Quiet New Year's Eve

We're having about the quietest New Year's Eve of all time. I started out on a short walk to downtown Littleton this afternoon with Mandy, but she couldn't take the cold after a few blocks, so I brought her back home, and dropped her off before continuing on. It was chilly, about 27F, and a brisk wind came up after a few minutes. I was glad to have my hat and gloves with me. I really enjoyed that squeaky crunching sound my boots made, as I made my way along the snow covered paths.

This evening, K and Mandy are sleeping in the reclining chair by the fire, watching the New Year's Eve coverage on TV. We watched the big fireworks show in downtown Denver at 9pm, which they'll repeat at midnight. I woke K up at 10, and we had a quarter cup of Martinelli's to celebrate with the folks at the Times Square celebration. She's only allowed to drink a measured amount of fluid each day, because the dialysis can only remove so much, and we definitely don't want a repeat of that terrible swelling she's been recovering from for the past two weeks.

Home for the Holidays

Well, we've made it most of the way through the holidays -- knock on wood! K has suffered through several dialysis sessions now. They really do take a big bite out of our lives, but they give back life itself, so I guess it's a fair trade. The swollen legs seem to be improving, but very slowly. It's one of those things where we have to take it a day at a time. Then on top of everything else, she got a huge blister on her heel before Christmas, and now that needs to be watched very carefully. We got her to the wound care people two days later, which seems like record time, after our previous experiences. They trimmed it up neatly and bandaged it, and we'll be checking it tomorrow for the first time since then.

It's snowed several times over the holidays, totaling perhaps two or three feet. We even had a nice thick coat of fresh white snow on Christmas day, a real treat! I've been shoveling the snow off the deck, so the dog has a safe place to be outside, and lay around and experience the neighborhood sights and smells and sounds, when the sun is out. While I was taking this picture, I noticed later that a local fox was sleeping down under the pine trees in our neighbor's yard to the West.

Mandy and I are getting used to driving K to and from the dialysis center, in various weather conditions. She's been snuggling into her little bed in the back seat, all bundled up with a small blanket and a sheepskin cover, and has stayed very warm, even when the outside temperature has dropped into the single digits. We've tested our new all wheel drive on several occasions, and it passed with flying colors. The heated seats do help take the chill away quickly. Mandy and I have ventured out for walks in several unfamiliar snow-covered parks, as we've been killing time running errands and exploring. I've discovered that regardless of how warm her little coats are, her feet don't survive for more than a little while, after venturing into the deeper snow. She'll stop and lift a foot, as if it had been stuck by a thorn, and I'll pick her up and warm her feet, before we proceed on. She's not very keen on those little dog booties, but they sure seem like the best solution to the problem. I sure wouldn't venture out into the snow barefooted myself, so I'm not sure why I thought she'd be able to tough it out.

Mandy seems to have hit critical mass on dog toys. For the past few months, she's been totally uninterested in playing with any of the little toys we've gotten her. Then this week, a friend gave her a couple more little stuffed toys, and suddenly she's completely into hoarding all of her toys, moving them around the house from one favorite spot to another, and taking them out and playing with them. It's such a delight for us, to see her perking up and getting a new level of enjoyment out of life.

Here's a little movie clip, of our little toy monger discovering that her new goose makes a honking sound when she bites it just right. It's kind of like a "baby's first step" thing for us. We hope you enjoy it!

K Started Dialysis

The snow forecast for this afternoon started to fall around 1:30 today. Big fluffy flakes. Mandy was not the least bit interested in going out to investigate, although she seems very happy to lay here in my arms and look out the window at it.

K's been to two dialysis treatments since she got home from the hospital last Saturday. I think it's safe to say she's feeling a little better, although she's still feeling very badly. She's going to the DaVita Lakewood Crossing Dialysis Center at Wadsworth and Mississippi, which is a bit of a drive. She's on the Tue-Thu-Sat schedule. She was scheduled for a treatment on Christmas Day, but they're moving that one up a day to Monday instead. They've also moved her from the 2:30-6:30 slot to the 12:30-4:30 slot, which is more convenient for them. So far, she's found rides over there with our neighbors, and I've been picking her up after work. She's trying to setup a regular ride with one of the shuttle services that are available. She's also on a waiting list to get into a closer location in Littleton, but she's struggling with that, since she's been told the Lakewood Crossing one is nicer than the Littleton one.

We launched three rockets (one Atlas and two Deltas) in the past couple weeks. The last Delta II of the year, MV331, launched yesterday afternoon, just before we got off work for the holidays. It's nice to end the year with a successful launch.

K Back Home

Ken and I took Mandy down to Lee Gulch for a walk in the snow, then Mandy and I raced downtown to pick up K in the early afternoon, and now she's beginning to settle back into life at home. She had stayed an extra day in the hospital, hopefully to get the benefit of an extra dialysis today. Unfortunately, this morning's dialysis was unsuccessful, for various reasons, mostly unanticipated clotting and swelling, so they sent her home without it.

She's supposed to begin her regular dialysis sessions next Tuesday afternoon, at a dialysis center about 13 miles from home, about a 30 minute drive. That's pretty far away, but that's all they could arrange on short notice. We're hoping she can get on a waiting list for a center closer to home, and perhaps arrange for a shuttle service to transport her, so we won't have to drive her all the time.

K at St Jo

K was admitted to St Joseph hospital on Tuesday evening. Just before I left her, two doctors came by to consult, and both said she should expect to feel better soon. She had two hours of dialysis on Wednesday, three hours on Thursday, and four hours this morning. She doesn't admit to feeling much better, but I think she sounds more alert and seems to have a better disposition.

Our neighbors Ken and Freddie have been wonderful, taking care of Mandy during the days, while I've been at work. It's been snowing off and on the past few days, and that combined with the Christmas music on the radio, and the Christmas lights on the City and County building and everywhere else, have made the commute to and from the hospital a little magical.

I guess you must've noticed in the picture above, I snuck Mandy in to see her last night and this afternoon, and I'm convinced both my girls were the better for it. It wasn't much of a sneak, really. The after-hours guard in the lobby asked if they knew a dog was coming up, and I told him we were planning on meeting in the Solarium, and he said I was good to go. The Solarium is a big visiting room on the 9th floor with lots of windows. It was very pleasant, sitting in there with the lights out, enjoying the wonderful view of the Denver skyline, and dozing on the couch with the girls.

K to Hospital

K's been troubled with various symptoms that have all been getting progressively worse. Swollen legs and pain, low oxygen level, generally miserable all over. Difficulty sleeping - she's a walking zombie during the day. She falls asleep the moment she sits down to do anything that requires her to stop moving. Difficulty concentrating, and forgetting to do important things like taking her meds.

She consulted with her Nephrology doctor this afternoon, and he advised her to be admitted to the hospital this afternoon, and to start hemodialysis tomorrow.

Our neighbors volunteered to take her to St Joseph hospital while I'm at work, but I'm struggling with the desire to take off work, and be directly involved with that myself. We haven't figured out how we'll deal with the dog, but I'm hoping we'll have enough time and friends available, that Mandy will be well taken care of. Some of our neighbors are leaving town for the holidays, so logistics will get more difficult, but hopefully she'll be home by then.

I wish I were a person whose capabilities always rose to the level of adversity, and I guess with most issues I am, but as always when something happens to K, I turn into an emotional wreck, and my world closes in, until I can barely even think, much less do the right thing. But I'll be trying, as I usually do.

No Xmas Trip

We just canceled our tentatively planned driving trip to see family in CA for the Christmas holiday. K's about ready to commit to dialysis. She's been feeling lousy for a long time, but was holding on, and hoping she could put it off until January. The past few weeks she's been feeling even worse. Her legs have swollen until she has very little range of motion. She's thinking she needs to start soon, in which case, they'll want her in the hospital for the first day, and here in town for the first 30 days. After that, she'll be spending 4 hours at a dialysis center every other day, for the foreseeable future, or until she can get a kidney transplant. That will make traveling problematic, since we would have to find a dialysis center at every town we stop in, and reserve a treatment for her every other day. The people she's asked say that it's difficult to find places during the holidays, because a lot of other dialysis patients are trying to do the same thing.

So... I guess we'll be pretty much on our own for the holidays this year. Our little dog Mandy is trying very hard to be a good companion for us, and is doing a wonderful job at it, so I have hopes that we'll have an OK time, just the three of us.

Nice Day for a Walk

It's hard to believe the weather is this nice in mid November. Ken and I have gotten back to going out on weekend walks the past few months, and lately we're enjoying the unusually pleasant late Fall weather. Mandy quickly got used to our long walks, and now starts leaping and bounding whenever she sees me putting on walking shoes. Here are a few pictures from 11/11 - 11/16 - 11/17

Flush with success from our Chicago medical trip, we were thinking we'd try to drive to the West Coast next week, and spend Thanksgiving with family. We had to put the kibosh on those tentative plans, as K realized her new biweekly iron I.V. would be coming due that week. We're thinking of trying again for the Christmas week. Once we start thinking about that, we get all excited, and start trying to figure out how to visit everyone we know out there, which becomes a daunting proposition. Too many good folks, and not enough time. Still, we're considering stopping in Sacramento, Arcata, Newport Beach, and Atascadero, before heading home, although we haven't even done a strawman schedule yet. The hectic ULA work schedule may still get in the way. Hoping for a positive outcome, K has her liquid oxygen supplier out looking for a 75 gallon supply tank, that will fit in the car more easily than the 100 gallon tank we have in the garage.

Halloween

The ever so frightening ghosts, goblins, princesses, witches, race car drivers, and cell phone bill made their appearance, took our donations of eyeballs, fingers, and other edible body parts, and faded back into the night. K added some fun new apparitions to the exterior - skeletons hanging from the light fixtures.

Scary

K looked over at Mandy last night, as she was getting just one more thing before sitting down on the couch for a casual dinner. K realized that the dog had gotten into the pile of pills she'd prepared, to take with dinner. Some of those pills could easily kill an 11 pound dog. K couldn't remember which pills she'd laid down, or which ones she'd already taken, so the situation quickly spun up into an emergency. We weren't yet fully prepared for a dog health emergency, so we wasted some time calling around to various poison centers for people and dogs, and a couple of emergency vet facilities. We finally got her to VRCC in Englewood, after what seemed like an eternity to me, but was really about an hour. They gave her a medication that caused her to empty her stomach, but they didn't find any pills. Still, they gave her some activated charcoal to soak up anything bad, and kept her overnight to watch for possible symptoms. They were ready for almost anything, with a catheter and various resuscitation equipment. She hadn't shown any symptoms by this morning, when we picked her up, so it's looking like she may not have actually eaten any pills. We had quite a scare of almost losing our "companion dog", who has rapidly become a new family member, and I really hope we don't repeat the experience.

Fall Walk

After having Mandy try on her new pumpkin theme fleece coat, we ventured out for a midday walk with the neighbors. The Fall colors are showing definite signs of fading, but there were still a few rich and colorful seasonal indicators to be found.

Airliner Pressurization

My good friend mentioned a recent incident where he, and some other passengers in an airliner, began "gulping for air" during their flight. He asserted that the airline was recirculating the air as a cost cutting measure, and wasn't providing enough oxygen for everyone to be able to breathe normally. We discussed airliner pressurization systems at some length, and I referenced some articles on Boeing 737 and 767 airliner pressurization, but still he wondered why they didn't provide oxygen masks for everyone, since his experience in the USAF taught him that supplemental oxygen was required above 10,000 feet.

This oxygen question has always been a subject of interest to me, especially since it so directly affects private pilots. When a pilot friend of mine showed me his miniature Nonin pulse oximeter, I realized I "had to have one", and aside from being helpful on long trips over the mountains, it's been invaluable with monitoring K's O2 levels over the past few years.

He's right that oxygen is the key concern, but of course there's oxygen in the air, and if you get enough in the air you're breathing, you're fine without a bottle and mask. The percent oxygen is about 21 in Earth's atmosphere, which works out to a partial pressure of about 3 PSI at sea level. Partial Pressure of oxygen is what the lungs use, and a PP of 3 results in a blood oxygen saturation of about 97% in most people. The experts say most people need about 87% to function normally. Up here in the mile-high city, I generally see my O2 saturation at about 95-97%.

At 10,000 ft, the atmospheric pressure is only 60% of sea level pressure. That results in an oxygen PP of about 1.8, and a blood saturation of about 87%, which is enough for most people to function normally, according to the experts. The USAF and others recommend going on supplemental oxygen at 10,000 feet, in an unpressurized plane, because it's the conservative thing to do. USAF pilots also have to worry about someone shooting a hole in their pressurized aircraft, so they always use bottled oxygen as a backup. Just for the record, the FAA doesn't require supplemental oxygen for private pilots in unpressurized aircraft until 14,000 feet, and oxygen doesn't have to be provided for passengers until 15,000 feet.

About the "gulping for air" symptom. When I lived in San Diego, I attended a course in "Physiological Training for Civilian Pilots" at Miramar Naval Air Station. One of the things we did, was sit in an "altitude chamber" while they ran the pressure down until it was the equivalent of 24,000 feet, and let us experience that high altitude without supplemental oxygen. There was a safety officer in the chamber with us, and his job was to force us back onto oxygen if we didn't do it when instructed. At that very high (simulated) altitude, I did notice some subtle symptomatic clues that hypoxia might be setting in, but they would have been easy to overlook, if I hadn't been watching for them. There was definitely no "gulping for air" symptom in any of the dozen people we had in the chamber. Then many years later, I was flying between Denver and Telluride several years ago, at 14,000 feet in an unpressurized Piper Turbo Arrow, and not using oxygen, although I had a bottle aboard just in case. I was carefully monitoring my blood oxygen with my portable oximeter. I saw my oxygen saturation level go as low as 77%, which is pretty low, but I never got short of breath or felt faint. I easily brought my oxygen level back up into the 90s, by inhaling deeply a few times, even though I didn't feel any need for it. There was no sense of a need to breathe differently, and definitely no "gulping" for air. All the articles I've read about pilots who fly higher than they should without supplemental oxygen, describe them as being unaware of their low oxygen situation. They just start acting stupid, then pass out after awhile. The Payne Stewart Learjet crash is a good example of this phenomena.

Modern day airliners are designed (and required by regulation) to be pressurized to an equivalent altitude of 8,000 feet or below, at their highest cruising altitude, without over stressing the pressure vessel that is the cabin. That leaves the partial pressure of oxygen at more than enough to sustain normal functioning, on all commercial flights, with no oxygen bottles involved. Airliners are also required to have an audible warning system in the cockpit, to warn when the cabin altitude exceeds 10,000 feet. Pilots are trained to act immediately, by descending the aircraft when that alarm goes off, although in practice it rarely does, partly because the systems don't fail very often, but mostly because the pilots are monitoring cabin pressure, and catch any anomalies before the alarm goes off.

I just couldn't accept the assertion that the airline was too cheap to fill the oxygen bottles, partly because I know there are no oxygen bottles involved, but mostly because the pressurization system is a mandatory item -- at the very least, it's required to keep the pilots awake.

I wondered if his shortness of breath might've been related to his asthma symptoms, combined with the likelihood that the cabin altitude was near 8,000 feet. I asked if he had difficulty breathing when he's in the mountains, and he said he does. Maybe the nearby passengers saw him having difficulty, and got nervous enough, that they started experiencing symptoms too. That kind of thing has happened before...

Or maybe the plane had a pressurization failure, and the cabin altitude alarm didn't go off, and the pilots didn't catch it. That's a lot of things to go wrong at the same time, but it's happened before too... in which case, they would have been dangerously close to having the pilots pass out along with the passengers. It's weird though, that more than one person experienced that gulping for air symptom. That's so unusual for that situation.

Snowdog

It's been getting more and more cool, as Fall settles in. With Mandy already showing a dislike for the chilly outdoors, we've had a scenario in our heads, of how this little desert dog would react to her first snow with us. We expected something on the order of, "Are you KIDDING?!", when we first tried to take her out in the stuff. Sure enough, we had our first decent amount of snow this morning, about 4 inches, with the temperature right around 34 degrees. It was a nice birthday present for K! Mandy saw me dressing for a walk, and got all excited about going. She was twirling in circles, doing excited little push ups with her forepaws, and generally trying to get me moving out the door as quickly as possible. I put on my boots, coat, and hat, filled my pockets with dog-walk paraphernalia, got her nice new waterproof coat on, and clipped on the leash. I could barely hold her back, as she dragged me to the front door. I swung the door open, and a blast of cold air hit her. She stopped in her tracks, leaned forward and examined the layer of white on the steps and across the yard, watched the flakes drifting down, and sniffed a little. She spun around, and ran upstairs as far as the leash would let her, and looked down at me, with a look that said, "Are you KIDDING?!" K activated the fallback plan, and took her down through the basement, to a covered spot in the back yard under the deck stairs. We figured this was a great opportunity to try letting her off leash, but that backfired, and she used her freedom to sneak up the snowy deck stairs to the (usually nice warm sunny) deck. That didn't work, so she scooted past us, and back indoors without doing anything. K led her with the leash to the desired spot, and she finally was successful, if somewhat miffed.

I tried getting her out for a walk again later in the day, after it had stopped snowing and the sun was out. She wasn't all that interested, but I persisted, and soon we were on our way down the wet street. She didn't find much of interest at first, with all the grass covered in snow. Something changed when we got to the bottom of the street, and her favorite trail was also covered in snow, except for the flagstones, which had been warm enough to melt the falling snow. She pressed on, hopping from stone to stone, in a cheery and springy kind of way. Halfway down the path, she started exploring out into the belly-deep (for her) snow, looking for a place to go. Not finding her ideal spot, she returned to the path, and we ventured on, down into Lee Gulch. She boldly struck out into the layer of snow on the boardwalk, and onto the bridge across the creek, which was already burbling loudly with runoff, and headed up onto the main trail, where there were only patches of snow. This she loved. I expected her to stick to the dry spots, but it seemed that now that she knew she had dry spots to come back to, she got her usual sense of adventure back. She explored out into the deeper snow on a regular basis, sniffing around and pushing snow around with her nose, and dragged me onward with great enthusiasm, for a fairly long walk. It looks like we have a snow dog! Of course I couldn't resist taking pictures.

Fall Walks

Mandy got to see some really nice Fall colors this weekend. Well, being colorblind, I suppose her big thrill was with all the colorful smells she got to experience. Ken and I took her with us Friday for lunch at Panera Bread in Aspen Grove. The colors along Lee Gulch and the Platte River were very vivid. This was Mandy's longest walk so far, around 5 miles, and she did just fine. On Saturday morning when I woke up, I noticed Mandy watching me closely every minute, and it was clear that she was hoping for another long walk. As it turns out, we had one in the plan. Ken and Freddie and I took her down to the King Soopers at Broadway and Mineral, and then back by way of the Highline Canal trail, maybe 5.5 miles, and she did fine on that one too. Then this morning, Ken and I walked down to the Post Office, and on for a cup of coffee, and of course she breezed through that teeny little 4 mile walk.

We made a trip to Office Liquidators on Saturday afternoon, and came home with a few file cabinets. We have great hopes of using them to get just a little more organized. Then we went back today and ordered a couple of office chairs. We're looking forward to having comfortable places to sit while doing paperwork, email, and such. Mandy got a little chilly in the car, as a cold front blew through while we were in the store. I went out to check on her, and she was shivering up a storm, so I bundled her up in her warm fleece dog coat, and wrapped her in a nice wool blanket that I carry in the car for just such an occasion. She was snug as a bug in a rug. The next time we came out, she was so comfortable she didn't want to move out of her seat. It felt like it was going to snow, and I did see a few flakes, but then it just turned into a short rain shower. So it's official - Fall is definitely here!

Chicago

The Chicago trip summary, in a nutshell, is that the trip didn't result in any major changes, yet. They're interested in doing the kidney/pancreas transplant she wants, but first they want to know more about why she needs oxygen. Kaiser had done a few tests last year, to try to understand it, and then sort of gave up, and fell back on just making sure she has it all the time. So we're hoping U of Chicago will push on Kaiser to get a better answer, that will allow her onto the transplant candidates list.

The trip itself was a bit of an adventure. Our outbound flight held for a long time, then eventually diverted to Indianapolis, due to thunderstorms camped out over O'Hare. It was entertaining, listening to the controller negotiating with all the holding flights, about the possibility of taking a longer route that might eventually result in an earlier landing time. He didn't have many takers - most of us didn't have enough gas. It was so moist at Indy, that the plane's air conditioning was putting out a sheet of fog above the windows. Very eerie. We arrived at O'Hare several hours late, but all the logistics still worked out, to pick up oxygen at the airport, and have a bunch of extra tanks waiting at the hotel. We enjoyed an awesome, albeit very late, dinner at the top-rated Rosebud steak house the first night, had a so-so dinner at Vivere on Wednesday. The highlight of the trip, at least for me, was poking around the neighborhood on 57th street in the Hyde Park area near the University of Chicago, before we left. We had lunch at a noodle house there, and bought sandwiches for the plane at a local market. We came across an airport shuttle while walking, and jumped aboard for a long ride to O'Hare in stop-n-go traffic, with a chatty and informative, very delightful shuttle driver.

I took some pictures on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Nothing spectacular, more just documenting that we really went on this whirlwind trip.

Speedog

Mandy got away from K yesterday, when the leash didn't clip on where she thought it did. She ran down the street so fast that she had to swing wide and almost didn't make the corner. She had lots of fun playing keep-away with K and our neighbor Bill down the street, who joined in the chase. She finally settled down and came back to K. Then today, I was walking up the hill with Ken from his house. K decided to let Mandy run down the hill to meet me. What a speed demon! And then foolish me, I tried to send her back up the hill to K. Instead she headed to her favorite grassy knoll, down the street from me. She took off down the hill so fast, you'd of thought a firetruck was behind her, and disappeared around the corner. I was a bit worried, but I wasn't up for chasing her, so I just headed up the hill for home (if you love something, let it go...?). Moments later, she reappeared around the corner, practically setting the street on fire, and zoomed into the garage! Simple pleasures...

Sustenance

Someone recently asked what sustains us these days. One thing that really helps is the new dog. We love our pooch Mandy, and the different activities she brings to our lives. She's dragging one or both of us out every morning and evening for walks around the neighborhood, and of course she gets K out a few times during the days as well. She's been to a lot of places with us in the car, sometimes going with us to restaurants that have patios, and sometimes staying in the car, on those cloudy cool days when we feel it's safe. We finished the beginner dog training final exam with a flourish - for whatever reason, Mandy did everything asked of her. K's jaw dropped as I led Mandy through her paces, or was it the other way around? Yeah, maybe it was me being led... We've had a few very fun outings to the REI flagship store by confluence park, and gone for walks around there. And K's been exploring the local dog parks with her, having visited a half dozen parks all around the metro area by now. She's ever so slowly beginning to own everything in the house. I see tonight that those chairs K had designated as off limits are now in the Mandy domain too. Of course she owned *us* the day we met her. :-)

K and I are planning on traveling to University of Chicago Medical Center later this month. She'll have medical tests and interviews, so she can be considered for a combined kidney/pancreas transplant. She's not officially on a transplant list, since she's still stuck on the heart stress test part, and they feel they need an angiogram to figure out what's going on there. The concern is that the dye for the angiogram may well shut down her kidneys for good. They're waiting as long as possible for her dialysis preparations to be complete, so if they do kill her kidneys, she'll be ready to go on dialysis right away. Once they figure out what's going on with her heart, they'll either try to fix that, or call it good enough, and press forward to getting her approved for transplant surgery. In the meantime, Kaiser has approved her to go talk to the U of Chicago folks. It's very nice that Kaiser is making all the complicated arrangements for her to have oxygen at all times during the trip, since that's one of the reasons we've avoided air travel for the past 18 months.

New Helmet

We just got back from the REI Labor Day sale. I replaced my biking helmet. Boy that was tough to do, since it was so new it felt like throwing away money. So many people kept reminding me that they need to be replaced after a fall, but I had mostly convinced myself that my shoulder took most of the fall, and my head just scraped on the ground. I kept looking it over, and seeing nothing wrong with it, so I was indecisive about the whole thing. Then I was showing it to my neighbor in the bright sunlight recently, and I finally noticed that when I flexed it a certain way, there was a crack completely through the hard styrofoam-like anti-shock liner material, and that's all it took to convince me. So it's heading for the trash, after I strip off the reusable parts.

K's fistula surgery site is healing up very well. Lately she's been dealing with swollen legs, and not sure why. She's also more tired. Her fear is that her kidneys may have suddenly taken a turn for the worse. She won't know for sure, until the next kidney function lab test.

My collarbone seems to be repairing on schedule. The Doc told me Thursday that I could take off the sling, as long as I don't stress the arm or shoulder. Now the collarbone hurts, when it hadn't for most of the time, probably from the weight of my arm on it. That's probably a good trade for the arm that was hurting from immobility, and is now feeling much better.

Breck

I suggested lunch in Breckenridge, a local ski resort up in the mountains, on the spur of the moment this morning, since we were both up relatively early, and K took me up on it. We were actually out of the house by 10:30 which I think may be a new record for us these days, especially with the dog to deal with too. We got up there shortly after noon, and walked around a bit, before we found Salt Creek restaurant & saloon, with a shady deck that allowed dogs. Well, actually most of the places in Breck allow dogs, since it's a mountain town and that's typical there, but this place was off the main drag and quieter. Then we stopped at Dillon reservoir for a little while, to enjoy the quiet of the lake and surrounding forest. The whole trip took about eight hours. When we got home, the dog didn't want to leave the car - seems she'd had quite a fun time and didn't want it to end. So did we, but we were beat from our first all-day outing in awhile. We got home just in time to hustle over to our neighbors, who were having us over for a belated birthday celebration, which was originally supposed to have been the morning we were riding bikes, and I broke my collarbone, so it had been deferred awhile.

We slept in this morning. K and Mandy got up long enough to go outside for a minute, and now they're back sleeping in the reclining chair. The living room is pretty spartan these days, since K had the downstairs carpet cleaned, and all the furniture has been piled in the non-carpeted areas like the kitchen and dining room. We took advantage of the opportunity, to dispose of our big pink sectional sofa, and now the big black leather fold out couch is our main piece of furniture in that room. That leaves more room in the study to start trying to make it into an office some day.

So far so good

K's fistula surgery site is looking good, and the sutures are scheduled to be removed this week. The Doc says last Thursday's X-rays of my broken collarbone don't look any worse than the first ones, which should leave me good range of motion, as the bones begin to knit this week. Mandy's definitely adjusting well to her life with us. She's feeling confident enough, that she'll bark at the skateboarders as they go by during our walks. Dad and Adele are back visiting with us, on the return leg of their summer driving trip. Kiyoshi and Laura Hamai are due to stop by, each on different days, as they travel to and from the Lotus meet in Snowmass this weekend.

Fistula

K's Fistula surgery on Monday went as planned, according to her doc. We asked our neighbors to drop her off and pick her up, since I'd been somewhat incapacitated on Sunday. She came home through the front door all upbeat and chipper, which was a very pleasant surprise.

Oops

Oops. It looks like I'm off the bike riding circuit for some time. I was riding with my neighbor Jim on Sunday morning, heading downtown along the Platte for a birthday breakfast at Racines with the girls. As we were rounding a corner in the detour just South of Hampden, my front wheel slipped on a soft wet wooden bridge. The bridge was so slippery, there was just no traction to be had. The bike and I went down hard, and bounced along for a few feet before stopping. The fall on my left shoulder broke my collarbone, and the slide abraded the skin in several places on my left side .

The detour isn't visible in the older satellite picture, but the trail now turns left 90 degrees immediately after crossing the little bridge circled in red, and runs up alongside those trailers. That bridge was all chewed up, probably because it's rotting away, and with the wetness from the day before, it was slippery like moss. Trying to start the turn on it was a mission impossible from the start.


In the Xray, the bones aren't even close to being aligned, ugh. The folks at Kaiser say it's typically 6-8 weeks for an adult to recover, although I have an appointment on Friday with the Orthopedic folks to follow up.

I heard (and felt!) the concrete path hit my new helmet, which did a great job of protecting my head, so not only did I avoid a concussion (I think), but I didn't even scratch my ear! Attagirl to K, for bugging me to get that this year.

Interestingly enough, Jim and I stayed around that bridge for awhile, warning people about the hazard, and still were unable to prevent several other people from crashing in the same place. We finally moved some nearby construction cones onto the bridge, which seemed to help. We rode on for a few more miles, until we got to a more easily accessible spot, then Jim pointed out the major swelling in my left shoulder, and I decided I should be seen by the Kaiser folks sooner rather than later. Y'all be careful out there!

Joan Sinagra

Joan Sinagra, born in Brooklyn, N.Y., April 23, 1920; passed away, at home June 17, 2007, in Las Vegas. Joan had a ready laugh, a love of blackjack and a zest for life. Even in her recent declining health, she enjoyed sharing a joke, and singing along to old crooners. Before she and her late husband, Salvatore Sinagra, moved to Las Vegas 12 years ago, Joan was a true blue Brooklyn gal. During World War II, she served in the U.S. Marines as a clerk typist and later worked for the City of New York before entering real estate management. Joan will be dearly missed by her family and friends. She is survived by her niece, Kristan Attardi-Hushing of Littleton, Colo.; and her nephew, John Attardi of San Francisco. She was preceded in death by her husband, Salvatore; and brother, Roland Attardi. The family is particularly grateful for the care and love provided by Marge Pacelli, Lucy Kelley, Marge Cimo and Norma Phillips. A private service was held at St. Joseph, Husband of Mary Catholic Church, with burial at Southern Nevada Veterans Memorial Cemetery in Boulder City.

Published in the July 6 Las Vegas Review Journal. Written by K's brother John.

Mandy

We drove the new CR-V down to Colorado Springs today, to meet with Kris King from the Poodle Preserve, and to meet Mandy, an adult Italian Greyhound and Chihuahua cross. K saw her online earlier this week, and fell in love. She talked me into driving down to meet Kris and Mandy (and a bunch of other wonderful small dogs), and now Mandy's our new family member!

This has been coming for years, but we've been holding back because of all the other complications in our lives. We finally decided there probably would never be a perfect time or situation, and we needed to do something that will help keep K company, and give her someone to be responsible for during the day. Mandy came from a rescue shelter, and is very distrustful of teenage boys, but is otherwise very well tempered and sweet. She seems very appreciative of her quiet new home with us. She's still very hesitant and self-protective, but she continues to show signs of becoming more comfortable with her new environment. At first we were counting the tail wags one by one, but now they're coming too fast and furious to tally.

Here's a picture of Kris King and some of her dogs at The Poodle preserve in Cotopaxi, CO. I'm pretty sure Mandy is the one under her left hand. Mandy spent two months with Kris, after being rescued from a shelter in Garden City, Kansas. Her disposition wasn't very good, after being returned by a family there, with a suspicion of abuse. The people in the Garden City shelter asked Kris to take her, help her forget the old bad times, and find her a nice quiet home without children.

Selling the Civic

I got up the nerve to post a For Sale ad on Craigslist last night, for my trusty 16 year old Honda Civic. Now that we have the CR-V, we're a little short on garage space, and I'm not too excited about carrying insurance on both of them. This morning I found 9 replies in my email inbox! The first person I called came right over and left a deposit. She was driving practically the same car, but with double the mileage as mine. She's supposed to return on Monday with a friend to help her drive it away. The only other time I tried to sell something on Craigslist, my old aviation GPS-90, it didn't move for a long time, but I think maybe this time I got the "priced to sell" part right.

Home From LV

What a week. We got home after midnight this morning, and didn't get to bed until 3am, after emptying and removing our new rooftop cargo box, so I could park in the garage. The new CR-V did really well on the trip. Even with several stops, we got there in just twelve and a half hours. And there was enough room for everything we needed, even with the big 42 inch high liquid oxygen supply tank in the back. It's hard to believe that Joanie only left us a few days ago, with so much happening before and after. Her loss will leave a big hole in our lives, especially after losing Sal so recently, in October.

Our friend Gabe is due in at 2:30 today from San Francisco. Maybe hanging out with him will take some of the sadness out of this week.

Aunt Joan

K and I embarked Saturday on our first long distance trip in over a year, on short notice. K learned this week that her Aunt Joan was deathly ill, at home with hospice care. She'd been wanting to visit Joan for over a year, and especially so after Joan's health took several turns for the worse. With K's own health issues, it just seemed too difficult to achieve. This latest very serious news got us jumping through hoops to make a trip happen. Most of the usual options weren't available to us, because of K's need for bulky equipment to provide oxygen 7x24, and also because of the uncertain schedule. So we took advantage of this challenge, to buy the Honda CR-V model we were eying throughout the winter. I felt the need to stay in town to support the first launch attempt of AV-009 on Thursday morning, and then the actual launch on Friday morning. The mission was successful, but not without issues, and I had to stay a little later than expected. Then we stopped into Honda and spent several tedious hours getting the paperwork done. By that time, it was late enough, and we were tired enough, that we decided to grab some sleep before leaving. We headed for the highway in our new vehicle on 6am Saturday morning. The drive went really well, with some really beautiful scenery that we'd almost forgotten about. I got really sleepy about halfway, but that was no problem, with K available to take over the driving. We made it in a little over 12 hours, and found K's brother John waiting for us at the curb outside the house. Joanie was in bad shape, lying there with very labored breathing. We stayed until midnight, keeping her company. It seemed like she was reacting to our words and touches, with an occasional sigh or groan. We finally headed over to our hotel for a few hours sleep. Joan died just a few hours later, very early in the morning.

Ride to Racines

Ken and I took Jim on a post-birthday bike ride down the Platte River, and up Cherry Creek, heading for Racines. We had our first en route equipment failure - Ken's rear tire went flat, from green goo gumming up the tire valve. His emergency CO2 cartridge really saved the day, and got us to the restaurant in time to meet up with Katie and Kristan for breakfast. It was a gorgeous day, forecast to approach 90 degrees later in the afternoon. We had a nice big lunch, and it did get hot, so we took the easy way out, and rode the light rail back home, after stopping at Turin Bikes to fix Ken's tire valve. He liked some tires he saw there, and decided to replace his knobby high-friction tires with some much smoother tires, which will work much better for all riding that we do on hard paths.

Bear Creek, Joan

K found out today that her Aunt Joan is in the hospital after showing symptoms of disorientation, and may have something going on with a mass in her head. Now she's struggling with the urge to get out there to visit. I dread having to deal with those logistics. Our ex-Boeing friends launched a Delta-II rocket on Thursday 6/7, and we're hoping to launch an Atlas-V next week on Thursday 6/14. See spaceflightnow.com for details. I got in some more riding with friends on Saturday, to Bear Creek Dam. On the way home, I stopped at Abe's Deli in downtown Littleton, and had a really tasty Gyro sandwich and bottomless cup of iced tea, at a sidewalk table.

June's Here!

K and I went to her appointment at the transplant clinic on Friday, talked to an MSW and an MD about the "next steps" in the process of trying to qualify for, and how to deal with, a kidney transplant. I've been wondering about this for some time, so I finally asked straight out about a pancreas transplant, and though the doc was a little hesitant because of her age, he didn't rule out the possibility. Next, our HMO will have to decide what they want to pay for. Right now, her only kidney transplant possibility would be from a cadaver, since everyone who's volunteered as a donor so far, doesn't qualify for various reasons. This doc mentioned something interesting: a surprising number of people are living with only one usable kidney, but don't know it, I guess the point being that two healthy kidneys are truly redundant. If Kaiser decides to go for a dual Pancreas/Kidney transplant, then the only option would be a cadaver, and we're off to Chicago at some point, for an evaluation. The doc says the good news is, they only like to take a dual organ transplant from young cadavers, in which case both organs would be likely to last longer. However, he recommended jumping at the opportunity of a live kidney transplant, since they generally last far longer. Somewhat unpleasant considerations, but necessary for us.

I went bike riding Thursday afternoon to Chatfield Dam, Saturday morning around the Lee Gulch loop, and Sunday to Bear Creek Dam. The little flying bugs are really out, this time of year, and the Cottonwood trees are all dropping their big fluffy seeds, too. The air is full of stuff. We feel like the personification of that old joke about how you can tell a happy biker by the bugs in his teeth. It's interesting, collecting heart rate data for each ride, with my new exercise watch. K and I were at Costco this week, and picked up a specialized biking backpack for $19.95 that has a water bladder inside, with a little nozzle that goes over the shoulder. The main idea was to get all the biking support junk (rain jacket, tools, snacks, etc) off the bike, but the water thing is pretty cool too. I tried it out today, and it works pretty well.

K and I took a walk along the Platte River Sunday afternoon, from the Nature Center down to the wildlife preserve, round trip almost a mile. The bugs and cottonwood seeds had a real presence. I don't remember either of them being such a big deal. But the walk was fun and the sunset was very peaceful. We even saw a beaver swimming in the reeds in a shallow spot.

Memorial Day

Here's some information on Memorial Day that I found online, while taking a few moments this morning to observe this special day, before getting ready for a bike ride down the Platte River with Ken. We met K and Freddie at Racines for lunch, then rode down to the light rail station, and cheated by hitching a ride back to Littleton. That was a really nice option for a hot day, to avoid the long uphill ride home on a full stomach! Here are some pictures. Watch out for the three movies - they're big! You'll spot them as the second of a pair of apparently repeated pictures. K asked me to make more water movies, after seeing the one I made of the waterfall in Waterton Canyon on Saturday.

Rode up to Bear Creek Dam on Sunday. Was intending to ride with the guys, but missed them by a few minutes, and spent the entire ride trying to catch up. I guess that was good exercise for the heart, which is a lot of the reason I've gotten back into walking and bike riding. My exercise watch recorded a new peak at 90% of my recommended max rate. So we'll call that a good thing, since it was just a peak...

Ken and I rode up Waterton Canyon for the first time, on Saturday. I wasn't sure about my skinny wheel road bike, so I borrowed Freddie's bike for the ride. I think the lower part, up to the dam, would've been fine with my bike, but the rocky trail heading up into the woods definitely required a trail bike. We didn't get far, just to the first bench, but it was enough to get a sense of what kind of riding equipment I would need, if I wanted to venture off the flatland trails I've been enjoying the past year. We celebrated surviving our first "mountain" ride, by meeting the girls for lunch at Hacienda Colorado, and splurging on a Loco Sundae for dessert, splitting that monstrous dish four ways.

We had quite a crowd for our regular Thursday afternoon Lee Gulch bike ride.

More Rides

Rode on Thursday with the guys and Friday with Ken this week. Loved the new wrist GPS, which lets me review cardio and other data from each ride. This'll be helpful in knowing how hard I'm pushing myself. Not to mention the fun gadget factor...

Ride 'til you drop

I've been a bike riding demon this week. I rode the Lee Gulch loop on Wednesday evening, and had a beautiful ride, with just a few raindrops from a passing T-storm. Then we did the usual Thursday afternoon ride, and it was also great weather and company. We took advantage of a special opportunity to ride Friday afternoon. Saturday came knocking with beautiful weather and a mid-day ride to the Bear Creek Dam. K and I drove downtown on Saturday afternoon, for spaghetti dinner at OSF and a visit to REI for their big anniversary sale. They'd discounted the Garmin Forerunner 305 by almost half, which made it pretty much irresistible. I got a few other riding goodies too, including a safety helmet, which I've been avoiding for years, but after a little event with a bus and a tree on Saturday morning, I decided I'd better stop fighting and get one. Naturally, I had to go riding today too, just to try out everything. Ken and I took a leisurely (he disagrees :-) ride out to Bear Creek Dam. It was his first experience with this route, and our longest ride together to date - 30.5 miles.

Kidney Class

K and I went to Kidney transplant class on Tuesday afternoon, and dialysis class on Wednesday morning. Our neighbors came for moral support. We learned about Fistulas, and how they create one intentionally in the forearm, to assist with the hemodialysis process. We learned a little about peritoneal dialysis. We learned that a transplant is far more preferable than either kind of dialysis. We even learned that there are classes for learning (or getting up the nerve) to ask friends and family about the possibility of donating a kidney for a transplant. We learned that doing nothing would have fatal consequences. Here's a link to the NIH writeup on Chronic Kidney Disease. Having gone to the classes, she's now on track to proceed to the next steps in the process. As always, K was thinking ahead, and kept us entertained with a trip to the Museum of Nature and Science after the Tuesday class.

The usual Thursday afternoon Lee Gulch / Chatfield / Platte bike ride was well supported by nice weather. Here's a pic from one of the few moments when everyone was behind me... coming down the hill off Chatfield Dam. As usual, we had a great dinner afterwards at Platte River Bar and Grille.

I rode along as safety pilot with Mike on Friday afternoon, flying out of Front Range airport. It was just a bit bumpy for me, but I survived long enough for him to make it through the six instrument approaches he needed for his IFR currency.

Saturday started out with another ride to Bear Creek Dam with the guys from work. After that, K and I ran a few errands, picked up some meds at Kaiser, then took up temporary residence at Costco, long enough to load up on a pile of groceries, and pick out some new T-Mobile phones. I settled on a Blackberry Pearl and we got K a nice Nokia 6133 flip phone. Oh, and while we were at it, I picked out a new Dell computer to replace my desktop that's never worked quite right, after being slammed around by United Parcel Service, and even after replacing several major components. I think I sprained my wrist, trying to wrestle the big box into the back seat of K's car. The monitor on this thing is huge. If a screen can be too big, I think this might be the one.

K had the idea we should go to the Denver Zoo on Sunday. It was a beautiful day for it. As always, we were taken with the Lions and Tigers and Leopards. The giraffes were pretty cool, too. I think we had almost as much fun watching the kids going ga-ga over all the stuffed animals in the gift shop.

Bear Creek

What a difference a week makes. Last weekend we were out playing with the results of yet another snowfall. This week, the TV weather forecast called for a huge snowstorm on Friday, but it never materialized, at least not here in our area. They say it "wiggled by to the South." Instead, we've got a delightful weekend to enjoy.

This is so cool: Google recently introduced their "My Maps" feature, and I used it to capture the route of our regular Thursday afternoon Lee Gulch bike ride, an 18 mile loop. What makes this cooler than just posting a map image, is that you can zoom in and pan around on the map, and switch to satellite view to see all the geographical features. Fun!

I went on a bike ride on Sunday morning. This route was new to me - out to Bear Creek Dam and back, 33 miles round trip. This panorama picture is from on top of the dam - it's very wide, so you may have to do some scrolling to see it all. I find it truly amazing that, not unlike when flying somewhere, there was a headwind going both ways.

Snow Again

We got another 2-3 inches of snow last night. KD and I walked to breakfast at Neighborhood Grille, previously known as Boulevard Grille. Nice people, and a perfect little breakfast of silver dollar pancakes, a scrambled egg, and bacon. After I got home, I looked outside, and noticed our neighbor's dog Kona sprawled out in the snow, perkily looking around to keep an eye on the neighborhood. He clearly just plain loves the snow.

Spring Snow

We woke up to a light layer of Spring snow this morning. It's been drizzly and freezing so far this weekend, which caused JB to cancel our IFR practice flight on Friday morning. There's nothing like a little freezing rain, to put the big damper on our plans. K and I had gone out for breakfast at the Original Pancake House, so we took advantage of our unexpected free time together, to run a few errands.

When we got home, I fired up Flight Simulator X, and attempted the Yakutat challenge again. It's the FSX mission where you have a short hop from Burwash, Canada, over the coastal mountain range to Yakutat, Alaska, with an ILS approach at the end, and a few twists thrown into the mix, just for fun. This time I succeeded in getting the King Air on the ground in one piece, even with a failed vacuum system, the ground ATC radar out of service, the left engine on fire and not producing power, at night in low overcast and snow, and a black bear on the runway. What a great little program, for practicing my flying skills!

Lonely Ride

I did the usual Thursday afternoon bike ride without the guys. There was some talk about skipping the ride, due to cold (47F) temperature and threat of showers, but was I raring to go anyway, and it sounded like at least a couple of them were going. I got down to our usual meeting place a few minutes late, and didn't see anyone, so I took off and tried to catch up with them, racing around our 18 mile circuit, up Lee Gulch, along the Highline Canal and C-470, up and down the Chatfield Dam, and down the Platte River. About a mile from the end, my cell phone rang, and it was Dave - the three of them had just arrived at the Platte River Bar and Grille, after riding the entire circuit just behind me. They'd decided to skip doing the dam, so they beat me to the end. The last couple miles were cold and challenging with a good headwind. It was really nice to bask in the heat of those nice infrared heaters, especially the one right over our table!

Biking, Willow Hacking

Ken and I went for a bike ride this morning, out to Chatfield dam and back, 17 miles or so. We weren't quite ready to tackle climbing the front of the dam yet, so we took the back way up, then zoomed down the front, and headed back down the Platte River. We stopped for lunch at Panera Bread - their half sandwich/soup combo is perfect.

I thought I was going to just relax and maybe take a nap afterwards, but Ken's a real energizer. He remembered that I'd mentioned I wanted to rip out one of our two arctic willows, and came back up with a wheelbarrow full of tools to help get me going. We spent several hours hacking away at that 60-pound monster with a reciprocating saw, finally getting down to the roots under the stump, and finished with just a hole in the ground, which I refilled with the dirt we'd taken out, and covered up with some weed barrier. That was an amazing accomplishment -- I've been wanting to do that for several years. We celebrated by going out for dinner, then watched "The Dresden Files", a really fun show for taking our minds off anything important.

March goes out with a splat

It was feeling a lot like Spring on Tuesday, warm and sunny, as Roger and I got out for an afternoon of Tennis. It was a little too blustery for me, so we just batted the ball around, instead of trying to play our usual sets. It felt good to get out and swing a racket around in my usual wild uncontrolled manner. Then the reality of the Winter - Spring transition set in, and we got half a foot of snow on Wednesday, which pretty much ruled out the usual Thursday bike ride after work - too much goop still on the trails, and just a little too cold, at 40 degrees. So I wandered into the Buck Center for a half hour of riding on the exercise bike, and make good use of the water facilities. It's always a treat, to sit out in their jacuzzi, catching big soft snowflakes on my tongue. I found myself wondering how our G1000/TwinStar instructor was faring, on his flight back from Toronto.

I've posted a bunch of March photos at our Picasaweb photo gallery...

The story this week about the Littleton man biking along the Platte River was just a little too scary and close to home. He was on the same path I like to ride downtown, and came upon a 60 pound rock that some really stupid and malicious teenagers had dragged out into the middle of the path. The rock was just into the shadow of the Belleview Ave bridge, so he never saw it. He hit it squarely, and it stopped his bike cold, breaking the frame, and throwing him over the handlebars onto the concrete path. I think he survived with a broken collarbone and a scratched helmet. The article I read quoted him as saying he's biked thousands of miles, all around the world, and never seen anything like this. I guess this may be a sign that I need to get myself a biking helmet. I'd been thinking I would get one, as soon as I dared to venture up into the mountain biking territories, where the trails are steep and rocky, and it would be more necessary. But it seems I may already need one, even for those nice flat bike paths around town.

Ground School

On the lighter side, I attended an all day ground school at the flying club today. It was a nice rainy day - perfect for ground school. The morning was dedicated to the new G1000 glass instrument panel that we're starting to see in our new planes. I mentioned to the instructor that I'd been playing with the G1000 glass panel in the Microsoft Flight Simulator X software that I gave myself for Christmas last year, so then he went and appointed me the official simulator pilot, and had me demo the capabilities -- with his help, and the kibitzing of the 25 other students in the class. Man, was that a humbling experience, having all my instrument flying skills laid bare in front of all those other pilots and instructors.

The afternoon was dedicated to learning about the newest plane in our fleet, a Diamond DA-42 Twin Star, which has two turbocharged *diesel* engines, and a G1000 panel. I'm hoping to expand my skills, and include a checkout in the DA-42 in this year's list of fun things to do. The instructor mentioned that he was looking for a rider/student to share expenses for a flight to Toronto later in the week. That would've added perhaps 15 hours of multi-engine, G1000, TwinStar time to my logbook. I was so very tempted, but couldn't convince myself to go for it.