Cousin,
You said you'd be interested in a narrative of my latest medical adventure when I had time to write it. Well, it's 4:30 in the morning, an hour earlier than my usual rising time, and I'm wide awake, and writing is a better use of time than surfing the internet or even working the crossword puzzle I didn't get to yesterday.
Often things happen out of the blue; certainly this latest brush with mortality seemed to.
But it's like piloting a boat across a tidal inlet: Sometimes the best way to see where you're actually going is to look back at your wake. In this latest case, I was confident in my compass -- the three bypasses I had thought would last as long as I did -- and I damn near ended up on the rocks.
Things got choppy on a Saturday two weeks ago. The started with me feeling vaguely crummy; nothing specifically wrong, just not a bundle of energy. Later in the day, I was helping Adelaide plant some pansies down by the seawall. When I walked back up to the house, not a great distance, I was really out of breath. I also felt a tightness in my chest. Not pain, not even that squeezing feeling that people often describe. Just a tightness that I still can't say whether was real or psychosomatic. I took my blood pressure. It was higher than it should be, but not dangerously so.
Then I tried to do what we so often do: deny what is. It's arguing that you've followed that safe course on the compass while hearing the surf pounding in your ears.
I'd played 18 holes of golf in Auburn the day before and then driven with Adelaide over to Clanton to pick up a car we were thinking about buying. Earlier in the week I had been in the gym at least a couple of times, including good sessions on the stationary bike, and had taken at least one good, long walk.
But, dammit, something just wasn't right, and we decided to go to the emergency room on the theory that a false alarm was better than a real one unheeded.
Potential heart attacks get prompt attention in the ER. They gave me some stuff that would help if I were having a heart attack, including aspirin, and did an EKG, took an X-ray and drew some blood. The ER physician said the EKG and X-ray looked normal, and there was nothing in the blood chemistry to indicate a heart attack, but he had talked with my cardiologist, who said they should keep me overnight and that he would look in on me on Sunday.
It turned out to be a good call.
Although my EKG looked normal, it looked different than the last one I'd had when I had my annual checkup with him in February, a checkup that included an echo cardiogram and a stress test, which did not reveal any imminent dangers. My cholesterol and triglycerides had been good, too.
There was enough question to warrant a heart on Monday, so I spent a second night in the hospital.
I really didn't think he was going to find anything (denial again), but he emerged from the procedure to tell Adelaide that he had found scar tissue creating blockages at all three sites where veins had been grafted onto the arteries. They scheduled sessions to put in stents on Friday and the following Monday. The reason for doing it in two sessions was that the dye they use in the procedure can damage the kidneys if there's too much of it in the blood.
Adelaide didn't even have to work hard to keep me from doing much physical activity while we waited for Friday, and I plenty of time to ruminate about how I got to this point.
After the bypasses (three years and a month earlier) I had worked at keeping fit and at eating wisely. While I hadn't limited my diet to leaves and twigs, a hamburger was a rare treat; we didn't eat red meat of any kind very often. I couldn't remember the last time I'd had bacon. We always used skim milk and put flax seed meal on our oatmeal or cereal in the mornings.
But I had to admit, I had not gotten as much exercise during the hot, dry summer (which around here seemed to start in May and is just now ending) as I ordinarily do. And I had noticed that I would be breathing a little hard when I began some activity, although that went away after I got going. And I was a little slower going up hills than I used to, but I didn't have to stop to catch my breath. And I am 70 years old; that ought to account for some slowing down.
So there were signs, but doggone subtle ones.
On that Friday the doctor put four stents in one artery, and on Monday he put in two more stents, one in each of two arteries.
As I'm recovering, I've thought about my brother and sister. My sis, a year older than I, has always eaten pretty much what she wanted, and what she wanted was often fried or salty or sweet. My brother, four and a half years younger, is a very disciplined eater. Both of them have coronary systems to envy. I think they inherited genes from my mother's side of the family. My inheritance, apparently comes from the Brown side of the family, not particularly noted for longevity.
Even if fate has drawn the line on the chart, though, I will keep trying to account for the current.
You recently sent me a copy of one of your favorite poems. There is a poignant line: How dull it is to pause, to make an end, / To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!
I can promise that I will not rust unburnish'd.
Cousin Bill
Contact the writer at billatthelake@gmail.com
Saturday, November 12, 2011
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Some Instructions Are Just Too Stupid
I don't think I am growing more prickly (some might argue that would be impossible) but I increasingly chafe at being told what to do by people who have no business doing so. There are enough people who are in a position to tell you what to do, and who often insist on your doing stupid things, but I am not talking about them. Them I avoid as much as possible and grudgingly comply when there is no alternative.
No, it is the more mundane things that set me off.
Like the envelope from someone who is trying to sell me something that states prominently "Do Not Discard." Naturally, those envelopes go directly into the waste basket; I'm thinking of leaving an all-weather waste can by the mailbox.
The marketers don't like to be ignored, though, and they get more insistent. I am holding an envelope that, in addition to my name and address, includes these phrases: "Official Documents Enclosed." "Official Notification." "Requires Immediate Response." "SECOND NOTICE." "Time Sensitive Communication." Well, duh. Guess where that envelope is going?
Maybe tossing their missives isn't the answer. I am considering saving a stack of the envelopes -- unopened -- until I have a large stack and then mailing all of them back to the sender. With luck, I'll open one of the envelopes and find a postage-paid reply envelope and use it to send the accumulation back.
Almost as annoying is the recorded message that urges you to hold for an important message. I used to hang up immediately, but now I just lay the phone down and go about my business. I like to think I'm using enough of their time to save someone else from getting a call.
At least in the above situations, I have the choice of whether to open the envelope or hold for the call.
One night recently, I had a choice of whether to respond to a stupid instruction, but exercising my choice saved me no time. I was trapped.
It was an event that included a talent segment. The mistress and master of ceremonies took turns introducing each contestant and then going offstage.
The contestant performed. The audience applauded. And the master/mistress of ceremonies returned to the stage with the instruction to give the performer another round of applause, even as the original applause was fading. Not once, not twice, but every single time.
Excuse me, but isn't applause like a tip: something that is earned.
I sat on my hands thinking that if it weren't for all the phony enthusiasm, the contestants could have more time to show off their talent. And the applause would have been truly earned.
Saturday, July 16, 2011
Time for a new adventure
To everything there is a season, and
a time to every purpose under heaven:
It is a little after 6 on a gray Saturday morning. Downstairs one granddaughter and her friend are sleeping. Later today, another granddaughter and three of her friends will arrive. It is not a promising weekend for outdoor things, but I am sure the young ladies will find plenty of things to amuse themselves with. They are at an age when their grandparents do not have to spend all of their time being recreation directors.
I have been sitting in the little reading room just off our second-floor bedroom looking out at the lake. A slight breeze has the water in motion – most often it is as still as a millpond this time of the morning – and I haven't heard any manmade sounds. Soon, even with the possibility, even probability, that rain could come at any moment, personal watercraft will be roiling the water. After all, how many weekends are there in a summer?
I have watched the day develop from this vantage point almost every morning since we moved to the lake full-time nine years ago and on as many mornings as possible in those years when we were only part-timers.
I have never tired of the view nor unmindful of our good fortune in being able to experience every day that which so many people get only to sample.
My morning view is about to change.
We have lived in this house longer than we have lived in any house since we got married, and it is the first house that we have had designed and built just for us. Like us, the house has its eccentricities, but I hope that soon some other family will enjoy this house as much as we have.
As much as we have loved the place – and, as importantly, our neighbors and our neighborhood – we have recognized for several years that the time for change would come.Simply put, the house is simply too big for the two of us It has too many steps;. Adelaide counted the steps from the dock to the widow's walk; there were 105 of them. When the children and grandchildren are here, the house is just right, sometimes even cramped, but those times are increasingly rare, and that space is heated and cooled and cleaned year round.
So in a few days a sign will go up offering our half hill for sale. We hope that someone will think it is as right as we did when we first saw this spot and visualized putting a house on it.
I am, at least for the moment, curiously unmoved by the prospect of making some other house our home. I think that we most liberated we have felt was when we returned to the states after spending the better part of a year on a self-styled sabbatical in England and Holland. We had sold most of our belongings before setting out, and having only a few possessions made us feel, well, less possessed. That was many years ago, though, and as long as you have a place to put things, things pile up.
We have decided that we need considerably less space – and far fewer things – and that this might be the time to make that change.
We would love to stay on the water and in this neighborhood if that is possible. We don't know how that will work out, because like most folks, we cant really look for another home until we have sold this one. (I'd hate to fall in love with a place only to see it sell before we sold our own home.)
  Whatever happens, it will be an adventure.
Contact the writer at billatthelake@gmail.com
a time to every purpose under heaven:
It is a little after 6 on a gray Saturday morning. Downstairs one granddaughter and her friend are sleeping. Later today, another granddaughter and three of her friends will arrive. It is not a promising weekend for outdoor things, but I am sure the young ladies will find plenty of things to amuse themselves with. They are at an age when their grandparents do not have to spend all of their time being recreation directors.
I have been sitting in the little reading room just off our second-floor bedroom looking out at the lake. A slight breeze has the water in motion – most often it is as still as a millpond this time of the morning – and I haven't heard any manmade sounds. Soon, even with the possibility, even probability, that rain could come at any moment, personal watercraft will be roiling the water. After all, how many weekends are there in a summer?
I have watched the day develop from this vantage point almost every morning since we moved to the lake full-time nine years ago and on as many mornings as possible in those years when we were only part-timers.
I have never tired of the view nor unmindful of our good fortune in being able to experience every day that which so many people get only to sample.
My morning view is about to change.
We have lived in this house longer than we have lived in any house since we got married, and it is the first house that we have had designed and built just for us. Like us, the house has its eccentricities, but I hope that soon some other family will enjoy this house as much as we have.
As much as we have loved the place – and, as importantly, our neighbors and our neighborhood – we have recognized for several years that the time for change would come.Simply put, the house is simply too big for the two of us It has too many steps;. Adelaide counted the steps from the dock to the widow's walk; there were 105 of them. When the children and grandchildren are here, the house is just right, sometimes even cramped, but those times are increasingly rare, and that space is heated and cooled and cleaned year round.
So in a few days a sign will go up offering our half hill for sale. We hope that someone will think it is as right as we did when we first saw this spot and visualized putting a house on it.
I am, at least for the moment, curiously unmoved by the prospect of making some other house our home. I think that we most liberated we have felt was when we returned to the states after spending the better part of a year on a self-styled sabbatical in England and Holland. We had sold most of our belongings before setting out, and having only a few possessions made us feel, well, less possessed. That was many years ago, though, and as long as you have a place to put things, things pile up.
We have decided that we need considerably less space – and far fewer things – and that this might be the time to make that change.
We would love to stay on the water and in this neighborhood if that is possible. We don't know how that will work out, because like most folks, we cant really look for another home until we have sold this one. (I'd hate to fall in love with a place only to see it sell before we sold our own home.)
  Whatever happens, it will be an adventure.
Contact the writer at billatthelake@gmail.com
Saturday, July 9, 2011
Trying to change a genetic instruction
There is imprinted in my DNA a basic instruction. It says: Never throw away something you might be able to use later.
I am trying to rewrite that instruction, which I have followed all too well, or at least to redefine it. I am locked in a mental battle that parallels disputes over interpreting our constitution: strict construction or loose construction.
I have been a strict constructionist of my genetic instructions. If there is any conceivable possibility that I might be able to use something later, I've kept it. (And it has occasionally paid off: just the other day I used a piece of metal tubing left over from a boat shade, a bail from a five-gallon bucket and a hose clamp to repair a colorful little wind-driven whirlygig down by the patio.)
I am trying to accept the notion that I should keep only those things that there is a reasonably good chance that I will need. I'm not sure the bail from the bucket or the piece from the boat would qualify.
I have been given some impetus in my quest because we are thinking about downsizing our home.
I have already tackled my library and my closet, though much remains to be done in those departments.
But those have been minor forays compared to the task now at hand. Confronting stuff in general.
So, there I stood in the middle of a storage building, confronted with the reality of my resolution.
Various tools from past projects: a tile cutter and a grout float I bought when I remodeled the kitchen of an old house we owned in Montgomery.
A pipe flaring tool.
A gear puller.
I couldn't recall why I had acquired some of those items.
But realistically, would I ever use them again?
And the smaller things: screws and nails and bolts, all of differing sizes. Would I ever have or take the time to sort them out. An electric motor from a food processor, hinges from a glass door, things that I couldn't identify but which I obviously thought I might use for something.
Cans of paint that, even if it isn't a lump inside the can, probably wouldn't cover anything I started painting and which probably could not be matched.
I divided the stuff into two piles -- keep and discard.
Some of the stuff migrated from one pile to another more than once. After disposing of what I could bear to, I took the rest home and put it in the cave, the name we give to a part of the crawl space. There's standing headroom and lights, but now it is dense with the stuff from the storage building, and I still have a lot of decisions to make. If do sell the house soon, I either will speed up the decision process or carry a bunch of stuff on one more trip.
Sorting through the accumulation, I think of my grandmother. She saved everything: the string that closed a 25-pound bag of flour, the empty 10-pound sugar sack, the gallon syrup jug.
The difference is, she knew the end use of the stuff she was saving. I have yet to get there.
Contact the writer at billatthelake@gmail.com
I am trying to rewrite that instruction, which I have followed all too well, or at least to redefine it. I am locked in a mental battle that parallels disputes over interpreting our constitution: strict construction or loose construction.
I have been a strict constructionist of my genetic instructions. If there is any conceivable possibility that I might be able to use something later, I've kept it. (And it has occasionally paid off: just the other day I used a piece of metal tubing left over from a boat shade, a bail from a five-gallon bucket and a hose clamp to repair a colorful little wind-driven whirlygig down by the patio.)
I am trying to accept the notion that I should keep only those things that there is a reasonably good chance that I will need. I'm not sure the bail from the bucket or the piece from the boat would qualify.
I have been given some impetus in my quest because we are thinking about downsizing our home.
I have already tackled my library and my closet, though much remains to be done in those departments.
But those have been minor forays compared to the task now at hand. Confronting stuff in general.
So, there I stood in the middle of a storage building, confronted with the reality of my resolution.
Various tools from past projects: a tile cutter and a grout float I bought when I remodeled the kitchen of an old house we owned in Montgomery.
A pipe flaring tool.
A gear puller.
I couldn't recall why I had acquired some of those items.
But realistically, would I ever use them again?
And the smaller things: screws and nails and bolts, all of differing sizes. Would I ever have or take the time to sort them out. An electric motor from a food processor, hinges from a glass door, things that I couldn't identify but which I obviously thought I might use for something.
Cans of paint that, even if it isn't a lump inside the can, probably wouldn't cover anything I started painting and which probably could not be matched.
I divided the stuff into two piles -- keep and discard.
Some of the stuff migrated from one pile to another more than once. After disposing of what I could bear to, I took the rest home and put it in the cave, the name we give to a part of the crawl space. There's standing headroom and lights, but now it is dense with the stuff from the storage building, and I still have a lot of decisions to make. If do sell the house soon, I either will speed up the decision process or carry a bunch of stuff on one more trip.
Sorting through the accumulation, I think of my grandmother. She saved everything: the string that closed a 25-pound bag of flour, the empty 10-pound sugar sack, the gallon syrup jug.
The difference is, she knew the end use of the stuff she was saving. I have yet to get there.
Contact the writer at billatthelake@gmail.com
Saturday, March 19, 2011
Spring Has Made Me Manic
Spring has made me manic.
Spring always makes us a little bit manic, but this year my case is extreme. Ordinarily an early riser, I find myself awaking even earlier and waiting impatiently for the sun to rise so I can be out and doing. (It is before sunup now or I probably would be doing instead of writing.)
I think there are a couple of reasons for my mania. The winter of 2010-11 seemed to have more consecutive days of unrelieved dreariness than most.There were not as may of those brief breaks when it was really pleasant to throw the kayak in the water and paddle or to take a long walk without bundling up as if for an expedition.
It wasn't just the past (I hope it has passed) winter that has fueled the mania. Medical adventures in the past couple of years, the heart thing and the cancer thing and then the unfortunate incident with the table saw left me more absorbed with self than with nature.
Helping with the restoration of the Smith Mountain Fire Tower and carving out hiking trails on the mountain have absorbed a good deal of outdoor time, but that's a whole other column. Around home, I managed to replace the decrepit steps leading from our dock down to the lake bed before the water got too high. I've raked dead leaves that have accumulated way too long and picked up fallen limbs; I finally got the shredder-mulcher running, so a lot of those will be reduced in size and returned to the earth. I got the lights on the patio working again and replaced the screen wire on the door to the porch. I wonder how long it will be before another child pokes his hand through the screen. Based on past experience, it will be before the summer is out.
I have been making some terraces with stones gathered from my neighbors country land = he says rocks are his principle crop = and planning more elaborate schemes to keep the dirt from washing down our half hill and into the lake.
Even as I work away, my project list grows longer. Dirty work clothes are a perplexity for my wife.She insists on washing them; I try to hold onto them for another day = or two.
"They're filthy," she says.
"I just put them on (meaning two or three days ago)," I insist.
She wins.
I have learned that I enjoy physical labor far more than I did when I was younger. The rhythm of labor frees the mind to wander all over the universe. The other day I found myself thinking of A.E. Housman's poem about the beauty of cherry blossoms, especially the line, "now of my threescore years and ten, twenty will not come again. And take from seventy years a score, it only leaves me fifty more. and since to look at things in bloom, fifty springs are little room, about the woodland I will go to see the cherry hung with snow."
Callow youth. I have reached my threescore and ten, and I expect to welcome a good many more springs.
There's one last reason for this spring mania: Before we know it, it will be so hot that the outdoors is most comfortably enjoyed by looking at it through a double-glazed window from an air conditioned room.
Meanwhile, the sun is about to come up; time for another cup of coffee and then out the door.
Contact the writer at billatthelake@gmail.com
Spring always makes us a little bit manic, but this year my case is extreme. Ordinarily an early riser, I find myself awaking even earlier and waiting impatiently for the sun to rise so I can be out and doing. (It is before sunup now or I probably would be doing instead of writing.)
I think there are a couple of reasons for my mania. The winter of 2010-11 seemed to have more consecutive days of unrelieved dreariness than most.There were not as may of those brief breaks when it was really pleasant to throw the kayak in the water and paddle or to take a long walk without bundling up as if for an expedition.
It wasn't just the past (I hope it has passed) winter that has fueled the mania. Medical adventures in the past couple of years, the heart thing and the cancer thing and then the unfortunate incident with the table saw left me more absorbed with self than with nature.
Helping with the restoration of the Smith Mountain Fire Tower and carving out hiking trails on the mountain have absorbed a good deal of outdoor time, but that's a whole other column. Around home, I managed to replace the decrepit steps leading from our dock down to the lake bed before the water got too high. I've raked dead leaves that have accumulated way too long and picked up fallen limbs; I finally got the shredder-mulcher running, so a lot of those will be reduced in size and returned to the earth. I got the lights on the patio working again and replaced the screen wire on the door to the porch. I wonder how long it will be before another child pokes his hand through the screen. Based on past experience, it will be before the summer is out.
I have been making some terraces with stones gathered from my neighbors country land = he says rocks are his principle crop = and planning more elaborate schemes to keep the dirt from washing down our half hill and into the lake.
Even as I work away, my project list grows longer. Dirty work clothes are a perplexity for my wife.She insists on washing them; I try to hold onto them for another day = or two.
"They're filthy," she says.
"I just put them on (meaning two or three days ago)," I insist.
She wins.
I have learned that I enjoy physical labor far more than I did when I was younger. The rhythm of labor frees the mind to wander all over the universe. The other day I found myself thinking of A.E. Housman's poem about the beauty of cherry blossoms, especially the line, "now of my threescore years and ten, twenty will not come again. And take from seventy years a score, it only leaves me fifty more. and since to look at things in bloom, fifty springs are little room, about the woodland I will go to see the cherry hung with snow."
Callow youth. I have reached my threescore and ten, and I expect to welcome a good many more springs.
There's one last reason for this spring mania: Before we know it, it will be so hot that the outdoors is most comfortably enjoyed by looking at it through a double-glazed window from an air conditioned room.
Meanwhile, the sun is about to come up; time for another cup of coffee and then out the door.
Contact the writer at billatthelake@gmail.com
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Just Call Me ... Bob?
My parents saddled me with the given name of William, which naturally evolved into Bill. I was named after my father, whose named was David Herbert, but who for some reason had acquired the nickname Bill.
There's nothing intrinsically wrong the name Bill. It's just that the name Bill Brown is so common that even the smallest burg has two or three. And not all of them are people whom you wish to be confused with. Every time we've ever purchased a house, I have had to sign affidavits that I am not the Blll Brown who has had a mortgage foreclosed, filed bankruptcy, or has some other blot on his record.
When your last name is Brown, you definitely need a given name – or nickname – that has more than one syllable.
From childhood to high school graduation, people called me Billy; some people in my hometown still call me Billy. But when I got to college, every automatically called me Bill – it sounded more grownup, I think – and it has been Bill ever since.
Except that it hasn't been, and I can't exactly blame my parents, though I think have a first and last name start with the same letter is at least a contributing factor.
It didn't begin until after I graduated from college, but since then, an amazing number of people get fixed into their minds that my name is Bob.
It is not just strangers to whom I am introduced as Bill and who two minutes later are calling me Bob. As a young reporter, I covered City Hall in St. Petersburg, Fla. On my news gathering rounds, I stopped in the city manager's office every day. About half of the time the receptionist greeted me as Bob. I would correct her, and I would be Bill for a day or two, but then I would revert to Bob. Her explanation for the name confusion was, "You just look like a Bob."
I suppose Shakespeare (or Juliet) was right, but still I used to bridle at being called Bob. No longer, though. People whom I see regularly, including one whose own nickname is Bill, alternate between calling me Bill and Bob. I just smile and respond to whatever name they call me; I guess if I ever run for office, I will have to put my name on the ballot as Blll Bob Brown.
(My wife, whose given name is Adelaide, has a totally different problem. No one calls her Shirley or Barbara or Sue. But they can't seem to say Adelaide. It comes out Adeline, Adalie, and even Natalie. Like me, she's learned to put up with it.)
Still, I wonder what a Bob looks like.
Contact the writer at billatthelake@gmail.com
There's nothing intrinsically wrong the name Bill. It's just that the name Bill Brown is so common that even the smallest burg has two or three. And not all of them are people whom you wish to be confused with. Every time we've ever purchased a house, I have had to sign affidavits that I am not the Blll Brown who has had a mortgage foreclosed, filed bankruptcy, or has some other blot on his record.
When your last name is Brown, you definitely need a given name – or nickname – that has more than one syllable.
From childhood to high school graduation, people called me Billy; some people in my hometown still call me Billy. But when I got to college, every automatically called me Bill – it sounded more grownup, I think – and it has been Bill ever since.
Except that it hasn't been, and I can't exactly blame my parents, though I think have a first and last name start with the same letter is at least a contributing factor.
It didn't begin until after I graduated from college, but since then, an amazing number of people get fixed into their minds that my name is Bob.
It is not just strangers to whom I am introduced as Bill and who two minutes later are calling me Bob. As a young reporter, I covered City Hall in St. Petersburg, Fla. On my news gathering rounds, I stopped in the city manager's office every day. About half of the time the receptionist greeted me as Bob. I would correct her, and I would be Bill for a day or two, but then I would revert to Bob. Her explanation for the name confusion was, "You just look like a Bob."
I suppose Shakespeare (or Juliet) was right, but still I used to bridle at being called Bob. No longer, though. People whom I see regularly, including one whose own nickname is Bill, alternate between calling me Bill and Bob. I just smile and respond to whatever name they call me; I guess if I ever run for office, I will have to put my name on the ballot as Blll Bob Brown.
(My wife, whose given name is Adelaide, has a totally different problem. No one calls her Shirley or Barbara or Sue. But they can't seem to say Adelaide. It comes out Adeline, Adalie, and even Natalie. Like me, she's learned to put up with it.)
Still, I wonder what a Bob looks like.
Contact the writer at billatthelake@gmail.com
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