Natural Night Owls

January 2006

I like to stay up late. It's my natural time to get things done! I have to force myself to go to bed, or I'll stay up until 2 a.m. 

 I have speculated that this might be an inherited trait, from my mother's maternal line. Her Aunt Letha (Eaton) Blair was a professional night owl. For many years, she was the night operator at the telephone office in Bassett, Nebraska. I remember that my mom used to call Aunt Letha at night and chat with her if she wasn't busy. 

After Letha retired from the telephone company, she found a job being the overnight desk clerk at the Range Hotel in Bassett. She worked there for several years before retiring completely. 

I learned recently that my nephew Ben likes staying up late, also. This new bit of evidence supports my theory that there's a bit of the night owl in the family line. Keely and Isaac definitely have the trait, too.

Poison Ivy

January 2006

I have a small patch of itchy welts between two fingers of my left hand. It looks and feels a lot like poison ivy, so I washed it with Isaac's special poison ivy soap and put some calomine lotion on it. If it is poison ivy, I probably had second-hand contact through the cats or possibly the firewood.

My mom was very sensitive to poison ivy. My sister Charlotte breaks out terribly from it, and Isaac is very allergic to it also. So is Dennis. Keely has had it several times, but I don't think she is quite as sensitive as Isaac.

I wasn't allergic to poison ivy at all during my younger days but I exposed myself to it too many times, and now the allergy has developed. At one time, I could wade knee-deep in poison ivy to go fishing and not even break out. I wouldn't dream of doing that now! "Leaves of three, leave it be!"

I read once that birds will plant a friendly habitat for themselves in your yard, if you will let them. The article said to identify the area and stop mowing it. Then, put up some wires in the area for birds to perch on. In a few years, many seeds in the bird droppings will sprout and grow, and the birds will soon have all their favorite foods growing right in your yard. The article mentioned that poison ivy would probably be one of the plants that springs up.

Mama's Mastoiditis in the 1930s.

January 2006

Until Dennis got mastoiditis, my mother was the only person I had ever known who had suffered this problem. She had mastoiditis when she was about 8 years old. Obviously her ear (or ears) were badly infected because she had surgery on her mastoid bone (or bones.) I think she had some hearing loss from it.

In the early 1930's, money was tight. I imagine that Mama got pretty sick, and home remedies were attempted, before she finally saw a doctor. Her mom had passed away recently, and I don't think that Grandpa Harry Sees had remarried yet.

The doctor drove Mama in his car from Gordon, Nebraska, to the Mary Lanning Hospital in Hastings, Nebraska, for the surgery. It was a long trip -- over 200 miles -- and it must have been an exhausting and scary experience for a sick little girl. I am not sure how long she had to stay at the hospital, but surely they kept her for a few days.

Mama said that they stopped on the way home and had ice cream. I'm glad she had at least that one happy memory of the whole ordeal.

Infection-fighting antibiotics did not yet exist in the 1930s.

Ear Problems and a Katrina Injury

January 2006

Dennis has been having trouble with his neck and ear, and it's been dragging on and on. To quickly summarize part of the story, he's had a bad ear infection. I theorize that he got it in Kuwait.

The doctor has been a little slow figuring out exactly what's going on. Early in the fall just after his first Hurricane Katrina relief trip to Gulfport, Dennis went to the doctor. He complained that his ear hurt and had pressure in it, that he had headaches that seemed to come up from the back of his head, and that he had a little lump in his neck. Also, he told the doctor that he had been wearing earplugs to sleep at night and that he had seen blood on the earplugs one morning. The doctor looked at his ears, saw nothing wrong, and told him to stop using the earplugs. (Good advice, but there was much more wrong than that.)

Then Dennis went on another Hurricane Katrina relief trip, this time to New Orleans. While he was there, he had a bad fall off the back of the semi-trailer they were using for storage. (You grab the rope and step off the trailer, and the rope pulls the door down as you ride to the ground. Well, Dennis missed the rope.) He landed on his neck and shoulder and jammed them severely. The sports medicine specialist who treated Dennis in New Orleans said that the lump in his neck might be a pulled muscle which could explain the headaches, and that anti-inflammatories and muscle relaxers might help it. (This diagnosis was wrong.)

Soon after that, Dennis came home and went back to our doctor to have his neck and shoulder checked. He also pointed out to the doctor that he still had the lump in his neck and was suffering a lot of discomfort. This time the doctor said the lump was a swollen lymph gland and it wasn't going to get well until Dennis quit feeling it all the time. (Once again, good advice, but the serious underlying problem remained undiagnosed.)

A couple of weeks ago, Dennis went back and said, "Look, there's something wrong with my neck and head and ears and you have to figure out what it is." So that day, the doctor ordered a CT scan, and lo and behold, they discovered that Dennis had an ear infection that had developed into mastoiditis. The doctor prescribed a round of antibiotics and then a round of anti-inflamatory meds. Now the lump is a little less swollen and the pain in Dennis's neck is better -- but still not gone. (Finally, a diagnosis and some semi-effective treatment.)

Today he went back to the doctor again, and now the doctor thinks that he may have some lingering nerve damage from his fall. He pressed on a nerve ending in his neck and Dennis he nearly went through the ceiling with pain. So now Dennis is taking a round of steroids to reduce inflammation. The first day he takes 6 pills, the second day 5, the third day 4, and so on. 

Dennis asked the doctor if there were any side effects to taking this drug, and the doctor said he should expect to be quite irritable. "Don't fire anybody," the doctor said. I told Dennis that if he gets any customer complaints at work, he'd better let his boss handle them. Dennis on steroids -- oh, brother!

The doctor has been documenting the Workmen's Comp aspects of this so Dennis can get any benefits he might be entitled to, but I really hope that he's going to get over all this and feels OK again one of these days.

Concerns about the lump on Dennis's neck (thought to be a lymph gland) were not resolved until 2018 when an ear, nose, and throat specialist determined that it was a lipoma (a fatty benign tumor.) He removed it at the same time that he operated on Dennis's sinuses.