Anniversary

Tomorrow will be Delia's and my 33rd anniversary. I plan to celebrate on August 15 instead of tomorrow.

I want to celebrate being married to Delia for a third of a century.

Thirty-three years is ordinary. Each five year mark is special Twenty-five years was extra-special because it is a quarter of a century. Fifty years will be extra-special because it is half a century. But a third of a century is 33.33333333 years. Four months is a third of a year, so it doesn't fall on our anniversary date.

We have to wait four months for our extra-special anniversary celebration.

Costa Mesa

Delia attended the annual meeting of one of her perfume companies this last week, as she has done for the past several years. This time she had a surprise.

They called her name and asked her to stand up. At first she was afraid she was going to be punished somehow, pointed to as a bad example. Then they announced that she was Number One in the nation for sustained sales of their product VIG (Very Impressive Givenchy). They gave her a certificate with her photo on it (not one of her best shots, unfortunately), a two pound box of Godiva chocolates ... and an additional 20 hours of pay. Even after taxes, that bonus was about as large an amount as she has previously been awarded.

Delia has often been the top sales person in San Diego for this and other companies she has contracts with. This was the first time she was the top for the country.

She has decided to stop slacking off.

Spirited Away

Spirited Away in an Anime movie released by Disney. I've known about it for a while but didn't have a chance to view it until today.

The heroine, whose real name escapes me, is a somewhat spoiled pre-teen. She and her family are moving to a new house. Trying to get there, they get lost. The father decides to drive on, up a dirt road. The road suddenly ends at an old building, which the father identifies as being part of an abandoned amusement park. While investigating, they smell food. They find an empty restaurant stocked with freshly prepared foods and the father and mother start eating, expecting to pay when somebody shows up. The little girl wanders off, crossing a dry riverbed to a building at the top of a hill. There a boy warns her to cross back to the human side of the river before the sun sets and enchantment sets in.

Rushing back across the river, the girl arrives too late. The sun has set, the lamps have been lighted ... and her parents have been changed into pigs. Hogs, rather.

The mansion on the hill is a bathhouse for the spirits, who begin arriving when the sun sets. It is run by a witch who is bound and obligated to hire anybody who asks for a job, which gives them protected status; if they don't get a job, the witch is free to destroy them any way she wants, usually turning them into pigs. When the little girl signs the contract to work, her name is taken away from her, after which she is called "Sen".

The inhabitants of this little spirit realm are strange and often dangerous. They often change form. For example, the witch transforms into a giant bird several times. Sen learns to conquer her fears and to act in a loving, intelligent way, her goal always being to restore her parents to human form and escape with them.

Despite being a coming-of-age tale, this story is not exclusively for kids. It is well worth watching.

Rain Ends Reign

The old pine may have ruled the back yard for fifty years. Starting Christmas of 1954, we used live trees decorated for the season, then planted them in the back yard. Only one of those trees survived more than a couple of years. The remainder were probably destroyed by gophers eating their roots in the late winter and early spring. Something killed them, though, leaving one lone pine in the back yard.

That four-foot tall ex-Christmas tree soon became the largest, tallest tree in the back yard. The Chinese elm tree in the front yard may be as tall as the pine in back was, but I don't think so.

During the years I was away, out of the country, two new trees sprouted, one on either side, to flank the old pine. I have been told they are either cottonwood or silk oak but I've made no attempt at certain identification. They are pests, having a pollen that gives all of us severe allergic reactions. I wanted to remove them but Delia wanted them left in place.

The pine tree had a double trunk, one half of which fell in heavy winds about a dozen years ago. I damaged the rotator cuffs of both shoulders when I rushed down the following morning to haul away the damaged limbs and other trash that resulted from the windfall. I never got back to removing the fallen trunk itself.

Now the remainder of the tree has come down, to lie on top of the first half-trunk. The tree fell completely on our property. Had it fallen on the neighbor's house, it could have done considerable damage. The constant rains of the past few weeks softened the normally concrete-hard adobe soil enough that the roots could no longer hold the tall tree against the heavily gusting winds that came with the storm.

The falling giant took the top third of one of its companion trees with it. The other companion suffered lighter damage, mostly to one side.

All of our eucaliptus trees are gone, removed because they were dead or dying and a danger to the neighbor's garage and house. There had been fifty tiny seedlings but gophers took more than half almost immediately. Eucaliptus trees grow too fast and are fragile, falling apart when it is too dry, too windy or too wet. They also developed a beetle infestation, a common problem in this area, that led to their early demise. As tall as they became, they never reached the height of the pine tree.

There is one more large tree in the back yard, a California pepper that was here before we bought the property in 1952. It isn't tall but it has spread out. The more of it I cut off, the bigger it gets. I want to have it removed. Delia doesn't. I guess it'll still be here when we aren't.

Whether it was there for fifty years or slightly less, the old pine had a long run.

Now I should break out my saws and convert it to firewood.

Baked Bones

Last night, the arthritis in my back flared up and I was in pain all night long. I had gone to bed early enough, but I didn't feel at all rested when I woke shortly before the alarm was due to go off. It had been a restless night in which I constantly had to shift my position because of the pain. I was still hurting when I woke.

The pain surprised me. The weather wasn't due to change for another day and I hadn't been in pain the last time we had rain for a few days, late last week, which had also surprised me at the time. I expected to suffer but not so soon -- I expected the pain to hit tonight, along with the shift to rainy weather.

I decided to go ahead with my exercise walk despite the pain. Walking generally improves how I feel although overdoing the exercise has sometimes left me in more pain than I started with. Perhaps I could walk the pain away. Being in frequent pain is still new to me, so I'm never sure quite what to expect from my body now.

Traffic was extremely light and I arrived early. I started walking on my own, to see how the pain would respond and to warm up. The pain became more intense, so I stopped walking until the group formed and did their warm-up exercises.

The leader of our group, Helen, announced that if it was raining on Thursday she would not show up. She has begun to be limited by her own arthritis (I can't remember whether it is in the hip or the knee) and in the last few months has found herself unable to walk as much as she could previously. Before, she would walk three miles or more at least three times a week. Now she sometimes finds it impossible to go a single mile.

Helen starts out after everybody else and soon caught up with me, the slowest walker of the group. When she inquired about how I was doing, I mentioned the pain. She indicated that she was not feeling a similar pain. That meant it was something peculiar to me, not induced by the weather. She would have been suffering too if it had been a weather problem.

I used to try to walk through the pain. That would leave me suffering for up to ten days. Now I quit when the pain gets bad enough. I had to quit before my mile was finished. Shortly after I passed Seau's I had to sit down so the muscle spasms would go away. After that, the pain never got so intense that it stopped me though it continued to bother me.

I sat with the group for coffee in Target, staying longer than usual. I've been cutting back on my coffee lately, so I had an empty cup in front of me most of the time. I had two stops to make on the way home.

I stopped at Staples to pick up my tax software. I made a point of walking all around the store, up and down most aisles, carrying my basket. It hurt, but not as badly as I had expected.

I went to Sam's Club to get some bagels. Once more, I walked through the whole store, going up and down most aisles as if I was seriously shopping instead of just making a minimum purchase. The pain was minor.

When I got home, Cathy was still in pain from her surgery yesterday (three moles removed) and Delia was off to her yoga. I sat and watched an old movie, The Comancheros, on the Western channel while snacking on the pig skins I had picked up from Sam's Club. Delia arrived with multiple pizzas. There was no room in the freezer, so they had to be cooked immediately. By the time I finished one slice, the pain had fully re-asserted itself.

I went downstairs to bake my bones.

I have a large heating pad, big enough to cover my whole back, that was prescribed by my therapist before I discovered how much the therapy sessions were costing me and discontinued them. The pad is 14 inches by 27 inches. The temperature is digitally controlled and regulated and there is a built-in timer. I have it set for 116 degrees, instead of the default 124 degrees, and for half hour sessions.

I usually start the heating pad, then start my half hour timer so I'll know when the pad finishes. This time I also started my 99 minute timer. When the heat hit and the muscles started to relax, I fell asleep. The 99 minute timer woke me.

I still had a bit of soreness on my right side. I changed position slightly and fired it up again, this time using only the half hour timer. I was wakened over an hour later by some noise from upstairs.

There is still a bit of pain, about as much as I feel on a good day. Most of the pain is gone ... for now. It has been baked out of my bones once more.

She Has a Good Excuse ...

When Delia travels to Panama for a vacation, she always stays longer than she planned. She always has a good reason for extending her stay.

A plantain is a fruit similar to a banana except it is high in starch instead of having sugars. It has to be cooked before it can be eaten if it is to be digested well. Patacones are made by thickly slicing green plantain, frying them until they are soft, crushing them into thin disks and frying them a second time until they are crisp but not hard. They are best with a few drops of hot sauce and accompanied by hot coffee in the morning.

When Delia bit into her sister Stella's patacon, her tooth shattered.

It wasn't so much because the patacon was hard as because the tooth, after a lifetime of receiving fillings, had been weakened to the extreme. The dentist they went to recommended a crown for the shattered tooth and for the one next to it, which was also in poor condition. As he makes his own crowns, he offered to charge only $130 for each. Delia examined the crowns he had done for Stella and asked several of her other friends about his work, finding it above reproach.

It will take a few days to make the crown. The airline has accepted the accident as a valid reason to reschedule the return flight.

The timing is bad. This is Carnival season. Getting a flight back through Houston or directly to San Diego will be difficult and, for obvious reasons, Delia doesn't want to use Newark as a connection point. She would rather wait a few more days than freeze to death.

Delia needs to have some more crowns done. She had one done this past autumn and needs more. She was nervous about having the crown done here in San Diego but fearful of having one done in Tijuana, having heard numerous horror stories, well aware that the risk wasn't worth the small savings involved.

But if these two crowns work out -- and it seems promising -- it will be as cheap to fly to Panama for future dental work as to have it done here. The best dentist I ever had was in Panama, so I feel comfortable with the idea. In fact, that is one of the few things that might entice me to visit Panama again, needing dental work and not having to deal with the crooks and clowns here.

We don't know yet when Delia will return. She hopes somebody will cancel their reservation so she can get a good return flight. Meanwhile, she has a good excuse for overstaying her vacation again.

Changing Medications

Two of the medications I take seem to be causing me problems and I want to stop taking them. I mentioned this to Dr. G during my annual physical exam this week and, as I expected, he was opposed, strongly in one case and weakly in the other. I will consult with Dr. J in a couple of weeks before I actually stop taking anything.

I may have mentioned that I dropped Dr. F in favor of Dr. J. There were a variety of reasons that I won't go into here. I did learn that Dr. F won't miss me. His patient load has doubled because his partner, on vacation in the Bahamas, dropped dead of a massive heart attack at the age of 41.

The first medication I want to drop is topamax, normally used to control seizures. I started using it after it was given to me during a research study to see if it was suitable for use in controlling the pain of diabetic neuropathy, which it was. It also helped eliminate my migraine headaches for a while. However, its effect is wearing off, which means I would have to go to a higher dose if I wanted to continue using it. But I've learned that it is the most probable cause of a problem that has been bothering me increasingly for the last few years, auditory hallucinations.

The sounds would come at night, waking me from sleep. They were simple sounds: a cat yowling for attention, the doorbell, somebody knocking on the door or Cathy calling my name (when she wasn't in the house). At first the occurrences were rare but recently they have become frequent.

Quitting topamax presents a problem. As Dr. G reminded me, I can't quit cold turkey, I have to taper off slowly to avoid withdrawal problems. I'll have Dr. J help me with a plan for quitting.

The medicine that Dr. G wants me to continue using is lipitor. At least, he wants me to continue using some kind of statin medication. But I have reason to believe that my cholesterol levels have gotten dangerously low, to the point that my brain and eyes are not functioning properly, especially in moments of stress.

I have never accepted this whole circus of theories about fat metabolism. If the medical industry wasn't making so much money off of their sales of medicines, they would probably find us an inexpensive natural solution. A little bit of research shows that such solutions exist. There is no reason for me to pay a bloody fortune for their chemical brews when I can get the same result with moderate exercise, a decent diet, fish oil, garlic, olive oil, cinnamon and a few other simple things that I either use / do anyway or that are cheap! I never gave up eggs, even when the world condemned them. I continue consuming red meats like beef, bison and lamb, sometimes washed down with a few glasses of decent (cheap) red wine.

What do I avoid? Carbohydrates, particularly after noon. Sodas. Candy, except for some hot chocolate beverages. The white poisons: flour, salt, sugar.

Before I started taking lipitor, my cholesterol was about 178; now it is about 134 ... I think. And my triglycerides always showed a little high ... I think. But Dr. F never tested them fasting, which biased the results toward higher readings. It should all be lower tested fasting. I'll know in a couple of days.

Such a simple thing! Test when not fasting to skew the results upward to justify prescribing an unnecessary drug. The patient / customer / victim almost never finds out.

I don't want to finance the drug industry. I want to try to get by on what's left of the diminishing income I have.

Symptoms? I get confused more under stress (such as when driving) and I don't seem to see things I look at, such as cars moving towards me. That wasn't a problem before. I have read that such problems can be due to insufficient cholesterol in the brain blocking its function and that this is particularly true when the victim is using any kind of statin. I'll have to give up either driving or statins. Both cost me a fortune, but I'm getting some utility out of the ability to drive. Therefore, the statins have to go.

This has turned into quite a rant, hasn't it? My apologies if it bothered you or bored you.

Headlines

"There is hope but not this year."

Buffalo News

"How could anybody blame Eli Manning for not wanting to get stuck (there)?"

The Record, Bergen Co., N.J.

"Wide receivers are horrendous"

Houston Chronicle

"No. 1 pick Philip Rivers better get ready to play."

Pittsburgh Post Gazette

"The Chargers merely stink."

Alabama Times-Star

"Expectations have been racheted down to anthill level."

San Diego Union-Tribune

"If it weren't for Arizona, this would be the worst roster in football."

Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel

"2-14"

Miami Herald

"Strengths: Tomlinson
Weaknesses: Everything else."

Florida Today

These were the headlines from early in the season that adorned the San Diego Union-Tribune's special section on the San Diego Chargers reaching the playoffs after a long absence. They were printed in a pale blue color, perhaps to indicate that their sentiments were fading away. Below them, in much larger, darker type was another headline that simply asked, "Say what?".

The Chargers played the New York Jets. The weather was expected to be nastier than it was. A penalty for roughing the passer in the last minute of the game gave the Chargers a chance to tie the score and send the game into overtime. In August, nobody expected them to get so far.

It has been a good year.

Cathy's Break ...

Her Left Hand

Cathy has been working at the Robinsons-May store in Bonita Mall lately. Today she stepped on a promotional gift box that had been dropped behind the counter and fell hard on her left hand on top of the glass display case, cutting the back of her hand. It rapidly became apparent that more was wrong than a cut on the hand since her wrist and fingers continued to swell despite being treated with ice.

Cathy managed to drive home one-handed. Once she got home, I drove her to the Ready Care center at Grossmont Hospital, the only one we found open (two other industrial accident centers / Ready Care centers were closed and we decided not to check a third). Most Ready Care centers are only open during regular working hours, 8:00 to 17:00 on Monday through Friday but this one was open 8:00 to 20:00 seven days a week. We arrived shortly after 17:00 and Cathy was seen promptly.

At least one bone in the hand itself is broken. Her treatment required x-rays and a short cast, so it took a while. Delia left her job about an hour earlier than she told me she would, at about 17:30, so we were not home when she got there. Delia's first reaction was to come to the hospital, a pointless gesture because we were almost done there.

Cathy didn't have to pay at the Ready Care because it was a third party claim that the store should pay. The doctors advised her to get a lawyer and go after the store for lost pay, too.

I suggested she heat dinner for us (a ham I had picked up with a few simple fixings), but she said she was too tired for that and made a counter-suggestion, that we eat out. I let her hash it out with Cathy as we set off to find a pharmacy that was open to fill the prescriptions she had been given.

Apparently the only open pharmacy in San Diego East County is the Save-On at Navajo and Fletcher Parkway, between La Mesa and El Cajon, a 24/7 operation. Armed with antibiotic pills and ointments and pain killers, we headed home, still discussing with Delia by phone where we might eat.

At home we switched from Cathy's Altima to my Malibu and, with Delia, started out for Marie Calendar's. But Cathy wanted to make a detour on the way back, out to Spring Valley to drop off a DVD and Christmas present for Wendy, the manager of the Spring Valley Blockbuster. Then, in a flash of brilliance, Delia asked if there wasn't a restaurant near Wendy's Blockbuster ... and we wound up going to TGI Friday's, the first time I've been there (Cathy and Delia have both been in the place repeatedly but never before together). The restaurant was nearly empty when we arrived but began to fill later.

I ordered potstickers for an appetizer for the table and garlic chicken for myself; Cathy got broccoli soup and wings of fire; and Delia got the Jack Daniels beefsteak, a thick cut which she ordered well done. Delia was very unhappy with her choice due to the excessively sweet sauce and the overcooked meat. Cathy discovered that she really needed both hands for her meal and made a bit of a mess. I'm the only one who enjoyed the meal completely. By the end of the meal, Cathy was in considerable pain. Shortly after popping a pill, she was drowsy.

Cathy and Wendy exchanged their presents and we headed home. Wendy gave Cathy a DVD (naturally) and some other neat stuff. I have no idea what Cathy gave Wendy but it made her happy, whatever it was.

False Alarm ...

or a Miracle?

When Delia's CAT scan results proved negative, her doctor recommended she begin the process that would eventually lead to radiation therapy. Dr. B sent her to Dr. D of the Radiation Oncology department.

I went with Delia for her meeting with Dr. D, a friendly young lady who explained everything much better than the others had. Treatment, if warranted, would consist of 26 two-minute exposures to a beam of accelerated particles done once a day, Monday through Friday. Unlike some forms of radiation treatment, it would not render her radioactive, so she would not have to shun the company of others. It would also not affect her mouth, unlike radiation received by friends of Delia's, so she wouldn't have to worry about avoiding problems that would cause her to consult a dentist; she could have dentistry done while receiving the treatments, though it would add to her discomfort. There would be some localized pain and she would have to avoid using cosmetic creams or powders on the skin where it was radiated until the treatment was concluded. The radiation was extremely unlikely to stimulate the growth of other tumors.

Before proceeding (and without delay), the first step was to get a PET (Positron Emission Tomography) scan. Tumors, being fast-growing tissue, show up particularly well in PET scans. The radiation therapy itself could be postponed unless the PET scan showed a major problem to exist, unlikely with the negative CAT scan. The PET scan is as particular to tumors as chemotherapy is and would show any kind of tumor, whether breast cancer, lung cancer, skin cancer or lymphoma.

A PET scan shows metabolically active tissue, tissue that greedily absorbs certain material from the blood. For it to work, the material to be detected must be made radioactive. This is done at places like the Lawrence Livermore Accelerator in Los Angeles, and the material remains radioactive for a very short time. It must be irradiated and shipped just hours before use and it quickly becomes useless and harmless. A small tube of radiated material costs about $5,000 and is flown in just in time for its use. The scan begins 35 minutes after the material is injected in a vein and takes about 40 minutes to complete. If the very tight schedule from irradiation to scanning fails, for any reason, they have to reschedule and make a new batch.

The morning of the scan, Delia had one of her migraine headaches and was in such pain that it had her vomiting. She still managed to arrive on time. The nurses found her a bed in a quiet place until they could begin the procedure. They couldn't give her any medication because the test required that she be fasting. When asked if she wanted to come back another day, Delia decided that the cost of missing the scan, which we would still have to pay for, was too high and she would rather go ahead with it.

The scan didn't require Delia's active participation. Once she received the injection, they wanted her to relax and to sleep if possible. She actually managed to fall asleep and to remain asleep through most of the scan. The additional hour of rest helped reduce her headache. When she was done, she felt better than when she started.

That was last Wednesday. This afternoon we got the results from Dr. D.

The PET scan will detect even microscopic tumors. There weren't any. This led Dr. D to suspect a false positive on the biopsy of the supposed tumor, a needle biopsy. The material removed from the lymph node was scanned by a machine that checks for certain markers associated with cancers. When the markers are present, cancer is almost always present. The usual procedure is to follow up a machine positive result with microscopic cytology to see if there was cancer there or not. This wasn't done until Dr. D questioned the machine's results. Microscopic examination did not discover any cancer.

So now we have a confirmed false positive on the biopsy and a series of tests and scans that show Delia to be completely free of any kind of cancer from her ankles to her brain.

Dr. D advised Delia against having radiation therapy or any other treatment. She suggested that we take no other action than to have another PET scan in six months to a year. If the lymph node swells up again (it has shrunk to a very small size), Delia should have it removed for biopsy rather than having a needle biopsy done on it or any other suspected tumor. Apart from that, we should just relax and take it easy.

Delia has sent the tests and pathology slides to her friend, Dr. R in Houston (they went to school together and share close friends). Dr. R will give Delia a second opinion. I doubt if it will differ from that expressed by Dr. D, who seems to be very much on the ball, particularly in following up when others have dropped the ball and accepted results at face value.

My reaction is that it was a big false alarm. Delia's is that the prayer of her friends has brought her a miracle.

Many people in several countries have been praying for Delia. In Panama, requests for prayer for her have been broadcast on the radio. Here and in Mexico the prayer efforts have been much more local, organized by her friends at several churches.

If it was a miracle, it came just in time for Christmas.