Fall Colors

              “The most colorful Fall we’ve had in a long time,” heard several times this October.

 

                     Our Fall walks around some of the “Seven Lakes” were quite colorful.

 

      The backyard blushed a little before it dropped its leaves to reveal the hospital parking lot across the way.

     Meanwhile, back at the farm, Mother Nature conspired to color the world for the early birds, in the absence of leaves.

 

     Those who missed the summer visits to the pool found another way to take a colorful swim.

 

                                                

                                                

      I would like to say I have raked up all the leaves in my yard, but I can’t.

    And now, “Old Winter’s Song” without regard for my schedule.

The Eyes Have It

       It all began around 2011 or 2012.  I began to notice some double vision.  My right eye lid wouldn’t fully open.

     In 2012, I got in to see an ophthalmologist—not an easy task, without an optometrist’s referral.  He opined that I was suffering from too many birthdays, but made an appointment for me one year later, in 2014. 

     Lots of other things were happening.  My regular optometrist retired.  For twenty-plus years, I had taken thyroid pills. The PA was reluctant to renew the prescription without more testing, quite an unusual protocol.   Usually, he would look at the lab reports and renew my prescription.

      Then we moved to Colorado.  I ran out of thyroid pills.  I called on a local PA who needed me to take all these tests before she would write a prescription.  Her conclusion was that I no longer needed to take the medicine.  She was leaving for a new job, and suggested I call on an endocrinologist.

      We made our final move to Loveland and an endocrinologist’s office was two short blocks from our new home.  After a bunch of tests, the endocrinologist discovered a “lobe” on my thyroid that was over producing, thus my no longer needing Synthroid.

     Meanwhile, I scheduled  with a local ophthalmologist, but before I could see The Man, I had to go through  his pilot-fish optometrist, who saw nothing wrong.  Wait a minute, this drooping eye lid, and now eye ball (I had continual double vision by this time, the right eye slanted down) is normal?  He saw that I was having thyroid problem and concluded I was suffering from Grave’s Disease. 

      I reported back to the endocrinologist.  She was adamant; I most certainly did not have Grave’s Disease.  She arranged for me to see a local ophthalmologist. 

     I scheduled with one.  I got a call that they were switching me to another, more suited to my condition.  When I actually showed up, I was handed off to yet a third doc, but by the time the two pilot-fish got done with me, they actually referred me to a fourth guy.  I began to feel like a fumbled football, except no one wanted to cover me.

     In the meantime, after a bunch more tests, including collecting my urine for 24 hours, twice, the endocrinologist concluded that I needed to reduce the size of my thyroid, because it was now hyPER-active.  I had two choices:  surgery (no thanks, I remember my mother having that done.  She hardly got over her seemingly-permanent sore throat.)

      Or I could ingest a radio-active iodine capsule.  Which I eventually did, but I had to find a time when I didn’t need to be around people for five days.  I took the capsule five days before my appointment with the ophthalmologist, thinking I would be clear of my radioactivity by then.

      Reading the fine print, I discovered I was cleared to be around healthy adults after five days, but should avoid pregnant ladies and children for another few days.  So I called the ophthalmologist’s office to be sure none of the persons attending to me would be pregnant.      

     I mentioned to the lady on the phone that I shouldn’t be around pregnant ladies or children.  She exclaimed, “Oh! Doctor Arnold is a pediatrician.  His office will be full of children.”  Appointment cancelled.

     In the meantime, we established contact with a new family physician who listened to my tale and immediately ordered an MRI of my head.  He felt I had classic brain tumor symptoms.  He was astounded that none of the other doctors had suspected that.

      A few times in my life, my father suggested I needed to have my head examined.  You can guess when he said that.  So I had my head examined.  Sure enough, just as Dad suspected, they found nothing there.

     Dr. Prows, the family physician, got me an appointment with one of two neuro-ophthalmologists in the state.  I had to drive across Denver to Aurora to Anschutz eye clinic. I did that for three or four years.

      Dr. Pelak diagnosed me with myasthenia gravis.  She put me on prednisone.  Not bad until I had to withdraw.  My right eye came back up.  My eyelid stopped drooping.  I had single vision again—for a while. 

     My right eye kept moving up.  I had double vision again.  For a year or two, I took Imuran.  Dr. Pelak felt I no longer had symptoms of myasthenia gravis, so we tapered off Imuran.  My eye stabilized, and she advised that I could possibly have surgery to correct my double vision.

      The surgeon told me he couldn’t straighten out my double vision by operating on the right eye alone.  He must work on both eyes.  Fearing unfortunate results, I exercised the surgeon's option two:  live with it.

      Eventually, I decided I might want to try to have single vision once again.  I did not want to have to make several trips across Denver, so I went back to Dr. Arnold, the pediatric ophthalmologic surgeon I was scheduled to see all those years ago.

       After another year of anguishing over what to do, in April, I scheduled the surgery for the last week of October.  That date got complicated when our daughter was diagnosed with breast cancer and her surgery date was on the very same day.  We decided that we should both keep our dates with the surgeon.  And we did.

      I went in at 6:45 a.m. and was back home by 10:30 a.m.  I had a patch over my right eye hiding two or three loose sutures.  There was one suture not tied up yet in my left eye as well.  I returned to the doctor’s office at 12:45. 

     A young lady checked my vision and used prisms to get me zeroed in on eye charts near and far.  She wrote down a bunch of numbers and Dr. Arnold came in, looked at the numbers, and began tugging at the loose sutures in my eyes.  That was the most painful part of the ordeal.

    He would pull a while, and I tried to keep my squirming to a minimum.  Then he would check my vision on the wall chart and up close with a target on a stick he kept in his breast pocket.  We went through that procedure three or four times.  Each time, the tugging lessened.

      When he felt I was zeroed in on the targets, he knotted and clipped the sutures.  How he could do all that with the fine sutures, invisible to me, wearing rubber gloves, is beyond my ken.  I have nothing but admiration for his skills.

      The sutures would eventually disappear, he said.  Now, it is up to my brain to adjust to the new field of vision.  It will take a while, weeks, probably, he said.

      We were home again by 2:30. I had single vision at an intermediate distance, not yet far off or close up.  Post op advice said I should watch television, avoid trying to do close up work, like reading.  I understood.

     The problem with close up work is the eyes have to slightly cross, and to do that hurt.  It’s like a sprained ankle that you have to use very carefully for a few days while the muscles heal.  Two weeks later, I can read pretty well with magnifier lenses that I have used for a few years.

     I have single vision close up with magnifiers, and also at a distance.  I still have some double vision on the periphery, left and right, and up.  The “up” business is a bit disconcerting, because I am used to looking over my glasses to see really close.  That’s not working.  Maybe I will learn to use my bifocals?

      It takes some time and muscle work to expand my single vision, but that is limited by the muscle fatigue.  My eyes get tired and it can be painful to look right, left, up and down later in the day.  Each day the muscles get stronger and I am hopeful that one day I will have single vision in all fields.

     In the meantime, the daughter has had a second surgery to remove more lymph nodes.  We await lab reports that hopefully will confirm that the lymph system is cancer free.  She has radiation and reconstruction left to go.  It has been a long road, but the road is less rocky than it would have been fifty years ago.  Modern medicine has made great strides and we both are grateful for our health care.

     Now, if you got this far, I apologize for indulging in old people’s favorite thing:  discussing health issues and doctor visits.  But then, you didn’t have to read this!

 

 

    I tried to take advantage of my blood-shot eyes for Halloween, but it wasn’t too effective.  I have the wrong head shape for either Lurch or Frankenstein’s monster.  I failed to scare a single trick-or-treater.

 

        The current state of affairs.  “This too shall pass.”

 

 

Fall Chores 2022

      Twenty Twenty-two proved that Eastern Colorado is the best next-year country in the world.  Maybe a bit of an exaggeration.  It was a disappointing year, farm-wise.

     The wheat crop was 38 bushels—not per acre.  A total of 38 bushels, which sold for $300.  The price of wheat went as high as $10 per bushel.  None of us in the neighborhood had any wheat to sell.  Typical!

      I did raise a bumper crop of sunflowers following the disastrous wheat crop.

 

 

      Not much income from that kind of sunflowers.

     The millet crop looked good.

 

 

      It yielded a little over 800 bushels, total, about five bushels per acre.  That sold for $19.50 per hundred-weight.  A hundred pounds equal two bushels.

      Nothing to do but plant next year’s wheat crop.  Keeping the weeds out of the summer fallow wasn’t too great a challenge, given the dry conditions.  But we did have occasional rains throughout the summer, enough to bring the millet up.

      A dry spell was broken about mid-August.  I actually began planting wheat on the last day of August and finished before Labor Day.  That hasn’t happened for decades. 

      When I was a kid, the farmer I worked for started planting on August 21, unless that was a Sunday.  As the summers got hotter, the planting date got pushed back. 

     Last year, I planted in October.  A lot of that wheat didn’t come up until April.  Some of it either never came up, or sprouted and died in the drought conditions that persisted throughout the winter of 2021-2022.

      In August, I had the moisture, so I planted.  I have wheat up this Fall!

 

 

     The wheat was up fairly well when it rained over an inch in less than 30 minutes.  Thus, the mud in the lower part of the picture.  I should have a good stand next spring when the winter wheat breaks its dormancy.    

     The wheat up, the millet done, nothing to do but clean up and put stuff away.

     There is always some sadness, along with some relief, when it comes time to shut down for the year.  True, it is nice to be able to relax a bit and look forward to days that don’t hit 100 degrees.  But the summer is over and colder days loom ahead.

        This year, I had to remove the old green machines to make room for the “new” stuff.  The new combine is a 1995 model, a 30-year jump from the old 1964 John Deere 95 combine.

      Putting a machine out in the open to rust away after it has been shedded during the off-season for thirty years is a little like sending a trusty old work horse from the stable to the glue factory.

 

 

        Except for the junk that always finds its way into a farm building, the shed was empty.

 

 

       I had to remove the top section of the combine’s exhaust pipe and the air intake apparatus to get clearance under the doorway.  It went in.

 

 

 

     Then the tractor, and the trucks.

 

 

      In the Fall, an old man’s fancy turns to firewood.  The felled elm tree has been split and stacked.  There remain the smaller branches to be dealt with.

     And look forward to next year!

     I live in a good “next year” country.