My body, my identity

When someone I don't know asks, "How are you?" I respond with the standard small-talk answer: "Fine." When someone I know well asks the same question, the most succinct honest response is, "Fragile." I definitely have something amiss with my heart. Some tests have been done, and there are more to come. Some meds have been prescribed, and there almost certainly will be more. After my woozy Wednesday, I am feeling, for the most part, OK -- well enough to do what I need to do in a job that I love and hate in equal measure. But as I was listening to a gubernatorial candidate speak last night, and searching for good photo angles, I worried that I would not make it through this story assignment without keeling over and feeling the room spin around me. (I did.) And today I'm going to Pardeeville, a community I love, for an event I love -- and I'm hoping the volunteer EMT service is fully staffed today, but hoping even more that I won't need th...

💓💓💓💓 For four seconds, my heart stopped. I was feeling a little woozy all day, on my first day back at work after an absence (vacation and holiday) of about 10 days. When I first felt dizzy during an 8 a.m. Columbia County Board committee meeting, I thought it was because I stood up too fast when I sought a closer look at the price quote displayed on the computer screen. (Really? $43,000 and change to move audio-visual mechanisms in the courthouse?) But I got a little worried when the dizziness persisted after I got back to the office, plowed through my 84 emails and wrote the story about the proposed courthouse expenditure. My desk dizziness prompted me to get my blood pressure checked at the local Walgreen's. The reading, 100 over 70, was low, but I don't usually panic unless both the systolic and diastolic are in double digits. I thought a Subway -- a 6-inch roast beef on nine-grain wheat, with lots of peppers and onions -- would perk me up. I felt woozy enough in lin...

A new recurring dream has entered my subconscious. It joins the oldies-but-goodies: the college class I've never attended until the final, the drives past my grandparents' farm, the hidden rooms in our house... In my waking hours, I studiously avoid cakes, cookies, scones, muffins and the multiple variations of pie that seem to be part of any community occasion in Pardeeville. This is not nourishment. This is ballast. If I need grains and carbs, and I believe I do, then I'll get them in small doses from cereal bars, multi-grain flatbread, a little granola with yogurt, a Nutrigrain toaster-heated waffle, a bowl of oatmeal or the 100-calorie multi-grain English muffins that we keep on top of the fridge. But at night, during REM sleep, I chow down on corn bread with butter and real maple syrup, pizza, birthday cake, Christmas cookies...and I wake up feeling both relieved that it was only a dream and guilt-ridden for having dreamed it. And autumn is almost here. Already I...

If you follow me on Facebook, you know Jay and I returned to Phoenix for four days last week. You may well ask: Why go to the desert Southwest in August, when it's 100 degrees or more outside? And why go back to the same city -- the same resort, even -- where you spent the post-Christmas week of 2016 crippled, confined to a hotel suite and zonked on pain medication? The first question is relatively easy to answer. We crave sunshine and dry heat, and we got plenty of both. (Yes, we were diligent in the use of sunscreen, and we kept hydrated.) The second question is a little more complicated, but it boils down to a writer's craving for a good story with a happy ending. December 2016 was a tough time for us. My mother had died on Sept. 5; I'd spent much of the year, including the month before Mom's passing, running to and from Des Moines to address one crisis after another. My brother Matt and I were with Mom when she died -- and as painful as the experience was, it wa...

So let's test the truth of the aphorism: A picture is worth 1,000 words. December 2016:  Phoenix, Arizona. I'd just been diagnosed with osteoarthritis; other than this short crutch-walk in the courtyard, I'd spent most of our vacation in our suite. August 2018: Phoenix, Arizona. Same resort, same courtyard, same woman -- only 130 pounds lighter, and walking without crutches or pain.

As readers know, I don't mince words when it comes to clueless doctors -- those who don't listen when their large patients describe symptoms,  but instead look only at the number on the scale and assume everything that ails the patients will be cured with crash diets, dangerous diet pills or bariatric surgery. I've known my share of those doctors. But I've also had great care from great doctors. A great doctor is one who understands medicine not just as science, but as art; whose in-depth knowledge of body chemistry and mechanics gives rise to a sharp, reliable intuition; who, despite clinic requirements to see a certain number of patients a day, and limit time with any one of them, still sees each patient as a whole person, not just a body that needs fixing. My primary care physician, Dr. Hampton, is one of those doctors. She knows me well, treats me well, talks to me as one intelligent woman to another, and has never steered me wrong. In this day and age when heal...

One of many reasons why I keep returning to the clinic-based aquatic center is because I have something vital in common with every person there, whether or not I know their names. We are, every one of us, people who know what it's like to live with excruciating, unending pain. And even people who have found enduring relief from their agony -- people like me -- need to remember. In that respect, Facebook helps. Here's a screenshot of my Facebook status one year ago today: Sometimes, especially when my knee is throbbing and every step is agony, I remember this passage from Joseph Heller's "Catch-22" and nod in agreement: "Good God, how much reverence can you have for a Supreme Being who finds it necessary to include tooth decay in His divine system of creation? Why in the world did He ever create pain?" "Pain?' Lieutenant Shiesskopf's wife pounced upon the word victoriously. "Pain is a warning to us of bodily dangers." ...