1. My visits to see the nephrologist, Dr. Bieber, and my primary care giver, Dr. Herold, were both a relief. Dr. Bieber and I had the same response to my blood work. It denotes stability. In fact, Dr. Bieber told me that unless I'm offered a really good organ, he advises that if I'm offered a kidney for transplant, I decline. I have been thinking the same way. I feel really good. I'm not displaying symptoms. We agree, especially if I'm offered a marginal organ, that right now I don't need to go through the surgery and the rigors of recovery when I'm doing well. I am especially wary, to be honest, about having my immune system greatly reduced, which a transplant requires, during this pandemic.
At this moment in time, I have two concerns that I hope hiking on the Wellness Trail and elsewhere will help me address: I don't like my blood pressure numbers (neither did either doctor) and I don't like how much I weigh. Neither doctor mentioned my weight, but they didn't need to. I know I'd like to weigh less. If, with home monitoring, my blood pressure doesn't come down in the next month, the doctors might increase my medication a bit. That was the main point I took away from my second appointment of the day with Dr. Herold.
2. Back home, Debbie and I had a cocktail hour with George Dickel and talked about my two appointments. Debbie put a can of diced tomatoes in the vegetable chowder I made yesterday. It was a great call, a great addition. We are getting quite a bit of mileage out of that chowder. It's provided two nights of dinner and we still have a quart left over.
3. Debbie and I spent a couple of hours this evening watching the first part of Ken Burns' two part documentary, Mark Twain. I took Prof. Clark Griffith's Mark Twain seminar back in the spring of 1980. I don't know what I expected when I enrolled in that course, but we explored Mark Twain's dark view of things, especially his philosophical determinism. In the spring of 1980, I was unsettled by Mark Twain's dark outlook, about his deep doubts regarding free will, and his dim view of human nature and the human condition. When part one of this documentary ended tonight, Mark Twain was turning fifty years old and was at the height of his powers and success, but this episode ended with a warning that Mark Twain's life over the next twenty-four years would involve misery he had never imagined. I'm wondering if part two might explore some of the dimensions of Mark Twain's thinking and writing that I found so unsettling in that graduate seminar forty years ago.
There's nothing dark or unsettling in this limerick that Stu wrote!
Of course, there's always the "Y"!
Had a tramp and a pool, that's no lie.
Crazy walls that were slimy,
Bottled pop costs a dimey.
Will remember those days 'til we die!
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