Rebuilding, my mother, death focuses the mind (long 850 words)

  So dad is in recovery and seems to be improving slowly.  My daughter and I have visited him three times and three days.  The first time he spoke mostly Norwegian, which is a bit difficult for me to understand (I came to America at the age of two and a half and stopped speaking Norwegian at the age of three.)  He seemed to have a bit of trouble tracking us with his eyes.  The other two times, he was much clearer, speaking 100% English.  There was a closed window between us, but both dad and I spoke on a cell phone, so it was easy for us to hear him.  He was very happy that I was out of the hospital.  He seemed to be on 7 liters per minute oxygen.  If they can get him down to 3 liters per minute, then we can move him into assisted living with my mother.

   We, my father and I, are both rebuilding our bodies — mostly our lungs.  I was discharged from the hospital on Dec 9 after demonstrating that I could walk 100 feet without oxygen.  Two days later on Dec 11, I managed to walk indoors for 14 min and go slowly up and down stairs for 7 min.   (Scott will be upset with me when I tell him because he wanted me to avoid stairs.  He thought, perhaps correctly, that stairs were a bit unsafe for me.)  The next day I walked 1.2 miles with my daughter around the neighborhood where I grew up.  I was kind of exhausted afterward.  This morning I walked around the house for 22 minutes mixing in a very small amount of very slow jogging and some stairs.   So, I am rebuilding.

   I was never near death, but I did think about death while in the hospital.  In the hospital, I could only expel about 900 cubic centimeters of air with each breath.  Now, I can expel 2500 cubic centimeters.  Being a little closer to death made me think about my life.  I have a passion for games, mathematics, and strangely writing.  I really did not get on the writing kick until after I blogged on artent.net for a few years and then later did a 30 day daily 100 word writing challenge with my friends Jason and Scott.  I want to devote a lot more of my time to writing about math, games, and maybe even amateur philosophy/self-help for a broader audience.  My mathematics publications were only read by a hundred or so mathematicians many of whom are my friends.  I would like to broaden that audience.  I also have this strong desire to live life fully.  I love travel.  I want to scuba dive again. I love massage, both giving and receiving.  (I even got certified for Thai massage in Thailand a year ago.)  I want to share these adventures with friends and maybe a girlfriend.

   My mother has always been an inspiration for me.  She got chronic fatigue syndrome 50 years ago, and her life has been a struggle.  Every time I get up, I breath heavily.  I have heard my mother breath heavily doing ordinary tasks like the laundry for several years.  All through these 50 years, my mother has demonstrated passions for yoga, helping people, German, learning, skiing, and horseback riding.  She did all those thing while having very low energy like I have now.  She is very self disciplined.  When she broke her wrist, she did not have the energy to go to the painful physical therapy.  She said, “Show me what to do and I will do the painful exercises at home daily.”  She kept her word and her wrist is like brand new.  She taught yoga 40 years ago which was difficult for her, but her students saw how she struggled to teach them, and they loved her for that.  She inspired them.  She took up yoga again at age 73 and she does it almost daily now.  At the age of 70, she decided that she was going to take up skiing again, some thing she had not done since age 30.  Many times she had to go home after getting to the Laurel Mountain Ski Resort due to the difficulty of just getting there, but other times she did succeed.  After a few successful trips, she started taking lessons.  A few years later, she skied Lower Wildcat, a very steep expert slope.  One of the amazing thing she discovered is that she could learn even while being quite tired.  She got a computer program called Mnemosyne which simulated flash cards, repeating cards more often if you got the answer wrong.  She uses Mnemosyne every day.  First she memorized the positions of all of the countries of the world and their capitals.  Then she went on to learn 5000 words of German (often as much as 15 words per day). My mother is an inspiration.  In the years ahead, I am hoping that I can match half of her passion and perseverance.


TLDR:  Dad and I are rebuilding my lungs.  Being so sick and my mother's example are inspiring me to live life more fully.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A temporary Stalemate - long

   My dad has been fighting a long, arduous battle against covid since November 2.  For a month, he experienced the fevers, weakness, and the shortness of breath that is common for covid patients.  Why has he survived?  I think he has had three great loves that have allowed him to persevere:  love of family, love of nature, and love of sport.    My father has always had strong emotions.  Over the years, he has done much for my mother, my brother, his aunt, and my children.  My mother has had chronic fatigue syndrome, so my father did the shopping and ran the house financially.  He always helped his now 97 year-old aunt in Brooklyn with any financial matters together with multiple phone calls.  He sent my brother and I though college and calls us a few times per week even though he is not talkative (my mother does most of the talking.)  He always drove the 4 to 6 hour trips to the hospital when my son was having lung issues (more than a dozen times).  Many times he drove to my house to
Read more

Good news, weight loss sliver lining (long 800 words)

Dad is doing alright.  His biggest problem is that he needs 10 liters per minute of oxygen to stay alive.   He is doing very well with occupational and physical therapy.   His lungs need to heal.   He has other neurological problems that largely predated covid.   His eye hand coordination, balance, and ability to read have been problematic over the last year.   As a result he has had difficulty operating a cell phone.   But otherwise, he is improving. The last two days have been a great improvement for me.  I was discharged from the hospital two days ago!!  At the hospital, my lungs had healed enough that I was on room air (no supplemental oxygen) for 23 hours a day.  I am staying at my parent’s house and my daughter has driven down from Brown University to take care of me.   My high high school friend Scott helped me out a lot in the hospital.  Normally, I take a vitamin D supplement prescribed by my doctor.  The hospital for some unknown reason would never give me vitamin D.  Scot
Read more

Vaccines

   My father and mother both got vaccinated on Friday.  My father threw up the next day and he lost oxygen saturation, so they put him on two liters per minute without any fever. He quickly improved over the next 24 hours.  We are hoping to transition my father to lower intensity assisted living with my mother in two weeks.    After getting vaccinated, my mother's only symptom was feeling lethargic for a couple of days.          My health is continuing to improve.  I jogged a mile twice last week and walked another 9 miles total.  My resting heart rate continues to drop.  It peaked around December 20th at 73 beats per minute (bpm).  I'm down to about 61 bpm.  Before covid, my resting heart rate was 56.  I lost 25 pounds during covid and I have regained 20 of those 25 pounds.  I think my stress level is lower for two reasons:  my mother has been staying with me which is nice because we talk more easily in person than on the phone, and I have not been working very much due to cov
Read more