Last one

Okay, just one more post that relates to my leg. Some pictures, and an absolutely wonderful get well card. Linny is one of the women that I jump with on a regular basis at the Drop Zone in Snohomish. She and about three others (Christine, Cindy, Dave) formed a core group of fun jumpers (with about a half dozen others who come and go) that gave me one of the best summers in the sky that I've had in a long time. Until two years ago, every weekend was consumed with teaching the First Jump Course and jumping with students. Rarely did I have a weekend in Colorado to just play in the sky. Now that's all I really care to do.

 Linny, Cindy, Christine, DJan

Yesterday I got a call from Linny at the end of the day to tell me how much they all missed me at the DZ. Of course I was wishing I could be there, but I knew that even going to sit around and visit is dangerous for me, thinking that I am really well enough to make a jump ("well, if I'm really careful and ..."). I've done it before and been sorry. Linny told me she had made me a card and to go check my post office box, which I did. This is what I found.

A puzzle! I opened the envelope and put the pieces on the kitchen table, and went to work. Once I realized that it is a circle, I was able to proceed with quite a bit of speed (like maybe a half hour) to solve it.

Any of these pictures can be enlarged by clicking on them. Apparently Linny is as talented an artist as she is in the air.  And to finish my leg saga, I just now took the ace bandage off to see if I could show how well my leg is doing. You have to remember that Thursday afternoon when I smacked the shinbone, the place where you see a scab had a half-a-softball-sized hematoma under it. (For those who don't know, a hematoma is a solid swelling of clotted blood within the tissues.)

You can see the marks left by the ace bandage, but although you can see that there is a small amount of swelling, because of the flash you can't see the really awesome coloring that goes from just below the knee to the anklebone. (Maybe this last picture will give some inkling of what I mean.) I suspect that this discoloration will continue for a week or so, but I am now able to walk around normally. On Thursday I thought I would be lucky to be off crutches by now, but it is healing up very fast. By next weekend, if the weather is good, I should be able to go off to Snohomish and get my knees in the breeze (i.e., make a skydive).

Between my blogging friends' good wishes and wonderful comments and my dear skydiving friends (and oh yes, also my Facebook friends), I feel surrounded by love and feel truly blessed. Who could ask for more? I guess I could also mention my beloved husband who fixes me scrumptious steamed veggies and fulfills my desire for a life partner.
:-)

Health care

Cartoon courtesy of Seppo Leinonen. Be sure to check out his other great cartoons!

 

My husband and I have been having quite the experience with our health care coverage lately. We have different coverages, because of moving from Colorado to Washington state, and not being able to deal with the massive extra costs we faced. We are both on Medicare, but I take prescription drugs and he does not. We were on the Humana Advantage plan in Colorado, which was very excellent and only cost us an extra $20 each over and above the Medicare Part B.

Not the same animal here in Washington: the plan we had changed from $20 to $82 (each!) per month, and not very many doctors were willing to take it. Since I was in my initial year on Medicare, I had the option to opt out of the Advantage plan and go back to regular Medicare. So that's what I did. I also joined the Center for Senior Health at St. Joseph's Hospital on the recommendation of several people, and got a Medigap (supplemental insurance) plan from USAA. I also kept the Humana Medicare Part D, the drug coverage. We moved my husband over to Secure Horizons Advantage plan, which seemed like a good idea at the time. The Center for Senior Health will only take Medicare patients, not Advantage patients.

As long as you're not sick, the Advantage plan works well. But he got an ear infection last month and went looking for a clinic that would take the plan. After a long search, he found one and went to it; they gave him antibiotics and all seemed okay. Until it didn't get better, and he went back to the clinic (no doctors there, BTW, just RNs). So they reamed his ear out for a couple of hours, managed to perforate the eardrum, and sent him to a specialist later in the week. So much pain and suffering, and now it's been three weeks, he still has a hole in his eardrum but is now beginning (beginning!) to recover from his treatment. Yesterday he went back to the ENT (ear nose throat) specialist and goes again in two weeks.

And last Thursday I fell on the hike to Rainbow Ridge, really smashed my shin on a tree root, and within minutes it had swelled to the size of a baseball. Very scary. One of my cohorts had an ace bandage, so we bound it up and I walked out (only another half mile or so), elevated my leg once we got to the car, and my fellow hikers stopped at the first grocery store and I hobbled in and got some frozen peas. (These are the best to use, because they are easily broken apart and can be refrozen again and again, although they aren't any good to eat.) Everyone told me I should go to the emergency room. Well, the thought of sitting for hours, literally hours, in an emergency room to have a doctor tell me to use RICE (rest, ice, compression, elevation), did not sound like what I wanted to be doing. Since this ain't my first rodeo, not the first time this cowgirl's been throwed, I have self medicated. And I don't have any doctor bills, either.

That's the same trusty package of frozen peas draped over my left leg, up on the desk. Today (48 hours after hurting it) I went to the gym and rode the elliptical trainer for 30 minutes and did some upper body exercises. Now, as I write this, my leg is up on the desk, like this, and I'm happy that it appears I've dodged a bullet. But health care in this country is broken, and I'm hoping that something is about to change.

:-]

Painful Rainbow Ridge

You may be wondering why the word "painful" is included in this post, but wait, you'll find out. We had a beautiful day, and 15 Senior Trailblazers headed up to Rainbow Ridge, an absolutely gorgeous hike. This view when we made it to the ridge (after about a mile's slog through steep uphill wet and slippery trail), shows Baker Lake in the background and the fall colors in the foreground.

We didn't go very far, but once you are on the ridge, you are actually "there" and enjoying the fantastic view. Weather was great, cool but sunny. Here's a picture of 11 of the Seniors:

I was taking the picture, and three of the slower hikers were still making it up to the ridge, where this was taken. It doesn't show up all that well, but Mt. Baker is behind them.

Look at the colors we saw. Notice a little snow on the side of the trail, which was also present in places as we hiked. We went probably somewhere a bit short of six miles round trip, with some pretty steep uphill and downhill. After gaining the ridge, most of our uphill and downhill canceled each other out. The blueberries were profuse and we ate them as we hiked.

We looked down at this valley as we had lunch. It's so beautiful here, and we really enjoyed ourselves. On the way back down, the trail was very slippery and even treacherous in places. Although I had hiking poles, at one point I slipped and fell forward onto an exposed tree root, scraping my shin, which caused me severe pain. I lay there in the mud for awhile groaning, but then took a look and stood up to see if I could walk. Since I had obviously not broken anything, we resumed our downward hike. Within a few minutes, I was aware that my shin hurt like crazy, and stopped. We were all stunned to see a softball-sized hematoma that was obviously not okay!

One of the hikers, Gary, is a retired nurse, and he had a good first aid kit. We bound up the injured leg with an ace bandage and kept going. When we got to the trailhead, I was not at all shy about laying down by the car and asking my fellow hikers to take off my boots and help me into the car. As we had a long drive, I elevated my leg and as soon as possible got some frozen peas (the best!) onto the shin. Now I am at home, and I've got my leg on the table next to me, with those same frozen peas wrapping around it. I'm going to be okay, but I won't be working out tomorrow!

Here's a last picture of Mt. Baker, after we started back down the trail, some beautiful clouds began to join my favorite peak:

You can click on any of these pictures to enlarge. I am so happy to have had a wonderful, if painful, day in the high country surrounded by such outstanding friends. I'll be okay, don't worry!

:-)

Senior moment

Way back in the 1960s I had a revelation. I was only in my twenties when the Women's Movement was born, and I learned about Women's Lib, as it was called then. I was raised to believe that biology is destiny, that because I was born female, my life was meant to support a man's career and that having a career of my own was silly. My parents told me that going to college was a waste, because I would be spending a lot of money just to find a husband. So I didn't and instead got pregnant and got married (in that order), a mother at nineteen.

I read Betty Friedan and remember the chapter in her book called "Housewifery Expands to Fill the Time Available" or something like that, and I wanted a way out. I found it.  I did end up going to college in my thirties, night school after divorce. This story is familiar to a lot of women. But what stayed with me from Women's Lib is that I could be anything I wanted, that I was smart and talented.

Now the time is different. It's the first decade of a new millennium, and the world has changed. Just yesterday, I had another revelation, as profound in my thinking as the first one almost half a century ago: that aging and entering into old age can be transforming, just as freeing as the first revelation.

How many of us have heard the saying that they are having a "senior moment"? All of us, and I am no different. I've used it myself. What I learned yesterday is that having a senior moment is actually setting foot into another reality. I happened to watch a PBS show called Retirement Revolution: The New Reality and was stunned to see beautiful elderly people gracefully dancing and moving in ways that don't look like young people, but like gazelles. They have a dance studio in Manhattan called Paradigm. These people inspired me to celebrate my age. Carmen de Lavallade, 78, has been dancing for 50 years and says she has no intention of letting age stop her.

I also learned in the section on Use It or Lose It that the brain has a real advantage as it ages. The right brain or the left brain tends to dominate our thinking when we are younger, and as we age, we begin to balance this out by using both sides equally. This gives us wisdom, and the ability to think in ways that we couldn't do very well before. Mental challenge and stimulation causes the brain to form new dendrites all through our lives.

I woke up in the middle of the night with this post forming in my head. It's early but I felt compelled to get over to the computer to write it all down, because I want to share with you this exceptional program on PBS. I also discovered a wonderful link while browsing for a picture, an artist who has a website called Birthing the Crone: Aging into Full Creativity. Helen Redman is my age and has a wonderful body of work to explore here. Enjoy!
:-)

Neti pots

This fall, the air in Bellingham has been absolutely filled with pollen, mold spores, or something that is causing me to suffer from allergies more than I can remember. I know that in some places I've lived I have had allergic reactions in the spring and fall, but something in the air here in Bellingham has brought sneezing, itchy eyes and throat, and a nose that has been running like a faucet. This has been going on now for about two weeks. I finally gave in and began using some of my husband's allergy medicines.

First I started with ceterizine (generic Zyrtec) and found a little bit of relief, not complete, for about 3-4 hours. This is a 24-hour pill, so I was pretty unhappy with the results. Still sneezing, running, going through tissues at the rate of about one every five minutes. Next, I tried loratadine (generic Claritin) which worked a little bit better, but the duration of relief was certainly not the 24 hours advertised. I went on the Internet and then decided to double the dose of loratadine and was feeling much better, but I was still not completely free of symptoms. So, my next step was down to the local drugstore for some information on nasal sprays. I found out that loratadine is a much safer drug than ceterizine and confirmed this on Wikipedia. But in the end, the only drug that I have found to be truly effective is benadryl. It works quickly but doesn't last long, either. It is good for 3-5 hours for me, which is fine. I just take another one.

While I was at the drugstore, I saw a neti pot and sinus irrigation stuff for sale on the shelf, prominently displayed as being useful in treating seasonal allergies as well as sinusitis. My sinuses are not clogged, but of course the next thing I did was go home to watch some YouTube demonstrations of how people use neti pots. Well, as you can imagine, there were some hair-raising and funny ones. One guy had a video of him using a neti pot with the saline solution you're expected to use, then coffee, and finally showing him trying to use Jack Daniels (don't try this at home). He found that last one to be, um, intoxicating in all the wrong ways. One guy used an old workout water bottle. The recommended saline solution is non-iodine fine salt, a quarter teaspoon to eight ounces of warm water.

I bought one, and this morning when I woke I went in and brushed my teeth and used the neti pot. The warm saline solution goes in one nostril and out the other. It's actually quite soothing, in some obscure way, and I found that I didn't need the benadryl quite yet. While writing this post, the benadryl is six hours in the past, and I felt the familiar itching in my nose, so I quick went in and irrigated both nostrils. I'm still not sure I will be able to keep from using the benadryl, but I really don't like all these drugs in my system. Now this picture illustrates how it works, and I'm, if not a complete convert, at least willing to use it twice or three times a day to see if it does what it's advertised to do: clean out the sinuses and keep the allergies from taking over. The neti pot is quite inexpensive (maybe ten bucks) and some places sell pre-mixed saline solution with baking soda for soothing the savage nostril.

So now it's been seven hours since I last took any allergy medicine and have the benadryl armed and ready if necessary. Of course, it's impossible to know if I would be allergy-free right now without any treatment, because I can't very well do a double blind study with just me. I'll keep you posted, but I sure would like to know if anyone else has used this handy little pot with good (or ill) results.

:-}

My dad

My father was my hero when I was a little girl. He was a morning person, as am I, and my mother was a night person. When my sister and I would get ready for school, Daddy was the one who would make our lunches and see us off to the bus. I also remember him washing my hair in the kitchen sink when I was little, but I don't know why that wasn't done when I was taking a bath a night. (Daddy didn't give us baths.)

I was the oldest of six children, but it didn't really seem like a big family. My sister Norma Jean is two-and-a-half years younger than me, and we pretty much grew up together. PJ was not born until I was seven, and the other three were born in close succession starting when I was sixteen. So in essence, the first three girls grew up together, and the second three (my brother and two baby sisters) grew up together also.

Daddy was in the Air Force, and we moved around the entire time I was growing up. I went to high school in Puerto Rico (on the base), Rancho Cordova and Folsom in California, and graduated from Fort Worth, Texas. I didn't get a chance to make long-term friends growing up. I remember my parents and my sisters as being the only real constants in my early life.

Daddy was an enlisted man in the Air Force until the war, and afterwards he received his commission as a second lieutenant. By the time he retired, he was a Captain with a temporary assignment as a Major. I think he retired because he was passed over too many times and was forced out. After retirement, he worked as a TV repairman and did odd jobs with the city of Fort Worth. After I had left home, they bought a house on Lake Worth, across from the Air Force Base, which has since been shut down. He and my mom and three youngest siblings lived from then on in a single home, so different from my experience.

Daddy was a good-looking man, and Mama was a dish when they met in 1941. I was born a year after they married, and we began the typical military family life of following Daddy from place to place. He would occasionally go on TDY (temporary duty) alone somewhere for as long as six months, and then would come home to his family. I remember once when he came back with an English Racer (bicycle) for me, which terrified me. Every once in a while he would sit me on the seat and see if my legs were long enough to ride it. One day they reached, and I began to learn how to ride a bicycle. Although I was scared stiff at the time, I also loved it. By the time I was proficient, nobody could get me off!

Daddy only lived to be 62. He died in 1979 of a heart attack, and Mama died in 1993. She missed him terribly all those years, and when we would talk on the phone she told me all kinds of stories about him that I never knew. Although I idolized him when I was a child, I learned that he was many things I couldn't quite reconcile with the father I loved. For one thing, I learned that he was a lifelong Republican, and Mama was a Democrat! (I'm my mama's girl now.)

I love my family of origin, each and every one of us, as different as we are one from another. Two of my three youngest siblings live in Texas (one married a Canadian and lives up there), Norma Jean is in Florida, and PJ ended up living in Texas as well. I moved from Colorado to Washington state, and so we don't have much opportunity to get together. But I know they love me, and we are all on Facebook, and although some don't use it as much as others, I get to see the family through pictures and stories, and they also get to see my life. Their children (and their children's children) are much more proficient with these things, so I am blessed with connection. And I have you, part of my extended family...

:-)

Rainy Thursday

As you can see from the above picture, our hike yesterday was, well, in a word, wet. I knew it would be, since they tell you that if the weather forecast says it is 80% chance of rain in these parts, that means you could count on it. I waffled back and forth about whether to go or not, but finally decided that I would go ahead and make the trek if others also went.

As it was, 14 Senior Trailblazers showed up, far beyond what I expected we would have. We were scheduled to drive up to the trailhead in the mountains, a fairly long drive, to hike up to Heliotrope Ridge. Since we were pretty sure it would be rainy, we decided instead to go up to Stewart Mountain on the east side of Lake Whatcom, just 10 miles away. We expected just light rain and then occasional showers in the afternoon. Instead, it just rained on us from about a mile out until we turned around after hiking up three miles and 2,000 feet. (The entire trip is almost five up and another thousand feet or so.) Instead of stopping to have lunch, we hiked back down and went to the Senior Center for lunch.

Here you can see four of the intrepid group, considering what to do: go back down, try to eat a soggy lunch, or just keep going up. Even though we hiked a total of six miles in the rain, it was so much better than staying inside watching it come down, don't you think?

I have a question for some of my blogging friends: my last three posts have received comments that I consider to be spam (they just picked up information from previous comments and have an embedded link), and I'd like to delete them. I have spent some time in blogger trying to find out how to do this, and I can't. Instead of allowing myself to be totally frustrated, I figured I'd ask YOU if you know how to delete unwanted comments. Anybody?
:-)