Overdue Update

I haven't posted in a long time, but it has been a mostly unpleasant several months. Here goes. We did drive down to Florida for Christmas at Mom's. That was a good visit. Prior to that trip I had x-rays of my long painful left heel and a visit to an orthopedic surgeon. The diagnosis was Haglund's Deformity. Mine also had a line of calcification up the Achilles tendon that was debrided and a nerve ganglion that was excised. I think the surgery went well but my recovery was delayed by the giant bloody blister and wound left behind by my tremor working against the splint I had to wear for the first 2 weeks. Mom had ridden home with us and stayed most of January and February to help us while I was on one leg. I used a kneeling walker for a couple of months. I had a large pediatric aircast to wear when up and about for a few months too. Waiting for the big wound to heal before they ordered me to physical therapy caused a 2 month delay. I've now had 17 of my insurer's allowed 20 visits, which is 3 fewer than the surgeon ordered. In the meantime, Clay's employer changed health insurers and we have been in a coverage hole, so that was the end of PT. I have a follow up visit with the surgeon next week. I don't have full mobility restored but the last time I was at PT, the therapist said I may have gone as far as was possible. I think that means that they've broken up all the excess scar tissue that they can and the PD rigidity is working against a full range of motion. I am out of the boot and walking without a cane. The pain is mostly tolerable without daily Tylenol. Unless the surgeon says otherwise this is probably what my finished recovery looks like. Coming down stairs leading with my left foot only. I am back to cycling with the machine 30 minutes a day. I have also returned to doing an earlier PT-designed LSVTBIG series of exercise that takes 15-20 minutes each day. I do achilles tendon stretches after every exercise session! 

In March, I had a bad mammogram. That bought me a sterotactic breast biopsy on the left side. Now this is sometimes called a needle biopsy, but I'll tell you it felt and sounded more like a dentist's drill. It was cringe-worthy and it made me cry. I was in pain overload for a few days. Good news the anomalies they removed were benign. 

We've each had 2 booster COVID-19 shots since I last posted. The global COVID pandemic rages on with the virus in about the 5th or 6th worldwide mutated variant. I think we'll still be needing at least another vaccine that addresses the latest variants probably in fall or winter. 

I have changed neurologists since I last posted. I was refered by my Raleigh neurologist to one at Duke in Durham. The deal is they offer DBS surgery to people like me with drug-resistant PD. Especially now, I am not looking for more surgery, but I am moving forward with the screening process to see if it is actually an option for me.

The impetus for finally posting today after my long hiatus is pictured. Year 2 for us of Dix Park Sunflowers. If you scroll down a few entries, you'll see last year's flowers were twice as tall and therefore twice as impressive. Not sure what happened between years! 

 That just about brings me up to date. Between my condition and COVID-19 we are continuing to stay close to home. Travel is still too uncertain for us at this point. So, our Global Entry expires soon and we decided not to renew it since we didn't feel we got value from it already, and it would require making another interview out of town to renew. Instead we are applying for TSA Pre-Check status. We can have that interview here in town. We are both scheduled for next week. So, we'll see how that goes.

Fully Vaccinated, Again!

The COVID-19 pandemic rages on here locally despite everyone's best or worst efforts to slow it down. We were both fully vaccinated this spring. It turns out that after 6 months or so the Pfizer vaccine that we both got 2 doses of wanes in effectiveness. So, now we have both received a 3rd booster shot. So, we're fully vaccinated again, for now, for however long it lasts again. The pandemic continues to keep us both pretty close to home with no travel plans at all except to Mom's for Christmas. No photos!

Clay's Big Night on his 73rd Birthday

 

Clay's Timpano

Clay reenacted a favorite movie cooking scene from Big Night. He worked for 2 days on this timpano!

We'll be eating it 4 days for dinner!

Timpano Cross-section

Clay baked his cake and ate it! Happy Birthday!

Sunflowers!

For the last several years, excluding 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, downtown Raleigh has had an 8-acre field of sunflowers every summer. It is part of a city park on the former grounds of Dorothea Dix Hospital. The parks and recreation department harvests the sunflower seeds at the end of the season to produce biofuel for their fleet. We've known about it, but today we finally visited the sunflowers ourselves. It was worth the wait even with the haze in the air!

No Synchronous Fireflies for Us this Year

We got an email notification that we did not receive a lottery pass for viewing the synchronous fireflies. Maybe next year. Maybe not.

That brings me to an update about my Parkinsonism. The tremors, resting and intention, have spread to all 4 limbs and my jaw. I have lost proprioception with the tremor spread. We bought a cycling machine for me and I use it for 30 minutes a day but so far it has had no noticeable positive effect. As to travel, I am struggling enough now with daily self-maintenance that we allowed our $500 deposit credit from last year's canceled American Cruise Line fall foliage Hudson River Cruise to lapse. I think we both thought between COVID-19 insecurity yet and my continued decline that it was a bad idea to try again this fall. We are talking about a long road trip to New England this fall instead, but only thinking and talking. It has the advantage of being flexible and avoiding close quarters. We'll see. 

Fully Vaccinated!

We are both fully vaccinated for COVID-19. There is talk now that later this year or early next year, we'll need booster shots to cover the variant mutation strains of the pandemic virus. We'll see. I think we both have a bit of travel bug even though things haven't returned to normal yet. That being said, we saw this on the news last night! Synchronous Fireflies! They appear every year around the same time, in the same places in the Appalachian Mountains. How did we not know about this? It is like when we didn't know about wintering tundra swans in NC! So, this morning we entered the lottery and we'll find out on May 7th if we won a spot for the first 8 days of June near Gatlinburg, TN. We already missed the window of opportunity for Congaree in SC. Fingers crossed for our 1st trip since the pandemic lockdown in March of 2020.

It's a New Year

 And yet, it isn't. A year ago COVID-19 hadn't even been given its moniker as I recall. It was a bizarre health event happening elsewhere. Now here at home, we are in day 308 of NC's state of emergency. We are well. We haven't suffered as millions of others have but being this careful of avoiding infection still takes a toll. I don't want to complain, we are in good shape. We went to Florida for 2 weeks over the recent holidays and had a nice isolated stay. 

It has just been awhile since I posted so here is my update. Fingers crossed that we'll both have received vaccinations by mid-year and that things will start to improve. We have no plans for the future other than to remain carefully hunkered down and isolated. Best wishes.