Memories! Ah!.. if only I could remember them! My short term memory is failing fast. Give me 4 numbers to remember and they have disappeared in seconds. Really! I need paper and pencil with me all of the time. But I can't remember to do that. I need some of those pocket sized, cheap note pads. The kind that are bound on a circular wire thing that I can't remember what it's called. I would have to buy them by the gross.
But now talk about long term memory and I can shine there. I'm depending on it right now; my son bought me a 400 piece jigsaw puzzle and it's been made by mapmarketing.com, a company in England, or maybe Great Britain. I'm always confused by that. The puzzle is made with a full color map from Google Earth that covers the place where I grew up in the 40's and 50's, Manhattan Beach. I need my memory to help me locate the streets that will connect all parts of the South Bay Beach cities. The box has no cover picture of the contents to help you, so you are on your own, and your memory. Heck, I can go to Google Earth and look it up myself, then print it. There goes a lot of the memory worries right there.
Now I remember... spiral binding! There is even a great sci-fi series I'm reading, where the focus of the book is/are The Spiral Wars. I should remember it, why didn't I?
Saturday, January 18, 2020
Catching Up
It has been about a month since the last post here. So it's time for me to unload on to the blog again. I suppose this blog is more like a diary than anything else.
As usual, there are a lot of health items. No one told us about this 'aging' process, or if they did, we weren't listening. My early career choices have come back to haunt me. Hanging drywall and being paid for it on a piecework basis. For every 4'x12' sheet of drywall (sheetrock) I put on the wall and nailed it there, would pay me 72 cents. I was in the Carpenter's Union at the time regular pay was $5 an hour, or $40 a day. I would only have to hang 55 sheets to equal that. That's easy! I could hang 8 sheets an hour easily... because I was young an very dumb. What that was doing to my spine was not apparent until I was in my late 60's. Then I learned in a hurry. Now, 11 years after that first surgery to fuse 3 vertebra, I have followed up with 4 more surgeries and numerous injections, all to no avail; the pain remains.
Last Monday, I slid into the MRI tube once more. I have done that 11 times. An x-ray taken a month ago revealed that my thoracic spine is falling apart. Compression fractures and bone thinning are the culprits this time. I have told my neurosurgeon that surgery wasn't going to happen this time. He agreed. Yesterday I was back at the radiology place for a CTA scan . This was to measure my aneurysm of the ascending aorta. I have scans every 3 months and this was my 6th scan or x-ray. I should be nervous about it, but that won't do anything, so I ignore it.
Besides a neurosurgeon, I have a neurologist, a urologist, a pulmonary doc, a thoracic surgeon, a dermatologist, a pain doc, the family doc and half a dozen others that are not currently active in my medical world, but they have been.
Yes, the 'Golden Years' are made of fool's gold. This all sounds very depressing and I must admit that I suffer from depression and take a drug for it. But, when being honest, I would not change my life. I wouldn't mind doing a little editing, but overall, my life brings me joy. The woman I share this life with and our children, grandchildren and even a great grandchild bring me a great deal of that joy.
As usual, there are a lot of health items. No one told us about this 'aging' process, or if they did, we weren't listening. My early career choices have come back to haunt me. Hanging drywall and being paid for it on a piecework basis. For every 4'x12' sheet of drywall (sheetrock) I put on the wall and nailed it there, would pay me 72 cents. I was in the Carpenter's Union at the time regular pay was $5 an hour, or $40 a day. I would only have to hang 55 sheets to equal that. That's easy! I could hang 8 sheets an hour easily... because I was young an very dumb. What that was doing to my spine was not apparent until I was in my late 60's. Then I learned in a hurry. Now, 11 years after that first surgery to fuse 3 vertebra, I have followed up with 4 more surgeries and numerous injections, all to no avail; the pain remains.
Last Monday, I slid into the MRI tube once more. I have done that 11 times. An x-ray taken a month ago revealed that my thoracic spine is falling apart. Compression fractures and bone thinning are the culprits this time. I have told my neurosurgeon that surgery wasn't going to happen this time. He agreed. Yesterday I was back at the radiology place for a CTA scan . This was to measure my aneurysm of the ascending aorta. I have scans every 3 months and this was my 6th scan or x-ray. I should be nervous about it, but that won't do anything, so I ignore it.
Besides a neurosurgeon, I have a neurologist, a urologist, a pulmonary doc, a thoracic surgeon, a dermatologist, a pain doc, the family doc and half a dozen others that are not currently active in my medical world, but they have been.
Yes, the 'Golden Years' are made of fool's gold. This all sounds very depressing and I must admit that I suffer from depression and take a drug for it. But, when being honest, I would not change my life. I wouldn't mind doing a little editing, but overall, my life brings me joy. The woman I share this life with and our children, grandchildren and even a great grandchild bring me a great deal of that joy.
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