If the above seems an unusual title for a blog post, indulge me as I explain. We’ll start with the back end of it first.
In my last post, which was (gasp) more than two months ago, I talked about the immediate impact of surgery on my right foot to repair a torn ligament. It was written just two weeks after the event, and I had no idea what was to come. If I had…well, let’s just say I would’ve had to take another dip in the courage pool to face it.
Saying goodbye to Mom.
Three days after the surgery on April 11, I flew to Arizona to be with my mother during her final hours. My brothers and I were with her as she passed away on the evening of the 15th. It was a sad event, but not entirely unexpected. Mom was nearing her 88th birthday and had not been in good health for a while. She’d rallied in the past several months, coming home to Wisconsin for one last visit in September of 2023, then overcoming a broken leg to attend her granddaughter Yvonne’s wedding in February of this year. It would be the last time Mom would have her sons, daughters-in-law, grandchildren and great-grandchildren with her.
Three weeks after the wedding, Sue and I flew to Switzerland, where she would have her international conference. On our final full day in country, Brian texted to tell me Mom had gone to the hospital with a variety of ailments. Since Dad’s funeral in August 2022, Mom had been spending more and more time in the hospital. I never counted the days, but there were more than a few. This time, she hung on for nearly a month before she was moved into hospice care for her final days.
We scheduled Mom’s funeral and interment for June 27-28, allowing plenty of time for everyone in the family to coordinate their schedules, coming to Phoenix from as far away as Boston. Sue and I planned to be there, but the week I spent down there in April would have serious repercussions, which began to be felt on the first of May.
This time, it got me.
I’ve made dozens of trips to Arizona over the years, but never brought anything home with me that I should’ve left there. Until this time: I must have inhaled a fungus, a particularly virulent strain that causes a disease called coccidioidomycosis, commonly referred to as “valley fever.” On May 1, I began experiencing bouts of severe coughing and had a high fever. It took me nearly three weeks to get in to see my doctor, and a CT scan revealed something in the lower right lung that shouldn’t have been there. Was it bacterial, fungal, or perhaps even cancer? You don’t like to hear your doctor talking about the “big C” in relation to a test he’s just run on you, but he prescribed an antibiotic to combat the infection if it was bacterial in origin, which he said was the likeliest explanation, plus a steroid to control the coughing. To be on the safe side, he said, he’d schedule a visit with a pulmonologist at the big hospital in Marshfield, a two-hour drive away. That wouldn’t come until June 24.
The meds seemed to be working at first, but then they ran out a few days before my next scheduled visit with the local doc and the coughing roared back. Plus, my right leg was now swelling. After two weeks in the splint, two more in a cast and four weeks in a walking boot, on June 5 my podiatrist cleared me to walk without the boot (assisted by a cane) and, more importantly, to drive. But the foot didn’t seem to be responding well. I didn’t have full range of motion, and more tests on June 10 (Mom’s first heavenly birthday) confirmed what I suspected, that there had been some nerve damage during the surgery, likely when they applied the nerve block, that was cutting off signals to the muscles that weren’t working. It wasn’t permanent, the doc said, and the nerves would regenerate at the rate of one millimeter per day–but the affected muscles were some 300mm away from the site of the damage. Two months after the surgery, I was still looking at about eight more before I could expect full use of the foot.
Sue and I had decided to be aggressive with my treatment, so after being told on May 22 that I needed at least two more weeks in the boot, we began scheduling acupuncture and reflexology treatments. The June 5 appointment also set up physical therapy at Rice Lake’s excellent clinic, Optimum Therapies. I also decided to start treating the foot like a foot again, so I would basically force it to walk and support me. You know, the things feet are supposed to do. I wasn’t going to be punting for the Packers this year anyway, although Sue told me that kicking the bag in the gym was absolutely forbidden. In the weeks since, we’ve seen some progress.
The words you never want to hear in a clinic.
We headed to Marshfield on June 24, thinking we would finally get some answers about the infection. We got more than we bargained for. After a battery of tests and a preliminary consult with the pulmonologist, we were in the waiting room when another doctor came in. “Are you the Tindells?” Yes, we said. “We need to get you to the E.R. right now. You have a P.E.” I knew the first set of initials meant “emergency room,” words you never want to hear when you’re at a clinic, but the next set was scary: pulmonary embolism. The tests, he said, showed severe blood clots in both of my lungs, and they had to be removed right away.
To make a long story short, a procedure that afternoon removed clots from both lungs. An ultrasound of my right leg had revealed more clots, and they were sucked out the next day. Sue had driven home just before my surgery on Monday, trying to beat the arrival of a severe thunderstorm; she made it, but regretted her decision all the way, thinking that if the worst happened during my surgery, she wouldn’t be at my side for my final moments. But we talked by phone that evening and all was well. I was in my room and watching the Brewers game. Had I been home, I would’ve been doing the same thing. But at least now I knew my problems were being addressed. I wasn’t happy to be in the hospital, but it felt good to know progress was being made at last.
The next day, June 25, was the procedure to remove the clots from my leg, which likely developed thanks to the flights I took to and from Arizona in the week after the April foot surgery. The clots had migrated up to the lungs, as they are wont to do, sometime after the May 21 test in Rice Lake. Had we not gone to the pulmonology appointment on the 24th, we would’ve flown to Phoenix for Mom’s funeral two days later, with potentially lethal consequences.
My son Jim came up from Milwaukee on that Tuesday to spend the day with me, a much-appreciated gesture, and the next day Sue returned, as it appeared likely I’d be discharged on Thursday. During that last full day at the hospital the doc performed a bronchoscopy on both lungs, retrieving samples of whatever was in there, and off to various labs they went. By the next morning I was feeling better, with blood thinners starting to do their work. We went home that afternoon, listening to the live-stream of my mother’s funeral service on the way. On Friday, the doc called and said tests had confirmed the diagnosis of valley fever, and he prescribed the appropriate medication. We’ll see them again on July 9 for a follow-up.
It was during my hospital stay that I discovered what every patient finds out: daytime TV is a wasteland. At least on Wednesday, the Brewers had a day game. But one thing I did find during my interminable channel-surfing–during the first two days there, I had neither my reading glasses nor my Kindle–was that the Hallmark Channel has Frasier episodes every morning, two shows back-to-back. And this brings us to the first few words of this post’s title.
Discovering one of TV’s classic sitcoms.
It seems like almost ancient history now, but the sitcom Cheers was a TV staple from 1982-93, a ratings juggernaut that hauled in about 40% of the country’s population to view its 275th and final episode. One of the supporting characters of the show, set in a Boston bar, was Frasier Crane, a stuffy psychiatrist who often traded verbal spars with the more blue-collar drinkers. Crane was played by Kelsey Grammer, and when Cheers ended in 1993, Frasier picked up the good doctor’s story. And a long-running tale it would turn out to be: Frasier ran for another 11 seasons of its own, winning 37 Emmy awards for the show and its cast, including five straight years as Outstanding Comedy Series. Although I’d never been much of a Cheers fan and could not recall having seen a single episode of its famous spinoff, I immediately took to Frasier, enjoying the sharp writing and great characters, perfectly cast. Sitcom humor these days is often geared to young audiences with way too many pop culture references for us more senior folks, or it’s crude and not very well-written. Frasier was anything but that.
Upon returning home, I found out that the Hulu streaming service has all 11 seasons of Frasier available at the touch of a button, so every day when I ice and elevate my foot, I call up an episode or two. It’s interesting to see how the characters develop. Frasier, having gone through a tough divorce with Lilith, has left Boston for his hometown of Seattle. Instead of opening up a new psychiatric practice, he lands a job on a news/talk AM radio station as the host of a call-in show. One great thing they do on the show is use famous actors and actresses as callers on his show; an early episode featured Christopher Reeve, another had JoBeth Williams, and Joe Mantegna plays a newspaper columnist who hates Frasier’s show and then challenges him to a fight. So, every show I pay close attention to the credits to see who played the callers. The guest stars who appear on camera are also A-listers, including the likes of James Earl Jones, Eva Marie Saint, David Ogden Stiers and Michael Keaton.
The writing is sophisticated and crisp, the actors do a great job, and the show moves smoothly from one set to the next as the story progresses. So, as my foot heals and the fungus goes away, I’ve got something to look forward to when I have to pause my day and apply ice and elevation. Oh, and “Tossed Salad and Scrambled Eggs” is the show’s theme song. Sung by Grammer, it plays over the closing credits, adding yet another touch of quirky sophistication.
July should be a big month, especially if my health continues to improve, which I have every reason to expect. I have to make serious progress on my new novel, The Silver Falcon, if I want to meet my goal of launching it at the Birchwood Christmas Fest on December 7. We’ll see how far along the foot has come when we journey north to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula at month’s end for two days of hiking in the Porcupine Mountains. We still have our sights set on going to Africa in October to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro, but we’ll make that final decision after returning from the Porkies. If we can’t do the mountain this year, well, I’m pretty sure it’ll still be there in 2025.
When I was in the hospital, I knew my condition was serious, but I also knew I was in very good hands and my chances of survival were excellent. I can’t say enough about the care provided by Dr. Ahmad and the entire staff, many of whom were foreign-born, which is yet another great argument for reasonable, controlled immigration. I never really thought that I might not make it. I have all my ducks in a row and my belief in Christ assures me of where I’m going, but I would be sad not to have another 25 years or so with Sue, not to mention my kids and grandson. There are still many things we want to do, as individuals but especially as a couple. Kilimanjaro is just one of them. Now, thanks in large part to the folks in Marshfield, we’ll get that chance.
A Strenuous Writer's Life 