Category: Life and Living

The Invisible Color of Pain

Posted on by Pete Schloss

I am home. Surgery, the fusion of two vertebrae (L4-L5) proceeded on schedule Monday morning, September 30th, at 7:15 a.m.. The 6-hour procedure (4 hours in the operating room and 2 in recovery) were necessitated by a herniated disc, a cyst impacting the spinal cord, and a general collapse brought about by a well-used/abused 72-year-old body. The excruciating pain preceding surgery has been replaced by the slowly abating post-surgery pain. Pain, to distress, to ache, to discomfort, to… relief? I’m not there yet, but is that a glimmer of light I see at the end of a spinal canal? Perhaps.

First meds included oxycodone and large doses of Tylenol. I was discharged on Tuesday, October 1st, with 15 Oxy pills (one every 4 hours as needed for pain, call for a refill) and take 1000mg Tylenol every 6 hours. There are still 10 Oxy pills in the bottle, and it has remained unopened since Wednesday.

Until recently I have been a very strong walker. It is amazing to me how quickly atrophy can set in. Today I “hiked” 10 minutes around the inside of my home and climbed two flights of stairs 3 times. That was a good start, and I will repeat twice later today. Outside and around the block tomorrow? Again, perhaps. Inactivity is toxic but too much activity is potentially catastrophic. It is for me to find compromise.

I once read that women who have experienced the significant pain of childbirth soon forget the pain and often embrace the thought of doing it all over. As a man, I cannot validate this. Christine says it is so. What I can say is that the very real and tangible pain I experienced has disappeared, like a ghost. I know I could once “see” that demon. It had color, red. It had shape, sharp and angular. It stabbed, pierced, wounded and assaulted me, relentlessly. I was helpless. I can still see what it did, but IT has vanished from my “sight”. Unlike the joy a woman experiences in bringing new life into the world, I do not invite this pain’s return.

It is an effort to share this with you. Sitting at a computer is not comfortable. But I am thankful for all the good wishes, encouragements and prayers. 

Tomorrow my first post-surgery shower! It’s the little things. Peace Everyone. Pete

PS. My last post (September 23rd) included a postscript about a book I was reading, “A Trick of the Light” by Louise Penny, the seventh book in the Armand Gamache detective series. I am a notoriously slow reader, plagued by mild dyslexia and lexical agraphia (an inability to spell or recall letter sequencing in words… thank God for secretaries, word check, and Christine. If you only knew!).

I have been so captivated by the series that in spite of the surgery, I not only finished book seven, but book eight (“The Beautiful Mystery”) and have begun book nine, “How the Light Gets In”.

They are that good. Pete

Written at Kansas City, Missouri, October 4, 2024

Having THAT Discussion

Posted on by Pete Schloss

Surgery on my lower back is scheduled for this coming Monday. I expect to be on the table for at least 4 hours. A robot will be involved. I am no stranger to the surgeon’s knife having previously undergone surgery on right foot, left foot, right knee, both shoulders, and brain surgery in June of 2023. This is not a resume I wish to further develop.

I have come to think of surgery as analogous to taking one’s car to the dealership for a major repair. You entrust your car/body to the care of (hopefully!) an expert and skilled mechanic/surgeon, expecting to receive it back in proper working order. In each case there is usually sticker shock, “How could it cost THAT much?!!” One difference is that the car dealer often provides you with a loaner car. Maybe the day will come when surgeons provide a “loaner body”. For now, the anesthesiologist turns off your consciousness and puts it on the shelf awaiting instructions to reactivate you. Where do we go in the meantime? That is a question for poets, philosophers, and perhaps at one time Timothy Leary:

“Whenever in doubt, turn off your mind, relax, float downstream.”

I came upon another quote by Leary that has absolutely nothing to do with this essay, but that I feel compelled to share: “Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition.”

Yesterday Christine and I had the “What If…” discussion. We have done so before the other surgeries, before the 4 times I sailed on a 45-foot sailboat over a thousand miles offshore in the Atlantic, and on other occasions that “what if…” became an uncomfortably real consideration.

There is the practical side to the talk: How to get into my computer, where passwords are stored, what bills are not on autopay, decisions to be made regarding investments, Social Security, and Medicare…

There is the “Last Wishes” part: Cremation not burial, a “celebration of life” not a funeral, Yes, beer-wine-liquor-music and fun, (renting banquet space at the Boulevard Brewery would work). No tears! Which special mementos to which child/grandchild…

…and then there is the important part: What Christine, my family, and you my friends have meant to me, what I wish for my children/grandchildren, and gratitude…

Whatever I endured in any past life, (again, a question for poets, philosophers, and perhaps Timothy Leary reincarnated) this life has been a reward. In looking back on the pages of my life I see that every chapter has been full of choices, decisions, and outcomes that turned out better than I had a right to expect.

I have every reason to believe that Monday, after the surgeon completes the repairs on my body and the anesthesiologist restores my consciousness, the physical healing will begin. However, if something doesn’t go as planned I want to make sure that everyone knows that I have lived a storied life, and I leave it with nothing but gratitude. For each of you I hold the wish that you Have Fun (because life should be fun), Do Good (as in your best and what is right), and Be Safe (for the sake of those who love you).

Peace Everyone. Pete

PS. From my earliest years I’ve been aware of the impermanence of life. Some might consider such thinking morbid. When I was in elementary school I was an avid reader of adventure fiction, both classics and contemporary. My “prayers” then included the wish that I not die until I finished the most recent book.

I am currently reading “A Trick of the Light” by Louise Penny. It is the sixth book in the Armand Gamache detective series and I hope to finish it before next Monday. However, I wanted to give a strong recommendation to this exceptional series of novels. The plot surprises, character development, and the presentation of the fictional Canadian village of “Three Pines” are superb. While each book centers upon solving a murder mystery, the various side plots are a study in human nature, love, loss, and so much more. I look forward to continuing the next volumes.

60+ years ago a very young Peter Schloss would have gone to bed saying, “God please let me finish this book before…”

Written at Kansas City, Missouri, September 23, 2024  

Original “tatting” (a form of lace-making) by my friend, Wendy Mejia, https://www.etsy.com/shop/WooWorks3

A Personal Update

Posted on by Pete Schloss

 

It has been a while since I have “spoken”. Instead of detailing my latest travels or latest musings I will share my latest “adventure”.

Earlier this year occasional back discomfort morphed into more persistent back pain. In turn the pain became more severe which caused me to seek medical attention. Multiple chiropractic visits, massage therapy appointments, and even acupuncture brought only limited and very temporary relief.

Matters worsened. Both before and after my mid-point aborted Camino with grandson, Britton, I consulted with doctors at the University of Kansas Medical Center Comprehensive Spine Center. Medications were prescribed and a lumbar steroid injection was performed. Again, the relief was only temporary and limited.

X-ray, CT scan, and an MRI have told the tale:

“At L4-5, there is a circumferential disc bulge and prominent right synovial facet cyst projecting medially within the central spinal canal contributed to marked central spinal stenosis and right lateral recess stenosis (of the traversing L5 nerve root). Additional moderate bilateral foraminal stenosis at this level.”

There was more that essentially boiled down to the fact that I have a well-traveled and well abused spine. (Witness that I recently fully engaged my stubbornness and fought through the pain to split and stack nearly 6 cords of firewood in Colorado. Not particularly smart on my part.)

I have never before dealt with chronic pain. At times this borders on disabling with pain rising to a 9 on a scale of 1-10. “Conservative” options have been exhausted and doing nothing more is not an option. I have been referring to surgery through the KU Spine Center. The recommendation from the consultation was: “Surgery would entail an L4-5 decompression and fusion with a TLIF from the right-hand side, robotically assisted, Infuse, allograft.” Again, there was more, including an exhaustive detail of why this recommendation was made and other options rejected.

My surgery is scheduled for September 30th, and it can’t get here sooner. The short-term recovery is 4-6 weeks with significant limitations on my activities. Full recovery is up to 9 months. No skiing this year. The prognosis is very good, and my excellent pre-surgery flexibility will only be slightly altered. However, I will still have a 72-year-old spine. I have promised Christine that I will be a “good patient” and follow the doctor’s instructions to the letter. That is perhaps the greatest challenge for me.

Peace Everyone. Pete

Written at Kansas City, September 6, 2024.

Friends, Neighbors, and Dog Whistles

Posted on by Pete Schloss

(The image above is of our 15-year-old granddaughter, Delaney, who donated 20 quilts that she made over the last year to the infants in the NICU of Kansas City’s Childrens Mercy Hospital.) 

Doug Pimm was a supervisor at the Missouri State Probation and Parole office where I began my first post-college job. He was hard spoken and gruff. He was also an ordained Episcopal Priest who traded his New York parish for a “more captive audience” in the Missouri Department of Corrections.

When you got beneath his rough-cut exterior, Doug deeply cared for people, among them his officers and the offenders we supervised. By the way, Doug married Christine and me. His price was a Wilson 2000 aluminum tennis racquet. In 1977 that was about all we could afford.

Doug once told me that real friends are rare. To Doug, real friends are the people who will drop everything to give you aid. He said that most people can number their real friends on one hand. By Doug’s metric I am blessed. Discounting for the impediments of geography, I count many of you as my true friends, more than I can count on my fingers and my toes.

The “Good Samaritan” gave aid to a stranger, not a “friend”, but a neighbor. Christianity is not the only major religion to recognize the importance of reaching out and giving aid to one’s neighbor. Nor is it the first religion to do so. Virtually all religions recognize the imperative of seeing the humanity in each of us.

The political and religious gulf that existed between the Jews and Samaritans was a canyon that made our current “culture wars” look paltry by comparison, and made Democrats and Republicans look like fraternal twins.

Christ intentionally chose the Samaritan as the giver of aid to a stranger, a Jew. The Samaritan had full knowledge of the religious/political identity of this stranger, yet humanity made the Jew his “neighbor”.

My friends and neighbors include, Republicans and Democrats, Right to Lifers and proponents of Reproductive Choice, the spiritually oriented and atheists, Gay, Straight, Trans… My friends would not qualify their assistance to me on my stand with regard to these modern-day controversies.

I suspect that most know where I stand on these and many other issues, but I resist throwing my beliefs in anyone’s face. I know that I won’t change any minds by my words, but I might by my example.

Social media is a wonderful tool for keeping in touch with friends. Unfortunately, it is also a megaphone that magnifies the latest “dog-whistle” in the news cycle grossly out of proportion to the actual importance of the issue in our everyday lives. Draw attention not to our differences, but to our similarities. The former already has countless voices (usually raised in anger), it is the latter that cries quietly to be recognized. I am not suggesting silence about your opinions, just suggesting you offer thoughtfully given information, not an incitement adding to controversy.

I am asking you, my friends and “neighbors”, to resist the urge to jump on and parrot the latest “dog-whistle” call to arms. Most often the expression of righteous indignation is someone else’s and we are enlisted to magnify that indignation for their benefit, not ours. Look among your friends and neighbors who are of a different political party, a different religion, a different race, a different nationality, a different sexual orientation, and ask yourself, “If they were in need, would I withhold my aid based upon the differences in our beliefs?”

Christine and I live on the corner of a busy intersection in the city. It is a rare month that there is not at least one collision at this intersection. Upon hearing a crash, Christine is among the first on the scene to offer assistance, whether that is by calling 911, directing traffic, or inviting the often shaken but mobile drivers into our home. She doesn’t try to first determine who was “at fault”, and certainly doesn’t ask about their socio-political stand on the latest controversies cycling in the news.

Follow her example. Peace everyone. Pete

Written at Kansas City, July 30, 2024.

PS. Here is an update on my condition: I had an MRI of my spine on Sunday evening. There was much confirmation based upon the nature and severity of my pain. Varying degrees of deterioration of certain vertebrae, most serious in the lower back. There were also a couple of surprises. A couple of bulging disks and a cyst protruding into the spinal column.

On Monday morning I had a lumbar epidural injection of steroid medication. It went well and later that day I experienced significant relief. Today minor pain has resurfaced, but nothing like my recent experience which verged upon debilitating. This is the next step in a conservative treatment approach. We shall see if the benefit lasts.

In the meantime, Christine and I are off to Colorado for most of the month of August. I have ordered a log splitter that is to be delivered on Monday. Britton is accompanying us for just next week to lend a hand. We laid up an impressive supply of firewood that awaits our efforts to split it.

Pete

 

 

A Saturday Night Memory

Posted on by Pete Schloss

 

Saturday Evening. We spent the day inside, victims to the contest raging between heat and humidity: which would make Kansas City least livable today. Frustrated, I blurted out, “Let’s go someplace, do something.” Christine was game but asked what and where. “How about the Uptown Lounge again?” It was all that I could come up with.

We were there for the first time two days ago with our dear friends Charlie and Mary Murphy, enjoying the Richard Haitbrink Quartet, with vocalist Nancy Wallingford. They entertained us with jazz and blues from “The Great American Songbook”. Nancy reads and occasionally comments on these posts. (Hi Nancy!)

Two decades ago we were in this space to listen to our daughter Alexis’ then boyfriend and his band. Then it was Davey’s Uptown, a venue well suited to garage bands, Pabst Blue Ribbon, and a level of sanitary neglect that gave footsteps a sound not unlike Velcro pulling apart. The Uptown Lounge was nothing like its predecessor.

I drove, negotiating Main Street which is currently a confusion of barriers, orange traffic cones, and shifting lanes as Kansas City extends its Trolly Line south. I envision that the road’s many open chasms must “collect” overnight impaired drivers like insects sticking to flypaper.

As we entered the Uptown Lounge we left the noise, dust, heat, and humidity of the city at the door. “Our table” was waiting for us. I feel qualified to call it that since we were now repeat customers.

The Uptown Lounge is softly lit and has a pure but understated elegance that welcomes sport coats and evening dresses with the same comfortable familiarity as shorts and polo shirts. Tonight’s entertainment was courtesy of owner Alan Stribling at the grand piano with occasional solos and vocal accompaniments by bartender Vonne Whittman.

His voice is like soft oiled leather while he slowly sways at the keys, a human metronome. Whittman wears an unobtrusive headset that picks up her vocals, broadcasting them through the sound system is such a way that an uninformed patron is left to wonder where the singer is hiding. Whitman simultaneously sings and performs her bartenderly duties without diminishing her expertise in either calling.

Into the first of two martinis, I am teleported in this carefree moment to carefree times long past by Billy Joal, Elton John, and James Taylor:

“It’s nine o’clock on a Saturday, the regular crowd shuffles in…”

“It’s a little bit funny, this feeling inside. I’m not one of those who can easily hide…”

“Just yesterday morning, they let me know you were gone. Suzanne, the plans they made put an end to you…”

Alan later asks if there are any requests. “Color My World” by Chicago, I reply.

“Great song… I’ll give it a try.”

In a very rare moment for me I ask (really, I insisted) Christine to dance with me. We are the only patrons to do so and Christine is a bit self-conscious. Thanks to my martini, I’m not. In a few moments Christine asks if I am tearing up. “No… well maybe a little.” 47 years ago this was our wedding song. I could not have imagined then how the song would foretell now:

“As time goes on, I realize just what you mean to me. And now, now that you’re near promise your love that I’ve waited to share. And dreams of our moments together. Color my world with hope of loving you…”

After we returned to “our table” Christine remarked that a few pre-COVID years ago Alan had been performing at another piano bar and that I had made the same request. She was right, and now I remember that things played out in much the same déjà vu way. (Was it a martini or a manhattan then?)

An hour and a half into the evening and half through my second martini I see a familiar face enter the Lounge. It’s Ann Adams Fay and her partner. They join us and as it turns out they have been talking about walking the Camino. Coincidence?… A gentleman in Puerto Rico who had walked the Camino once told me, “Peter, in life there are no coincidences.”

Two hours gone and my second martini finished we bid farewell to our friends and the Uptown Lounge. Christine had been filling up on free soda water as she was the “DD” for the evening… “designated driver” (“designated darling” to me).

Driving home she skipped a return on Main Street in favor of a more serpentine and tree lined route. As we drew nearer to our home a thought came to mind. We were a few blocks from Winstead’s, a 1950’s era hamburger restaurant that we had not visited together since our children were young. Back then we could occasionally afford buying them each a Winstead’s “Tiny-Tot-Treat”, a mini-hamburger, small fries and child-size malt.

“Are you hungry?” She was. “Do you want to dine or just eat?” There was a pause and Christine then offered “Eat. What do you think of Winstead’s?” Synchronicity such as this is the byproduct of nearly a half-century together.

Christine had a double burger with tater-tots, I had two singles and fries. We split a chocolate malt. Twenty-one dollars plus tip. Not dining, but much better than just eating. Then it was home.

As Christine’s father, Bill Nichols, drew nearer to his 100th birthday (he almost made it to 102) he often told the same stories from his life. He would tell anyone willing to listen. It didn’t matter that the listener had heard the stories before, Bill would tell them over and over again. It was easy to ascribe his repetition to age related memory lapses. It now occurs to me that Bill did not tell his tales for the benefit of the listener, but rather so that he could relive those moments that were dear to him.

Perhaps that is why I am telling you about this Saturday night.

Peace Everyone. Pete