John's Green Blog

Doing less and writing more.

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  • 5. Broken Hip – March 2026

    Unbelievably, late night on March 10 2026 I did it again!
    I broke the other damn hip! .
    .. and also broke my left wrist while I was at it!

    I am starting this post on March 31, 2026 – exactly three weeks after the unfortunate event. It is the first day I’ ve laid hands on my trusty laptop since the event so I’m pretty excited!

    They discharged me from the rehab place (PPAR).
    I am back in my Cogir apartment and my comfy situation there.
    I am delighted to be back in the world!

    I am kind of amazed that my wrist has healed enough to plausibly do touch-typing three weeks after the event … 18 days after the wrist surgery!

    I am a basically healthy guy who is highly motivated to recover and get back to normal … of only I can stop messing myself up!
    See next section 🙁

    A little bit of pot and a lot alcohol seem to be a bad combo for older me

    So How Did I Get Here?

    Looking back at times I get into trouble, it’s when I feel extra good and energetic and god help me, kind of invincible(!!)

    Normally I’m a pretty moderate drinker (honest!), but on these evenings I tend to drink too much and usually smoke a little pot to keep the party going.

    I’d forgotten until Laura reminded me that I blacked out in a parking lot towards the end of my time living in Reno – somewhere in 2021,2,3. I will search my old notebooks and see if I can pinpoint it. Somebody had some really strong pot I wasn’t used to, and I had partied pretty hard, and boom! broken wrist!

    Recovery is a bitch

    It is evidently the rule up here in Sonoma that the Emergency wagon always take you to Providence Hospital in Santa Rosa, no matter how many times you tell them you are Kaiser, their remit is to take you to Providence.

    Nothing against Providence. They are competent and cheerful and helpful, but it means an extra run to take me from Providence to Kaiser a day or so later. That seems wasteful.

    They bandaged up my wrist in a way that they knew would be temporary, but the wrist needed some kind of protection.

    EMTs again: Providence Hospital to Kaiser Santa Rosa

    • Wednesday,
      • start the day in Providence,
      • be taken in a ward at the Kaiser Hospital
      • get settled.
    • Thursday, do all the prep stuff for operating today.
    • Friday March 13, do all the prep stuff for operation AGAIN because they postponed me yesterday.
      Do the operation!
      • Got a big ole Ace bandage wrapper on my left wrist, with a some kind of solid base.
        • They explained that there is a strip of metal inside my arm!
        • They mentioned this would be a problem later!
      • The left leg looks pretty normal, but it feels messed up.
    • Saturday, they wanted to move me out, but I got a one day reprieve.
      • I thought they were being extra nice, but now I’m pretty sure they couldn’t find a place with an available bed to take me to until tomorrow. 🙂

    Sunday get moved in the Emergency wagon for the final time!

    Kaiser Hospital –> Petaluma Post-Acute Rehab

    Two plus weeks at the rehab place

    My new home for the rest of March is PPAR – Petaluma Post-Acute Rehab.

    First impression of the place was that it was chaotic and grimy, with sketchy people wandering the halls … i.e. not where you would spend any time if you had a choice.

    But once I settled in and got the swing of how they do things, I got kinda attached to the place! The food wasn’t good at first and never got any better, but the people were mostly kind and compassionate and did their best!

    So except when it was time to eat it was a nice enough place to put in my time..

    What do I miss the most

    My laptop!

    Discharged from PPAR, back to my happy home at Cogir

    Discharged from PPAR on March 31, 2026. Martha came took me away from all this and brought me back to Cogir. I went to my room and stayed there.

    Wednesday April 1, 2026 was my first real day back in the swing of Cogir life!

    Home Rehab visits are winding up

    Tuesday April 28: I’ve been back in my native habitat for exactly 4 weeks … which seems to be the exact amount of time that Kaiser will pay for home follow-up visits!

    When you’re on the home health care list Kaiser takes pretty good care of you! I had:

    • Two nurses – the executive nurse came first, then Nurse Mercedes came every week.
    • Occupational therapist – Sophia – My hero because she assembled my shower stool 🙂
    • Physical therapist – Cesar – walk the stairs. He didn’t make much of an impression.
    • Home aide – Barbara – helped me take showers. I liked her!

    They were all lovely people.

    Real World Happenings

    • April 11 – Tyler’s wedding takes place outside on a cool, wet Saturday in Brian’s back yard.
      • I’m still pretty immobile, so I basically stayed whereever they put me. 🙁
      • but it was a cool event!
    • April 12 – The next day my ole Autodesk buddy Dave Primmer drove up from South Bay to visit
      • He made my new laptop work … he’s a genius and a godsend! 🙂
    • Thursday Apr 16 – My Reno friend Ed visits
      • Friday, he takes us on a really fun drive to the coast – thanks Ed!
      • Saturday, he goes back to Reno

    I’m walking better!

    Wed April 29 – Up at the crack of dawn! (or so it seemed for me, it was really 8:30 🙂 Chad drives me to a dentist appointment four blocks from his house.
    We do the hard work part of the procedure, which is measuring for the crown and getting the tooth ready to have it glued on.

    Fri May 1 – Chad drives me to appointment with Orthopedic doctor (Dr Paci), who takes off the big Ace bandage cast and gives me a removable nylon sleeve. 🙂 I always like seeing Dr Paci!

    Mon May 18 – I’m driving again, Chad’s off the hook for taking me everywhere!
    Back to the dentist for the easy and fun part, namely gluing the new crown onto the tooth stub the set up last time.

    The metal bar is still in in my left wrist, 🙁

    That second wrist surgery really IS a pain

    Back when I got the operation, the hospital staff warned me in about the piece of metal in my wrist.

    They all said that living with it day to day was not a big deal, but when it is time to take it out, removing it is a pretty big pain in the ass!

    Well, that time is finally here.
    That surgery is scheduled for next Wednesday May 27.

    And yes, it was a big deal and a big pain in the ass.

    Tuesday is pre-surgery day

    Almost everything else you do at a Kaiser appointment is predictable and easily schedulee, except for surgeries.

    Your surgery schedule depends your doctor, the room your surgery is supposed to happen, and a host of other little things.

    Monday was Memorial Day, so everything was closed.
    Tuesday I went to the Rohnert Park Kaiser to get pre-surgery things done:

    • yet one more X-ray.
      • Kaiser charges a hard $30 per x-ray, cash on the barrelhead today!
    • Pick up a pre-op kit
      • a pint of Ensure – special, enhanced Ensure I believe.
        They act like it has magical powers!
        I exaggerate, but they DO set a lot of store by drinking one before surgery.
      • a couple of packets of extra special wipes to wipe yourself down pre-op.
        • From the neck down, not armpits or genital area.
        • Wait ½ hour after showering

    Wednesday is The Longest Day

    Today, Wed June 10, is surgery day.

    My daughter had stuff to do, so she picked me up early and got me to Kaiser intake at a little before noon for my 1:45 appointment.

    [Would you believe that I did not make it back home until after midnight!]

    The story of that day is detailed below.
    It’s not really very exciting, but I want to get it off my chest, so here is comes!

    It’s probably worth mentioning that I am entering all this text with the surgically repaired wrist that I am bitching about for the next few of pages bitching directly below here!!
    Ain’t science great!

    The tick-tock – Wednesday May 27

    • Arrive 11:30, way too early.
      Get sent to the lobby for an hour or so.
      This was expected. I brought my book and a fully charged phone.
    • Official appointment was for 1:45.
      • At 1:30 rude Kaiser lady hustled me upstairs .
      • Upstairs was not expecting me yet.
      • So I spend the next 20 minutes in an uncomfortable chair with bad lighting when I could have been remained in the nice lobby area.
        But hey, whatever’s convenient for the rude lady.
    • Then things start to happen.
      • I’m hustled around the labyrinthine second floor hallways to the big room that was familiar from other operations.
      • I’m gonna call it the Staging Area.
        It’s REALLY busy and noisy and could seem chaotic, until you realize every person is doing what they’re doing with a serious purpose.
        It’s THE place where everything but the actual operation gets done.
      • I was led me to my own gurney.
        • They gave me privacy to take off my clothes and put on my gown.
        • Then the time-honored hospital tradition of sticking an IV in your arm for the length of the stay.
        • I think I was all setted and comfy by 12:30, for what we all thought was going to a wait until maybe 3 or 3:30.
        • I got False Hope soon thereafter because I got my visit from the Head Anesthesiologist,
          • Short version:
            They probably will NOT do general anesthetic.
            They’ll do a strong local anesthetic that will wear off quicker.
            It will all seem the same to me because I’ll be out of it!
        • I call it false hope because STILL nothing happened,
        • Next text to the family was at 5:26.
          • My aide keeps telling me about what a complicated procedure Dr Paci is doing – “skilled hand surgery”.
          • I have no doubt that’s true, but why couldn’t they have gotten in my little unskilled bit of metal removal out of the way before all that high-tech work?
        • My aide was a very pleasant little asian (chinese?) woman who hung at my side the whole damn day (except when she took her break while I waited). Because I’m a dork I did not get her name, but I could not have asked for a better side-kick 🙂
          • Very kind and sypathetic.
        • Back to the sad narrative. Next text to family was 6:30.
          Dr is still doing things more important than me.
        • Some in the 7-7:30 range IT HAPPENED!
          • I get the long-anticipated in-person visit from the doctor!
          • That went very well.
            I really like Dr Paci, and she seems actually entertained by ole weird me, so we get along great!
          • I got to ask her about my slow healing hip which I’ve wanted to do for quite a while!
      • But it was a false hope again.
        • After Doctor Paci’s appearance, I thought my surgery would happen soon!
        • Wrong, wrong, wrong … by about 2.5 hours.
      • My family are hard working early-to-bed folks.
        I knew this bullcrap of someone staying on ALERT until 10, 11, 12PM so they could drive me home was killing them.
        • Somewhere in the 11-ish range Martha texted that she would rather come on the morning, which shows how over it she was!
        • Of course we know that’s not how this works.
          We are at the service of Kaiser’s schedule.
          Our petty concerns might have mattered last week but not now.
      • She left Petaluma at 11:28 PM,
        • picked me up a the front door of the hospital at a little after 12,
          • No parking problems at Midnight!
        • got me back to Cogir 15 minutes after that.
          No traffic that time of noght.
        • WHEW What an awful day!

    After surgery

    There will be plenty of time to natter on about my usual health stuff, but this it a 5 AM Thursday post surgery report on how wired up I still am!!

    I don’t know if my pain meds had some kind of stimulant in them but here it is 5:34 AM and I am still typing like a fiend.

    I do get this way on my own. In fact the night I broke my first hip I was feeling so damn good that I did stupid things.

    I could just be high on life because I’m FREE and this wrist thing is over.

    From all the warnings in the pre-surgery literature, I think it must be hard on a lot of people. But this little ole metal-bar-removal thing was a piece of cake once they got around to doing it.

    Well, whatever … at 5:57AM I am finally feeling sleepy!
    Man o man, that 11:30AM knock on the door by the Cogir cleaning (every Thursday whether you need it or not 🙂 is going to come too soon.

    I know Kaiser LOVES to count their efficiency beans.
    How more efficiently they could have spent resources on other things for … 6 or 7 of the 11 hours they had me on a gurney with a dedicated helper.

    Still recovering. Physical Therapy next Thursday

    • 6/10 Wed – Cast off
    • 6/12 Fri – First Phys therapy
    • 6/25 Thurs – Second Phys therapy

    The day after 4th of July (July 5, duh 🙂 was special because I put on socks!!!

    Since I broke my left hip I have been unable to reach my left foot sufficiently to get a sock over it, but I did this Sunday.

    Thurs July 9 was Dr Paci day. An occasionion to have a face to face with your orthopedic surgeon is a BFD in Kaiser world! I think I even wrote down my questions:

    • The break was to the radial metacarpal bone
      • the long bone below index finger
      • and some of those little bones below!
    • The radius is the bigger arm bone down from your thumb.
    • The ulna is the smaller arm bone at the litt.le finger side.
      • It rotates more (I think).
    • 5/26
      • Stable wrist ORIF with healing subacute fracture of the distal radius and ulnar styloid
    • 6/10 From the medical notes
      • Patient is status post interval removal of plate and screws traversing through the distal radius as well as index finger metacarpal.
      • Communited(?), intra-articular fracture of the distal radius is identified with the fracture cleft still visualized with minimal sclerosis around the fracture site.
      • No significant change in the fracture of the ulnar styloid process.
      • Tract marks from previously placed screws is noted.
      • Dorsal tilt of the distal radius of approximately 10 degrees with soft tissue swelling of the dorsum of the wrist
    • 7/9 From the medical notes:
      • Healing distal radial and ulnar styloid process fracture with similar alignment
    • 5/1/2026 xrays also

    One Month Later

    I’m editing this ONE MORE TIME on August 1, 2026, and I am happy to report that I keep improving.

    Summary of it all:

    • I broke my right hip in November 2025.
      • That surgery gave me a titanium ball joint in that hip.
    • I broke my left hip in February 2026.
      • Hard to believe anybody could be stupid enough to do both those things in a six month period, but that’s what I did.
      • This one was a different kind of fracture. This surgery did NOT replace the ball joint, rather it gave me a titanium left femur.
    • In that February 2026 accident, I also broke my left wrist (I’m left-handed of course) in a fairly complicated fracture.
      • That surgery gave me a metal strip in my wrist to provide stability for the bone-knitting process that stayed on there for about three months.

    I can now do a decent imitation of walking semi-normally. The first step in the morning, and even the first step every time I get up from a table requires a deep breath and some planning, but after that first one I can go pretty well!

    I walk the parking lot loop around our building every few days. My pedometer app says it’s a little less than a mile. I should be doing more ambitious walks, but there is nowhere interesting to walk around here so it’s hard to get motivated.

    The wrist is doing well also! The piece of metal has been out for six weeks or so. I think it’s as “normal” as it’s ever going to get.

    I still have to favor it getting up from chairs and that sort of stuff, but it continues to improve.

  • 4. Broken Hip – November 2025

    Early November 2025

    Things were going too good. I was feeling too healthy and energetic, so I had to create some kind of event to slow myself down. I chose a harsh one, breaking my damn hip!

    Three weekends ago I drove to Reno and rented an Airbnb “in the heart of midtown”. The official reason for the trip was to tour the Promenade, the old folks home right behind my old condo by the river. The tour went fine (too expensive!). But the point here is that before and after the tour I had just a marvelous time recreating my old life on Reno.

    • I drank my usual Reno amounts with my friend Ed.
    • On Saturday I walked down to the Reno No Kings rally (walked!).
    • Thursday and Friday we drank in fine places new to me.
    • Saturday and Sunday we drank in places familiar from the old days and ran into many people I used to know.

    It’s sad and ironic that five days after walking everywhere in Reno, I would destroy my ability to walk anywhere for a couple of months in a blinding act of stupidity.

    Prelude

    In late October 2025 I signed up to spend Friday and Saturday night at Martha’s house to dog and cat sit. (Nothing to it: keep the water bowls full and fill the food bowls twice a day). I look (looked) forward these weekends, because it got me out of Cogir and near an actual downtown scene. So it was a great thing … if I don’t screw it up, which sadly I did this time.

    The event

    Everyone says that you don’t metabolize alcohol as well at 75 a you did at 65. I’m here to say that’s a true statement. I wish I had listened!

    It was a lovely Friday night. I had dinner at the Speakeasy, then a lovely beer outside at the Riverfront Cafe, enjoying the twilight reflections on the water in the harbor.

    I hopped across the river on the coolly lit pedestrian bridge, through the little shopping center to the The Block which I have driven past since it opened, but which I think I’d never been to. I liked it!

    Back across the river to Buffalo Billiards. Two beers there. I have a vague memory of the bartender encouraging me to slow down, but this was going to me my last stop, so I did have that second. Let the record show that she tried, I was just too dumb to listen.

    The Block ($10)
    Speakeasy ($29)
    Riverfront Cafe ($8)
    Buffalo Billiards ($20)

    Then the fatal decidsion to walk up Martha Lane

    Kids called the ambulance

    Providence first, then Kaiser

    Kaiser

    I’m generally happy with Kaiser, but I’ve got two negative observations, one long running, and one from this sad health event.

    Seeing a doctor is hard

    At St Mary’s Health in Reno, I was given an appointment with my cardiologist every 6 months for 15 years whether I needed it or not. Didn’t even have to ask.

    I’ve been with Kaiser for 2 years now. I’ve seen my primary twice.
    I don’t think I’ve ever seen my cardiologist.

    Kaiser is good with scheduled things, bad at unscheduled things

    This is my observation after showing up at their emergency room late one Friday night.

    Evidently the policy up here in Sonoma is to always take trauma victims like me to Providence Hospital in Santa Rosa. I kept saying “I’m with Kaiser”, and they said “yeah, we’re taking you to Providence anyway”. Since my trauma wasn’t really so traumatic, they asked Kaiser “will you take him?” and they said “sure!”.

    I had been wheeled into Providence a little after midnight. Somewhere around 3-4 AM I got another ambulance ride to Kaiser Hospital. Every transfer from bed to gurney to the next bed was very painful.

    Kaiser is pretty good with the money though:

    City of Petaluma Ambulance Service
    Ride from Martha Street to Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital
    amount due: $300
    total cost: $4,187.75

    I stayed on my back in an ER bed for little over a day. I finally got operated around 6:30AM on Sunday. Remember, the accident happened on Friday night.

    How being in emergency is different than being in a ward

    • Emergency
      • Bed is obviously temporary, whole room feel temporary, because it is!
      • You get a gown to cover you, but you keep your underwear and socks.
        • You’re not a long-term guest! 🙂
    • Ward
      • As soon as the get you in they cram an IV in your arm, which stays there till you leave.
        • First thing on, last thing off.
      • They remove your underwear and replace your socks with those funky hospital checkered plaid socks.
        • No vestige of the outside world is spared.
      • Nice bed, rooms are nicer

    Back in Cogir

    (which I fear I will not escape for a while)

    We negotiated for a helper. Most of the helpers at Cogir are people from Fiji. They are great at it. My guy was named Eric. He was mostly great, but he got a little cranky at the end when we broke up. Getting wheels around in a wheelchair is a drag.

    [when I got the bills, turns out those people are very expensive!]

    Thanksgiving field trip

    It was really exciting to escape Cogir for even a single day!

    Chad came and got me, I negotiated the stairs like a champ, and we had a great day!

    Four weeks

    Some days, it seems like there is no progress, then one day there’s great progress!

    Two weeks ago I was getting wheeled to dinner in a wheelchair, then 10 days ago we switched to the walker, so I started getting at least a little bit of exercize.

    Suddenly (it seems) I can walk around the house with no aides at all, can hop out of my chair (almost) without thinking – pretty exciting!

    Two months – Is this what normal is?

    I am “almost” normal. I have a little ‘hitch in my giddy-up’ when I stand up as start walking, but I’m pretty normal after that.

  • 3. Lemons to Sour Lemons

    Most of these health-saga posts are nuts and bolts reports.
    This one is more kind of a philosophical interlude between reports.

    This is the part of the story when I went from
    being a regular guy who was getting older to
    being an old guy.

    Why “Lemons to Sour Lemons”?

    My first major heart event in 2009 was a bad thing, but I managed to handle it in a pretty cool way and everything turned out pretty well.

    So I patted myself on the back a little and gave the first post I wrote back then the jaunty title of “Lemons to Lemonade“.

    This recent heart event in late April 2024 however, was

    • a bad thing when it happened,
    • a bad thing during the recovery process,
    • and continues to be a bad thing to this day.

    It ended the peaceful and happy life I was trying to put together in Chico in a most disruptive and unpleasant way.
    So no self-congratulations and no lemonade this time, just sour lemons all the way!

    It’s pretty much inescapable that your body will slow down after age 70. However well (or not) you were doing in your 60’s, your expectations for your 70’s should be for less. I learned this the hard way.

    Just to pick one not so random example, it is a physical fact that your body metabolizes alcohol at a reduced rate the older you get. Who knew?!
    (This figures prominently in the next post about me breaking my hip while being a drunken fool.)

    I will tease out all these events in subsequent posts, but the overview is that this second heart crisis happened at a fiendishly inconvenient time in my life.

    I had just bought a house in Chico, and suddenly I had to sell it!

    I never saw the inside of that little house again after I drove to the Emergency Room in the middle of a quiet Thursday night. After recovery I went straight to an old folks home and have been there ever since.

    I never did recover most of my beloved kitchen stuff (silverware, bowls, plates) 🙁

    My health decline in Chico

    Chico should have worked out great if it all went as planned.
    But it didn’t!
    I didn’t stay healthy, and it didn’t work out.

    I moved into the little house I bought in Chico around the first of July 2023. The biggest and best local health systen there was Enloe Medical, so I enrolled in that. Their way of doing things was to assign one to a nurse practicioner as your main point of contact, then (s)he refer you to specialists, sets up test, etc.

    Aug 3: “so tired …can’t go 5 five steps w/o laying down … nausua … blood in urine … can’t keep food down”.

    From the Green Notebook, around July 2023, visiting Petaluma.

    • “Summary of what a mess I am”.
    • Tues June 20, bad food at Aqus(not really!).
      • So tired I poop my pants, get diapers. Fri start feeling better and eating better.
    • Thu June 29, Sonoma, Washoe Roadhouse.

    Fri April 26 – Emergency Room

    Went to the Emergency Room late one Friday night, never set foot in my house again.

    Still getting tests all the time – no clues though…

    Feeling crappier every day. Couldn’t walk from the house to the van without stopping twice.

    On Friday, went to bed really tired. Lay there and decided it was ER time.

    3 am got dressed, collected normal outside stuff, and called a Lyft. Did not pack anything for overnight. No clue I would never see that place again!

    Evening at the ER was uneventful. They put me in a room, jammed an IV in my arm as they always do and left me alone.

    Very early the next morning (Sa 4/27) Cory the jolly ER doctor tells me:

    my aortic valve is chewed up an infection … must operate NOW!

    Wow. My life changes instantly.

    They took me upstairs to a holding room to get my surgery ready.

    It was a two person room, other dude was a spoiled brat.
    Would not stop hollering for the nurse.

    One more night in the holding room. Annoying neighbor still there.

    I got a real nice shave, and an enema (ugh).
    They took off most of my scruffy, useless beard. I look years younger!

    Actual Operation Tuesday Apr 30 – Wed May 1, 2024

    (can’t take notes when you’re unconscious 🙂

    Sat May 4 – Intensive Care Unit

    Moved to nice room in ICU My home for next 2-3 days

    Su 5/5 – Early am – fix bloody bandage – leaking from the big holes in my chest plate. Not the actual incision, but the three holes where the tubes went. No big deal, but I got to see those creepy holes in my chest, which was quite a sight!

    Mo 5/6 Prostate Day

    • Morning to evening irrigating down there to prevent blood clots
    • Really eccentric nice lady urologist
      • didn’t even take her purse off 🙂
    • 3 VERY painful (4 counting last night) rounds of going down there and scraping out blood clots. That SUCKED!
    • Late afternoon, Dr Holzman(?) shows up,
      • flutters around for a while,
      • leaves,
      • comes back and cleans out clots again. She got a lot!
    • I’m told they’re gonna operate on me tomorrow and clean that shit out. cystoscopy
    • tu 5/7 – got my fave nurses – Lilly and Cashmir
    • tu 5/10 – Kelli the Doctor visits
      • get rid of the balloons
      • schedule 2 ultrasounds – one for lung cavity, one general
      • lung ultrasound shows need for water removal.
        • They wheel me off to the first floor and we get ‘er done.
        • Not as painful as catheters
      • Could breath better INSTantly
    • tu 5/14
      • install very interesting litle ‘test tube’ in my back
      • more catheter pain and discomfort, it clogged for an hour
    • w 5/15
      • Cory pumped betadyne mixture through test tube
        • to annoy the lung wall into adhering to the cavity wall
        • -> no place for water to accumulate.
        • I thought this was VERY cool!
      • Packing with betadyne was painful, and made my side sore for 2 days.
        • Kind tough when you must use your core and not use your arms, but your core effing hurts!
    • sa 5/18
      • doctor says I’m outta here out tomorrow!!!!
        • Intensive care -> recovery place in Redding
      • replace picc-line
    • ==== Added 5/17/26
    • Mo 5/20 Enloe -> Vibra
    • Sa 6/1 – Chad and Brett clean out the Chico house!
    • We 6/12 – 2:30 M arrives -> Chico -> Cogir

    My new life as an old person

    As I’m typing this in May 2026, I’ve been here at Cogir for about two years.
    My how time flies when you’re doing nothing!

    There wasn’t much of anything in the first year and a half to blog about!

    But them I created some excitement for myself by breaking my right hip in Fall of 2025. That story is in the next post!

  • 2. Chico didn’t work out (Jul 2023)

    Where are we in the saga?

    In the middle pf living my heart attach drama, it was clearly time to take up the health reports again.

    This is the second Health Saga report in (new-ish) 2025 blog
    1. Leaving Reno (Feb 2022).

    The next one will be Lemons to Sour Lemons.

    Between those two events my Health Saga took a very dark turn! I went from:

    • a happy Chico home buyer full of optimism to start over in a fun new town to:
    • a defeated Chico home seller …
      • who was so beat-up and wrung-out that I enrolled myself in a managed care facility before the surgery.

    Heavy thoughts

    The Freemans (my family on my dad’s side) have a history of bad hearts. My dad and my sister both died of heart complications.
    That seems as likely as any to be my fate also.

    All that time in the previous post where I was nowhere in particular finally ended when ….

    At the end of June 2023, I bought a pleasant little house at the end of a pleasant little block on a pleasant little street in Chico.

    It was going to be great! I would re-create of my Reno life on the California side of the Sierras in a lively little college town that Martha loves to visit!

    • When I moved out of Reno, Chad and Bret schlepped all my stuff across the mountains to Lakeville Storage in Petaluma.
    • Sometime later they started renting the second floor storage area of the Home Hub, their second hand store.
      Chad and Bret again schlepped my stuff from Lakeville Storage to the second floor attic space of Home Hub. No monthly rent for me!
    • In the first part of July 2023 I bought my little cottage on Oak Street in Chico.
      Chad and Bret then schlepped my stuff out of the Home Hub attic back across the Central Valley to Oak Street.

    So now visiting the family is a 2.5-ish hour drive across the Central Valley from Chico instead of a 4.5-ish hour drive over the Sierras from Reno.

    Merely convenient in the summer, but kinda crucial in the winter!
    That was supposed to be the big payoff of the move!

    My personal stamina and health was not an official problem … at first.
    I was low energy from the start, but I was able do stuff.

    If I had still been living in Reno when it all happened who knows how different my life would be today. Would I still have gotten the heart infection?

    We’ll never know.

    It was all going so well in Reno

    You might ask:

    • If the goal was to be closer to Petaluma, why buy a house in Chico?
    • Good question!
      • I still wanted to buy instead of rent and I could not afford a house in Sonoma.
        • (*) Looking back…, I NOW question the whole idea of buying a house.
          I guess my notion of the permanence of things was stronger then. sigh…

    Martha really likes the area around Chico, I think mostly for spring wildflower and such.

    I really like it for the University, the coffeeshop scene that thrives around the university, and the thriving bar/club/music scene.

    [Now that I live in Rohnert Park, I should note that Sonoma State University does NOT have these things. You could be in the local shopping center and have NO idea you were a half mile from a major university. I like to I think most unversities are more like Chico.]

    It did not work out.

    • Would it have worked out if I had been my two-years ago energetic self?
    • Or was it doomed from the start?
    • Who knows, but I sure would have liked to have been healthy enough to give it the old college try!

    My notebooks show that I was having slow motion heart failure for the whole time I was there.

    Why Chico?

    Martha loves to go to Chico. She does it on her own once or twice a year.

    • She goes for the spring flowers north of Oroville(*)
    • Then for summer swimming in the huge municipal pool in Big Chico Creek.
      I really like that pool also!

    So the plan was that I would see a lot more of the family than I did in Reno, because Martha would be visiting frequently.

    Also Chico is a happening college town with plenty of live music and a thriving bar scene. What could go wrong? My health is what could go wrong.

    Enloe

    The biggest and best (and only?) local health system in Chico is Enloe Medical Center, so I enrolled in that. Their way of doing things was to assign a nurse practitioner to you as your main point of contact, then (s)he refer you to specialists, sets up test, etc. That person is basically your interface to the Health System!

    From earlier days, Enloe had a really good brand with me. As soon as I moved, I enrolled and never looked back. Seeing how badly they muffed the diagnosis of my heart condition, I now wonder, but I was totally happy with them at the time!

    Am I having fun yet … no!

    Looking back my notes to pull this report together, it’s all right there:

    I was already feeling like crap when I bought the Chico house. From July, after I’m in the new home:

    • July 7: “So tired all day”
    • July 12: “Home all day. Very tired.”
    • July 10: “Made Doctor’s appt for September”
    • Aug 3: “so tired …can’t go 5 five steps w/o laying down … nausua … blood in urine … can’t keep food down”
    • Enloe assigned me a nurse practitioner, not an MD, in June: Morgan Oloya.
      • She sets about trying to figure out what’s wrong with me.
      • Symptoms (sudden weight loss) could be cancer, so we spent a lot of Enloe money on expensive tests looked a lot for that.
    • Somewhere in July(?) I drive myself over to Enloe Urgent Care. They admitted me to hospital for rest of the day for dangerously low blood pressure 78/48 (?)
    • Oloya signed me up for three biopsies, a colonoscopy, all kinds of cat scans. No resulted to speak of. I guess we were looking for cancer that (happily!) wasn’t there.

    Me and Ms Oloya got along fine until the end. But it’s hard to look back and say she did a good job.

    She ordered expensive tests all summer. Then in the Spring it took the Emergency Room staff about an hour to diagnose a critical heart infection that must be operated on NOW.

    I think she got tunnel-vision on the cancer thing, but that’s excuse for failing me as badly as (I think) she did.

    Livin life interlude

    From the start I was not energetic on Chico. Walk along the creek. Go to coffee places. That’s about it.

    I didn’t particularly care for the only really close bar.

    Ed walked to the 5th St bars, just as the Reno me would have done.
    But the Chico me couldn’t make it that far.

    Hanging out at the bar was my going to be my go-to strategy for meeting new people. No bars + no other social outlets –> NO friends here in Chico.

    It was not working out AT ALL like I expected it to. :((

    Getting worse

    This is a list of medical shit that happened to me in less than a year.
    It is not the list of a man who is enjoying life!

    • 6/20/23 – First mention of debilitating tiredness
    • 7/18/23 – Had a stroke
    • 7/21/23 – At Gannons, Laura takes me to Kaisesr ER
    • 8/04/23 – BP plummets, drive to Urgent Care, they sent me to hospital
    • 8/15/23 – shouder hurts really bad
    • 9/18/23 – appt with Oloya
    • 9/20/23 – Pulmonologist, then kidney scan
    • 9/21/23 – dentist – get crown re-glued
    • 10/02/23 – appt with Oloya
    • 10/11/23- Oncologist (cancer doctor)
    • 10/12/23 – Cardiologist, also Pulmonologist (trouble breathing)
    • 10/13/23 – get blood work
    • 12/02/23 – Colonoscopy
    • 12/05/23 – Renal biopsy
    • 12/19/23 – see Dr Randolph
    • 12/21/23 – Pituitary scan
    • 4/09/24 – see Dr Randolph
    • 4/12/24 – see Oloya
    • 4/17/24 – bone marrow biopsy
    • 4/18/24 – Urologist
    • 4/26/24 – Drive myself to Enloe Emergency at 1AM, never set foot in my house again!

    Exciting details in the next post!

  • 1. Leaving Reno (Feb 2022)

    Health Posts

    This is the first post in the category where I keep everybody informed on what parts of my body aren’t working so great. A little self-indulgent perhaps, but hey, it’s my blog, my therapy if you will, and I want to talk about it!

    There will be more posts, and they will be numbered.

    Deciding to leave Reno

    This first post is about leaving Reno. A pivotal decision in my life, and a bittersweet experience that evokes complicated feelings in me every time I think about it (like right now!).

    Of all the big things I have done in my life, this is the only one where the regrets outweigh the happiness.

    If I had simply NOT DONE ANYTHING!
    If I just kept living in my very cool condo by the river and taking a road trip every now and then, who knows how it all would have turned out!
    Would I have gotten a life-threatening heart infection a year later like I did in Chico??!?

    I think NOT, but we’ll never know.
    I do know that my life hasn’t fit togther in any good way since that decisioin, all the way to today.

    Kinda sucked from the beginning

    In February 2022 when I left Reno I was the generally healthy, semi-energetic person I have been my whole life! …. But six months later I was moping and dragging around and not even remotely energetic and being given all manner of exotic medical tests while the Chico medical people try to figure out WTF is wrong with me!

    My previous health blog left off in the middle of 2020. The last posts are reporting on getting Achilles surgery during the COVID shutdown. A minor drama. Seems so quaint now!

    For the earlier parts of my Health life, go here.

    With perfect hindsight it’s clear that I did not value my wonderful Reno life enough.

    Finally packing up and leaving

    In the early 2020’s I started thinking more and more seriously about moving back to California. This percolated in my brain for a while, and in the winter of 2022 I started the “moving back to California” plan.

    I put my Reno condo on the market in April. In the big decision for who to list it I stiffed my friend Mi Thai. Maybe that’s where the bad karma for this whole shit-show started. I had a bad feeling that it wasn’t going to sell for what I wanted (I was right! ): and I had some notion that this other woman I barely know would get a it better price. She was actually just fine but that was not a cool move on my part.

    Gwen, my favorite barrista (and possibly my favorite human in Reno) cried when I told her I was leaving. Just writing that or thinking about it makes me cry again right now!

    Her and her friend came over to my condo to carry off whatever they want from my stuff. Mostly they took my extensive collection of punk CDs! I’m happy they are in a good place. 🙂 

    In early May, Chad and Brett drove over the mountains in the Peace Out Junk truck take most of my stuff back to Petaluma.

    Moving out of Reno

    I wasn’t getting much action on the condo, so Jan 10, 2023 dramatically lowered the price. 2026 me says WFT was wrong with you, why didn’t you just keep the price steady and continue living there? But 2023 me felt differently.

    That lower price was too good. Within 10 days, on Jan 19, 2023 an offer was accepted. SIGH…

    My last night in my beloved Reno condo was February 28, 2023. Every time I read this I cry a little bit. I wish that I never left. But it seemed like a good idea at the time, sigh…

    I dithered around with no fixed address for the next three-ish months, doing camper van things and visiting friends.

    I got a post office box at the Staples in Petaluma so my mail would have somewhere to go. I recerved a cubicle at Lakeville Storage.

    Home Hub was invaluable as the place I dumped whatever I didn’t want to carry in the van. I can’t remember why I didn’t just take my stuff to the Hub instead of Lakeville Storage, but I’m sure there was a good reason.

    Being America’s guest for three months

    Here’s how I passed the time between selling in Reno and buying in Chico. Notice that at the beginning it’s all about traveling and doing stuff, but by the end it’s mostly about how crappy I feel all the time. 🙁

    1. early March – Motel 6 Petaluma
    2. three weeks in Martha’s driveway in the rain under a tarp
    3. April – back to Reno, Shaun’s house.
      • Mark Twain was correct, guests do start smelling after a few days.
      • Shaun was a wonderful host for about 5 days, then he was over it!
      • I hung on for a couple of more days, but even I can take a hint!
    4. mid April – Chico to look at houses
      • Martha comes to visit (see (*) below), we visit the gorgeous carpet of spring flowers on Table Mountain!
    5. late April – Petaluma – stayed at the Metro.
      • I felt really fancy staying there!
    6. early May – up to Tualatin to swap my propane heater for a diesel heater
      • This time is was effecively a triangle trip:
        • Reno – Tualatin heading up
        • Hang out in Tualatin and get the work done
        • Tualatin – North Bay along the coast
    7. One night sleeping on the street in Fairfax to see a band at Peri’s … ah van life!
    8. May 23 – Back to Chico for the official house inspection
    9. May 26 – Face went numb. WTF
    10. Back to Martha’s
    11. Back to Reno as part of the scenic way to return to Tualatin – oops, I DID go one more time 🙂
    12. May 31 – Last visit to my Reno dentist.
    13. Sleep on Ed’s sofa a coupla nights
    14. Sleep in my van on the street outside my old condo for coupla nights.
      I LOVED doing this!
    15. Take the Oregon Back Country route to Van Specialities so I can to visit Crane Hot Springs
      • Spend two nights at the hot springs. It was awesome.
      • Jun 12 – StereoKing
        • They did a hard reset on my stereo for some reason I don’t remember.
      • Jun 13 – Van Specialities
        • Reclaim the space of the propane heater and hot water system ($897.98)
      • Taking out the propane heater opens up a lot of space!
    16. Jun 17 – Jackson Wellspring – could this be where I got a heart infection?.
    17. Back to Martha’s on June 19
    18. June 20 – horrible joint pain, very, very tired!!
    19. June 21 – Awful joint pain(!)
    20. June 22 – Still feel terrible, poop issues, buy Depends 🙁
    21. June 26 – Buy Chico house!

    We know something is happening here but we don’t know what it is

    This seems to make it clear that the heart drama is inseparable from the moving to Chico drama.

    From reading my notebooks, I felt “normal” when I lived in Reno.
    No whining about “low energy”, just did my thing.

    But it seems that some kind of wellness issues started the very week I signed the paper for the house in Chico.

    Doesn’t get any worse than this timing wise.

    Looking back, I don’t think I ever had a chance at a healthy and happy life in Chico, although I didn’t know it at the time!

    The next post has more of the same sad notations from July and August in Chico. Sigh…