A FEW MORE THINGS
YOU MIGHT ENJOY
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WEEK 444
Week Ending November 18, 2009
On day 3113 of my Journey
Weight Watchers Goal
(the top of my normal weight range)
200.0 pounds
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Week 444 Update
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| Weigh-In Date: | 11/18/2009 |
| Weight: | 200.0 |
| Body Mass Index: | 25.00 |
| Average Daily Points: | unknown |
| Average Weight for week: | 200.93 |
| Miles Walked for week: | 0.00 |
| Miles Walked in 2009: | 191.75 |
| Pounds +/- for this week: | ±0.0 |
| Pounds lost total: | 39.5 |
| Pounds From Personal Goal (185 lbs) | +15.0 |
Week's Data
Wednesday |
Thursday |
Friday |
Saturday |
Sunday |
Monday |
Tuesday |
11/11/09 |
11/12/09 |
11/13/09 |
11/14/09 |
11/15/09 |
11/16/09 |
11/17/09 |
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200.0 lbs
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201.0 lbs
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200.0 lbs
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203.0 lbs
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202.5 lbs
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199.5 lbs
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200.5 lbs
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34.5 pts
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41.0 pts
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34.5 pts
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??.? pts
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??.? pts
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??.? pts
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??.? pts
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CONTROL PANEL
GRAPH |
FUTURE
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60-DAY
GRAPH |
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90-DAY
GRAPH |
1-YEAR
GRAPH |
2-YEAR
GRAPH |
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It was 6:48 a.m., in a hotel room in Vancouver, Washington, when I stepped up on Mr. Scale and he said, "200.0 pounds!"
I wanted to note here that on Monday, November 16, I had the lowest daily weigh-in number for the entire year of 2009! Finally, a number in the 190's. Okay, it was just barely in the 190's but it was there! 
I was happy for the maintain, because this week was anything but normal. I had to travel, live in a hotel room, have surgery, help Dotti deal with her laptop failing, and the associated driving and waiting times, and worrying about our sister-in-law who went in for major surgery, while trying to recover from my own ordeal.
Since my mouth was cut up, I had limited eating options after the surgery, and that threw everything out of whack. I was taking meds that were really upsetting my stomach, and all and all it was not a fun week, and it was all mixed in with nostalgia for our old hometown, where we had lived for over a dozen years, as we drove around streets and highways that we have driven hundreds of times before.
Our hotel had a complementary breakfast where Dotti and I ate each morning we were there. I found that after my surgery I could choose certain cold cereals that would soften well in milk, and that was the bulk of my breakfast there. The last two days I added a muffin, some eggbeaters, and a banana.
Lunches I either skipped entirely or we grabbed a Jamba Juice that I could eat with a spoon. (No straws after that surgery!)
In the evening Dotti might make some instant potatoes and blend up some vegetable in the hand blender she bought after the surgery.
I lost track of what I ate exactly for a few days (note the question marks for points on some of the days above) but I didn't do too badly on holding things in check, since, even though I had a maintain on my weekly weigh-in, I lost a pound in my average weight for the week…trip, weird eating, lack of journaling, and all.
On the other hand, I know if I try to wing it like that for very long, I always gain weight. So, I am back on track today with my journal!
The solid squares on my Weight Commander Control Panel Graph this week are nearly in a straight flat line. If you look at the entire graph, there are 4 hollow-square points that sort of jump out at you that are above the solid squares. If you throw those out, as aberrations—whenever such large jumps in weight occur, and then are followed with a similarly large decrease, they are indeed aberrations, which can be safely ignored—the rest of the hollow squares cluster around a line with a shape that very closely matches the solid square line, but that lies below it. That is why, the solid squares are falling. The final three hollow-square points are all below the solid-square line. I am still losing, despite the maintain for my weekly weigh-in.
The numbers on the left once again add up to a 4.5-pound loss for the past four weeks. So, I am back on the track that I left a couple of weeks ago. To keep that going, I will need to replace that 1.5-pound loss at the bottom that will fall off the radar next week. We'll see if I can do it.
The numbers on the right are still about the same. I am under what I weighted 30, 60, and 90 days ago, but still 2 pounds over what I was 1 year ago. But I think that is about to change!
The Weight Commander Future Graph is showing a losing trend for the future, and that is always good to see. It says I will come up nearly 8 pounds short of my goal for February 18. While that is not great news, it still shows me down another 8 pounds from where I am now. That is never a bad thing, especially when I am already inside my Normal Range. 
The Weight Commander 60-Day Graph is holding on track, as the line from the first point through the last one runs just a tad bit below the center of the data points. That means I am doing a bit better today than some of the earlier points indicated. Today's point is not the lowest on the graph, but it is very close. This graph shows that all is well, for the moment, on my weight loss Journey.
The Weight Commander 90-Day Graph makes me think of a pine forest growing upon a mountainside. There are spikes up, where trees reach for the sky, and then falls down to the next tree down the hillside. But no matter how tall the tree is, the hill below the tree roots is going downward at a brisk pace.
Whether it is sales data for companies, or many other forms of data that is graphed, the sharp, quick changes that occur are generally ignored and the general trend is what is looked at. If a company's sales were doing what my weigh-ins are doing, on such a graph, management would be scrambling, because it is a sharp and steady decline. I like it! 
The Weight Commander 1-Year Graph shows the entire past year has been a lot of work to move very, very little. The first point of the graph and the last point represent nearly the same value.
There are two major divisions that this graph falls into. First is the time from the end of the year through March, where I was on a very sharp incline and gaining weight in a hurry. The second runs from April through today, and it shows a recovery and loss of the weight I put on so quickly. The loss has come in two pieces really. From April through July I was losing pretty regularly, and then I lost my hold on things briefly in August. Starting in September, the drop has been fairly consistent.
Now it is up to me whether I choose to continue on this downward path and hold steady on my journey, or to let go and drift up again as I have the past two years. I am feeling fairly confident right now that I will stay on course this time. But I am not over confident. I have shown myself far too capable of letting go. It will take determination. It has to matter enough to me, or I won't do it.
The Weight Commander 2-Year Graph is a study in trends. If you drew a line starting from the point for January 6 through the one for September 6th in 2008, and then continued that line on, it would run very nearly through the highest point on the graph around May 7, 2009. The period from early September through early December in 2008, appears to be a force of will against the natural trend, and once I let go of that effort, I hurriedly made up for lost time and went back up to where I would have been, if I had never taken the downward detour.
This is what dieting always does! It is a temporary change in weight, caused by a temporary change in eating and exercise. Temporary actions, in this arena, always produce temporary results. It has to be a permanent, day-to-day change in lifestyle in order to create a permanent, maintainable weight loss. Hello, Al! Have you gotten the message yet?
Once again, if you draw a line from the first point through the last point on this graph, I have essentially gone nowhere for 2 years. As frustrating as all this is, I have a few things to be thankful for on my Journey:
- On my drive home, as well as several times in the full-length mirror in the hotel room, I noticed that my pants are loose on me again. My shirt is also loose and I don't look overweight.
- I don't feel overweight. Not only with my clothes, but also the overall feeling I have about my body generally, seems better than it did a few months ago. When I rest my hands on my legs I feel muscle not fat.
- While I have gone "nowhere" the past two years, I am in my Normal Range and not 40 pounds overweight.
At this point, I will try and hold on to the positive and focus on the future, while using the past as a warning, not a club—I know I can fail, therefore I must focus. Or as Dotti has said for so long, and so well: NO GUILT AND MOVE ON.
This week began on Veteran's Day, and I was very happy to get a card from my 9-year-old niece Katie (Dotti's youngest sister Tina's daughter), who lives in Virginia. She thanked me for my service in the US Navy, and I thought that was really sweet. After 13 years in the Navy, I can't ever even remember getting the day off from work as a civilian. I never got a card, and seldom even a word in thanks before. I was surprised, and it felt good. Naturally, I was very pleased that Katie took the time to do that. THANK YOU KATIE!
I also want to say that I never needed anyone to thank me either. I love my country, and I am happy that I did what I did. It was nothing compared with what many others have done for this great land. It was my small contribution, and it was my privilege to serve. It is I who want to thank the land of my birth, my native America for being here, and allowing me to add my small part towards sustaining it. I have seen a lot of the world, and the one thing I learned very well from that is that this land is unique, and I would never want to live anywhere else.
The United States of America didn't "just happen"; it was created by the blood and great ideas of men, who have been dead these long years. It was nurtured and strengthened by more of the same. When I was born America was strong, brave, proud, well educated, the most productive nation on earth, and populated by a people who were filled with hope. When they married, it was for life. They had just come through a depression and the most destructive war of all time, and yet they were looking to the future with happy anticipation. Rome, at its greatest height, never could match the wealth and security that the generation of my parents bequeathed to my generation. Luck, talent, great foundational ideas, and a belief in a Manifest Destiny all drove my forefathers to give their lives and fortunes for America. And I received the bounty from Plenty's Horn that they poured over me.
Yes I served, and I only wish I could have done more. More needed doing, but it wasn't in my power to do it. And still, I think I shall remember Katie's card for a long time to come.
Wednesday we had to scramble around and get everything ready for the trip down on Thursday. I don't use my laptop much, and so when we have to make a trip I must get my files up to date, so it will be ready to use. And we had to put our affairs in order, and of course, get packed.
Thursday was a nice day for travel, and the trip was fairly uneventful. The only issue I had was that my sinuses had been draining and I was taking Sudafed to try and dry them up for the procedure on Friday. There was about a 2400-foot elevation change during the drive and my ears were not "popping" like they should, because of my sinuses. I finally got my left one to "pop" but the right one refused to. (It didn't end up finally completely loosening up until today on the drive back home.)
This was one of many trips down memory lane that I was destined to take this week. When I was a child, my folks would take me up into the San Bernardino Mountains for the day, and we would have a picnic. There was this little creek that ran through a place called Barton Flats where we often went, and one time I clearly remember us floating a small catamaran-hulled boat that my dad carved out of balsa wood and then coated with wax. I was so impressed with that little boat, and thought my dad could do anything. We laughed and had a wonderful time. Those trips always included time when I had my dad's full attention, and there never was any drinking. Those were good memories, really good memories.
However, there was an offsetting bad memory to go with it, as I several times had trouble with coming down out of the mountains when my ears wouldn't "pop," and I would get the most excruciating earaches. Mom would heat up some form of oil, to a warm but comfortable level and pour it into my ear, and pack it with cotton to keep it from coming back out. It was a home remedy that seemed to do some good, but those earaches were nasty things. Thinking about them kept me at trying to get that ear to "pop," even though I have never had anything like that as an adult. I don't know if having my tonsils out helped or not, but I was 4 when they were taken and the earaches may have stopped after that. I am not sure.
During the drive down, I was able to get completely through an unabridged reading of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. I have read the book myself before and parts of it have stayed with me, but it is always a joy to go through it again, and it really made the drive down seem to pass very quickly. Dotti was working on her computer a lot of the way, and I kept my mind on the driving and the story. It was a very pleasant combination. (Just having Dotti near to me brightens every minute, and having beautiful scenery, and great literature pouring in…well, how could it not be a wonderful trip?)
As we entered the Columbia River Gorge, we had already gone over half the distance we were to travel. (The entire trip was about 360 miles. We hit the halfway point when we cross over into Oregon and hit I-84, the freeway that runs through the Gorge.)
We stopped to use the restroom facilities at this Oregon Shell station (because they have a law that forbids pumping your own gas in Oregon, I avoid buying gas in that state whenever I can), located just beyond the John Day Dam, and I took this photo, looking north into Washington, while I was waiting for Dotti to come back to the car. The bright yellow and red of the Shell sign was lit by the sinking sun, as were the shrubs in the foreground and the Cascade wall rising behind. The Cascade Mountains selfishly pull the water out of the clouds, and cast a "rain shadow" that creates a desert on the east end of the Gorge.
Fairly new additions to the Gorge are the windmills, moving their arms slowly in giant circles. The difference in temperature between the east and west ends of the Gorge keeps an almost constant wind blowing through the area. It sometimes gets really strong and sometimes it quiets down, but it seldom drops to zero motion.
A much older addition to the area is the solidified lava flows on the northern wall of the Gorge. Above that lies a smooth surfaced rise all the way to the top. Glaciers left behind loess, silt formed from ground up soils and rocks, which blew all over every which way, and covered the ground in thick layers. Up the hill, it still is covering the basalt, but down below the silt has been torn away. I have a book called Fire and Ice, and it covers the Cascade Mountain Volcanoes, but the name could speak to this entire area of the country; molten rock covering glacial deposits, which in turn are shaped by the cutting of later glaciers.
The upper third of the state of Washington was covered by a thick sheet of ice during the last glacial intrusion from the north, as were all the higher regions of the Cascade Mountains.
But Fire and Ice doesn't cover it completely. They need to add in Water, in its liquid form, to complete the trio, because the world's largest flood poured right through where I was standing to take this picture. The highest point, where you can see the exposed basalt rock, indicates the high water mark of that flood, where it is stripped clean of the smooth covering of loess. Needless to say, if I had been standing there at that time, I would have been dead long before I could have understood where the water had come from.
The Bretz Floods, or commonly called the Spokane Floods, dropped in from up around Missoula, Montana, about 10,000 years ago, when a glacier dam broke, freeing the 300 cubic miles of water that it had backed up behind it. Nasty business that. (In addition to what it did to the Gorge, the Grand Coulee and Dry Falls were blasted with the extreme flooding that has fortunately never been seen since.)
Leaving the Shell station, we drove a very short distance directly north, passing under the freeway, and right up to the bank of the Columbia River. The time of day was very special for taking pictures. The sunlight was passing through more of the atmosphere, as it dropped lower, stripping more of the blue wavelengths from the light and leaving the longer-waved red light to illuminate the scene.
The clouds were teasing the tops of the mountains, causing the windmills at the top to play peek-a-boo with us. The mighty Columbia River flows by a mostly brown land, but there is some grass growing on the bank.
Straight across the river you can see a huge rockslide, where a major piece of the basalt gave up trying and collapsed in a heap of pebbles so small they almost look like dust. But as we found on many of our hikes in the Gorge, like our
Hamilton Mountain Hike, those
rockslides are made up of bigger stuff. Nearly every hiking trail has its own version of one or more of these places where the basalt gives way and slides down the mountain.
According to geologists, the Columbia Plateau Basalt Flows, which we are looking at here, occurred about 17 million years ago. The dinosaurs had been extinct for tens of millions of years, and the glaciers of our last ice age were still far off in the future at that time.
However, Yellowstone Park was in its embryonic state about then. It is believed that a mountain-sized asteroid hit near what is now the border of Idaho and southeastern Oregon, and plowed or vaporized a hole deep into the interior of the earth. A crater 100 miles across was formed, and it later filled with lava and over flowed into what is now the Columbia Plateau, covering up the ground beneath for thousands of feet in many areas. In time that crater on the surface, carried by the North American Tectonic Plate, moved off the hole in the crust (at the leisurely pace of 2 to 3 inches per year) and healed up. But a new spot was then exposed to the fire from below, and every few 100,000 years or so it erupts violently, creating a new hole in the ground of immense proportions. The plate moves and it does it again. The path of that motion tracks all the way across Idaho's Snake River Plateau, and it currently resides underneath all those beautiful and very popular geysers, mud-pots, and hot springs at Yellowstone Park. It is about time to erupt again, and it will be like nothing mankind has ever seen in his history, written or oral, when it does cut loose.
Dotti took this shot of me looking into the sunset down a set of tracks. The lighting at that location was so interesting that I kept looking for new pictures to take. Weeds were growing up through the ties and beside the rails, tenaciously fighting for life despite the arid climate. Beyond me, sage bushes, some of the toughest plants on the planet, were climbing up the bank that supported the Oregon side railroad tracks running through the Gorge.
Shadows were very long at this time, but it is interesting to me that, from this angle, you can hardly see any of them running away from the objects in the photo.
I like this picture partly because of the symbolism it carries, since it caught me looking off into the future, when I had a lot on my mind. The next day I was facing a procedure I was not happy about having to do, and I was worried about how tough it was going to be.
When I was in school, it was a common insult to say, "You [or fill in the name] are so ugly, you would make a freight train take a dirt road." I couldn't help thinking about that when I turned around and looked away from the sun, and saw that the tracks ran only a few feet, and then, as if the train really did take a dirt road from this point on, they ended. The line the tracks once followed is still visible, but only appears to be a dirt road. The opening in the fence is also interesting. Why is it there at that point exactly? And how long has it been since a train actually used this line?
Off in the distance you can see just a bit of white sticking up between the trees. That is part of the John Day Dam. On the right, we see that the Oregon side of the Gorge has its own display of basalt walls to show off.
Here is a "rail's eye view" of the sunset. Off to the west the Gorge fades into orangish clouds and haze.
I took this shot only a few feet up and over a bit from where the last one was taken. I normally would only include one of my shots from a particular location, but these are sufficiently different from one another I included this one as well. Despite the desert-like appearance: the sun's tint, and the Columbia River paint the scene into a keeper for me.
As I said above, this week was one of memories for me for whatever reason, and this photo reminds me of when I was just a young lad and Dad took me about three quarters of a mile from our home and we walked along the train tracks. There was an old 19th century wooden train station there, with a platform a few feet up off the ground. The doors were locked up and the windows boarded. I think I was about 12 when it burned down (which would have put the fire around 1963).
Dad would put a penny on the tracks with me, and we would stand back and watch a train run over it. The penny was flattened out and I thought it was really cool.
Walking along the tracks, I would sometimes find one of these nails had worked itself all the way out, and was lying there on the ground. They seemed so big and heavy to me at the time. Memories.
Dotti me with the sun at my back, and it was time to get on the road and finish our drive. We still had an hour and half to go or so, and we wanted to have some sun for some of it.
I can tell from pictures of me that this year has taken a toll on my body. Stress and upheaval have an impact. I am hoping for a quieter year coming up.
When I got to the dentist's office on Friday the 13th—good thing I'm not superstitious—the first thing he did was to mount a crown on the upper left implant that has been just sitting there for over 8 months, with no tooth on it. I was happy to get it! That will help me to be able to chew on the left side and it will close most of that big gap that shows up too often in Photos.
Once the new crown was shaped and positioned and
 glued in, it was time to get down to business. Dotti took this picture of my dentist and I before he started.
If you look at this picture, I think you can tell which of us is more ready to get into it, and it wasn't me. I just wanted this to be over.
I met the doctor who would be handling the IV anesthesia, and he was a likable fellow. He had a little fun getting the needle positioned, and apologized for the pain, and said I took it well. Trying to keep it light, I said, "It's okay, I have had some practice," as I looked at my dentist. We all laughed and things were moving forward. For me they were about to stop, because the next thing I knew it was over and I didn't remember a thing.
Unfortunately, the surgery turned out to be more extensive than I had expected.
On February 18, 2009, nearly nine months ago, the failed implant was pushed partly up into the sinus cavity. My only real concern at the time was that it might shift is position, and perhaps cause damage in there. But I was assured that it was "stable" where it sat. On March 3, 2009 my dentist wrote to me, "There is no real issue with time...you are safe with that implant in there." So, I put rushing the procedure out of my mind and focused on trying to take care of Mom and watching out for Dotti, while we were in that mess.
We drove back home to Tiller on February 19, and I wrote this that day in an email to a friend:
We went to Vancouver mostly for my dentist appointment where they were going to test out that implant that was redone. It went about as badly as it could have. Not only did the implant fail, it slipped up into the sinus cavity quite a ways. It looks like a major procedure is going to be required in order to retrieve the implant.
I told him before he even tested the implant that if it failed we were done with that one. I don’t want to mess around doing it over and over again. Of course the reason was that I am not up for another one of those grueling days in the chair, with hours of probing, cutting, drilling and pain.
I am emotionally drained right now. I have had too many stressors hit me from too many sides, and too many times the past few months since Dotti’s car accident.
I told my dentist that if I am going to have to do something big, I want more sedation than I have been getting. He told me that he has started to bring an MD in for the big procedures now and has the patients taken down, not to a general anesthesia level, but more like the level where you are at when they do the proctoscope. I told him that sounded about right for me where I am right now.
Two days later, on February 21, after my friend replied, I wrote:
My reserves are fully drained. The procedure is far too intrusive for me to go through yet again.
If I had known January 2007 what I know now, I would probably have gone with the smaller number of implants, with no sinus lifts, and used a roofless denture. I am not sure that one day I won’t be doing that anyway now. I have gone through a lot of pain and other discomfort that was based upon a crapshoot a lot more than I realized before I started. And while I have no real hope of things getting much better, I still have at least one more nasty procedure to get through before they will be done tearing things up in there. I wish it was over. I really do. But wishing doesn’t get much done.
These emails show how down I was at the time, and I hate to say it, but I am not feeling that much better about sitting in the dentist chair, than I was when I wrote those emails. It is like "burn out"; once you get it, you may never completely recover for doing whatever it was that burned you out. Well, I may never be happy about sitting for a major procedure again. I don't know. But I do know, just from looking at this picture, I was not ready to do this again when they sat me down.
A couple of days later I spoke with my dentist on the phone, once the medications had worn off and I was feeling more normal. I found out that the “stable” implant that “wasn’t going to go anywhere” had worked its way all the way into my sinus cavity and had been rolling around in there for some time. My thought was that I was glad that I hadn't sneezed really hard.
As he was talking I was thanking my lucky stars that I had the good sense to choose to be sedated for this one, because I would have been very uncomfortable sitting there with all he had to do.
✓ He went in and fished out the implant. I have no idea how tough that was to do, but I’ll bet it wasn’t easy.
✓ He then had to patch “a couple of perforations” that had been torn in my sinus wall by the implant.
✓ He flushed out the sinus cavity with saline, before stitching up the sinus holes that had been created by the implant.
✓ He then moved out of the sinus membrane, and began working in the cavity that they had originally created (on February 14, 2008) by lifting the sinus membrane from its natural base on the bone. He scraped out all the old bone grafting material that had been placed for the sinus lift procedure, and also removed some bone that had grown into the area. (It was all supposed to set up into one solid mass of bone for the implant to reside in. But most of it never grew in like it should have. It stands in stark contrast to what happily happened on the right side sinus lift.)
He said that the entire area should be returned back to pretty much the same state it was in, before they started the procedure in the first place, in about three months.
Until then, I am going to be afraid to sneeze.
So, naturally, I was not feeling any too good for several days. I was put on two antibiotics, one of which I will finish on Thursday the 19th, and the other (good old Penicillin), I will finish Friday the 20th. Those antibiotics always play havoc with my stomach and I feel light headed a bit. I always feel much better after I get off of them.
My stitches have been falling out one at a time, and I think there is just one left up high against my cheek. It probably will be giving up its ghost pretty soon as well.
Well, my journey to the Mastication Miracle is drawing to a close. I originally planned for a maximum of 6 months for the entire ordeal. (The sinus lift was supposed to take 3 months to grow the bone and 3 additional months to set the implant, if it couldn't be set at the same time the sinus lift was created.) It began on February 14, 2008 when he put in my first 7 implants, and on November 13, 2009, I may have finally had my last session in the chair. (I will probably need a follow-up evaluation at some point, so there will be one more—easy one I hope.) It is very well that I had no idea how this was going to go before we started.
I do have a spare tooth. Yep, that implant number 7 he put in on February 14, 2008 is now sporting a useless crown on my lower jaw on the left side that is pushing against absolutely nothing. That will no doubt be a constant reminder of how this part of the procedure broke down. I am about ready to finish my Mastication Miracle write up. I have quite a lot to add to that now, and it looks like it is about to come to an end. I am not back completely to where I was before I had my teeth pulled, for example, I don't think I could bring my front teeth together properly in front to bite a finger nail, should I wish to. I haven't had a nail biting problem for more than a decade, possibly two. So, it isn't that I want to bite my nails. But the fact that I couldn't do so, even if I wanted to, shows that the alignment is different. So, I am somewhere between where I was with my real teeth and where I was with my dentures, with a definite lean towards my real teeth. These are way better than the dentures were! And they look significantly better as well.
I am on my way to recovery from the latest go around with the dental chair, and don’t know of any obstacles to it being completely over, and soon. If I am still happy in 3 months I think I will be home free. I don’t have any more procedures scheduled at this time. If I have a follow up inspection of the site to make sure all is well, my dentist up here will do it, and then we will be officially moved as dental patients to Spokane.
Right after I got out of the chair, Dotti and I went to breakfast at Shari's, and I took this picture of my lovely lady while we were waiting for our order to arrive. (She took some of me as well, but I decided to not subject you to them. There was some blood on my lip, and I looked pretty punchy. ) Every time I look into this beautiful face I am reminded of how lucky I am to have this woman for my wife, to love and cherish for the rest of my life. Dotti has a spirit of life that just bubbles up over everything about us, and I love her more than life itself.
I was famished, because I wasn't supposed to eat anything before the procedure. I actually sat down to a meal that was more than it should have been, but I was still drugged up enough to not be thinking too clearly. I had some hash browns, pancakes, eggbeaters, and a cappuccino. (Probably the cappuccino was the most out of line thing, because it could react with the material that the stitches are made of, and soften them up.)
I was careful, and only slowly chewed on the right side, leaving the surgical area alone as much as possible.
Between recovering from the anesthesia, the pain and antibiotic medications, and just being tired after all that abuse to my gum, bone, and sinus membrane, I don't remember much about Saturday at all. We spent the day in the room, and I slept more than usual.
That night, Dotti’s laptop died. She had done a lot of work on her restaurant pages on the way down to Vancouver, and she wanted to save that material, but the computer wouldn’t boot.
On Sunday, the second day after my surgery, with me on pain meds and all, I had to let Dotti drive us down to Bridgeport Village in Portland, to the Mac store. I really wasn’t feeling up to it.
But we were both very glad that the laptop decided to act up while we were down in the Portland area, because there is nothing like the Mac Store in Spokane. Our old iMac is still in pieces at LeRoy's house because we couldn't find anyone to work on it in Spokane. (At the Interstate Fair we did find someone who works on Macs finally, and may get that iMac fixed yet, but it still isn't a Mac Store with the facilities like this one has.)
Looking out of our window before we left, the autumn colors were everywhere. A couple of the trees in the parking lot had dropped their yellow leaves like snow onto the hedge running beside them. And speaking of snow, off to the east, the Cascade Mountains were showing a touch of white up along the ridge on the top. It was a typical autumn day for Vancouver. My first thought was that I could probably go out and find an acorn on the ground. I used to like to grab one each autumn, when they fell. (See my entry for Sunday 9/16/2007.) But I wasn't up to taking any walks on this day.
 I had my camera out as we were going down to Bridgeport Village, and I took this shot of the Interstate Bridge, and I was reminded of the day, back on June 10, 1976, when Dotti and I drove our red VW bug over this very bridge, heading the other way of course, from Portland over to Vancouver, where we bought our marriage license, and then walked across the street to a wedding chapel there, and we said our vows. A lot of water has flowed down the Columbia River and under this bridge since that day, and our lives have covered a myriad of experiences in the same time. From Midway Island, to Massachusetts, from California to Virginia, from El Paso, Texas to Spokane, Washington and back again, our lives have moved about in many directions, but always this spot, like a magnet draws us back.
As we drove past the junction with I-405, I snapped this picture of the Fremont Bridge, which crosses the Willamette River into downtown Portland. The bridge first opened for traffic on November 11, 1973, about the time I graduated from Navy boot camp. Another memory jumped up in my heart as I looked at this bridge. To the right of the area you see in this picture is an area called "Swan Island" and, when the Fremont Bridge hadn't even been in use for an entire year yet, on September 15, 1974, my ship, the USS Ozbourn DD-846, was tied up at the pier of the US Naval Reserve Center. I was part of the active duty component of the crew, at the time, and on that Sunday I was standing the Petty Officer of the Watch duty on the quarterdeck, wearing my whites uniform, with a .45 strapped to my hip. This bridge was in view from that spot, although I wasn't looking at it. Instead, I was looking at the ladies who were coming aboard for a visit, and this especially delightful looking creature, whom I later learned was named Dorothy Vilar. Not too many days later I was already hopelessly in love with that girl, and now, 35 years later, she was sitting beside me driving the car when I snapped the picture. Memories…
Just a little south of the Fremont Bridge was the exit for OMSI (Oregon Museum of Science and Industry) and once again it felt like a walk down Nostalgia Lane. We have been to OMSI many times: we took Jamie down there when she came for a visit in 2005; Jim and I went there on the day before the cruise in September of 2006; Dotti and I went on a family outing there with Rip and LeRoy; and of course when our son Glenn and our grandson Kai came for a visit in 2008 we went again!
The USS Blueback, SS 581, a movie star from Red October, sits tied to the pier, the planetarium and IMAX theater are running daily shows, and the science exhibits await the happy visitors who enter there. But today, that was not to include us.
 Here we are running along the lower deck of the Marquam Bridge, which opened in October 1966. I was already attending high school in Milo, Oregon when it opened, and I first crossed it in 1969 when the school choir came up to perform in the Portland Coliseum. Dotti and I drove across it many times in 1974, and then when we moved back to the area in 1995, my job took me this way nearly every day.
The route I used to take to work was the one the little red VW bug is on. Today, it isn't Dotti and Al in the red VW bug, as it was in 1976 on our wedding day, but it reminds me of that time. The road it is on leads to my old office in Beaverton, to Hillsboro with its Dawson Creek Park, and to the Oregon Zoo, as well as the Oregon coast.
But not only were we not going to any of those locations, we were not even taking that road. That is the other end of the I-405 loop, and if we were going that way we would have taken the Fremont Bridge earlier no doubt. Instead we were continuing on I-5 South, to exit 290, where Bridgeport Village is located.
We arrived about the time it opened in the morning, but they said it would be a while, more precisely—3:15 p.m.—before they could look at the laptop.
We first found a Jamba Juice at Bridgeport Village, where Dotti picked me up a smoothie that was something I could eat with a spoon and required little or no chewing. We next drove to a Barnes and Noble not far from my old work office, and killed the time reading.
I was feeling a bit better as the hours passed by, and so I went back behind the wheel for the return trip to the Mac Store. (From that point on, I was okay to drive for the rest of the trip. )
When we got back the guy tested the computer and found that the hard drive was okay and just the OS was corrupted somehow. He started transferring her files off the computer and took our cell phone number.
Here is my lovely wife sitting at the coffee shop in Borders Books, where we had gone to wait for the computer. It was located just around the corner from the Mac Store, and an easy walk, even for us invalids.
The tech gave us a call after about an hour to tell us that there were too many files and it was taking too long to be finished before closing time. (This isn't Les Schwab's you know!)
So, Dotti and I headed back to the Hotel room—and was I ever ready to do that!.
Monday morning I woke up with some swelling. My cheek on the left side was puffing out just a little, and it was hard to smile, because it pulled on my stitches on that side. Dotti had bought an ear thermometer for us and I never spiked a fever. Fortunately, the swelling was almost all gone by the next day.
Originally, I hoped to be recovered enough to be able to visit the Oregon Zoo on Monday. As it turned out I wasn't feeling that good just yet. Also, the weather was too rainy for a really fun day at the zoo. Since we needed to be available to pick up the computer anyway, that was just as well.
We had to wait for the Mac Store to call and let us know they were done. We assumed that they wouldn't even get started working on it until their normal opening time, and we had a couple of hours before that. So I set up a DVD movie on my laptop, pulled the curtains closed, turned the lights off, and Dotti and I snuggled on the couch together to watch it. We were just a few minutes into the movie when the phone rang. 
It was our son LeRoy, so we forgave him. When Dotti finished talking with him, and we were about to hit the play button again, the phone went off once more. Before I could throw the phone through the window, Dotti grabbed it and it was the Mac store. They said that they were done and the computer was okay. So, we dropped watching the movie, and set off for Bridgeport Village.
 When we got there the computer was all fixed and ready to go. On the way back to the car we had to stop at the statue for a couple of pictures. Here is Dotti with her fixed computer in hand, and smiling!
We have stopped here on previous occasions (
12/22/2007, 10/27/2008, and
05/22/2009) but this time Dotti took a picture of me standing beside the sculpture as well.
On Tuesday, I was still under the weather, which was unfortunate, because Cathi, our sister-in-law, went in for surgery on that day. I originally planned to be at the hospital for the entire time, but I was hoping to be in better shape. I hadn't expected to have a hole (or especially holes) in my sinus, and so I was very concerned with anything that might lead to sneezing. So, getting around large groups of people, who were sniffling and sneezing was not something I wanted to do.
Secondly, because of the extensive nature of what the dentist actually did, the associated medications, and the premature trips to Portland to get Dotti’s computer fixed, I was not feeling too great. So, when Dotti suggested it, I immediately accepted the offer to have me drop her off at the hospital and let her spend the long day there with Bob, and I could return to the room to recuperate, and then pick her up later.
We put in a wake up call for 4:30, but Dotti was up a 3:00 a.m., and I woke up also before the call came. We were on the way, and arrived just before 6:00 a.m.
Dotti got a hold of Bob on his cell phone (how did we live life before those things came around?),
and he said they were already upstairs. He gave us directions to the elevators (located beside the fountain in the picture) and a couple of minutes later we got to the waiting room. Cathi, Bob, and their daughter Samantha were there, and we got to wish Cathi well before she left. We were just in time, because only a few minutes later they took Cathi away to get her ready.
I then left Dotti there to keep Bob company and went back to the room to rest and recuperate.
That left Bob there with his daughter Samantha, a niece (Cathi’s sister’s daughter), and of course Dotti, during the long hours of waiting. (I have always been alone during Dotti's surgeries, and that makes for a very long wait.) Dotti let Bob play games on her iPod Touch, and did other things to help pass the time.
In the photo Bob had just passed the "Moron Test" on Dotti's iPod Touch, and it was a lot more challenging than the name implied. So, he was rightly proud reaching Genius category at last.
With Dotti's gall bladder surgery I had learned a bit of the anatomy of that area, but Cathi has had a lot more going on in the area and it has led to a more extensive study of the parts of the biliary system, including the ducts, the liver, the gallbladder, the pancreas, and the duodenum.
In earlier surgery procedures Cathi had her gall bladder removed, and some cancer was found on the gall bladder, along with gangrene on the inside of it. The cancer was up against the liver and so, the surgeon removed that part of the liver near the gall bladder. The preliminary lab tests came back negative for cancer in her cystic duct, but later, the longer and more thorough testing came back positive for cancer. Naturally that was a hammer blow to all of us, but especially Cathi, who already was sick and tired of these medical procedures, and Bob, who is of course worried sick over his wife of 33 years. (They were married 10 days after Dotti and I were.)
On Tuesday, Cathi’s surgery turned out to be a rebuilding project, which I wasn’t expecting. The doctor pulled out some of her ducting and replaced it with parts of her intestine I believe. He also took samples from 14 locations where he was most concerned with possible cancer infiltration. He saw no cancer by eye, and all the preliminary tests showed negative for cancer. However, we all remember the last time that happened. So, we have our fingers crossed that this is the end of it.
Back to the ducting. (I drew up this simple diagram to show the relationship of the various ducts in the bile system for reference.) There is a duct that appears to run from the liver down to the duodenum, with two tributary ducts, the cystic duct and the pancreatic duct, that lead to the gall bladder and pancreas respectively. Now, whether it is for convenience sake, so they can talk their way around the area, or if there is some physical reason why, I don’t know, but they call the duct, running from the liver to the cystic duct, the hepatic duct, and the rest of the duct running on to the duodenum, they call the common bile duct. It probably makes sense to surgeons to be able to differentiate between the parts of the bile ducting system, and so, even if the hepatic duct and the common bile duct are one tube and the others simply branch into it, or if the common bile duct really is just a large segment on its own and the hepatic duct is merely another smaller tube connected to it, probably doesn’t matter much to us laymen.
I showed Dotti the diagram above, and she said that after listening to what the doctor told them, what she believed was removed, was the hepatic duct, just below the 'Y' at the liver, and the portion of the common bile duct leading to the junction with the pancreatic duct. He only spoke of "two ends" of the part he removed, and he mentioned the liver and pancreas being associated with those ends.
He found dysplasia at both ends, which is a collection of abnormal, but not yet cancerous, cells. He said that increases the odds of future cancer by about 10 to 15%. Since he is an oncologist, I think this is probably a very educated guess. It is certainly far better than finding cancer at those locations! Since the earlier cancer showed up in the cystic duct piece removed with the gall bladder, it is good that that entire area is now completely gone with the ducting replacement that occurred! And, seeing nothing suspicious there, he didn't need to take any more of her liver this time. Since the liver will repair itself, the part that was removed before will grow back, and if no more cancer shows up, all will be well in that area.
If any of the long-term tests come back positive, I think they will do chemotherapy. But she has major blockages in the flow of blood to her legs and they have to go in and bypass those soon or she will lose one or both of her legs. They may have to do that before starting chemo, or else she might be too weak for the procedure. In any case, it is very sad, because I know that the last thing in the world Cathi wants to do is go in for yet another surgery. All we can do is hope for the best.
In November 1976, when Dotti and I flew off to our first real home on Midway Island, we flew from Medford, Oregon up to Portland, to catch the plane on over to Hawaii, and then on to Midway. Bob and Cathi came to see us at the Portland Airport on our brief layover between planes.
We were all so much younger then, and had no idea where our lives would lead. Dotti and I knew we were off on our own adventure, and Bob and Cathi were on their own path. The future was an empty slate to be filled in by time, fate, and our own actions. On that November day in 1976, we had no way of knowing that we would all be coming back together on this dark November day 33 years later. Instead of hugs of joy and tremendous anticipation of what lies ahead, we are now merely hoping that the changes will be small and only for the better.
Standing in the airport—all of us in our 20's—we had no possible way of knowing what life in its 6th decade would be like. Honestly, it is better that we didn't know, because we would not have enjoyed our earlier years as much I think if we dwelt on the pain and medical conditions of being in your 50s. (Shhh! Don't tell anyone, but my next birthday is the last one allotted to me of even those, whose number begins with a 5.)
It was nearly 6 hours after I left, when Dotti called me to tell me that Cathi had gone into the recovery room. That meant about an hour must pass before she would be wheeled up to her hospital room. Dotti said she would call back when she needed to be picked up.
Later, I timed it about perfectly, because when Dotti called to ask me to come and pick Bob and her up, I had just got into the car, and was pulling out of the parking lot at the hotel. I had decided that I could get started and if I got there too early, I could wait for them all to reach Cathi's room, while being in the parking lot in my car, as easily as I could do it in the hotel room. (I always have an audio book to listen to in the car.) It was getting a bit late in the afternoon, and I didn't want to get tangled up with rush hour traffic on the way over. (If you have read my journal from earlier days, you know how much I love Portland rush hour. )
As it worked out, I parked the car, and thanks to another phone call, I had her room number. I found my way to it, just moments after they wheeled Cathi in. The poor girl looked about ¾ dead, completely drained of energy and joy. But, groggy from anesthesia recovery, morphine for pain, and all of that, she still had the good heart to ask about me, and how I was feeling after my surgery. I was really touched. But when someone comes back from major surgery, there is nothing to be done, but wait for time to pass and the body to heal itself. We said our goodbyes, happy that she had made it safely through the surgery, and that, at least for now, there was no terrible news hanging over our heads. We all are hoping that this is the last we hear of the C word.
Bob left Samantha to spend the night with Cathi, since only one person could sleep over in the room with her. So, Dotti and I gave him a ride to his house. He lives quite a few miles out of town, and so I was happy that I had rested up for the drive. By the time we got back to our room I was really out of energy. And I had a far easier day than Dotti did. She was ready to drop off to sleep when we got back to the room.
I had one task I wanted to perform before going to sleep: I burned Dickens' Tale of Two Cities over to Audio CDs (which is the format it was in when I purchased them in the first place, but the originals were sitting on the shelf at home). I knew that I would not be getting as many activity points for this listening session, but on the other hand I knew I would be covering a lot more ground per word. (I did only get about one of the CD's listened to on the drive, because other things had my attention for part of the trip, but it was nice having the story to listen to.)
After a good night's sleep, and one last crack at the continental breakfast, we were on the road back home again. LeRoy had stopped at our house while we were gone, and he checked on Frostbyte. LeRoy said that the cat was so lonesome that he wouldn't move 5 inches away from him the entire time he was there. LeRoy sat down and Frostbyte wouldn't budge from his lap. He was meowing and purring and very happy to see him. LeRoy had also checked his food, water and kitty litter and made sure they were all in top shape. But even so, we didn't like leaving Frostbyte alone for so long, and I was thinking about him for much of the trip.
I have grown very attached to that cat. He has entangled his little silly ways into all parts of our life. He sometimes sleeps with us, and sometimes he doesn't. He gets really feisty when he knows it is time for us to get up, and noisy if we are trying to sleep late. He is right there watching when we play foosball, one moment from up on the window sill, the next from under the table, then getting tangled up with our feet, and then moving to the book shelf for a look at that fascinating ball zipping around the table surface. Now and then he grabs the ends of the rods as they move in and out of the table wall. We know he would love to call "next game!" if he only could. How did we ever get along without that lovable little fur-ball before? I just don't know.
Once again, in the east end of the Columbia River Gorge, we stopped. We wanted to visit a truck stop and replace a couple of items that were stolen from our car when the jerks pilfered all that stuff. (We are now almost all the way back to where we were before that happened.)
The sun was out, as it usually is on this end of the Gorge, which is why it is so dry. (As the Arabs say, "All sunshine makes a desert.") The sun made the bright red and yellow on the signs pop out at us. And the blue? It was gorgeous! There were just a few clouds to add some contrast and texture, and perhaps to make the three windmills on the left easier to see. It seems that each time we drive through the Gorge, more of those windmills are there. It is like a forest dropping seeds and trees sprouting up. But these "trees" don't need water, and as long as the wind keeps blowing they will keep growing.
I was outside waiting for Dotti, who was buying us a couple of 3-point McDonalds ice cream cones. Looking south, away from the river, a gas station and end of a motel stood before a wall of basalt, the ever present reminder that we live on a planet that is capable of amazing violence in ways that would sweep aside any of man's efforts to withstand it, should it choose to unleash it's power upon us. They say that 240 million years ago 90% of everything alive, died. It was a much less traumatic event, when 65 million years ago, all the dinosaurs were wiped out. A great deal of other life survived to carry on. This massive lava flow of 17 million years ago, was a footnote to geological history in comparison with those mass extinctions. And the Bretz Floods which scoured the basalt out from under the glacial silt was a passing "flash in the pan" leaving a trail behind of scab lands, coulees, and exposing this particular wall of rock for us to admire.
At any moment we could find that the earth will release something else interesting upon us—the Yellowstone Park caldera, for example, could blast the entire Midwest into a real mess, and change our climate in very dark and chilling ways. An earthquake measuring 9-points or higher, on the Richter Scale, rumbling for several minutes, could topple buildings that were built to withstand 8 points in LA, San Francisco, or even Seattle or Portland. An ice age could begin at any time, or a wall of basalt, thousands of feet thick, might wash over entire states.
No, none of these things are likely to happen today, nor tomorrow. But they all could happen, and they all will almost certainly happen at some point in the future. And the list is far longer than that.
Every so often, they have mass extinctions on this planet. Another is coming one day. It may be tomorrow, or it may be a hundred million years from now. My personal view is that I am happy to be living in less "interesting" geologic times. We have a small volcano, called Mount St. Helens, pop off one of its lesser eruptions, and are very excited about it for decades. It was almost like a carnival coming to town for many people. But it was nothing compared with what is coming one day, if the past, shown in this rock wall, is any indication of what the future holds for us.
Turning our backs on the warning written in this wall, Dotti and I set to enjoying our cones. They were good!
Overall, the drive home was uneventful. After the rain in Vancouver, the bright sunshine on the other side of the Gorge was pleasant. We got home around 4:30 p.m., and it was already dark out. (Sunset is around 4:00 p.m. these days.)
Getting the car unloaded and then unpacking the bags was something we didn’t have a lot of energy for, but we got it done anyway, so we wouldn’t have to look forward to it the next day. I lifted one heavy thing up the stairs, and I could tell I shouldn't be doing much of that, because the area around my stitches was complaining a bit. But otherwise I was okay.
We did get in a couple of games of foosball, because we had missed playing it so much. But our hearts weren’t really in it. We were tired.
So, another week has come to a close. It was far more "interesting" than I like, but it's over and I can hope for a nice quiet week of recovery coming up. I don't have the energy for any more excitement for a while. (It really stinks getting old. You wonder where the energy went…with apologies to the old Pepsodent slogan. )
I didn't gain weight this week, and that is great! I didn't eat especially healthy meals—I certainly could have done better on some of the nutritional choices I made, especially after the surgery. But I didn't sit and eat comfort food all day (although I spent a great deal of time fantasizing about having a feast of Hostess Twinkies), and it all sort of balanced out by the end of the week. I don't have to retrace ground that I lost, and I am very happy for that!
I am ready to grab on to my journal, and hit the trail on my Journey once more in all seriousness. I am ready to be in the 190s, and I am going to do all that I can to get there, and to not go climbing back over 200 again. Wish me luck!
8 years, 190 days on my journey; a lifetime to follow.
-Al-
6'3" 239.5/200.0/185.0±2.5/BMI:25.00/WK-444
Starting weight: 239.5
Target Weight Range: 185.0±2.5 pounds
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