Fine, thanks, and you?

Lots of words today but no pictures.

My back went out (translation: into muscular spasms) about a week ago and recovery has been slow (translation: virtually non-existent). For the first time in our married life except for the times when I happened to be away on business trips I slept in a different bed from Mrs. RWP last night. It finally dawned on us that the mattress in one of our other bedrooms is firmer than the one in our room. Getting out of bed or even just turning over has been excruciating. For the record, changing beds didn't seem to help. Our chiropractor, who used to say "Ice is nice" for lower back pain, has changed his tune and is now telling us that recent studies recommend using cold for crisis pain and heat for chronic pain. Accordingly, not knowing whether mine is chronic or crisis and not knowing exactly what to do, I have been alternating between 15-20 minutes of ice pack and 15-20 minutes of heating pad. Some days it helps and some days it doesn't. Maybe I'm just making things worse.

It has now been about four months since the surgery on Mrs. RWP's left eye and two months since the surgery on her right eye. Her vision continues to fluctuate, probably because the eyes are at different stages of healing. The surgeon said this would happen, but Mrs. RWP finds it a bit disconcerting. Ever since April 15th I have been putting various kinds of drops into first one, then both, of her eyes. These have included Prednisolone 1% ophthalmic solution (a steroid), Vigamox, Oasis Tears Plus (non-prescription), and strangest of all, serum teardrops made from her own blood. Three times now we have made the trek into Atlanta so that the nice people can extract seven or eight vials of of her blood at a time and centrifuge the bejeebers out of it in order to separate the red blood cells from the serum. After a couple of hours they then give the clear stuff back to us in ten or eleven little bottles. The surgeon said using this stuff will help Mrs. RWP's eyes recover faster because it contains her very own antibodies. Each time we go, the bill is $200.00 and it is not covered by Medicare Part D since the drops do not contain any pharmaceuticals.

Today my grandson Matthew leaves Kenya for home after an eleven-week stay. His dad tells me it will involve about 18 hours of flying and 30 hours of travel overall. He will be home for one week and then depart again for his second year at university. He is one busy fellow. I may have mentioned this before -- I can't remember -- but I find it interesting that our three visitors to Kenya this summer -- Matthew, Noah, and Nicholas -- have had completely different itineraries. One flew from Atlanta to New York to Dubai to Nairobi. One flew from Atlanta to Amsterdam to Nairobi. And one flew from Atlanta to London to Johannesburg to Nairobi. And boy, are their arms tired.

Yesterday, as we were sitting in the wing chairs in the sitting area of our bedroom and talking on speakerphone to a friend from church, suddenly a mama deer and a little spotted fawn came into our back yard and stopped not ten feet from our bedroom window. After a few seconds of "freeze time" during which we exclaimed our "oohs" and "ahs" and pondered getting a camera, they turned and left the same way they came. We live in the middle of a large housing development and I have never seen deer in our subdivision before, let alone at our window. It was a moment to remember.

This post is all discombobulated, but it cannot be helped.