That’s Navy talk for re-enlist or to convert it to civilian-speak she’s ready to sign up to do it again. Not!
That’s because today is Colonoscopy Preparation Day. She’s been on a no meat, no corn, no nuts, no seeds diet since Thursday and got to eat her last meal last evening as a “light” dinner. After that it’s the old multiple doses of laxatives starting last night and this afternoon she’s into the GI tract flushing system of a gallon of Gatorade mixed with (you guessed it) even more laxatives. Clear fluids only, no caffeine and no alcohol. She does get chicken broth and yellow jello but that’s about it for her.
We’ve got to be down to the doctor’s at 0730 in the morning for her procedure…and Neil has already scheduled a stop at the Golden Arches or whatever else she feels like eating as soon as we get out of there around noonish or so. He’s also given her priority access to the bathroom for the remainder of the day.
This morning he did some more troubleshooting on our ventilation fan that quit working. According to the manual there’s a self resetting fuse on the board that resets when you remove power. He tried pulling the fuse for the fans (at least the one that’s marked Ventilation Fans) and while this fuse does kill the living room fan the bedroom (broken) one beeps constantly with the fuse removed. Since there is only one power supply to the fan and the beeping needs power…he’s a bit confused as to whether the power was really removed or not. He went ahead and tried opening the battery disconnect to kill all DC loads in the house…the broken fan doesn’t beep when he did that and beeps once when the disconnect is closed…which according to the manual means the fan has power connected properly.
He sent an email to New Horizons to see if they have any other ideas…and will call the MaxFan people in the morning while waiting on Connie’s procedure to see what to do next. They already sent him a replacement motor but that wasn’t the problem. Hopefully we’ll get it figured out and fixed soon as no ventilation in the bedroom is a downer.
He finally tracked down the status of our TV repair as well…they ordered the replacement parts 10 days ago with a 3-5 business day estimated delivery…as of yesterday it was still in CA…must have been shipped from overseas and is scheduled for delivery on Tuesday. So, hopefully it will get installed, tested and be ready for pickup by Thursday and we can watch TV again. We’re going to have to go up to the clubhouse to see the SuperBowl and it’s commercials this evening since ours doesn’t work. We might be able to stream it on Fox to our iPad but that’s a pretty small screen.
I sent Neil down to the Eagle’s nest for some pictures; turns out that e3 (the larger of the two eaglets) died early this morning. The biologists are unsure what happened but it started acting weak and barely moving a couple of days ago…must have had something wrong with it as both e3 and e4 were gaining weight so it doesn’t look like it was insufficient food. On the other hand; the adults started feeding e4 more about 2 1/2 weeks ago so maybe they sensed something was wrong with e3 and that was part of the reason that e4 started getting more food.
He took a few shots…these are all of Harriet as Ozzie was not seen the whole two hours that Neil watched…and Harriet sat on the nest or adjacent branches the whole time except for one brief fly around right after Neil arrived. He also got a couple of shots of a peregrine falcon which just happened by; one of the local birders told him that it nested in the area and he had seen it a couple of times. Too bad it wasn’t stooping on some prey…that would have been a good shot. None of his falcon photos were worth a darn…so he included one he scrounged from the internet so you would know what he had seen. He also got one of the horse in the field and one of a cattle egret stalking bugs.
Harriet coming in for a landing.
Then hopping over to the adjacent branch.
An a couple of her regally perched around the nest area.
The horse who came over for a scratch and a cattle egret.
And finally a peregrine falcon…a much nicer photo than how his turned out as it wasn’t all that close to him. He could identify it pretty easily but with the distance and having the long telephoto hand held his shots just weren’t in focus very well.
That’s about it.
Travels with Gunther and Kara 
hi gang – (that bird in the last foto is staring at me…) will pray fer botha yall as regards yer caliediescope… but this does pose a thought regarding the ongoing human condition, so lemme see… we can put a man on the moon; we can see real-time fotos from the mars rover; we can map and alter any dna chain (that we know of) – and this is the only way to accurately diagnose a tummy/intestinal malady ??? lesse here, drink dis godawful brew we got here (might as well, you already paid fer it) – sorry ’bout the moose-scat flavor, we’re outa cherry… ok, where’s that telescope (and the KY)… now this won’t hurt a bit… relax, enjoy the drugs (I did, fer years) – I feel fer ya… (a suppository makes my eyes water !) – guess ima wuss. don’t ferget to get extry drugs – when they say “you’ll feel fine tomorrow”, ya gotta know they’re lyin’… (how do they say that without smiling ???) – I truly hope and pray that all is well, so please keep me in the loop – mebbe one day they’ll get past “practicing” medicine, lose the inquisition fetish, and come up with sumthin a little less gothic… my md buddy asked me ’bout havin’ one a few years ago, I politely informed him that “no” was a complete sentence. I finally gave in to a “fingerwave” (ask neil) – but one burning question remains – if they call it a “fingerwave, why is he pulling that glove up to his elbow ??? be brave connie – I’m prayin fer ya – (neil too).
miss yall,
me
Thanks for the good wishes from both of you; nothing to worry about as it’s just the every 10 year thing…no other reason for it beyond time passing. She’s OK, has a few polyps like mom did and diverticuliti (little pockets) that sometimes cause distress if she doesn’t get enough fiber but fine beyond that.
The prep is way worse than the actual procedure…they gave her general anesthesia and she was out of it. Got there at 0730 for an 0800 appointment and were out and headed home by 0945.
Between that and her eye thing…she’s been seeing nothing but doctors the past month it seems.
About 3 weeks ago she started seeing flashes around the edge of her vision in her good eye and got a floater in it…she’s got the fuchs spot on the other side so doesn’t see much from that one. Went to a local eye doctor who said that at our age the vitreous fluid in your eye separates from the retina at the edge. For those with extreme nearsightedness like her the separation causes flashes of light and they were a bit concerned that her retina could detach…they can fix that if they catch it within 72 hours. She had her visit on Tuesday and went back on Friday…and the fluid has completely separated so she’s out of the woods. One more follow up in another week and a half just to verify that the edges of the retina have healed correctly but they told her she’s 99.999% likely to be OK.
I liked the falcon picture; too bad it wasn’t one of mine but he refused to come that close to me.
They actually do have this thing called a virtual colonoscopy…where they do the whole MRI/computer thing; but if they see anything that might look interesting they just schedule you for a regular one anyway…and you still have to do the prep even for the virtual one. At least doing the real one initially means you only have to do the prep once…and the prep is far and away the worst part of the experience, the actual test is pretty much a non event since you’re all drugged up. It’s the spending the day before on the throne and having your entire digestive tract riled up that’s bad about it.
Sending prayers and best wishes for an all clear tmrw! ❤ BabySis