A Life Well Lived

About ten years ago I had a pine struck by lightening and die. It was large (about 20" diameter) and tall (75-80 ft). It was near the lake shore and endangering my dock, so I had a local climber top it to a 20 ft tall "stump". 

That butt height was safe for the dock and provided a lot of habitat over the years. Woodpeckers (at least one Pileated family was raised in it) and smaller critters enjoyed it's safety and bounty.

As inevitable, the butt finally slumped over, forming a barrier to lakeside maintenance, so it was time for a cleanup and cremation. This is where I started taking some pics. 

The dissection revealed an inner core of heart pine through most of the butt, valuable as "lightwood", natures fire starter, so I decided to salvage some of it. In the process some of the smaller forest floor dwellers appeared.

The outer softwood was mostly soft soil by now, which I scattered and left to fertilize the area. Along with relocating the living critters still there. The two short video clips at the end show carpenter ants and termites. (These would be hard to spot in a still photo.)

The remaining scraps of lightwood pile into the hollowed-out stump and make a fire, good enough to take the stump below ground. 

The salvaged heart wood will light many fires in the fire ring at WinterCamp and in the wood stoves at Bucksnort.

Four days later - all smoothed out for regeneration of ground cover. 

Dogs

You know that Far Side cartoon, where Fido is trying to lure the cat into a clothes dryer with a sign reading "cat fud this way" ? Well, we may think that's funny because the dog appears so stupid. But really we are stupid to laugh at it. The dog (1) has no sense of cruelty, like we do; and (2) communicates about food with a sense of smell. If we attempted to put something together like that sign, only in the smell medium, we would be far outclassed by Fido, who is far more oder-iterate than we could hope to be. This cartoon captures the sorry tail end state of our relationship with dogs, and it is a sad one.

We have had dogs in our lives since the dawn of reason, and we probably owe our intellectual capacity to them.

Just sayin'

Don't Go to the Doctor

(Initially published as a story of facebook.)

Feeling nerve pain in my left shoulder, arm and hand, enough discomfort to prevent sleep, I paid a visit to the walk-in clinic. That was August 2022.

The initial guess - there was a pinched nerve in my neck, likely because I made the mistake of mentioning I had bonked my head standing up under a tree limb. (It's usually not a good idea to plant seeds like that.) As is common for people my age, X-rays did show a narrowed gap around C5. That and the "bonk" did make the pinched nerve at the neck seem plausible, so I went with a prescribed regimen of PT at their facility, along with a cascade of Prednisone. After several weeks of that, I felt stronger and more flexible in my upper body, and the night-0time pain was alleviated, so all seemed good.

Unfortunately, exactly in step with the ending of the Prednisone cascade, the initial problem returned. Note that all this time I had no actual diagnosis because, as one of my MD consultants put it, Tallahassee is underserved in neurologists. Meaning, there aren't enough of them. I had been on a waiting list to see one since the initial visit.

Finally, in early December, I got the call. Diagnosis: classic carpal tunnel pinching. Easily fixed with arthroscopic surgery done with local anesthesia. SIGN ME UP!

Just one little hurdle, due to my age any surgery, even this minor procedure, can't be scheduled until my main guy signs off on it. A kind of permission slip. No problem, I thought.

Well, everything looked good, as I expected. But, since I hadn't done an EKG in 10 years, in the interest of thoroughness, they harnessed me up. The caregiver took the printout away, but returned saying it was a bit fuzzy so they wanted another one. (I thought, here we go.) She came back and said they wanted a 3rd confirmatory reading. After looking that one over, she returned with the news that I was, at that very moment, in Atrial Fibrillation. I'm thinking, why don't you have paddles in hand?

Turns out, one can have "afib", to use the friendly nickname, with no symptoms, including not hearing anything abnormal via stethoscope.

So I'm immediately put on "blood thinners" and sent off to see the "electric heart guy", who, apparently can't be the same as my previous cardiologist who does only "general" cardiology. Electric heart guy wants to run 2 tests (echo cardiogram and stress EKG) followed by a shock treatment.

I know some of you are thinking, it's about time they fixed that old SOBs brain, but you're wrong. This is essentially the paddles, done while put under for a few minutes because "it is very painful". I asked if it was more painful than being tazed, the answer is "it's different" - devoid of the information I was seeking.

Well, finally, on Valentines Day, I went in to TMH and got all that done. I passed the two tests, with only one casualty being my right foot, and the shock treatment flipped the ole ticker out of afib ... for the present. I'm told by everyone from Dr to custodial staff that I can slip back into afib at any time. I asked, how will I know? There doesn't seem to be a definitive answer, but I'm advised to check my pulse regularly.

So, now, I'm hoping to be cleared to get the carpal tunnel procedure and with luck cure the original complaint.

RE: the right foot - when I was wheeled in concentric circles and up and down various elevators without being informed as to the reason or destination, I ended up at the stress EKG facility - a treadmill. With my shoes still far far away at my cubby which I would not be able to find in hours of searching. Using the treadmill vigorously, barefooted, stressed my right plantar facia, and I'm hoping I can nurse it back to health in a few weeks.

PS: In no way is this story intended to reflect poorly on any of my physicians or other medical personnel. I hold all of them in high esteem and am quite fond of those I've known for a while.