244) Dupuytren's Disease?

May 3, 2008
Saturday

Morning: Liz is out with her girlfriends for the weekend at Rocky River Ranch, kicking back and enjoying themselves without kids and hubbies. Shayna and I have a Soccer Tournament today and tomorrow: 3 games today and 2 tomorrow... so, I'll be going to dialysis at my regular 4 o'clock time and the coach will take Shayna to her last game and deliver her to Calla afterwards.

This is also my last weekend for doing two-handed work around here for awhile, since I'm having hand surgery for Dupuytren's Disease*! Nope... I never heard of it either but I do have it and it is time to do something about it cause I can't really shake hands anymore cause of my atrophied tendon in my little finger. I don't know how all the rest of you 60 year olds are doing, but it seems that I am just falling apart. I actually noticed this shrinking tendon thing a few years ago and at one time mentioned it to the doctor (Clark Race) who injects my index finger joint with Hyalgan for arthritis every three or four months. Dr Race said he could fix my atrophied finger but by the time I relented, he looked at it and said, "This is a job for the hand doctor!" and referred me to Dr. Era Lown. Now I have an appt for this hand surgery on Monday because we want it to get done and healed by Memorial Day weekend when we work at the folk festival. I talked to the pre-surgery interview nurse and she suggested I ask the anethesiologist for a kind of knock-out that'll not impact my going to see Lyle Lovett and Guy Clark** at 8 pm (my anniversary gift to Lizzie).

So, anyway, I finished painting the top of the pop-up yesterday and want to finish the inside ceiling this weekend, along with attending Shayna's soccer games... busy weekend again.

Noon: First game down, the Kick Kats' first loss of the season, to a San Antonio team; the Comets, 4 to 2.

Mid-afternoon: Second game down, Kick Kats' second loss of the season, to an Austin team; Blue Rush, 3 to 1. Maybe its a good thing I'm missing the third game of the day!

El Milagro: Got here on time... sitting in the front corner by the window, where I can see out on the parking lot and the whole room. Jason the Tech cannulates me with his usual style and Jo the Nurse does my nursing evaluation as we discuss parents and soccer tourneys.

I turn on the TV and find the 134th Kentucky Derby on NBC. Somehow I find it every year and have watched the two minute race for the roses almost every year. I remember watching it with Shayna the Horse Lover and chuckle at her picking winners based on the colors they sport, or their names. These horses have wonderful names; this year there is Big Brown, Z Fortune, Cool Coalman, Bob Black Jack, Eight Belles, Smooth Air, and Colonel John (who won the Santa Anna). I recall too, years ago, when my friend Albert had a commission to paint some of those thoroughbreds for someone and he produced some very colourful paintings that I really liked... I wonder what became of those paintings? (Al: if you read this, send my a photo of one of those for this blog) So, after several hours of TV time preparing for the 2-minute race, the race is on, and the announcer screams as Big Brown comes up on the outside and races out ahead of everyone except Eight Belles the filly. The filly is second by a few lengths! ...OUCH! She goes down... it doesn't look good. They finally report having to put her down cause of two broken ankles... what a sad day for her people.

Also, today is Pete Seeger's 89th birthday so I must tip my hat to this great activist who has reminded me throughout my life that there are always people to be spoken out for and causes to remember.

After the race and some Pete Seeger on Folkways, I turn to a movie to relax with and find The Incident, starring Walter Matthau and Susie Blakely***. Let me tell you about Susie Blakely... she was one of the kids that hung around briefly with the "in crowd" at the Ft. Bliss Officer's Club pool in the summers of '64 and '65, best I recall. I remember her as a fiercely motivated teenager who used to claim that her career goal was to become a famous actress. Actually, that is my hallucinatory memory... she might have not been that seemingly arrogant... she wasn't really overly outspoken about her dreams, but I do remember a few conversations at an umbrella-ed table out in front of the snack bar Dale, Jay and I worked in where we talked about going to California... me talking about a dream of going there to learn to surf, and her about acting. I also remember several of the guy lifeguards having various designs on her body, but she really wouldn't have any of that. She was protective of herself and not involved with the girls acting seductive and "cute" for playing up to the coolest guys kind of trip... she was more aloof and somehow seemed to me to be more interesting: later, as the women's movement was developing, I remember thinking back to her as an independent person who was my idea of a woman being liberated. And most of the guys who hung around the pool, and the lifeguards of that mid-sixties era didn't take well to women who were breaking away from "playing the game". I remember several guys remarking that she needed someone to put her in her place, and some who poo poo'd her statements about chasing her dreams of acting.

So, anyway, whenever I see her in a movie (she was in Rich Man, Poor Man) I take the time to watch it, simply because it is neat to see someone one once knew in the movies. And BTW, they have her age wrong on Wikepedia: I swear she was only a year younger than Dale and Tom and us who graduated in '65! She was born in '48, not '52. '52 would make her the same age as my little brother, and he and his crew were "little kids" in the days I am remembering.

So, this movie with her and Walter Matthau is worth watching... about a lawyer defending a Nazi in the post war years of the late '40's. Great era CARS too. I actually get to watch the whole movie and then I'm done with my dialysis. As we used to say back then, "Caio!"

Notes: In at 75.5 and out at 74.3 Kgs.
*Dupuyten's Disease, retrieved online May 3 from The Austin Hand Group,s website, http://www.austinhandgroup.com/injuries/dupuytrens.html
**Guy, Joe, John, and Lyle, retrieved online May 3 from the Paramount Theatre website, http://www.austintheatre.org/site/Calendar/1544269710?view=Detail&id=15062
***Susan Blakely, retrieved online May 3 from Wikepedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Blakely