Bruce came home from the hospital today.
Archive for the ‘Home’ Category
After 32 weeks
Friday, October 28th, 2005Various & Sundry, part twenty-four
Saturday, October 1st, 2005— Month of September workout totals: Swim-7; Bike-4; Run-3; Lift-0; Yoga-0
— I was reliving the moment of confusion, pain, and regret when I learned of Mike’s illness, so I decided to learn more about rheumatoid arthritis. The books in Dana’s own natural healing library here at home were a big help, and she spent time doing some digging herself. RA is an autoimmune condition, and there are strong indications to suggest that it’s related to food allergies. The ability of foods to trigger an immune response is often associated with a weakening of mucous membranes in the intestine that allow undigested food to pass into the blood stream and collect around tissues. In the case of RA it would be the joints. His immune system is mistaking cells around the joints as the enemy and will eventually destroy them if the complex isn’t unraveled. I put together a packet of information so that he can get another perspective. I believe, in most cases, orthodox medical care and natural healing methods can work side by side. It should only help him feel better if he combines dietary and lifestyle refinements with his current therapy.
— Bruce has had a powerful week of positive developments after a long summer of erratic recovery. For the first time since March he was able to take food by mouth. Imagine that… well, I know you can’t… neither can I. He also made it down the hall to the Dialysis Center with a walker, on his own—another first. This man has grit (or as my Uncle Don would say, “the Means”).
Thankful it’s not Gulfport, Mississippi
Monday, August 29th, 2005A chunk of the day was disrupted by power outages in our part of downtown Danville, restricting us to a few basic, civilized activities such as talking, reading, and eating our lunchtime salads on the front porch.
Various & Sundry, part twenty-two
Monday, August 1st, 2005— Month of July workout totals: Swim-7; Bike-5; Run-7; Lift-0; Yoga-0.
— The yew shrubs (taxus) in front of our porch had gotten totally out of control the past couple years. I figured I needed to either yank them out or do something radical with their appearance. On Saturday I sat and stared at one of them for half an hour, and then I attacked it with my old lopping shears. We’d seen pictures of how landscapers sculpt these bushes in the oriental style, then began to notice examples (Chicago, Cincinnati) in proximity to “Arts and Crafts” residential architecture. It was worth a try. I was pleased with the result, especially after I used shoe polish to camouflage the pruning scars. I have no idea how old these plants are, but they’ve reached nearly six feet in height and have to be dealt with.
— Bruce is doing better, now that he’s back in the hospital. It’s hard for me to see how they could discharge him last week without ensuring the continuity of treatment essential for his improvement. Much of the routine care he needed fell into disarray or was changed. If it hadn’t been for family…
— While Dana was having her Indianapolis adventure, I was trying my hand at topiary arts, making more stabs at getting back into triathlon condition, and spending some time at David’s range with my two carbines. The 1894s clobbered my shoulder until I learned to hold it correctly. David helped me take off the scope that Dadbo put on it, and that restored it to the desired simplicity. I’ve decided to learn to use this nice rifle with the naked eye. I don’t think I’d ever be comfortable with scope hunting, so I don’t intend to start that. If I can’t get a kill shot with open sights I intend to let the moment pass. The .30-caliber M1 was fun to sight in and proved to be far more accurate than I was expecting, probably due to the influence of some negative Rick Jason remarks published in a book about the “Combat!” series. Or maybe I just happened to get a particularly good example of the WWII-era design. I checked my notes and can’t believe I purchased that gun in 1993. That I just let it gather dust must have something to do with Dadbo dying less than a month later. (Interestingly, my father and Rick Jason were almost exactly the same age. I only just learned that he died in 2000 of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, but I don’t know any details.)
— Josh should be back in the States on leave by this weekend. There’s a tribute planned for the following Friday evening at Eagle Nest. That should be a memorable gathering and celebration. To top it off, it’s the World Premiere of “Pirate Revenge,” the family short we shot at Lake Cumberland a dozen years ago, but it was never completed as the last installment of the Clan Pirate Trilogy. Marty and Coleman were babies, Brendan was a squirt, and Dadbo made his final contribution to family creativity as “Frank, the old fisherman.” My, how time does fly…
Wake up and smell the kookhead
Thursday, May 26th, 2005Setting the “bean machine” to automatic before bed, but forgetting to put the coffee pot underneath, is not a desirable way to start your day.
Nature abhors a shopvac
Wednesday, April 27th, 2005I spent the day with exterminators (don’t even ask!) and felt my livelihood slide one more notch toward crisis. All I want to do is watch “Alias” and “Eyes,” back to back (the two most entertaining dramas on network television, due to Ron Rifkin and Tim Daly).
Oldenday III
Friday, April 15th, 2005I don’t know if I really liked school as a kid, but rather accepted it as my fate. It did have one nice thing going for it—ample opportunity to draw. Because we were Catholics, we went to school six days a week, although the Saturday religious instruction (catechism) was only in the morning, which wasn’t so bad because we were used to it, and we got to hang out with our top chums, the Vagedes boys. But maybe the best thing about Saturday mornings was that we got a comic book. I didn’t know that Treasure Chest wasn’t “cool.” I looked forward to the wholesomely didactic magazine (given out one per family before we went home each Saturday morning) because it was a comic book. Super heroes would come later. “Treasure Chest” introduced me to the longer pictorial narrative form and the art of the visual cliffhanger. Looking back on it, the staff that produced it was clearly packed with talent. I never saw another issue of it after 1964. With the move to a new town, a few dimes to spend, and the proximity of my junior high school to a retail rack of Superman, Batman, and Aquaman, I made the seismic shift to the world of DC Comics. Other than being shown how to use pastel chalk by family friend Mr. Smalley, I still had received no direct exposure to fine arts instruction. I was almost a teen, and I’d had no educator who could demonstrate to me genuine artistic technique, even though I’d had a series of teachers who rather negligently but wholeheartedly supported my effort to become self-taught. And so I continued with my own strange mix of preferred influences: Reed Crandall, Doug Wildey, Bob Clampett, Alfred Andriola, Curt Swan, Bob Kane, and Frank Frazetta. Actually, I could have chosen much worse…
At times like this
Tuesday, April 12th, 2005My wife Dana and I want to thank each of you—individually, in person, if we could—for your many messages of support. For now, please know that they are much appreciated.
Bruce was able to sit up and talk on Friday, but seemed tired on Saturday. Since we’d arrived in Indianapolis the previous Saturday with clothes for only two days, we needed to get home. We got back to Danville late Saturday, but didn’t get much sleep that night.
Since we hadn’t seen Marty during his spring break, we took him out for dinner on Sunday. During the meal we got the call that Bruce was failing (high temperature, growing infection, pneumonia out of control). We packed up and headed back to Indy. The message we’d received was so alarming that Marty and his mom Terie came with us, despite the fact that school would be back in session on Monday. This time we grabbed our dog, too.
Bruce was stable by the time we arrived, back on a ventilator, but blood pressure and pulse were erratic. By early afternoon, he was resting fairly well and went into surgery to remove a temporary stint (a possible source of the continuing infection) that is used for dialysis, and replace it with a different type. A permanent fistula was considered, but it was decided that he’s too ill to go under anesthesia.
He was sleeping comfortably last night with better vital signs. He’s still under heavy sedation, but he does react to his mother’s voice and can respond to questions with a slight nod. He’s receiving nutrition through a nose tube that goes directly into the small intestine, bypassing the stomach and pancreas. His nurse told Dana that patients with pancreatitis this severe sometimes remain in the ICU three months or more and in the hospital for months longer–a true test of endurance. Regular drives back and forth to Indiana will seem easy by comparison. On Sunday I got to talk to a friend who reminded me that a local acquaintance spent six months in the hospital with pancreatitis, and that it was two years before he was totally his old self. Bruce has the will to undergo a long recuperation if his situation can just stabilize, but I honestly don’t know if his mate has the stamina for what lies ahead.
It is at times like this that Dana and I are reminded how much we value our family (powerful, quiet support) and our friends (an amazing outpouring of affection).
We’re truly grateful for the positive thoughts and prayers. We’ll need them for some time to come…
(Dana helped with this entry.)
In transit
Saturday, April 9th, 2005Making our way toward home at last.
Oldenday I
Saturday, April 2nd, 2005Although my mom provided a truly rich atmosphere for mental play and my dad revealed for me his familiar world of nature, I look back at times with wonder and some amusement that I ever arrived at any sort of creative legitimacy, given the odd character of my early visual stimuli. I always had chalk and my own blackboard, and was given free reign to inhabit the world of my own imagination, sharing it with a captive sibling audience. I suppose we were rather sheltered. It was no surprise they thought I was a real artist. I recall almost no access to books with “serious” artwork. A bound collection of Currier and Ives reproductions was about as close as it got. I don’t remember any childhood visits to art museums or even going to a library before attending school. There was really nothing about art to learn on television, except for the exposure to Walt Disney, or a glimpse of illustrations in the books read by Captain Kangaroo, or, eventually, Jon Gnagy’s “Learn to Draw.” At least I understood that Yogi Bear and the Flintstones wasn’t about art. We didn’t get a daily newspaper. And so it was a monumental event in my life when Uncle Art delivered a stack of Saturday Evening Post magazines and a year’s worth of old Sunday comics. I must not have had a bit of interest in anything else until it was fully absorbed. For a time, that was the pinnacle: Walt Kelly, Al Capp, Milton Caniff, and, of course, those magnificent Rockwell covers…
Various & Sundry, part ten
Saturday, March 12th, 2005— We had no business doing it, but we purchased a DVD recorder for our TV/cable configuration at home. Dana’s testing it out today. My question is this: If I’m supposed to transfer my entire collection of Mission: Impossible from VHS to DVD in order to save space, does that mean I get to watch all of it during the dubbing?
— Last night Dana and I made pizza, opened a bottle of Australian Merlot (Black Swan), and celebrated 27 years since our first date. Positioned precisely six months across the calendar from our wedding anniversary, this special observation enables us to have two celebrations each year that honor our enduring partnership in all things.
— After hearing a remark by Charles Murray that the movie Groundhog Day is an “Aristotlelian moral fable” of profound significance that will stand the test of time as a great work of art, Dana and I watched it again and enjoyed it enormously. Yes, I’m aware that among some people, Murray (no relation to Bill) has a negative reputation (unfair, in my opinion), but how can a guy who lists P.J. O’Rourke and James Clavell among his favorites be all bad?
Just a matter of semantics
Wednesday, February 2nd, 2005A visit to the cellar
Monday, January 24th, 2005After the open house for David’s retirement from National City, Dana and I had dinner at Freddie’s with David, Lee, Gary, and Trish. Afterwards we regrouped at the Town House for dessert, so I opened the 1997 bottle of Nichelini Cabernet, which had been waiting patiently for a celebration. My goodness, it was even better than I was expecting. RWB certainly knows his wine. We all enjoyed a welcome break from recent tensions. David asked me to show Gary and Trish my first wood engraving, and so I made my typical awkward attempt at juggling personal pride and sincere humility. You’d think that by now I’d feel more natural when it came to discussing my art.