Red orange and a good doctor's visit

 An appointment at the doctor's in Asheville, where some trees (at 4pm new time) still show nice color with the brilliant North Carolina blue sky.

The sun still hit the top of this golden orange tree's last leaves.

Golden orange hair in tightly woven braids greeted me as my nurse led me back to the exam room. I asked her if I could take a photo of her hair, and she was willing.

She said it had been pulled tightly while the braids were being made. It shows!

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Twilight struck around 5:25 pm in Asheville. As I left the cardiologist's office to go home, and I followed that almost full moon going east on I-40 all the way home. That was Mon. Nov. 3, when I was still getting used to no more Daylight Savings Time. Gag. Sunset at 5:30 now!

Anything new from the cardiologist? Heart had been examined in Sept by ultrasound when I was hospitalized with pneumonia which left me very short of breath when walking anywhere. So we knew my heart worked, but the lungs were not doing so well.

I had had one episode which might be heart related in early October, when nitroglycerin worked to relieve the pain in 5 minutes. Doc talked about how I need to get my lungs in better condition before we can have a stress test of my heart (not on a treadmill, but with MRI and contrast.) So it's scheduled early next year.

So I'm also interested in my risk factors for a stroke. I take all the proper meds to keep my blood pressure at a good level. I am not a good candidate for exercise until the lungs are better...there's constant coughing and little wheezes there.

We had a few laughing moments when I couldn't remember a word, and basically gave the hint in Charades game fashion...one word, 3 or 4 syllables, means...etc. I don't mind at all that my mental score was 27 out of 30 (normal range!) ...memory and word finding continue to be a laugh! 

I do like my cardiologist.

I am looking into improving my diet somewhat, since the lunch program just gives me lots of carbs. I'll load up on fruits and veggies for breakfast and dinner at least. (I went to the grocery store a few days later, and only got one kind of bread - 4 croissants). Not even the chocolate kind. 

Life and love and death

 

‘Butterfly Nebula’ by Hubble space telescope

by Ana Maria Silva.

Unknown photographer

"This, then, is the agreement: Learning to live is learning to love, and learning to love is learning to die — the imperative in the inevitable that renders our transience meaningful and holy. The price of this holiness is absolute humility: There is no pact to be made with the universe — we die, whether or not we agree to it, whether or not we have learned how to love in the bright interlude between atom and dust. We may or may not be lucky enough to live out the two billion heartbeats our creaturely inheritance has allotted us. But no matter how many we actually get, it matters how we spend them and what we spend them on. It may be the only thing that matters."

Maria Popova in The Marginalian

Going to my cardiologist today. Perhaps that's what made me think of my mortality. But I've been faithfully taking my meds and 3 years ago was the last time they checked on me. When I called to see if I should schedule a 2 year appointment last year,  since he'd said he could extend my visits to every 2 years, they wouldn't give me an appointment. At the time the nurse/scheduler told me he was only seeing patients who'd just come out of the hospital. OK, that's fine. I'm dealing with other things anyway.

But a couple of weeks ago they called me and said I should come see a Physician's Assistant since they keep renewing my medications. So that's what this is supposedly all about. Heart attack was in May of 2020. That's over 4 years ago. I've had some scares that turned out to be heart burn, indigestion, or muscle pains from coughing. Nothing related to my heart itself. Whew.

Art for the day:

 by Sue Ellen Parkinson - Solstice night

Today on Open Yesterday's Pages: The history of the Burnett Reservoir

and Rear Admiral Grace Hopper, computer pioneer and mathematician