It’s still dry

When I posted on August 6 that we were dry, we had received 2.24 inches of rain since May 10. In the time since, nature has been taunting us with heavy rain to our west, moving our way, and then a few drops when it reaches us. This was the weather radar this morning at 10:40.

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There was a very nice and fairly large thunderstorm passing just north of us. We could hear the thunder. We didn’t even get a sprinkle out of it. We’re at the pushpin.

This was all lined up and heading towards us later in the afternoon.

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We’ll get rain out of this for sure, right. Here it is 20 minutes later

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And then this. It looks like we’re getting rain here, doesn’t it?

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And then it was gone.

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But, look, here comes more, out to the west.

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You know we’ll get a lot of rain out of this one. Here it is, and we’re in it.

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And then it was gone. I checked the rain gauge. Three-tenths of an inch for the day, and this is what it looked like later in the evening.

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So with this 0.3 inches of rain today, we have had 2.58 inches since May 10. The rain chances for the rest of this week are going steadily down, and the forecast is for 90s the rest of the week peaking at 98 F by Friday. I wonder if it will ever rain again.

Heartening results

I went to see one of my two cardiologists on Wednesday to get the results of an echocardiogram I had the previous week. I was diagnosed last summer with reduced heart function. The amount of blood my heart was pumping (the ejection fraction) was measured as 35 percent of the volume of the chamber at rest, which is somewhere between 50 and 65 percent of normal (there is a range because the average amount of blood the heart pumps relative to the volume of the chamber has a range of 55 to 70 percent). An ejection fraction of 35 percent is the point below which dangerous heart arrhythmias can occur, thus indicating that an implantable defibrillator might be warranted. The ejection fraction measured this time was 45 percent, which is somewhere between 64 and 82 percent of normal. This cardiologist, whose specialty is electrophysiology, said he wouldn’t need to see me again.

So this was good news. My heart function has improved by almost 30 percent over the last few months. I’m not sure why. It could have been medications; studies have shown that the medication I’m on can help increase ejection fraction. It could be the increased exercise I started after the diagnosis. Aerobic exercise has been shown to improve ejection fraction. Or I could be recovering from a possible unknown and undiagnosed viral infection.

I suppose it’s also possible that a different person read the echo results and calculated the ejection fraction differently. It’s hard to get a good idea how accurate and repeatable ejection fraction calculations are using a 2D echocardiogram.

The second bit of good news was that the short EKG I had in the office showed no premature ventricular contractions (PVCs). PVCs don’t necessarily indicate a serious heart problem; a lot of people have them with no serious consequences. I, on the other hand, had a very large number of PVCs when I first went to the doctor. I suspected that an EKG would show a decrease in PVCs because the things I associated with them had almost disappeared. Those things included discomfort when I laid on my left side, and the inability of my home blood pressure monitor to count my pulse accurately. When I mentioned to the doctor that there were no PVCs, he said, “But that was only over six seconds.” I said, “Yes, but I had so many before that I would have expected to see some in that time.” He looked back at the previous EKG and agreed with me.

I was relieved as we walked out of the doctor’s office. I had already decided to stop worrying about it, and now I think I actually have a good reason to do that. Leah is also relieved, but she still worries. She also thinks that doctors should be able to say why I had the problem in the first place and why my heart function has improved. I have a much less sanguine attitude about the state of medical knowledge.

I was a little amused by the doctor. I could almost see him losing interest in me as he looked at the echocardiogram results. Since I was no longer a candidate for an implantable defibrillator, I was no longer a candidate to be his patient. He didn’t exactly give us the bum’s rush, but he was not inclined to talk about what might be going on with me.

I guess I understand that attitude. Doctors like him see lots of patients every day (multiple appointments at the same time) and it must be hard to look at every patient as an individual rather than as a heart that needs some work. I do think a doctor ought to be able to hide that attitude.

My heart function is still below normal, but I’m also still asymptomatic. I walk the dogs a couple of miles every day, down the mountain and then back up. When I get back home, I ride a stationary bicycle for 50 minutes. And then I go outside the work on the house. I’m hopeful that my heart function will continue to improve. It will be interesting to hear what the other cardiologist has to say at my appointment in September.

Friday Felines

We caught these three relaxing on the front walk a few days ago.

The Three Amigos

The Three Amigos — Sylvester in black, Zoe in white, and Smokey in gray.

They look pretty comfortable together here, but they aren’t really all that friendly with each other or with any of the other cats.

 

All hands on deck

Our deck has not weathered well. Many of the boards are warped and cracked (which might apply to me, too). Since I’m in the middle of some much-needed exterior maintenance, I decided it was time to replace some of the decking.

There are three problems. The first is that the current boards are tongue-and-groove, the result of a not-so-great idea by my framer. That means I have to run a circular saw down the joint between the boards to free them up to remove them.

The second problem is that the boards are nailed rather than screwed, which is also the result of my framer’s practices (plus the fact that he apparently didn’t have a good drill to use for deck screws). Deck nails tend to rust in place, which makes them hard to extract. Each nail is a little mini-project in itself.

The third problem is that tongue-and-groove two-by-sixes use some of their width for the tongue and groove, leaving the exposed face between a quarter and a half inch narrower than a standard two-by-six. That means that every new deck board has to have a thin strip ripped off the edge. Twenty boards by 12 feet means I have to rip about 240 feet of pressure-treated lumber. My father’s old table saw bogs down severely on every inch I rip. Ripping each board is a somewhat bigger mini-project in itself.

In the two hours (selected carefully so that they would be in the hottest part of the day) I worked Sunday afternoon, I got three boards down. I takes somewhat longer to get all the nails out than it does to rip the board, and I have to do it all on my hands and knees.

Here are the five new boards I installed over the last two days, along with some of the shards of tongues and grooves plus other assorted chunks of wood removed during the nail extraction process. The missing stiles will be replaced and stained some day.

deckboards

Our spindly tomato plant makes a cameo here, too.

The deck faces due south, a real advantage for solar gain in the winter. Unfortunately, solar gain also works well in the summer, too. Since having a heart problem diagnosed last fall, I have been exercising enough that my weight went down from the upper 160s to the upper 150s. I have been weighing around 157 to 159 each night. This afternoon when I stopped working on the deck, I weighed 150. That means I lost nearly a gallon of fluid in two hours Sunday afternoon. It was 82 F up on the mountain. I don’t know what would have happened if it had been 92 as it has been for the last few days.

I had three glasses of iced tea with supper. I am now planning on one Shock Top Belgian White as a finishing touch. I’ll probably be completely rehydrated by tomorrow around noon, just in time to start working on the deck again.

Friday Felines

Zoe made his routine visit to the vet on Wednesday. He feels more comfortable if he stays in his carrier.

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Everything went pretty well at first. They took blood and stuck a thermometer up his … well, you know. And the doctor saw …

His ear!

His ear!

I had just found a scab in his ear while we were waiting for the vet to come into the exam room. When the vet saw it, he ripped the scab off and said there was an infection, and he needed to clean it out and stitch it. That meant the vet had to put him under, and Zoe had to spent the night.

WHAT!

WHAT!

He was ready to be picked up Thursday morning. We expected it to be expensive. The total for his shots and exam and the surgery was $457. Ouch. Way too much money! But we had to do it.

Here he is at home afterwards.

zoe fixed ear

You can see the stitched wound in his ear and you might be able to tell that the side of his head was shaved.

We think he got into a fight with one of the other male cats and got a claw in the ear. We don’t know whether it was Smokey, Sylvester, or even Dusty. We know that Smokey and Sylvester jump on the other cats and on each other, but we haven’t seen Dusty do anything like that. So it was probably Smokey or Sylvester.  Mark suggests that we check under their claws for Zoe’s DNA.