Actually, I'm cheating a little with the title for this page. Robert picked me up in Weiser and took me to the airport at Boise on December 28, three weeks to the day after I arrived at Weiser Care. No pieces fell off the plane, and after a flight I spent mostly sleeping, I arrived at LAX late that afternoon. As we approached the airport from the east the Griffith Park Observatory was clearly in view. As we descended for landing, it slowly disappeared into the thickening smog. Mike picked me up and we rode a taxi home to Lomita. (He avoids driving at night now.)
At this point I should tell about the feeding tube that was installed in me at Norhwestern Hospital in Chicago in September. As impressed as I was by the dedication of staff at Shirley Ryan and Weiser Care, both places dropped the ball on that tube. By November I was eating by mouth and no longer needed it. I started asking about getting it removed. The answer was always along the lines of "soon", or "in a few days", or "next week", but it was still there when I left for Idaho. At Weiser I had to continue taking care to not let it dangle down in the water whenever I used the toilet. I must have griped enough to make an impression, because the head nurse finally curled it up and taped it to my side to stop the dangling. But it turned out that no doctors would be available to take care of it until the middle of January. (I was told it would take two of them.)
Hearing that if I stayed in Idaho it would take until the middle of January to get that tube removed, I figured that it would probably take less time in California. That's why I left Weiser on December 28. I asked Mike to find a doc near Lomita who would take on the job. So when I got there and learned that my first appointment was for February 1, I was less than thrilled. Anyway, I took advantage of being there and got some exercise. Many days I would walk a mile or two, and often more. I think my longest walk was about seven miles.
I had been in Lomita for a couple of weeks when Kim Dobbins took me for a Model T ride. He showed up in a home made pickup truck with a wooden cab and body. I rode in style to Larry Smith's house (he also lives in Lomita). We had a nice visit, discussing Model T's and other stuff for a couple of hours. My memory is not what it used to be (age? TBI? Both?) but it was a good day.
February, 2024
Although my old phone, along with its saved contacts, was gone, I managed to contact Model T guy Derrick Pang (through Facebook, I think). He came down and took me to lunch at a new Korean place in Torrance. I liked most of the food, but I had a hard time with the chopsticks. Part of the problem was my old age clumsiness, but the bigger part of it was the sticks themselves. They were stainless steel, too slick for me to grab anything. I'm just as clumsy with wooden sticks, but wood is not as slick as stainless steel.
At my February 1 appointment, the doc examined my feeding tube situation and set February 22 as the date for a "procedure" to get it out. She expected to use an endoscope to view the thing from the inside. On the day of the big event Mike got me to the hospital in time for my 9:30 AM sign-in, with the Big Event to happen at 11:00. At the appointed time I arrived in the operating room and found my doctor with another doc. She explained that he had a lot more experience with feeding tubes than she did, and she would feel more comfortable having him there to help if needed. He asked me a question or two and examined the tube. Then he grabbed the tube and yanked it out. That was all there was to it. No endoscope or other special equipment, just a good yank. He taped a piece of gauze over the hole and told me that if it bled more than the gauze could take, I should tape on a new piece of gauze. I never did. The first gauze stayed for a few days, and that was the end of the feeding tube adventure.
Late in January or early in February I began shopping online for a plane ticket. It turned out that the least costly date was February 23, the day after Feeding Tube Day. When I started shopping, fares to Wichita ranged from $179 to over $700. I went for the least expensive and ended up spending less than $200. I was gratified to find so many people were inclined to be kind and accommodating to an old man with a cane and dragging around a carry-on bag. After Mike dropped me off in front of the terminal, the rest was pretty easy. It had been many years since I flew out of LAX, but even the security procedure was not too bad.
The most notable part of going to Wichita was the layover in Dallas. The way the gates are arranged at DFW, getting from one flight to another is a bit of a scramble. If I hadn't been pushed in a wheelchair, and if there hadn't been a tram ride to save time, I might have missed the second plane, which took off around 6:30 PM and arrived in Wichita a few minutes before 8:00. My cousin Zack was there to take me home. With one stop at the Walmart in Derby to buy a couple of needed items, I was home at the farm and asleep by midnight. My arrival at home was less dramatic than some might expect. Shorty didn't go nuts at seeing me for the first time since early September, but It was easy to tell that she was glad to have me home.That was February 23. Saturday the 24th was one more step in the rebuilding process. There's an old sleeping bag on a foam pad on the floor in my office. There are times, as when my bed in the house isn't made up, that I sleep there in my office. One thing I found the first night I did that was that, despite the progress I had made so far, I was still distressingly weak. Once I got down on the floor, it was nearly impossible to get back on my feet without a sturdy solid object nearby for support. Fortunately, if I had my cane getting up was not completely impossible. But it was a real struggle.