Are You Eating Tires Too?

 I bet you thought that was a totally silly question, that only an idiot  - or one of those morons filming themselves on camera doing stupid stuff just to get attention - would even give it a try. Come to think of it though, not much difference between the two categories. They probably are eating tires, too, but then, so are we.

We haven't studied it - yet - here in the US. But Switzerland has. And the answer they found is pretty much everybody has been eating, drinking, even breathing, tires. Yep, rubber automotive tires.

The thing is, what probably everybody knows without considering the implications, is that tires aren't just rubber. They get vulcanized for strength and longevity of use.  You may have thought of that as mostly a heating process, but it involves a lot of additives as well. We expect a lot of our tires, like 60,000 road miles of abuse before the steel belts show. Of course we almost never let them get that low on tread since they're simply not safe to drive well before then, but most of us hate to spend money until we absolutely have to do so. We pop in our cars, turn the key, and expect to go smoothly to wherever we want... for nearly forever. 

Manufacturers try to keep us happy by selling tires that perform as close to reasonable expectations as possible. They know we'll be back for more. Where we buy them will depend on how the last set worked for us. So stuff gets added to the rubber, things like DPG, 6-PPD, and 6-PPD-quinone.

Yeah, I have no clue what those are either, nor what precisely they do for tire longevity and performance.  But what is known is that those particular chemicals are toxic to mammals. You know, what we humans also are.  In studies on rodents, they have found that these additives lead to decreased fertility in males and have neurotoxic and neuroinflammatory effects. They haven't been studied for their effects on humans yet. After all, who would volunteer? "Hey guys, we know these things are poisonous to rats, but who wants to give them a try and report back what your symptoms are?"

Ri-i-i-ight. Remember they haven't been studied in humans on purpose. But the thing is, humans have been eating them. In Switzerland they've started studying them, finding them in the food supply - and in the air - and in the water, including high mountain lakes.

Go back to the tires and that inconvenient part about them needing to be replaced. The rubber wears off in microscopic bits with use. It gets in the air, on the ground, in the water. It lands on fruits and vegetables, gets taken up in plant roots, gets inhaled by whatever breathes. They're even in pristine (?) mountain lakes and rivers. They're everywhere.

Yummy!

Now alerted, while scientists have commenced to study how it's affecting us - though I'd imagine the first hurdle is separating out those rare people who may not have been exposed, off in some isolated corner of the world where tires are not used - we have to start thinking about how to minimize exposure. One way might be to no longer put those chemicals in rubber, but what happens to our tires then? Will they start falling apart on us? And under what conditions?

We could stop driving as a species. Uhh, camels, anybody? Horses and wooden-wheeled buggies? Lay rail everywhere and we have to walk all those places not on the lines? Sure, you bet, right away. It  could be great for the environment too,  but it just won't happen.

Those of us who don't bother to wash off our produce will have to start since the chemicals have been found on them. But as they're already in many of them it's only a tiny partial solution.

We could change our driving habits immediately, not by totally quitting but by doing it in a more tire friendly way. Fast starts and stops just make it worse. Ever heard the expression "lay rubber"? It's literal. You've seen the black streaks on the road. People get impatient, even angry, or their minds wander and they're surprised by that sudden reason to stop immediately running out right in front of the car. So we need to do better by giving ourselves more time to get where we're going, and consistently paying attention to all around us. (Put the damn phones down!)

Those are the kinds of things we could choose to do just for ourselves, and get twice the benefit from doing so. Meanwhile, it's a good thing that somebody's scientists are studying the problems to find out how much harm all that rubber is doing inside us. Our country's scientists won't be, or not soon.

But it's a pretty good bet we all are breathing, eating, and drinking rubber tires.

I'll take mine ala-mode please. How about a sprinkle of cinnamon?

His Best In Four Years!!!!

 Yesterday was the day we were waiting for. Both of us were a bit sceptical of how good the results would be, and tried not to be too confident ahead of time. After all, the last time we did this it not only hadn't been great, it turned into more problem than cure.

Yesterday was the day his back's pain interrupter was turned on. In preparation he's been going easy on his limited prescription of Percoset so he'd have some left for his 100 plus miles in the car. We discussed him having one before the ride to Minneapolis, but decided we didn't want any interference with his ability to tell how much pain relief he needed. If necessary he could take one on the way home.

His appointment started with the surgical staff inspecting his incisions for signs of healing or possible infection. He passed, and even better doesn't need to come back for stitches removal since they'll dissolve internally and let the outside bits drop away.

After they left, the tech from Medtronic came and spent over an hour with us. First he connected his computer up to Steve's now-internal mechanism. Wi-Fi is wonderful. It also means that like me, Steve now has to avoid magnetic scanners like those for security or in MRIs. That would reset the programming inside his body, which is what the next half hour was spent setting up, making a series of different programs for different uses. As each lead was powered Steve reported when he could feel the electricity and how far in which direction, while the tech asked him to move in different directions or in different movements like standing up or sitting.

The rest of the time was spent in showing how the chargers, programming tech, and nest of cords we were taking home and would be needing to use would work. The procedure took long enough that Steve needed to excuse himself for a restroom break, and reported when he returned that the walk produced no pain whatsoever! It was working!  

The one thing he did notice was that the more he needed the pain relief, the more he felt the electricity going through his body. What this means is that this system is smart tech, sensing need and supplying the right amount of relief, then backing off when not needed again. This resulted in the ride home providing a lot of tingling... instead of pain! We both still wince when a tire hits a bump or hole, but that's habit. Steve felt so well that he decided we'd head out to his current favorite restaurant and have a nice late lunch. His optimism led to a bit of over-reach, using muscles too long ignored, and exhausting him. PT is definitely going to be needed!

It also meant that the implant was working overtime once he sat in his recliner, and lying down didn't help at all. So we made what we hope is both first and last call to the tech guy, who is both smart and experienced enough to expect that kind of thing. He helped Steve change the power level to a lower point where it no longer was too strong but still knocked out the pain. The new plan is to power it back up when he's active, and back down for sleep.

This morning when he came out to the family room he was delighted to announce he'd just had the best sleep he's had in years, and several times today he's announced to others he's not felt this good in four years!

Next comes fishing !!!!!!!

From April Showers....

It's been nice to get some of them this spring. We've been watching the earliest garden plants spring up, as well as a lawn which will soon require mowing. The mowing won't be my idea, but part of the lease requirements as this place apparently is inhabited by people who like to pretend they live on a golf course green. Or that's what I guess anyway, since I haven't actually been rude enough to ask any of them. Yet.
Scillas pop up first. For some reason the rabbits and squirrels don't feast on either tops or bulbs. In a few years these will go from isolated plants to ground cover - inside official garden boundaries of course. They die back early in the season, leaving lots of room for other flowers.

A rainy April means a bumper crop on the outside of the concrete block walls as well, this time in moss. Some will get knocked off either from drying out or careless lawn mowing. Since I pay somebody else to mow, I try not to complain. It'll return when conditions are right.

With luck you'll also see early crocus and the beginnings of the rhubarb patch.

Unfortunately for the crocus - more so for those of us who like to enjoy them, the rabbits also like fresh spring greens/yellows/whites/purples. Many of those bulbs were harvested by squirrels in the fall, and what survived got their tops nibbled off. The bottom picture of the two shows two plants, which you may not have noticed, as the one on the left proved especially delicious. Of course the rhubarb was never in danger from any of the local critters with more than two feet. By now it's much bigger and we're starting to eat it.

Many of the daffodils failed to thrive over the winter, just rotting in the ground, and a few are simply slow in coming. Others had their tops cropped before buds could form. Fortunately, my absolute favorites popped up in a clump of four - after planting over twenty, of course! In the space of a week the blossoms go from cream and yellow to white and orange, which they finally arrived at today.

                         Happy May Day!

These were not the only surprises outside this morning. One of the good ones was seeing the Bleeding Heart going overnight from a tight clump of lacy stems of green to  draping rows of blossoms, the first stamens starting to turn white.

Last year I didn't get to them with a camera in time, due to the move delays, and missed the best part.

I also didn't get the hydrangeas pruned back at all, nor had the previous owners for at least a couple years, so a major cutting happened last fall. I've been anxiously waiting for indications that I did it right. Buds yet? No buds. How about now? Nope. Today? See for yourself:

In another few days I should be able to sort out the maple trees growing inside through and between the branches and get rid of those... for this year. I'm sure more helicoptor seeds landed last summer for another year's sprouting. One I partly got rid of last fall was the tallest thing in the north garden bed. It's short, not gone. Not yet anyway.

Of course not all surprises were good ones. My lilies have been sprouting, with more inside waiting for being ready to transplant into the garden to make up for squirrels. But while the squirrels are ignoring them, the bunnies have taken a liking to the leaves and buds.

Have I mentioned I've ordered a pair of live traps, to be delivered Saturday? I'm already baiting the area they'll get set in with fresh fruits and veggies the rabbits are supposed to prefer. I figure a couple days of watching to see what their favorites are will both inform me and reassure them that here is a reliable feast for dependable safe munching. I figure about a 4 mile drive for release should work well enough.  I know where several eagle's nests are.

Bair Hugger

No that's not a typo, or at least not mine.  It may have started that way. The logo is a blue bear silhouette with a smaller white bear cut-out, the young one getting a hug from the older.

Steve is home now recovering from his surgery. Our alarms were set for 3 AM. We were told be be there by 5:30, and there was a lot of prep ahead of time, including two showers with special soap to kill germs on the skin prior to the procedure. I got to rub it in all over his back, since that's where they operated, and he - like most of us - can't truly wash his own back. Since surgery was at the U of M hospital system in Minneapolis, and it was raining, dark, and the route contained road construction, the alarm time seemed sensible. 

What they "forgot" to tell us was that the building was locked until 5:30. We had the best luck on all parts of our route, arrived half an hour early, and had the rare privilege of standing around in a cold breeze in the dark waiting to the doors to unlock. Of course we were both cold. So were the other five people who hadn't gotten the useful version of arrival time requirements. But following this is where Steve lucked out and I didn't.

Unless you've not been to get surgery you know the silly paper gowns they hand out for .... modesty? They certainly don't do much else. Modest can even be iffy. But you come in a  bit chilled, the operating theater and your room are a bit cold, and most times the best you can hope for is a thoughtful nurse who will pile several heated but thin blankets on you. 

They never quite do the job, cooling down quickly. Nurses stay busy with many tasks and blankets are not the top of their list, even if they are yours.

Steve got no extra blankets, just a paper gown, and a pair of socks to keep him from slipping and falling while walking on the floor. There was a pillow in a weird place, designed to keep a sore back in the most awkward, painful position available. His bed was more slanted chair than bed, so the pillow was unable to be pushed aside, and the footrest was set at an angle where he had to keep squirming to keep from sliding off to the floor. There was also this odd little inset in his gown.  When he held it up to show me, neither of us could figure why they'd put a cup holder in a paper hospital gown in a surgical unit where beverages had been banned for hours. How cruel can you get?

Knowing he'd be much more comfortable with his feet up, but unable to figure out how it worked, I wandered down to the nurses' station to request a bit of help. As soon as she fixed his footrest she reached over to the wall and pulled a flexible hose off  the Bair Hugger. It plugged into that weird "cup holder" which of course wasn't a cup holder, and a flick of a switch turned on a lovely stream of warm air that piled out of the Bair Hugger and floated around inside his gown across the skin, bring welcomed heat to every inch he could get under that gown, lasting until he was wheeled away to surgery. AHAH! Hence the "air" instead of "ear" or even"are". 3M came up with a good name for this gizmo.

Suddenly he was warm and snug, and I was a wee bit jealous. Then again, I didn't have to go through surgery while they didn't quite put one under so they can still talk to him about the placements of the electrodes they were implanting. Of course, in the event, he got stubborn and refused to wake up enough to respond to them, giving them what I'm sure was a polite version of "Go *** yourselves." Or if not, they didn't bother me with details while chuckling over the story. After all, everybody knows you can't be legally responsible for whatever happens under the influence of anesthesia. It's why you can't sign documents, or drive, or ... whatever.

He goes back in a week to get the planted electrodes charged up from the new battery. This is much more sophisticated than the one that needed to be removed. The electrodes each have sensors which tell some other part how much current is going through them and whether it's right in the Goldilocks zone, too much (like the shocks from the first one), or too little and effectively useless. In the meantime he's getting lots of sleep today, and has a handful of good pain pills to last him till the gizmo gets officially turned on. They hand out antibiotics as well to prevent infections, and order him to basically not move his back. No twisting, bending, or lifting. If it drops to the floor it stays there until - guess who? - gets to go pick it up. If it's off to the side, guess who fetches it? If it's heavy... well, it just might stay wherever it is till next year!

Meanwhile we're both catching up on sleep. Or he is anyway. I'm getting a lot of phone calls, and surprisingly they're not all about how he's doing. The last one was about the solar panels on the house we sold. And no, if anyone else cares to know too, the bird guards around them didn't do much good. Pigeons are pretty smart critters as well as messy. By now eggs should be rolling off the roof and breaking all over the ground again. Apparently nest building under solar panels just isn't a pigeon's strong point!

Not my problem any more.

What Do You Call....?

Scientists are excavating fossils from a site in Big Bend National Park. The bones are huge and so was the dinosaur, one of the long necked variety. It is believed to be the largest dinosaur to have existed in North America, certainly appropriate for upholding Texas's reputation for pride in size, and lived in the Cretaceous period, around 69 million years ago.  Similar fossils from this species have been found before in the park, but this is the most complete and well preserved.

It needed a name, of course. So, they picked a very Texas kind of name for the beast:  Alamosaurus!

Imagine how that battle might have gone if one of those was still around. I can just see that huge neck swinging back and forth knocking fighters off the walls. While I doubt somehow it moved vertically I can also visualize it's head pounding down whomping on the fighters to clear the area so it can get back to some peaceful grazing again... supposing it wasn't as arid back then. They haven't said whether it was carnivorous or not, though my uneducated impression is the long neck varieties foraged from the treetops. It comes, of course, from watching "Jurassic Park" repeatedly. I doubt a "Cretaceous Park" would be all that different in general form/function memes. The name just lacks the same punch though.

But "Alamosaurus"?  LOL

On the Edge

As time gets closer, the worries increase. That's Steve's reaction to his scheduled and long awaited surgery coming up. It's close to a year now since we knew he needed it, when the pain interrupter in his back began to fail, first by not sending enough current to the electrode tips to disrupt the spinal signals, and them by sending shocks instead. Not only was each shock painful in itself, but the resulting jerks which each caused created even more pain in his back. We had to totally stop charging it, which still gave it about two days to lose all power.

There was a combination of efforts to assist him. First was a pain specialist who worked with him to prescribe opiates to ease the pain, which did a pretty fair job until she moved her office far enough away that the ride in the car to visits became their own torture. Arrangements to switch pain control to his primary care doc resulted in a lesser medication being prescribed for him, one which both of us have experience with and find about as useful for pain as a sugar cube. So after discussing it, we both decided to add ibuprofin back into his regimen. He's not actually supposed to be taking it, but we make sure it is combined with a meal to minimize digestive issues.

Concurrent with that were visits with back specialists who understand the various problems his back has, the failed implanted equipment, and the need to remove and replace it with a different version (brand) without quite the same history. Nearly a year later, the roadblocks to getting surgery for a "non-life-threatening" condition are finally surmounted. Those roadblocks included having both surgeons getting their schedules together, plan their strategy of one removing the old while the other placing the new, in as close to a simultaneous procedure for each electrode as possible, and finally, waiting ... and waiting ... and waiting for the shortage of sterile IV fluid to get him through the surgery to abate, after hurricane destruction of the factories. The diminished supply had to be held for truly life-threatening emergencies. Quality of life, or lack thereof, was not top of the list. As a result his inactivity resulted in its own set of health issues, one of the results being he now uses a walker to get around without fear of falling from lack of strength or balance.

One other thing that gave some relief, but only when used, meaning almost constant use, was his heating / vibrating "vest", which lets his back muscles relax somewhat. It doesn't actually cure the pain but keeps him from reacting to make it worse by tensing them. It needs standard household current to work, not a plug from the car battery, so basically he's become housebound. He orders groceries online and I drive to pick them up. I now do the same for my own, so it works out well enough... except for wear and tear on my shoulder, but that's another story, and I'm making my own adaptions.

Steve had to travel down to Minneapolis a few times, quite a trip in the car even if I manage to avoid every pothole and manhole-cover divot on the way. Unfortunately, I don't quite manage that. The surgery will be at the U of M hospitals, and the pre-surgical exams are held there. At least we know the route quite well now, which will be a good thing at 5AM, or what I refer to as O-Dark-Thirty. Yes, I know that's the wrong phrase for the time, but reflects what it will feel like when we have to wake to start the involved home pre-op process before we go. Plus it's a catchy phrase, even if I never saw the movie.

As long as it has taken, a bad as the pain has been, as frustrating as the many setbacks have been, Friday looms with oversized importance. It HAS TO work!!! Nothing can go wrong, the pain finally has to leave, and life has to change for the better. So of course Steve worries about it. 

Wouldn't you? Flip a coin, heads it works and he can start to resume a normal life, tails and the worst imaginable happens. There no longer seems a middle ground option. It no longer is maybe it won't be that effective, it's now thinking something will go wrong and he'll be paralyzed... or worse.

One practical thing we both agree on, because we've done it before but the documents are in Arizona, is both of us redoing our living wills. Before Friday! Since we first did them, things have changed, including geography, closeness to family, marital status... and the ravages of getting older and the realities of living with them.  What has also changed is the increasing strength of our love and the depth of our appreciation for the other, even in the simple things like me doing something for him that will save him moving his back, or his assisting me to get my arms into sleeves or pulling things down off high shelves because my shoulders won't cooperate. Such little things, yet so important: we work as a team, because we are a team.

It Passes For A Road Trip These Days

I had a reason to put about 150 miles on the car this weekend, all country driving. Some forest, lots of fields awaiting a farmer's touch, a stream or two, modest ponds with old blown cattails on their edges, and some good company for much of it.

I may as well been having a bird watching tour. Within the first ten miles I slowed for two different pairs of hen turkeys. For some reason it felt like they waited for an oncoming vehicle before wandering across. No hurry, just a surreptitious glance to be sure I wasn't going to change either my speed or my lane and actually endanger them. They might have been wondering where the toms were, but who knows what goes on inside turkey brains?

Shortly after those, several crows circled the road overhead, leading me to wonder whether they were looking for dinner that was alive or already dead. 

Shortly after those, there was some roadkill on the shoulder. It was only briefly, and unidentifiable both for being flattish and all black, as well as for being in the bill of an adult bald eagle after three quick tries to secure it, which quickly flew off with whatever it was.

That really made my day.

Much of the rest of  my drive was full of the usual. Up here that means miscellaneous ducks, mostly mallards, Canada geese pairs already defending patches of high ground above a patch of water, trumpeter swan pairs swimming in those patches of water or heads immersed hunting for bottom vegetation, and the rare solo sandhill crane silhouetted on the ridge of fields still stubble from last fall. The three I spied were still very brown from the dirt they work through their naturally grey feathers to rid themselves of buggy pests wanting to hitch a ride with their meal.

I did see one more bird I never see except in hunting season, and then only after the hunt has been successful: a ring-necked pheasant. This one was very much alive, strutting around on school grounds still short from last year's mowing, the grounds themselves backing up to more trees and fields.

All in all, a nice cure for winter's residual cabin fever.