Posts in the “personal” category

As I’m packing to move soon, this photo shows ~1/2 of my medical records/bills, primarily from 2013-17. I hope you never have a health problem like what I went through, but an important “lesson learned” is that there are specialists and then there are specialists.

The short story goes like this: My PCP sent me to an endocrinologist who ran a bunch of blood tests and three MRIs (including one MRI just four days after an angiogram, and walking immediately after an angiogram hurts like a son of a gun), looking for a rare and potentially tumor (a paraganglioma or pheochromocytoma, which have a 10% mortality rate).

Coming from a family of lucid dreamers and sleepwalkers, this is funny.

With the exception of our first dog, my wife and I always had Siberian Huskies. I can tell you firsthand that they like bones, big bones.

In honor of watching a Sherlock Holmes episode last night (the Jeremy Brett version).

A good quote from Harold Ramis about the characters in his movies.

During a summer many, many moons ago, I helped to build the bookshelves (“stacks”) in a library at Texas A&M University. I don’t remember its name, but the building was related to the animal/veterinary sciences program there.

My lasting memory of that project is that one of my coworkers would sing this song every day, “Hush, hush, keep it down now, voices carry.”

“When the soul becomes the warrior, all fear melts, as the snowflake that falls upon your hand.”

~ from the Kung Fu tv series

I don’t know if Twin Peaks ever makes me laugh, but it often makes me smile.

From the movie, I Hate Valentine’s Day. :)

One thing I learned on vacation this week: It doesn’t hurt to ask for the “biggie” hotel room. Turns out they had a really nice discount on this nice size suite, which was much more comfortable than the usual little hotel room. (This room is a “mini suite” at The Lodge at Santa Fe, in Santa Fe, New Mexico. From March, 2015.)

I’m a fan of many Tom Hanks movies, and I’m also a fan of his comments in regards to COVID-19:

“We don’t know what’s going to happen with COVID-19. The idea of doing one’s part, though, should be so simple: Wear a mask, social distance, wash your hands,” Hanks told host Hoda Kotb. “That alone means you are contributing to the betterment of your house, your work, your town, your society as a whole. And it’s such a small thing. ... It’s a mystery to me how somehow that has been wiped out of what should be ingrained in the behavior of us all.”

People who knew us at the end might be surprised by this, but one thing I wish I had asked my business partner more often was, “How are you doing? Really, how are you?”

Just like my Jenny Lane Cottage painting, this is another small version of a “faux painting” I recently created from a photo. This one is of a sidewalk in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

The complexity of this image was in removing several modern aspects from the original photo, including signs that were on those green columns, and cars that were in the street. Everything after that is what has become fairly standard work with Gimp for me, including making it look like an oil painting, and signficantly modifying and enhancing the colors.

FWIW, my week leading up to the Memorial Day weekend went like this:

Tuesday: Went to the liver doctor, he said my numbers are greatly improved, no worries, keep up the good work. A couple of hours later I started having chest pain, and eventually went to the ER. Their first two tests didn’t show any heart issues, but they wanted me to take a stress test the next day.

For anyone interested in the radioactive iodine treatment instructions I received from the hospital back in 2014 (for the post-surgical treatment of thyroid cancer)(which I’ll be going through again), here you go. As I note in the image, as a writer I appreciate the strong finish. :)

Wow, this radiation is good stuff. I just woke from a very long dream sequence where I was in three and then four dimensions, all at one time. It was similar to what happened to Picard in the last episode of STNG. In my case I was trying to help the people in the third dimension, who I originally thought may have had an earthquake, but as I later found out, they were in some sort of battle or war. As Spock would say, fascinating.

(A note from my radiation treatment,
June 24, 2014)

Another tequila sunrise. Virginia Beach, Virginia, November 7, 2009.

“Spirits are very fragile. Easy to break, but not impossible to repair.”

~ from a Monk episode

June 23, 2020: I woke up in the middle of the night only to find someone drilling in the back of my head. It didn’t hurt, but it was just like what you might expect, kinda like a dentist drilling in your mouth, but this was someone with a larger drill, drilling into the back-right side of my head.

This happened once before, maybe 1-2 years ago, and that time I panicked. I started trying to yell, “I’m not dead,” “I’m not asleep, either!” I just wanted to get the heck out of there, so I woke up quickly.

This time I was extremely groggy, but I realized that there wasn’t any pain, just noise, so I tried to keep my eyes open and look around. Unfortunately most of my view was obscured, and I could only see out of my right eye, and most of that view was blocked. I could only see the floor and the bottom of some people’s outfits. From what I could tell, they were all wearing white and lightblue or lightgreen surgical garb.

My favorite part of doing lower-body yoga work is that when you’re finished, your hips and legs are so loose that it’s impossible to walk a straight line. It’s like daily life makes your legs only go in one direction, but once you loosen all the joints, you lose that straight-line stiffness.