Yikes. I broke my kidneys

I've joked a bunch of times since I had my grand hospital drama 3 years ago that I broke myself by not seeing a doctor for so many years.  Having to have 7 teeth removed was a sign of that. But I've been very good with my health for the last 3 years and I hadn't thought much about being broken in a specific way until this week.

When I was in the hospital they saw signs of reduced kidney function which they've had me keeping an eye on for a while. My doctor hasn't really talked much about it so I haven't worried too much. My GFR(Glomular Filtration Rate) has been on the low side for several tests, but generally within the acceptable range. GFR is a test of how well the kidneys filter the blood. The normal range is 60-100. This last one was 56. So what that means is that my score is about half of the best score in the range

My last blood test 3 months ago was a little lower than that so I took another one last week. This one was also low which made the the lab automatically flag it.
I got a note from my doctor's PA basically saying don't freak out. This is NOT kidney failure and you can live a long time with this condition.The official diagnosis is Chronic Kidney Disease(CKD) I actually was initially not too worried, after all I've been in this range for at least 3 years. Since I hadn't seen a doctor for so many years I don't know how long my kidneys have been functioning like this. I don't really feel any symptoms with the exception of a little fatigue which I've been attributing to age until this point. But I don't have any kidney pain, issues with having to pee a lot at night(which I actually did have before my hospital visit)

But there's this thing called the Internet and it has a way of scaring a guy. Mostly what I read is encouraging. It's generally considered a chronic condition at this point. It's not kidney failure until the GFR reaches 30. Men in their 60's often have some level of CKD etc. But on the the other side  there's a heightened risk of Heart disease and diabetes.  I'm supposed to watch my diet and Blood Pressure which I've been doing for several years and they are fine. It didn't really hit me until one of the websites pointed out that a GFR under 60 shows about half of normal kidney function. That does freak me a little. That makes it very concrete. I had good kidneys once and now they're not; not by half.

I'm going to talk to my doctor in a couple of weeks about what to do and expect.  But for now I continue to exercise, watch my diet, take my BP meds, be careful and not freak out. I look at someone like my mom who is on oxygen 24/7 and I'm not even near that ballpark yet. I think if I'm careful I won't be there any time soon.

Attack of the Killer Squirrels

My wife Lisa's family lives in a very rural area of New Hampshire. The nearest big town is Keene, most famous for the location of the Robin Williams movie Jumanji. Her brother, aunt and mother all live on family property about a mile from each other and the nearest neighbors are about that far as well. The aunt and brother in-law live in fairly new houses that they built, but my mother in-law, Nancy, lives in a couple hundred year old farm that is mostly wood with a stone foundation. It's a huge rambler house with rickety old wooden stairs and several fireplaces and a wood stove that heat the place. There are a million little cracks and holes in the walls; in some cases you can actually see through to the outside.

We were there visiting for Christmas. We stayed at Nancy's(she goes by Pook) and then going up the hill for Christmas. Like I said the house is large and rustic. My mother in-law had some health problems a few years earlier and she isn't the tidiest person in the world. So there are usually books everywhere, dishes in the sink and writing projects on the table. This year there was a huge cage like thing on the kitchen table. It was a Have A Heart animal trap. When I asked what it was for I was told squirrels. I laughed because I assumed it was really for rats or mice. But Pook assured me it was for squirrels.

We had a really nice Christmas Eve up at my brother in-laws house. A winter storm was dumping a lot of snow and when got home we all rushed into the house. I heard the clawing and clicking before I even went to the dining table and saw a huge squirrel trapped in the cage. I assumed we were going to take it out and let it go but Pook wanted to wait until the next day to drive to another town. She said that they had to be relased more than a mile away or they'd come back. I didn't know if that was true, but I'm from California where we don't often trap squirrels so I kept my mouth shut.

I went into the living room and tried to  read but I kept hearing the squirrel trying to break out of it's cage. I went to bed but even up there I could hear Steve(I nicknamed the squirrel Steve McQueen who played a POW in the Great Escape). I also was certain I heard scratching in our room, so I slept with the covers up to my chin for protection;like I said I grew up in the suburbs in California.

The next day the roads were impassable and we were more or less snowed in. We ate breakfast in the drawing room with the squirrel scratching away. I went upstairs to the guestroom to read. When I opened the door I saw a bag of coffee that someone had given us as a gift laying on the floor with a huge hole in it and coffee all over the floor. Before I had time to do any detective work I heard a noise and looked up and saw another squirrel careening around the wooden ceiling beams, leaping from beam to beam, jumping to the wall and then coming toward me. It was hopped up on Caffeine and heading for me. In terror I  slammed the door and ran to get Lisa; I'm not equipped for fighting off deadly squirrels.

Lisa went around the outside and slid up one of the windows that could be reached from the side of the hill. After an hour we went in and the squirrel. was gone, presumably through the window. We shut the window and made sure there was no more food in our room.

After eating both lunch and dinner with Steve scratching away at his cage, Pook finally decided it was time to let Steve go. She went to her secret squirrel disembarkation place and came back resetting the trap. 

The next morning I woke up and didn't hear any noise from the trap. But as I went to get coffee I noticed something laying in the trap. There on the bottom of the cage was a dead squirrel. According to my brother in-law this was very unusual. We decided that this was the squirrel from the bedroom and the cause of death was caffeine overdose. 

I'm told that someone has finally squirrel proofed that house. Maybe I won't have to stay in a hotel the next time I visit.

Earl's Monster

When my brother used to live in LA and I still lived in the Bay Area, I would usually take a road trip a couple of times a year to see him. It was about a 6 hour drive and generally a boring one so I occasionally I would get ride shares. This was before Craigslist so I'd either use San Francisco State's ride share board or the SF Bay Guardian(I tried the SF weekly once but I only got replies from people who wanted to know if they could pay for gas with drugs or sex).

It was a little harder to get to know someone back then without email,  maybe a phone call or two so it was always a crap shoot. There was the woman who refused to talk and winced any time I brought up any topic. There was the jolly stoner who would spend 20 minutes in the bathroom at rest stops and then got us lost in Compton trying to find his girlfriends apartment.

One trip I got a young woman in her early twenties. She seemed nice enough on the phone, but about an hour before the trip she called me and asked if she could bring her 3 year old son along. She had some story about her babysitter cancelling at the last minute, but I had the feeling this had been plan all along. The kid seemed okay, if a little hyper.

We were in a Honda Civic which had a nice big back seat. The boy, Earl, was strapped in in back, If there were any car seat rules at that time I was unaware of them, We'd been driving along for about an hour when Earl screamed. It was a loud, sort of jarring yell. The mom, Shelly, turned around to ask what was wrong. Earl was huddled in the corner, he wouldn't say what was wrong. She gave him a cookie and he calmed down.

Two hours later, I'd just bought them some hamburgers at a rest stop and Earl was sleeping away in the back seat. Earl suddenly woke up screaming again. This time he said, "There's a monster. There's a monster." He wouldn't stop so I pulled over somewhere on I5 in the middle of nowhere and Shelly and I made a big show out of looking at the back seat. Finally Shelly convinced him he'd been dreaming and he calmed down.

Five minutes before reaching Shelly's destination in West Wood Earl started screaming again. This time he wouldn't stop and they  arrived at their stop with Earl crying and Shelly feeling kind of embarrassed.

After a nice week of visiting my brother I left LA around Midnight and headed up I5. By 4 AM I was getting White Line Fever and decided to pull over at a rest stop and take a nap. The back seat was fairly big so I laid down and took a nap. I was in a deep sleep, but I suddenly started dreaming about something crawling on me. I startled awake and had the feeling that something had really been crawling on me. But then I convinced myself that I was just imagining that. I'd been reading Fear And Loathing in Las Vegas and probably had Hunter S Thompson's desert hallucinations in my mind.

3 days later I was washing and cleaning out the car. I'd pulled everything out, and was vacuuming the back seat, when I suddenly noticed something wedged in the seat. I thought it was one of Earl's toys, As I reached toward it, it suddenly moved. There, running across the seat was small green lizard. There were plenty of Lizards where I lived and this one must have burrowed in the car at some point; Earl Monster.