The Traveling Widower

Tag: health

  • Out of luck

    Born under a bad sign.
    I’ve been down since I began to crawl.
    If it wasn’t for bad luck,
    I wouldn’t have no luck at all. (Cream, 1968)

    Well, maybe not that bad, but it has been a bad run for the past 2+ years. And Cream did not write that song.

    I’m now into day four (maybe 5) of a journey I could have done without. 

    COVID-19. 

    Crap. 

    I was pretty much wasted by the time I got home from Alaska but I figured it was due to lack of sleep from my cavitation cabin on the ship, the constant activity on board, and the long flight home. Monday I was OK – just tired, and I even managed to hit the gym. Tuesday was probably the first day – tired, aching, feeling like I had a cold coming on. 

    Then Wednesday came along – uh oh. I was feeling really bad and had a slight fever. I did a test in the morning, which came out negative…but the test card seemed a bit strange. So I ran another test later and it came out positive. How did this happen? The drunk woman I sat next to on the flight from Seattle was sniffling and sneezing.  But it’s hard to say who was the carrier – I was on a ship for 7 days with 89 other passengers and a lot of crew. And two very crowded airports. Could have been anyone.

    So what do you do when you are alone, and have a medical condition you’ve successfully avoided for 4 years? Do a Google search of course! And then call a doctor. 

    I called my UC Davis clinic, which was closed for the day, but they transfer you to an on-call nurse service, which works really well. After describing my symptoms, they set-up a video call with the on-call physician. Since he had all my records (it pays to stick within your hospital system), he told me I could not take Paxlovid, the drug  prescribed for COVID – it’s a no-no if you take blood pressure meds. Since I seemed to have a pretty mild case, he basically told me to tough it out – drink a lot of fluid, tea with honey, take over the counter flu meds (NyQuil, DayQuil), and wear a mask if you go anywhere. In theory, it should take about 5 days to get a negative test. And you still have to wear a mask for a few days afterwards to make sure you do not infect anyone else.

    I guess my luck finally ran out – Jan and I were so cautious when COVID first hit. We bought home-made masks, stayed home most of the time (boring!) – I still have the board games we bought to keep ourselves occupied. We both played online Mahjong. But we did venture out quite a bit. We decided to move back to Colorado during COVID, and were there when the first vaccines became available. It seems like we spent so much time then getting tests, and trying to find someplace to get the vaccines. 

    So after all this time without getting infected, I basically forgot about it. I doubt if anyone really thinks about COVID much – you rarely see anyone with a mask. With the majority of the population vaccinated, we consider COVID to be a lot like the common flu – it will make you sick, but won’t kill you. As long as you get vaccinated. And that may become a problem now with the current head of HHS. I’ll stick to the vaccines thank you.

    So, my boring life is even more boring for a while. It’s Friday, and I still feel crappy. The fever is gone, but the cough, wooziness and moderate congestion are still there. If the test comes out negative, I’ll go to the store later to get more chicken soup (and other things). But forget about the party I really wanted to attend – my only social activity for the month. At least I had enough energy to bake some bread yesterday.

    I was planning on heading out to Yosemite or Sequoia National Parks in the next week or so. I’m thinking now that maybe I should just stay home and find something else to keep myself busy. Like baking bread.

    Expect a few weeks before I post again.

  • MacGyver, Forest Gump and hiking – Huh?

    This is going to be one of those very strange posts….just a heads up. I need to vent about something which is marginally related to travel. Strap in, here goes. It will all make sense at the end.

    Dictionary

    Definitions from Oxford Languages · Learn more

    verbINFORMAL•US

    verb: MacGyver; 3rd person present: MacGyvers; past tense: MacGyvered; past participle: MacGyvered; gerund or present participle: MacGyvering; verb: McGyver; 3rd person present: McGyvers; past tense: McGyvered; past participle: McGyvered; gerund or present participle: McGyvering

    1. make or repair (an object) in an improvised or inventive way, making use of whatever items are at hand.
      “he MacGyvered a makeshift jack with a log”


    When my wife and I first moved into our house in Gold River, it had a 25 year old heat pump. For those of you who have never had the pleasure of owning one of these wonderful HVAC units, a heat pump is basically an A/C unit that also blows out slightly warm air in the winter. Sort of like having a large hair dryer heating your house. But I digress as usual. The compressor unit vibrated violently when running, and you could hear it from a few blocks away. We were given one of those useless home warranty deals when we bought the house and after reporting the problem, the company sent out one of their technicians who spent hours trying to balance the fan. No matter what he tried, the unit continued to vibrate. So he had a great idea. He pulled up one of the large landscape rocks in my yard and placed it on top of the unit. A miracle – it stopped vibrating. For about an hour or two, when the rock vibrated off the unit. He said he would talk to the managers once he got back to the office. Then I received notice that the case was closed – problem solved! 

    Problem Solved!

    This is what my wife called a MacGyver solution (I never watched that TV show). Sort of like fixing a broken muffler or a leaking pipe with Duct Tape. It’s ugly, but works for a while. 

    So what’s this got to do with anything related to my travels? Earlier this summer, I decided to try and do something about an annoying medical issue – drop foot. Walking is a complex mechanical process, with a lot of moving parts. As you step forward, a small muscle in the shin keep the foot pointing up so that you step onto your heel first, and roll forward on to the ball of your foot. If the nerve controlling that muscle is not firing correctly, your foot flops forward, making a loud slapping noise on the ground. Aside from the sound, this is also a potential tripping problem for walking on uneven surfaces – hiking for example. Something I like to do on my trips.  

    After a couple of years living with this, I finally went for help, and wound up with an appointment with the UC Davis Neurology Department. This did not go well:

    1. They put me through an EMG test, where they stick acupuncture needles, hooked up to monitors, into the leg and shock you with a small cattle prod. Results confirmed that I had distal neuropathy. No kidding. I already knew that from prior tests.  
    2. Then they ordered all kinds of obscure blood tests to see if there were any underlying issues. Oops. One test was way out of bounds and was an indicator of multiple myeloma – blood cancer. Kind of ruined this summer.
    3. Next I was referred to another department, Hematology, to deal with what was likely myeloma. I was not overly thrilled about having to visit the UC Davis Cancer Center again. That was where my wife was treated for 11 months. No thanks.
    4. Fortunately the blood test was a lab mistake – I had them take another sample and it came out normal. Phew! Bad news for whoever they mixed up the test results with.

    So the end result of this exciting sequence of events was that I still have drop foot, which is what I wanted to solve in the first place. The neurologists had kicked the can down the road, and I have to wait a few more months to meet with another doctor to talk about the neuropathy and drop foot. Grrrrrrr.

    Now for the MacGyver solution. I had done some research (Google of course) on this condition, and found references to a brace designed specifically for drop foot. I spoke to my primary care physician who scheduled a reference to the orthotics department. I now have a carbon-graphite contraption that fits in my shoe, wraps almost comfortably on my calf, and keeps my foot from flopping. MacGyver rules! It would be perfect if it used Duct Tape to stick to my leg. This hopefully will not be a long term solution, but for now I can take long walks, workout on a treadmill without that annoying slapping sound, and hike (already tried it out) without worrying about tripping. Maybe I’ll use it as an excuse for early boarding on flights….you poor old man. Nah. Not my style. 

    And who cares if I look like Forest Gump wearing a leg brace. 

    Bring on the Manitou Incline!! 2700 steps, here I come. See, I told you I would tie this all together.