Dear Family,
Hopefully all of you have learned by now that if you don’t want the details of your latest health challenges chronicled on the internet, then you’re probably better off not sharing them with me.
I have genuine concern for how you’re doing — and I’m actually good at keeping secrets. But you have to tell me it’s a secret. You should never assume that I will keep something confidential simply by virtue of its nature. I mean, I might. (I’m an idiot, but I’m not a complete idiot.) But the fact that I basically publish a monthly digest of my personal journal for anyone in the world to read should tell you that my idea of what constitutes inherently confidential information might differ from your idea of it. Furthermore, not only am I not bound by HIPAA privacy rules, I literally have no idea what HIPAA even stands for.
With that disclaimer out of the way, Crystal spent the past week in Wenatchee, Washington, looking after her mother, Carolyn, who just had a fancy new pacemaker installed.
Fit and healthy are not synonyms. They tend to be correlated, but plenty of people are one and not the other. Still, stories about fit people who require pacemakers always give me pause. Carolyn has completed at least as many full Ironmans as I have (2). (At least one reason I got into triathlon was an ill-considered attempt at keeping up with my Ironman mother-in-law, brother-in-law, and sister-in-law — one of the many perils of marrying into an insanely high-achieving family.) I recognize that something eventually has to kill me, but given my lifestyle, I have long assumed that that thing was unlikely to be my heart.
Endurance training has conditioned me to believe that a low resting heart rate is always a good thing. The lower the better, I’ve always thought. My resting heart rate, according to the good people at Garmin who track things like this for me, has averaged 53 beats per minute over the past seven days. It’s bouncing between 61 and 68 bpm as I type this paragraph, but I would not necessarily categorize writing as “resting.” I live in a near-constant state of wishing all of these figures were lower. I am secretly covetous of real athletes who go about their lives with resting rates in the 40s. But I was surprised to learn recently that there is such a thing as a resting heart rate that is actually too low. And when it drops into the teens, where Grandma Carolyn’s has been hanging out for quite some time, your cardiologist starts to worry. (A resting rate in the teens sounds to me like the centerpiece of an incredibly efficient cardiovascular system — something to envy — but, and this may surprise you, I’m technically not a cardiologist, so, you know…)
Hence, Grandma Carolyn’s new pacemaker. Perhaps she and my mother can compare notes. (Mom got hers last year. — Was it last year? I think it was last year. She’ll tell me if I’m wrong — I’ll quietly edit this and no one will be the wiser.)
The procedure gave Crystal a long-sought-after excuse to go out and spend a week with her mother in Wenatchee. I was surprised to learn that her employer permitted her to use her sick leave to do this. (I work in the private sector and am therefore not acquainted with the concept of sick leave. I get paid not to go to work when I’m sick, which I guess technically counts as sick leave. But no one keeps score on how often this happens — I don’t have anything like a sick leave “balance” — and I’ve never thought of it as something I could use to take care of someone else.)
Wenatchee is a nice place. Maybe you’ve never heard of it. I might not know about it if my mother-in-law didn’t live there. But if you associate Washington State with apples, that’s largely because of Wenatchee and its surrounding valley. If you associate Washington State with rain, that is not because of Wenatchee, which averages 300 days of sunshine a year.
Wenatchee is also incredibly remote — basically a three-hour drive from anywhere. Getting there requires flying all the way across the country (to Seattle) and then either: a) timing that flight with one of the two daily flights between Sea-Tac and Wenatchee and hoping for something less than a six-hour layover, b) renting a car and driving 3+ hours, or c) riding a bus. (Crystal took the bus this time. It worked out okay but still made for a couple of very long travel days.)
Put another way, it’s faster and easier to get to Europe from here than to Wenatchee. I remind myself of this whenever Grandma Carolyn treks back to visit us.
But once she finally got there, Crystal had a great time being with her mom. The fact that her week there coincided with her birthday meant that she was likely fêted more appropriately than she would have been at home.
Ari and I somehow managed to hold down the fort, though we both agree that we’re much happier when she’s around.
In Crystal absence, Ari became my date to watch Renée Fleming perform with the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center last weekend (tickets courtesy, as usual, of my friend Ira, who plays bass in the NSO).
Vocally, Renée is still totally bringing it at 65 — an age that no longer strikes me as old. She sang the final scene from the Richard Strauss opera Capriccio. I was not familiar with that work and a Strauss opera is not something I would ordinarily go out of my way to experience. But I’d pay to hear Renée Fleming sing the phone book. She and Lynda Carter are probably still my two biggest celebrity girl-crushes. (Lynda is 73 now, but I’ve basically been in love with her since I was 8.)
Fortunately, Crystal eventually came home.
Crystal’s Never-Improving Back
Meanwhile, elsewhere in other-people’s health news, the issues associated with Crystal’s herniated disc continue to plague her, notwithstanding her surgery back in April and thrice-weekly physical therapy for most of this year.
I was half-joking back in April when I observed that the otherwise-empty surgical center in downtown Silver Spring where Crystal‘s procedure was performed looked like a mob front and wondered whether the “surgeon” had actually done anything. But apparently I was at least half-right because whatever happened there didn’t work.
The mob doctor’s read of Crystal’s follow-up MRI was that everything looked fine. But a second opinion from Crystal’s brother Roland, who also happens to be a spine surgeon, concluded that considerably more could have been done. Roland’s opinion is supported not only by the fact that Crystal continues to walk like an old lady — her flopping right foot is reminiscent of a percussion instrument, and walking next to her makes me feel like I should find my old middle school clarinet and start a marching band — but also by the results of Crystal’s EMG two weeks ago, which clearly revealed a persistent pinched nerve in her back.
So Crystal clearly needs a better doctor. Roland would be ideal (and patients do, in fact, travel to his North Idaho practice from all over), but someone a little closer would be more practical. Roland said he knows a couple of good guys at Johns Hopkins he could refer her to, so that would be good (and geographically convenient). Hopefully they’re in network🤞.
Hannah’s New Job
Hannah, who, unlike me, probably actually does have a duty to comply with HIPAA’s patient privacy provisions, started a new job this month. Saying good-bye for the second (and probably final) time to her job at the Utah State Hospital in Provo, she is now the new Director of Nursing at Covington Senior Living in Orem.
Hannah sounds pretty excited about the place, which she describes as a “super cute” assisted living facility, less than two miles from where she lives and she’s “just in love with it.”
The move compels Hannah to trade in her nursing scrubs for more conventional office attire. I guess her wardrobe didn’t have any of that, and so she’s had to do some shopping. I’m looking forward to seeing pictures.
Boo at the Zoo
Despite being 25 years old, Ari would probably be the first to tell you that they are basically an 11 year old at heart. It’s one of the reasons Kids After Hours is basically the perfect job for Ari. They get paid to do things they enjoy doing anyway.
Ari’s child-like nature was on full display last week when they announced that our family (all three of us) should go to “Boo at the Zoo” together. Boo at the Zoo, as its name suggests, is a Halloween-themed event at the National Zoo. It features a variety of activities and attractions that mostly target a somewhat younger age demo than a 25-year-old and their 50-something parents. Kids (and some parents) dress up in costumes and go trick-or-treating at stations set up around the zoo. The event was sponsored by Mars, which meant lots of M&Ms, Skittles, Starbursts, Snickers and Twix — i.e., crap candy — as opposed to Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, Kit Kats and other stuff actually worth digging through your kids’ Halloween haul for. This did not stop me from grabbing a trick-or-treating bag and grabbing several of everything that was on offer.
The following Monday, a colleague told me she had taken her 4 year old to Boo at the Zoo. She was surprised to learn that I’d been there, too.
“Aren’t your kids a little old for that?” she asked.
I guess not.
It makes me happy. I suppose it’s only fitting that I have a 41-year-old brother who still believes in Santa Claus. Why shouldn’t I also have a 25-year-old kid who still gets excited for Halloween?
Adorable, Autistic Middle School Boys
This might have to become a regular feature since Crystal’s students continue to amuse me (even though I haven’t actually met any of them).
”I got soap in my mouth. Is that okay?” the boy asked. “It’s not lethal or anything, is it?”
“How did you get soap in your mouth?” Crystal asked.
”I don’t know,” he replied. “I just suddenly noticed a soapy taste in my mouth. Maybe I didn’t rinse my hands well enough.”
”Have you washed your hands recently?”
”No.”
But my favorite this month was one boy’s response to be asked what he would do if he suddenly had five million dollars:
”I would give one million to my parents and use the rest to buy a cat and all the things you need to take care of a cat.”
Everything about that answer is so wonderfully adorable.
I have since learned that that sweet little boy now owns a cat. I imagine it’s being well taken care of.
I hope someone is taking good care of you, too.
Love,
Tim
Managing Editor of The Famlet Monthly