Cold Bathrooms, Warm Hoodies and Miracle Power of Honey

Some Fridays arrive with a clear topic in hand; others show up with a blank screen, a stubborn pocket door, and a foot wrapped like a mummy. Jean’s week delivered all three — plus a few medical mysteries, a sweatshirt that now fits like she borrowed it from a linebacker, and a maintenance man who unintentionally rescued her from writer’s block. Settle in for her latest dispatch from the continuum of independence, cold bathrooms, and the winding road of wound care...AI

How many times am I going to start a blog post by saying I’m staring at a blank computer screen without the foggiest notion of what to write about? This time, however, there’s a maintenance man on the other side of my apartment trying to fix the pocket door between my en‑suite bathroom and the bedroom. It only slides halfway and then gets stuck. And you’re probably wondering why it matters, since I live alone and privacy shouldn’t be a problem.

For one thing, I’m a creature of habit, and I’m afraid I’ll forget not to close it, get trapped in the bathroom, and die of starvation before anyone finds me — which isn’t entirely true. If I didn’t show up on Mahjong day to set up the tables, mats, and sets, someone would come looking for me. I may be wrong, but I think it takes longer than six days to die of starvation, assuming I got trapped on a Wednesday night. Although knowing my luck, I’d be the first documented case of someone starving to death in a bathroom with a fully stocked pantry twenty-five feet away.

But the main reason I need the door to shut is to keep heat in the bathroom when I’m taking a shower. This stupid apartment has no heat source in the bathroom except for a small heater on a timer that’s part of the ceiling exhaust fan. I’d add my own space heater, but there isn’t an electrical outlet anywhere except on the countertop — where the cord would no doubt end up in water and I’d die by electrical shock. My entire apartment is too cold for me. The heat ducts are close to the ceiling, so I can’t even stand in front of one to get warm the way I did in other houses where I’ve lived.

My favorite winter attire is a hoodie that says, “Yes, I’m cold! Me 24:7” sprawled across the chest. I put it on the other day and almost cried. I spent a fortune on that bulky sweatshirt, and after losing 40 pounds it totally engulfs me. It was already a size too big last winter but now my hands are completely covered, the body of the shirt is halfway down my thighs, and I have enough room inside to conceal an eight‑month pregnancy. It’s one of those situations where I’m both happy and sad at the same time — happy for the weight loss but sad that my favorite garment now makes me look like a toddler who wandered off wearing her father’s college sweatshirt.

I still have more weight to lose, so I’m trying not to buy anything new. Like most people whose weight has been up and down their entire lives, I had a stash of clothing stored away in a box labeled “Too Small.” They are just right now. So I’ll be okay until around Christmas, when I hope to be in new territory with a number on the scale I haven’t seen since I was forty. I thank the gods of science who developed Zepbound for that possibility, and I curse the gods of misfortune who gave me a foot wound that’s preventing me from walking my butt off — literally.

And finally, I found my topic to blog about: updates on my foot.

I’ve been to the wound center three times now, and I can actually see progress. And guess what they’re having me dress the wound with. If you said scoparium honey, you’d get the kewpie doll. AI says scoparium honey “is a unique monofloral honey produced by bees that pollinate the Leptospermum scoparium bush… produced mainly in New Zealand and parts of Australia where the native tea tree grows.” For wounds it’s “applied topically in medical‑grade gels to promote tissue repair and fight bacteria.”

But it’s a little more complicated than just dabbing it on. First I have to apply a cream that lessens the pain of cleaning the wounds (there are five) and let it set for ten minutes. Then comes cleaning the wounds with a cleanser that has “acid” in the title before it’s ready for the honey, followed by covering the wounds with a gooey, sticky infused gauze. On top of that goes a silicone foam dressing and enough tape to mummify my foot. At this point my foot has more layers than a wedding cake. But I still have to add a compression tube folded double over my toes and its liner. The foot doctor I was seeing before I started going to the wound center wasn’t even having me cover the area with anything but a cream.

As part of the hunt to figure out what caused — or is contributing to — the wounds I’ve had since May, the wound center sent me to a vein doctor because they suspected a “leaky varicose vein.” But the vein doctor said I have good blood flow going down to my feet and back up to my heart, and nothing that requires surgery. She recommended that I see a vascular doctor to rule out an issue in that department, even though she said that since I can walk 7,000 steps without pain, she didn’t think a vascular doctor would find anything. And since she seemed interested in spending Blue Cross and Medicare’s money, she also said I should see a dermatologist and an autoimmune doctor.

When I told the wound center doctor that, he made a sarcastic remark under his breath about her wanting to run me all over the place — which pretty much echoed what I thought. I didn’t tell him that she also thought he was wrong to tell me to cut back on my walking because, she said, “the ankle is like a second heart, pumping blood to our feet.” Don’t you hate it when doctors disagree? It’s like having divorced parents, except instead of arguing over custody, they’re arguing over my foot. Even though cutting back my walking has slowed down my weight loss, I’m sticking with his advice since I’m finally seeing improvement — which I never saw during the three months of going to a foot doctor twice a month. When I finally saw what Ms. Foot Doctor was billing my insurance company, I was flabbergasted. $326 each visit on top of what Medicare was paying her! Thankfully, I got smart enough to ask for a referral and I'm now getting a treatment that seems to be working. Whatever is causing the open sores, they went from one open wound to five under her care.

Circling back to where I began — because I read once that writers need to do that — the maintenance man is gone, my pocket door works great again, and I no longer have a blank computer screen. Now I need to save what I just wrote so I can do some proofing and editing later today. ©

Photo: When I was searching Etsy for a photo of my beloved sweatshirt to use up above, I noticed they were having a sale so I broke down and ordered another one — two sizes smaller and out of the plus size category! They have a no returns policy so if it's too small, then it will live in my closet as incentive to stay on the weight loss course.  

When Fall Arrives With Rain, Clown Shoes, and Old Memories

Fall may not officially start until the calendar says so, but Jean’s campus has already decided it’s autumn — and it’s bringing rain, acorns, and footwear dilemmas worthy of their own sitcom. This post begins with her trying to keep her clown‑sized “medical” shoes dry on the way to a Mahjong mixer meeting, then somehow detours into hydrangeas that look like prowlers and memories of actual window peepers from decades past. It’s part seasonal update, part true‑crime‑lite, part “why is life like this,” all told with Jean’s trademark ability to laugh at the absurdity of her own First World Problems…. AI

The official start of fall in the Northern Hemisphere is September 22nd at 8:04 EDT which is the day before this post goes public. Rain is coming down hard and fast as I sit here at my computer. Normally I wouldn’t care but today I have to go to our sister campus to play a game of two of Mahjong with two of their residents as we hammer out the details to a Mixer we’re have in October. It was my brain child three years ago to have a yearly tournament and now it’s my brain child to switch the tournament to a mixer. A mixer will be less pressure on some of the old souls I live with who freak out over taking part in a formal competition. In past years I coddled and coerced them into competing. This year I don’t have the emotional bandwidth to herd anxious seniors like caffeinated cats.

Anyway, back to the rain. As I said, normally I wouldn’t care if I have to walk across a rainy parking lot but I don’t like the idea of getting my new, wide-ass shoes wet—the ones I bought because I needed extra room for the dressing the wound center is having me wear 24/7. (When I walk in them, I feel like I should be handing out balloon animals.) Normally on raining days I’d wear one of my older pairs of tennis shoes but my foot doesn’t fit in them in its present state. Oh, my God, these First World Problems will be the death of me. I should be grateful I have shoes in the first place and in the second place would it really be so bad if I got my new clown shoes wet? I call them my clown shoes because that’s the way my non-bandaged foot feels like when I walk in them. Grace may be one of my favorite words but it sure doesn’t describe how I move these days. Who am I kidding? Grace has never been a word that would apply to my body movements. I didn’t give up ballet classes because I out-grew my tutu.

Fall is starting to make it’s presence known around our campus. Acorns are falling. Pine cones and black walnuts are on the ground. And the trees across our green space are wearing a tingle of pink here and there as are the hydrangeas on the other side of my window. Those hydrangea blossoms are as big as a man’s head. A few nights ago I mistook one for a window peeper. That brought back a conversation we had at the firepit a few weeks ago when a fellow resident said she asked Management to replace the hydrangeas in front of her window because she kept thinking she had a window peeper. At the time I thought she was being paranoid but now I understand how that could happen. Or did she plant the idea in my subconscious? By the way. She has clout here. The hydrangea outside her window is gone.

Back in my twenties when I lived alone I had a window peeper. My neighbor across the street used to sit on his porch to smoke and every so often he’d call me to tell me someone was peeping in my bedroom window. Then he'd chase the guy but by the time he got around the corner of my next door neighbor’s house there was no sign of which way he went. We finally figured out that my next neighbor and the voyeur were one and the same. He’d just slip in his back door when the man across the street came after him.

I was in grade school when the concept of window peeping first touched my life. My aunt had one several times and it freaked her out to the point she’d call my mom to come over. My older brother and I were too young to be left alone and my dad worked nights so my mom would haul me out of bed and we’d get to my aunts house about the same time as the police. Mom would plop me down on my aunt’s couch like a tiny, pajama‑clad security detail with a blanket and pillow while the grown ups talked in the kitchen.

I never called the police about my Peeping Tom. For some reason it seemed like that would give the guy an extra thrill, knowing I was frighten. Google AI says window peepers do it “mainly out of idle curiosity, nosiness about how others live, or malicious intent such as stalking and voyeurism.” Since I’m still alive to talk about my peeper, I’m guessing, he wasn’t stalking me with malicious intent. But just in case you have the urge to try it, window peeping is a crime in all 50 states. Peeping Tom’s are prosecuted as misdemeanors same as loitering and disorderly conduct with punishments that could include up to six months to a year in jail plus fines. If you use a camera, it’s a felony offense and you could end up as a registered sex-offender.

I’m pretty sure Peeping Toms are quaintly old school now, replaced by internet stalking or visiting blogs and Facebook pages incognito. There’s a strong line, however, between stalking and lurking online. Lurkers are harmless and all bloggers have them. Lurking is defined as “passive observation without interaction, while stalking is a repeated, unwanted pattern of behavior meant to harass, track, or frighten a specific person.” Lurkers rarely let their presence be known where the same can’t be said about stalkers. I had a malicious stalker once but that’s a story for another day. How’s that for a cliffhanger? ©

From the Dungeon of Pain to the Mahjong Table

A week that begins in a wound clinic and ends in a Mahjong classroom is, admittedly, not everyone’s idea of a balanced life — but for Jean, it’s just another chapter in her ongoing quest to stay upright, amused, and marginally patient with the world around her. From medical mysteries to sparrow‑themed tiles and one very inquisitive student, this dispatch wanders through pain, persistence, and the peculiar joys and frustrations of teaching seniors a game with more rules than Carter had little liver pills… AI

I knew I was in trouble when the instructions for my two‑hour appointment at the wound center included, “Take a pain medication before your appointment.” It also warned that if I was more than ten minutes late, the appointment would be rescheduled. Since I’d already waited weeks to get on their schedule, I was not going to be late come hell or high water. I left fifteen minutes early, thinking I’d use the extra time after I arrived to let my blood pressure come down from the stress of driving. What I didn’t count on was a construction zone that added extra time — not to mention extra stress — to my normal route to the hospital. I got there by the skin of my teeth.

I know what you’re thinking: no one has skin on their teeth, but what do you expect from a blogger who also uses the tired phrase “come hell or high water”? The latter is a quaint 19th‑century way of saying you have “an unyielding resolve to complete a task regardless of extreme obstacles.” My mom used to say it often. “Come hell or high water you’re going to finish your dinner or you'll sit there until bedtime. Liver, back in those days, was my biggest obstacle."

The “skin of my teeth” idiom comes from the Book of Job, verse 19:20. The King James Bible, published in 1611, translates it as: “My bone cleaveth to my skin and to my flesh, and I am escaped with the skin of my teeth.” I wonder if Job ever imagined his words ending up in The Dictionary of Clichés more than three hundred years after that translation. That was one of my favorite reference books before Google came along.

Didn’t I get off track. Now you know what it’s like to live inside my head. Back to the wound center — which I’d rename the Dungeon of Pain if that didn’t sound too much like a video game. But all kidding aside, it went well. The people were super professional and friendly. The LP helping the doctor kidded at one point, “Remember, I’m the one who gives you Lidocaine gel, and he’s the one who inflicts the pain.”

They debrided the wound on my foot and found formations of urate crystals, which was no surprise since I’d already been told I probably have gout. (And no, I’m not a heavy drinker. In my case it’s a side effect of having stage 3 kidney failure.)

But it was a surprise that they also found evidence of venous ulcers, which they suspect are caused by a leaking varicose vein. Now I’m waiting for a referral call to set up an appointment with a vein specialist. God — another specialist to add to my contact list. But the wound center doctor said we can’t get the wound healed until we get at the underlying causes. Why can’t we go back to the horse‑and‑buggy days when one doctor treated whatever ailed you? Never mind the life expectancy back then was 40 to 45. They also had over‑the‑counter cocaine and snake‑oil salesmen to help you cope.

I have to go back to the center every week for God only knows how long. A few days after that appointment I clicked on my patient portal to read the clinical notes. At the end of a bunch of medical terms strung together like popcorn on a Christmas tree, it said: “Estimated time for wound healing: 4 to 6 months.” Four to six months! And for the foreseeable future I need to stop walking for exercise. There goes my progress with losing weight. If it’s not one damn thing, it’s two damn things — another one of my mom’s favorite sayings.

Change of topic: I taught another Mahjong class of newbies today. Five senior citizens, and four of them will probably make it to the end, but one lady is trying my patience. I’ve been teaching classes once a year at my continuum care community for four years, and there’s always one person who gets hung up on the stupidest things.

When I was doing the history segment of the class, I showed them my one‑bams collection of tiles. They all have birds carved or painted on the fronts, and I explained you can date antique sets by the style of those birds. “I don’t get it. Why are they all birds?” Ms. Dense asked. “Tradition,” I replied. “The word Mahjong literally means ‘sparrow,’ and for centuries that’s how one‑bams tiles have been made.” “But why?” she asked again. “I don’t understand.”

“You don’t need to understand,” I said. “It’s just an interesting sidebar to appreciating the history and artistry of the game.” She took up so much time with her “why this” and “why that” questions. “Why can’t I use a joker in a pair?” “Because it’s one of the fourteen rules for using jokers. Mahjong has a lot of rules, and part of the fun and challenge is remembering them all.” “But why do they have so many rules?”

I didn’t say it, but I wanted to tell her we’d need a time machine to take us back a century or two to get all the answers to her questions. You'd think that would be obvious with a game as old as Mahjong.

There you have it —another exciting week in my world. How did your week go? Bonus points if it involved fewer specialists and fewer people asking "why?" every few minutes. ©

Note: In the early 20^th century a massive advertising campaign inspired the well-known idiom, "He/She has more [things] than Carter has Little Liver Pills." They stopped making Carter's liver pills in 1959 so I can't be the only person old enough to remember this saying.

The first photo below is a collection of very old one bam Mahjong tiles made of ivory over bamboo. My collection (second photo) is much smaller and are mostly Bakelite tiles from the 1930s.