Day 4331

Well, I've got two more medical procedures behind me now. I think everything went well. My upper GI endoscopy has the longest name imaginable. Technically the procedure is called a esophagogastroduodenoscopy. The doctor wanted to do a follow-up biopsy of my esophagus when they discovered that I had a condition known as Barrett's esophagus. Very rarely Barrett's esophagus leads to esophageal cancer, so early testing is always wise. I think they discovered why I have reflux issues so often. The upper part of my stomach protrudes into my esophagus a bit. The doctor didn't think this was serious and said most people learn to live with it. Surgical options are available, but I'd rather just learn to eat foods that don't cause reflux.

The Colonoscopy I had done at the same time also went well. They removed one very small polyp from my colon. Polyps are very common at my age, so I was pleased that I only had one. The worst thing about today's Colonoscopy was the prep liquid I had to drink last night. This always seems like an enormous amount of water to drink in a single evening. I was up most of the night. I was hoping that this would be my last Colonoscopy ever, but the doctor said since they found a polyp, I would have to have one more five years from now. I might also need to have one more upper GI endoscopy, depending on the results of today's biopsy.

Hospital visits are always interesting. The administrative part of the visit is always slow and tedious, while the medical part is usually very swift and efficient. I think I sat in the waiting room this morning for longer than it took to do the procedure. When you sit in a waiting room for any length of time you realize that most patients are older and many are extremely overweight. Old people are why health care is so expensive. If we just threw the old people to the wolves, health care would be a lot less expensive. Since I am an old person, I'm happy to get good care though. I do try to do my part to stay healthy. I stay active, exercise a lot, and eat healthy food. No fast food for this guy. It's probably been decades since I've been to a McDonalds.

Janet wanted to vote today, so we stopped at our polling place while she was driving me home from the hospital. It was a cold, rainy day and the only things on the ballot were a bunch of constitutional amendments. No one was actually running for office where we live. You have to be careful when you vote for propositions or amendments. They seem to be worded as obscurely as humanly possible. If you don't read the ballot slowly and carefully, it's easy to end up voting for the opposite of what you intended.

I missed getting a minimum of 10,000 steps for the first time in a long time today. The doctor said it would be OK to take a walk later in the day, but it was raining outside so walking was out of the question. I can't decide whether to leave the pumps running tonight. If the pumps run dry, there's a chance they can overheat, but if I leave them off there's a chance of a roof leak. We need the rain, but rain is never my friend. Rain disrupts my walks, Dawn gets dirty on her walks, and there's always that pesky roof leak.

The Rolling Stones are in town tonight. It's a sign that I'm getting older that I have no desire to sit out in the cold at the Cotton Bowl and hear them in the rain again. Been there, done that. It always seems to rain when the Stones come to the Cotton Bowl.

Puppies are today's Dalmatians of the Day

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Day 4303

It's always interesting to go to a new doctor. I think this one is a keeper. The doctor I talked with today was the same one who removed the stones from my bile duct while I was hospitalized. and discovered that I had Barrett's esophagus. She did a good job of explaining why a second endoscopy and a biopsy of the esophagus was necessary. Evidently Barrett's esophagus is considered a pre-cancerous condition, even though the chances of it turning into cancer are very low. This inflammation of the lower part of the esophagus is caused by years of repeated acid reflux.  I've certainly experienced heartburn for a long time. Chances are the damage was done decades ago.

The upshot is that I go back to the hospital in a few weeks for an upper GI tract endoscopy. As a dubious bonus I am going to have a colonoscopy done at the same time. I knew that my primary care physician would never stop bugging me about the colonoscopy, so I thought this might be a good idea. Hey, I'm always up for killing two birds with one stone. I was somewhat surprised that the doctor agreed and said that doing both procedures at the same time would be no problem.

I don't look forward to being anesthetized again and having tubes shoved up both ends, but I'm a practical person and agree that this is necessary. No matter how healthy you think you are, seeing the doctor more often is just part of growing older. This is the time of year when I'm due for most of my annual exams anyway. I still need to make appointments to see the dermatologist, the urologist, and the eye doctor.

My doctor's appointment didn't stop me from taking my long walk. My new routine is to start the day with our sunrise walk with Dawn, eat a quick breakfast, and then immediately return to the trails for my long six mile walk before it gets too hot. This seems like a good plan even though it doesn't really get too hot anymore. The weather is just much nicer before 11 AM. 

People continue to send me surveys to fill out on an almost daily basis. What is the deal with all these surveys? I get them from the Land Rover dealer, the hospital, various doctors, elected representatives, the electric company, and just about anyone else I've crossed paths with. This is a recent phenomenon. Five years ago nobody asked me to take a survey. I wonder what has changed? Probably everything is driven by big data now and surveys determine what products and services we will get in the future. That's a shame if this is true. The world would be a much better place if people just used common sense to make decisions.

I finally figured out how to get the new medical features on my Apple Watch to work. The good news is that I have a few more graphs to look at in the morning. The bad news is that the batteries on both my phone and watch don't seem to last as long anymore. I've been trying to disable the background app refresh settings on my phone whenever I can find them. These seems to be on by default when you upgrade your operating system. Apple doesn't really care how long your battery lasts. They'd rather just sell you a new phone or computer every couple of years.

I think I'm more or less caught up on things for a while. I haven't heard from the observatory lately, so I'll probably just postpone my next visit until the Spring. I doubt that I'll be returning to Kennedy Space Center this year either. The launches I want to see have all been postponed until 2022. Maybe this is all for the best. It's been an expensive year and I don't have much money left for travel anyway. There's always plenty of walking to do. I'll just walk my way into 2022 and then pick up where I left off.

Lightning is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 4163

Another rainy day. I think it's supposed to be this way for the rest of the week. This would have been the week to go out to the Davis Mountains. It's still clear out there. I don't know what this proves other than it's very difficult to plan ahead and sometimes I'm just unlucky

I guess having a regular physical exam is an attempt to plan ahead. I do try to stay healthy, even though maintaining your health depends on a certain amount of luck as well. Since I was having blood work done today, I needed to fast and couldn't eat breakfast before my 10 AM appointment. This made for a long morning. I drove to the doctor's office in the rain and noticed that I need new windshield wipers. One more thing to add to my to-do list.

Physical exams are always a mix of good and bad news. The good news was that my doctor seemed pleased with my overall health. The bad news was that I'm due for another colonoscopy. It doesn't seem like ten years since my last colonoscopy, but time flies when you are growing old. I always ask about my ongoing foot pain and my frozen shoulder, but I'm never happy with the answers I get. There's no real cure for osteoarthritis. When the protective cartilage that cushions the ends of your bones wears down over time, there's not a lot you can do. Your choices are usually limited to pain medications, physical therapy, and surgery. I've known plenty of people who have had knee, hip, and shoulder replacements. I'm not sure I want to go down that road.

Dawn didn't get a walk at all today. We tried, but she had no interest in getting wet. It took some planning to take my own longer walk, but I managed to find some dry time between the bands of rain moving from the southwest to the northeast. I got caught in a few sprinkles, but for the most part I stayed pretty dry. This wet weather seems to bring out the snakes. I've seen snakes almost every time I've walked lately.

I made another attempt to process some of the pictures I took last week and wasn't happy with the results. It is much easier to take pictures of dogs. The night sky is quite dim and the stars are always moving, so you can't simply take a very long exposure. Successful astrophotography depends on taking a lot of shorter images of the same subject and then merging them together using specialized software that compensates for the rotation of the earth. There are many steps to this stacking process. You want to keep both your foreground and your stars sharp, while avoiding the camera noise that often accompanies long exposures. I'm learning, but I've got a ways to go.

The Atlas V SBIRS GEO Flight 5 launch was successful today. Several of my launch photographer friends were there and got great pictures. I'm always a little envious when I see these pictures, but I don't think I'll be returning to Florida any time soon. The East Coast gas shortage, lack of rental cars, and the huge number of people who want to get out of the house and return to Disneyland or the beach are going to make travel difficult for a while. I'm hoping that life will eventually return to normal, but clearly we're not there yet.

Dismal weather always puts me in a bad mood. I wonder how long it's going to be before I see the sun again? I spent a lot of time napping today, but that's the way it goes on a rainy day. I'll make up for lost time when the sun returns.

Skippy is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 2808

Maybe the zombie apocalypse has already started. First North Korea threatens to nuke us. Then, Mother Nature actually does nuke us with a Godzilla hurricane, Now, things are starting to get real at home.

I was getting ready to go to bed last night when I heard an ominous cracking sound, followed by what sounded like a rush of water. The supply line to the toilet had burst and high pressure water was spewing everywhere. I tried in vain to close a shut off valve, but it had rusted and was frozen. By the time I found the key to the water main and went outside to shut off the water to the house, the bathroom, hallway, and part of the bedroom were completely flooded.

To make matters worse Janet had to have a colonoscopy today and was right in the middle of colonoscopy prep when the pipe ruptured. If you've ever had a colonoscopy, you'll know that the night before is not the best time to be without running water or working toilets. I was able to use water being collected by the dehumidifier to flush the toilet a few times and then we resorted to using the bottled water we had around the house.

It's amazing we didn't get electrocuted. Several plug strips that were sitting on the floor got covered with water and shorted out. After I got the water shut off, I unplugged everything with gloves on. If I didn't have the wet/dry vacuum nearby, I'd probably still be mopping up water. About 2 AM, things were reasonably dry again and I went to bed.

I called my plumber as soon as their office opened this morning and was told that they were completely booked up until next Tuesday. This was not good. I took Janet to the hospital for her procedure and then went looking for a plumbing supply store, hoping to not use up too much gas in the process. I eventually found exactly what I needed and was convinced that I could make the repairs myself. I'm not very comfortable sweating copper pipe, so I found supplies that I could use without a torch. Surprisingly, my repairs worked perfectly. I saved at least $150 by not having a plumber come out, not that I could find one anyway.

By the time I got the pipe fixed and restored water to the house, it was time to pick up Janet. Since the morning had been relatively successful, I decided to spend the afternoon looking for gas. I know I told you yesterday that I was going to just wait, but it drives me nuts not to be prepared. When I looked at the Gas Finder website this morning, there were even fewer stations that still had gas than there were yesterday. When I drove to the hospital and back I didn't see a single station that still had gas.

There was only one station within a fifteen mile radius that still claimed to have gas today, so I drove there and got in line. There were sixteen pumps at this station and only two of them were still working. The only thing left was regular gas, so I reluctantly filled my tank with regular. I've never done that before, but I didn't want to run out of gas on a long holiday weekend. On my way home I saw my first gasoline tanker. There were a long line of cars following this tanker and when the tanker eventually pulled in at a Chevron station, all the cars followed. This is madness. There really wasn't a gas shortage in the first place, but we have created one. The tanker trucks usually just top up the tanks at the stations once a week. Now all the tanks in the city are completely empty. It might take a while to get back to normal.

It was an odd day, but I'm happy. We've got running water again and I've got a full tank of gas. What more could you ask for?

Spot is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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