Still Cleaning up the Damage from January’s Ice Storm

Posted on May 26, 2012 by

Remember that ice storm we had back in January? Well, some of the neighbors are still cleaning up from it. On Thursday, they brought in some folks to top the poplar trees behind our house.

The kids had a great time watching these arborists climb up and down. And I was so glad it wasn’t me (or them) up there.

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And the final results, this morning. By the way, that little mountain in the background is Mt. Rainier. It’s bigger in real life.

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A Weekend Retreat

Posted on May 23, 2012 by

My wife and I are making a yearly thing of getting away for a weekend in May to celebrate our wedding anniversary. We drop the kids off at Grandma’s house, and then treat ourselves to a relaxing trip somewhere not too far away. Last year, we went to a wonderful bed and breakfast in Wenatchee, Washington. This year, we spent two nights at the Cave-B Inn and Vineyard near George, Washington. Yes, there really is a town called George, in Washington.

This is the view of the inn, with one of its many cliff houses in the foreground. We had the room on the second floor, on the left corner.

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This was the view from one of our windows, looking west towards the Columbia River.

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This place is a bit pricey, especially for the suite we had, but it has a couple of things going for it.

1) It’s within 30 minutes of Grandma’s house, so by dropping the kids off there, instead of hiring a babysitter for the weekend, we save a ton of money better spent on ourselves.

2) Everything we needed for the weekend was right there. In fact, there really isn’t anything else nearby, except for The Gorge Amphitheatre, which is literally right next door. I imagine that on concert nights, the music would be quite audible from anywhere on the property.

Since I’m still not very mobile as I recover from GBS, sitting around, doing nothing was very important. It’s not actually all that different from what I have been doing at home, but for two days, my wife got to do nothing with me. And she really needed that. She did take a two hour hike down to the river on Saturday morning, a hike I hear was quite wonderful. I spent the time editing one of my novels, then watching the Food Network, which I don’t get at home.

I did splurge on myself, and had my very first, real massage. I’ve been to the chiropractor hundreds of times in my life, but never had a true massage. It was quite a pleasant experience, and one I will will probably treat myself to again in the future. They also had 7 head showers in the Spa Building that were absolutely amazing.

The food was pretty good, but I really wish I could have tried the wine. Since I am still in recovery mode, I didn’t want to do anything that would set me back even a little bit. The food cried out for a little of the vino, and I was sad that I couldn’t oblige.

The only real problem I encountered all weekend was that in the suite we were in—which was right over the dining room—we could hear the jazz playing on the speakers below us. It wasn’t a problem during the day, but at night, the thump of the stand-up bass reverberated through the bed. I finally had to go down to the lobby at 2 AM to get the night porter to turn it off. I couldn’t sleep at all. On the second night, we called down at 11:30 PM, and I slept much better. I can honestly say, I have never hated jazz as much as I did at 1:45 AM Saturday morning.

Overall, it was a good time, and something we’ll definitely do again. Next time, we’ll check out one of the cliff houses, or maybe one of the Yurts. And hopefully, I’ll be healthy enough to go on that hike too.

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Gettin’ Hitched

Posted on May 5, 2012 by

Today is the 7th anniversary of our move into this house, so I decided to celebrate it by getting hitched.

What’s that? I’m already married? Yes, of course I am. But Washington is a very liberal state. They’ll let you do almost anything on Cinco de Mayo.

Here’s a couple of pictures of the big day.

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Yes, it’s a brand new trailer hitch and bike rack! How cool is that?

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It’s Guillain-Barre Syndrome Awareness Month

Posted on May 3, 2012 by

I didn’t know anything about GBS until I got it three months ago. Chances are, you hadn’t heard about it either, unless you know someone who has had it. So May is the month to spread the word that this disease is out there.

What exactly does spreading the word do? Well, most importantly, raising awareness amongst the population raises its profile in the medical community and that assists doctors in making early and accurate diagnoses of the disease. Early treatment is critical in preventing the symptoms from going from serious to completely debilitating or even deadly.

The GBS / CIDP Foundation International has been leading the charge in raising awareness, and if you have any interest in learning more about it, start there.

There’s also this great blog article by David Farr that points out some of the famous people who had had GBS. I had no idea that the US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt suffered from it. It’s quite amazing what he did with his life, under the circumstances.

GBS changes your life in a thousand ways. Things you once took for granted that you would always be able to do, you can only dream about doing. Here’s my top ten list of the things I dream about doing (and hopefully will be able to do again soon)

  1. Playing sports with my kids.
  2. Writing without feeling guilty that I am burning energy I need to save for work.
  3. Reading books
  4. Blogging on a regular basis
  5. Playing video games with my kids
  6. Going out to nice restaurants with friends
  7. Having a beer
  8. Having a foofy coffee drink
  9. Being able to work 8 hours without crashing every evening
  10. Cutting the lawn / doing yard work

Here are a few things I don’t miss:

  1. Spending three hours a day commuting

It’s not really an even trade. Once I get all those things back in the top list, I’ll probably put up with the one in the other and be happy about it.

Probably.

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Three Months of Guillain-Barre Syndrome… and Counting

Posted on May 2, 2012 by

Today marked the 3 month mark in my battle with Guillain-Barre Syndrome. Well, actually, yesterday was the 3 month mark of the first symptoms, but it wasn’t identified as GBS until the next day, so we’ll call it good and move on.

At this point, I’m working about 6 hours a day, though I think that lately I’ve been pushing it just a bit too hard, and back-sliding health-wise just a bit. GBS is like that. It lets you push, until it doesn’t, then it laughs at you for overdoing it, and you feel like crap for a day or two or three. Then you start feeling good again, go a little bit further, and it whip-saws right back at you. At the beginning of last week, I felt like I could take on the world. So I did, and I’ve been paying for it ever since.

Today, I had an appointment with a neuro-opthamologist—an eye doctor who specializes in neurological issues. He put my through a long series of eye tests, including a series of strain tests that gave me a headache that I still have, 10 hours later. The news was good, for the most part. I seem to be recovering, and the new prescription my optometrist gave me a few weeks ago, seems to be the right one for the job. I do still have some muscle control issues with my eyes, both in focusing them, and keeping them in alignment. The muscles tend to tire quickly. My brain then steals energy from other parts of my body (i.e. my nose and fingertips) to compensate and allow my eyes to continue to work. Hence, when I work or talk, the tip of my nose goes numb, followed shortly thereafter by my fingers, then my arms if I push too hard. I spend a lot of the day either expecting to sneeze, or having an itchy nose, because one part of my brain is so confused from the lack of signals it gets when another part shuts down the sensation. It’s pretty annoying.

I have started to get outside just a bit more. Walks to the mailbox, or to the park around the corner with the kids, don’t completely wear me out, though I do walk more slowly than I used to. I’ve spent a few minutes each weekend pulling weeds in the flower beds. The fresh air and sunlight feels good, but I usually pay for that exertion later in the day.

I have been getting back to editing my latest novel. I’ve been doing a chapter a day during the week, just to feel like I am making progress. Not being able to write consistently for the last three months has definitely impacted my mood, but I think it has also made me a better  writer because I am pacing myself, and taking my time. Last year I wrote 80000 words in 50 days. This year, I’ll be lucky if I write 5000 new words total. But they’ll be good words.

The only really beneficial thing about being home so much is that I have been scheduling in people to do work around the house. We had someone come out and seal the ductwork and add some insulation to the house. The carpets are being cleaned tomorrow. And, I’ve been getting estimates done on installing a photo-voltaic system on the house. I’m not sure I’m going to be able to afford it right now (hence the estimates), but it is something I would like to do. If we do it, it’ll make some great material for blogging about.

I still haven’t read a book since the end of January. My eyes just can’t take it, at least not as long as I am working six-plus hour days. I miss it, especially when I see that some of my favorite authors are releasing (or have released) books this spring. Hopefully by summer, I will have the energy to get back to it.

I think the biggest mind-shift for me in the last three month has been to lower expectations, and to not let that depress me. I’m a type-A personality. I’m go-go-go all the time. I expect to be able to rehab my way out of any illness or injury. I tend to forget on Mondays that I’m not supposed to sit for more than a couple hours at a time, and I sit down after dropping the kids off at school, and the next thing I know it’s lunch time. By Friday, I am a dead-man walking. I have to learn to take care of myself better during the week, and to learn that sitting and watching TV in the middle of the day, or taking a nap, or a hot bath, is not a luxury—it’s a requirement. I will not heal if I push to hard. That’s a hard lesson to get through my thick skull.

So I keep the NetFlix queue updated on a daily basis. I do have a hot bath every afternoon. I take a short walk every day. And hopefully, at my six month anniversary, my life will be back to normal.

Fingers crossed.

Posted in Family, Guillian-Barre | Tagged | 12 Comments

April Showers

Posted on April 22, 2012 by

It’s not exactly summer here, but with 78 degrees, it’s close enough for the kids to ask for the sprinklers. So on the sunniest, warmest day so far in 2012, we had showers of the kid-made kind.

The screams they made while playing sound a lot different from the ones they make when fighting. These are the good Sunday afternoons.

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More Time on the Couch: The Watch List Part II

Posted on April 22, 2012 by

While I have been working more the last last few weeks, I have still been watching quite a bit of TV and a lot of NetFlix while I recover from Guillain-Barre Syndrome. There’ not a lot else I can do, so I keep churning through my movie backlist. The backlist is considerably shorter now, than it was on January 31.

Here’s some of what I’ve been watching via NetFlix since Part I of this list back on March 13th. I wish I had time to do actual reviews of each of these, but I just don’t have that much energy. However, if there are a couple on the list you want to know more about (or even debate), drop in a comment.

  • [x] = Number of Episodes watched if TV show
  • ( y ) = Rating out of 5.
  • Items in bold = ones I highly recommend

Instant Watch

  • Collision: Part 4 [2] (4)
  • Commander in Chief [1] (2)
  • Doctor Who: Ssn 5: [1] (3)
  • Eureka: Ssn 4.5: [6] (4)
  • Freakonomics (4)
  • Friday Night Lights: Ssn 1: [3] (4)
  • Giant (2)
  • Inspector Lewis [14] (4)
  • Ken Burns: Baseball [11] (4)
  • Memento (3)
  • MI-5: [1] 3
  • Star Trek: TNG: [3] (3)
  • TEDTalks: [20] (5)
  • The Big Energy Gamble: Nova (5)
  • The Cosmos: [1] (3)
  • The IT Crowd: Series 4: [3] (3)
  • The Last Enemy [5] (3)
  • The State Within: [7] (4)
  • The X-Files: Ssn 1: [1] (5)
  • To the Ends of the Earth [3] (3)
  • Weeds: Ssn 1: [3] (3)
  • White Collar: Ssn 1: [1] (2)

DVDs

  • 10,000 B.C. (1)
  • A Fistful of Dollars (3)
  • Almost Famous (5)
  • Burke and Hare (4)
  • Contagion (4)
  • Crazy, Stupid, Love. (5)
  • Dolphin Tale (4)
  • IMAX: Hubble (3)
  • In Time (5)
  • Jonah Hex (3)
  • Jumper (2)
  • Knowing (3)
  • Layer Cake (4)
  • Lions for Lambs (3)
  • Moneyball (4)
  • Pale Rider (4)
  • Push (1)
  • Rebel Without a Cause: Special Edition (2)
  • The American (3)
  • The Andromeda Strain 2008 (4)
  • The Birds (5)
  • The Brave One (3)
  • The Life of David Gale (3)
  • The Outlaw Josey Wales (4)
  • The Rocky Horror Picture Show (3)
  • Untraceable (4)
  • W. (3)
  • Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2)
  • Why We Fight (4)
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Time Well-Rationed

Posted on April 8, 2012 by

I skipped a week or two of status updates on my GBS Syndrome, and now it feels like I’m not doing any blogging. Perhaps, to the outsider, it looks like I’m not doing anything.

Au-contraire, mon ami.

I’ve actually been doing a lot more the last week or so. A lot more than I have since being diagnosed with GBS, anyway.

Work-wise, I crossed the 20 hour mark last week, and, should everything be okay, I’ll be around 25 hours this week coming up. I do have to go into the office at least once, and I may have a client meeting. Both of those activities cut down on my actual working hours since it takes energy to commute. I’ll be happy if I do all that and work between 23-25 hours this week.

I felt better this Friday night than I have in weeks, which meant I didn’t push so hard during the week that I was broken by Friday night. It also meant I didn’t have to spend the whole weekend trying to catch up on rest. I was able to get out and watch my kids’ first gymnastics lesson, and I spent part of the afternoon pulling a few weeds in the flower beds with the kids. I wasn’t out there more than half an hour, but it was the first true, physical activity I’ve had in weeks. I’m feeling it a bit today, but not too bad.

I’ve also been rationing my spare time at the computer in an effort to get back to writing, or more correctly, editing. I’m making a major pass on The Forgotten Road / Nowhere Wild. It’ll be a couple more weeks before this pass is done, but at least I am making progress, something I’ve been sorely lacking these last two months.

I haven’t yet started reading for enjoyment yet. I did get new glasses a couple of weeks ago, and those make it much easier to work at the computer, but I’m still trying not to push my eyes too far. Reading seems like it will be one of the last things I get to reintegrate into my life. I miss it, and I really want to resume writing reviews, but some things have to suffer for the greater good.

I am still watching movies and television, but not nearly at the clip I was a few weeks ago. I’ve been watching a lot of the TED conference clips on NetFlix Instant Watch. They’re great when you only have 20 minutes, and want something that you don’t have to worry about the kids seeing. Often, the kids will watch with me, and though they don’t understand all of it, I hope they are picking some good things out of it.

The return of baseball means I have that to watch or listen to as well. I’ve been doing that a good chunk of the day as the Tigers-Sox game almost crossed the 5 hour mark.

So, anyway, all good news this week. One week at a time now, which is better than 1 hour at a time 8 weeks ago, and better than 1 day at a time 3 weeks ago. Soon, hopefully, this will all be a distant memory, and life will be normal.

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Because it is finally spring

Posted on March 23, 2012 by

After my rant earlier this week about spring never really coming, well, it arrived.

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And apparently, the bees came with it.

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Week 7 Update – My Recovery from GBS

Posted on March 21, 2012 by

Today marks the seven week mark in my recovery from Guillain-Barre Syndrome. Things are getting better slowly. I have more good days than bad, with more good hours than bad. That’s a sign of improvement.

If I overdo it, I do pay a price. Monday, I worked for about 4 hours, and about 5 on Tuesday, with some other personal chores thrown in. Today I worked 5, and then I fell apart for a few hours. I feel a little better now, but it probably won’t be until Friday that I get back to Monday’s base level.

I did go to my optometrist last week, and will be getting glasses (just for reading, not bifocals), and I can’t wait for them to arrive so I can start reading, and hopefully writing, again.

Lisa and I have an outing planned this weekend to go and see The Hunger Games at the movie theatre. So very looking forward to that. I tried getting out of the house last Saturday to grab a coffee at the local Starbucks, but that somehow backfired and the caffeine jolt left me a numb-nerved blob on the couch for most of the day. I vow not to do anything crazy while at the theatre to set me back.

The only other news this week was that I made it onto John Scalzi’s blog today as part of his Reader Request Week. As I told him, it’s kind of like getting my name up in lights on Broadway. I do hope, however, that this is not the end of my 15 minutes of fame. I’ve got a lot more writing to do, and I hope to be a guest blogger there sometime in the near future.

These updates are getting a little repetitive, so this will be the last one on GBS unless something huge happens. I appreciate all the support I’ve gotten during this time. Hopefully, I’ll be able to repay it in some way down the road. From here forward, I’m going to try to return to topic oriented blog entries. I’m tired of talking about GBS. Maybe if I ignore it will just go away.

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