Category Archives: Health

July 20, 2025 · 23:27

Forever Home – July 20th

Happy Apollo 11 Moon Landing Anniversary!

In the here and now, we’re getting down to the final stages of our home purchase and moving adventure. We signed loan documents on Friday, and the escrow company should have all of the wet-signature and notarized copies Monday morning. The mortage company is supposed to fund early Monday, so early Tuesday we should close and record. Right now we’re on schedule to spend Tuesday in the new house dealing with utilities and the first stages of unpacking, with the PODS units going up on Wednesday and the movers on Thursday.

The packing and preparing for the movers while loading as much as we can into the PODS units has been exhausting for days. We’re taking damage…

Sometimes when trying to push large objects (in this case, a large shelving unit) they might stop suddenly and have blunt objects (a leg) sticking out that jabs HARD into my arm. Thirty-six hours later, it’s tender but not terribly painful, but the purple and black coloration is impressive.

“You should see the other guy!!”

More practically a pain, my Apple watch got knocked off of a counter onto the tile floor and what started as a couple of small cracks in the corner has now turned into a much larger web of cracks. Like a crack in a windshield, it’s gradually spreading and growing, while continuing (for the moment) to work. I don’t think that SafeLite comes out and repairs this. If/when it stops working, I’ll probably have to bite the bullet and buy a new one. This one is about five or six years old and I sort of depend on it a lot, so just going without isn’t realistic at this point.

At least it’s not my phone that’s dying.

Thirty-five hours, thirty-three minutes and counting to home ownership.

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June 30, 2025 · 23:16

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

I’ve been a regular blood donor for almost 50 years. But as I’ve gotten older and run into some physical changes, the American Red Cross has made it harder and harder to be a good citizen and donate whole blood.

I’ve been deferred for having high blood pressure.

I’ve been deferred for having low iron.

I’ve been deferred for having too high of a heartbeat.

I’ve been deferred for having PVC (Premature Ventricular Contractions).

As of today, I’ve been deferred five times in a row.

And there’s no arguing. They have their machines, and even though (for example, today) their BP readings are 30+ points higher than the readings I’m getting on the high-end digital home BP monitor, there’s no appeal or discussion.

So tomorrow the emails and phone calls will start again, reminding me of how critical the blood supply shortage is, how I have an unusual blood type, how much they appreciate the HUNDREDS of donations over all the years, and begging me to schedule another appointment for July.

Let’s assume that’s a “NO!” Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me five times, shame on me.

I’ve done my good deeds. I’ve tried to do more and been told “Thanks! But no thanks!!” repeatedly.

I’ve taken enough punishment and disappointment for trying to help. I’ll stop now, thanks!

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June 12, 2025 · 23:47

Proof Of Life – June 12th

The new gym my trainer is using has new toys and torture equipment. I’m feeling that tonight.

It’s a “good” feeling in the sense that my head knows it’s for the greater good, the long term goals, blah blah blah, yadda yadda yadda… Meanwhile, I’m physically exhausted and sore. It’s a good match for the mental exhaustion. It feels like… It actually reminds me of about Mile Twenty of running a marathon. “The Wall.”

At least I’m not thinking about my sore tooth. Mind you, the tooth still hurts. But I’m not thinking about it.

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June 11, 2025 · 23:51

Proof Of Life – June 11th

I don’t want to break my current streak of 300+ days of posting every day, but there are a couple of things going on that are just a bit all-consuming going on, and my new and exciting dental adventures on top of it!

That leaves very little time to think great thoughts, take great pictures, and cogitate on the wonders of the universe. So, you may get a lot of these “quickie” Proof Of Life posts for a couple of weeks.

I finally got into the dentist today and, as expected, there are two primary options – Bad and Worse.

Bad = tooth extraction and replacement with a fake on a post. Sounds painful, but it’s a one day thing, probably.

Worse = crown lengthening, which I had done last summer when I had three root canals, turned out to be worse than a colonoscopy, very unpleasant and painful. And even if we do that, the odds are good that we’ll need to do the extraction and replacement anyway within a year or two.

Sometimes “bad” is “better.” Fun and games next Friday.

This is why June is “Hell Month” this year.

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June 9, 2025 · 23:44

No – But I Wish

 

No, the keyboard and world don’t quite look like this – but I wish that I had some of the “good” painkillers so that it did.

I don’t, and my jaw/tooth is plenty sore enough to be annoying as hell. But none of the good stuff, just Extra Strength Excedrin every six hours.

No dentist today, or tomorrow – the earliest I can get in is at the end of the day on Wednesday, and I’m expecting to be told that I need to go to the endodontist at that point, and who knows how long that will take. (Buy stock in GSK Healthcare!)

The audit kicked off today and I spent a full day (and then some) dealing with it through the fog of “significant discomfort.” Almost more fun than any human being should be allowed to have with their clothes on.

Almost.

Yes, I did take yesterday’s picture by sticking my entire iPhone 13 Max Pro in my mouth and then taking pictures. Isn’t that how everyone does it?

Where does that go on my resume? Skills? Life Experiences? Talent?

I’ll be fine. I just reserve the right to be cranky.

Crankier.

Whatever.

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June 8, 2025 · 22:23

Which God’s Dog Did I Kick

Work deadlines, forever home house hunting, starting to pack for the move, filling out mortgage application paperwork, the news, the world, the Mango Mussolini & his cult, skunks, gophers… It is enough to get on your last nerve and dance on it a bit.

And when you finally think that maybe, perhaps, against all odds, you might be keeping your nose above water, the Universe says, “Yeah, right! It’s cute that you think that!”

I’m trying to keep it in the proper perspective. It’s not cancer. I wasn’t hit by a car. The Long-Suffering Wife and my kids are all fine. But, on the other hand – JEEZ LOUISE!!

Those of you who have been reading a while will remember that last summer was a freakin’ festival of fun in a dental sense, with three root canals and all of the accompanying crowns and fillings and EXPENSE and *PAIN*!

Eating breakfast this morning I felt the “pop!” and the “crack!” (no “snap,” but I might have missed that in all of the excitement of the moment) and sure enough, there’s a huge chunk of tooth that’s gone walkabout.

I’m not in absolute agony, thankfully, but it’s tender and sore and I’m going to assume that absolute agony is in the on-deck circle just waiting for it’s turn at bat any moment, so as busy as this week already was going to be, I’m going to need to figure out how to squeeze in at least one and probably a couple of dental appointments.

Using a phrase I think I learned from the esteemed Jim Wright online (“Stonekettle”), “Which god’s dog did I kick? And how do I apologize?”

This too shall pass. But then again, they say that about kidney stones, and I’ve had them a number of times and I never want to have them again. Just like major dental work.

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June 4, 2025 · 23:59

Contempt & Bemusement

Wednesday after work is my gym night with my trainer. He’s doing an excellent job of seeing just how far he can push me every week without actually breaking me. After almost a year in a small, private gym, today was our first day at a much larger, much newer gym nearby.

The old gym was small, and rarely had more than four or six other people there at the same time. (Usually in pairs, a client and a trainer.) Almost everyone was thus involved and minding their own business, either counting painful reps or performing them.

The new gym is much larger (not as large as a 24 Fitness or something like that), at least three or four times the size. It also had maybe a dozen pairs of client/trainers working out. No worries.

But about a quarter of the space is a bit partitioned off (-ish!) and was used for karate classes for grade school kids. They were making a ton of noise, as pre-teens kicking pads will do. No worries.

My favorite part was the holding pen for the moms and nannies. An open air waiting room of sorts for those who had brought their tykes and were simply killing time, waiting for them to sweat and scream so they could go home in a half hour.

When I say “moms and nannies,” I’m being exact. There were no dads. There were very obviously nannies and housekeepers, whose duties included getting the small ones to karate practice and back safely, along with all of the other cooking, cleaning, and domesstic work around the McMansion. This was an EXTREMELY Woodland Hills crowd, every car in the parking lot an SUV from either BWM, Mercedes, Lexus, Land Rover, Jaguar, or Tesla. My decades old Volvo convertible was definitely the poor man’s vehicle of the collection.

In the holding pen were three types of women:

The nannies, bored to tears, watching something or the other on their phones.

The business moms, on their Mac laptops, answering emails or writing legal briefs in their $5,000 Armani pantsuits.

The adult Valley Girls, makeup and hair perfect, figures toned and sculpted, every molecule of Botox in place, chatting for social karma points like their lives depended on it.

There were several times when I made eye contact with a member of this third group. I never spoke to any of them, but every time I saw one of them looking out of their pit of despair into the rest of the gym, at the late-sixties, bald, chunky guy lifting weights and sweating like he was gonna die (i.e., me) there was a wave of contempt and quiet bemusement that swept across the room like that pyroclastic flow from Mt. Saint Helens forty-five years ago. Well, maybe not completely quiet. I know that I heard one woman snort in derision as she looked at me and then instinctively flipped her unnaturally blonde hair over her ear and looked away.

Being sore and having trouble moving around after a tough workout may suck, but it beats ennui!!

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May 14, 2025 · 23:34

I Paid $399.99 For THIS?

For Christmas, I got myself one of the Oura 4 rings (size 13, if you want to buy jewelry for me for some unknown reason) for $399.99. It’s worth it, I like it, I’m very much into tracking my fitness and health parameters these days (being as that I have become and Olde Phart and am officially Phalling Apart) and between the Oura and my Apple Watch, I have lots of good data to work with.

But in today’s “NO SHIT, SHERLOCK!” moment…

The only surprise is that my “usual” day only has 90 minutes of “stress.” How high is that freaking borderline set?

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May 7, 2025 · 22:56

No Context For You – May 7th

Wednesdays are training nights, when I meet my trainer for an hour of “Functional Strength Training.” Weights (flys), sit ups, weights (curls), push ups, even more weights (combinations) – all to build strength, and it’s really made a difference.

It’s one of those “use it or lose it” things. I’m not doing it to be a body builder or anything, but so that I can still move around and have a normal, relatively active life when others my age are restricted to rockers and wheelchairs.

It would be nice to lose some weight as well, but that’s more of a diet thing.

It would be nice if this had been of more help last Saturday when I was getting my ass kicked by a mountain hiking trail, but that’s endurance, not strength. Related, perhaps, but also different.

It does help me sleep well on Wednesday nights!

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May 3, 2025 · 23:43

Conejo Mountain Via Powerline Trail

We had a work event today, a fundraiser with lots of volunteers, public awareness, education, collaboration, networking, and so on. There were 25-mile and 40-mile bike routes (I haven’t been on a bike in decades), a hike, and a walk.

In retrospect, I probably thought that, in addition to helping and participating as an employee, I would participate in the Walk (1.5 miles, flat, around the park) when I in fact took off with the group doing the Hike (6 miles, 1,000+ feet elevation gain, up into the mountains).

I finished and they didn’t have to bring in a helicopter to rescue me or recover my corpse. I kicked that mountain’s ass!

I’ve reached the point in the aftermath where every muscle in my body right down to my eyebrows is cramping, twitching, and incredibly sore. That mountain kicked my ass!

Image: Strava app

It was enough of an ordeal that both my phone and my Apple Watch ran out of power. It was weird finishing the route without any way of contacting anyone if there had been an emergency, or of checking my location on the GPS or trail map, or even taking pictures. It shows to go you how dependant I am on my electronic assistants. I AM BORG, RESISTANCE IS FUTILE!

We climbed up into the hills at the far end of the park. You can see the white tents from our event way off in the distance on the left.

There were a ton of wildflowers everywhere and at the beginning we climbing up along the hills overlooking some very nice neighborhoods.

It was cool and drizzly and foggy. In the AllTrails app you can see tons of beautiful pictures of the view from up higher – we didn’t see any of that. Totally socked in, we climbed up into the low-hanging cloud deck and pretty much saw nothing but grey off the trail. Cool, damp, wet, slippery – yeah, fun times!

And look! Over on the other side of the road you can see others of our group who weren’t horribly out of shape climbing up the first really good set of switchbacks. The clouds hide the multiple peaks stretching out to the north with high-tension powerlines swinging from peak to peak to peak.

In the end, I think the peak is looking down over the 101 Freeway where it dives down from Canejo Valley and Thousand Oaks down to the coastal plain of Camarillo. I’m sure it’s a spectacular view. Maybe some day I’ll be able to go back and see.

Or not.

Image: Alltrails.com

After I go home and was describing the ordeal experience to my family, the Second Daughter (who, along with her husband, is a hiker, runner, and camper, and very active) sent this link. YEAH! That’s it. “Moderately challenging.” Not quite the words I was using, but okay. Po-TAY-toe, Po-TAH-toe.

Lessons learned?

One, make sure the electronics I’m so dependant on are charged, or carry a battery backup if I’m going into an unusual situation like this.

Two, while I’m seeing a trainer and going to the gym, training for strength is not training for endurance. Similar yes, related for sure, but not the same.

Three, while my head still thinks that I’m 29 or 39 and I can just rip off a hike like this with little or no notice, reality says I’m 69 and things really, REALLY are starting to change.

Four, I need a better source of pain killers or horse tranquilizers. (Just kidding. I think.)

 

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