Happy Mother’s Day!

I’m not much for Hallmark holidays but at least Mother’s Day and Father’s Day have their roots in the chiseled stone of the Ten Commandments. Talk about old school, it doesn’t get much older than that.

You would think that trying to provide your wife, the mother of your only child, with a high quality breakfast on her special day would be a fairly easy task, but no. Not with this wife anyway. It’s got nothing to do with dietary restrictions or residual pains from surgery, it’s got everything to do with love of thy pillow. It seems the bride would rather snuggle with her sack full of feathers than have a renowned chef prepare a culinary delight dropped from a feathered friend. And this is from the woman who is constantly complaining about this same head cushion. I think this mother hen has her feathery priorities all mixed up. Renee cockle-doodled-doo at the mere fact I wanted to take her to breakfast on Mother’s Day…

… IN THE MORNING!

Imagine that, coffee and eggs before the sun has reached its zenith, who would even suggest such a crazy concept? I must be mad! If you were outside the house and heard the ruckus Renee made over me even considering that she leave the house while there is still dew on the ground you would have been surprised, no amazed, that this battle was not about some monumental marriage melting issue. A monumental meltdown over someone offering to take you to breakfast, is this possible? Yep! A real reality TV moment, too bad the cameras were not rolling. Kate Gosselin move over we’ve got a new star on the rise.

The moral of the story, do something nice for the mother in your life even if you have to drag her out of bed screaming to do it!

Don’t Take This Personally

We took a trek up to Cleveland for lunch yesterday and just for kicks decided to stop in to the Cleveland Clinic to see Renee’s surgeon. Lo and behold, they were expecting us.

They’re good up there at the Double C, and efficient. Renee didn’t even make it through her survey tablet before they were calling her in to see the doctor. Every time you check in at the clinic they have you fill out a survey to see how they’re doing and to ask many personal questions about your health. When I say personal, I am not kidding. Since this is the colorectal unit, they want details, grammar school bathroom humor variety details about the consistency of fecal matter and the like. They are very thorough.

Renee went through her preliminary check-in routine, weight check, medications, all the usual questions by the nurse, then we got back to the survey. The survey is on an electronic tablet with a touch screen and has multiple choice questions. You tap the screen with a stylus and move to the next question. There was a whole new list of choices from the last visit which has us wondering just what they need this information for? What I’m talking about here is sex. Twenty or so detailed questions about Renee’s sex life, which, as she said, “They are asking about the wrong side of the problem.” They want frontside info on a backside issue. What kind of perverts are we dealing with here?

These questions were more intimate than a fertility specialist would ask. Renee’s blush factor was at Code Red. I was having a blast helping Renee answer until she pulled the tablet away and I think hit the N/A button for the remainder of her answers. That right there gives you too much information about the subject, so we’ll move on.

The previously stoic surgeon was Mr. Joviality. There was a lot of joking and raised eyebrows about Renee changing her medication regime all on her own without informing him. I assumed she was following the directions he gave her months ago. Gee, I wonder why these flair-ups are happening, Renee? He looked like he wanted to slap her but remained composed and leaning back around Renee, he gave me the old ‘what the hell is she thinking?’ look. Which I immediately returned with the old ‘Who the hell knows what she’s thinking but I have to live with her so I’m not saying anything’ look. There was a lot being said without being said.

He gave her some new direction about when and how to take her meds and decided he needed to take a look at the problem which Renee describes as sharp as razor blade pains in her rectal region. For a second there the nurses tried to chase me from the room or at least get me behind the curtain. No way, I stayed. I covered in a previous post the Anaconda camera they use for this procedure. It goes right up the garbage chute and gives you a darn good picture of what’s going on. That is if you have any clue about what you’re looking at. I don’t but it is sure fun to watch in the deranged way you stop on the Surgery Channel and go “ewe!”

I’m not the queasy type so I just find it fascinating that they have this technology and that they let me watch them take biopsies and point out to me the irritations and the healthy areas. I now have first hand knowledge of what people are looking at when they’ve got their head up their ass. Knowledge is power!

The bottom line, pun intended, is that Renee’s surgery went well. Her pouch is healthy and working. It will take at least another six months for the surgery to completely heal so there will be some issues of discomfort and adjustment to the new internal routing. The Doc said the pouch will continue to enlarge during this period which will decrease the bathroom visits as time progresses. Renee’s got to adjust her medications according to his direction in order to quiet the Cuffitis which is causing her sharp pains and irritation but other than that she’s good to go for another six months.

It was another long round trip, about an 800 mile day, but highly productive without any bad news or even further testing scheduled. As for lunch, time constraints prevented us from hitting any of the local restaurants we discovered on previous trips so we got some lousy not “NY style” as advertised subs. Going all the way to Cleveland and not having pierogies is blasphemy in some circles. But at least our bellies were the only recipients of disappointment.

We chose not to hang around for dinner and high-tailed it on out of there before any one else started asking any more questions which are a little too personal. After all, Renee has suffered enough red-check syndrome through this ordeal.

Censustivity

Do you count?

Once every ten years, according to our constitution, the great and good government is required to count every living human in the country, piece of cake, right? But, people keep on borning and dying on them, moving from one place to another and hiding behind the curtains. Others can’t be counted for a variety of reasons. So in the end, despite all the fancy databases they’ll just wing it. Also, the still great and good government can’t help itself from doing more than what is constitutionally required and getting distracted from just counting people, so they spend a cool billion plus sending out questionnaires and hiring door-to-door canvassers to get answers to rude questions.

For example: What color are you?

“Do you have light beige with speckles on there?”
“Nope, just black, white and other”
“Put me down for other.”
“I can’t do that, you are obviously white.”
“But I’m not white, I just told you I’m light beige with speckles. In the summer I turn red with speckles. Do you have that on the form?”
“Nope, just black, white and other.”
“Put me down for other.”
“You don’t qualify for other, you must be Asian or Native American or Eskimo or Hispanic to qualify for other.”
“But those aren’t colors, you asked me what color I am.”
“Well we don’t really want your color but where you’re from.”
“I’m from right here, so put me down for Native American.”
“But you must be from an Indian tribe to qualify for Native American.”
“I was born here so I am a Native American.”
“But you’re not Indian so you can’t be Native American.”
“So, to be Native American you have to be Indian.”
“Yes”
“I was born here and my whole tribe is here, put me down for Indian.”
“You don’t qualify for Indian, you have to be from India.”
“But you just said that Indians are Native Americans. If you can be two different things why can’t I be beige with speckles?”
“It’s not on my form, sir.”
“So you can’t be two things.”
“No, just black, white or other”
“OK, so I’m not black and I’m beige with speckles today and turn red with speckles in the summer so I can’t be white and now you say I’m not other, what am I?”
“Well, I don’t have any other choices on the form so you have to be one of the three.”
“Put me down for other”
“Sir, I told you, you don’t qualify for other.”
“Are you telling me what I am or asking me?”
“I’m asking, sir.”
“Well, I’m not black and obviously someone who’s beige with speckles can’t be white, so put me down for other.”
“I can’t do that sir beige with speckles is not on my form.”
“Write it in there.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“They told us only to color in the circles, other information won’t be counted.”
“But I thought the Census was all about counting.”
“It is, sir.”
“Then why don’t I count?”

********************************

Back to the medical business:

I am happy to report that there is not much to report. Renee is scheduled for her surgery follow-up at the Cleveland Clinic in mid-April. She’s got a few lingering issues that need to be addressed but nothing at the panic level. She hasn’t got this whole back to eating thing worked out yet and so can’t pinpoint what triggers inflammation and what doesn’t. The doctor’s going to scold her for her cavalier attitude about what she ingests with blatant disregard for the consequences. That at least will be fun to watch. Maybe she’ll listen to him, she’s tuned me out a long time ago.

That’s it for now, while you’re waiting for the next update fill out those Census forms or better yet give them to me and I’ll fill them out for you. Let’s give this great and good government some information worth counting.

Half A Century Is Better Than None

If you were able to decipher the clues from my last post, you probably figured out it was a big birthday week for me. The whole age thing doesn’t bother me in the least. I’ve earned every wild ear hair and facial crease. I’ve even adapted to ordering an adult beverage at a local saloon and not being carded. Sure it hasn’t been all beer’n’pork chops (wine’n’roses for you romantics who don’t know the way to a man’s heart) but at least there’s been more applesauce than sour grapes.

Wait a minute! I like sour grapes. You know the big green ones that make your face pucker, maybe that’s where these creases come from. The moral of this story is, if you woke up this morning relatively healthy and you’re still looking down at the topsoil, count your blessings. It’s good to be any age!

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We received some news of possible concern this week from the pediatric endocrinologist. Cassidy’s growth spurt has lost its steam. Her bone age has caught up to her real age. This means that as far as height goes, she is just about done. They have upped her growth hormone to the medical max to coax every last inch out of her skeletal structure.

When we first started with the hormone treatment it was predicted that without it Cassidy would top off at maybe 4’6”. She is currently at 4’7” just barely passing the amusement park ruler line that says you must be this tall to ride. Being short in itself is not a problem, just ask me or my mother. Adapting to a world built around average standards a foot above where you top off will be challenging though.

The big question is, does this mean that there are underdeveloped organs that could cause medical problems down the line? It is all wait and see of course, we won’t know for a while. What we do know is that the doctor was very disappointed that the lines on the growth chart are going sideways rather than up.

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How ‘bout them WinterLympics!

This is where, as a spectator, you find out if you’re a “thrill of victory” or “agony of defeat” kind of person. Did you say “Oh yeah!” when the Russians came down the track under their bobsled? Did you cheer when the Japanese ski jumper face-planted her landing? Or, are you saying that you just wish each individual team and athlete could finish their respective run cleanly and count up the subjective scores to see who is awarded the medals? For me it is a little of both but I do want each one of these athletes to leave it all on the course. Seeing a top-tier skier dog it down the mountain because others in front of her have crashed is not sport. Go for the medal or go home.

Sometimes it is better to be remembered for a spectacular crash that you survived rather than them playing your song and handing you a bouquet. What is with the bouquets anyway? Tops in the world and you hand me tomorrow’s trash? If I make it to the podium keep your dead flowers and give me beer’n’pork chops and don’t forget the applesauce!

Olympic Pursuits

It feels strange to sit and stare at the screen and have nothing of medical portent to report. What is going on here? This does not mean that you get to stop reading and move on to other useless endeavors, you must complete this bit of uselessness first. Only then may you return to your far-outvilles, mafia chores, downloading mobile phone apps and flipping channels between rocks’n’brooms and men in tights in jealous rages over a hunk of jewelry. “Oh, that brute can’t even do a quad and besides the gold goes much better with my eyes.” High drama in Vancouver, I agree, but you can DVR that stuff and avoid the relentless Marriage Refs promos for the few precious hundredths of seconds it takes to slog through the slush here.

Renee still has not rescheduled her Cleveland Clinic trip, which right now looks to be nothing more than a perfunctory follow-up visit with no additional testing necessary. It sure was touch and go for a while there, but it looks like everything is working as advertised a few years back when her colorectal doctor first broached the subject of surgery, knock on mahogany. Yes, mahogany, not just any wood. Go out and find some solid, smooth, polished mahogany, dagnabbit! The bar in an Irish pub is usually made of the stuff. Order a Guinness while you’re there knocking and toast to the passing of Renee’s colon. We never did give the little bugger the proper Irish wake it deserved. It is time to make up for lost time.

There is also nothing to report on the Cassidy front. Her check-up at the endocrinologist was postponed due to the whiteouts that blew through here. Based on the tidal waves of mood swings, the (gulp!) feminine blossoming and the fact that she’s still growing with the help of the daily hormone injections, we think the doctor will be pleased with the progress and only make minor adjustments to the doses of medication.

Polly, the wonder dog, has also been healthy of late but is starting to show some signs of aging. Her roughhousing has diminished. Her bursts of energy are very short-lived. Those squirrels on the lawn trying to tease her don’t even rate a raised whisker. There are only flashes of the rambunctious puppy that that ran endless laps around the house like Apollo Ohno, bumping and scratching and clawing o’er the slick carpet. She is content now to just plop down in one spot and sleep through most of the day. Ah, the dog’s life!

So where does that leave Invasive Maneuvers? If the reporting on things I set out to report have all been reported, what else is there to report? Does the old dog need a new trick? Should other useless endeavors be pursued? Am I done publicly humiliating my immediate family? Am I out of ass jokes? I think I may be having a mid-blog crisis.

Perhaps though, your reporter just feels as if a new milestone is approaching. Decades of intense training is coming to a head. The game clock is ticking. The crowd is mesmerized. He stands poised against the battle of time. He lunges through the falling flakes of man-made snow for the five interlocking rings …

And then ….

And then …

“Hi, I’m Bob Costas. We’ll return to the real, tape delayed, live action after we interview a few polar bears and pelt you again and again with clips of Jerry Seinfeld’s teeth. Whoa, that’s laugh track funny.”

Red or Ick?

Did you know that even Muslims, Buddhists and Jews celebrate Saint Valentines Day? That is a rhetorical question folks, requires no answer, draw your own conclusions.

In another forum Renee commented, “Can anything be said around here without you making a song out of it!” (sic) There really should be a question mark there except that Renee was not asking but making an emphatic statement. All of you grammarniks will understand. Sometimes you’ve just got to throw the rules out of the window to get your point across.

I hope I never get to the point where the things I see and hear don’t resonate inside and spark some kind of creative bonfire. Burn baby, burn! The title of the blog is Invasive Maneuvers and at least this week deals with things other than surgery like what goes on inside my head. Heck, Renee hasn’t even rescheduled her Cleveland Clinic appointment. The winter of discontent for many is a period of healing for others. Go figure!

Back to the topic, can anything be said around here without you making a song out of it? Heck no! And I’m proud of that. But what I’m not proud of is so far, as far as that line goes, I’ve got nothing. There’s a song in there somewhere but I haven’t found it yet. Renee throws down the challenge gauntlet and I freeze up. Well sort of …

Rhetorical, rhetorical, rhetorical, rhetorical
The answer is no but you didn’t ask the question
You were stating, stating, stating the historical
And I’m just confirming the lesson

Wow, that’s pretty bad, not Valentine’s Day greeting card bad, but bad nonetheless. So there’s your homework for the weekend folks. Write your honey your own song or at least come up with something original to celebrate Lovers Leap Day. Don’t do the tired old thing like chocolates or Hallmark, originality scores points. But be sure to be judicious in your use of romantic rhetoric.

Who Are You?

We canceled our trip to Cleveland late on Thursday when the weather oujis predicted a mix of wintry slop for the 700 mile round trip. No thank you. Who knows when we can get it rescheduled? And who is that Who person anyway and why does he/she know so much? And shouldn’t they be practicing for the big halftime show?

The Who – Who Are You
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgWQ1erBnMo

Renee’s pains are more floating than nagging this week. Yes, I know I reported that she reported that they were gone but they didn’t completely disappear. They’re just poking about like that strange button on facebook. What purpose does that function serve? I got poked and my eye hurt for hours. Youch, stop doing that!

The rest of the week has been pretty quiet. We have settled into winter mode and our semi-hibernation state only venturing out to complete necessary errands and then returning to hide under the covers on the couch watching the dull crackle of the light box. The only excitement came when Renee hit the panic button because she couldn’t locate her rings, one of which was a priceless family heirloom. Of course this always happens at bedtime and the chaotic quest to find them disrupted the slumber fairies.

It also happened to be garbage night and when Renee couldn’t find them anywhere inside she pulled the bags from the can at the edge of the driveway and started sifting through the ick. After rummaging through a few days worth of coffee grinds and eggshells she located both rings. Yes, she had tossed them in the trash. Had she not thought to panic in the late hours the rings would have been history.

Lessons learned: 1) Don’t throw your rings in the trash. 2) Dumpster diving is not fun but does have its rewards. 3) Panic is not always a bad thing.

So go ahead, you have my permission to panic, whoever you are.

Something's Missing

When you’re dealing with recurring medical issues you get used to missing things, for example, vacations and parties. (Hopefully, we haven’t missed any opportunities. Opportunities for what I’m not sure, but I just hope we haven’t missed them.)

For Renee, rather recently, something has been missing. It has only been a few days but the noticeable absence of something that has been so prevalent in her life has got her feeling some separation anxiety. Where did it go? Why has it left? It has hung around for years like an adult child that just won’t leave the house and then one day you wake up and the familiar voice is gone, shhhhh – quiet. Is this an empty feeling inside or elation? Is it for real? Will there be a mid-morning return, “Jeez, I just went for a walk. What’s for lunch?” or is it gone for good? I’m talking about Renee’s parasitic friend, pain.

Required listening
Andy Williams – Can’t Get Used To Losing You
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUeaqHHq2II

Renee said yesterday that the pain she’s been carrying around in her mid-section, like a baby on the hip, just disappeared. Do we issue an Amber Alert, print up some new milk containers? Do we celebrate and throw something similar to a mortgage burning party? Is this another one of those false positives?

We’re still scheduled for our trip to Cleveland on Friday. Renee asked if the trip is worth it now that the pain is gone. My medical training in this regard is pretty rusty. I am up on all the current Renee trends of excruciating behavior. It has been a long while since I’ve had to deal with a pain free Renee. I’m just a general blog-titionor and not a specialist in this area. I’m going to have to defer to the surgeon on this one, so we’re going north.

With Renee, you never know if the skies are clearing or if you’re in the eye of the storm, but I do know that we’ve fed, clothed and housed her little friend for too long now. It is time for the pain to move on and wither away like last Autumn’s leaves. It is time for Renee to embrace this new empty-nester lifestyle and break free of the cocoon that has enveloped her. It is time for the Monarch to emerge and take flight, fluttering again in the wild, windy, open pastures, not just on the rebound but once again unbound.

It is time for Renee to get used to missing the pain.

Northern Exposure

Our excursion to Cleveland this week was postponed due to the doctor booking a surgery when he was already booked for an office visit. This is the second time Renee has been bumped by this surgeon. And I’m not talking in a dance floor kind of way. We just received a cold message on our answering machine that your appointment has been cancelled, please call to reschedule. We try to explain to these folks that we are coming from 350 miles away and that logistical planning for this is the equivalent of reuniting the original 5th Dimension members for a five part harmonic regeneration of Aquarius/Let the Sun Shine In, pretty hard considering at least one member has already ascended to the heavens they were singing about.

On or about February 5th, will the Moon be in the seventh house and Jupiter align with Mars? I don’t know, but Saturn and Pluto will be in alignment, appropriately enough, with Uranus. I’m not sure if peace will guide the planets but I-71 will guide us back to Cleveand. Unless, of course, we get another chilly voice message disrupting the whole planetary alignment process we put in place to make it happen.

Renee’s discomfort in her mid-section is not decreasing and at least one of her local physicians has used the A-word. Around hear that naughty little word is adhesions. Adhesions are internal scar tissue. Everyone who has had surgery has some adhesions, usually no big deal, but some people scar worse than others and some scar tissue continues to grow beyond the normal area of incision.

Renee has experienced this before. Her adhesions got out of hand following her kidney removal surgery six years ago leading to further more invasive surgery. We don’t want that. She’s already been opened up more times than a refrigerator in a busy kitchen. More surgery, more adhesions, it’s a vicious cycle. We are hoping we don’t need to go there.

We are also hoping for some better weather. The winter doldrums have set in. Can you tell from the tone of this post? We went from three weeks of sub-freezing temperatures to two weeks of dark, dreary, foggy, misty, sinus clogging, head stuffing, pneumonia inducing cold rain. I can’t remember where I left my shades because I haven’t needed to even squint when going outdoors. We've gone from a Canadian cold front to a Seattle soaking, we need a January jolt of light.

So put your hands together, if we sing real loud, in harmony, maybe it will chase the clouds from the sky. And maybe ….

Let the sun shine in …

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LANwIgpha7k&feature=related

Knock, Knock

Knock on frozen wood people – we’re nine days into the new year and not one hospital visit, woohoo!

It’s the third straight day of snow and a full week’s worth of sub-freezing temperatures. When the heck did I move to Canada? Crazy, but I think I’m getting used to it, the cold that is. I’ve got an arctic pup who doesn’t get phased in the least by the low temperatures and asks to go out every time she raises her lazy bones up from one spot to move to another, so I’m getting my share of time out in the elements.

Cassidy wants to go snowboarding down the big hill today and wants me to go too. We’ll try to make it through without any broken bones. Even at this stage of the game moving swiftly down a big hill on a board is still exciting and fun. Paying for it later isn’t as fun but the pain lets you know you’re alive - yeah right, that’s Hollywood talk. Keep your dang pain. Recovery’s a killer but it still won’t hold me back from playing on the big icy slide. MEDIC!

All’s quiet on the Renee front. She survived her first week back to work with the help of a snow day. A week and a half and we’ll be back up to the Double C to check out some lingering issues from the last surgery but she hasn’t been complaining lately. Did you hear that? Renee has not been complaining! Shocking isn’t it? Let me be clear here. Renee is not complaining about her medical condition, her complaining about me continues incessantly. If that stopped I’d know she was really sick. You’ve got to be aware of the indicators folks.

So everybody set your speed dials to 911, we’re throwing ourselves headfirst down the big 2010 hill right now. WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!