Health Update

Over the course of the last couple of weeks, I've been asked a number of times how I'm feeling, what's up with my health and various other questions. Because of this, I thought I'd give you a brief update on my situation.

I didn't write about it here on Blogger, but did post about it in Facebook, so many of you already know what happened in the middle of February. My second surgery was February 10th,  and I had a third surgery scheduled for the 22nd. That surgery was postponed because 5 days after my second surgery I ended up in the emergency room and hospitalized for not one, but two pulmonary embolisms. Doctors put me on blood thinners right away and I have been steadily improving, but I'm not out of the woods yet. About a week ago, I developed a urinary tract infection (my second one since being diagnosed) and have been on a regimen of antibiotics to knock that out. I feel good overall, having gone on several four mile hikes over the last couple of days, so that's a good thing.

What it boils down to is my third surgery was rescheduled for six weeks down the road, because apparently I've been "stabilized" on my blood thinners. The surgery is still risky, but my urologist believes that he needs to get in and do some more work on the remaining tumor inside my bladder. And so I go in for surgery, tomorrow, the 29th of March. My doctor told me he didn't expect this surgery to last as long as the first one, which means my recovery should be quicker. Upshot of all of this is, this particular surgery will determine what the next line of treatment is for my cancer.

So if you don't hear from me in the next couple of days, that's the reason. As always, I have appreciated your kind words and support through all of this.

Collections and traditions

For those of you who know me well, you already know that I'm most comfortable in tee-shirts and shorts, unless it's the winter months and then it's tee-shirts and pants. Not really much difference, but at least it keeps my legs warm.

Anyway, most, if not all of my tee-shirts are ones that I've purchased when I travel. I started this way back in high school when the family would camp in Yosemite National Park almost every summer. And every time I was there, I would purchase a Go Climb a Rock tee-shirt. It sort of became a thing for a while there and I had a Go Climb a Street shirt that I bought in San Francisco and a Go Climb a Volcano shirt that I purchased in Lassen Volcanic National Park. I even had a gag tee-shirt that a friend of mine purchased for me that said Go Climb Mt. Fuji.  

After high school, I tended to drift away from the Climb shirts and just purchased ones that I liked. Most of these tee-shirts center around the national park experiences, but there's also novelty tee-shirts that some of my family and friends have purchased for me. So what does this have to do with anything?

Well, when I'm out and about I tend to wear a tee-shirt that fits the theme of the day.  If I'm geocaching, then of course, the likelihood is I'll be wearing a geocaching tee-shirt.  If I'm camping, more than likely, I'll be wearing a national park shirt. Family visits usually mean I'm wearing a shirt given to me by one of my kids.  You get the idea now.

After looking over some of my more recents shots I took at several national parks, it seems like I have a "Go to" shirt for when I enter a national park and get my photo taken at the entrance sign of said national park. I'm wondering if it's my subconscious telling me that I have to wear my Yellowstone National Park tee-shirt every time I enter a national park, or if it's just a coincidence? It's probably the latter, but no matter what, since this has become sort of a tradition, I obviously will be wearing that tee-shirt on my next excursion out into a national park, or at least when I get my photo taken at the entry point sign. And of course, because I noticed this, I'm going to either have to get back to Yellowstone to get a couple more tee-shirts, or order some on-line so I have a ready supply for future trips.

More detours - Three lefts make a right

This is just an update on what I wrote about in my last blog entry. If you haven't read the first part of this, I suggest you click on this link and read that one first as this one will make more sense after reading that one.

Yesterday, I underwent my second surgery in the past 17 days. This one was less invasive, and yet it's a little bit more invasive since I have a tube coming out of my body at this moment.  But I'm mobile, so it's not as bad as it sounds.  Last months surgery was able to completely get two of the three tumors and most of the third one. However, that third one is causing some problems which is why I had yesterday's surgery. The tumor was causing a blockage of the ureter leading from my right kidney to the bladder and so they went in yesterday and performed a nephrostomy, inserting a tube into my kidney and allowing it to drain outside of my body. This will help the kidney not be damaged after all of this is over, so that's a good thing. I was awake during this surgery, but didn't feel anything due to local anesthesia. 

This is just another detour on my road through life. I may have stated in my last blog entry that this type of cancer is very treatable. It may be messy on this end, but there's a very good chance of me leading a normal life once I'm out on the other side.  And so it goes.

I have one more surgery scheduled for the 22nd of this month. Once that one is completed, then we'll have a much better picture of what the next course of action is.  And so, right now, I'm just recuperating from these first two surgeries, taking it easy, and mentally preparing myself for the next surgery.

I have appreciated all of your comments of support, love, and encouragement. Your friendship means a great deal to me and as always, if I can't respond back right away, please know that I have read every comment that has been posted either here on the blog or on on Facebook. 

Detours

The title of this blog has always been Webfoot Wanderings and thus it's supposed to chronicle most of my travels. This will be the primary focus of this blog at all times, but every now and then, life gives us detours, things that take precedence over other wanderings. So if you don't want to know all the gritty details, then just feel free to stop reading right now.  I can give you the TL,DR (Too Long, Didn't Read) version right here. I'm having some health issues that have cropped up and am dealing with them.

First off, I'd like to apologize for the way I'm communicating this to everyone, but I felt that it was the easiest for me and my circumstances. Some people already know and they have been a great support to me over the past month or so. Now, everyone will know.

Christmas Eve, I noticed some things that weren't right, so we ended up going into Emergency Kaiser in Northern California for what looked like a suspected kidney stone. Tests indicated negative for kidney stones, however a mass was discovered in my bladder. 

I had my first urology appointment on Friday the 13th.  More tests including a camera inserted into my bladder confirmed several tumors in there. Yesterday, I went into surgery to remove those tumors and I'm now resting rather uncomfortably at home recuperating. I have my post op appointment next Wednesday, February 1st. Hopefully, pathology will be completed and my doctor and I will be able to chart the next course of action in my recovery. As far as I'm concerned, this is a detour in my wanderings and a temporary setback.

Physically I feel fine for someone who just went under a surgical procedure yesterday. Mentally and emotionally, I've been all over the place. The people who I've been able to talk with personally about this have shown such love and support for me and I can't thank them enough. 

Throughout this, my wife Marsha has been my rock helping me through all of this over the last month. I can't imagine a more luckier guy than me to have married her 35 years ago.

If I don't comment specifically to a comment that I'm sure will come after this posts, please don't take offense. I promise that I will read every one of them and will respond in kind when I can. Right now, your love and support is all that matters.

Potpourri

Wow. Three posts in less than a month. I guess I'm on a roll now. It's either that or I actually have something to say. But since it's the beginning of a new month, it's time once again for P.J.'s monthly photo blogging challenge. This month's theme is potpourri, a mixture of things, and boy do I have an interesting mixture of shots that I took last month. In reality, the amount of shots that I actually took was low and the amount of selfies last month was very high, almost 67% of all my shots included my self-serving mug in the frame, so I'm actually pleased that there's only two shots in this month's gallery of photos that has me in the shot.

So anyway, here's my take on this month's theme of potpourri.

1. How hot is it?

This past week I took another road trip, to of all places, Las Vegas. Why you might ask? Well, usually, the only time I ever travel to Las Vegas is when I'm traveling through Las Vegas to get to points elsewhere. It's not a town I really want to spend a lot of time in, but when I have been there, it's always around 110 freaking degrees outside and very unpleasant to walk around, so we get out, maybe for a bathroom break and then hop right back in the car usually on the way to Utah, where it's always cooler.

This time I purposely decided that I wanted to visit Las Vegas and I turned it into a geocaching road trip (but then again, when isn't a road trip of mine geocaching-centric?). Part of the reason was there are several geocaches in Las Vegas with very high favorite point ratings. If you have been following along, you know that I enjoy challenge caches. Find the cache, but before you can log the cache, you have to complete the challenge. One challenge that I've signed requires me to find 15 caches with 1000 favorite points. There are several in Las Vegas and I eventually found three of them, bringing my total of 1000 favorite point caches up to 11. So that gives you the reason why I went to Las Vegas, but the first shot isn't about Las Vegas at all.

No, this is actually in California. I needed lunch, so I stopped in Baker, California, had lunch, then drove over to the "World's Largest Thermometer." There is a virtual cache located here which I had already logged several years ago when it was over 100 degrees, but there's also a physical cache right near the base of the thermometer and so I ended up finding that one for my second find of the trip. Ironically, I didn't even step back to see how warm it was that day, but I suspect it was somewhere in the mid 70s, a very pleasant day to be out in the desert.

2. All Hail Caesar!

Once getting to Las Vegas, I decided to walk along the Strip. It was late in the afternoon and I wanted to find some of the virtual caches along the Strip. One of the caches is entitled Toga Party and is located outside Caesars Palace. You need to find this particular statue of Caesar and take a selfie of you with it. As opposed to some of the other Caesars nearby, this particular Caesar is quite naked and so I wanted to keep my shot family friendly and thus framed the shot accordingly. Not that anything is family friendly along the Strip, but I have some standards nonetheless.

3. Sunset on the Strip

Everything on the Strip is over the top. You like M&Ms? There's a four story building dedicated to nothing but M&Ms. You want to visit Paris? There's a replica of the Eifel Tower along the Strip. Castles, performing fountains and volcanoes, rollercoasters around high rise buildings are all part of Las Vegas and I enjoyed just taking it all in.

As I was heading back to my motel for the first night, I was greeted by this gorgeous sunset behind the New York, New York hotel and casino. I couldn't pass that up. And as noted previously, since this was a geocaching trip, I had certain goals I wanted to accomplish, so riding the rollercoaster, although tempting, wasn't in the plans for this week. Since I didn't accomplish all of my goals, I know I'll be back in the future, perhaps next fall again as I now know that the weather is much more accommodating than in the summer.

4. Annie

No, I didn't go to a play while in town, but I did visit a very dear friend of mine who I worked with for about 20 years before I retired. She subsequently retired a couple years later and she and her husband have since moved to this area. She was our school's media coordinator/librarian. She also owned several "labrary" dogs over the years who would enjoy the library on Fridays during our school year. Our school was very dog friendly and so it wasn't uncommon to see several dogs on campus, especially on Fridays. Annie was the last of the labrary dogs to enjoy the hospitality of the school's library. 

Annie is a very loyal dog and once you were her friend, she would always recognize you and ask for scritches and wag her tail at you. Sometime during the last month of school the year I retired, we had an assembly and I decided that I would be the mascot of the school during the assembly, dressing up in a large cougar costume. At one point, I was resting on a chair on the side of the gym and Annie came over to me and snuggled with me, not something she would normally do when you're so camouflaged, but she recognized my scent.

When I went to visit on my second day there, Annie barked at the door since there was an "intruder" into her humble abode. But as soon as she saw me, she was all tail wags and dog kisses. She remembered and we hadn't see each other in over three years. She's a good girl.

5. Life's short. Eat dessert first.

My last night in Las Vegas was again dedicated to walking along a different portion of the Strip. I found this side alley near the Flamingo hotel that had all sorts of restaurants, so I decided that I was going to eat back in there as there just seemed to be all sorts of gastrointestinal delights, including sushi burritos. I didn't try those, but they did look interesting. 

Before I had a chance for dinner, I found the Ghirardelli shop and entered. Mistake number 1 according to some people, but I looked at it as an opportunity. I wandered around inside, checked out the menu and then decided that life is short and I ordered this sundae, a Cookie Crumb Hot Fudge Sundae. I posted this shot to my family's group chat and my youngest immediately posted back, "I don't know what that is, but I know I want one." 

I decided that I was going to eat dessert first. Well, in reality, I ended up eating dessert that evening as it was a very filling dessert. I know it wasn't very healthy, but it was very tasty and because I don't do this on a daily basis, I could justify it for a one night extravagance.

The next morning, I hosted a coffee event just off the Strip that was fairly well attended by some of the local geocachers as well as two other geocachers from California and two geocachers from Australia who were in town for a conference. Why host an event? Why not? It gave me a way to meet some of the local geocachers, get a tip or two on some local caches that I might try to find and gave me my 8th different kind of geocache find in the state. 

Yes, there's a challenge for that in Colorado called the 8x8 challenge where they want you to find 8 different kinds of geocaches in 8 different states. I now have found at least 8 different kinds of geocaches in 3 states, California, Arizona and now Nevada. New Mexico is the next closest with 7 different kinds and all I have to do is go to New Mexico and either attend an event or host my own event and I'll then have 8 different kinds of caches there. 

Well, there you have it, my take on the theme potpourri for this month. Please stop by P.J.'s blog and check out some other people's interpretation of the same theme. As always, please comment here. I won't bite.

Trail Encounters of a Different Kind

As most of you know, when I go out hiking, I like to encounter wildlife, especially the legless variety.  A couple of days ago, I had a different kind of encounter on the trail. Usually, when I'm hiking, if I hear a rustle in the bushes on either side of the trail, I can be fairly assured that it's a lizard of some kind. Lizards like to hold still until the last possible second, then take off when the danger becomes overwhelming to them. At that point, they aren't very stealthy and make a lot of noise as they travel over dead leaves and such. Snakes, on the other hand, are very stealthy and can travel over dead leaves without make a sound.

So when I heard something in the brush off to my left, I looked over and sure enough I spotted a lizard running across the trail on a trajectory that would take it right between my legs. About a millisecond later, a second sound and right behind it comes a snake in hot pursuit. So now I have a lizard and a snake heading right toward me.

Now, I can hear some of my friends right now exclaiming, "I would have been screaming." Yeah, well, I'm not proud to say that an expletive left my lips and I jumped just a little, mainly because I had been surprised by the snake coming out more than anything else, but once the snake saw me, it decided that lunch, in the form of that lizard, wasn't worth the human that now stood between it and its meal and so it turned tail and headed back to where it came.

I was not able to get a photo of it unfortunately, but I was able to ID as a two striped garter snake, very similar to the photo here.  They are very pretty snakes. I just wish the encounter had been a little bit longer as it was over in a matter of 10 seconds or so.

Road Trip

Well, this one is way late in coming and I should have written some other stuff in here many months ago.  But that's water under the bridge and so seven months have gone by since I've written here. It's not like I haven't been motivated, but I just never got around to it and this has languished long enough.

So why all of a sudden am I writing today?  Well, P.J.'s photo blog challenge for this past month was the theme "Road Trip" and I did go on a road trip last month where I actually took some photos, so it made it easy to get back into the swing of things.

When I retired three years ago, I set several goals that I wanted to accomplish so it wouldn't get stagnant. One was to visit or do one new thing each year. The second was to have at least one overnighter somewhere each month. It didn't necessarily have to be a camping overnighter, but just somewhere different each month.

It was going fairly well, but then the pandemic hit and everything fell apart. But recently, I'm been getting back into the swing of those goals. And I will be the first to admit, that it's easy to come up with an excuse to take off for a long road trip.  

"Honey, I'm going up to visit the grand baby."  And so I go, although both of us went up in April for Easter, but I went up by myself to visit her in July.  June, I did a road trip up the Owens Valley on the east side of the Sierra for a lot of really good geocaching.  July, the grand baby came down here for three weeks and then we turned around and went up there for another week. Why? Because we could. August, I did another short backpacking trip in the Sierra and that brings us to this month.

I looked at the calendar and the weather forecast and it was going to be hot down here, so I decided to head up to visit the grand baby again, then head up to Lassen Volcanic National Park. I've visited this park many times in the past and seven years ago I accomplished a bucket list item by summiting Mt. Lassen in June 2015. So why go back? It's one of the least visited national parks in the lower 48 states, so there's a lot of peace and quiet, especially if you go during the week. My plan was taking me there on a Tuesday and leaving on a Friday before the weekend crowds come in. Second, because it was already mid-September, the crowds were going to be even smaller during the week, because school is back in session so there wouldn't be as many vacationers out.

Third, it's a beautiful park with some fascinating geology, plus there were a couple of new geocaches (a virtual cache and an earthcache) hidden since the last time I was there and because you know I love to go geocaching, that seemed like a no-brainer. 

My long hike day I'd set apart for myself dawned crisp and cold. Temperatures were down in the mid 30s overnight, but it warmed up nicely during the day.  I drove around the mountain and went down to the trailhead for Brokeoff Mountain, which is the second highest peak in the park at 9200 feet (2804 meters). The hike was a little bit over 3.4 miles (5.47 km) with an elevation gain of 2600 feet (792 meters). The third shot is of Brokeoff Mountain from the trail. The trail had some very nice shady spots and I had two small water crossings going up.  I ran into a total of 13 other people on the trail the entire day. Had I opted to go up to the top of Mt. Lassen instead, I probably would have encountered 3 times as many people. It was definitely a road not taken kind of adventure.

Brokeoff Mountain was my new thing for the year. In all of the years I'd been going to the park, I'd never taken that trail before. Of course, geocaching was to blame since there was the new virtual cache on the top of the mountain, which got me going. I probably would have gone to the top of Mt. Lassen again were it not for geocaching, but that's one of the reasons I really love geocaching. It takes me to a lot of places I might never have gone without it.

I'm not sure it's because of my age, or something else, but I felt like the hike up there was tougher than the hike to the top of Mt. Lassen.  Of course, I was seven years younger then, but still in my late 50s. After we got done with Mt. Lassen, my friend Craig and I then hiked out to Bumpass Hell. This time, I really wanted to go out to Bumpass Hell again, because the area really highlights the thermal features of the park, but once I got down off of the Brokeoff Mountain hike, I was pretty much spent. I headed back to my campground with no intentions of stopping elsewhere, at least to hike.

I did stop numerous times on the way back to the campground, however. Summer of 2021 was not a kind one to this park with regard to wildfires. The Dixie Fire burned about 64% of the park's eastern side and there was lots of evidence of the fire as I drove back around to my campground. In fact, the virtual cache at the top of Brokeoff Mountain had me taking compass readings of both Mt. Lassen and Mt. Shasta. As you can see by the shot of me at the top, taking a compass reading of Mt. Lassen was easy, but Mt. Shasta was more difficult to spot through the haze of not one, but two different wildfires that were between us and Mt. Shasta. Fire, it seems, is becoming more and more prevalent throughout the area.

What is really amazing, in my opinion, were the number of trees that survived the blaze.  It's not readily apparent in my last shot, but if you look closely, you can see quite a few individual trees that survived and will be the trees that help sustain this forest into the future, provided the area gets enough rain and snowfall. That being said, when I asked about weather for my trip, they said it was going to be cool at night, which I already knew and that a storm was coming, scheduled to come in Friday or Saturday. Since I wasn't planning on being around, it didn't bother me, but the forecast was for rain, with snow on the summit of Mt. Lassen.  Let's hope the area gets more of this all winter long.

And there you have it.  My road trip for September.  Please stop by P.J.'s blog and check out the links of others who posted about road trips.