Top Retirement Blog
Online MBA

Winter Wonderland

Posted on January 31st, 2010 by Retired-Ed in Daily Life

I have spent the better part of the last week shoveling snow. Over and over again. As I write this, I have already shoveled six times since yesterday morning. I have pictures! But first things first.

Today, January 31st, is my younger daughter Allison’s 27th birthday. Happy Birthday, Allison! Your mom and I wish you health, happiness, and prosperity in the coming year. I vividly remember 27 years ago today, and your arrival took me away from a school assembly! Thank you for that! However, your arrival almost occurred while driving to the hospital. Thankfully, you waited, but not for long. It made for some excitement! Happy Birthday again.

So, back to the snow. We have lived in this house for fifteen years, and this is the most snow that we have ever had. I grew up in Midwestern United States and have seen my share of snowfalls, blizzards, and winter storms. What we have now cannot compare to some of those, but this is really unique for Unterfranken (our area of Bavaria). German law requires that your walkways are cleared of snow and ice by a certain time every day. You also have to shovel a path to your front door. In addition, prior to driving your car, the snow must be removed from every outer surface of your vehicle. All of those are good laws, aimed at safety, but it can be a pain. Fortunately, since I am retired, I don’t have to leave early for work. In the past, I would have to leave the house by 6:15 AM. Not so any more! I can shovel the driveway and sidewalk clear before the Queen leaves for work. It takes about 90 minutes to clear everything after a snowfall of more than an inch or so. In addition, I have to shovel several times during the day if the snow continues. I am getting my exercise, and that pleases my doctor! Anyway, here are some shots of our scenery. I would have like to show the pristine condition of the snow before the snowplow clears it off the street, but (bless him!) the Winterdienst (snowplow and salt truck operator) comes before dawn, so it is not light enough to take pictures then.

Here is a shot of our backyard from a balcony on the second floor of our house:

And another of the woods behind our house

Our front yard from a balcony:

And our yard from the driveway level:

The mounds of snow from our neighbor’s shoveling efforts:

And a view of our snowy village from atop our hill:

So, as you can see, we have some snow, and  driving is complicated by the fact that there is a nation-wide shortage of “Streusalz” or road salt. Not all of the roads are being salted; sometimes it’s only the intersections. One of our American bases (Ramstein AB in southwest Germany) is advertising in other European countries that they will pay top dollar to anyone who can deliver 120 tons of road salt to them. It’s a mess all over. In addition, the local stores don’t have supplies of salt for consumer usage either. Actually, it really isn’t salt, as that is banned for de-icing here in Germany, but most people are familiar with the term, so I use it here.

Since I started this post with information about my younger daughter, I’ll close with a comment about Wendy, my older daughter. Many of my readers also read her blog, CityWendy. In addition to her personal blog, she also writes for another site, and that is her paying job. Quite some time back, she wrote a piece about how she was lamenting that she didn’t have  any gay male friends in New York, and she had several friends in Chicago. Someone took offense at her post and wrote a scathing comment that got posted on another website. It seems that he (a gay man) felt that she was being “dehumanizing” in stating that she missed having gay friends. For the record, my daughter is a straight woman (married) but has many gay friends whose company she enjoys. Now just why it took so long for this guy to respond to her post, I can only imagine. I think it took him that long to read the words that had more than one syllable.

I seriously doubt if he reads this blog, but just in case he does, here is something for him. Sir, it’s great that you live in a country where free speech is the norm. If you want to trash Wendy’s posts, it’s your right. However, it’s always better to be nice. You’ll win more allies to your cause by being pleasant and not so vicious in your diatribe. That’s just friendly advice. Now here is a response from her dad. Listen, douche bag, write what you like, but at least give her (and me) the courtesy of spelling her name correctly. Since her byline is on every post, all you have to do is copy it letter by letter. It’s not that difficult, but I can see that it was for you. What is it about the internet that causes people to forget their manners? I can’t figure it out.

Retired-Ed

6 Comments

He’s Ba-aaaaack!

Posted on January 22nd, 2010 by Retired-Ed in Daily Life

Well, did you miss me? I think it has been more than a month since I posted to this blog, and much has happened in my life. I will try to go chronologically and not bore you too much.

Our family visited for Christmas. First, Allison arrived on a Sunday, but she was delayed for several hours because of weather. Evidently, the bad weather was on this end, and flights leaving the States for Frankfurt were delayed in taking off. The weather really was pretty bad. The normal trip of 1 hour and 45 minutes to the Frankfurt airport took me  3 hours and 35 minutes to drive. Driving in the dark in the middle of a driving snowstorm is not my idea of fun. At that time of year, in these northern latitudes, it gets dark early. And she arrived on the day before the winter solstice, so it got dark very early. We didn’t get home until 11:00 pm for a flight that was scheduled to land in early evening. I had hoped to be home by 6:00 pm, because I had to leave early the following morning to pick up Wendy and Drew.

But that was not to be. Wendy phoned and said that their flight was delayed from Newark. Later she emailed, and if I leave out the curse words, I think it said that even though they knew that their flight would be delayed by at least 4 hours, they had to go to the airport anyway so that their seats would not be given away. Have I mentioned that I think that all airlines suck? But  I digress. All told, Wendy and Drew spent 9 hours in the Newark airport waiting for their flight to take off. Finally, they arrived in Frankfurt…..and I was not there to meet them. I had determined that I was going to take the train because of the traffic delays that I had faced the day before when picking up Allison. Well, guess what! The much-vaunted German high-speed train was delayed. I figure that if I had to fork over many Euros for one round-trip and two one-way tickets, the least I should expect would be for the train to be on time. Oh well! I got there about 15 minutes after they cleared customs. We raced back to the train station (located in the airport) and caught the next train back.

We had a really nice visit. We dined in,dined out, drank some champagne, opened presents, visited Christmas markets, played games, and just celebrated being together as a family. Drew is a new addition (and a welcome one) to the family, and it was his first visit to Germany, so I hope he enjoyed it. He’s visiting another “foreign” country now. He’s in Vancouver, B.C., helping his network cover the Olympics (assuming that that particular network hasn’t imploded by then). My plan was to post pictures of some of the Christmas markets that we visited, but it seems a little “after the fact” for that. I still have pictures of the Wuerzburg  Christmas Market as well as the one from Rothenburg ob der Tauber. Maybe I can get those on the site later if anyone is interested.

All of them left on the same day, December 27th. The Queen and I had a couple of days to do things on our own, but circumstances got in the way. On the afternoon of December 31st, the Queen found me unconscious and having a seizure in our bedroom. Honestly, I can’t relate very much of what happened, because I have absolutely no recollection of that afternoon at all. She found me in bed, and I had taken off my bluejeans, so I must have planned on taking a nap….but that’s only conjecture. I can remember sitting on the couch downstairs, earlier in the day, and checking email, but I do not remember going upstairs at all. I have never had a seizure before, and it was caused by severe hypoglycemia. I take insulin for my diabetes, and I can now piece together what must have happened. Normally, I get a “warning” when my blood glucose drops too low. I must have not recognized the symptoms this time. The Queen force-fed me an entire tube of glucose tablets that we can buy in the German Apotheke. She also fed me two larger glucose tablets that I kept in a jar on my nightstand. I was non-responsive and apparently was flailing around all over the place. At some point, my glasses got bent up, and I got some minor injury to my hand (which I believe was cause by the EMTs trying to insert a line into my vein while I was seizing….but I could have struck something…or someone). The EMTs and the Notarzt (emergency doctor) finally did get an IV line inserted and began infusing me with glucose. After all of that, my blood glucose level only measured 30. Imagine how low it must have been earlier! I’m lucky to be alive.

After I was roused, I felt fine, but they told me that I needed to accompany them to the hospital. I was able to dress myself and walk to the ambulance for the ride to the hospital. I was taken to the ER where I stayed for about 4-4 1/2 hours until I was released to a ward. Because it was New Year’s Eve, not much happened that night other than to make me comfortable and to monitor my glucose level about 300 times. Well, it felt like that many times. Here in Europe, the New Year is rung in with fireworks, and I got a spectacular show from my 4th floor (third floor in European terminology) room.

With the next day being a holiday, and then the weekend after that, I didn’t start any treatment until Monday. But then things began to happen quickly. After the admissions office determined that I wasn’t a deadbeat and really could afford the treatment, I was asked if I wanted to be treated by the Chefarzt (chief doctor). “Sure,” I said, and he came later on to take over my case. I saw a diabetes counselor and went to “diabetes school”, which is probably something that should have happened 20 years ago when I was first diagnosed. They were reluctant at first to criticize the care that I had been receiving from various military hospitals and clinics, but later told me what they thought. The standard of care wasn’t the issue, but the type of insulin that I was being prescribed gave them pause. They changed the type of insulin that I use and changed the schedule. It seems that the NPH insulin (a type of long-lasting insulin) that I had been using made me hungry, which caused me to eat more, which caused me to need more insulin, etc. it became a vicious circle. One result of the new insulin is that I have lost 16 pounds so far and am not hungry at all.

The doctors also got me on an exercise program which has made me feel better than I felt before, and I didn’t even realize that I felt bad before. This is really nice. I am taking Apidra insulin before my meals, and I have to calculate the dosage based on my blood glucose level and what I will be eating. Basically, I am counting carbs, but here we use BEs, which is short for Brot Einheiten, or “bread units”. I even bought a book which gives the BE details on many foods. As the book is in German and listing German foods, I also have another book in English which lists many American foods, but I have to convert grams of carbohydrate to BEs. Not much of a problem. Twelve grams of carbohydrate equals one BE. Even I know how to divide by 12! I also take Levemir, a 24-hour insulin, right before I go to bed. I think I need to tweak that dosage, but I’ll talk with my doctor this coming week about that.

I was in the hospital for eight days, and it certainly helped my German. They knew that I spoke German, so they did not use English with me. On day 3, I believe it was, I got a roommate…another American. He was a young soldier who had some stomach pains. When these same nurses were speaking English with him, I was astounded that they could speak English.  After that, they would speak English with me if I requested them to do so. It was fun trying to stretch my German. Many of the nurses were also speaking German as a second language, just as I was. They came from Eastern Europe or Russia, so they were stretching their ability too.

The hospital bills have started to roll in, and I paid four of them today. I’m still waiting on the doctor bill, the bill from the ambulance, the bill from the emergency doctor, the bill for the ultrasounds that I had to undergo, and the bill for EKGs that were administered. There are probably more bills that I haven’t even thought of yet. It’s part of the normal course of business here to bill for things separately, so I might still be getting bills in this coming summer. I’ll pay ‘em. I’m glad that they fixed me!

Some of the Queen’s colleagues lent me some DVDs while I was in the hospital, and I am still enjoying them. I’m just finishing up NCIS and about to start on JAG, but I have seen many of the JAG episodes. I thought I had seen many of the NCIS episodes, but they didn’t seem familiar as I watched them. Maybe my memory was affected by the “incident”. We’ll see.

And that’s what I have been doing. I wish everyone a Happy New Year, even though I’m a bit late with my wishes.

Retired-Ed

6 Comments

In Sickness and in Health

Posted on January 2nd, 2010 by Retired-Ed in Daily Life

I am sorry for the lack of posts lately. We hosted our two daughters and one son-in-law for the Christmas holiday. I planned to post about that.

However, on December 31st, my wife found me unconscious in our bedroom due to hypoglycemia. I have been in the hospital ever since while the staff tries to get my insulin intake better adjusted.

I start posting again when I get out!

Retired-Ed

6 Comments