In Which Time Dilates
Oct. 19th, 2019 01:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shannon_aUgh. The last two weeks have been endless. I look back and I think "That was just a week ago?", "That was this Tuesday?"
And my work on the move has come to a grinding halt.
Unfortunately, this has largely been centered on Kimberly's health, and she just hasn't been catching any breaks.
A week and a half ago, we thought we'd figured out her "cognitive episodes" and that the appointment she went to that Monday to look at her EEG was a waste of time. Except the EEG showed her having small seizures on the left side of the brain while the EEG was going on. So she was diagnosed with a seizure disorder.
The thing is that she hadn't had any notable (large-scale?) episodes for a full two weeks before that, since we changed out our laundry detergent for something scent-free, and I rewashed not just our bedsheets, but the entire contents of our linen closet. But her neurologist said he thought that was just a coincidence. Since she was having three or four seizures a week before that, I find it hard to believe. My suspicion is that she's now experiencing chemical sensitivities and they're triggering the seizures. But chemical sensitivities are often poo-pooed by doctors, including their possible relationship to seizures. But we can accept this medical diagnosis, and meanwhile see if we can help prevent them.
(In the week and a half since then, Kimberly has had three episodes that I know of, once when she was at a friend's house, and twice when we had people over, so that's unfortunately up from those two blissful seizure-free weeks, but they're still all in situations when she could have been exposed to unusual chemicals.)
Last Monday night we went through the endless process of bringing our real-estate agent on to sell our house. We literally spent hours going over forms and signing them. Our realtor, B., said the forms had gotten much more extensive since when we bought our house 19 years ago, and they'd be even worse if we were buying.
Well, none of that for now: we have a house waiting for us in Kauai.
And I got some new stuff for my TODO list: get our attic door replaced and talk to stagers.
Meanwhile, I also got a DocuSign copy of our agreement with our shippers sometime during the week.
For whatever reason, I put it all off to Friday ... and then things went to hell.
I was in the shower last Friday when Kimberly messaged me from her GI office, to let me know what was previously thought to be a growth in her kidney had turned out to be a tumor in her colon. And the GI office was frantic about it. They eventually set up a colonoscopy to do a biopsy on Tuesday.
Tuesday, Katherine took us out to Walnut Creek for the colonoscopy, and we waited around for a few hours while the GI doctor did the procedure.
And thus far we know ... very little. Full results of the biopsy are due next week; I'll be going with Kimberly to a very early appointment with her GI on Thursday morning to find out what's happening.
This type of existential emergency in your family really throws everything on its head. Kimberly, of course, has been very upset, and I've been offering what support I can. Meanwhile, my own work has been tough going. I only started to get the least back in the swing of things on Wednesday, several days after Kimberly got that first report. And I didn't touch Bitmark work until last night, and I haven't done a thing on the move since our talk with our realtor.
And I'd all but forgotten that we went out with Kimberly's friend J. for lunch on Friday after the bad news. It all blurs together.
And I'd all but forgotten that PG&E's irresponsible and doublethink "public safety power outage" was occurring at the same time as all of this. We didn't get hit by it, but I was worried we might as PG&E was grossly inaccurate with their maps, showing for example that UC Berkeley was fine, when the entire campus got shut down.
Governor Newsom is now encouraging municipalities to buy up PG&E facilities, since PG&E has proven themselves feloniously incompetent. If only he had some power where he could force a takeover of PG&E. Yes, it would be tied up in court for years, but that's a first step that's badly needed.
I have been doing my best to relax when I can. Last Saturday I biked across the Golden Gate and into the Marin headlands. I took Monday off for the holiday that shall not be named and did a hike to the back of Strawberry Canyon. Today, I got back on my bike and went out to Wildcat Canyon.
(Turns out I haven't been to Wildcat in a while. I was delighted to discover two nasty cross-streets on the bikeway north of El Cerrito del Norte are now four-way steps, which makes that ride much nicer. I was less delighted when I detoured over to San Pablo Dam Road for lunch and discovered that area is now infected with RVs parked all over; I just don't know where they all come from.)
A bit of problem when I got up to Wildcat. After huffing and puffing my way up the first hill, leading to Wildcat Canyon Trail from the Alvarado area of the park, I found a sign that said the Wildcat Canyon Trail was closed between Wildcat Canyon and Tilden.
Great. That's pretty much the way you get from one park to the other (and the nostalgic trail that I wanted to ride).
I considered biking on up and seeing how closed the trail really was. I've been able to bull through more than one "closed" trail like that. But, bulling through a closed trail is harder with a bike, so instead I decided to go up to the ridgeline at the back of the park, and then take the Nimitz Way over to Inspiration Point.
Unfortunately, the paths up to the ridge line are pretty steep in the Wildcat Canyon Park. And I took a new path (perhaps the only path I'd never walked in Tilden or Wildcat Canyon, which went up past the ruins of an 1800s private "sanitarium") and it was really steep. I knew I'd be walking my bike up most of the hillside, but one section was so steep that I didn't think I'd be able to get up it at all with my bike. I stopped a half-dozen times over the course of a few hundred yards.
(A jogger went by in the opposite direction at my fourth or fifth stop on that near-vertical climb. "Windy, huh?" he said. Neither of us commented on my struggle up the hill.)
When I finally got up to the ridgeline, it was all clouds, fog, and marine layer. At times I couldn't see 50 feet ahead of me. And occasionally I'd hit a forested area and it was raining! The ride wasn't pleasant the first bit when that tremendous wind was buffeting me, but once I got past that it was weird and neat, with the gray fog covering everything and water occasionally misting into me.
Oh, and did I mention that the Wildcat Canyon Trail was closed due to "storm damage"? This is an increasing problem in Bay Area parks, where trails are closed due to "storm damage" for extended periods of time: we haven't had storms for five months at this point. It could easily be closed a year or two from now, due to that same storm damage.
I'm not sure they ever get fixed at this point: the signs just eventually fall down and the tread of feet finds its way around the damage.
Meanwhile back in the real world ...
Poor Kimberly just wants to sleep until next week, and it's entirely understandable. Me, I want to get back to a normal head-space where I can get things done.
But we've still got a long ways to go on her newest health problem. We need results of that biopsy, and there will almost definitely be surgery. And then depending on the results, Kimberly might have to fight through chemotherapy too. And if that happens, that's going to put us past January 1st, at which point we have to decide what in the world to do, because we've put a lot of effort into that January 1st move date, and there are financial issues if things get stalled out.
So, stressful times. Much, much more stressful for Kimberly than me. But for me it's on top of feeling like I need to be the one leading the way on the move, because Kimberly wasn't up to it healthwise, even before these latest few problems.
Ay.
Hey, had my own yearly physical this recent Thurday. I almost put it off, because I was stressed with the rest of the world, but I'd been putting it off since spring, because things always seemed too busy, and I wanted to have it done at least a few months before our move.
And I was stressed about getting my blood test results. Because as we've learned, you can never tell what's going on inside. But they just showed pretty much exactly the same thing as my last tests. My blood sugar is just barely into the high range (but some longer-term sugar blood tests are within range) and my triglycerides are high. Not perfect, but neither of those numbers seem to be moving, so I'll call that fine and get back to my plan already in process to lose a bit of weight.
Meanwhile, instead of sleeping this afternoon, Kimberly filed while I biked. So she's probably done more on the move in the last two weeks than me. But tomorrow I'm going to get back into that saddle ...
And my work on the move has come to a grinding halt.
Unfortunately, this has largely been centered on Kimberly's health, and she just hasn't been catching any breaks.
A week and a half ago, we thought we'd figured out her "cognitive episodes" and that the appointment she went to that Monday to look at her EEG was a waste of time. Except the EEG showed her having small seizures on the left side of the brain while the EEG was going on. So she was diagnosed with a seizure disorder.
The thing is that she hadn't had any notable (large-scale?) episodes for a full two weeks before that, since we changed out our laundry detergent for something scent-free, and I rewashed not just our bedsheets, but the entire contents of our linen closet. But her neurologist said he thought that was just a coincidence. Since she was having three or four seizures a week before that, I find it hard to believe. My suspicion is that she's now experiencing chemical sensitivities and they're triggering the seizures. But chemical sensitivities are often poo-pooed by doctors, including their possible relationship to seizures. But we can accept this medical diagnosis, and meanwhile see if we can help prevent them.
(In the week and a half since then, Kimberly has had three episodes that I know of, once when she was at a friend's house, and twice when we had people over, so that's unfortunately up from those two blissful seizure-free weeks, but they're still all in situations when she could have been exposed to unusual chemicals.)
Last Monday night we went through the endless process of bringing our real-estate agent on to sell our house. We literally spent hours going over forms and signing them. Our realtor, B., said the forms had gotten much more extensive since when we bought our house 19 years ago, and they'd be even worse if we were buying.
Well, none of that for now: we have a house waiting for us in Kauai.
And I got some new stuff for my TODO list: get our attic door replaced and talk to stagers.
Meanwhile, I also got a DocuSign copy of our agreement with our shippers sometime during the week.
For whatever reason, I put it all off to Friday ... and then things went to hell.
I was in the shower last Friday when Kimberly messaged me from her GI office, to let me know what was previously thought to be a growth in her kidney had turned out to be a tumor in her colon. And the GI office was frantic about it. They eventually set up a colonoscopy to do a biopsy on Tuesday.
Tuesday, Katherine took us out to Walnut Creek for the colonoscopy, and we waited around for a few hours while the GI doctor did the procedure.
And thus far we know ... very little. Full results of the biopsy are due next week; I'll be going with Kimberly to a very early appointment with her GI on Thursday morning to find out what's happening.
This type of existential emergency in your family really throws everything on its head. Kimberly, of course, has been very upset, and I've been offering what support I can. Meanwhile, my own work has been tough going. I only started to get the least back in the swing of things on Wednesday, several days after Kimberly got that first report. And I didn't touch Bitmark work until last night, and I haven't done a thing on the move since our talk with our realtor.
And I'd all but forgotten that we went out with Kimberly's friend J. for lunch on Friday after the bad news. It all blurs together.
And I'd all but forgotten that PG&E's irresponsible and doublethink "public safety power outage" was occurring at the same time as all of this. We didn't get hit by it, but I was worried we might as PG&E was grossly inaccurate with their maps, showing for example that UC Berkeley was fine, when the entire campus got shut down.
Governor Newsom is now encouraging municipalities to buy up PG&E facilities, since PG&E has proven themselves feloniously incompetent. If only he had some power where he could force a takeover of PG&E. Yes, it would be tied up in court for years, but that's a first step that's badly needed.
I have been doing my best to relax when I can. Last Saturday I biked across the Golden Gate and into the Marin headlands. I took Monday off for the holiday that shall not be named and did a hike to the back of Strawberry Canyon. Today, I got back on my bike and went out to Wildcat Canyon.
(Turns out I haven't been to Wildcat in a while. I was delighted to discover two nasty cross-streets on the bikeway north of El Cerrito del Norte are now four-way steps, which makes that ride much nicer. I was less delighted when I detoured over to San Pablo Dam Road for lunch and discovered that area is now infected with RVs parked all over; I just don't know where they all come from.)
A bit of problem when I got up to Wildcat. After huffing and puffing my way up the first hill, leading to Wildcat Canyon Trail from the Alvarado area of the park, I found a sign that said the Wildcat Canyon Trail was closed between Wildcat Canyon and Tilden.
Great. That's pretty much the way you get from one park to the other (and the nostalgic trail that I wanted to ride).
I considered biking on up and seeing how closed the trail really was. I've been able to bull through more than one "closed" trail like that. But, bulling through a closed trail is harder with a bike, so instead I decided to go up to the ridgeline at the back of the park, and then take the Nimitz Way over to Inspiration Point.
Unfortunately, the paths up to the ridge line are pretty steep in the Wildcat Canyon Park. And I took a new path (perhaps the only path I'd never walked in Tilden or Wildcat Canyon, which went up past the ruins of an 1800s private "sanitarium") and it was really steep. I knew I'd be walking my bike up most of the hillside, but one section was so steep that I didn't think I'd be able to get up it at all with my bike. I stopped a half-dozen times over the course of a few hundred yards.
(A jogger went by in the opposite direction at my fourth or fifth stop on that near-vertical climb. "Windy, huh?" he said. Neither of us commented on my struggle up the hill.)
When I finally got up to the ridgeline, it was all clouds, fog, and marine layer. At times I couldn't see 50 feet ahead of me. And occasionally I'd hit a forested area and it was raining! The ride wasn't pleasant the first bit when that tremendous wind was buffeting me, but once I got past that it was weird and neat, with the gray fog covering everything and water occasionally misting into me.
Oh, and did I mention that the Wildcat Canyon Trail was closed due to "storm damage"? This is an increasing problem in Bay Area parks, where trails are closed due to "storm damage" for extended periods of time: we haven't had storms for five months at this point. It could easily be closed a year or two from now, due to that same storm damage.
I'm not sure they ever get fixed at this point: the signs just eventually fall down and the tread of feet finds its way around the damage.
Meanwhile back in the real world ...
Poor Kimberly just wants to sleep until next week, and it's entirely understandable. Me, I want to get back to a normal head-space where I can get things done.
But we've still got a long ways to go on her newest health problem. We need results of that biopsy, and there will almost definitely be surgery. And then depending on the results, Kimberly might have to fight through chemotherapy too. And if that happens, that's going to put us past January 1st, at which point we have to decide what in the world to do, because we've put a lot of effort into that January 1st move date, and there are financial issues if things get stalled out.
So, stressful times. Much, much more stressful for Kimberly than me. But for me it's on top of feeling like I need to be the one leading the way on the move, because Kimberly wasn't up to it healthwise, even before these latest few problems.
Ay.
Hey, had my own yearly physical this recent Thurday. I almost put it off, because I was stressed with the rest of the world, but I'd been putting it off since spring, because things always seemed too busy, and I wanted to have it done at least a few months before our move.
And I was stressed about getting my blood test results. Because as we've learned, you can never tell what's going on inside. But they just showed pretty much exactly the same thing as my last tests. My blood sugar is just barely into the high range (but some longer-term sugar blood tests are within range) and my triglycerides are high. Not perfect, but neither of those numbers seem to be moving, so I'll call that fine and get back to my plan already in process to lose a bit of weight.
Meanwhile, instead of sleeping this afternoon, Kimberly filed while I biked. So she's probably done more on the move in the last two weeks than me. But tomorrow I'm going to get back into that saddle ...