Notes from the Home - December 23, 2016

Here in Columbus, Christmas seems a long way off. Beautiful weather will do that. And we've had beautiful weather: chilly mornings, pleasantly cool afternoons. abundant sunshine, gentle breezes. The mornings say it is fall, mid-October. The sun warms, and by afternoon, these late-December afternoons feel more like April. The weatherman is saying it will be partly cloudy on Christmas Day, with a high of 75 with a 10-percent chance of rain. I don't remember Christmas being like that in Ashtabula or Bethel Park.

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It is Friday morning, just after four o'clock. I have been up for an hour, and I have been awake since one-thirty. I don't understand it. Getting to sleep has not been a problem; getting enough I sleep has. I get in bed most nights between nine-thirty and ten-thirty, quickly fall asleep, and wake up three or four hours later. In no hurry to face the day, I spend an hour-and-a-half trying to get back to sleep. As the body begs for sleep, the mind picks up speed, and like a spoiled child, it demands attention. The only way to shut it up is to get out of bed.

Wednesday, after a string of five nights with less four hours sleep, I found myself in the middle of an argument over taking a sleeping pill, The hydroxyzine Dr. Miller prescribed is good stuff, too good. He wrote the prescription in September when I was having difficulty falling asleep. It helps me get to sleep, then it keeps me asleep longer than necessary, ten hours or more. The body doesn't move well these days and changing positions in bed takes some effort. There is no tossing and turning; once I fall asleep, I don't move until I wake up. Ten hours in one position makes an already stiff and uncooperative body much stiffer and more uncooperative - and achier, too.

The devil at my left ear, who argued that a full night's sleep was worth a few achy joints and stiff muscles in the morning, won. The angel at my other ear, who kept saying, "You'll be sorry," gloated for hours Thursday morning.  After nearly eleven hours sleep, I awoke Thursday morning feeling as though I'd spent Wednesday doing some sort of demanding physical activity. I hurt. And as I slowly got dressed, I struggled to stay awake. That is when I remembered the hydroxyzine always left me feeling more tired after a long night's sleep than I did before I went to bed. My days are never highly productive, but Thursday I broke my record for nonproductivity.

One Friday in Fall

A crisp, clear Friday morning. The Covenant Woods’ drives and parking lots were covered with leaves, tossed out of the trees by two days of wind and rain. The day looked and felt like the October days I loved in Ashtabula, up there along Lake Erie.

As I circled Covenant Woods on my trusty chariot, the day sparked memories. Walks to Lake Shore Park, where I watched the waves rush to shore and felt the wind that pushed them and the cool Canadian air across the lake.

Memories of raking the leaves that carpeted the yard. Six-year-old Bethany watching my progress from the dining room window. When the pile of leaves reaches a satisfactory size, Beth rushes out. “Let me help,” she yells, diving into the pile and burying herself. She is silent for a moment, then asks, “Where am I, Daddy?” “I don’t know. Where are you?” An explosion of leaves; “Here I am,” Beth shouts triumphantly, wildly waving her arms. Good times, even if I have to rake up the leaves she scatters.

The memories were interrupted by a phone call. Russ said he was going to bring the pictures over. He has been looking into the history of the Harris clan on Ancestory.com. In his search, he found a man in – or the man found him, I’m not sure which – who had two photo albums that once belonged to my dad’s Uncle Hiram. The man wanted to sell them, Russ wanted to buy them, and now Russ was on his way to show them to me.

Hiram was quite the shutterbug, and his recordkeeping wasn’t bad. Beneath nearly every picture there is a note identifying the people in it and where it was taken. One or two, according to the note below, were taken at Geneva-on-the-Lake. The photographic record spanned the years 1908 until 1919, or so. An enchanting trip through time. The men seemed to always be wearing a white shirt and tie; the women were almost always in ankle-length dresses, even in the summer.

 It was a different world, and most of the people in it died before I came along. My grandfather died in 1943, five years before I was born. But in a way, I did know him. When Dad went into the service, my grandfather kept him informed with a series of wonderful letters, which Dad gave to my grandmother, Nana, after my grandfather died. The letters were often read aloud at family gatherings. My grandfather wrote beautifully, and his sense of humor shined brightly in every letter he wrote.

An hour or two after Russ left, Beth called. She brought me up to date on the grandkids – Hayden and MaKenna – and events of note in the Pratt household out there in Idaho. We talked for a half hour.

I can’t remember when I enjoyed a day as much as I enjoyed that Friday in fall.

My grandfather, Thomas R. Harris, in 1912

Notes from the Home - November 29, 2016

It took a while, but on November 18, I had the MRI that was originally scheduled for November 11th or, depending whom you believe, November 3rd. You see, on October 28th, I had an appointment with Dr. Verson, a neurologist. Among other things, he said it was time for me to have another MRI of the brain and cortex, and that he wanted to see me again in a few weeks. The appointment concluded, he told Russ and me to wait in the examining room and someone would be along to get things arranged.

While we waited, Russ said he wouldn't be available to chauffeur me on November 11th. A moment later, a woman came in to tell me where I needed to go for the MRI and what to expect when I got there. As she was talking, I noticed the paper in her hand, which indicated the appointment was scheduled for November 11th. "This date won't work for me," I told her. "Then, you'll have to call over there and reschedule it."

On Tuesday, November 1st, I called the folks in the imaging department at St. Francis Hospital and explained the problem. "Mr. Harris, what is your birth date?" the woman asked. I told her, and she said, "Mr. Harris, actually, we show your appointment as being on November 3rd, this Thursday. Will that work?" I said, it would, and then called Russ to make sure.

At 10 am on the morning of the third, Russ took me to the hospital. At the desk in the lobby, a woman handed me a clipboard with several forms on it. "Fill these out. Someone will be with you shortly." About the time I finished, someone was with me, and she led Russ and me to the imagining department, where I was given another clipboard and several more forms to fill out. One of the questions on those forms asked if I had a implanted drug infusion thingy. "Yes, a baclofen pump."

Then a woman came by and pushed me into an office. She asked for the forms I had filled out, took a quick look at them, and said, "You know, you will have to have someone restart your pump when you're done here. Do you have someone to do that?" My answer was "No." I told her, Dr. Milton, who manages my pump, is in Atlanta at the Emory Clinic. And, the other time I had an MRI at St. Francis, there was someone here from Medtronics, the company that makes the pump, to make sure it was operating correctly. "We'll have to reschedule your appointment," she said. "Do you have a card for your pump?" she asked. I do, I gave to her, and she went off to call Medtronics. Twenty minutes later, she returned to say the person she needed to talk to was out and wouldn't be back until Monday. "I'll call them next week and see what we can arrange," she told me. With that, Russ and I headed to the parking lot.

Far be it from me to cast aspersions, but I do believe the woman at Dr. Verson's office who put down the wrong date also neglected to tell the people at St. Francis about the pump. You see, Dr. Verson had me get an MRI two or three years ago. That was the first MRI I'd had since the folks at the Cleveland Clinic put the pump in me. I had no idea the MRI might play havoc with the pump until I was sitting in the imaging department's waiting area that day, and a nurse came by to say I might have to stay a while after the MRI was done, because the person from Medtronics, who would make sure the pump was functioning properly, was running a little late. Obviously, someone from the doctor's office told the people at St. Francis about my pump then. Just as obviously, no one bothered to give the hospital that information this time.

On the morning of November 15, Dr. Verson's office called. I assumed the call was to remind me of the follow-up visit with Dr. Verson, scheduled for Friday, November 18. But, no.  The woman said because I had not yet had the MRI, the follow-up visit would have to be rescheduled. Someone from the hospital would call, she said, to reschedule the MRI.

The call from St. Francis came an hour later. The woman said I was to be at the hospital on Friday by eleven o'clock. Russ got me there in a timely manner, and the procedure proceeded without a hitch. It would have been nice, though, if they had kept all the forms I filled out the first time. They didn't, and I had to fill them out again. Like, I have nothing better to do than fill out a bunch of forms. Well, actually, I didn't have anything better to do, but that's not the point.

When the woman operating the MRI tired of looking for my brain, she pulled me out the machine and turned things over to Ed from Medtronics. Ed, who is originally from Maine, said he enjoys the Georgia winters but prefers the Maine summers. "That's how I feel about the weather along the shores of Lake Erie," I told him. From there, the conversation turned to football. We talked about our favorite teams - his is the Patriots; mine is the Steelers - for a few minutes before turning our attention to the Browns for comic relief.

"It's been twenty minutes," Ed said, looking at his watch. "Let's see how the pump is doing." He pulled a sensor and something about the size of an I-Phone out of his case. "Where's your pump?" he asked. I showed him. He put the sensor on it, stared at the display on the device in his hand, and said, "The pump is doing everything it's supposed to. You're good to go." And with Russ pushing, I went.

Now I must wait until December 27 to find out what is going on with my brain, assuming they found it. I know I often have a hard time finding it.

That's Me

3 Word Wednesday:

Lackadaisical, Harebrained, Idiotic

That’s Me

Alas, I’m lackadaisical

With a head full of thoughts harebrained.

An idiotic spectacle,

This guy so lackadaisical

I’d surely flunk a physical,

And claim body and mind are strained.

That’s me. I’m lackadaisical

With a head full of thoughts harebrained. 

Sad Day

Sad Day

Trump wins? Seems far-fetched,

Gamy racist, sexist oaf

Halting the American dream.

Notes from the Home - October 23, 2016

What is a man to complain about when he can't complain about the weather? If the folks at Weather.Com are right, I'll need to find something. A quick look at their prognostications indicates that the low tonight (Saturday, Oct. 22) will be 42, tomorrow's high 80, and the chance of precipitation is 0. That is also the forecast - more or less - until November 4th. For the next not-quite two weeks, we can expect, say the folks at Weather.Com, highs in the low 80s, lows in the 50s, and no more than a 10-percent chance of rain until the first Friday in
November.

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Georgia was coming in from her walk, as I was going out for my "walk." We talked about the almost-too-good-to-believe weather. She said fall was her favorite season and asked what mine is. I've always looked forward to spring more than fall. 

But fall is gaining fast. It has to do with the weather.  Along the banks of Lake Erie, where winter is winter, and the cold is unrelenting, the snow has to be shoveled almost daily, and TV shows are interrupted nightly by winter weather advisories, there really is nothing so rare as a day in spring. At least it seems that way when the forecast for St. Patrick's Day is another 2-to-4 inches of snow.

On the banks of the Chattahoochee River, however, where from the middle of May until early October, the weather folks tell us daily the high will be in the mid-90s and the low in the low-to-mid -70s, a crisp fall day is heaven. Not that spring isn't welcome here, but fall brings more relief, at least to a Yankee like me.

Once we dispensed with the weather, Georgia told me about the best vacation she ever had.

"Years ago, my husband and I bought a camping trailer, and we went up to Dahlonega [a town in north Georgia; it is the site of America's first gold rush]. Well, we were almost there when we got lost. We figured we were going in the right direction, and we were on a main road, so we decided to follow it until we saw a sign or something. Then the road went down to two lanes, and a few miles later, it went down to one. With the trailer, we couldn't turn around, so we kept going, hoping to find a place where we could turn around and go back.

"I spotted two tall posts. It was like they were the gateway to something. We went through and soon realized we were on top of a mountain. You could see for miles, and the view was beautiful. We took it all in before we started looking around for the way out. We saw a guy and asked him for directions. The guy said he worked there - the mountain was a garbage dump. We told him we felt stupid for getting lost like we did. He said, 'Don't worry about it. I've given directions out of here to eight other people today.'"

Georgia also told me about the pet skunk she had when she was in high school. It was the best pet she ever had. "And she was smart, too. Sometimes she followed me to school. There I was, and the skunk was right behind me. On those days, our principal kept the skunk in a cardboard box until it was time for me to go home."

Outside My Window

The view from my window is not majestic, but it is pretty on a sunny fall morning.

And, the shadows make a pattern on the porch.