While Rome Burns, I Play in my own Little World

I'm going to write a post that ignores what went on over the weekend---ignores the 45 million dollar military/president's birthday parade, ignores the thousands of 'No Kings' protests, ignores the inhumane tactics used by ICE, ignores that the president is illegally sending federal troops in where governors don't want or need them, ignores the so-called "Big Beautiful [ugly] Bill" working its way though the Senate and will end up bankrupting us if it passes, ignores the political assassinations in Minnesota. I'm even going to ignore how smart and courageous the new pope was with his live stream message on parade day that surely irked 45/47. Instead of writing about any of those topics I'm going to be Miss Merry Sunshine and share details about all the fun stuff, frivolous stuff and mundane stuff going on in my little corner of the world. In other words, while our seat of government metaphorically burns I'm taking a mental health day.

Let's start with the customized paint-by-number I recently finished to the left. This one is of my oldest niece's oldest grandson and by the time this post goes live another customized paint-by-number kit should arrive from Amazon of my youngest niece's youngest granddaughter. I had hoped to eventually do all of my great-great nieces and nephews but my arthritic hands aren't going to last that long. So I cut the list down by eliminate my nephew's seven grandchildren and will just concentrate of those of my niece's which puts me at four done and three to go before hanging up my paint-by-number brushes. I still hold out hope that I'll be able to find a painting style that works in my old age---one where fine details are not required. If I ever get the time! They keep us so busy here on my continuum care campus that blocking out a chunk of time to experiment is hard to do. On the day this post goes live, for example, this is my schedule: Chinese restaurant lunch off campus with fellow residents from 11:30 to 1:30, Teaching Kitchen back here from 2:30 to 3:00, Mahjong from 3:00 to 4:30, a Magic Show from 4:30 to 5:30 and from 5:30 to 7:00 is a cookout in our park featuring their mouth watering ribs. In the morning and after 7:00 PM I'll catch up on publishing any comments that come in on this post. No one is forcing us to sign up for everything offered and believe it or not, I could have taken a couple exercises classes before the bus picked us up for lunch.

Also in the somewhat fun department is I'm getting a new computer. My current one won't expand enough to get Windows 11 and Windows 10 won't be supported after October 14th. The IT guy here on campus is also a shirt-tail relative on my husband's side who has taken to calling me Auntie Jean and he helped me pick out a reliable HP machine. (We're both worried about tariffs and a higher than normal demand causing shortages if I wait until fall to make the change.) When the new computer gets here he'll help me move my files and photos over to it, hook up Wi-Fi and my printer. I've also made the decision that it's time to join the mouseless community. So I've been practicing using the touchpad. I find it frustrating but already I can tell that it's a good decision for my arthritic wrist.

Speaking of my wrist, I saw my orthopedic doctor this week for a follow up on the Synvisc gel he put in my wrist and to get the results on my yearly bone density test. The day after I got the shot the top of my hand swelled up and I thought it wasn't going to work but he said that it takes time for it to seep in where it needed to go which turned out to be true. Anyway, as I told him it helped 80%. I can once again pick up things without dropping them, put my earrings in and all motions from the wrist to my finger tips is usually pain-free. 

I still have a great deal of pain in my forearm. For that the doctor did some more tests and I got a final and firm diagnosis on what is causing it. My theory from day one has been proven right, that the forearm pain is not coming from the crushed vertebrae in my neck or my arthritic wrist. It is 100% caused by the surgical mess in my elbow from a long-ago break---something he wasn't willing to assume on face value until he'd ruled out everything else. The only real cure is another elbow replacement surgery but at my age I don't think that's a wise choice, so he's recommending a daily steroid pill for life for the pain and inflammation and for me to quit doing anything that causes the sharp pains. That means---among other things---I need to rethink the bras in my life. Eventually he may have to remove the screw that he can feel poking out the surgical site but we'll cross that bridge if it looks like it will actually break through the skin.

And last but not least I'm four days into using the Pink Salt Trick. If you don't know what that is, I'll explain in my next post when I have more data to know if it helps or not. It sounds crazy, but I've done crazier things. Spoiler alert! One thing I've have learned: there are two Pink Salt Tricks going around the internet and a Pink Salt Hack. One is practically free and the other two are not. I'm doing the free version. ©

Until Next Wednesday... 

Accomplishing Projects, Horrific Mistakes, Tariffs and Disappearing Pain

It's two-thirty in the afternoon and I sat down at one to write my weekly blog post but these are the first words I've written on the topic. I got distracted working on a project that I started back in 2021 and just now I'm ready to push it over the finish line. It's a soft-cover, self-published (of course) book of twenty poems I've written about growing old and living on a continuum care campus. I'm only one click away from ordering my proofing copy using the Book Wright app at Blurb Publishing. The back cover content reads like this:

"_____ __ _____  is a continuum care community that sets on 40 acres in Kent County, Michigan. I was fortunate enough to move into the independent living building when it first opened in October of 2021. Those early days were very much like moving into a college dorm as we learned our way around, attended orientation classes and got to know our neighbors. The uniqueness of all of us moving in at once helped foster a close knit community that remains today and along the way I wrote poems…

There is a thin line that separates laughter and pain, comedy and tragedy, humor and hurt. ~ Erma Bombeck"

I'm at that antsy time when I want to pull the trigger to get the book published but I know myself well enough to know there is probably a dyslexic-driven mistake in there somewhere and I need to let the content set a few days before proofing it again. Just yesterday I was showing my youngest niece a hardcover book I wrote about my husband back in 2012 and I was shocked and horrified when she read the title of one of the stories within and asked: "What's a Barstood Ranger?" I can't tell you how many times over the years I've looked at that mistake and saw what I meant to type rather than what I did type---Barstood Rancher. Thankfully, there is only one copy of that book in print so I only embarrassed myself in from of one person---well, in front of all cyberspace now that I've confessed it here. ('Confessed' originally spelled 'confused' until Alex did an intervention.) So I'll take the time to let the poetry book set before I click 'place my order'. One of my reading/writing disability comes from a place where I memorized spelling words rather than coming from a place where I learned phonetics. Writing Hell comes in the form of Alex not working on Saturdays when I write my posts but I just learned that she does not answer to Alexis. So whose got egg on her face this time?

Side-note: the idiom 'to have egg on your face' as a creative way to say you are embarrassed came from the theatrical tradition of throwing eggs at performers that the audience didn't like. Obviously, this comes from a century when eggs didn't cost as much as they do now. 

Speaking of the price of goods have you done any tariff shopping? I have. I ordered a new coffee pot. I've needed one for a couple of months when I tried to clean my old one with vinegar and it took the paint off on the heating pad and it turned to rust. The pot works but it looks horrible. And my Waterpik infusion electric toothbrush and flosser had the good graces to spring a leak the day the tariffs went on. I did shop for a replacement part and they have them for other models which would have saved a ton of money. The replacements parts are under $20 while the new Infusion Waterpik is $173. I really didn't want to pay that much but I don't have room for two separate units and my gums have improved since I got my Waterpik. Once they add the 50% tariff onto the $173 it will be out of reach. I also stocked up on Burt Bee's products because they import the bee wax from a third world country that made the tariff list. 

A 45/47 supporter---just after I was bemoaning the outcome of the election---told me, "You'll see, the minute he takes office the prices will come down and the stock market will go up." I know it's petty of me but I recently sat across from her at the farm table and asked the group at large, "Did you see how far the stock market fell today?" She didn't say a word and I was enjoying the fact that she was probably biting her tongue while staring at her bellybutton as a conversation about tariffs broke out.

Other news on the home front: I saw my orthopedic doctor yesterday and he gave me a shot of lubricating gel in my wrist. Since it's given off label, there is no way of knowing if it will last 3 months or 3 years---no statistics are being compiled. And it's private pay because no insurance company will reimburse you for off label treatments. My doctor says the insurance companies don't care how much success is reported in the field because they don't want to start paying for joints other than the knees which the gel was first designed for. I've had great luck with the gel in both knees and in my shoulders so I had no hesitation getting it in my wrist. Private pay was $183 and if I only get a year out of the gel, it will be worth it as I couldn't do anything without pain or dropping things. I suspect I will get more than a year but with all typing I do, who knows. The gel shot adds a padding in where the arthritis has destroyed bone.

 Until Next Wednesday!

One Day, Seven Errands

Friday I ran seven errands and it felt good, almost like old times, except for the reminders that we’re living in the middle of a pandemic. One of those stops was to the veterinary’s---can’t say office because they make you stay in your car. The dog needed his monthly flea, tick and heart worm medications. $96 for three months’ worth. Expensive little bugger. But I remember back decades ago when a dog brought fleas into the house and we all got bite up and it cost a fortune to get a pest control guy to “bug bomb” the place. Levi’s also had Lyme disease a few years ago which is reason enough to keep giving him those preventive treatment pills for ticks, and every time I see that jar of heart worms in a dog’s heart that the vet keeps in the waiting room it grosses me out and I wouldn't think of dropping that preventive treatment. $96? That’s $8 a week I can’t spend on fast food or at Starbucks. Boo-hoo.

I’ve never really worried or kept track of my spending because we worked hard, long hours all our adult lives and never outspent out income, never lived on credit. But with the move coming up to the continuum care campus I got scared…enough so that one of my errands Friday was to swing by the place to go over the figures on why they think I won’t run out of money to live there. The way those continuum care places work is they have to pick up the tab if you run out of money so I know they run the numbers based on a formula where the odds are in their favor that they won't have to pay much, if any. As the guy said, “We feel confident you won’t run out of money but if you do you have our legacy promise that you’ll be cared for the same as if you’ve hadn’t.” They’ve been in the business as a non-profit for over 100 years so I trust that legacy promise.

He gave me the flow chart for my next eleven years of spending and income---the estimated number years I’m likely to live with two of them spent in their nursing home building and last year in their Hospice and/or memory care unit. It’s weird to see your life laid out like that in black and white and they generally don't show the flow charts to their future residences. But I wanted to be sure I won’t be eating cat food and worrying that all my underpants would get so thread-bare I’d resort to going commando because I’d be afraid to spend money from my savings accounts. I was shocked at how detailed that flow chart was and how it allowed for yearly increases in costs. I came out of the meeting knowing that after paying their monthly fees, taxes, insurance, utilities and cleaning services they’re estimating I can start out spending x number of dollars a month on stuff like clothing, gifts, the dog, meals not provided on my monthly food card, entertainment and whatever. It settled my nerves to have that monthly figure to use as a guide. I don’t spend anywhere near that much now, so I should be fine.

Other errands I ran included dropping off my presidential ballot at the township office. There was a line of ten cars in front of me. I also had the trunk filled up with books to donate to one of the few libraries in town still taking donations during the pandemic. It was near the CCC so I got to see the library I’ll be using in the future. I was going to sell that batch on e-Bay but I decided to let them go instead. It was a bunch of first editions and I only kept about a dozen. Selling that dozen will probably pay for the La-Z-Boy chair I picked out at one of my other stops on Friday. I didn’t actually buy it but I don’t usually get down to that part of town and I really wanted to sit in a chair I saw online. I’ll wait until closer to my move to place my order. It takes four months to custom order a La-Z-Boy. Who knew.

The main stop I made, though, was back to my bone doctor. He’d gotten the report on the carpel tunnel test and he thinks that surgery still would help the banquet of issues going on in my arm, even though I only tested to having a mild case. He said in his experience with carpel tunnel tests is they tend to “under report” the level of damage rather than over report it. I also learned that I was mistaken about him giving me a lubricating gel shot of into my shoulder when I was there in September. What he gave me was a cortisone shot, which if effective, would prove that the Synisc gel shot will help even more and last longer. The cortisone worked wonders on the needles-and-pins feelings I was getting while typing. So now I just have to wait until the cortisone wears off, the symptoms come back and then he’ll do the gel shot.

That treatment is not covered by insurance because he’s using it off label---it’s made for knee joints---and it’s very expensive---$700 to $2,000 depending on what pharmacist orders it. The more we talked about it, the more I remembered paying out of pocket for it in the past. By the time I got home Dr. Bones had called and left a message on my answering machine. He’d looked through his hand-written notes and, said I was right, he’d given me the Synisc five years ago and in the same shoulder. (He doesn’t put the Synisc in the computer records because that triggers an insurance billing.) So you know what that means, don’t you. If I’m going to live eleven more years I’ll be getting the Synisc within the next few months and again in five years and then I’m good to go wherever Karma sends me. No shoulder or neck surgery for me and I’m still trying to figure out the best timing for the carpel tunnel surgery which I'm thinking might be in the spring when my niece will temporarily be free of her granny-nanny duties and we might be past the worse of the pandemic and flu season. ©

This is the La-Z-Boy recliner I'm looking at. I like its mid-century profile and hope it will go with my grandfather's wicker settee and matching chair that I'm seriously thinking of using use instead of traditional living room furniture. I'm hoping the scale will look better than the bulkier La-Z-Boys. I just wish I could get the wood in a white wash. It comes in black, oak and brown.

I'm also thinking about getting new cushions for the wicker settee and its matching chair like the fabric below. And if I do, I'll get the La-Z-Boy in a gray. My connecting kitchen area is all white and gray and by using the neutrals on the furniture I'll be able to change and/or add pops of colors at will with throw pillows and accessories. I'm leaning towards getting the new cushions. These kinds of decisions are driving me crazy. I've had that settee in my life since I was a baby when my grandfather moved in with my parents and I'm really not ready to part with it but it's not comfortable to sit on for more than an hour. My niece says as long as I have one really comfortable chair for me what does it matter and I can always replace the wicker after I move in if I find myself I'm doing more entertaining that I think I will. Opinions?

The Bone Doctor and the Widow

I love my orthopedic doctor even if he is small enough that I could bench press him if I was into that sort of thing. And even if he often sounds like a wind-up doll where you pull a string and out comes a canned speech. In his case his canned speeches are explaining in great detail, what he’s seeing on your x-rays, what he thinks is going on that’s causing your pain and additional steps needed to gather more information before a conclusive diagnosis can be made. When I pulled the string for the last time today at my long awaited appointment and I got the speech where he walked me through the various approaches he and I can take to getting rid of the worst of the problems going on in my arm---needles-and-pins several inches above and below my elbow when I type and the feeling of dead weight at other times.

He quickly ruled out the failed elbow surgery I had back in 1999 that was x-rayed again in 2019 where it was discovered that I’ve got a loose screw off in La-La-Land in my lower arm and another screw that had backed out but is still attached to one of the two bones it originally held together. In my mind I thought that loose screw had migrated and was pressing on a nerve and it was time to get the last resort elbow replacement we talked about back in 2019. After a few touchy-feely tests he didn't even feel the need to x-ray it to know my theory was wrong. Nope, I just have to keep doing what I've been doing for the past 15 months which is not lifting anything above my waist and always keep elbow tucked into my waist when I do pick anything up because the tactic has done a good job of keeping the shooting pains I get when I do forget at bay.

He did take lots of x-rays, though, of my back, neck and upper arm but before taking them Dr. Bones asked me to do a series of things that he said are going to sound silly but would give him some diagnostic information. He really does like to over explain himself which I like because you never have to ask questions or get home feeling like you should have asked such-and-such. He had me hold the backs of my wrists together at shoulder height for two minutes to see if it cause the needles-and-pins. It didn’t. Then he had me stand with my head and shoulders back and, sure enough, the needles-and-pins replicated within seconds but it wasn’t until after he looked at the x-rays that he explained that if the needles-and-pins was coming from a carpal tunnel issue I wouldn’t have been able to do the wrist-to-wrist test. Evidently, carpal tunnel pain can go well up past your elbow.

The head and shoulders test, he said, is backed up with an x-ray showing I have an issue with cervical vertebra C-6 in my neck. He also told me that having the needle-and-pins happening only on the inside of my arm is another indication of a C-6 involvement and it rules out some other causes that stem from more general health issues---heart, diabetes and something else I've forgotten. Still, he’s sending me to see a hand specialist to get tested for carpal tunnel just to make sure it’s not contributing to the maze of stuff going on in my arm. Given how much I type a mild case could be likely. Once that test is done, he’s having me back in the office to map out a course of treatment. In the meantime, he’s putting me on a six day round of prednisone. I love that drug! Every time he’s given it to me in the past all my joints magically feel great and I feel like a 30 years younger version of myself. The prednisone probably won’t do anything to address the needles-and-pins, he says, but either way it's giving him more information to work with. Prednisone is in the corticosteroid class of drugs and according to Google, "It prevents the release of substances in the body that cause inflammation." But doctors don't like you to be on it long term---trust me, I've asked---because it can also suppresses your immune system.

Also going on in my arm was pain and clicking in the shoulder joint. He had shot some gel-like stuff in that joint five years ago and he did a labrum tear surgery in the area six years ago. Thankfully, all the range of motion tests he had me do today indicated the labrum tear repair is still holding up. I was happy about that. My great-niece-in law had to have hers done over already and we had our surgeries done on the same day. As for the bone-on-bone in the shoulder joint that is causing the clicking and pain in my upper arm, the x-rays shows it’s not a large area and he thinks another round the gel stuff will work well again, which I got today. Instant relief and I'll be able to sleep on that side again!

Back to how the cervical vertebra C-6 problem is treated. There are surgical and non-surgical approaches and my bone doctor always starts off with the lowest possible treatment to get the job done and he works his way through them until we find out what works. The first car on that treatment train is medications ending with surgery as the caboose. The other treatment cars in between the engine and the caboose are things like neck braces, injections and physical therapy. And he didn’t say it but I can see a new computer chair in my future. My posture while using my current chair is terrible. Whatever I have to do to get rid of the needles-and-pins I'll do because I can't stand typing like this. It's frustrating!

There are several different surgeries, including an implant fusion, that could be done on my neck but other than touch on the topic Dr. Bones is saving that canned speech for down the road, if needed. My next appointment is early in October which means this whole thing is going to take some time to work through. But let me tell you, I feel like dark cobwebs have been cleaned out of my head. I was so sure I would end up with the elbow replacement with its painful turn-buckle cast and long therapies afterward in the middle of my moving project. Knowing that’s not on the table will go a long way in getting my mojo back. I was/still am seriously getting concerned about the level of depression I’ve been nursing lately. It's not like me to be stuck on the dark side for such a long stretch. ©