Sunday, January 15 started as a nice blue sky sunny day, and we were surprised as we were expecting snow. However, north of us now are clouds that suggest snow is coming this way. Managed to take some photos of our Casio keyboard (gotten last Saturday) in its new spot, but they are still on the camera. I also managed to type up some Peanut Butter Pie recipes from the family and a friend of the family in PA. Now we need to get the ingredients and try them.
We made the trip to the Bluegrass Jam session at the Swauk Teanaway Grange just fine, with no snow, except a tiny flurry (very light) on the last 15 minutes to home. It might snow some tonight, but the holiday tomorrow means we do not have to get out on the roads. We took a canister of dried apples and banana chips, and I put them on the counter (with brownies and cookies others brought), and took a banana chip to check out. I was just sucking on it, and dammit, I pulled off the gold crown again. I knew it was not in the banana (my dad used to say he loved bananas because they had no bones). So, I captured it and put in a plastic Zip-Lock bag I had brought along with me.
A huge crowd was there. There were 22 instrumentalists and another 15 people (at least) in the audience (as John was). We stayed till 4:20, so it was getting dark by the time we hit our driveway, and John went and fed the horses without coming into the house. I brought myself and violin stuff in. The dogs just got to go in the front fenced yard and not to help feed. It was too dark.
Monday, Jan 16 is the MLK holiday, but not for our resident doe who was in the front yard again this morning, wanting to be fed. We have never fed her there, except for her getting berries off the Mountain Ash tree. I had a call from my dentist this morning and they will work me in tomorrow for replacing the temporary gold crown. Good because we can combine with John’s trip there for his tooth. Most of the day was spent on paperwork.
Tuesday, Jan 17 we awoke to snow and it continued to a little over an inch. We took off for the dentist at 10:15 and didn’t return till 1:25. That was because someone cancelled her appointment and they were able to put me in after John’s appointment to complete the work on my tooth, the installation of a stainless steel crown. That beat a temporary glue-in job and having to wait for a Jan 31 appointment. Only problem was after the anesthetic wore off I was in serious pain–my jaw, my tooth, my gums, my head, you name it. I was hurting big time, so after I had taken 4 Tylenol over the afternoon and nothing was improving, I called my dentist and left a message at 4:20. They were in a “class” and didn’t get back to me till after 5:00 p.m. They decided to put me on Percoset and a Prednisone packet drug to help me over the hump for the next 6 days. We had to drive back to town (24 miles r.t.) to pick up the pills, but I was very relieved to get them in my system with dinner. The pain has not all subsided, but it is tons better. I will take another Percoset with a piece of pound cake and go to bed. It snowed another couple of inches, but then the wind blew most of it off the trees. Yet we are not getting the amount of snow that others around us are.
Wednesday, Jan 18 Turned out I didn’t get relief on the pain until 4:00 a.m. By the time 8:00 a.m. came I decided I would take one more Percoset just for the heck of it, because I didn’t have to go to town till after lunch. I was much better after my meds for pain & the anti-inflammatory for irritation of the gum and jaw. Apparently the decay cleaning was quite close to the nerves of the root and caused the severe pain. Got a call from the dentist office this morning checking on me, and asking if John could come in today for finishing up his tooth #31 behind the one from yesterday, $250 for this today—higher cost than either of ours yesterday. I dropped John off at the dentist and went on to SAIL class, but I didn’t have to lead it after all because my friend (our teacher) got excused from Grand Jury duty because she is over 70 and cannot drive in this weather. After that, I went to the Post Office to load up on Forever Stamps before the price goes up this Monday.
Later tonight John took some time to web-search for the style of my Dulcimer, because both of us read parts of the new book I got by Ritchie (published in 1973) on the history, tuning and playing of the Dulcimer. He took out mine and looked for anything written on it to see the maker, and the only name he could find anywhere was on the pegs holding the strings. They are named Kluson pegs and are high quality. Mine, however, is a different shape from most of the dulcimers. We are going to take some pictures of it and put on the forum we have found to see if anyone knows anything about its origin. I was never able to find out from the woman I bought it from.
I went on to my acupuncture treatment and it was a wonderful full hour. He tried some different things to try to clear the shoulder pain by working with the edges of scar tissue (fascia) adjacent to the scar from the opening of my sternum for heart surgery. All those nerves were disrupted and jumbled.
He used a Pointer Plus instrument along with massage (which I actually can do myself), but he added the Pointer Plus electronic gadget to assist in connecting the collagen and tissues across the scar. I’m a little concerned and need to discuss it further with the acupuncturist, from reading on line about the Pointer Plus made in Texas.
http://www.texas-medical.com/modalities/pointerplusfeatures.htm
Some contraindications (not to be used with) include, among other things that don’t apply to me, some that do: If fitted with pacemakers or internal defibrillators (which I have), or if there is any heart disease or condition (which I suppose I still have, with my replaced porcine heart valve, and I am on medication for atrial fibrillation and on Coumadin for thinning my blood).
We did discuss this when I heard it was electronic. He put it on a very low power and also stayed away from the ICD. There was never any interaction.
The overall procedure is called: Myofascial Craniosacral massage, and can be read about below as it was applied to my scar tissue from the open heart surgery. I really find this fascinating and believable. I want so much for this to get me back to normal on my left shoulder and adhesive capsulitis in my rotator cuff on the left side. I have highlighted below (bold) the things I think apply to my condition.
Craniosacral Therapy for reducing Scar Tissue Pain.
Posted by Michael on March 13, 2007
The body has the ability to heal itself after surgery. The body produces connective tissue, adhesions and collagen, to replace the damaged compromised tissue from the result of an incision to the skin. This natural phenomenon causes the formation of scar tissue. Scar tissue replaces damaged cells at the site of the incision or injury. Skin scar tissue is different from deep fascial scar tissue. Skin scar tissue lacks in pigmentation and hair follicles. Deep scar tissue in the fascial layers of the body develops adhesions or spider-like web threads to help the body heal and recover.
There can be a potential problem in the development of scar tissue. The problem lies when scar tissue and adhesions go unchecked over the years. The scar tissue and adhesions start attaching themselves to bones, arteries, veins, nerves, and organs. This phenomenon alone can cause dysfunction in the homeostasis of the body and possibly manifest into further complications in our body’s internal health as we age.
In addition I have witnessed in my practice patient’s scar tissue developing over periods of time causing spinal curvature (scoliosis), rotated hips manifesting in sciatic pain and lower extremity discomfort, shoulder displacement causing rotator cuff problems, and cervical or neck problems manifesting in a variety of neck and headache pain. Scar tissue can and will cause loss of range of motion making simple job and home activities difficult to perform. In addition there have been preliminary studies showing that manual therapies such as craniosacral therapy can relieve the discomforts and problematic symptoms in the Ureogential region after “C” section deliveries. One of the most profound areas of relief from scar tissue is a patient who has had open-heart surgery. I myself have recovered from open-heart surgery. I [have] received scar and adhesion therapy once a month for the last 10 years. My primary care doctor concurs that the manual therapy I receive keeps my body anatomically correct, allows my body full range of motion without pain and discomfort in the soft tissue.
Over many years in my practice I have found that craniosacral therapy has had a profound positive effect on relieving the discomfort of scar tissue formed in the body. In addition Craniosacral therapy has afforded my patients/clients increased range of motion, the reduction of adhesions and pain in the sub acute stage after a surgical procedure. (End of quote).
Thursday, Jan 19 We awoke to snow and it is still coming down. Over the last couple of days, we have had a little over 6″ according to averaging John’s 6 different measurements around the place this morning. He had to clean off the walkways to the cat house and hay shed, where all the cats were hanging out this morning.
My music group canceled our trip to play music today in town. All the snow plows have been in Upper County removing 2 feet of snow, and left us to deal with our own. Our friends over in Winlock (south of Chehalis) got 17 inches to deal with yesterday. Puget Sound area had ice and winds that brought down power lines. Internal house temperatures are dropping into the mid-50s. Glad we don’t live there or in Alaska! For every inch in WA, they are getting a foot.
John’s working on his music theory today and just found more about the Circle of Fifths, and the first line of Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star. Then the friend in the music group who had the 17” snow told me that Five Foot Two is the classic song with a run through from C on the Circle of Fifths.
Friday, Jan 20. Staying home today, neither our driveway nor the road in front of our house has been plowed. John may shovel a path, but our cars are so low and our neighbor will likely come down and plow us out.
We have nice neighbors, and we have no reason to go to town, so we can wait. Oh my, it is 12:20 and starting to snow big flakes again. John went back to take the mail to the mailbox, and to shovel out the approach for the postal carrier. Guess the timing might be right; hopefully, the plow has come back down our side of the road. John saw it go north earlier. It has, John came back to report. He got our mail in for pickup, and the snow has also stopped. John can always take off the middle part so it doesn’t hit under our car, and the tires will plow through the tracks on the side (that’s in case our neighbor doesn’t plow us out).
While John was out, I stayed inside and used his computer. I managed to transpose 3 pages of music for our clarinet player, for Willie Nelson’s, “On the Road Again,” which our friend found while he was in the UK over Christmas. I managed to learn how to put in “slurs” (symbols for holding a note, connecting to others), and first and second bracket endings. I had previously been filling them in by hand, and that was rather messy. This is very cool and can be done at the time the notes are entered. I have never completely read the manual (John says I never do), but I did today to find out how, by reading the manual! Meanwhile, I had taught myself how to enter tempos, keys, notes (full, half, quarter, eighth, …), without the manual. I also had previously figured out how to put in “repeats” and also crescendos. And more!
I am busy now playing with pictures from two different cameras, and trying to clean off my digital camera (ExiLim) which has a 4 Gig card and takes good movies. My Casio fills up way too fast. This one hasn’t been used since I was last teaching before my heart attack in fall of 2009. I need to clean it off, with the hopes of recording the concert at the Grange next Saturday.
Currently, I’m copying large files from my camera to my computer and then to a CD so I can free a bunch of space on my camera (for movies) and my computer for storage. These were movies I took at the time of the last class REM 515 (GIS in Resource Management, a Graduate Seminar) I taught in the fall 2009. There are some really good ones in there: Kevin Vaughn, LiDar at Mt. Rainier, Dan Church, Bureau of Reclamation LiDar Work in Yakima, Michael Wandler, on WSDOT work he does and has done with GIS, and Steve Rush on the history of GIS at Hanford. Then this afternoon I decided to put them on my FTP site at CWU so folks could download which ones they want and save me mailing CDs. I have one talk that is larger than a CD (over 702 Mb), and I do not have a DVD burner on my laptop. Theoretically, I can use John’s computer for that one. I will keep the CDs and DVD for my “files” even though I am not likely to ever need them again now that I’m no longer teaching. But somehow I cannot just delete them and I want to back them up somewhere and give the authors a copy as thanks for coming and presenting to my class, even if it is two years late coming!
John is continuing to work on his music theory learning. He is really making good progress and making summaries from multiple web sites to teach himself the information. Every once and awhile, he calls me to get an interpretation or to play something on the keyboard to clarify what the information/lessons are telling him. He actually found an error on a web site today and wrote the author, but also told him what a fabulous job he had done to clarify the meaning of the terms.
A side note about this music thing is that there were almost no family and friends from John’s Clarion-era that had or played instruments. One older woman (great aunt by marriage) had an upright piano that was played once in John’s presence. One neighborhood family paid for #1 son to learn piano. #s 2, 3, 4 got zip! OH! One nephew got a guitar somewhere and played Waltzing Matilda endlessly. Then he took up art – thankfully. Music seems to be more a southern Appalachian thing and there were major migrations from those mountain regions to the Pacific Northwest. You can’t throw a stick out here without hitting someone with a fiddle, banjo, guitar, harmonica (harp), accordion (squawk box), mandolin, dulcimer, and a few others. Hundreds of folks from WA State go to Weiser, ID for the old time music festival first held in 1953 . . .
Saturday, Jan 21 was spent at home with John doing a lot of shoveling, even after our neighbor came in the dark last night and plowed us out some; there is much to be done. We should be able to get out tomorrow to go to Yakima, and we hope for no snow. Today it is sunny and nice here, but we are in a pocket of good weather, with clouds surrounding us on all sides. Some of the snow is melting. But, in cases where it has not been removed it is a foot deep and deeper where it was pushed by the “skid-steer loader” last night. Many folks call these things “bobcats” (a well-known make) but the neighbors use theirs for cleaning up cow manure and John calls it their powered-pooper-scooper.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skid-steer_loader
John took a break and came in to make some brownies. I have been working most of the day between computers. I’m ready for a brownie, but John said they had to cool first :- )
He’s back in now reading the news on the computer after putting a meatloaf together and, with potatoes, sticking them in the oven. Now we wait. I need to get this blog to him so he can post it.
The other thing I have been doing is working with music for our group. As mentioned, I learned how to put in “slurs” and double repeat ending brackets, and then today, how to add chord designations to the music. I can even add fret board notation, if desired. I had to read the manual for those manipulations. Also, have been organizing food & the menu for the potluck. I send out lists of what people are bringing so we don’t end up with all desserts or all salads.
Tomorrow, we’re headed to the Yakima area to Costco, to lunch with friends, and pick up my classical guitar I had loaned out last year. John may be able to use it to learn on in conjuction with the 12-string.
Hope you had a nice week.
Nancy & John
on the Naneum Fan