Life is a symphony, or not

I'm not very good at multi-tasking, and since I'm involved with several things at once just now and trying to cope with them all simultaneously, my brain tends to get frazzled and wants to fight back by shutting down altogether. "Stop the world, I want to get off!" it cries, and not much gets accomplished when that happens.

I like to read one book at a time, so naturally I am reading two at present. Over a year ago when Mrs. RWP and I were visiting our daughter's family in Alabama, I noticed Sam's copy of To Kill A Mockingbird and asked if I could borrow it if he was through with it. He was, and I did. I read it when it was first published nearly sixty years ago and I thought it would be interesting to re-visit it now that I am past eighty. I laid it aside in a drawer when we returned home and didn't find it again until last week. The other book I have begun, which was sent to me over a year ago as well by my blogger friend Snowbrush out in Oregon, is The Long Loneliness, the autobiography, as the cover states, of "the legendary Catholic Social Activist" Dorothy Day, who was born in 1897 and died in 1980.

Since Mockingbird is fiction and Loneliness is non-fiction, I am hoping to navigate them more or less simultaneously, although literally simultaneously would be something of an impossibility.

My daughter, who began chemotheraphy for breast cancer two weeks ago today, lost much of her hair yesterday. Fortunately, the wig she had ordered arrived in Friday's mail. We had made the 3-1/2 hour drive over on Thursday to keep her company while her husband was teaching a class in Mississippi and we returned to north Georgia on Saturday afternoon. We had a good visit although she has already begun to experience some side effects from the chemo. Her next treatment is a week from today and will continue every three weeks until July, at which time the oncologist will assess the situation. That is on our mind at all times.

I am scheduled to receive injections in both eyes on Wednesday (intra-vitreous injections, they're called) for the macular degeneration that was first diagnosed in 2017. These injections typically occur every four to six weeks. Our son, who has been transporting us to these treatments, is without a vehicle at the moment. A deer ran out of the woods and collided with his car recently and the repair shop had to order replacement parts from Japan to repair some of the damage said deer caused. If his car is not ready today or tomorrow, I will need to make other arrangements. I can drive myself when only one eye is being treated but not when both eyes are being treated. Mrs. RWP doesn't drive any more. A neighbor who had been very helpful and more than willing to assist underwent surgery for anal cancer recently and is now wearing a colostomy bag, so though her spirit is willing, her flesh is weak. I am hoping to hear from my son soon so that I can ask the doctor's office to treat one eye only this week and make a follow--up appointment for the other eye for next week. This novel way of solving my dilemma also means that I will be required to pay two co-payments to the doctor instead of one.

Our little dog has decided to go on a hunger strike of sorts and is eating far less than usual. We have tried giving her dry kibble, kibble with goat's milk, and kibble with pumpkin puree, but it is anyone's guess from one day to the next whether she will eat her food. She was a little on the pudgy side anyway, so losing two pounds of her fifteen in the past month may not be a bad thing, but one tends to worry about one's furry pets.

I don't want to sound like a whiner, a complainer, a lily-livered low-life of a specimen of humanity who doesn't realize that lots of other people have far worse things to deal with, but neither am I ready to sing tra-la-la with Pollyanna and accept whatever comes my way as being the best of all possible worlds. (I have no idea whether Pollyanna sang tra-la-la, but it sounds good, doesn't it?)

Another Dorothy, Dorothy Parker. wrote the following:

Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
A medley of extemporanea;
And love is a thing that can never go wrong;
And I am Marie of Roumania.

In case you are wondering why I would include those particular lines in this post, you can find out by reading this.

Lo, how the mighty are fallen, or I am not always right

First things first: On this day -- March 19, 2020 -- the vernal equinox will take place for most of the Americas. It will occur at 11:50 pm Eastern Daylight Time, ten minutes before tomorrow comes. The rest of the world will see its arrival in the early hours of March 20 because of a little thing called time zones. This year's vernal equinox happens to be the earliest it has occurred in 124 years.

My barber calls me a walking enyclopedia.

I hope people don't find me annoying. If I encountered me, I probably would be annoyed. I do know a lot of stuff, mostly trivia. I don't study it or learn it on purpose, it’s just that things I hear or read seem to get stuck in my memory banks. My theme song ought to be "You're Easy To Remember, But So Hard To Forget."

However, there are big gaps in my memory banks, subjects about which I know very little and subject about which I know absolutely nothing. I try to avoid those subjects as much as possible because I don't want my abysmal ignorance in certain areas to be on display.

One of my favorite television programs is Jeopardy! with Alex Trebek. I love to call out the answers and many times I am right, but many times I don't have a clue. Well, they give me a clue, but it doesn't help.

What stuns me are the times I know the answer or make an educated guess based on the clue and not one of the three Jeopardy! players presses a buzzer. In recent days I have found myself yelling "Haile Selassie!" and "Tweedledum and Tweedledee!" and "Singapore Sling!" at the screen, but the contestants never seem to hear me. By way of explanation, I am not a drinker, but I am, as I said, a reader and a listener. The category was Alliterative Two-Word Names Of Alcoholic Drinks and the clue, which was most helpful, mentioned the Malayan peninsula, so what else could it have been? One contestant guessed Rob Roy but the last time I looked, Scotland was not on the Malayan peninsula.

The Final Jeopardy question the other night was something about a movie studio's high water bill during filming of a movie in 1952. I said Singing In The Rain (one of those "What else could it be?" moments) and two people answered correctly, but one woman had written down The Wizard Of Oz. Everybody knows that The Wizard Of Oz was released in 1939, not 1952. Don't they? Apparently not.

This is long and meandering, but I'll get to the point eventually.

Yesterday our 23-year-old grandson drove us 20 miles to my monthly eye appointment so that I could have another injection in my right eye for macular degeneration. Normally I can do the driving, but this month I was scheduled to have my eyes dilated, and it would have been rather difficult to drive the 20 miles back home with my eyes dilated.

On the way I was telling him that last month I was examined by a new technician who told me his name was Mel. Tall, thin, and black, Mel spoke with an accent I couldn't identify. He told me without my even asking that Mel was short for Melchizedek. I recognized the name from the story of Abraham in the book of Genesis in the Old Testament, so I assumed he came from a Christian family. I asked him where he had come to the U.S. from and he said he had spent the last five years in the U.K., but that he was from Ghana originally.

At this point, my grandson said, "Oh, Ghana! That makes sense that he went to the U.K. because Ghana is part of the British Commonwealth of Nations."

I, the family walking encyclopedia/know-it-all, said, "No, I don't think Ghana is one of the British Commonwealth nations."

My grandson said he must be thinking of another country starting with G.

I knew it couldn't be Gibraltar because Gibraltar is a British Overseas Territory, not a Commonwealth nation, so I, being my ever-clever self, said, "Gaustralia!". He laughed, and when I said "Ganada!" he laughed even more. My third possibility was G-New Zealand. "And it's still pronounced New Zealand," he said, "because the G is silent!"

We always laugh a lot when we're together.

Hours later, back home, in the evening, something made me google British Commonwealth of Nations. There it was, plain as day: Ghana.

I pulled out my smart phone and texted my grandson. "I'm only going to say this once. You were right and I was wrong! Ghana IS a member of the British Commonwealth of Nations. I looked it up."

He replied, "Be still my beating heart! I never thought this day would come. HaHa".

My mother used to say, "Pride goeth before a fall" which is also from the Old Testament (Book of Proverbs). It's not an exact quotation. The full quote is "Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall."

My hope is that I am neither proud nor haughty even though others are always telling me how much I know. What I know is how much I don't know. No, that's wrong. I don't have a clue how much I don't know, but I'm sure it's voluminous.

If you catch me getting proud or haughty, you have my permission to sneak up on me and kick me in the behind.

The eyes have it.

That is not a typo. I don't mean ayes, that the ayes have it as opposed to the nays. I meant just what I said, that the eyes have it as opposed to, say, the feet.

Houston, we have a problem.

Recently I learned that I have Age-related Macular Degeneration (AMF). If you don't know where the macula is, here's a helpful chart:

When my ophthalmologist told me that I have macular degeneration, I thought immediately about a friend of mine who was told the same thing about 25 years ago who has become legally blind. I immediately thought this will be happening to me also, but the good doctor told me it probably will not. For one thing, mine was found fairly early. For another, the medical community has learned a few things in the past 25 years.

Most of the information in the remainder of this post is from a handout provided by the American Academy of Ophthalmologists.

Age-Related Macular Degeneration (AMD) is a problem with your retina. It happens when the part of the retina called the macula is damaged. With AMD you lose your central vision. You cannot see fine details, whether you are looking at something close or far, but your peripheral vision will still be normal. This is akin to looking at a clock with hands and being able to see the clock's numbers but not the hands.

I would say that the illustration above is very accurate. In very dim light I experience something quite similar, except that in my own case the smudge is only about the size of a quarter instead of the size of a silver dollar.

AMD is very common. It is a leading cause of vision loss in people 50 years or older. Unfortunately there is no cure for AMD. But it can be treated, if that is the right word, slowed down significantly, or even arrested at its current level in some cases.

I have learned that there are two types of AMD, "dry" and "wet." Lucky me, I have both types (one type in my left eye and the other type in my right eye).

Sometimes drusen (tiny white or yellow particles that form under the retina) develop. They seldom cause vision loss, but many (or very large) drusen can be a sign of AMD.

Dry AMD is quite common. About 90% of people who have AMD have the dry form. Dry AMD occurs when parts of the macula get thinner with age and drusen grow. You slowly lose central vision. There is no way to treat dry AMD yet. However, a major study that lasted several years (called AREDS and AREDS2) revealed that people with serious vision loss may be able to slow their dry AMD by taking these vitamins and minerals on a daily basis:

Vitamin C (500 mg)
Vitamin E (400 IU)
Lutein (10 mg)
Zeaxanthin (2 mg)
Zinc (80 mg)
Copper (2 mg)

...so I have begun doing that. They can be purchased over the counter without a prescription. The important thing is that the brand you buy says "AREDS2" on the package. I'm taking PreserVision by Bausch & Lomb.

Wet AMD is less common but much more serious. Wet AMD occurs when new, abnormal blood vessels grow under the retina. These vessels may leak blood or other fluids, causing scarring of the macula. A person loses vision faster with wet AMD than with dry AMD. To help treat wet AMD, medications called anti-VEGF (Vascular endothelial growth factor) drugs can help reduce the number of abnormal blood vessels in the retina and also slows any leaking from blood vessels. This medication is given through injections (shots) in your eye. As I was saying, lucky me.

I am grateful that treatment exists and that complete blindness will probably not occur. Still, who wants to get shots in the eye?

Nobody, that's who, unless you discover that you need them to retain what vision you have.

So I received my first shot a couple of weeks ago and will be getting one per month for a while. The doctor said that if there is noticeable improvement he may lengthen the interval between the shots.

Laser surgery may also be used to treat some types of wet AMD. The doctor and I may be talking more about this down the road.

You now know as much about Age-Related Macular Degeneration as I do.

Lucky you.