The last couple of days I’ve been extremely short of breath. Every time I get up from my recliner and take a few steps I need to find a seat, for the shortness of breath is so strong I have to rest.
Today, about all I’ve done is sit in the recliner and try to read or write something. But the S.O.B. (good acronym) comes on and I can’t do anything but lay my head back and close my eyes. Then the alternating SOB and regular breathing comes on. The pulse ox meter shows me with 98%+ oxygen but pulse of 99+. The ekg I can take with my smart watch shows me in a-fib.
Our son snapped this picture just as they called me to begin prep for surgery.
As the title of this post says, I’m somewhat uncertain about what my life if going to be like in the future.
As to the heart surgery, I’m healing well. I’m being careful to follow the discharge instructions the hospital gave me. I’ve been seen three times by home health, once in clinic for blood draw, and once in clinic for the post-op appointment. Almost every day I sense healing happening in my body. Yesterday, after working with our daughter putting one bedroom back together following down-sizing activities, I had my first real time of pain at the incision point. A Tylenol was sufficient to help control it.
As to my stroke of 3 Sept, progress on the lingering impairments is slow. Typing has started to improve, but remains both slow and painful. Handwriting is also slow to return to normal. It takes me a long time just to sign my name to anything, and the result is barely legible. Writing anything takes much more time it ought to.
But, I’ve been able to do some light writing tasks. I began work on the next volume of my Bible study series. Not actual writing yet, but creating the book files, loading the scripture in and dividing it by chapter, and planning the subsections. I think I’m perhaps a day away from completing the preliminaries and beginning the writing.
The other writing project is the book of family letters from our years in Saudia Arabia. All that’s left is adding photographs. That involves scanning to digital, resizing, loadings into the books, then formatting the pages. As I’ve said before, the words are written. I scanned some photos previously. But the scanner is in the basement and I’m still not allowed to do stairs. Our daughter did a lot of scanning. I have at least 40 scanned photos to go through and load into the book. I will work on that some this week. About the time I finish that, I’ll be at the point using stairs again, and can complete the scanning.
So healing is happening, and writing tasks are getting done. Hopefully on Friday, I’ll be able to report increasing progress.
I had my open-heart surgery on 9/30, came home from the hospital on 10/4, and have been a good boy at following the rules since then. I’m healing well since the surgery.
But now the negative effects of my 9/3 stroke. Typing is still very hard, and a little painful. So this will be a short post. Hopefully I’ll soon be able to type more, and to report more specifically on my health and activities.
A cheap cover, basic layout, but good editing. But hey, for 91¢ and Tate Publishing, what can you expect?
Sometimes you pick up a book and don’t remember where you got it. This one we seem to have picked up in a thrift store named “Heart & Hand” for the inflated price of 91¢! It’s from a land Far, Far Away: Letters From the Front Line of the War On Terror by Wes Trueblood. He served as an English teacher, a civilian employee for the US Military. Earlier in his life, Trueblood had been in the military. In one letter he mentioned he was “no longer an ordained minister”, so that’s also an item on his resume.
The book is a series of letters Trueblood wrote to a mailing list back home—family, friends, and friends of friends. The letters told his impressions of the countries he went to: first Iraq in 2007, then after a year in the USA, to Afghanistan in 2009. The book looked interesting especially due to our time in Saudi Arabia and Iraq.
In terms of information, the book did not disappoint. Trueblood’s impressions and conclusions about the two countries pretty much match my own. He was hampered in learning about the countries because he was essentially in a war zone and could not get out among the local population.
Thus he gave a lot of information about the bases he was at. Who lived with him, as roommate and as other base residents? What were the site rules? What type of recreation did they have? Were they in danger? After a while, it got tiring. Trueblood kept trying to distinguish between miliary people and civilians (such as him) who worked for the military. Those parts became kind of boring after a while. I read them all, but not closely enough to really understand the differences.
One other problem was that the “letters” were really a newsletter sent by e-mail. It reads differently than letters do. That was a little off-putting for me.
So, should you read this book? is it a keeper? How do I rate it? I think you would have to ha e a special interest in these countries or in this part of the world to make this book worth your while. It is now a keeper for me, and will go straight out to the donation pile. And I rate only 3-stars. It is really 3.5 stars for me. It’s well put together, and I’m glad I read it, but the stars rating is for others, not for me.
A couple of month ago, I posted that I was reading The Grasmere and Alfoxden Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth, sister of poet William Wordsworth. These are famous journals in the world of poetry, specifically in the British romantic movement era. I read this slowly, about five or six pages a day at my noon reading time, either in the sunroom or at my reading spot in the woods.
I must admit to having a difficult time concentrating on this book. Dorothy’s main entries had to do with the weather, where they walked and who they saw, what letters they received and who she wrote to. Sometimes she wrote about household items, such as making pies and bread, doing laundry. Many entries had to do with health issues. Both Dorothy and William were frequently ill and spent much of their days in bed, to rise at supper time then be up most of the night.
William’s poetry does figures in the journal, which is what most interested me. Dorothy sometimes wrote, “W is working on an ode” or “W is working on a sonnet.” Sometimes she would give the name of a poem. “Peter Bell” is mentioned quite often at one stretch. It makes me want to pull out my Wordsworth poems books (I think I have two) and read them.
Place names feature in terms of where they walked or rode to. The book included two maps, but so many of the places mentioned weren’t shown on the maps that I gave up referring to them. Coleridge also features in the journal. He came and went frequently, went away from his wife right when she was about to give birth. The impression Dorothy gives of Coleridge is not flattering.
The book included 140 pages of notes, printed as end notes tied to a page and a journal date. I started out reading the journal entry then flipping back to the notes. I gave up on that when I came to realize the notes more often than not compared this edition of the journal (2002, edited by Pamela Wolf) to earlier editions (stretching back over 130 years). That kind of information would be of great interest to a researcher, but not so much to a casual reader such as me.
So, on to my usual questions. How do rate this? Will I read it again? What will I do with the book? The extensive notes and lack of an adequate map cause me to rate this 3-stars. No, I don’t think I will ever read it again; thus I don’t plan on keeping it. It is already put in the donation pile.
Writing this post ahead of time. It ought to be and end-of-month progress, beginning-of-month goals post. But due to my stroke on September 3, I had almost no progress. And due to my heart surgery today, I’m not making any goals for October.
I’m writing this post early, to go live on September 30, at the exact time my surgery is supposed to start. I have a few more posts scheduled to go lived on my normal blogging schedule. I suspect my first post-surgery live post will be somewhere around the middle of October.
The hematomas from the hospital blood draws have mostly healed. But next Monday I get to do it all over again.
The impacts of my stroke:
Left side weakness: mostly gone. But this has exposed the fact that my right leg is still weak from my July 15 accident. I’m still working on that.
Left side loss of balance: seems to be gone.
Double vision: affected the middle distances, seems to be gone.
Loss of left side fine motor skills: still greatly impaired. Can’t write. If I tried to write a check the bank would reject it based on unreadable handwriting. Practiced writing some yesterday, and it had improved a little since my last practice on 9/16. Touch-typing is slowly coming back. I’m no where up to the speed I used to be at, but I’m better than at OT on 9/11. Of course, with my bad rotator cuff from my other July accident, who can for sure tell what is an impact of that and what is from the stroke.
Speech: slow to come back. Still hard to say certain sounds. I have not worked on this enough, but it’s painful and tiring to talk out loud. I sang at church yesterday. Fortunately, the noise level in the sanctuary was such that no one could hear me, and I couldn’t hear myself. The words seemed to come easy to the two familiar songs, much harder on the new song.
Hopefully I will be more diligent at working on the remaining impairments. Possibly I’ll give a follow-up report on Friday. Meanwhile, I have no thoughts of resuming writing. It’s a good thing my only current writing work is scanning photos and loading them into a book of family letters.
Folks, I was away from the blog due having another stroke on 9/3, being in the hospital for 14 days (including in-patient rehab). My left side was affected, the most lingering of which is loss of fine motor skills in my left hand. Consequently, I can barely type. I’ll see what I can do come Monday.
Vol. 2 may be published this month—if I can make my goal.
Well, August was another strange month, as I continued to recover from the two freak household accidents I had in July. While my output was certainly affected, I wasn’t shut down from some progress. Here’s how I did relative to my goals.
Blog twice a week, on Mondays and Fridays. Did this. I had lots to write about.
I’m not making a goal of attending any writers meetings, partly from not knowing how my surgery and illnesses will lay me up, and partly because one meeting may be cancelled due to lack of a venue. I went to one meeting.
Complete two editorial passes through A Walk Through Holy Week, Vol 2. I managed to do this. Actually, I made three editorial passes through and have declared it “Done”. Publishing tasks to follow.
Figure out any final changes to the latest Danny Tompkins story, then finish and publish it. Did this, and published the short story on Aug 5. Made changes to it over the next few days.
Complete the commentary between letters. If I can get that done, begin selection of photos and insert them in the book. Did this. Completed commentary, Introduction, proofreading the letters and commentary, and started selecting photos.
And, one more for good measure: Make a start at outlining Vol 3 of A Walk Through Holy Week.Nope, did not work on this at all.
Hopefully, I’ll come very close to finishing my next book of expatriate year letters this month.
September will be an odd month. My heart surgery will be on Sept 30, and I have lots of pre-op stuff before that. So I don’t plan on any writing this month. Publishing tasks will take precedence.
Blog twice a week, on Mondays and Fridays.
Attend three writing group meetings. I present at the one on Sept 10.
Complete publishing tasks for A Walk Through Holy Week, Vol. 2 and publish it to Amazon. I may have to do so with a temporary cover.
Complete adding photos to the Saudi years letters book. A really stretching-it goal would be to do enough formatting to order a review copy.
Spend at least a little time organizing Vol. 3 of A Walk Through Holy Week.
That’s it, and it may be more than I can accomplish. But it’s better to have a goal that requires you to work hard and efficiently.
Ah, back in The Dungeon as of Tuesday. Productivities improved in my familiar realm. Maybe Virginia Woolf was on to something.
When I hurt my right leg in the freak home accident on July 15, I found immediate difficulties in maintaining my normal routine. Each step I took was extremely painful. The accident happened mid-morning, after I had finished about half my daily time in The Dungeon. That’s the computer room in the basement where I do almost all my writing, and other projects. But I could tell it would be too painful to go back downstairs. I finished the day away from The Dungeon and away from my laptop.
The next day, after sleeping (not very well) in an easy chair all night, I knew I needed to get to The Dungeon, at least for an hour or two, work there, then bring my laptop upstairs. I had begun using a walker upstairs, and could see it would be too difficult to carry downstairs. Walking downstairs was going to be impossible. I could ask my wife to go down to get my laptop, but I didn’t really want to ask that of her. What was I going to do? How could I get to The Dungeon?
I got there by walking backwards downstairs on all fours. That took some of the weight off my bad leg. It gave me stability going down the staircase. I actually went down fairly quickly. But then there were the fifteen steps to my computer desk, with a slight deviation to switch on the light. Once I was in my seat, I was okay. But the getting across the floor was very hard. When it was time to get breakfast, I went up the stairs on all fours, then once again went down and over—in much pain. I could tell it wasn’t working.
So after an hour, I took my laptop with me and said goodbye to The Dungeon, promising to be back as soon as my leg healed enough to walk on it and go up and down stairs as a normal person. My easy chair in the living room—the same chair I slept in—became my office. Needless to say, my productivity suffered. In the same time I could write 1,000 words in The Dungeon, I was lucky to get four or five hundred in my chair. I prayed for healing and productivity through unusual circumstances.
In my reading recently, I saw where Virginia Woolf, in a letter to a friend, sort of commented on this.
But to write a novel in the heart of London is next to an impossibility. I feel as if I were nailing a flag to the top of a mast in a raging gale.
I felt like that was me. To finish a Bible study book in an easy chair, with a laptop on my lap, not on a desk, forty-five feet and twelve stair steps away from my usual working space, would be difficult. But not impossible. I finished the round of edits to the Bible study, set it aside, and moved on to my next project. I slowly gained a measure of productivity and got things done.
But healing did come to my injured leg. I was finally able, last Sunday, to sleep on a bed. Monday too. So Tuesday morning, I grabbed my laptop and wireless mouse, leaving my coffee behind, and walked down to The Dungeon with no trouble and no pain. By Thursday, I was able to make the trip with computer and coffee.
So I’m back at my retirement work: writing books; trying to figure out how to sell them; trading stocks; and working on downsizing. My leg is not quite fully healed, but six weeks after the injury, it has healed enough for me to say, “Hello, Dungeon! It’s business almost as usual.”
