Looking Around

So it has been awhile

Funny how things just kind of keep flowing along, like time, days, months... stuff like that. I am continually grateful for the continued flow of life. I should not get all melodramatic on myself or anything, but my wife started it. I have been diagnosed with myleofibrosis for about 26 years now. Turns out the initial doctor analysis of 7-10 years just did not wash. I have been mostly symptom free for those two and a half decades. Then, my wife read Three Cups of Tea and got a little worried.

It seems that one of the characters in the book was a donor to Greg Mortensen's schools project. The big money person wanted to see a school build before he succumbed to the ailment. He was on his last dying legs, and didn't make to the end of the book. We were reading in bed one night when she turned to me and asked what was that disease I had? I told her and she got kind of quiet. Then she told me about the character who had just died rather soon in the book. She wondered if I could go like that. And, well, I could, we just don't know.

The Myleo Proliferative Disorders are kind of a rule unto themselves. Then present in a broad mix of types and symptoms, usually boiling down to the basis of your blood and circulatory system gets really out of whack. Some people have huge numbers of red blood cells that in effect turn their blood into a sort of sludge. Some folks get high white blood cell counts with the extra cells starting to look for anything to attack, even normal other cells or organs. Another aspect is the one I am more familiar with, fewer red blood cells that are not fully formed. The result of all that is that my spleen is huge, my blood tests anemic, and I sometimes have a really hard time with blood pressure and kidney function. But, so long as I don't try running marathons or swimming the English Channel, I am fairly well suited for normal life kinds of things.

I have a new garden put in. Yes, that took some doing, and this year I did hire a couple of guys to come in and do the heavy lifting. Turns out one of them was really good and using power tools to build garden beds and lay walking stones. The new urban, organic peace garden has gotten a few attaboys from the neighbors... I guess they were as tired as my wife of the overgrown mound of weeds that earlier this year occupied the spot. The weeds were pulled and sent to the compost bin of history. The garden boxes were built around the mound, then the dirt was mixed with compost and redistributed into the containers... and the plants seem to be thriving. Not sure how the rest of all this will go, but the garden is off to a good start.

And, of course, the other evil, time-sucking phenomenon in my life is FaceBook. I don't know about other folks, but that is one huge time sink. Fun, and then the afternoon or evening is just gone. I have caught up with the 300 or so friends I have who I don't seem to ever see anywhere else, and I have invited others into my attention span... but nothing else seems to come out of it, ever. Oh there is the occasional invite to some event or another, there is the numerous game invitations and the know yourself tests that allow marketing conglomerates to hook into your web browser for marketing research purposes... but actual connection? Not that I can see or make out. Maybe I am not doing something or I am too shy... and maybe, I won't ever stop using it. Let's face it, it is a benign chatty world wide water cooler experience that is always there. Hence, the appeal for me... at any odd hour I care to sign on, blips and notes and posts from actual people I know... sort of... are all there. Except for my sister in law who's son is at West Point and she kind of got tired of all my wife's War Resister's League kind of posts. It 's a thing. We'll get by... it might take a decade or so, but these kinds of things tend to pass at their own pace. Besides, I am carrying a much larger consideration... a bad infection, or flu, or spleen rupturing punch to the gut and I am on my way to a "higher frequency"... do not pass go.

And, now, I am trying to hard to come up with a quippy ending... so maybe it is time to let it go for now. Besides, the rain didn't materialize today, so out comes the hose and nozzle... quick while the plants have time to dry off a little... but late enough the water won't be too hot on the plants. Later.