Update On Wilders, Happy 2024

“Happy New Year. Stay fit. Keep sharp. Make good decisions.” – Ghostbusters II

“Call me crazy, but I think it is possible for a Democratic president who spent his first term setting records for inflation, gasoline prices, and low approval ratings to win a second term.” – Jimmy Carter

Hiyas!

Apologies for the delay – for the last few days I’ve been riding vinyl in a hospital room while nice people poked, prodded, x-rayed, EKG’d, CAT-scanned (I think that they use cats instead of dogs because cats keep hospital hours), and measured in such detail that I’ve seen charts, graphs, percentages, statistics, and cross-sections of The Mrs. that I’ve seen at least three of her vertebrae.

People want pictures with women’s clothes off?  I’ve seen pictures of The Mrs. with her skin and muscles off.  At least in slices.  Dang.  That sounds like something Dr. Lecter would say.

Nevermind.

The chair in the hospital room was ungodly uncomfortable, and the vinyl couch was okay since we were at a hospital nearly three hours away in Modern Mt. Pilot.  At one point, a woman I didn’t known came into the darkened room, gently lifted up my blanket, and started to lift up my shirt.

I said, as groggily as a human who only had two hours of sleep in the past 48 could, “Huh????”

“I’m here to replace the battery in your cardiac monitor,” she whispered seductively in my ear.

The Mrs. quickly marked her territory from the actual hospital bed:  “I think you’re looking for me.”

In a hospital, there’s a flurry of activity at the emergency room, and people with amazingly expensive looking pieces of equipment come and stand in line to do amazing tests that provide lots of data so that the hospital doesn’t get sued.  Then comes the long wait as recovery hits, and interaction with the hospital personnel happens only every six hours or so.

This is a good sign.  They have much bigger problems elsewhere.

What’s best in life to get out of the hospital?  Be boring.  The Mrs. tried, but her lungs greedily ate up all the antibiotics the world has to offer and then called for more.

The good news is they booted her out of the hospital so they could give the bed to someone who needed it.  The bad news is that her lungs have not adapted properly for our atmosphere, and we’ll have to seek a planet with more oxygen.

Just kidding, that’s silly.  Why not increase the oxygen content of the Earth, instead?  All we need is a volcanic island lair in the Pacific, the entire GDP of Japan for 30 years, and several dolphins that can play chess at the International Grandmaster level.

So, I filled all of her prescriptions in Modern Mt. Pilot while we waited for discharge.  In one case, the pharmacist said at the consult that the antibiotic might make her poop turn blood red, which apparently alarms weak people who do not welcome the signal that Valhalla is calling.

“Well, that’s an Easter egg I’ll let The Mrs. figure out.”  Sometimes I say what I’m thinking out loud.  It’s usually more enjoyable for me than for others.  The pharmacist gave me a look.  The Look.

I said, “We’ve been married 26 years – I think I know how far I can push a joke.”

She smiled, and shook her head.  “Just like my husband.”

We’re home now, and our Penultimate Day was spent doing precisely nothing.  Pugsley stayed home and didn’t drink all my booze and injected Elderly Dog periodically with insulin, a process we call (in honor of Lisa Douglas, wife of Oliver Wendell Douglas) “Shoosting the dog.”

Now, we’re home.  The Mrs. is touch and go on podcasting Wednesday (if you don’t show up for the livestream, you really should, it’s fun, free and if you have a beer I’ll chug one with you), but (I think) we’re back into that controllable portion of life where we manage the really unimportant things like bills and schedules.

Regardless, we welcome in 2024 with the idea that although we know life is finite, we should enjoy and live each moment with the virtue and faith that you would use in your last moment.

What will anyone pay for pictures of the vertebrae?  We’ll call it Only Organs.

I’ll respond to comments and such tomorrow.

I’m tired.

Author: John

Nobel-Prize Winning, MacArthur Genius Grant Near Recipient writing to you regularly about Fitness, Wealth, and Wisdom - How to be happy and how to be healthy. Oh, and rich.

54 thoughts on “Update On Wilders, Happy 2024”

  1. Happy to hear from you, not so happy to hear why you’ve been MIA.

    Praying for your beloved wife.

    Michael

    1. Thank you so much! Yeah, she’s better today, and I think (after a few more Dr. visits) she’ll be better than she was a year ago. Seriously.

  3. Tell the Mrs. we are praying for her to get well soon. Happy New Year John.
    wendyworn

    1. Wendy, thank you so much! She’s much better, home, and has her puppy on her lap as we watch TV right now.

  4. Prayers for the wife and you as well. I have done a few stints in the Hospital as both the object of their affections and as the helpful observer. While being the patient is not good, being the watcher in the chair is no walk in the park, more like a visit to a torture rack (seriously who designs those Hospital chairs!)
    Prayers that the wife will heal quickly and that you both can get plenty of rest.
    (I have plenty of vertebrae pictures so I am not in the market for more, no matter how cute they may be)
    MSG Grumpy

    1. She’s better every day, and it’s not linear – each day brings a lot more capability. Today she looked better than she has in a year.

      My butt is still sore. Really.

  6. Best wishes for a speedy and complete recovery.

    May the new year be kinder to you all.

    1. I think, long term, this was the best trip to the hospital that she could have had. It’s already starting out well.

  8. Good heavens, John. Prayers up for sure. Do the important things, and we shall endeavor to not burn the place down in your absence (as he carefully puts the matches and gasoline back on the shelf….).

    Perhaps we can all go with “This year had better be better than last year”.

    1. Yeah, she was going to get out one way or another. She had her bags packed 10 hours before they let her out.

  10. Pleased she is doing better. I’ve been a minor drone in several hospitals for nearly fifteen years now, restocking their drug dispensing machines, compounding IVs, etc., and my contempt of the Medical-Industrial Complex is second to none. Pharmacists can be replaced by Expert Systems, doc only know what the last drug rep bribed them, and most nurses are hard-pressed to tell your mouth from your anus. I do have a tiny shred of respect for surgeons, as every time you open someone, it’s going to be different.

    I’m happy she survived the encounter and admit being semi-professionally curious as to the diagnosis and treatment. If that’s too personal, fine, but I’m merely offering a backhanded third opinion.

    Happy New Year, such as it is. Deus vult.

    2. HMU on email. This staff was pretty competent, and the nurses were top notch. The doctor we saw just once a day, but the nurses all said . . . “She’s good.”

  11. Jeez, JW, I wanted to write a whiny, self-pitying rant on how lousy my own life is going here at the start of 2024 (“I stepped in dog poop this morning/It looks like rain/Property tax bill is due/I’ve got jury duty next week”) and you just stole my thunder with this rather (*ahem*) disjointed and rambling recap of your wife’s travails. Really puts my own trivial woes into perspective.

    Sounds like you’ve really got your hands full, yet you remain upbeat and able to laugh at the worst. That is truly some wonderful gift you’ve got. If you could manage to bottle it for sale, I’ll take a couple of forties.

    Here’s wishing you and your wife the best, with prayers for complete recovery incoming. Stay well, for there’s much work to be done.

    1. It was disjointed and rambling – that’s the stream of consciousness after 120 hours in hospital. But in the end, getting a problem fixed sooner is generally better than later, so I’m putting this one in the plus column for now.

      Life is what it is, so why not enjoy it?

      Thank you for the wishes, more to come!!!!

  12. Happy New Year!
    Thanks for the update, especially since it’s mostly good news. It’s good to hear that your wife is well enough that the hospital chose to send her home so they can instead host someone that’ll give better billing revenue opportunities. 😉
    I’ll continue with the prayers for a complete recovery, as having to use supplemental oxygen as a regular thing doth sucketh greatly. Via modern O2 concentrators it’s less onerous, but not much. I speak from direct knowledge as my sweetheart’s dad and stepmom both were on supplemental O2 for years. It sucks, but beats the alternative of assuming room temperature and so not needing O2 at all anymore. :-/

    While I’m at it – I’ll also be continuing prayers for a peaceful resolution to our modern troubles. I’m hoping that won’t be via mass coronal ejection that returns us all to the 1800’s (technology-wise, at least), but I suppose that’s one way of solving the immediate problems (while introducing a whole host of others!) 😉

    1. Thank you! She’ll still need oxygen, but I’m hoping that in a month or less that it’ll just be the normal levels in the air and she’ll still be at 97.3F (her actual normal temperature). Right now, it’s only at night.

      A CME would be interesting – but would it be funny? I mean, I can do a small humor magazine for Modern Mayberry on the press we build.

      1. That’s the spirit! Adapt, Improvise, and Overcome! And FWIW – I’d read your humor magazine. Hmmm. I wonder if Kevin Costner would be interested in reprising his role as The Postman – in order to deliver this valuable tome to it’s impatiently waiting readers? Tune in next week to find out! 😉

        The technology geeks of the world (both electrical and mechanical) could and likely will – restore much of the lost/broken infrastructure with less modern but workable replacements. That’s my plan, at least.

        This will essentially allow us to do a ‘do over’ on some (many?) of the choices made that brought us to where we are now. And I’m just delusional enough to think that *maybe* we’d make better choices this time – knowing how things turned out *LAST* time.

        Who am I kidding. We’re doomed! 😉

        FWIW – my sweetheart and I are nearly constantly at odds about the quantity and variety of technical & history books I *still* have, in spite of acquiring a Kindle (it’s the world’s smallest and lightest bookcase that can hold thousands of books at a time). I have a love/hate relationship with my Kindle. I love how easy it is to buy/store books in it – and I hate that in the event of an EMP/CME event, I’d likely either lose all it’s content as it gets ‘fried’ along with most other modern electronics, or perhaps worse – it’d work, but only until it runs out of charge. Hey, wait. This reminds me of a Twilight-Zone episode about the guy that wanted all the time in the world to read, but when he was granted his wish – lost the use of his reading glasses…. :-/

        I guess he’ll have to spend his time looking at picture books and the kind of magazines with pictures. So, it might not be *ALL* bad. 😉

        1. Lots and lots of books here, too. My unread stack is enough to last me years. But the Postman would probably have to take copies for people to share . . . where are we gonna get the paper???

  13. So happy to hear the Mrs. is out of the hospital and busy working on generating blood-red urine. Hope you get better soon!

    In the be-thankful-because-it-could-be-worse department, my cousin Shelli was not so lucky in the past few days. In her mid-50s, she was released from the hospital from Vanderbilt just before Christmas so she could die (I personally refuse to use the euphemism “pass away” and its variants) peacefully at home on Dec 27. Her CAT scan showed lymphatic cancer tumors spread throughout her body, perhaps (or not) related to her “beating” breast cancer years ago.

    Shelli was a good woman worth remembering. We’re gonna need millions more like her to get thru 2024. Happy New Year, everybody!

    https://www.companionfunerals.com/obituaries/shelli-cody

  14. I was concerned about The Mrs. before this morning. Now, I’m downright scared.

    Don’t give the YT podcast a second thought. We’re grownups, and we can cope. But, please, take care of that woman. I know you will; she’s your wife and all. But, hey, think about ME! She’s my hopeless crush.

    And, after all, it’s all about ME. As always.

    1. James, I take these days as downright positive – she’s in a great mood, and feeling wonderful today. Podcast for this week is still sketchy.

  15. FFUUUUUUCCKKK! I mean, glad the wife is at home and recovering. Between the wife and I (of 47 years) we’ve spent too many weeks in hospitals in both capacities. Morbid/graveyard humor has always pulled us through the hard times. YMMV

    1. You mean her lungs or my butt? My butt is still sore (really). But who gets all the sympathy????

      FYI – no podcast for the next two weeks – not gonna push her for tomorrow, and doctor visit next week.

    1. And my advice is, if they’re not paying you to be there, try to stay out of hospitals.

      Where you never want to be the person getting all the attention from the staff.
      That rarely works out well.

      Best wishes for continued recovery.
      Unless you can get the volcano lair, truckload of cash, and dolphins with frickin’ laser beams on their heads.
      Do that, if you can.

      1. We’re out, planning on staying out. The good news is that she’s sleeping better than she has for, perhaps, years. Which means I’m sleeping better because she’s not waking me up.

  20. Glad the Missus and you both are on the mend. Nothing worse than when your Loved One is sick, especially hospital sick. Mine had a bleeding cerebral aneurysm 11 years ago that was misdiagnosed and thusly the stoopid hospital almost killed her. Now we only go to the smart teaching hospital an hour away.

    But the lesson learned – “the things that happen we rarely worried about, and the things we worry about rarely happen.”

    In flattering imitation of my favorite Wilder holiday, we made Pen-penultimate day ale (should be IPA-ish) on Dec 29.

    1. Oh, my! The diagnosis was (I think) pretty simple here in comparison. The underlying issues will make her much healthier (IMHO) when she fixes them.

      Nice on the beer! Cheers! ETA?

      1. Beer is going to the secondary fermenter today and probably in the keg Sunday. Adding some whole hops to the keg. I usually do a minimum 6 weeks in the keg for aging and carbonating.

        Gonna wait to sample it during one of your podcasts, I’ve been meaning to attend and now have a motivation.

        1. Excellent! I’ll hoist whatever brew I have on hand when that day comes. Probably week after next.

    1. Above t’was me, btw (Hal from Horn Section) for some reason I hit send too early…

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