We’ve had a few activities outside of the daily norm here over the past two months – some good, others not so much. In chronological order, we get to start with the fun stuff.

Donna and I booked a flight out of Mesa Gateway Airport to Spokane, Washington on December 9th. We flew on Allegiant Air – they have a direct flight to and from Spokane out of Mesa, but you’re limited to only a couple of flights scheduled per week. Our best choice was to depart on Friday, December 9th and return on Monday, December 12th. Our reason for heading up to the snowy north country was the graduation of our granddaughter Lainey from Washington State University College of Nursing.

Like her mother, my oldest daughter Alana, Lainey earned her RN-BSN (Bachelor of Science in Nursing) Degree.

We picked up the rental car around 3:30pm and it seemed like we should have plenty of time to reach the Cowles Auditorium at Whitworth University for the convocation and pinning of nurses. But wait, this is the snowy north. The roads were treacherous, covered with snow and ice. A light snow was falling and it was dark. I chose an alternate route to avoid the inevitable rush hour traffic on the usual routes into north Spokane.

We had little traffic, but most of what we encountered was understandably moving along slowly. Occasionally, a testosterone-filled driver of a lifted four-wheel drive truck would blast past – disregarding the fact that he couldn’t stop that three-ton mass much quicker than anyone else. We made a shortcut crossing over a residential street from one main thoroughfare to another. Unfortunately, a clueless driver stopped in the middle of this narrow street at the top of a small rise. The car behind it made it worse when he went around her left side, slewed diagonally, stopping to block the rest of the roadway. Luckily, they were able to get the first car to the side of the road after several minutes. I wasn’t about to back down the short hill into a busy street to reroute.

We made it to the commencement and pinning just in time. From there, we drove to the east valley where Alana and her husband, Kevin had rented a large AirBnB home for the weekend. There were enough rooms for everyone, including Kevin’s son Kyle, his mother Donetta, Alana’s mother LuAnn and her husband Jerry and Lainey’s sister Gabi.

The actual WSU Commencement was scheduled for Saturday in Pullman, Washington. We woke to winter storm warnings and possible treacherous driving conditions on the way to Pullman. Lainey gave everyone a free pass and said she’d understand if anyone wanted to forego what was sure to be a two-hour-plus drive in bad conditions for a two-hour ceremony. Donna and I took the pass.

On Saturday night, we went out for a celebratory dinner at Twigs Bistro & Martini Bar. Our party numbered a baker’s dozen – I think we had a table of 13. The dinner was fun and the food was great. Back at the BnB, it was party time. I didn’t take any photos – don’t ask me why. I guess I’m out of the habit of making a record of our activities.

On Sunday morning, everyone packed up to head home. We checked in early at the Hampton Inn on the west side, near the airport. We couldn’t fly home until Monday due to the Allegiant Air schedule. It was worth the extra day to be able to fly out from and into Mesa Gateway. It was hassle-free and only a 15-minute drive from our place AND half the price of flying out of Phoenix Sky Harbor.

The next event was less pleasant. Donna’s parents live in Bennington, Vermont and are in their twilight years. Her mom had medical issues arise that resulted in brief hospital stay. When she came home, they needed assistance. Donna’s sister Sheila flew out for several days, then realized they weren’t ready to cope on their own. So Donna flew to Vermont on December 19th to take over with the intention of returning on Christmas Day.

Her parents’ needs exceeded her expectations and although Donna devoted 24/7 attention, her mom wasn’t improving. She made the decision to extend her stay until New Year’s Day. It was a good thing, because then her dad took a turn for the worse. They are both getting help every day now while Donna and her sisters try to arrange for them to move to assisted living. While Donna was working herself to exhaustion, I had nothing but time on my hands over the holidays.

On Thursday, December 22nd, I packed up my two refractor telescopes, mount and gear and headed up to the Weaver’s Needle Viewpoint and rest area to try my hand at deep-sky astrophotography from a darker, less light-polluted area. I failed miserably. Deep-sky astrophotography is a whole ‘nother world from planetary or lunar imaging. It requires different gear, software and techniques. For the next couple of weeks, the weather deteriorated so I spent the time studying the subject.

During the day, I would read articles and watch YouTube tutorials to try to figure out this hobby. Eventually, I had my ideas on what I needed as far as software and some hardware. I would study by day and in the evening I’d shop online, cocktail in hand. Most of the software I intended to use is available as freeware. However, you can’t do much in the way of hands-on learning with it unless you have the necessary hardware. I started spending money. I won’t go into the hardware details here – that’ll be another subject for another post.

I did buy a dedicated deep-sky astrophotography camera. I also needed a guide scope to accurately stay on target during long-frame exposures. This miniature telescope needs its own camera to track stars. It goes on and on. I took my time deciding on gear. I wanted to buy once, cry once, instead of just buying based on price only to have to upgrade later.

For a guide scope, I settled on the Altair 60mm guide scope with a focal length of 225mm. Again, I’ll go into more detail on this decision in another post. It was only available in England. I placed the order and was happy to see DHL delivered it within a week.

The guide scope will ride piggy-back on whichever primary scope I’m using at the time.

Donna returned on New Year’s Day after an uneventful travel day. I’m not sure if she was surprised to find I had added a bunch of new gear. She needed a few days of rest – she had been a 24/7 live-in caretaker for two weeks straight!

The last event I want to relate is somewhat bizarre and very unpleasant. On Sunday, January 8th, I woke up and thought it’s just another day. I had breakfast and coffee as usual and settled in front of the widescreen TV in the Arizona room for the last weekend of the NFL season.

Around 10:30am, I had a bloating sensation in my belly. It wasn’t very comfortable. By noon, my stomach was somewhat distended and I had no appetite. The bloating started to hurt a little. Later, my back ached as well as my lower ribcage and right shoulder. By dinner time, I knew something wasn’t right – it seemed like more than just indigestion.

When I went to bed at 9:30pm, I couldn’t get comfortable. If I lay flat on my back, the pain along my upper abdomen-lower rib cage was unbearable. Donna asked if I thought I needed to go to the ER and I said yes. I don’t take a trip to the ER lightly. My daughter Alana is an ER nurse and I’ve heard so many stories of people abusing the idea of medical emergency.

We went to Banner Baywood hospital which is only a few miles away from here. As I waited to check in, I couldn’t help overhearing the guy ahead of me. He was complaining of a persistent cough. When asked about when this condition started, he said, “About a month ago.” There you go – he’s been coughing for a month and instead of making an appointment to check it out during that time, he decides now it’s an emergency situation. I don’t know anything about his condition or final disposition, but it didn’t seem like a reasonable course of action to me.

After waiting for about 90 minutes – my pain level continuing to increase by the minute – I was called back for an EKG. I told them there was no way I could lie flat on my back without pain management. They made do with me propped up and suffering extreme pain in the upper right quadrant of my abdomen. Then I was sent back to wait some more.

Eventually I was called back to an exam room. A young female PA conducted the exam. She was very competent and quickly zeroed in on a possible gall bladder issue. She ordered an ultrasound and also chest x-ray to rule out other possibilities. Once they had the ultrasound results, things started moving. I was given pain injections while a treatment plan was developed. It’s a bit blurry in my mind, but the way I remember it, they gave me 50mcg of fentanyl before I had the ultrasound. This did nothing to dull the pain. I later read that 50mcg is a minimal dose for someone my size.

Later they switched to dilaudid, then morphine injections. They moved me to 6th floor and scheduled surgery. I met the surgeon, Dr. Garner around 8:30am. He was pushing to get me into the OR ASAP. I was in pre-op a little past 9am and in surgery by 10am. In pre-op, I told the anesthesiologist that transferring me to a supine position on the operating table would be more painful than I could bear. He said, “Don’t worry, I’ll see to it so you won’t feel a thing.” He was right. The next thing I knew, I was waking up in recovery.

Dr. Garner was concerned that an open-type surgery would be required to sucessfully remove my gall bladder, but he told me he would do his best laproscopically first. He managed to succeed. He found what he suspected. The ultrasound revealed a thickening of the perimeter walls of the gall bladder. This indicates infection and possible gangrene. He said the gall bladder had many gall stones and the walls were dangerously gangrenous. He told me that certain infections can create necrosis and gangrene within 24 to 48 hours! I hadn’t had any previous symptoms that I recognized.

In hindsight, I may have had referred pain in my right shoulder and back during pickleball over the past couple of weeks, but who would associate that with gall stones and gall bladder infection? Dr. Garner told me that life-threatening sepsis was a real possibility if the surgery hadn’t taken place in time. I didn’t have any time to spare!

I spent the next two nights at Banner Baywood Hospital. I give the nursing staff a huge thank you! They were awesome – competent and attentive to my needs. Dr. Garner was great as well. The other doctors I have to say weren’t so impressive. They assign what they call a “hospitalist” to each patient. However, my hospitalist was a different doctor each day that spent about 30 seconds looking at my chart, listening to my lungs (which the nurses did several times a day) and then moving on to the next patient. In the old days, we would have what was called an attending physician that was more in-tune with the patients on his rounds. It seemed to me the hospitalist was more concerned in keeping the hospital out of trouble than really taking care of the patient.

I’ve been resting and taking scheduled antibiotics and pain mangement since I returned home on Wednesday, January 11th. They gave me a presciption for oxycodone, but I’ve avoided using it. I haven’t had good experiences with that drug. I’m managing pain with a cocktail of tylenol (500mg) and ibuprofen (2 x 200 mg tablets) every six hours. The tylenol knocks back the pain and combining it with ibuprofen fights inflammation and further relieves pain. I learned this at the hospital and it’s surprisingly effective.

I took the last of the antibiotic today and am gald to put that behind me. I’m still battling bouts of fatigue as I recover and type this – I’m feeling rather dull-witted at the moment. Tomorrow I have a follow-up with Dr. Garner and he’ll remove the drain tube from my abdomen which I’ve had since the surgery. From there, with any luck, I’ll be back up to speed in a couple of weeks.

It’s raining here today and probably will continue through the night. It should clear up by tomorrow afternoon. It has been an unusually wet winter to date – we’re more than a tenth of an inch above normal for the entire month and we’re only halfway through it. It doesn’t look like we’ll see 70 degrees for the remainder of the month, but I can’t complain about high 60s in January.