Good News

It's no bigger and that's a win!

Relatively speaking good news and about damn time too.

Plotkin has reviewed my films (he looks at them online versus on film actually and has for the 12 years I’ve been seeing him, since Ojemann died…fuck, I’m old) and I’m “stable.” Stable doesn’t mean no growth OR shrinkage necessarily—what it means is that there’s been no change worth fussing about. I’ll be MRIed again in June. That is, that’s the plan UNLESS I start showing fresh, bothersome symptoms (like more headaches, weakness on my left side, exploding eyeballs—okay, I’m kidding on that last one). I need to be watchful but not manically so—chill but observant. Good luck to me on that!

What the good doc wants me to concentrate on over the next six months is increasing my fitness. Yup, I’m already on that. What he told me to do is think about what I’d like to be able to do again and work towards that.

I wanna wander through lava fields in Iceland, explore archeological digs on the Shetland Islands, walk on the beach here at home—pick up shells and rocks, visit my cousin Della in Berlin and check out a zillion museums and galleries. (COVID will have to cooperate with my plans and chill the fuck down) Clearly my plans involve a lot of walking and a good bit of that will be over uneven ground.

To achieve this, I’ll increase my distance a bit each month so I zoom (sorta, kinda, not really) from half mile+/mile+ each day to a consistent mile+ per day, then 1.25 daily and on up. I’ll start doing additional short walks with a cane versus my rollator until my balance is fine enough to just use a cane. Then I start using only the cane on my longer walks.

The key here is to be diligent, consistent and focused. I’m 64—I plan to live a lot longer AND have fun while I’m at it. I watched Daddy give up on his health (he didn't have Nf2—I inherited that from mother) and spent his last 15 years being a mess, becoming more and more helpless. If he’d stayed active maybe he wouldn’t have slipped into dementia. Maybe he still would’ve been subject to depression but, conceivably, it wouldn’t have hit quite as hard.

Sitting around watching TV all day—not walking, exploring, exercising, reading or creating shit is a great way to banjax my bean and insure that my final years are, if nothing else, boring as hell.

This, THIS, is what keeps me rehabbing—I don’t wanna miss out on all the fun.