Month: January 2020

Searching deep within

– In which Dorn finally concludes his search for his mystery illness.

W

hen we left off this now quite long story about my mysterious gastro-intestinal tract bleeding (here), I had just finished undergoing a Balloon Endoscopy, where the doc had sent his scope down my throat, and used the balloons at the probe’s end to shimmy about half-way down my GI tract. He examined every inch of real estate along the way, but ended up finding nothing that shed light on my mystery illness.

The logical next (and just about final) thing to try was to have a probe repeat this mapping of my internal landscape, but start from the other end—“swim upstream with the salmon”, as they say, “drive North on the interstate”, “drain the bathtub counter-clockwise”, “watch the swallows leaving Capistrano”, “tuck-point the chimney in anti-Santa mode”. Whatever your favorite expression for it is, they all mean the same thing: undergo a Retrograde Balloon Endoscopy. 

In many ways the procedure seemed about the same as the previous endoscopy, but there was at least one important difference in my experience. My work to prepare for the procedure took longer and was more unpleasant.

The preparation started with a requirement to ingest nothing but clear liquids on the day before the procedure. I decided I was going to do even better than that, to assure a sparkling GI tract in which no anomaly could hide, by starting this liquid diet three full days before the scoping. Part-way into my first day of clear liquids, I broke down and enjoyed a real meal. “I don’t REALLY need to start my liquid diet today—even if I start tomorrow, I’ll still be one full day ahead of the directions!”

The second day I only cheated a little. I had bought a small bag of those ruffle-y potato chips to pack in our hotel kit, for when you really want a nosh but don’t want to leave the room. I broke into the bag around noon. I figured this was hardly a cheat at all, because what are potato chips anyway but a thin little bit of potato and a lot of salt and oil? And oil’s a clear liquid, after all. And salt must be okay, because if you dissolve it in water (or heat it to 1473°F) then that’s a clear liquid too, right? So the only illegal part was the potato, and let’s be honest, potato chips probably have almost no actual potato in them nowadays anyway. It’s like maple syrup in that respect (don’t get me started!).

National Potato Chip Day - March 14
Don’t forget! Only 51 shopping days left!

By the third day (the actual day that I was supposed to start my liquid-only fast), I figured I was at least a little ahead of the instructions. I complied that day, even when Kathleen’s breakfast was rewarmed rib-eye steak and baked potato. What else could I do?

This was the day we (Kathleen, Archie and I) went to hotel room in Baltimore for the night before the procedure, because it was scheduled so early the next morning.

Between the packing, getting ourselves and Archie ready, driving, and moving into the hotel room, I didn’t have much time to think about cheating on my diet most of the day. But once we were settled in, I took Archie for a walk around the block, and stumbled on the Helmand Kabobi Afghani restaurant. I poked my head in and asked for a carryout menu (for Kathleen). “Come on in! Your dog can come too, there’s nobody here yet.” 

Jodhpuri kabuli

The whole place was awash with the most delicious smells! Spices, meats, garlic, and things I couldn’t recognize. I don’t think it smelled this good just because I hadn’t had a decent meal (or any meal, really) in several days. They had dishes with cardomom (my favorite spice), cinnamon, turmeric, mint, Shalgum and sabzy (whatever they are). It was hard to stay in there, even long enough to grab a menu! 

I made it back to the safety of the hotel room! No aromatic aush, shorwa or dwopiaza here, just some Gatorade (don’t ask), tea- and coffee-bags and, if I felt I needed a special treat, a bottle of sparkling San Pelligrino. 

Eventually it was almost time to take my final medicine, that would get me fully prepared for tomorrow morning’s endoscopy. But before that, I’d better take Archie out for one last walk. He seemed to like the city as much as the last time he was here, and seemed to remember the little park at the side of the hotel. 

After he had done what we came for, he rushed back toward the hotel so fast the he nearly tore the leash from my hands! “Isn’t that neat!” I thought. “He remembers the hotel from last time and considers it his home-from-home.” 

We ran/walked back to the hotel entrance as quickly/slowly as Archie and I could negotiate, but he barely paused a moment at the front entrance, and continued straight on as fast as he could manage, with only cursory sniffs at the little tree islands along the sidewalk. He didn’t slow down until he got to his real destination: the Helmand Kabobi. That’s one smart dog! But we both had to turn around and return to the hotel unsatisfied. Maybe tomorrow, after the endoscopy, we could hit it again.

Of the rest of the day, perhaps the less said the better.

The procedure itself went off without a hitch, except at one point the head nurse there decided to tell Kathleen that she would be attacked and killed if she set foot on the street outside the hospital, and the only safe way to get to and from the hotel was to use the nurse’s “secret passageway”. Which, by the way, can’t be accessed without a nurse ID card. Way to keep the family calm, Nurse Laura!

Immediately after the procedure came the part Kathleen had been waiting for: the exit interview with the dreamy Dr Bollywood! (She literally had dreamed about him the night before.) But alas, he didn’t show up. Instead, he sent out a perfectly serviceable but definitely non-dreamy other doctor, who told us that, as they feared might happen, the endoscopy showed up nothing useful to discerning my illness. They had warned me in advance that this was likely, but I felt I needed to get this endoscopy even so, as this was really the final test in their arsenal.

He was quite pleased to note, though, that my mystery illness and all my tests had kept his interns and fellows occupied for quite a number of clinical peer reviews, and they looked forward to every time I came. So it was all worthwhile, I guess.

Afterward, I was feeling too crappy to want any Afghan food (drat!), so we packed up and Kathleen drove me home.

When I first got this illness (described here), I had vowed not to stop looking until I had found its cause. But I seem to have come to the end of the search. My symptoms ended months ago, and they said that (if this is what they think it is) it’s hard to find even when it’s active, and mine has been dormant for many months now.

Reluctantly, I’m calling my search off, until some new clue presents itself. A clue which, if it comes, I hope isn’t too painful or dangerous to me! And so here ends my tale….or does it??

Thanks for your patience,
Dorn
1/23/2020

Meditation

For many, many years I tried to meditate but was unable to be disciplined enough to be regular about it. Finally, the cell phone era arrived, and with the Insight Timer meditation app that I downloaded on it, I was able to develop a regular practice. Insight Timer is mostly a simple timer app that keeps track of your minutes and your consecutive days – and you get *stars* for your milestones. The dedicated Buddhists that use the app say you shouldn’t get too attached to your stars, but I have to think that is what helped me get to 29 consecutive days and 27,600 minutes (as recorded by the app right now). On the app, there are also thousands of guided meditations that I ignored for years but lately I have been appreciating more. Here are some favorites:

Yoga Nidra For Sleep by Jennifer Piercy – for when you can’t sleep. Its rare for me to even get to the end of this one without falling asleep.

Developing Loving-Kindness by Bodhipaksa – If you are mad at someone this has an almost magical ability to dispel that conflict.

Morning Meditation by  Bethany Auriel-Hagan – a great six minute start to the day.

Meet your Animal Spirit Guide by Kristen Acciari – this is the fun one I did with the grandkids. They had amazingly detailed experiences and Granddaughter #3’s tale of meeting her spirt guide, the Arctic Fox, inspired the painting below.

Modern science acknowledges the many benefits of meditation, including reducing stress, sharpening focus and improving memory. For third agers a special benefit accrues: “There was a study reported at the American Geriatric Association convention in 1979 involving forty-seven participants whose average age was 52.5 years. It found that people who had been meditating more than seven years were approximately twelve years younger physiologically than those of the same chronological age who were not meditating.” (Gabriel Cousens, M.D., Conscious Eating, p. 281.) So, if you’ve ever wanted to establish a meditation practice, there’s an app for that!

Old tech and new (part 2)

– In which a new gadget joins the stable.

PART 2: NEW TECH (old tech is here)

here may have been a time when a vacuum cleaner was an acceptable gift for a husband to give his wife. Perhaps this was during the post-WW2 “golden age of capitalism”. All sorts of so-called energy-saving devices were making their way to the mass market, and the novelty of new gadgetry might have outweighed the implication that a wife’s biggest Christmas wish was to vacuum the house. At least, that’s what ads from the time try to tell us.

But by the time this husband was buying presents for his wife, such gifts would be looked upon as evidence that (a) you were a male chauvinist pig who thought the woman’s place was in the home, and (b) you thought she would be happy to be viewed as your domestic servant. No thank you ma’am!

Times and sensibilities continue to evolve, though. Kathleen and I do a pretty good job of sharing cleaning chores, and we are both annoyed by the pet hair and 75 years of unidentifiable dust that seems to rain down continuously inside our house. (Kathleen is annoyed because of her fastidious sensibilities; I am annoyed because of my allergies). So I figured, correctly, that any gift that reduced that problem would be most welcome.

So I got Kathleen an Autonomous Floor Suctioning Vehicle (AFSV) for the house, to regularly give our floors the once-over and keep the dust and hair from proliferating too badly.

It’s a Roomba, of course. Kathleen wasn’t insulted at all to get one for a present, but she was skeptical that it’d work. “We’ll have to be constantly rearranging the furniture to get out of its way, and it’ll be more work than just vacuuming ourselves!” But I said that a Roomba can navigate just fine around furniture, and we should at least give a chance before we send it back.

So we set it up. In an obvious effort to get you to anthropomorphize the thing, when you initialize it, it records that date as its “birthday”, and asks you to give it a name. We decided on the obvious—Kathleen Junior. 

And the thing works like a champ. As long as it avoids a couple of key areas where the carpet is too thin to bump against and too thick to just drive over, it operates just fine. I don’t know exactly how it finds its way around without any seeing or (I’m told) internal map-memorizing functions, but it does. The search algorithm it uses seems to allow it, eventually, to wander into each room on the first floor and suck up all the dust, even along the walls.

Roomba pathways

Mostly we tell it to vacuum in the wee hours long after we’ve gone upstairs to bed (like 8 PM). But sometimes I like to start it up just to watch it work, helping it out of tough spots, or nudging it with my foot to encourage it into a room or an area I want it to pay special attention to. When I seem to be getting too solicitous, Kathleen pouts, “You love Kathleen Junior more than you love me”.

“That’s not true, honey”, I reassure her, “I love you both EXACTLY THE SAME AMOUNT”.

Thanks,
Dorn
11/11/2020

Frieda Kahlo as Muse

My first Frieda Kahlo inspired painting was about a decade ago when I found a cute little Mexican dress at the thrift store, so I posed and painted my little granddaughter as baby Frieda. More recently I caught my daughter wearing flowers in her hair and it inspired me to pose her for a Frieda inspired portrait. We couldn’t find any monkeys, but I thought her little dog Pumpernickel could fill that role. Why is it that Frieda is so iconic in art? It seems to me that suggesting Frieda is a good way to represent women’s inner strength and a certain amount of staying true to yourself. Both portraits are below.