Hope For The Heartbeat
It's been a while since I was here, and I'm honestly not sure I have the words for anything at great length. My life since 2010 has been a series of roller coasters...life, love, lunacy, ll of that. I've lost a partner, had friends die, had my dog drop dead in the doorway, fallen in love several times to no really good end, underwent a retinal detachment (and subsequent surgery, which reattached the retina but left me with distorted vision in my left eye), had my house firebombed, spent seven months living with friends well south of Tucson proper, and undergone heart surgery for a double bypass and clean up work. My mother is in end of life care in Australia. I'm now in a new apartment, trying to make the budget work as best I can, and trying to cop out of running an organization I started...which is made difficult by the way the lives of my deputies tend to go.
As it stands, these days I'm spending m time sorting out the apartment...things are moving slowly, but surely. I've got to finish reloading way too much music onto hard drives, too. Given the sheer tonnage of music around here, I wonder sometimes if I should even bother -- I'm occasionally tempted to reduce it all to a bunch of favourites, and ignore the rest...the trouble is that there are too many odd little treasures, too many weird little productions.
With my somewhat impaired vision and present lack of funds for new glasses that will handle the added vision issues (which stem from going in to get my eyes checked to make sure that the replacement lenses from the cataract surgery were doing alright, with an eye to getting new glasses; this resulted in one lens going adrift, and being replaced; that went wrong three fays after surgery, and ended in the retina tearing and then detaching, requiring emergency eye surgery) I'm listening to audiobooks a lot once again, and not just while out on the road or on the treadmill at rehab. It's a bit frustrating as it's a far slower way for me to read a book than the old-fashioned dead tree method. I'm also trying to use ebooks where I can, but the issue there is twofold: cost is one, although here's always deals to be had, and there's always the library. The second is that as much as I like my tablet, and reading on the computer, a good old fashioned chunk of dead tree just feels so much better.
One of the things that probably led to me ending up under the heart surgeon's knife was the time spent essentially crippled by the stasis dermatitis in my lower legs going out of control. I sprang wounds that wouldn't heal, and ended up with a pretty wretched case of MRSA in both lower legs, along with a pseudomonas infestation. I came extremely close to losing both legs, but was sent to the St. Josephs Wound Clinic as a last-ditch attempt to salvage things. While I'd been using high-grade honey to beat back the MRSA (eighteen months of nuclear-grade antibiotics hadn't done the trick, after all) with great success (as far as doctors can tell, the MRSA is completely gone from my system) th wounds weren't healing. I give a tremendous amount of credit to my wound therapist, Gina, who to this day I *adore*. She, in turn, was amazed at how fast I started to heal -- one of the actual joys of an immune system that's in overdrive.
All the same, I was slowing down over a period of years, a decline I attributed mainly to age, although some odd pains and warning signs did prompt me to bring up the question of possible cardiac issues with my doctor. Curiously enough, none of the tests revealed *anything* aside from a slight heart enlargement. Even the cardiologist was baffled -- especially as I had my weight and my family history as primary factors in a potential crisis. It was only when the cardiologist threw up his hands and ordered an angiogram that the truth was revealed -- I was hovering on the brink of a massive heart attack. The true madness of the moment, though, was that this had come after my home had been firebombed (the firebug who did it was trying to burn the tenant in the rear section; fire, though, respects no property boundaries.) It was determined eventually that to effect repairs, I needed to get the rest of my stuff out and into storage -- I'm told by those who were present for the entire packing and transporting process that I visibly declined at an alarming rate. On December 17th I walked into Carondelet St. Marys and signed in...and remember nothing between that and waking up for the *second* time. There's lots of story packed in around that, but I'll leave it until later.
I finally ended up convinced that the old place was not the place I'd end up going back to. The new place is a bit noisier, but it's less than a block south of a library. It's also somewhat larger, with a big bedroom, a large balcony with storage, a huge closet, and room for lots of bookcases, as well as the giant (used) TV my friends got for me as a get-well present...which is another story entirely.
Enough of this, anyway. I have to be getting on with things. I will try not to be gone for such a long time again, however...although I'm not sure anyone actually reads LiveJournal any more...!
As it stands, these days I'm spending m time sorting out the apartment...things are moving slowly, but surely. I've got to finish reloading way too much music onto hard drives, too. Given the sheer tonnage of music around here, I wonder sometimes if I should even bother -- I'm occasionally tempted to reduce it all to a bunch of favourites, and ignore the rest...the trouble is that there are too many odd little treasures, too many weird little productions.
With my somewhat impaired vision and present lack of funds for new glasses that will handle the added vision issues (which stem from going in to get my eyes checked to make sure that the replacement lenses from the cataract surgery were doing alright, with an eye to getting new glasses; this resulted in one lens going adrift, and being replaced; that went wrong three fays after surgery, and ended in the retina tearing and then detaching, requiring emergency eye surgery) I'm listening to audiobooks a lot once again, and not just while out on the road or on the treadmill at rehab. It's a bit frustrating as it's a far slower way for me to read a book than the old-fashioned dead tree method. I'm also trying to use ebooks where I can, but the issue there is twofold: cost is one, although here's always deals to be had, and there's always the library. The second is that as much as I like my tablet, and reading on the computer, a good old fashioned chunk of dead tree just feels so much better.
One of the things that probably led to me ending up under the heart surgeon's knife was the time spent essentially crippled by the stasis dermatitis in my lower legs going out of control. I sprang wounds that wouldn't heal, and ended up with a pretty wretched case of MRSA in both lower legs, along with a pseudomonas infestation. I came extremely close to losing both legs, but was sent to the St. Josephs Wound Clinic as a last-ditch attempt to salvage things. While I'd been using high-grade honey to beat back the MRSA (eighteen months of nuclear-grade antibiotics hadn't done the trick, after all) with great success (as far as doctors can tell, the MRSA is completely gone from my system) th wounds weren't healing. I give a tremendous amount of credit to my wound therapist, Gina, who to this day I *adore*. She, in turn, was amazed at how fast I started to heal -- one of the actual joys of an immune system that's in overdrive.
All the same, I was slowing down over a period of years, a decline I attributed mainly to age, although some odd pains and warning signs did prompt me to bring up the question of possible cardiac issues with my doctor. Curiously enough, none of the tests revealed *anything* aside from a slight heart enlargement. Even the cardiologist was baffled -- especially as I had my weight and my family history as primary factors in a potential crisis. It was only when the cardiologist threw up his hands and ordered an angiogram that the truth was revealed -- I was hovering on the brink of a massive heart attack. The true madness of the moment, though, was that this had come after my home had been firebombed (the firebug who did it was trying to burn the tenant in the rear section; fire, though, respects no property boundaries.) It was determined eventually that to effect repairs, I needed to get the rest of my stuff out and into storage -- I'm told by those who were present for the entire packing and transporting process that I visibly declined at an alarming rate. On December 17th I walked into Carondelet St. Marys and signed in...and remember nothing between that and waking up for the *second* time. There's lots of story packed in around that, but I'll leave it until later.
I finally ended up convinced that the old place was not the place I'd end up going back to. The new place is a bit noisier, but it's less than a block south of a library. It's also somewhat larger, with a big bedroom, a large balcony with storage, a huge closet, and room for lots of bookcases, as well as the giant (used) TV my friends got for me as a get-well present...which is another story entirely.
Enough of this, anyway. I have to be getting on with things. I will try not to be gone for such a long time again, however...although I'm not sure anyone actually reads LiveJournal any more...!