COLUMBUS OH

This entry has been delayed as usual - by over a month, as usual. But no one has missed much, since not much that was intereting has happened here.

The most important, of course, is the medical report. As usual, Bobbi is preparing for what by now has become her annual Advent surgery. This time she is having last year's cardiac sphincter repair repaired. (The story is that four days after the first repair she was moved to an aftercare facility where another patient who was admitted that afternoon happened to be carrying a flu virus in a highly infectious stage. Of course the staff broke procecure and transmitted the virus to Bobbi [and others]. She retched violently for 24 hours, blowing her suture line. So she has been nursing an incompetent cardiac sphincter again for the past year, waiting to redo the surgery. Now she has had all the preliminary testing, and one of her old pastoral friends will take her in to the operating room tomorrow morning at 0530.

We ask that you all pray for her. (Normally Paul would have been taking Bobbi to the hospital and staying with her until she is safely out of the recovery room. But unfortunately he will be working third shift tonight and won't be able to join Bobbi until after she wakes up.)

Lew's situation must be considered simply boring. In some ways, his medical condition unexpectedly improved slowly during the past year - ejection fraction last month was up to 50, and the PT has guided him to slow, unspectacular improvement in his gait and balance. But he obsesses apprehensively on outliving most of his Lindner uncles but none of the Holms.

Of course the boys still are relatively young, so there is little of a medical nature to pass on about them. At last all are gainfully employed and on their own.

One fun item to report: the week of 10 November Scott flew up to Columbus so he could take Lew to Toledo for the weekend. The two of them then proceded to tour the city while Lew pointed out his old haunts - some legal, some not so legal. Lew really enjoyed the excursion, and Scott said that he did also. Maybe they can repeat. Enough! It's late, and Bobbi must get ready early in the morning. A report on the surgery will surely follow. Peace and Love, - an aged Hippy

COLUMBUS OH

(I see that my 3 October post also has evaporated into outer space - who knows why? Oh well, I'll just combine it with this one.)

If you missed both the 3 October and the May post, it may be have been 7 mo since we communicated. As boring as Columbus has been, nevertheless many things have happened some good, some not so good.

In the first place, health report. Bobbi has had no more fractures (thank God!) - probably because we discovered the cause of the repeated fractures - she suffered from a severe osteomalacia secondary to impaired calcium absorption in turn due to aging and reduced dietary intake. It turned out that Paul also had reduced blood levels - haven't checked Lew yet. A few weeks of increased calcium and Vitamin D intake seems to have increased blood levels of both vitamin D and calcium, and stopped the fractures. And by the way, none of our numerous physicians ever thought to check any of our blood levels of vitamin D, even when 2 members of the family both were found to ha reduced levels.

Lew's health remains pretty much status quo. He has recovered a little of his strength but his balance remains very poor and he continues to have the various pains in his back, legs, and biceps (Dx = ?????).

(It's 2 AM, so I'm quitting this. More later. An superannuated hippie.

COLUMBUS, OH

The excrement has hit the rapidly revolving blades. When we wrote the last entry, Bobbi was making her usual uneventful clinical recovery. However, Lew was warning her that he feared her leg would fracture again as soon as she put weight on it. Everyone told Lew that he was mistaken and being unduely pessimistic. (This has been a problem throughout his career - whenever he gives a pessimistic prognosis, everyone else ridicules it; a prophet is without honor in his own country.)

Well, Friday the 20th she started doing exactly that. And started complaining about slowly increasing pain in the same spot over her tibia where the last fracture had occurred. At first she passed it off as not significant, and insisted on going to mass the next day, walking both in and out at the church. So by the time we arrived home (after DQ) she was in agony.

Of course, Bobbi's orthopod was unavailable over the weekend, and Bobbi was not able to contact him until after 9 AM on Monday. When she did so, they arranged a 1 PM appointment for her. After a great deal of frenzied running around she just made it. Xrays of the site disclosed that the tibia had pulled apart again at the same location and was displaced considerably. Her orthopod replaced the cast (sexy black) and returned her to her (ER) room. She was admitted and scheduled for repair on Tuesday about 1 PM.

Monday was confusion - first a side issue: Rob was scheduled to take a flight to Bangkok. But the airline advanced the schedule on him without notice and had to put him on a different flight the next day. No wonder they keep losing planes.

Tuesday: the hospital took Bobbi to surgery at least an hour early, so Lew didn't get to see her before she went down. She was in the OR less than 2 hours, but remained in recovery for longer. Plus she was out of it even longer. So Lew didn't get to see her on Tuesday.

Wednesday 25th = Bobbi in recovery, but Lew's shoulders, which had been aching for a few days, becoming intolerable.

Thursday 26th = Bobbi continued in RMH while the system sought to figure out what to do with her

Friday 27th = Bobbi moved to a NH.

Since then things only have gone downhill. This week she started PT, but on her birthday (the first) she experienced the onset of severe vomiting and diarrhea (hospitals are more dangerous than almost any other place you can think of). As of today, she says the vomiting has stopped but continues to sound very hoarse and weak. She has requested that she continue to have no visitors.

And so in that very unsatisfactory position we all remain. I'm sure there will be more to follow, but I'm not sure when I will be able to post again. Peace and Love -- A Ne'er-do-well

Once again life simply has been terminally boring for Lew and Bobbi. It is not surprising that everyone else's focus is medical issues. But Bobbi and Lew can't escape reality every morning when they wake up. So they would rather not think about it, thank you.

Bobbi of course remains confined to bed, where she has been since 8 October last. When she is released, not only will recuperation be slower than before, but she will need specialized physical therapy to recover from the severe muscular atrophy resulting from such prolonged inactivity - all the time being super-careful to avoid stressing her skeleton. Furthermore, it will be necessary to put her through a very thorough workup to discover how she could have had three fractures in the same leg, with two of those taking place while she was asleep. But as of this date she has not even been able to get an appointment with and endocrinologist. Furthermore, the skeletal problem is complicated by the discovery that - also for unknown reasons - hypertension has reduced her cardiac output greatly.

Of course Lew's heart disease also continues. But the pain from spinal stenosis which constituted his greater disability has remitted almost entirely, so that he now is almost pain-free when not on his feet. For however long this lasts, he is grateful.

But the greatest disability for both is the maddening boredom of being confined to one place. Lew does get out to the gym at the nearby senior center every afternoon. But while that does provide him with a minimal amount of exercise, it too is maddenly repetitive.

Rob is not troubled by boredom. He is preparing for his annual trip to Thailand - frustrated by the usual conflicts with the bureaucracy of the airlines and government "security". However, he is motivated, so he will manage to get through all that.

Despite his old back injury, Paul is able to function more normally than either of his parents. He is able to attend his nurse's training and earn top grades. And most of the household duties devolve to him

Our Pets continue to provide our sanity. While Rob is gone, we will share the bonus of caring for his little dog - whom we have renamed "Spot" because his heeler ancestry has bequethed him a plenitude of black spots of all sizes. As Rob has noted, he looks like he is made of Oreo ice cream.

COLUMBUS OH

Ugh!!!!!!!!

E-e-e-e-e-e!!!!!!!!!!

Frustration knows no bounds.

A whole new set of apologies. In the first place, we did publish a 4 January entry, but it's no longer on the site. So to avoid extra work, here it is as a quote:

"Well, the holidays are over - and things are a worse mess than before.

"When Paul took Bobbi back to the orthopod (on the 22nd) he told them that Bobbi's tibia indeed was fractured. He insisted he never had seen such a thing before (which prompted Lew to wonder where he trained). He gave her a short boot to wear and told her to return again in another month. Nevertheless it will take almost until Lew's birthday for her tibia to heal. Except for Lew's gym on weekday evenings, both will be confined to the house. Good thing Paul still is available to run errands. However, his nursing school starts again next week, so that will drastically decrease his availability. It is unclear what the 2 cripples will do.

"That weekend Lew had a 24-hr diarrhea which did not affect him a whole lot.

"The next week after the medical appointments Lew got into a serious conflict with one of his cardiologists. As a consequence he started checking with OSU about a potential transfer, and meditated on the baleful changes that have occurred in the medical business since he graduated.

"With Bobbi confined to bed, Xmas and New Years both were worse than anticlimactic. Neither Bobbi nor Lew could think of any gifts they could ask for beyond better health. The next day they made phone calls to a few relatives and a few friends, but couldn't develop enough initiative to be more systematic about it.

"Enough of an unpleasant subject. In between vacations Paul continues to attend a nursing program (with the familial straight "A"s of course), while Rob continues massaging for a local accupuncturist - now yielding a pretty good income since he has built up a practice. In Florida George and Bryan continue their schooling as well, George in IT and Bryan on the trumpet. G'ma & g'pa are pleased (and much relieved).

"The one bright spot in our lives is the animals - officially still 4 of them, but Rob leaves his little dog with us while he is working. All of them still are terminally cute, and the 3 dogs extremely playful when not asleep. G'ma's big black tom cat remains extremely shy, but is quite loving towards lew, who has been training him with kibbles.

"That is the best we can do right now. Of course we are expecting Bobbi will be released in a couple of weeks - but we've been there before."
Now the rest of the February entry:

With Bobbi confined to bed, and Lew needing to sit with her for safety's sake, both have been confined to the house except for Lew's gym each weekday evening. The Airstream sits in the backyard all nice and shiny - but not moving. Rob has used it in order to internet, but Lew hardly has been in it.

There has been some progress, however. Last week Bobbi once again returned to the orthopod. And this time he at least permitted her to trade out the boot for a slightly less restrictive ankle brace. She also was permitted to leave the house to attend church yesterday - which took place without incident. So in three weeks she returns again, with the possibility of switching to an aircast.

Lew has remained as unchanging as Mt. Rushmore, and Paul continues with his nursing practicum at the city's most upscale hospital - he had requested assignment to one of the prison rotations. Since he is in school again, we see little of him. And as usual, the animals are wonderful.

Now this is long enough, so we will post it - no doubt with typos and all.