After 34 years in the classroom and lab teaching biology, I'm ready to get back to traveling and camping and hiking. It's been too long of a break. I miss the outdoors and you can follow my wanderings on this blog.
My day started without any breakfast except for the two cups of coffee that finally got me awake. From then on, it was a liquid diet or at least semi-solid one with lime Jello. I opted for the pre-made Jello from the refrigerated case. Later, I did a cup of Better than Bouillon, beef flavored, and then another cup of Jello. That stuff is addicting.
I sat at the computer reading e-papers for a while and then heard from Barbara who suggested I might be hungry after the procedure and would meet up with me and Joel for a late lunch. By then, it was pretty much 2 pm and time to start the prep.
I mixed one 328 g container of MiraLAX into 48 ounces of Gatorade last night and let it chill in the fridge. In case you are wondering, that’s 6 glasses of Gatorade. It made the Gatorade taste a little chalky but otherwise it was OK going down. By 3 pm I had finished the MiraLAX/Gatorade combination and decided to take a nap.
I realized something urgent was about to happen and jumped out of bed and made it to the bathroom just in time at 5 pm and stayed there for the next 35 minutes. You can play a lot of Solitaire on your iPad in that amount of time.
I hope they know what they are doing. I had not fully recovered from the last bout of diarrhea and here they are giving me diarrhea. Can I assume the Gatorade is hydrating with the amount of discharge I’m having?
I have no plans of getting any sleep tonight, particularly with the second dose scheduled at 10 pm. This time, it’s Crystal Lite. At least my back seems to be a little better.
Welcome to the month with the most hurricane activity! We’ve been very, very fortunate so far. There seems to be a lot of activity out in the Caribbean and the eastern Atlantic so everyone needs to keep a watchful eye. The majority of the people I know live in an area that could be affected by a hurricane.
Sunday is a lazy day for me. It needs to be if I’m going to work the Sunday crossword. I managed to fill in all the clues except for four so I count that as a victory.
After unloading the dishwasher and reloading it with newly dirty dishes, I made the bed and then crawled back up in it to read. Of course, that meant a nap a little later. I got out of bed when a thunderstorm came rolling through. You could hear the thunder bursts as it approached from the south. It was moving so fast all it did was sprinkle heavily for a few minutes and it was gone.
Somewhere in the Netherland of dozing off, I remember the first “cuss” word taught to me by cousin Jimmie. We often played in the back of her Dad’s Shell station where there was a loft. We also had a swing that would swing out over the loft and into the void below.
She told me she knew of a very dirty word but I had to never repeat it because it was so dirty. Of course, I had to beg and plead for a while to get her to tell me the word. She whispered it in my ear and I apparently misheard her. I heard it as “funk.” Sitting directly across from us was a sign advertising Funk Corn. I began shouting funk as loud as I could as she tried to shush me. Aunt Mabel was in the front of the Shell station and I’m sure she thought I had lost my mind.
Trust me, I later learned the real word. After all, I was once a sailor.
I learned a lot from Jimmie. I learned Elvis played an electric guitar. She informed me it meant Elvis didn’t know how to play guitar so he had to use an electric one. Much later, I learned one of my favorite singer/songwriters, John Prine, did not know how to read music. He mostly stood in front of an audience and strummed the cords he knew.
Then there was the case where dogs were boys and cats were girls. As a biologist, I can now confirm that is not the case, although, my major professor’s son, who has a PhD in Zoology, misidentified the sex of his Dad’s cat. No one’s perfect.
Tomorrow is gruesome day. I start the procedure to clean out my intestinal system for the colonoscopy. I don’t mind the laxative, I don’t mind voiding the contents of my GI system. What I absolutely hate is not getting any sleep Monday night because of the frequent visits to the bathroom. I hate it when I don’t get a good night of sleep and it’s kinda hard when you are sitting on the toilet.
There may or may not be a post tomorrow. Stay tuned!
Welcome to the first real week of college football. Unlike the times I went to Ole Miss, there are some real games this week instead of the usual patsies. Ole Miss believes in tradition so they scheduled a patsy.
This morning I awoke to noises in my digestive system. Usually when that occurs, it means diarrhea in on tap for the day. So far, it’s not been a problem. However, the day is young. Of course, I start the prep tomorrow so I’m not sure how that will work if I do have diarrhea and then take a laxative. Fort Lauderdale may be declared a superfund site.
I managed to put clothes in the washer, changed linen on the bed and clean a little in the house. I really should be doing my monthly clean today but I’m just not up to it. I would normally be on the drying cycle by now but the washer seems to be stuck in an unbalanced cycle. Usually I can stop the machine, re-arrange the clothes and start it back up but it’s locked the top and I can’t get in.
Today seems like Sunday to me for some reason even though I know my routine is a Saturday routine and college football is mostly on Saturday. We’re overcast with rain threatening. It’s rained so much this week that Trevor had to cut my grass three times this month instead of the usual two.
I’m resigned to the prep requirements for the colonoscopy but I hope this is the absolute last time I have to do this procedure. Hopefully he’ll check not only for any growths but also parasites – like Mom used to do to me and Archie.
I hate to say it but I feel a nap coming on. I’ve been operating on low energy for so long I don’t know what normal feels like anymore. Enough complaining. Stay tuned!
OK, I think I have it straight now. My procedure is on Tuesday, September 3, at 9:15 am. In my defense, the last time I used my iPhone to put in a date, it was with the neurologist who I am seeing a year from the last visit. iPhone seems to default to the last calendar entry so when I entered September 3, 2025 it was on a Sunday. When I later saw that, I changed that date to a Tuesday, September 5, 2025. I’m now back in the year 2024 and my time warp is over. Visiting the future was harrowing. It was kind of like a reverse Dr. Who.
Last night was some pretty heavy rain. And lightning. And thunder. It sprinkled this morning when I was cleaning the pool filter. The coming week is full of rain predictions. The only real problem is the ground is getting saturated and everyone is growing mushrooms in their yards which means flooding if we get a “wet” hurricane.
I’m still sleeping too much – never thought I would write those words! I think it is partly depression but it is also partly because I still feel blah from the last diarrhea bout. I still don’t have any energy. My back problem is slowly getting better but turning over in the bed is still agonizing. So is getting out of bed and the first few steps in the morning. I don’t plan any more fainting spells since that last one did my back in.
I picked up some flowers on my last in-store visit to Publix. The genus is Alstroemeria and one species is referred to as Yellow Alstroemeria and some species are referred to as Peruvian lily even though it is not native to Peru.
For years, I refused to buy these because they looked so delicate and I thought they would never last a week. My bad. These babies will last longer than any flower I’ve bought over the years. Publix had a sale, 3 for $12 so I took advantage of it. They don’t have any aroma but they certainly add a festive air to my overloaded table.
Apparently, the state of Florida has problems with their calendar also. I got paid day before yesterday which was two days early – not that I’m complaining. It used to be they never paid until the last day of the month and the only exception was if the last day fell on a weekend. Hopefully, they are better at managing our retirement funds than they are managing their calendar.
I’m of the generation – thanks to my parents who came up during the depression – that when something goes wrong on the webpage of my banking institution, I get nervous. The same with the Florida Retirement System. I remember them losing something like $850 million with the Enron scandal.
I did manage to get the pool filter cleaned but I still am having a problem with clarity with the pool. My test strip is showing I need to add calcium and when I do, it gets cloudy again. Looks like I’ve over calcified the pool. It’ll take a few more runs through the filter and another filter cleaning or two to get it back to the correct clarity.
Otherwise, the pool deck and patio were pretty much clear from the cleaning on Tuesday or Wednesday. At least the mango tree has quit shedding so much. That thing is like a long-haired dog in summer.
Wow, sometimes the medical world moves fast! I went online to MyChart to schedule an appointment with Dr. Paul Feldman, gastroenterologist and, in a daze, clicked on a date. After coming out of the fog, I realized it was the same date I was recovering from diarrhea the day before. In other words the same date as I signed up.
Joel took me into my “be there by 9:15 appointment” and we made it with time to spare. I checked in and it was shortly after that Althea showed us into an examining room and confirmed the information I had filled out online. In a first, no one asked me to fill the same info on a piece of paper. Kudos to Dr. Feldman’s office. He came in shortly after Althea left and he also confirmed some things I put in the online form. He basically said doctors have no real answer for diarrhea and that when they check the causes it comes back with a smorgasbord of possibilities.
He expressed concern about my anemia. Finally! Someone actually used the term. All my other doctors acknowledge that I have low iron, low hematocrit and low red blood cell count but never call me anemic. Dr. Feldman wants to eliminate anything going on gastric-wise and therefore wants to do both a colonoscopy and endoscopy, fortunately at the same time so there is only one prep.
We were provided with the prep info on a three page paper. We were then asked to wait for a scheduler to contact us. When he did, we both figured it would be sometime in the future – like the end of September. Nope, I’m scheduled for the 5th of September, next Tuesday.
My prep is using Miralax (328 grams) mixed in 48 oz of water. One dose is 2 days before the procedure and the other is one day before the procedure. Joel drove me to a nearby Walgreens and I picked up the two bottles of Miralax powder. The rest of the procedure is the same for pretty much every colonoscopy.
I’ve already had several offers to drop me off and pick me up but Joel immediately said he thought he was available. This is above and beyond for Joel because he lost his brother Denny day before yesterday – his last immediate family member.
An old Coast Guard buddy, Chip, sent me a link to a photo yesterday. I was a little taken aback. He asked when I joined the army. I’m not sure if it is real or simply something AI generated. What do you think?
Personally, I like the look of the WWI helmet. I notice I’m a private in the photo. Underachiever. He got it from a site that is titled “Proudly American” on Facebook.
That neatly folded flag reminds me of Boy Scout Camp Kickapoo near Clinton, Mississippi. Every evening at 5 pm we held lowering of the colors – we called it “Retreat.” The first day of camp, the staff did the honor in order to show how it was done. The entire camp formed a huge “U” facing the dining hall with the flag pole in the center of the “U.” A color guard of staff approached the pole, and while “Taps” played (we always had someone who could blow the bugle – some better than others). They never let the flag touch the ground. They then folded it to the form shown in the photo above. It was a great teaching moment. Once folded, the color guard would reform and bring the flag ceremoniously back to the dining hall where the staff always aligned.
Staff showing how “Retreat” is done. The dining hall is at left and you can see one leg of the troops in the background. Camp staff performing retreat – 1969
It looked easy but it was not. Individual troops were assigned the lowering and raising of the flag every day. The raising of the colors was at 8 am. We didn’t have troops make the “U” formation but they had to have a color guard to raise the colors. Mistakes were made and the kids learned from it. Folding the flag into a tight triangle takes a lot of practice. The best I’ve ever seen was the folding of the flag from John Kennedy’s coffin that was presented to Mrs. Kennedy. It was actually very well done.
This video didn’t show how they got to the folding part but it was very smartly done. What I really hate to see is when the retreat ceremony is poorly done. All it takes is a little practice. As a kid, I started learning how to fold the flag in school and then Boy Scouts. Practice made perfect.
Last night and today we’ve had thunderstorms and rain and it looks to be the same most of the day. As you might guess, after the case of diarrhea, I’ve now had two days of constipation. I hope these procedures find out something as to why I’m cycling between diarrhea and constipation. It kinda saps your energy.
No real blog today. Diarrhea hit me again last night and I was just recovering from last bout. I’ll spend the day in bed with BRATL (bananas, rice, apple sauce, toast/tea and lomotil).
I’ll spend some time looking at Holy Cross gastroenterology group for a physician who will accept me.
I went with a friend to a doctor’s appointment today to lend a second set of ears. The appointment was for 9:40 and we got there early only to find out the appointment had been changed to noon. When my friend checked, there was no message or phone call. Such is life. So, we had a few hours to kill.
The appointment was in Weston which is like going to another state. We received directions to the Town Center and we both agreed it reminded us of the Mizner Town Center in Boca Raton. There’s a good reason. The official name is Mizner Place at Weston Town Center. There’s restricted traffic to one lane and it’s more of a pedestrian shopping center.
Weston is aptly named. It’s 18 miles and 23 minutes away from my house. It’s so far west it buts up to the Everglades. When I first moved here in 1985, there was nothing there but Everglades. There were several mitigation deals and land swaps that allowed the town to be developed and the boundary to the Everglades got pushed a little further west.
We found a place open at Town Center and had brunch and then proceeded to kill more time by having a second cup of coffee. We both were a little stoked on caffeine. Tom refused to let me buy his brunch or coffee.
Part of the pedestrian area of Mizner Place Weston Town Center
In any case, we re-arrived at the doctor’s office at a little after 11 and after paperwork, we were shown to an examination room at 11:30. In essence, the visit was to review his issues before he could be referred to a surgeon. They make you jump through so many hoops these days for any procedure much less surgery.
I thought I would take a nap when I got home but couldn’t doze off (too much caffeine) so I cleaned the pool filter. For some reason, the pool has been cloudy lately and I’ve been trying to get it back in balance. Cleaning the filter helps.
It’s actually pleasant outside today even though the temperature is 92°F. There’s a nice breeze and I really want to get into the pool if only to move around and cool off. Today is the last day I have a restriction on the pool. The steristrips haven’t fallen off as of yet but at least I can get in the pool tomorrow!
I got out of bed to pee around 4 am and as I got back into bed, a gentle rain began to fall. It reminded me of spring rains in Mississippi when I was a kid. It’s funny how certain smells, tastes, sights, sounds and touches remind us of things in our past. I finally dozed off again around 5 after hearing the rain drip on the Bahama shutters.
I finally got out of bed around 9:30 and even so, with the time I went to bed last night (11 pm) I got eight hours of sleep. It was still raining when I got up and continued through the morning as I ate breakfast and had coffee. This time the rain reminded me of the fall rains in Mississippi because I could see the overcast skies.
It’s amazing but I have the entire week open. I haven’t had that in a while. I had to reschedule a few appointments for my past trip but there was nothing to reschedule this week. Of course, I had to call my GP to see about my diarrhea.
After noon, I headed to Holy Cross to visit my friend Kurt who has been in the hospital for about a week. It started with kidney stones but became an infection and fluid around the lungs. It’s scary how fast one condition can lead to several others.
While talking with Kurt, my GP’s office called and suggested either a prescription to a gastroenterologist or an orthopedist (knee). I’m not sure why not both. I went with the gastroenterologist. The office provided a phone number of a group that I’ll call tomorrow or the next day.
Kurt’s partner Tom has an appointment with a neurologist in Weston. We say Weston like it’s 500 miles from us but it’s just before you get to the Everglades. I 595 takes you right there. I’ll go with him to provide moral support but more importantly, note taking. Paying it forward is a good feeling. I’m glad I feel well enough to do it.
After stopping at Publix for some Bluebell Dutch Chocolate ice cream, I headed home. I was pretty wiped out which tells me I still having some effects of the diarrhea on Friday. The good news is I had a normal bowel movement this morning so I obviously am not constipated like last time. What awful topics I write about!
The day turned Sunday with a nice breeze even though the temperature is 89°F. Tonight, I have a baked sweet potato and tomorrow I have overnight oatmeal with strawberries and blueberries for breakfast.
Friday night I slept 11:55 hours and last night I slept 10.35 hours. That’s how much diarrhea drains you (literally and figuratively). Not only that, my neuropathy is acting up and my hands and feet ache. I feel lethargic today but managed to clean the toilet, change linen on the bed and wash, dry, fold and put away laundry. I suspect it will be an early night tonight again.
My next big physical effort is to shower and shave. I haven’t for the last three days and I have a very pungent odor about me. Call me scruffy.
I would grow a beard but it would probably come in a mixture of white, grey, red, and black. With the chemo I’ve had, it might even glow in the dark.
I had a nice conversation with my cousin Jo on Saturday and another with my cousin Jimmie today. I don’t think we talk about anything serious but it’s good to connect. We often reminisce about our childhood and do the usual of trying to remember a name and only thinking of it 10 minutes later, if at all. We often talk of how naive we were as kids in a small town and how our views changed once we reached big cities. I certainly was and I’ve been in some very big cities since growing up in Morton: New York, Atlanta, San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago.
My cousin Jo recounted how she changed when she moved to New Orleans and found a group of friends that changed her perspectives on some things. My time in the Coast Guard sent me to Alameda and San Francisco and New York and that was eye opening.
It reminds me of something Mark Twain once wrote.
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.”
Jimmie, Jo, Jean, Archie and I have certainly done our share of traveling in life. We’ve come a long way from our small town upbringing in Morton. That’s not to say we didn’t learn some bedrock principles growing up. You help your neighbor, you learn early wrong from right, it’s not nice to burn your cousin at the stake, and you learn there are no secrets in a small town.
We had great experiences in childhood even though all of us had our share of family woes. Burning at the stake aside, we shared birthday parties, exploration of semi-forbidden areas, swinging on vines, smoking cross vines, skinny dippin’ in ponds, how to make a tank out of a wooden spool, how to ride a bike without holding on to the handle bars, and many other important principles that have carried us far. Or at least kept us out of jail (even though Jimmie and I came close).
Tomorrow I plan to consult with my GP about the diarrhea. I have no idea as to its cause and am scared he will want a gastroenterologist to perform a colonoscopy on me. The prep makes me shiver. I have a sick friend in Holy Cross and I would like to visit but have been too weak the last few days to even try. There are threats of rain every day for the coming week. I need to cut and slice up a watermelon, re-clean the pool filter, and put the garbage out.
This will be short. Yesterday afternoon my diarrhea came back with a vengeance. In an hour’s time I must have had six very explosive episodes. I was concerned enough I called Chris and asked her to check on me later that night before she goes to bed. What I didn’t realize was my phone shuts off at 9 pm and I forgot to set the phone to allow certain people to reach me after 9. She walked over and rang the doorbell to make sure I was OK. I felt so badly about that. I’ve changed my phone notifications.
I intend to lie low and try to get over this. I’m pretty weak but I have plenty of Gatorade and apple sauce. I’ll order some bananas and I have bread and tea for the BRAT diet. My biggest problem now is I constantly am passing gas and belching. The belches don’t taste very good. If I drink anything, I can hear it as it winds its way through my stomach, my small intestines and my large intestine and out the end. Try getting some sleep hearing that all night.
