OK, we'll know for sure. Both would be good outcomes, though one is better than the other. Anyway, on we go.

Reading post: The Tale of the Heike

It is April and I have finished my second book for the 2022 Classics Challenge: The Tale of the Heike, which has no known author. It is a collection of oral narratives about how the Taira (Heike) clan tyrannized Japan for many years (in the 1100s) until the Minamoto (Genji) clan finally took them down. I read Royall Tyler's translation, which is based on a version of the "tale" that was dictated by a blind Heike performer, Akashi no Kakuichi, in 1371 -- but it was composed (perhaps by many people) many years before that. I chose it to fulfill category #4, "Classic in translation."

Originally I was going to read Saikaku's Five Women Who Loved Love, from 1686, as my second book. That would have been a good choice too (and much shorter and easier to read), but I decided to switch to the Heike because as I read more about it, it seemed like a very important work in Japanese literature. Royall Tyler says, "No work of Japan's classical literature influenced more pervasively the art, literature, and drama of later centuries." I think it is something like Homer's Iliad, which is both a history of the Trojan War and a work of fiction. (I've never actually read The Iliad, but I think I'm now going to have to. Maybe next year.) It is also often compared to the 11th-century French epic poem The Song of Roland, about Charlemagne, which I have also not read. Hmm.

It took me a full three weeks to read my first Challenge book of 2022, The Tale of Genji, but Heike took me even more time, even though it's about 400 pages shorter (710 pages of text plus 50 pages of explanatory matter). I don't know exactly how long I spent reading it. I know I picked it up at the library on March 5th and started reading it that day, and I finished it today, April 2nd. Though I didn't read it every day, it was my faithful companion for much of March. I even took it on our trip to Nebraska, though I don't usually travel with library books, and I didn't read much of it on the trip. During the week I was sick with a bad cold, I found it absolutely essential for putting me to sleep. I would read a couple of pages and then I'd be snoring.

After this, the books will get easier, I promise. Many of the remaining books on my list are actually quite short.

Before going any further, I need to say that I did not understand this book very well. I found it so difficult to keep track of the characters. The Tale of the Heike is divided into 12 "books," plus one extra one at the end, so 13. Each book has several chapters, as many as 20, though the last extra one has only 5. The first five and a half books are mostly about the extremely bad behavior of the Heike, especially the tyrant Kiyomori (pictured on the cover having a nightmare). In the 6th book, Kiyomori dies a gruesome death -- he gets very hot:

From the very first day of Lord Kiyomori's illness, nothing passed his lips, not even water, and his body burned like fire. The heat within twenty-five or thirty feet of where he lay was unbearable. His only words were "Hot! Hot!" This was clearly no common affliction. When he stepped down into a stone basin filled with water from the Senju spring on Mount Hiei, to cool himself, the water bubbled furiously around him and soon boiled.

He is a very evil man and is obviously on his way to some sort of Hell. But after his death I kind of lost the thread of the story. The Genji start to be more important, and the focus turns more to their leaders, and I just couldn't keep them straight. Eventually a Genji warrior called Yoshitsune began to take over the story, and I liked him, so I paid more attention. But I can't tell you how many times I had to re-read passages, because I had not understood a word of them, and how many times I had to go back to Tyler's helpful list of "Principal Figures in the Tale" to figure out who on earth I was reading about. It was rough going.

Finally the Genji triumph over the Heike, and the last few books are about the mopping up process, chasing down Heike remnants who are trying to hide, executing all their children so they won't rise up later on, etc. Interestingly, although the Heike are certainly the villains early on, by the end of the book you feel sorry for them and wish the Genji would stop murdering them. 

Long stretches of the book are so boring I couldn't keep my eyes open -- I don't know what I'll do to put myself to sleep after this -- but they're interspersed with very amusing stories. Tyler, in his introduction, says that the entire work was probably almost never performed; rather, people had their favorite stories and the blind Heike performers would just do a selection of the favorites in an evening. Of course, now I can't find the ones I liked. There was one about a horse that I liked a lot, but I can't find it.

One amusingly weird aspect of the book is how the warriors' outfits are described. For example, here is what the Heike warrior lord Shigehira wore on the day he was captured by the Genji:

That day he wore a dark blue hitatare embroidered with bright yellow plovers under armor with purple lacing darker toward the bottom and rode a superb steed named Doji Kage.

It's just not possible to make any sense of that. How can anyone have dressed up like that for battle and how can anyone else have remembered it and sung about it, or, conversely, how could anyone make up something like that? Purple lacing darker toward the bottom, give me a break. And then there are the endless pleas to various Buddhas and goddesses (the mix of Buddhism and Shinto that makes Japanese culture unique). And character after character renounces the world and becomes a monk or nun, if they don't kill themselves by jumping in the ocean or slitting their bellies open first. It's a window on a world that is so so so different from mine.

You may wonder why I kept reading, when the book was so difficult. I am perfectly capable of giving up on a book I don't like. I guess the answer is that I did kind of like The Tale of the Heike, impossible though it is. I'm not sure I would recommend this to anyone -- but if this sounds like something you might like, then you might like it.

Home again -- and a fire

Well, this was going to be a lovely post about our lovely vacation -- and it still will be, in part. But I also need to write about what's going on right now. A fire. Yesterday afternoon, around  2 or 3 pm, a fire started up in Bear Canyon, near the headwaters of Bear Creek (which runs through our park and past the kids' old elementary school). It looks like everything is going to be OK -- it's terribly dry, but the winds aren't super high. But we were actually told to evacuate yesterday. This is what I could see from my backyard.

In the process, I learned something about myself. Apparently, I am one of those people who ignores evacuation orders, who makes excuses, who "does their own research," who, bottom line, is a problem for emergency personnel. 

I did not think I was that kind of person. It's a big surprise to find out that I am.

Now, I've got to say, it was confusing. For hours they were posting conflicting maps of the evacuation area and saying conflicting things. That's another thing I learned yesterday: in the midst of a crisis, information coming in may be somewhat screwed up, and you do have to rely in part on your own judgement. And around 11 pm they posted this nice map, which shows that we are in the "All Clear."

Still. 

I did get out the cat carriers and the suitcases and I packed everyone's clothes and whatnot. I made several interesting decisions about what to take. I pulled a photo of Rocket Boy's parents off the wall and stuck it in my bag, thinking as I did so that he probably has no electronic copies of any of his family's pictures and no one else in his family would have much of anything. I spent several minutes thinking about which books to take. I concluded that most were replaceable (not sure that's true), so I just packed some library books and recent acquisitions that I haven't read yet. 

I pulled out our wedding album and my trip-around-the-world album, but I left the other photo albums in the bookcase. I probably should think about that a little more. There are a lot of irreplaceable photos in those. 

I didn't pack the glass stein that belonged to the twins' great-grandfather. But I did include the small book of important documents from Rocket Boy's family, including his father's false papers from when he was a spy for the U.S. Army after the war.

I packed all my little earrings, but none of my animal pin collection. I probably would have regretted that later. I simply forgot about them.

I'm writing as though the danger is over, and I hope it is, but we don't know for sure.

So, instead of just sitting around being nervous, let's remember our nice trip to Nebraska. We left on Tuesday morning, around 10:30 am, and took Highway 52 east to Highway 76, which merges with I-80 just across the Nebraska border. We ate lunch at the Home Plate restaurant in Fort Morgan, where we had eaten once before, when we went to that town to visit Philip K. Dick's grave. I recommend that restaurant -- not expensive, just down-home good cooking. You can tell all the locals go there.

We reached our first hotel, in Kearney, around 6:45 pm. It was a Ramada by Wyndham, and I was a little doubtful about it. The reviews on TripAdvisor were pretty bad. But it had a two queen suite with sofabed, and that's what we need these days to stay in a room with the twins. Unfortunately, when we checked in, they told us they had no more rooms of that type. Instead, they gave us a king bed suite and added a rollaway bed "for no extra charge." I'm pretty sure they did charge us extra, but oh well.

The hotel was amazingly terrible, so much so that I'm sure we'll never forget it. First of all, there was almost no one there. I don't see how they could possibly have run out of queen bed suites, unless they only have one or two. More likely, those rooms were dirty or full of bugs (as shown in some of the TripAdvisor reviews). We wandered around the hotel as if it was ours alone. I'm sure it wasn't safe -- the back door remained unlocked through the night, and the doors to some rooms were ajar. We could have spread out into multiple rooms and no one would ever have known. We swam in this lovely pool, but it was quite cold and very dirty, both inside and out. The hot tub, when we finally found it the next day, had been closed due to a health violation. That fancy structure next to the pool is the Elephant Eye bar, but it was closed too.

The king bed, at least, was comfortable and I slept well (the kids did less well on the sofa and rollaway bed). Before we went to bed we watched a show we found called "Pure Nebraska," on the MeTV channel. On Pure Nebraska's Facebook page it says, "We celebrate rural life and the state's number one industry: agriculture." After that we watched the news, and then at 11:30 pm, "The Twilight Zone" came on, so of course we couldn't miss that. Teen B, however, fell asleep after the opening credits, and snored sweetly all through it. 

The next morning we went down to breakfast, but the room was dark and there was no one around. It wasn't even 9 am yet, so we couldn't have missed it. We asked the maid and she said she would ask someone, but no one ever showed up to ask. We finally found coffee, milk, and cold cereal, and had that -- it's all I would have wanted anyway, but the kids were disappointed, so we stopped at a Starbucks later.

As we drove away from the hotel, we saw two police cars in the parking lot. The officers were talking to some women who looked like hotel guests. They seemed very upset. Who knows what that was about.

Our goal that day, Wednesday, was to see some sandhill cranes. I had a brochure which listed some viewing spots. I hadn't arranged an early-morning tour like we did with my mother 19 years ago because I knew the twins wouldn't appreciate it. So we just drove along rural roads, looking at the cranes in the field. Oh, but I'm forgetting something! First we went to Fort Kearny, thinking there might be something interesting there, but it was closed. On the way there I realized we were almost out of gas. Rocket Boy's car is a hybrid, but it doesn't go forever. So I nervously drove back into town, to a gas station. There, Rocket Boy couldn't find his wallet! So he called the Starbucks to see if he'd left it there, and we drove back there to check it out for ourselves. I was horrified: if he'd lost his wallet, he couldn't get back to St. Louis, because he couldn't pay for gas or a hotel room. I wondered at what point I should call our credit union to report his card missing.

Then, as we were just about ready to give up, Rocket Boy noticed that his sunglasses were on the car's dashboard. Then what was in his shirt pocket? Oh, the wallet!

So, that took some time. But eventually we returned to the rural roads and the cranes. I really enjoyed seeing them in the fields, as did Rocket Boy. The twins were less interested, but who cares about them. We eventually made our way to the Iain Nicolson Audubon Center at Rowe Sanctuary, where to our great surprise we were required to wear masks! It was like suddenly stepping into California. I had brought a package of masks with me on the trip, but Teen B was unhappy that he hadn't brought his own favorite mask from home. Teen A stayed in the car. Teen B and I explored the gift shop happily, and eventually bought him a crane t-shirt and me some postcards, which I later forgot to mail.

After the Audubon Center, we went back to Kearney and had a late lunch at a Culver's -- I'm sure there was some local place that we should have eaten at, but oh well. Then we drove to Wood River and explored the small cemetery there, looking for my great-grandparents. I should note that we had terrible weather that day -- very cold and with a dreadful north wind. I walked up and down the rows -- it's a small rural cemetery, but still, that was a lot of walking. There is a directory in the center of the cemetery, but it took a while to make sense of it. Finally I figured out roughly where the graves had to be, walked over there -- and there they were. My grandfather, his first wife, his second wife (her sister), and two of their children. A bleak headstone, a bleak graveyard, that cold north wind blowing. It was memorable.

Then we drove on to Grand Island and checked in to our next hotel, a Best Western Plus. It was as boring a hotel as I've ever seen, but it was clean and well-run. After the Ramada in Kearney, we were glad to embrace boredom. We lay down on our beds for a short rest and then drove back to Wood River to have dinner with the relatives -- my father's cousin's widow Virginia and her younger son (who is a farmer) and his wife. My mother and Rocket Boy and I had eaten with them 19 years ago, and I remembered how they prepared an enormous meal for us, like a Thanksgiving dinner. 

This time it was much simpler (Virginia is now 95!) and yet still very lovely -- three kinds of pizza, sliced strawberries, and a vegetable plate, water to drink, and ice cream for dessert. Just perfect. We made the twins leave their stupid phones in the car, which I think was the right thing to do, but it made them fidgety and generally badly behaved. Teen A pulled all the pepperoni off his pizza (he likes plain cheese best), then put his leftovers on my plate, and then started putting napkins on my water glass and other nonsense, while I tried to ignore him. I was having such a good time chatting with the relatives that I wanted to wave a wand and have the twins disappear. At one point, Rocket Boy took them outside to run around, and I used the time to explain about the ADHD and dyslexia and all that, so they understood. It's OK. Five years ago, if we'd come for a visit then, the twins would have been crawling under the table, hitting each other, and screaming. 

Back at the hotel, we swam for a long time in the fabulous pool -- just the right temperature -- with breaks to enjoy the fabulous hot tub. And then we ran upstairs to catch the last of "Pure Nebraska," the news, and of course "The Twilight Zone." Once again, Teen B fell asleep and missed it, and the rest of us fell asleep to the sound of his gentle snores.

Thursday morning we had a very nice breakfast at the hotel, checked out, and headed for the Stuhr Museum of the Prairie Pioneer. I couldn't remember whether I'd been there before. The weather was supposed to be better that day, but it wasn't really. The wind had died down quite a bit, so that helped, but it was still cold and gloomy (Teen B was slightly sorry he'd decided to wear shorts and flip flops, but only slightly). I remembered that when I went to Nebraska with my mother for Spring Break back in 1977 it was so hot I thought I would die from the humidity, and it also snowed. This time we had cold and wind. All those things can happen in Colorado during Spring Break, too, of course, except the humidity.

We didn't have time to do the Stuhr Museum justice, only went to two buildings, but I did really enjoy the exhibit of crane art in the main building. Apparently every year they ask a different Nebraska artist to make art relating to the sandhill cranes. My favorite was the picture of the cranes flying, on the right. I thought about buying it, but it was over $1000, and anyway, we have nowhere to put a new picture. Still, I liked it a lot.

Rocket Boy was scheduled to have a conference call for work at 1 pm, and it was close to 12 when we left the museum, so we decided to stop somewhere along the way to Lincoln to have lunch. We ended up in York, Nebraska, where my parents eloped back in 1943. I wanted to look for the church where they were married, but couldn't find it online and in the end, we didn't have time. We ate at an Applebee's inside a hotel, Rocket Boy's call was cancelled at the last minute but he did talk to a colleague for a while during lunch, and by 1:30 or so we were back on the road, headed for Lincoln.

I had been texting my cousin Kathy, who lives in Lincoln, to let her know our progress. When we finally got to Lincoln, we drove first to my father's parents' house, which is really the heart of Lincoln for me. That's where we always stayed when we went to visit. The neighborhood has gone downhill over the years, but the house looked better on this visit than it did the last time I saw it -- 30+ years ago? Someone's looking after it. 

There was a Starbucks a few blocks away, so we went there next, and I texted Kathy. She met us there in about 15 minutes and it was so wonderful to see her. We chatted for a while and then drove over to the cemetery to look at our grandparents' graves. Her dad is buried there too. After quite a bit of walking we found the graves. Then she left to go back to work, and Rocket Boy and I spent a lot more time looking for my other grandparents' graves, finally locating them. Then we headed for our hotel, another Best Western Plus, identical to Wednesday's hotel. We relaxed for a little bit and then drove to a Cracker Barrel nearby where we had arranged to meet Kathy and her husband for dinner.

Before the trip, I had reminded Rocket Boy and the twins not to talk politics while we were in Nebraska (or for that matter, eastern Colorado). I really didn't know what my relatives' political leanings were, but Nebraska is a pretty red state, so better safe than sorry. I wanted to interact with them outside of politics. In Wood River we managed this successfully and had a wonderful time. With the Lincoln relatives, what a relief to discover that they were pro-mask and pro-vaccine. We spent some time around the table at the Cracker Barrel talking about anti-vaxxers and how stupid and destructive they are.

We didn't bring up Trump, though -- not there, not anywhere. The waitress might have been a Trumper. You can't be too careful.

After dinner we went back to the hotel and had one more glorious swim, one more viewing of "Pure Nebraska," and one more "Twilight Zone." This time, Teen B stayed awake for it. In fact, we were all still awake at midnight, so we all did the new Wordle, even Teen A, who always says that's a stupid game for Boomers. We were all laughing and having a wonderful time. 

I should note that this was a fantastic family vacation. I don't think the kids got that much out of the official "activities": cranes, museums, cemeteries, family visits. They did seem mildly interested -- though puzzled -- to meet a lot of relatives they'd never heard of and see the houses of people long dead (at one point Teen B asked me, "Do my grandparents have houses?" I said, "Yes, we live in one of them!"). Mostly they just complained. But the evenings! The swimming, the funny Nebraska television shows, doing Wordle together. We all got along so well and had so much fun. I kept thinking, this might be as good as it gets. Next year or the year after they may turn into obnoxious teenagers who won't even speak to their parents. Treasure this time, I kept telling myself. I don't think I got mad at anyone the whole trip, I was so focused on appreciating every moment.

The next morning, Friday, we had another good hotel breakfast, checked out one more time, and then drove to south Lincoln to see my other grandparents' old house. It was a pretty crummy house when my mother lived there as a child, but it must have been upgraded through the years. It looked great and well-loved. It even had a St. Patrick's Day-themed cover on the mailbox (the inhabitants must switch it out for different holidays). There was a welcome sign on the door. The maple tree my mother planted around 1928 is still hanging in there almost 100 years later. She always wished it would grow tall enough to cover the lawn with leaves. I'll bet it does that now.

You can see from the photo that the sun finally came out that day, and it was a little warmer. After 55th Street, I decided we should go to Morrill Hall, the University of Nebraska natural history museum, since I have good memories of that. I vividly remembered a model I saw there in 1977, of a giant prehistoric rhinoceros called a baluchithere, but sadly it was gone. I asked the person at the front desk about it, and she said she'd seen pictures of it, but didn't know what had happened to it. I later discovered online that it had been removed back in 1992 because it was from Asia and the museum had decided to focus more on fossils from Nebraska. I had a postcard of the baluchithere on the wall of my dorm room in college. I probably still have it somewhere.

Morrill Hall was as delightful as ever, even without the baluchithere, and we spent an hour or so viewing the four floors of exhibits. Finally, around 12, we left. We stopped at a Scooter's coffee shop for a snack and then drove on to the Omaha airport, where Rocket Boy left us off. The boys and I had a bit more lunch while waiting for our plane, and then flew back to Denver. The plane was full and we were in the very last row on the right. Unfortunately, the plane was about 20 minutes late, so we ended up missing the bus back to Boulder and had to wait another hour for the next one. But it all worked out, we got home, and the cats were happy to see us. 

And the next day there was a fire. But I just heard the latest press briefing on it, and it is now 35% contained and did not grow at all today. We have one more day of fire weather and then it will snow. They said we'll be seeing (and smelling, breathing) smoke probably all this coming week. I can live with that. But I'm going to wait until Tuesday to unpack our suitcases.

Better

I am feeling better. I still hate my braces to distraction, am horrified by what I've done. But the pain has subsided (the cold went away and my sinuses are mostly recovered). It's still very uncomfortable to eat, especially chewing. You know how if you're holding a bunch of coins in your hand and you punch someone, the impact is much greater? Well, I think that's how it is with my teeth. All my teeth have metal on them now, so when I bite down, the impact of tooth on tooth is much worse than previously. 

Also, one of the things the orthodontist is trying to do (I think) is reorient how I bite. He showed me how my bite has gotten weirder and weirder over time, as my mouth has adjusted to accommodate the funny things my teeth were doing. Basically, I've been biting sideways. Now, with that front tooth gone and the metal on, my bite is adjusting, but now when I bite down, I bite down on teeth that aren't used to being bitten down on. 

It feels better just to drink tea all day long, skip the food. But then I get so hungry. We went out to Chili's for dinner last night and I ordered a bowl of potato soup, because that's easy to eat. They delivered it early, long before anyone else's entrees came. I ate it while it was warm and then there was nothing left and I was so hungry. When the others' food came, I ended up eating a bunch of the kids' french fries (which they don't like), dipping them into the honey-mustard sauce that Teen A rejected in favor of ranch. Soft french fries dipped in a sauce will dissolve in your mouth pretty well, not much chewing required.

So my meal was (1) potato soup, (2) french-fried potatoes, (3) honey-mustard sauce, oh and (4) a Sprite, because I thought I'd had too much caffeine already that day and should skip the iced tea. What a great meal for a diabetic!

I feel like I should talk to a dietician. What could a mostly vegetarian diabetic with braces eat? Because I'm running out of ideas here.

One other annoyance: the braces are definitely affecting my speech -- one of the things I was trying to improve by wearing them! I just can't speak clearly with a mouthful of metal. It's hard to read aloud to the kids. Also, I tend to spray saliva when I speak. It's lovely.

I've stopped trying to hide behind a mask, as masks are really vanishing from stores here, and instead am focusing on good dental hygiene, trying to keep the bits of food out of my braces so I don't look Even Worse when I open my mouth.

***

So, in other news, we are getting ready for our trip to Nebraska! We have hotel reservations, flight reservations back, and a cat-sitter. Today I did massive amounts of laundry and tried to think of other things that need doing. I am excited because I've managed to connect with a cousin I haven't seen in 30 years or so, and we'll be getting together with her in Lincoln. And we're having dinner one night with the widow of a cousin of my father and her son and daughter-in-law, in Wood River.

This is going to be a fun trip. For me, anyway. Twins, hmm. We'll have to think of fun things for them to do too.

It's nice to be taking a trip. I feel like I've been at home for a long time. And since we all just got sick, maybe we can avoid catching something new on the trip. I don't suppose it works that way.

This afternoon we took a quick trip to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, primarily to see an IMAX film called "Wings Over Water" which was about three types of migratory birds, including sandhill cranes. I thought it would be a good introduction to the cranes for the kids. I don't think they were very thrilled by the movie, but I don't expect them to be thrilled by any aspect of the trip, certainly not the bird part.

I think I'll stop here. No pictures. I'll have pictures next week. For now, it's time for bed.