Home 8/13-8/16

Monday August 13 to Wednesday August 15 (5% max level of steroids) I’m going to group these 3 days together because they kind of flow into each other in my mind.

Had delightful visits with both Kim Klein, a friend from Landmark Education (we have attended many of their courses), and three colleagues from work, Sylvia, Flo, and Pam, who also brought me my work laptop computer, as I had requested.

I have been using the laptop, so far, only to write material for the blog in the middle of the night (as I am doing right now). For some reason, although the wireless connection is in place, I am unable to access the Internet to get to the blog. I’ve contacted our IT folks to see if they can offer assistance. Susanne and I had a conversation about when it would be alright for me to begin accessing my work email. From my perspective I don’t see any big deal about how soon I do so. She expressed concerns about me doing so without consultative input from my manager, medical personnel, and her. The concerns were around potential impact on my medical leave and possible damage to my reputation due to what she perceives as my impaired judgment. I fail to see the relevance of either of these issues but agreed to await consideration of beginning to access email until Sunday (0 steroids day).

I spoke to Dr. Sloan’s secretary about the Pathology report on Tuesday. She assured me that these reports come straight to her desk and she immediately gets them to the doctor with a priority status. She also indicated that the amount of time this one is taking is not unusual and that we should be patient.

I began to experience a slight amount of upward movement of my right foot and was able to more or less hold my foot level when walking without the brace. My ability to hobble about without the brace improved as a result.

I hired Marcus again to clean out and organize the garage. That pretty well completes the clean-up activities I had in mind for our external environment.

We decided to rent a video and chose “Peaceful Warrior”, which is a portrayal of Dan Millman’s book “Way of the Peaceful Warrior”. Very powerful story of overcoming a serious life setback through gaining clear focus.

Went to the barber shop and library. At the library I was drawn to get a range of heavy, medium and light read books. My norm previously would be fairly light to medium reading books.

I had previously worked out a method to have sales affiliates involved with the Marriage Transformation products and already had a couple in Norway who runs a Baha’i-oriented website for singles called Two Doves interested in participating. I got them signed up, developed the webpage to explain the program, and announced it to our listserve. It will also be an ongoing item in our monthly e-newsletter. Got an immediate positive response from one of our friends in New Mexico, so we now already have 2 affiliates signed up! Some of the backlog of tasks from before the surgery were beginning to get cleared up.

Thursday August 16 (2.5% max level of steroids) We went to the YMCA to workout/swim, at about 5:30 AM, which has been our practice for years. We have developed nice friendships with a number of the other regulars. Many of them were there and were very glad to see me. I did a light workout but will not be permitted to swim until September, to avoid potential infection of the incision.

Had the intake visit at Out-Patient rehab. It was a very thorough and probing examination of the condition of my right leg. Susanne had also gotten authorization from the insurance company for some other issues to be addressed during the rehab work. Because there is a family history of osteoporosis, I was tested a year or so ago and the results indicated it was an issue. When the initial MRI tests were done, in addition to the brain scan, which showed the tumor, a neck (cervical spine) scan was also done, which showed some degeneration. I am scheduled for 2-45 minutes each week for the next 4 weeks. At that time my condition will be re-evaluated.

I completed the task from the Smart Marriages conference of getting all the contacts that had entered our raffle signed up for our e-newsletter and entered into our database.

We had decided that it would be worthwhile for Susanne to contact Dr. Sloan’s secretary and request that she confirm with Pathology that the report was, in fact, in process and not misplaced somewhere. In the preparation for the surgery, we had two occurrences where tests had to be done a second time. The secretary agreed to do so and came back with the information that was posted on August 16. As we looked at the further delay we came to recognize that it was really a bounty in disguise and decided to take on being fully prepared for whatever the report indicates…1) no further treatment needed or 2) further treatment indicated. Planning for the first option is easy. What we began looking at is what steps we will take to gathering additional information and develop a plan IF the second option is what is presented to us. This was a very empowering discussion because, for the first time, Susanne was willing to engage in real conversation about the insights of the Fact-Based Spirit-Guided Path (and I was willing to discuss a possible negative outcome to the tests). There is still much to be developed to fully flesh-out this new paradigm and I’m now seeing the potential for Susanne and me to do some of this consultatively. Yeah!

We decided to go to our Toastmaster’s meeting. I was particularly drawn to go because the topic for the week was Comets and Meteors. I was an amateur astronomer in high school and continue to have a fascination with all the phenomena visible in the skies. It was very moving to walk into the room. The meeting had just started and when folks saw me they paused and many of them rose to their feet with applause. I had some wonderful conversations with many of them after the meeting.

I’m now caught up to real time so plan to, at the end of each day review and process the events of that day.