Ice

We have been having an unusually warm January, and that has meant that for the past couple of days temperatures have risen above freezing. It would seem that this would be a cause for celebration, except that it dips back below freezing at different points during the day, and melting + refreezing = slippery slippery ice.

This weekend has been all about ice for a couple of reasons. First, I had the opportunity to try out an adaptive form of cross-country skiing called kneeling sit ski. I first learned about this through a chain of clicked links after searching for something related to learning to ski when you have balance problems. As it turns out, Saskatchewan is the place to be if you want to use adaptive technology for cross-country skiing. I was put in touch with a woman named Colette Bourgonje, who has been a long time member of the Canadian Paralympic ski team. After a number of conversations and email exchanges, we set up a time for me to try a brand-new type of sit ski called a kneeler. It is basically a sort of chair that you kneel in, that hooks into the bindings of regular cross-country skis, and you propel yourself with your arms. She came down from Saskatoon with her sit ski set up and the kneeler, and on Saturday morning we skied at a park that is about a half-mile from our house.

It was super fun, and a really cool thing to be able to try. And, it turned out that the weather was excellent because ice makes everything a little slipperier and makes gliding on a sit ski set up that much easier. It sounds like I will be able to have access to this equipment by joining the Regina Ski Club and a wheelchair sports club. I'm pretty excited, as I think this will be an awesome way to get outdoors in the winter.

When we got back to the car after about forty-five minutes of skiing, everything was extremely icy as there had been some freezing rain. As Jeff started driving he said he hoped I didn't mind if our top speed on the way home was 15 km/h. Of course I said I was glad he was being cautious. So as we were inching along, we had to make a slight right onto a neighborhood street, and Jeff lost control of the car. We were headed ever so slowly toward a parked truck, and no matter what he did Jeff could not change our trajectory. So we slid at about 10 km/h into this parked truck, and the passenger side headlight and body above the front wheel well got completely smashed in. No one was injured, but the car is not drivable, and now we have to wait for an insurance adjuster to look at the damage and tell us where we are supposed to go to get it fixed. In the meantime, after everything melted later in the afternoon we got a rental car.

There is still so much ice around that I can't really go places by myself because I need someone there to give me a hand to get across patches of ice. The weather is supposed to be this way for the next several days. It sounds a little bit crazy, but we are all waiting for the temperatures to get back to the usual -20°C, so things aren't so slippery and I can get back to normal!

Happy Belated New Year!

I can't believe that my last blog post was three weeks ago. That time has gone by extremely quickly, and yet lots has happened. I went to Eugene and back, the semester started, and everything around here is in full swing. However, first things first:

Jeff had a follow-up doctor's appointment on Thursday, and the news was good. The doctor cleared him to do any activity he feels like, including running and shoveling snow. Jeff says he feels completely back to normal, and yesterday he went for a short run. He had absolutely no problems with breathing, but having been away from running for a while, his knee started acting up a bit. He will need to ease back into activity slowly, but more because the rest of his body will need to adjust and not so much because his lungs need to adjust. It is a huge relief to hear that he is out of danger, and although he will need to continue the blood thinners for another five months and then get some tests done to see if a cause for this event can be determined, it feels good to have things pretty well back to normal.

So, my trip to Oregon was great – I got to visit with friends and family, got a break from the cold weather, and generally had a good time. The only exception to this was the part about getting there and back. I ended up spending hours and hours in the Denver airport on the way there, not getting in until something like 2 AM. Then on the way back my flight from Denver to Regina ended up getting canceled, and I spent the night in a hotel that was neither close to the airport nor to the city of Denver, with none of my luggage (no toothbrush, no hairbrush, no clean underwear, and no pajamas). I ended up buying an XXL T-shirt from the hotel gift shop to sleep in, and washing my clothes in the sink so they wouldn't be unwearable the next day. I got home about eighteen hours later than I was supposed to, and apparently I was lucky because there were eighteen people on standby for that flight (who presumably were also supposed to be on my canceled flight) and only one got on (I was fortunate to get a confirmed seat). I think we have dealt with delays or flight cancellations on every single flight we have taken in the past year. I could complain about the specific airline, but when I think about it it hasn't mattered much which airline we are flying. They are all terrible.

The semester has started with a bang, and in some ways it feels like I have been teaching my classes forever, and yet it also seems like they've barely started. I am teaching two undergraduate classes, and both are full to their maximum of fifty students. I was asked if I would be willing to increase the enrollment limits, but the way I have the classes set up is for this maximum, and it would take some reworking (so that my TA and I are not overwhelmed with grading of assignments, exams, and final papers) so I said no. I am not sure what forces have led my classes to be completely full (with students on the wait list) when this has never happened before (and I have been teaching these classes since I started here), so I am not ready to change the format of either class for what might end up being a passing bump in enrollment.

We have been quite busy jumping into this semester, though when I look at my to do list, it seems quite a bit smaller than it was last semester. I am hoping that things settle down soon, and I think they will!

Moving in the direction of normal

First, I am happy to say that Jeff continues to improve. Most of the time he actually seems perfectly normal, and has no symptoms other than a little bit of pain sometimes, and getting winded a bit more easily. This comes with its own challenges, as he forgets that he has to take it easy, and I have to remind him not to do things. He is not allowed to exercise at the moment, possibly for the next six months, and that is quite a difficult prospect for him. It is expected that he will make a full recovery, but recovery from a pulmonary embolism is a long slow process. He has to take blood thinners for the next six months, and wait for the clot to slowly dissolve and reabsorb. There are apparently no other treatments (anything that would remove the clot more quickly is much more risky).

When I look at the statistics, it's a bit scary – about a third of people who have pulmonary embolism die within the first twenty-four hours. After it is detected and treatment begins, the risk of death drops significantly, but it is difficult to find statistics that accurately predict risk. The best statistic we have found is that between 3% and 8% of people with treated pulmonary embolism end up dying. However, as Jeff continually points out to me, this includes people with all kinds of compromised health including COPD, cancer, recent surgery, and other serious risk factors. So it is likely that Jeff's risk of having something serious happen at this point is low, but that doesn't keep me from worrying about it, at least sometimes. I have made a rule, which Jeff is electing to follow, that he can't be anywhere alone without checking in at least every fifteen minutes. I figure that this way if there is some serious event, at least it won't be too long before help is called.

But, as I said, most of the time Jeff seems pretty normal at this point. Although we didn't spend Christmas with my family as we had planned, we did have a nice Christmas just the two of us. Jeff was even able to surprise me by filling our stockings – he went for a short trip to the store, and managed to stop at a candy store very quickly.

Because he was so fast at the candy store, he thought he was buying a box of assorted Jelly Belly jelly beans, but was in fact buying a box of Bean Boozled Jelly Bellys, which have normal flavors as well as very nasty flavors that look identical to the normal flavors. Here is Jeff tasting a jellybean flavored like skunk spray:

After that, it was necessary to cut open and sniff each jellybean before eating it:

We opened our presents from each other,

and Jeff got me handmade bowls, specifically for ice cream. It's a good thing I had made some peppermint ice cream (with candy cane pieces) for Christmas, because it was perfect for trying out the new bowls: 

This afternoon I leave for Eugene, and will get in around midnight. I am ambivalent about leaving Jeff, and sad that he will not be able to make the trip with me, but I am sure that he will be fine (being looked after by friends in town who he will be staying with until his brother arrives from Calgary to be with him) and it will be good for me to spend some time in Oregon. So for those of you in Oregon, I can't wait to see you soon!

Bad time, better time

The past couple of days have been crazy, and in not at all what we expected to be dealing with at the moment. We were looking forward to our trip to Oregon, which we were to leave for on Monday. However, all that has changed.

On Tuesday Jeff was having severe abdominal pain, which at first he thought was some kind of muscular pain from sleeping poorly, but which got worse throughout the day leading him to think it was something else. At 7 PM he went to the doctor (our doctor's office has excellent extended hours), and then was sent immediately to the emergency room. After many tests, they finally figured out late Wednesday afternoon that he has a pulmonary embolism. This is much more serious than anything I imagined, even as we were in the ER waiting for a diagnosis. It is a mystery how it came to be that he has it, because he has no known risk factors and there was no evidence of him having had a clot in his leg (which is usually where a clot in the lungs comes from).

Jeff on Wednesday afternoon, shortly after getting a diagnosis

He has improved a lot each day since then, and yesterday afternoon he was allowed to go home.

Jeff at home with his "cat nurses" as he calls them. This picture is slightly misleading, as Jeff was only briefly dressed in jeans, and got into pajamas pretty quickly after this.

 Last night's sleep was a little bit difficult at first, but we were both able to sleep reasonably well. Today, Jeff seems just about normal, playing video games and watching movies, though he is not allowed to exert himself. That means I get concerned when he does anything, like grating cheese to help make dinner, but he was told before discharge that he is allowed to do household activities as tolerated. I may be slightly overprotective, but in general my experience with people who have pulmonary embolism is not good (an understatement). When I worked at Harborview in Seattle, pulmonary embolism was pretty synonymous with sudden death, so I think I have a right to be protective and careful. However, other than an inability to cough properly and related phlegmy throat, just looking at Jeff he seems totally fine, which is reassuring.

I will post more of an update in a couple of days, but I just wanted to let everyone know what has been going on, and that things are getting better. Jeff will not be doing any traveling for the holidays, but I will be making a shorter trip, after Christmas, and Jeff's brother will be coming here to stay with Jeff while I am gone. I will be arriving in Eugene late at night on December 28, and will depart from Portland on January 3 in the afternoon as previously planned. For anyone who has tried to make plans with us, maybe send me a new email with your availability if you think it might be possible to get together, though with this shortened trip it may be harder to squeeze in visits.

Two very full weeks

Last time I posted was two weeks ago, and it has been a very full and busy two weeks since then. I rushed to get all my work done by Thursday, December 4, and then that afternoon we drove three hours to Saskatoon so that I could attend an awards evening put on by the Saskatchewan Health Research Foundation. I did not receive an award, but was in the program as a recent grant recipient, and had to make a poster describing my research to a lay audience and stand at it and talk to people for a good chunk of the evening. This is not my favorite kind of thing to do, though Jeff says I'm pretty good at it despite my dislike. Then we drove back three hours to Regina that night, getting in late, so that we could catch our flight the next morning to Calgary. That week was rather exhausting.

We had our early Christmas in Calgary with Jeff's siblings and their families. It was a fun time of visiting, eating, playing some games, and spending lots of time with babies. Unfortunately, people were sick, naps didn't align with one another, and parents were not getting lots of sleep. However, all this had the effect of forcing quite a bit of rest and down time, which I think I greatly needed.

Jeff's sister's partner and their sixteen-month-old, and Jeff's brother's wife and their three-month-old

 We came home the night of December 9, and the remaining three weekdays last week were spent hard at work. All except for Friday morning, when I had a doctors appointment and took the rest of the morning to bake some cookies. Thursday evening we had a retirement party to go to, Friday evening was a Christmas gathering for people (and their families) who attend a research meeting that Jeff is part of, which is what I baked the cookies for. On Saturday afternoon was a birthday party for our friends' one-year-old, and much of Saturday was spent doing work. So between work and all these social events, this has been somewhat of an exhausting week!

It has also been a bit odd weatherwise. The real shock is that most of last week was spent with highs above freezing, which has meant lots of melting. There is very little snow left, and grass is even peeking through in some places. It's making things all brown and yucky looking, which we normally don't have until spring (as much as I can say what is normal here after being here for a little over two years). Today the hype was just below freezing, and this afternoon it started to snow a bit making things look a bit more fresh and white. I never thought that I would say this, but I sort of wish that it would drop below freezing, stay there, and snow a fair bit, because it makes winter much prettier!

This upcoming week I have a lot to get done at work– grades to submit for one class, papers to grade for my graduate class, end of year documents related to annual performance review to submit, a manuscript to review, and a manuscript to edit and submit for review. Also, I have to prepare for teaching next semester, help my honours student get her data collection up and running, and probably a few other things that I am not thinking of right now. That is the neutral to stressful news. The happy and relaxing news is that I have only one meeting scheduled over the next week, I can do quite a bit of this work from home, I don't think it will spill into the evenings, and it should all be done by this coming Friday. Then, a free weekend, and then on Monday, December 22 we leave for Oregon where we will spend twelve days. I plan for that time to be completely work free, and I expect to immerse myself completely into the holidays (funny note from Dragon speech recognition software – it typed hostilities instead of holidays, and when I went to fix it it suggested hot ladies).

Until then, I will do my best to relax into the Christmas spirit at home with Jeff, my kitties, and our Christmas tree :-)