Summer Heat and Bad Bones

While trying to research which animals on earth like heat as much as I do I got sidetracked reading about the Hippopotamus. Did you know their name comes from the Ancient Greek language and literally means ‘river horse’? Of course you do, you probably read Let’s Meet Mr. Hippo to your children or grandchildren. You probably also know they can run faster than humans, can hold their breath under water for five minutes and they spend most of their time in the water. Little old childless me missed all that trivia. At OneKindPlanet.org they also say that, “Hippos sunbathe on the banks of rivers and lakes to warm themselves when it’s cool out. They take skin care seriously though and secrete their own natural sunscreen to keep their skin moist and prevent it from drying out and cracking. The sunscreens pinkish-red color led people to believe that hippos sweat blood, but in reality, they don’t sweat at all.” I might not secrete my own moisturizer and sunscreen but I don’t sweat either....at least not until the temperature gets in the high-nineties. But it’s a good thing hippos have that secreting sunscreen super power. Can you image how much it would cost to cover a three-four ton hippo with Hawaiian Tropic AntiOxidant+ Sunscreen Lotion just to have it submerse itself under water and wash it all off?

This week was bone week for me. I had my old-lady required bone density test Wednesday and I've got the long awaited bone infusion of Reclast coming up tomorrow---that would be yesterday to blog readers who read posts on the first day they go live. Confused? All you really need to know is they aren’t supposed to be back-to-back like that but the pandemic has done crazy things with scheduling---or I should say to rescheduling. Which brings me to another question to ponder. Did you know that of all the vertebrates in the world the one with the fewest bones are sharks? Only their jaws are bone and everything else in their skeletons are made of cartilage. If my bones get any more porous I’m going to start living in a lake where I’m less likely to break a bone, assuming I can find a body of water without sharks or hippos. There’s something about their worldview that makes them both very aggressive which probably explains why mermaids are extinct. 

We all know about mermaids but I was shocked to learn that there was a male counterpart, a merman, who was first recorded in early Babylonia. When I was reading about mermen I thought about the Progressive Insurance TV commercial where they’ve photo-shopped the top half of a man to a motorcycle and a real man is asking him, “So what’s it’s like to be a Motour?” like he was a sub-species of Homo Sapiens. If everything on earth was destroyed by an asteroid but that commercial somehow survived and was discovered by explorers from another planet, they’d think the Motour was once a real life-form on earth.That leads me to believe that the artists from ancient Babylonia who first “photo shopped” mermaids on canvas with oils are laughing their heads off in eternity because people are still making money off their little mermaids. Today’s mermaid images, however, don’t have bare breasts. Ponder that one. Where do modern mermaids shop for bras, for example? And wrap your head around the fact that people a couple of centuries back could go to museums and view bare breasts around every corner but showing a woman’s ankles while getting out of a carriage was considered scandalous. Now, seeing ankles is benign but---gasp---don’t let a woman nurse a baby in public. Don’t get me started on that rant. I’ve got one.

Back to my bones: And back to the Greek Language. Did you know that ‘osteoporosis’ literally means “porous bone” and a bone density test is shorthand for a bone mineral density test? It measures the calcium and minerals deposits or lack thereof in our bones. My appointment was just to see the doctor’s x-ray technician and I have to go back on the 29^th for him to talk to me about the six pictures she took. Actually, she took eight but she had to delete two because she forgot that I’m left-handed and the doctor wants hip shots on the non-dominate side of the body as part of his bone density set of scans. 

Surprisingly, the orthopedist’s office was the least Covid-19 careful place I’ve been to since our state started opening back up. That surprised me. Tomorrow I’ll spend the afternoon at the infusion center getting my bone infusion treatment, and judging by the ‘rules of engagement’ the infusion center outlined over the phone, they will be more careful that the orthopedist's office and slightly less care than my hair salon. Wish me luck but of course by the time you read this it will be pass time for your wishes to work. However, I can tell you one thing, I won’t turn down the heated blankets they offer you at the infusion center. It’s always cold in that place! ©

 

The Mermaid by John William Waterhouse

In 1842 Dr. J. Griffin, presented this dried specimen to the British Lyceum of Natural History as proof that mermaids were real, turned out to be the tail of a fish and the shriveled head and torso of a monkey. He and P.T. Barnum were both in the business of presenting oddities to the public for the price of a ticket.

Summer Day Trip and Broken Bones

Michigan has had some great days weather-wise this week---sunny, but not so humid that people were complaining about the temperatures in the 80s. Wednesday I spent some quality time with one of my Gathering Girls friends in a small town thirty-five minutes away. The town was founded on the Flat River in the early 1800s as a trading post but it’s only grown to a population of around 4,000 people. Their downtown area is a collection of quaint old buildings covering a six block area that is over shadowed by a massive 228 year old mill that today “produces 1,300,000 pounds of flour and 500,000 pounds of whole wheat products each day.” 

But the town’s most famous claim to fame is a riverboat named The Robert E. Lee that they use as a showboat. When the White Supremacists had their rally in Charlottesville, VA, last summer it set off shockwaves that were felt all the way up here in Michigan. A hot debate and a petition drive to change the name of that showboat became the area’s obsession and it ended with one of the city’s leaders resigning and the others making plans to change the showboat’s name. "A few coats of paint and a steady hand is all we need to take the right symbolic steps to denounce racism." 

Back on topic: The outside of the buildings on Main Street might be turn-of-century quaint but the two art places we explored first were anything but quaint inside. Except for the original hardwood floors, they’d been gutted and were sleek and modern---high black ceilings, white walls, with great lighting that showcased a large assortment of work by artists working in various medium. The one place was an artists’ co-op, the other was an impressive art gallery and the theme of the show we saw was places in Michigan. My God, I could not believe the prices on the paintings---mid hundreds to low thousands! Made me wish I was still an obsessed wanna-be artist. Also makes me glad I still have all my framing and mat cutting tools, should I ever decide to become the next Grandma Moses. 

We also found some nice antique shops after lunch. The place where we ate, though, had great food but it was tacky with a capital T. It’s been a long time since I’ve eaten in a place so in need of a good purging and a makeover. But it’s good to be reminded from time to time that while I might come home to messy house once in a while it’s never truly dirty or neglected for lack of money to keep it up. That sad little place with its friendly waitress and cook sporting prison tattoos was well pass its heydays. A set of sliders at the back hinted at its former glory. They once opened to a long-gone deck that would have given outdoor diners a good view of the showboat parked across the river. But one thing struck my funny bone---a sign on the front door about wiping your feet before coming inside. The inside was so at odds with what that sign suggested we’d find---I expected prissy pristine---and that still cracks me up.

Speaking of bones, I saw my orthopedic doctor the next day to get the results of my yearly bone density test. Great news! There was so much improvement from the Reclast infusions that my risk factor for a major osteoporotic fracture (hips and back) had gone significantly down. Now for the bad news. I had surgery at my elbow back in 1999---broken bones in three places---and it’s been hurting again, so I asked the doctor to x-ray it. When he looked at my images he said, “Wow! What we’re looking at here is a massive surgical failure.” One of the screws that once held the top of the ulna bone to the bottom was floating around free-willy in my flesh. Another screw that looked to be around 1 ½ or 2 inches long had backed half way out and was no longer anchoring the ulna bone to the radius bone like it was supposed to do, and a stress fracture was showing a few inches below the screw. 

The bottom line: Every time I lean on a table, for example, or put any kind of pressure on the back of my lower arm---I get a sharp pain. And I get a duller pain in my forearm every time I rotate my wrist. He said to fix the mess would be “a major ordeal involving a very long surgery, weeks in a cast and  months of physical therapy” then he added a few more 'wows' like he couldn't believe what he was seeing. The good news is I’m not getting a pinched nerve---yet---but that may happen down the road, he said, as the ulna bone floats around unconnected at the top and with the screw migrating around. I can never again lift anything above my waist. Bench pressing is out, too, which I was actually doing last year at the YMCA.

I have to go back to the doctor in two weeks after taking a round of Prednisone to reduce inflammation and we’ll go from there. He did not do the original surgery but he replaced both my knees, fixed a broken radius and wrist in my other arm and repaired my shoulder not long ago but he's not known for shoving patients into surgery without trying other things first. Laser energy waves therapy for pain management was mentioned along with a few other tricks he has up his sleeve. And here I was wishing I was just being a wuss and the old surgical point was starting to act like a weather barometer. ©

P.S. In case anyone is wondering, this elbow is not the same one that I had the Popeye’s Elbow in earlier this year.

Bones and Ballsy Old Men

On June 29^th, 2016 I wrote in this blog, “I got some great news this week from my orthopedic doctor. The results of my bone density scans show that I’ve lowered my risk factor for a major osteoporotic fracture down from last year’s 20% to this year’s 15%. The Reclast infusion did its job---far better than the Forteo injections did after two years of doing them daily which only lowered the risk factor down by 1.3%.” Guess what, this year’s bone density scans show my risk factor for a major osteoporotic fracture is up to 16% which means my second Reclast infusion didn’t repeat its magic on my bones. It’s disappointing, especially considering I’ve also been doing intense weight bearing exercises that are recommended for building bones. The only thing left to do that is supposed to help to keep osteoporosis at bay is to give up coffee. Would life be worth living without it? I gave up soda pop several years ago and lived to tell about it. Some people don’t realize it, but there’s a correlation between having a high intake of pop and having an elevated risk of fractures. Experts aren’t sure why but some say it could be just the fact that if you’re drinking a lot of pop you aren’t drinking enough milk.

My doctor does full body scans from three different angles, not the one wrist test that a lot of women get and, he says, if my insurance doesn’t cover the cost of doing those scans every year, he will. Many companies only cover a bone density test every two years. But I have bad bones---four broken since menopause plus I’ve had two badly needed knee replacements---a by-product of taking thyroid medication since I was a kid. It leeches the calcium out of your bones. That’s the trouble with a lot of medications, they cure one thing while causing another problem in your body. I did learn something new regarding calcium. I’m taking calcium carbonate which needs to be taken with food, 600 mg taken twice a day but sometimes that second pill doesn’t get taken because I either ate away from home or I was doing a two-shakes-one-meal day. If I pick up some calcium citrate it can be taken with or without food and there’s a better chance I’ll get my full 1,200 mg in every single day.

The next day I decided to take myself out to lunch and while following another car on a five lane road, both of us going about 50 miles an hour, a tall, lean figure on a skateboard swooped out of a condo driveway, crossing closely in front of the other car and into the center lane. The other driver slammed on his breaks and so did I, thankful that he didn’t hit the skateboarder and I didn’t end up in the backseat of the other car. As the skateboarder got within six feet of my driver’s side window it hit me: The damn fool was my age! No helmet or other safety gear, gray hair, white beard and he was wearing a pair of leather goggles like drivers of early automobiles did to keep the bugs and dust out of their eyes. I wondered briefly if it was the same pair of goggles I sold in my antique booth after my husband died. As I watched the ballsy old guy in my rear view mirror I had no doubt he planned on staying in the center lane all the way to the baseball park over a mile down the road where skateboarders are known to congregate.

After I placed my order for a tuna melt on rye at the Guy-Land Cafeteria I thought about Mr. Ballsy who was probably at the park by then, matching his skateboarding skills up against kids young enough to be his great grandchildren. And I didn’t know whether to admire his careless disregard for his personal safety or to scorn him for scaring the stuffing out of drivers. But he did get me thinking. Why is it that some people, like him, don’t give up their younger self’s passion while others, like me, are afraid to even rekindle ours? Case in point: In 2016 I re-purposed my guest room into a multipurpose hobby room/guest room with a whole side devoted to painting. I hauled my oak easel out of storage, unpacked my old supplies, bought some new ones, prepared some canvases and I fully planned on picking up where I left off in the mid-1980s, before family obligations and caregiving took over my life. I still have not mixed my first palette of paints. Will my old talent come back? Will my cataracts dull my color sense too much? Will I still enjoy the process of honing a craft that takes more years than I've got left to become famous like my younger self dreamed of being? I’m afraid---afraid of the answers to those questions. Why can’t I be like that ballsy old man and say to myself: Damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead! A phrase that’s come to mean, of course, that despite the known risks continue forward with gusto. I think I’ll google that old Civil War Naval battle cry and see if I can find it cross-stitched on a throw pillow. That might help inspire me to overcome my fear of failure in an area where I once excelled. ©

 Link to the re-purposed room with photos