2021 in review

This has been another strange year, although the strangeness is becoming less strange and more familiar. COVID continues to be a huge global crisis, here in the US people are still angrily divided over mandatory vaccines/masking/quarrantining. I often wonder if it was this way with the Spanish Influenza pandemic over a century ago. I’m afraid it was; humans are humans, nothing’s changed there. 

What did you do in 2021 that you’d never done before? 

I joined a Crossfit gym, and am loving it. I’m getting much stronger, and know this is also great for my bones.

Did anyone close to you give birth? 

Not yet. We’re waiting for Abigail Louise to make her appearance in a couple of months to join Jordan, Amanda and Grace (oh and Leo the cat).

Did anyone close to you die? 

Yes, this has been a year of extreme loss. I have a team of seven and two of the women who are on the team lost their mothers this year. We’re a really close team, closer than any I’ve managed before so their losses affected all of us. Christine lost her mother (who was only 58) in February, and Sara lost her mother after that double organ transplant in October. Sara’s mother wasn’t all that old either, she was 64.

Horribly, I lost a woman on my team on July 31. Mary was 40 years old and just died. That loss also gutted my entire team because she hadn't been ill.

On July 2, Kent and I lost his mother, Ardis. Although she had lived a long life (she was 84), we still weren’t ready for that. Kent was able to see her earlier in the year so he takes comfort from that, that she didn’t die during the lock downs.

And while some may not understand this, losing Wally gutted me. Yes, we made the decision to euthanize him and I still believe it was the right decision. It still guts me. I miss the cat he used to be.

Did you suffer illness or injury? 

Yes, on July 5 I fell and broke two bones in my wrist. At least this wasn’t a break due to my crappy bones.

What countries did you visit? 

Hmm the countries of isolation and lock down? In other words, I didn’t visit any countries this year.

What would you like to have in 2022 that you lacked in 2021? 

Better sleep? Less anxiety? At this point after hoping for each year to be better since 2019, I’m setting the bar pretty low and not saying things like “oh next year will be so much better.” 

What dates from 2021 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?

July 2, when Ardis died.

July 5 when I broke my wrist.

That’s it.

What was your biggest achievement of the year? 

This isn’t really an achievement but a reframing. I have a terrible habit of getting a diagnosis and then immediately discounting whatever it is. For example, when the orthopedist called to tell me I had fractured my pelvis, my response was “I did not!” Well I did. 

And this year, when the Meniere’s disease ramped up so much, I couldn’t deny that diagnosis any more. 

Somehow that all combined together in my head and I realized yeah so the Army diagnosed me with reactive airway disease when I was 19 and I have spent the decades since saying no, I don’t have that. But the fact of the matter is I do. And I need to quit dicking around and denying it because that may end up killing me in the time of COVID, all the varieties of flu, and any other respiratory illness. 

A couple of weeks ago I asked my PCP if he would support a request for reasonable accommodation under the ADA so that I could move to fully remote work. He did, and I put in the application and it was approved.

I feel really weird about that course of action; I hope this is the right way to go. Is that an achievement? Maybe? 

What was the best thing you bought? 

At work, I had a sit/stand desk. Since I’ve been working from home, I’ve really missed it. I found one that has a small enough footprint and is quite easy to raise and lower (it’s not electric, I didn’t want that). It’s made a lot of difference for me.

What did you get really excited about? 

I was excited to be able to visit my kids again (words are inadequate to tell you how much I miss them). Kent was supposed to go with me in May to see Jordan and his family and then in July to see Ben and his family. Only of course his mom’s health took a huge nosedive in May, and then of course she died in July. So my excitement was tempered by her illness and death and also by him not being with me. 

What book(s) did you love this year? 

I continued my escapism into science fiction and some fantasy. In no particular order, here are some of my favorites:

• A Boy and His Dog at the End of the Word by C. A. Fletcher
• Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir 
• Angel of the Crows by Katherine Addison
• The Goblin Emperor, also by Katherine Addison
• Fugitive Telemetry by Martha Wells (her most recent book in the Murderbot series, all of which I adore)

What song will always remind you of 2021? 

I heard this at church, not long after Kent’s mother died, and Mary died and Sara’s mother was so gravely ill. This song brought me so much comfort.

Whatever happened to Linda Schwartz?

Last night on the drive from La Guardia to our hotel on Times Square, I thought of Linda Schwartz. I hadn’t thought of her in years, well decades actually.

She was married to Rick’s youngest brother, Ron and was from some pretty serious money here in New York. In 1979, after Rick and I got married that December, we spent some time with Ron and Linda up here (they weren’t married yet but were engaged). I vividly remember going to her parents’ penthouse apartment overlooking Central Park—the elevator just opened right in their space, no need for a separate hall or anything as they had the entire floor. She came from that kind of money.

But she wasn’t happy, I don’t know what the pain was from but it was there and she and Ron didn’t have a good relationship. Let’s be clear, he wasn’t happy either and I have a much better sense of where his pain came from, so this isn’t a bash Linda story.

What stays with me the most, all these years later, are two things:

• She didn’t care for the ring Ron bought her. If I recall correctly, it was 14k gold and she wanted 18k gold. So she replaced the ring herself. I always thought that didn’t bode well for them. There’s nothing wrong with wanting something different, it’s the not talking about it that seemed to indicate things weren’t going to end well.
• When Ben was born, she was livid about the name. That was the name she was going to use for her (as yet unborn, not even a glimmer on the horizon) son. That baffled me. OK name your kid the same thing, it will be confusing but there are worse things and oh by the way, that sure wasn’t aimed at you. But she took it as an attack.

I think they limped along together for about 8 years, maybe a bit longer, and had two children, one of each I think. But that’s all I know.

Why I like Crossfit, specifically Change Now

Last summer I’d joined a Crossfit-esque gym run by a woman who’s a national expert in exercise for cancer survivors. I loved the classes, loved the atmosphere and was gutted when she decided to retire early and travel around with her husband.

I knew I wanted to keep this kind of workout going so I looked for other options. I found a Crossfit gym that’s a lot closer to us plus it has 5:15 AM classes 4 days a week, which our previous gym did not (plus it was a good 20 minute drive away). I am most definitely a very early morning workout person so Kent and I decided to check it out.

The woman who owns this box had been out of shape and overweight most of her life. Then about 9 or 10 years ago, she decided she wanted to get in shape. In 2019, she opened her own Crossfit box.

What I love about this box has a lot to do with her:

• Form always over hitting achievements
• Encouragement but also pushing when needed
• She never gives up on us

I also really like it that I am doing things I’m horrible at doing. Case in point: 

• Jump rope. Let me tell you, the first workout of the day that used jump rope about did me in. As I told the coach that day, it had been well over half a century since I jumped rope. I’m terrible at it. But I’m going to get better.
• Also things like pull ups, or a devilish push up variation called an Archer ring row push up (we did those today, I most definitely modified it).
• Oh or the work out that had a total of 350 air squats. Boy I felt those for nearly a week.
• And Saturday we did 50 Romanian split squats with weights. Hard but good.

I relish the challenge, I love that I’m getting stronger and best of all, my left wrist is improving.

Wally

We had to say goodbye to Wally yesterday. 

Over the last several years, he’d gotten grumpier and grumpier, often attacking Eddie (who’s his litter mate). He’d also gotten a lot more feeble, not able to jump directly to our desks or the counter, things he did effortlessly when we first moved into this house in 2013.

The last three months were even worse. He started attacking Annie, randomly and with no provocation on her part other than existing. All the things that used to bring him pleasure no longer did. And then the last three or four nights, he started attacking Stevie.

These attacks were violent, not a small hiss fest with a couple of swats. Twice, Stevie ran in terror down the hall, voiding her bladder the whole way. I think if Wally had caught her, he would have tried to kill her. As it was, in addition to the urine we found tufts of her fur scattered down the hall.

We’d taken him to our vet several times during all this. We were convinced that something had to be really wrong, that he was in extreme pain, something was causing this change. But his health was good for a 14 year old cat: very early signs of kidney disease, the start of cataracts, but nothing else.

After Tuesday night’s attack, we realized we were at a decision point. We didn’t think he could be re-homed, he wasn’t nice to anyone but to the two of us. Plus he puked all the time, had always done that (apparently some cats do and his brother Eddie also pukes a lot), and then there were the aggression issues.

Our vet fully supported us with this. He told us yesterday that some cats just never quite get socialized and that with his aggression issues, we were lucky not to have been bitten ourselves. He pointed out that he and the rest of the vets there all knew Wally, that he had a reputation for violence. And I’ll tell you, those middle of the night attacks were definitely scary because Stevie sleeps up by my head. When Wally came screeching up the bed at her, he didn’t pay attention to my face being in the way.

Because he was always a screaming attacking terror at the vet, he was fully sedated when the vet brought him to us before administering the terminal drug. I realized then that I had not seen Wally that relaxed in years. He was always tense, always on edge, always wary. My heart broke and I knew this was for the best.

Even though the vet assured us Wally wouldn’t know if we were with him when he died, we both needed to be there. And I think somewhere in my Ginger Prince’s heart, he knew and felt our love as we stroked his fur and cried and told him we loved him.

Every night when I go to bed, I sit cross legged and read for a bit. And every night, Wally gets in my lap, and Eddie plasters against my right leg and I give them cheek rubs and say “wiki wiki wiki” (like the DJ sound effect) as I rub their faces. Last night, my lap was empty. 

A new grey kitty

No, not ours

A few years ago, we had a neighborhood cat who liked to loll around on our patio, our front porch, our AC dealie which is right outside our office window. He was gorgeous, a lovely dark grey with a black nose and he had cattitude for days. One time he was lying on the AC thing, and I guess he got really curious because he reached over and banged on the office window. Wally and Eddie were NOT amused.

Today I saw this grey kitty clearly hunting something at the base of the smoke tree. It’s not the same cat, this one isn’t as long and doesn’t have the black nose. But he’s sure a hunter. 

More loss, more tears, some anger

Sara works for me; she’s a really neat woman, amazing at her job, smart etc. etc. A single mom, she’s also had her mother living with her for nearly two years because her mom was diagnosed with a form of fatty liver disease that’s genetic. So Sara may have to face this for herself someday.

Anyway, Sara’s mother went downhill slowly at first, and then as often happens with organ failure, that sped up. She originally needed a liver transplant but then her kidneys also started failing (which apparently is not at all unusual to happen). In early October, she crashed hard and honestly I didn’t think she’d make it--she was in ICU for two weeks, on a vent and on dialysis.

But she rallied enough to move to rehab and then we got great news that the VA had a donor for her for both organs. So Sara and her mom were flown to Madison WI for the surgeries.

On Thursday, October 21 she had the liver transplant. That surgery was rough, so her surgeons waited until Saturday, October 23 to transplant the kidney. And she did GREAT. The next day she was off the vent, talking with her family, making urine etc.

And then she died that afternoon. The preliminary autopsy ruled out a blood clot, which is what her medical team suspected killed her. But no. She just died.

What feels so cruel is that she came through both surgeries, she was alert etc. Sara and her sister were so excited, heck all of us who work with her were too.

Rhonda’s funeral is Wednesday at Fort Leavenworth. She was an Air Force veteran and wanted a military service. I will be there.

When the answer is not clear

I have what may be competing goals:

• Run one (just one) marathon successfully
• Break no more bones

And I’m not sure how to decide. Normally I’d run off and ask my medical care team only here’s something I’ve noticed. I’m not sure if this is age or gender bias or a lack of common ground (because 99% of my medical care team clearly aren’t as into fitness as I am), but what I’ve heard since fracturing my pelvis in 2018, then struggling with side effects from radiation that affected my fitness and then breaking my foot goes something like this:

• Why don’t you just take a long walk?
• You just run to stay fit, right? So find another workout.
• How about some yoga?

To which the answers are:

• A long walk is beyond boring. Seriously boring. I would rather put that energy into mastering riding my bike.
• I run to compete, not just to stay fit. So screw that noise.
• I already do yoga. And Crossfit. And biking. 

I do have one doctor who’s as into fitness as I am: my endocrinologist. He's an avid mountain biker, totally loves it. And that he's my endocrinologist is also good because he’s the one who keeps an eye on my bone health. So I’ve thought about emailing him through the patient portal and asking his take on this. 

Because I really, really would like to run just one marathon.