Problems

 After a long struggle with passwords that I had forgotten and had to reset, I am at last able to get into my blog and continue to make posts. The only problem is that I am in on my desktop but do not seem to be able to get in on my new Mac.

I will have to go back next door into 1501 and check if I can find a way in so that I can compose on both computers.

Tuesday June 4

    Joan has gone on to bed--tired after a rather strenuous day, her usual morning run, followed by walking 7 miles with me, mainly from Kingston-on-Thames to Richmond, along the Thames path---mostly with a view of the river, but with some stretches of woodland where the foliage cut us off from the view.

    We had our usual lunchtime beer and crisps at a pub in Richmond, where we sat outside and watched an unusually high tide bring the river up over its bank and over the sidewalk

    We got to Kingston by the Underground to Richmond and a bus to Kingston. Coming home we took two buses--one from Richmond to Hammersmith and one from Hammersmith to Kensington Church Street, where the 27 bus stopped almost opposite our apartment.

    So now, at 10.30pm, I am left to fill in my time before I go to bed, which will be at about 11.15pm. I often have trouble going to sleep, and it is quite likely that I may be still awake after half an hour lying in bed.

    I have my ear-buds in, and I am listening to Classic FM--at the moment the final movement of Elgar's Symphony Number 1--a piece I have never heard before. I am not greatly impressed.

    Last night we were thrilled by a great concert at the Festival Hall--Beethoven's violin concerto and a Brahms Symphony. Great soloist in the violin concerto, and the orchestra was terrific in the Brahms.

    Time for bed... 

The Leg

 

        I should have mentioned the one carry-over from my fall on the escalator--the further treatment of my leg. We needed the stitches out and we made an appointment with a clinic here in London. The first time we went, the doctor said that the wound was not sufficiently healed to take the stitches out--she cleaned the wound and redressed it, told me to keep it dry, and we fixed an appointment for one week later. Keeping it dry meant wrapping the leg with cling film--which was real pain every day when I showered.

    Second week--she took the stitches out and redressed the wound. "Keep it dry until next week." More daily cling film, and yesterday we went again, hoping that I could now leave the dressing off...but no--still minor oozing. And the advice was--another week of cling film, then Joan to check it, and to put another plaster on if it is still oozing.

    Will this leg thing ever end?

    The only other remnant of my fall are the three parallel scars running down my forehead above my left eye. Visible, but not ugly in any way--adds character to my face...

  

London

     We have now been in London since May 4, and we have done the sorts of things we always do when we are in London. We are in an apartment on Kensington Church Street, just above the intersection with Kensington High Street--close to shops, restaurants, the Tube station, and in easy walking distance to Kensington Gardens and Notting Hill--where we often take the Central Line or the 94 bus to get us into central London. Alternatively, the Number 9 bus on the High Street, a very short distance away, also gets us into the area towards Aldwich and Trafalgar Square via Hyde Park Corner and Piccadilly.

    We have done several Thames path walks, on both the north and south sides of the river, and a couple of walks on the towpath of the Regent's Canal. We have been to two plays--one in Richmond that was a real dud--while the other--in the Hampstead Theatre--was excellent. And we have been to two chamber music concerts in Wigmore Hall and one piano concert of film music by a superb French pianist.

    My walking has generally exceeded my four mile daily limit--although once or twice I have deliberately taken things more easily.

    Today is the first day when it has rained most of the day, and we have been confined to our apartment--though Joan had a long Zoom call about one of her arbitration cases, starting at 9.00am, so I slipped out and went around the corner to a restaurant called 'Joe The Juice,' where I had a breakfast of mushed up boiled egg, with sliced tomato and spinach, and a coffee, taking my time there with a newspaper--The Times--which I bought from the shop across the street from the apartment.

    And for the rest of the day, as it began to rain during the morning, we have been confined to the apartment. The major disadvantage of the apartment, which is excellently furnished and equipped, are the stairs. There are two layers of apartments in the building, above a hairdresser's establishment. The second floor is one apartment on one level. Our apartment is two layers, one bedroom floor on the third level, with two bedrooms and two bathrooms, and one living room/kitchen level on the fourth floor. This means a lot of stair climbing...up and down in our apartment from bedrooms to living room, and the flight from the front door to get past the lower apartment. Got it?

    So what have I done all day? I read the newspaper. I did the usual sequence of daily puzzles: Spelling Bee, the mini-crossword, Wordle, Connections (which I rarely solve) in the New York Times, and KenKen and Waffle on the Internet. I failed to finish the Quick Cryptic crossword in the Times, but I did succeed in doing the Codeword. All of which, I suppose, exercised my eighty-nine-year -old brain--which is something we are urged to do.

    And now, at 4.30 pm, the rain is coming down much more heavily, just when we were starting to think we might put on our rain jackets and take a bit of a walk...

    Most evenings here we take a post-prandial stroll around the Round Pond in Kensington Gardens, which is a distance of about a mile. On a sunny evening the Park is full of people, but it is actually very interesting to see the ethnic variety of the populace--many of which, I suppose, are tourists--and you certainly hear a lot of different languages. Of the groups sitting on the grass, the most notable are the Moslem women--all black-robed and many with their faces covered.

    All for now... 

 

The Fall, and beyond

 Somehow, on Tuesday night, when we left a restaurant, I fell at the bottom of the escalator on my way to the Metro train at Gallery Place.

From the time of the fall until I came to my senses in the Emergency Room Trauma Unit at George Washington University Hospital, I seemed to have blacked out---though Joan tells me I was at one time crying in pain that I wanted to die.

In the Trauma Unit, they examined me in every way possible, including X-Rays and an MRI, but their major work was stitching my wounds: one very ragged one low on my left leg, three parallel ones on my forehead, and a number of small ones on the crown of my head. I was bruised in many other places.

We waited an endless period while they "did the paper work,"and I was eventually released at about 5.00am. They gave me a pair of baggy pants and a sweat shirt to wear, as they had cut off my bloody pants and shirt when I arrived. Joan called an Uber, and we got home quickly.

On Wednesday I began to have serious neck and back pains, and we fixed an appointment with the spine specialist for 1.25 pm on Thursday. That Wednesday night was awful: great difficulty in finding a position in which I could sleep--often excruciating pain when I got up to go to the bathroom and then had to struggle to get back into bed.

On Thursday we saw the spine specialist--Dr. Eva Hoffman--and she reviewed the report from the Trauma Unit and had me X-rayed. Her conclusion was that there was no need for any surgery and that I would just recover slowly over time...take it easy was the basic advice.

She prescribed a muscle relaxant and strongly urged me to make an appointment with my primary care physician, which I did when we got home: an appointment for 9.25am on Friday morning.

Before going to bed that night I took two Tylenol and the muscle relaxant. I slept soundly for a few hours, but then I was awake and felt like a complete zombie--and from then until getting up I slept very fitfully, and I still seemed a complete zombie when I got up.

We went to see my primary care doctor--Dr. Vassallo, a heart specialist, and he checked me over, gave me an EKG, and an echo cardiogram, and declared all was well with my heart. But he wanted to see an X-ray of my lungs as the Trauma Unit X-rays had mentioned small nodules. So we left his offices and went downstairs to an X-ray unit, and there we waited and waited until at last they did the X-ray. Joan went to get the car, and--amazingly--I arrive at the pick-up spot at exactly the same time as she did...and home we went.

And then, a shower and a clean up of my wounds, Joan applies new dressings, breakfast...and then what? How to fill the day? Well, partly by writing this record--and, of course, Spelling Bee, Connections, Wordle, the Mini crossword, and my 6x6 Kenken, reading a novel, taking a few corridor walks, and sometimes just sitting with my eyes closed and thinking.

Joan did some research with Dr. Google about lung nodules, and she reached a happy conclusion about minimal chances of any particularly danger.

So, that is the straightforward narration of The Fall and of the few days after it. Throughout those days, Joan has been a tower of strength and support, doing everything she can for me.

The Four Mile Obsession

     I just do not recall when I adopted 4 miles walking as my target each day: or why I chose four miles.

    It couldn't have been something like 10,000 paces, as my 4 miles at 28 inches a pace only gives me 9,051 paces. I'am, in any event, suspicious of the 10,000 paces requirement: it seems to have started in Japan, and its origin is unclear.

    But, somewhere along the line, 4 miles became the aim, and I do try --religiously or obsessively--to achieve it. Today, for example, Joan ran this morning, and I walked in Rock Creek Park--she taking a longer route while I did my usual, which comes out at about 3.5 miles.

    And so, when later in the day, Joan suggested we take another stroll, I was keen to go, and my pedometer now shows 6 miles--which makes me feel very virtuous.

    Sometimes, in the evenings when I go to get the mail from the mailboxes on the 5th floor, I walk a few corridors to get the mileage up--one corridor in our building from the staircase in the northwest corner--next to our apartments--to the staircase in the southeast corner is about 150 yards, and often I often check my pedometer to see if I can get up to my four miles with a few corridors.

    I am not sufficiently obsessive to make sure that every day I achieve the four miles--sometimes on a rainy day, I might walk all the corridors from the 15th floor (our floor) all the way down to the first floor--boring, but often I can listen to a podcast or some music on my phone.

    So there we are: not an obsession, but something that encourages me to take exercise--and I am sure I am the better for it, rather than lying or sitting around all day.

A Day in the Life of David Cutler

 On so many days of my life, so little happens, and I have in many respects to find ways to "kill time'' in activities that have no great value, but at least they stop me getting bored or simply sitting in a chair with my eyes closed, quietly relaxing--times when Joan thinks I am asleep, but when I believe I am awake. 

So let's take Friday March 22nd as a typical example. On Thursday night I went to bed at 11.15pm: up to urinate at 1.35am, 4.35am, and 7.18am. Back into bed for another hour. Up, say, 8.30am, coffee, make the bed, bathroom, shower, and then proceed to breakfast--almost always the same--bran flakes, some fruit, usually a sliced apple and blueberries, bread with margarine and Marmite, and a handful of (nominal aphasia cuts in, as so often)...I have to ask Joan...pistachios.

During breakfast, I go into the New York Times on my phone, finish Wordle, and start on Spelling Bee. I take my morning pills--one a blood thinner, one to control blood pressure, and a multivitamin (probably unnecessary, as we eat a good diet). Maybe more coffee, maybe some water.

So there we are. At, say, 9.15 am, and nothing to do until I have to set out to have my pacemaker checked at about 10.50am, when I will have to Metrorail to Friendship Heights and walk for eight minutes or so to the doctors' offices.

But Spelling Bee was unfinished, so I switch on my Mac, go into the NY Times Games section, and perhaps, after 20 minutes or so, I reached Genius level, my daily aim. I needed to use the 'Hints'--but that's not cheating. If I need to cheat, I go into Inges Anagram Generator, put in 2 of each letter, and usually (but not always) get a few words that get me up to Genius.

The next puzzles are the Waffles word puzzles, followed by KenKen, which can take me anything from 12 minutes to half-an-hour. (I do the 6x6 Hard version.) So exercising my brain is off to a good start.

Now it's time to go and get my pacemaker check. Down in the elevator to the 4th floor, thru the garage and into the Giant food store, out onto the plaza, down the two escalators to the platform, and along comes the train. Two stops to Friendship Heights, walk to the doctor's, two minutes wait, three minutes examination--all is well, you have AFIB, as you already know, and the battery will last six and a half more years: I wonder whether I will outlive the battery, or vice-versa.

I walk home from the doctor's office. When I get back into the apartment, I check my pedometer, and I see I have just passed my daily goal of 4 miles--a goal I am not too obsessed about, but I generally get there: and sometimes, in places where we do long walks, I far exceed the daily norm.

When I get back, I go into apt.1503, where my other computer lives, and go into the German paper Die Zeit. They have an equivalent of Wordle called Wortler, which uses 6 letters. I do it with my German dictionary at hand, and I have got it right several times. Then I finish watching a program streamed on PBS Passport about a Chinese American artist called Wong...very interesting. He died at 106. He was a serious artist, but he also worked in film studios on sketches for film sets, and as an artist at Disney doing the backgrounds for animations. He designed Christmas cards and simple decorations of pottery for tableware, and he made beautiful kites that flew like birds and butterflies.

Lunch--a typical repast--big sandwich with turkey breast, cheese, and  chutney--topped off with an non-alcoholic beer.

And then what? I turned to writing this account of my day. So, having dealt with everything up to now (3.45pm) I shall have to wait until tomorrow to finish it...

No, I can pick it up again now, at about 6.00pm.

I have just got up from one of my 'shut-eye' periods--the times when Joan swears I am asleep and I say I wasn't--just brooding. When I got up, it was like a rusty old piece of machinery moving into action, and I stumbled and nearly fell...it happens. I should note--as we are tracking activity--that before I took my 'shut-eye I went into the Guardian Crosswords to look again at last Sunday's puzzle, which I hadn't finished. And, as is often the case, coming at it afresh, I was able to put in the last few words.

At 6.15pm, I asked the daily question (if we are eating at home)--"When should I start the salad?" And Joan's answer is "now."

Salad making is my task: same ingredients most nights: peppers, tomatoes, cucumber, carrots, shredded cabbage--red and white--Feta cheese, wontons, and Asian sesame dressing.

Eat, do the dishes--I am the washer and Joan the wiper. Walk down to get the mail, using the far elevator going and coming to add a little more to my mileage.

Next into 1503 to watch a Netflix series, ending at about 9.30 pm.

Into bed about ten o'clock, intending to read for the period before Joan announces that she is falling asleep, which happened quite shortly after we had started reading. I leave her with a good night kiss, and retreat to the living room, where I decide I will go into the Guardian and do the crossword, which I solve with minimal cheating. This lasts me to about 11 o'clock.

Teeth-cleaning--an evening ritual, which includes my electric tooth brush, ordinary toothbrush, pointy tooth brush, flossing, and the tricky flossing under the lower right bridge. Topping off with an antiseptic mouthwash.This ritual is probably excessive, but it is a long time since I needed anything done apart from the routine cleaning.

Bed at 11.15, and I was still awake at midnight....

(BTW...I have mentioned very little about Joan. This was a day in which was engaged in important Zoom sessions in the morning and in the afternoon she went to the hairdresser. On other days, we spend more time together.

And there is one activity that occurs every other day: the morning back exercises that I have been doing ever since the attack of sciatica immobilised me in London.)