It's been a stressful year. My wife told me it was the Year of the Dragon. Lord have mercy! The Dragon's calling card came early on Dec 31, with a generator building fire. Being it was raining for 3 weeks straight, our solar panels weren't bringing in much power and I was running the generator for an hour on some late afternoons to top off the battery bank. Well this particular evening, I was going out to shut her down after an hour and 10kWH boost, and I was in disbelief to see flames rushing out of the doorway of the concrete bunker. The only flammable parts were the door and door frame, both of which were on fire. It was 33°F out and wet. This genny had run all day in 95°F heat without a fire, so I was in a state of cognitive dissonance upon discovering the fire. Long story short, I put it out and due to the positive air pressure by the two fans, the flames blew outward away from the generator. Aside from some melted plastic cowling, the generator was no worse for wear. But I will need to build a new frame and door out of steel this time.
January, I gave away some free firewood, mostly big logs. One guy came with a mini tracked excavator. I expected he would use it in the wooded area next to driveway, not tear up the driveway turning it around in circles. The guy was a jerk about it and never came back to fix it. I was going to get a load of process stone, but when I found out it was $800 for one truck load, I just let it be. Customers were getting stuck in the mud, so I had to do something. Eventually I contacted the town public works and learned that "millings" are free an they even load up your truck for you. So I went down there late in February and got two loads. By the second load on Feb 29, I was hurtin'., but I get ahead of myself...
Early February, the wife calls me to say there's no water pressure in the house. I check the usual things, find the capacitor boiled over, but then decided to check winding resistance. I had opens on two of three windings. Uh-oh. So in preparation, I ordered a new pump. This pump cost me $750 in 2008. This year, the place would not sell to the public (wholesaler) and I had to buy one out of state for $1400 and have it overnighted. All my friends have moved to Japan and one other friend passed away 2 years ago. My neighbor who used to help the other four times I pulled this pump in 58 years, died in 2019 at 73. So that left me and the wife and daughter and a neighbor I don't know well, to pull the pump. We got the whole thing out okay. And I replaced the pump, but found the drop wires, new in 2008, severed in two places. So off to the plumbing store and another $300 for 200' of drop wire. By the time we got back, it was sunset and getting cold. My chest was hurting and my back was hurting alot at this point. I managed to get it all wrapped up and by dark we started lowering the thing into the well. But my wife and daughter couldn't feed the pipe or it was snagged on something in way back in the woods. The pipe snapped as it was barely freezing temperature now. I yanked up the remaining pipe and pump and set to repair the break. By now I could no longer feel my fingers. Frozen. I cut the pipe, put on a new fitting and glued it with pipe joint cement,. But it would not cure at 30°F. Even waiting an hour, as when I put the thing back down the well and turned on the pump no water came out the Pitless adapter. By this point I was feeling VERY ill. Back spine was in agony, too, masking my chest pains. I decided to call the neighbor and get the name of the well guy he uses. Next morning, Russ arrived and in 90 minutes and $650, the pipe was replaced and the pump properly set. That night, chest pains persisted until 10pm.
Back to the driveway... so I'm shoveling millings off the truck and I'm losing feeling in my hands, my arms tingle, underarms have a peculiar ache and I'm feeling chilled all over and faint/dizzy. So I let my wife take over the shoveling. That was Feb 29. On the morning of March 1, at 7:30, I am awakened by a very strong sense of a brick in my chest. I get up, walk around, drink some water, feel better and go back to bed. That day I changed my diet from high fat low carb, to no fat, no sugar. Started eating steel cut oats, fruits and fish for dinner with kale, okra and cruciferous vegetables. I felt some of the brick in the chest sensation, but pressed on with my new diet (a change from eating 3 strips of bacon with 3 eggs every morning for breakfast). Within a week, I was feeling better and a week and a half the warmth returned to my hands which were cold as a corpses the first week. It seemed I was on the mend. But I made appointments with cardiologists anyway, because I wanted to know how much damage I'd sustained. I set one up with a conventional doctor first, but at the healthfood store, the owner, whom I've known almost forty years, gave me a number for his cardiologist, a prominent NYC-based doctor who was an MD but preferred natural remedies.
So on March 15th, my wife drove me to Fairfield, where he has Friday hours in CT. As we were backing into a space, my pains came back along with numbness and lightheadedness. I made it to the appointment, the doctor listened to my carotid arteries and heart, declared them clear and said I was suffering from anxiety. Long story short, we drove home 50 minutes and I'm feeling lousy the whole trip. Lay on the couch for ten minutes, my parrot stood guard over me and just watched me, but I was freezing cold and the pain would not let up. I told the wife to take me to ER.
At the ER, they hook me to an EKG and the doctors inform me that I am indeed having a heart attack. As the local hospital has no cardiac intervention unit, they ambulanced me to Danbury, and I was admitted while on two IVs of blood thinners and nitroglycerine. Initially, they said they don't perform surgeries on the weekends and that I'd have to wait til Monday. But the cardiologist thought the matter too urgent to wait that long and he scheduled me for the cath lab the next morning, Saturday.
I could not sleep in that hospital. Too much noise, talking, beeping heart monitors, paging systems, etc. Room was too hot, bed was uncomfortable, etc. But I managed. Next morning, doctor discussed the lifetime meds I would be on and I realized I didn't have any options other than to go into the catheterization. In the lab, he found my LAD artery 95% blocked. The others were fine. He put in a stent. I was moved to recovery and later back to my room where they brought me lunch. Within hours, the pain was gone from my chest. I felt MUCH better than I'd felt in months in fact. I was kept for another 48 hours and constantly monitored, given injections, pills and had vital signs checked HOURLY. By the next day I took my first walk around the 8th floor. The day after, I did more walking. On Monday, they decided to discharge me, so I was home by Monday night.
Ironically, the whole time I was in the hospital, the weather was warm and sunny. When I got out, the temperature dropped 30 degrees and damaging winds were blowing like crazy for the entire week. Today was calm enough that I was able to take my first real outdoor walk and not use the treadmill. It got up to rip roaring 50°F this afternoon, and the winds died down from hurricane force to just blustery.
As for my new diet, I watched Forks over Knives documentary about plant based diet and my wife started me in that direction. She made an incredible pasta with marinara sauce consisting of mushrooms and vegetables all cleverly blended in. A meal even a mafia don would enjoy! Late afternoons involve a sort of pita bread with hummus on it. Breakfast is oat meal with fruits and no salt or sugar.
Given the events, I'm going through a period where that uneasy mental feeling that I could die at any time dominates my thoughts. I hope that as I recover, that feeling will give way to a sense of well being. I was losing weight on the HFLC diet (lost over forty lbs) and was physically very active until October when my inguinal hernia got painful. I had to stop doing 100 situps a day and stop splitting firewood. I became more sedentary. I've lost another 8lbs since the hospitalization.
Feeling pretty good, but lost a lot of muscle mass and my leg muscles tire easily now. Gonna be a long road to recovery.
I need to deploy a palette of 550W solar panels in April, and hopefully the doctor will clear me to go back to work. It's been tough getting by with just social security and no amp repair income. Luckily, our electric bill shrunk a lot of we'd be in dire straights. I've got to fix the roof again, despite spending thousands on rubber roof coatings that leak after two years. It's a never ending headache. I'm starting the process of writing an "owners manual" for the house and the major electrical and plumbing systems. Luckily in December, we moved everything into revocable living trust with a law firm. Now I just need to finish the instruction manual so the wife knows how to operate the solar stuff and how to shut off valves if a leak happens in the plumbing.
January, I gave away some free firewood, mostly big logs. One guy came with a mini tracked excavator. I expected he would use it in the wooded area next to driveway, not tear up the driveway turning it around in circles. The guy was a jerk about it and never came back to fix it. I was going to get a load of process stone, but when I found out it was $800 for one truck load, I just let it be. Customers were getting stuck in the mud, so I had to do something. Eventually I contacted the town public works and learned that "millings" are free an they even load up your truck for you. So I went down there late in February and got two loads. By the second load on Feb 29, I was hurtin'., but I get ahead of myself...
Early February, the wife calls me to say there's no water pressure in the house. I check the usual things, find the capacitor boiled over, but then decided to check winding resistance. I had opens on two of three windings. Uh-oh. So in preparation, I ordered a new pump. This pump cost me $750 in 2008. This year, the place would not sell to the public (wholesaler) and I had to buy one out of state for $1400 and have it overnighted. All my friends have moved to Japan and one other friend passed away 2 years ago. My neighbor who used to help the other four times I pulled this pump in 58 years, died in 2019 at 73. So that left me and the wife and daughter and a neighbor I don't know well, to pull the pump. We got the whole thing out okay. And I replaced the pump, but found the drop wires, new in 2008, severed in two places. So off to the plumbing store and another $300 for 200' of drop wire. By the time we got back, it was sunset and getting cold. My chest was hurting and my back was hurting alot at this point. I managed to get it all wrapped up and by dark we started lowering the thing into the well. But my wife and daughter couldn't feed the pipe or it was snagged on something in way back in the woods. The pipe snapped as it was barely freezing temperature now. I yanked up the remaining pipe and pump and set to repair the break. By now I could no longer feel my fingers. Frozen. I cut the pipe, put on a new fitting and glued it with pipe joint cement,. But it would not cure at 30°F. Even waiting an hour, as when I put the thing back down the well and turned on the pump no water came out the Pitless adapter. By this point I was feeling VERY ill. Back spine was in agony, too, masking my chest pains. I decided to call the neighbor and get the name of the well guy he uses. Next morning, Russ arrived and in 90 minutes and $650, the pipe was replaced and the pump properly set. That night, chest pains persisted until 10pm.
Back to the driveway... so I'm shoveling millings off the truck and I'm losing feeling in my hands, my arms tingle, underarms have a peculiar ache and I'm feeling chilled all over and faint/dizzy. So I let my wife take over the shoveling. That was Feb 29. On the morning of March 1, at 7:30, I am awakened by a very strong sense of a brick in my chest. I get up, walk around, drink some water, feel better and go back to bed. That day I changed my diet from high fat low carb, to no fat, no sugar. Started eating steel cut oats, fruits and fish for dinner with kale, okra and cruciferous vegetables. I felt some of the brick in the chest sensation, but pressed on with my new diet (a change from eating 3 strips of bacon with 3 eggs every morning for breakfast). Within a week, I was feeling better and a week and a half the warmth returned to my hands which were cold as a corpses the first week. It seemed I was on the mend. But I made appointments with cardiologists anyway, because I wanted to know how much damage I'd sustained. I set one up with a conventional doctor first, but at the healthfood store, the owner, whom I've known almost forty years, gave me a number for his cardiologist, a prominent NYC-based doctor who was an MD but preferred natural remedies.
So on March 15th, my wife drove me to Fairfield, where he has Friday hours in CT. As we were backing into a space, my pains came back along with numbness and lightheadedness. I made it to the appointment, the doctor listened to my carotid arteries and heart, declared them clear and said I was suffering from anxiety. Long story short, we drove home 50 minutes and I'm feeling lousy the whole trip. Lay on the couch for ten minutes, my parrot stood guard over me and just watched me, but I was freezing cold and the pain would not let up. I told the wife to take me to ER.
At the ER, they hook me to an EKG and the doctors inform me that I am indeed having a heart attack. As the local hospital has no cardiac intervention unit, they ambulanced me to Danbury, and I was admitted while on two IVs of blood thinners and nitroglycerine. Initially, they said they don't perform surgeries on the weekends and that I'd have to wait til Monday. But the cardiologist thought the matter too urgent to wait that long and he scheduled me for the cath lab the next morning, Saturday.
I could not sleep in that hospital. Too much noise, talking, beeping heart monitors, paging systems, etc. Room was too hot, bed was uncomfortable, etc. But I managed. Next morning, doctor discussed the lifetime meds I would be on and I realized I didn't have any options other than to go into the catheterization. In the lab, he found my LAD artery 95% blocked. The others were fine. He put in a stent. I was moved to recovery and later back to my room where they brought me lunch. Within hours, the pain was gone from my chest. I felt MUCH better than I'd felt in months in fact. I was kept for another 48 hours and constantly monitored, given injections, pills and had vital signs checked HOURLY. By the next day I took my first walk around the 8th floor. The day after, I did more walking. On Monday, they decided to discharge me, so I was home by Monday night.
Ironically, the whole time I was in the hospital, the weather was warm and sunny. When I got out, the temperature dropped 30 degrees and damaging winds were blowing like crazy for the entire week. Today was calm enough that I was able to take my first real outdoor walk and not use the treadmill. It got up to rip roaring 50°F this afternoon, and the winds died down from hurricane force to just blustery.
As for my new diet, I watched Forks over Knives documentary about plant based diet and my wife started me in that direction. She made an incredible pasta with marinara sauce consisting of mushrooms and vegetables all cleverly blended in. A meal even a mafia don would enjoy! Late afternoons involve a sort of pita bread with hummus on it. Breakfast is oat meal with fruits and no salt or sugar.
Given the events, I'm going through a period where that uneasy mental feeling that I could die at any time dominates my thoughts. I hope that as I recover, that feeling will give way to a sense of well being. I was losing weight on the HFLC diet (lost over forty lbs) and was physically very active until October when my inguinal hernia got painful. I had to stop doing 100 situps a day and stop splitting firewood. I became more sedentary. I've lost another 8lbs since the hospitalization.
Feeling pretty good, but lost a lot of muscle mass and my leg muscles tire easily now. Gonna be a long road to recovery.
I need to deploy a palette of 550W solar panels in April, and hopefully the doctor will clear me to go back to work. It's been tough getting by with just social security and no amp repair income. Luckily, our electric bill shrunk a lot of we'd be in dire straights. I've got to fix the roof again, despite spending thousands on rubber roof coatings that leak after two years. It's a never ending headache. I'm starting the process of writing an "owners manual" for the house and the major electrical and plumbing systems. Luckily in December, we moved everything into revocable living trust with a law firm. Now I just need to finish the instruction manual so the wife knows how to operate the solar stuff and how to shut off valves if a leak happens in the plumbing.
