Hardly a Creature Stirred

This was the most low-key . . . and enjoyable . . . Christmas ever.

The tree went up the week before along with the large Santa atop the bookcase, two penguins under the tree and a couple of large stockings on the front door, one inside and one outside. That was it. No creche, no exterior lights, no carol-wielding circus train. My brother did scatter some Christmas balloon figures across the lawn but never got around to inflating them.

We limited ourselves on the presents, too. Since my niece was the only one who sent a wish list, and since half her list consisted of books, I was happy to oblige her. My brother and I agreed to limit ourselves to only "stocking stuffers" which meant he gave me three small jars of flavored honey, a bottle of orange flavored syrup and a box of fudge while I gave him a case of beer and a bottle of honey roasted peanuts. We were both happy.

The cats, being natural born heathens and not, as we, lapsed communicants, received nothing. They were content to nest in the boxes and nibble on wrapping paper. Despite occasional manic bursts of running about chasing each other around and under the tree, they were (generally) very careful to avoid touching it and only a couple of the lowest ornaments ended up on the rug.

We had Christmas dinner mid-afternoon and in the evening I made about a gallon of split pea soup with a portion of the leftover ham. The cats turned down ham samples although I did catch one of them later gnawing on a piece of gristle she stole from somewhere. I now have pea soup, bean soup and turkey soup taking up space in the refrigerator and freezer and kind of wish the weather would cool off again. It feels weird eating hot soup when the temperature is pushing 80F.

If we can maintain this same level of concentrated placidity, 2015 could start off well.

The Best Laid Schemes . . .

My niece was tentatively scheduled to go home last Monday. I am astonished by the speed at which people can recuperate from major surgery these days mostly as a result of improvements in surgical practice that minimize trauma to the body. When I was a kid, people stayed in hospital longer recovering from tonsillectomies (surgery like she had wasn't even possible).

As it was, those plans went agley when she suddenly developed a level three (whatever that means, but it was serious) heart block and they rushed her back into the OR and installed a pacemaker. I'd like to think her heart, after struggling for years and years just to keep her alive, suddenly reacted to the lack of stress due to all the new replacement parts and upgrading and sort of "overclocked." Or kind of like pushing and pushing on a stuck door when someone finally removes the doorstop on the other side (not that that's ever happened to anyone I know).

So now not only does she have bionic bits, she's battery powered as well.

At least she got a nice visit from a cute service dog. And will stay in the hospital for another week or so. Just to be sure.

Thank You, One and All

After a long day and night I think this Facebook post from my niece's Mom says it all:

"Caitlin's father spent the night with Caitlin in the ICU. She
looks good and had a good night. Dr. Baird did some pretty
extensive work on her yesterday. He reworked her tricuspid valve
and tightened it with a ring, put in a titanium mitral valve,
replaced a patch covering the hole in the septum, trimmed off some...
scar tissue, adjusted a small group of heart muscles, and performed
an ablation to the right side of her heart. In ICU now and they are
keeping her asleep for a little while longer."

That's a hell of a lot for a fourteen-year-old to go through (and not for the first time) but her Dad reports that the oxygen tubes are out and she's breathing on her own although still drowsy from the sedatives. The use of an artificial valve this time means she should not have to ever do this again.

In a previous century she never would have made it this far, and I am extremely grateful to not just the superb surgeons who have the skill and talent to perform such work, but also to all the people over the years who developed the techniques and trained the doctors, who invented and manufactured the tools and replacement parts and those who built and maintain the organizations that could bring them all together to accomplish something so extraordinary. And to my fellow citizens, who help to pay for it all through your taxes and insurance premiums. This is the definition of civilization and, today, my niece and her/my family are the beneficiaries.

Thank you. May it all be there for you when you need it.

Nothing To Do But Wait

So today is the culmination of weeks and months of growing anxiety as my sweet, beautiful niece goes into surgery, yet again. She's fourteen and this is her fourth open heart operation. It was originally scheduled for last month but she came down with the flu a week before that date and had to reschedule.


I think at least part of the anxiety (our own, that is) comes from knowing that she is now old enough to be aware of the risks herself. The first two operations occurred when she was an infant and the last one a couple of years ago, but fourteen is a good age to have a real grip on your own mortality.


She's pretty good, although not perfect, at hiding her nervousness and spent yesterday evening swimming in the hotel pool in Boston before going in for pre-op.


The first three operations involved stitching together her heart valves and repairing leaks but they just wouldn't hold up permanently, so this one will install an artificial valve that should last.


One of her big brothers, the middle one who was just sent by the Navy on an extended tour of the Eastern Mediterranean and Black Seas (Romania, Israel and Greece, so far), made a video for her wishing her well because he couldn't be there this time. His political consciousness was formed almost entirely by 9/11 and tends to be somewhere to the right of John McCain but he is a sweet, caring, loving human being and the best big brother anyone could ask for and I'm quite proud of him.


I just received a report from her Dad that the operation is proceeding satisfactorily. They have finished replacing one valve and are working on the second one now. She went under around 8:30 this morning and the expect to be done in another couple of hours.


So we continue to wait.

The Neverending Holiday

This is neither surprising nor untypical of our family. A little more communication would probably help, at least in keeping down expectations, but wouldn't really change anything.

We were expecting the family (Other Brother, niece, two nephews) down here for Christmas. My brother bought a nice standing rib roast for Christmas dinner.

Our Other Brother called--on Christmas Eve--to let us know he and the niece would be coming down the day after Christmas and the nephews would be showing up three days after that. We cut one third off the roast and I cooked that up on Christmas Day just for the two of us. We opened presents.

Other Brother and niece arrived Thursday afternoon with enough time to visit for all of two hours before my brother had to go to work. We opened presents and played games. They were going to come back later in the evening to look through my new telescope but the sky clouded over. Last night they came over and we all got to look at the moons of Jupiter, the Pleiades, and the stars Procyon and Betelgeuse. The niece wants a telescope. She also thinks Betelgeuse is a hilarious name for a star (and she's never even seen the movie). Today they've gone kayaking for manatees.

When the nephews arrive on Sunday, they're all going up to Busch Gardens for the day after which Other Brother leaves for home. The niece is staying with the nephews at least until their mom shows up and then will go home with her. Not sure when that will be. The nephews may be here through New Year's but who knows when, or how often, we'll see them. There are still presents to open and the rest of the roast to cook. If I get enough notice, I'll be able to make a New Year's dinner for everyone. If not, my brother and I will finish it off ourselves.

Also, my brother and the niece were the only ones to ask for (and get) anything specific in the way of presents. The rest of us just give and receive random stuff. It's kind of the way we roll. It's actually exciting in its own way never knowing ahead of time whether the recipient's reaction is going to be joy, satisfaction, let down or, "WTF were you thinking?!"

I got two joys and a let down this year. Not bad.

Deconstructing The Old Year

Our nephews came down for the New Year celebrations. They were down here to party with friends so, technically, they just used our house as a base of operations but they did visit for a while when their sister and mom returned from Georgia and they also helped tear up the back yard which was a good thing.

My brother has long wanted to remove the small mound out back that Dad built years ago. It originally contained a rock garden and a small working waterfall feeding a stream that emptied into a koi pond. The mound was built on a base consisting of the excavated dirt from the pond. On top of that, Dad stacked a short ton of coral boulders glued together with cement. The watercourse from the fall to the pond was lined with river stones embedded in cement. The pond was a homemade basin of cement over a sheet of black waterproof plastic liner and edged with slate cemented into place. Dad was a frustrated landscape architect and concrete was his medium.

The overall effect was very pleasant for several years but, eventually, the underlying earth sank a bit and the water didn't flow properly and the pump stopped and the whole thing was too tightly cemented together for the operating guts to be accessible to repair and so it became simply a pond with a slight rise in the background. The folks added and aerator to the pond and the fish were happy.

The fish were happy for a while, anyway. I was on the phone with Mom one day when she suddenly exclaimed, "Oh, look at the great blue heron!" which, of course, being on the phone from Connecticut, I could not, but she described in detail how it had just landed in the pond. Her excitement was understandable. Great blue herons are magnificent birds and not that common, even down here, are usually spotted at long range off in a swamp somewhere, and to have one standing not more than 20 feet from the back door was extraordinary. It was only after the great blue had flown that Mom realized the visit might have been somewhat less than exceptional and that, in fact, they had invited the heron by setting out such an easily accessible goldfish buffet. A few of the smaller fish survived by hiding under the leaves overhanging the edge of the pond but they were too traumatized to ever come out of the shadows again.

Dad died and the pond and mound became overgrown. The last of the fish were eaten by some other bird (no witnesses this time) and the water was allowed to evaporate. My brother didn't make any changes while Mom was alive because she liked some of the flowers that took root there.

That all changed this past weekend. The nephews gave my brother a new sledge hammer and chain saw for Christmas. I gave him a new orange tree. On New Year's Eve day we all went out and started dismantling the pond with the sledgehammer (my brother initially claimed he didn't need a new one so the boys started off with the old one but it broke about ten minutes in (Dad always made bunker-grade concrete.)) and the overgrowth with the chain saw.

The nephews have now gone back to base. The project's not done yet. The walls of the pond are completely broken up and it is about two-thirds filled in with rubble and dirt. The mound is half gone. We will have extra volume remaining thanks to the cement fill. The coral boulders have been rolled back to the property line in preparation for we know-not-what further use. The trees and bushes are down (with the exception of the central trunk of the tree on which the mockingbirds built their nest last summer where its ruins still perch) and the branches hauled out front for disposal.

The area looks disturbingly like a mass grave. Sod or grass seed will take care of that. What's worse, we can now see the neighbors.

Visits, Here and There

The niece and her mom stopped by on Saturday. We intended to go mini-golfing but her mom begged off saying she had errands to run and computer stuff to do, my brother warned that he had limited time before having to go off to work, and Caitlin wanted everyone to be there so we put the expedition off until they return to town from their detour to Georgia to spend Christmas with aunts and uncles from the other side of the family. (Mom ended up hanging around and visiting all afternoon anyway. We probably could've managed two rounds.) And, maybe by then it will be a bit warmer, too.

As a result, my trip to St. Petersburg to see vacationing friends from Salt Lake was put off until Sunday. I managed to find them with only one slight detour which brought me to the tip of such a delightful barrier island that I took them on the same detour later. We ate at a diner that (unbeknownst to us beforehand) was having their regular half-off-your-bill-if-you-wear-your-pajamas-to-brunch Sunday. You could tell the regulars from the visitors by who was (over)dressed for the occasion (although most of them were wearing something under their pj's to keep warm on the trip to the restaurant).

After croissants, omelettes and French toast we ended up in downtown St. Pete along gallery row where we examined blown glass made by Chihuly and his disciples, a number of offbeat restaurants, more glass and furnishings galleries, and a couple of really funky boutiques. The sun came out and the day warmed up nicely. I found a handmade present for my sister-in-law at a tiny Moroccan place.

We were saying goodbye as I prepared to return home when we were interrupted by a raucous chorus of a half dozen green parrots on the wires directly overhead. another flock of a dozen or more circled a few yards behind them. It was a perfect send-off.

Friends and Family

This should be a busy and fun week. Not only did the world not end on this solstice, some of it is coming here to visit.

My brave and beautiful niece (the one who just had her third open heart surgery a couple of months ago) and her mom are in town from Connecticut for a few days. They came down right after Caitlin played her harp in a Christmas concert. They're staying at a house owned by her mom's sister's family. When she told me, back in November, she would be visiting she asked if we could go play miniature golf. We'll do a couple of rounds this weekend despite the cold front that just blew in. She also wanted to go swimming but I'm not so confident that's going to happen.

Following right behind said cold front are a couple of friends, now married, from back in Utah. They're going to be up in the Tampa/St. Pete/Orlando area starting this weekend assuming their flights take the southern route and don't get entangled in the winter storm disrupting the rest of the country. We'll be able to catch up on all the stuff our other friends aren't willing to post on Facebook.

I'm making cookies for everyone. Oatmeal raisin now, chocolate chip later.

And, welcome back, Sol Invictus!

A Temporary Setback, Rapidly Repaired

My poor, brave niece went into the hospital today, again, this time because the two halves of her recently repaired heart were beating at different speeds. According to her mom, her atrium was beating 35 times faster than her ventricle. I don't understand how that's even possible.

Her mom rushed her to Yale-New Haven Hospital in New Haven where, after a short delay waiting for an operating room to become available, the doctors checked for clots and then shocked her heart back into regularity.

As of 2:00 p.m., her mom reports she is in the pediatric intensive care unit, awake and sipping juice. There were no clots. Her heart rate is a little high but not excessive or irregular.

For some reason, she claims to be sick and tired of hospitals and just wants to go back to school. She's a tough kid.

And Home Again Already

My niece is out of the hospital and home again.

She's on Tylenol and Motrin for pain relief and is walking around, playing her harp, playing card games with Mom and complaining of being bored already. She wants to be back in school again. I'm sure her friends can't wait, either.

Her Mom reports she was running a small fever, but her doctors expected as much, and as long as it stays below 101 everything is supposedly fine.

So, now we can get back to the annual Hallowe'en battle of the inflatable lawn decorations, wherein Neighbor Dan has already taken the offensive and may have a commanding lead.

Strolling Through the ICU

A little more than twenty-four hours after open heart surgery, my niece is up and walking around . . . with a little help.

She signed a little to her big brother but had to tell her Dad to go get Mom because Dad just couldn't understand her and Mom could. Then she wrote, "I can't breathe," meaning the tube down her throat was interfering so the doctors removed it and now she's talking again.

It's still going to be a while before she can be discharged, but I am so proud of the little fighter.

The Girl Is Doing Fine

I've received some word regarding my niece's surgery in Boston. It went well.

The operation was delayed half a day and she didn't go under until just after noon on Thursday. The whole thing took about seven hours. The doctors knocked her out, cooled down her body to slow respiration and circulation, attached her to a bypass machine so they could stop her heart and then repaired the leaky valve. Her parents and oldest brother were there the whole time and were given progress reports as the operation went along. There turned out to be three defects: two they knew about, although one was worse than expected, and one they only found when they were already in her heart. Once they were done and had tested their work, it took an hour to warm her back up and another one to close her.

The doctor planned to keep her unconscious and on a respirator over night but her parents saw her as they moved her to ICU and report that she already shows better color than before the operation.

Her Mom reported this morning that the docs plan to start removing her from her various tubes this afternoon and begin to wake her.

The family is planning on staying in Boston for most of next week while she recovers.

It's hard to express the depth of our gratitude to the doctors at Boston Children's Hospital and to all the staff there (let alone the researchers and equipment manufacturers and builders of sophisticated systems procedures and the almost-limitless list of others who have contributed in some way) who made this possible. This is what the interconnected web of civilization produces.

Latest update: 3 p.m. Caitlin is awake and when asked how she felt gave her Mom thumbs up. Tube down her throat will come out soon.

A Trip to Boston

My 12-year-old niece goes in for surgery tomorrow morning, 6 a.m., at Boston Children's Hospital. This will be her third open heart operation, although the first two were done when she was a baby so this is the one she'll remember. I just got off the phone with her and her Dad (my Other Brother). They and the rest of the family, except my younger nephew who is stuck on base in Virginia, are all going off for a Duck (DUKW: ex-military amphibious vehicle) Tour of Boston Harbor.

Caitlin with her Dad and two older brothers.

Fortunately, insurance will cover the operation itself, but there are other expenses including travel costs, living arrangements in Boston, lost income and additional doctors' bills that are not covered so the family has been conducting a number of fundraisers to help defray them.

Caitlin, in the middle, because of the stress on her heart,
has always been  . . .extra petite. For comparison, her friend,
Elizabeth, in pink, is a classmate and the same age. Credit Kevin Kane

I have been very impressed by the support her friends and the community have shown her. Her classmate, Elizabeth McCann organized a bake sale and lemonade stand. The local grocery has been selling fundraising cookies and the church hosted a fundraising dinner. In addition, a number of individuals and charities have donated to her cause.

On the one hand, I wish none of this, the operation or the begging, was necessary. On the other hand, I am proud of how, when the need arises, we do all pull together, just because it's the right thing to do.

The Cupcakes of Desperation

My Brother came home from the bar last night with a couple of treats: two homemade cupcakes, each topped with frosting and a half Twinkie decorated to look like minions from "Despicable Me." He gave me the single-eye-goggled one and kept the double-eyed one for himself.


A quick Google Image Search reveals that Minion Cupcakes
are a thing out there in the world. Who knew?

Apparently, someone's child had been diagnosed with cancer and this was one of the ways they are trying to raise the funds for her treatment.
I am quite confident that, if you were to ask anyone in that bar (this being southern Florida), they would all profess to be adamantly opposed to Obamacare, opposed to government mandated health insurance, opposed to "socialized medicine," and, in addition, are all oblivious not just to the irony but the pure obscenity of having to hold a bake sale to raise funds for life saving treatment for a child (or anyone else, for that matter). My Brother lost his own health insurance last year when his employer unilaterally decided to drop it. Still, he would rather die (and doesn't recognize the increased odds of that happening) than vote for a Democrat. Instead, they all buy cupcakes at $2 a piece and hope things work out because that's the way it is.

On a not entirely unrelated note, my niece (12 years old) is facing her third open heart surgery this fall. Although her parents do have health insurance, and most of the direct bills will be covered, the incidental expenses, ranging from food and parking during hospital stays in Boston to lost income during parental custodial time off and additional doctor bills, means they have had to set up a (slightly more organized) fundraiser for her.

It's wonderful to live in a first-world country in the Twenty-first Century. I'd like to try it some day.