Health Event: Numb Big Toe

I’m writing today to document what I’m calling a Health Event.

I’ve had numbness in my toes for years, at least 20 years. I’ve been to doctors to try and figure it out and it essentially came down to a diagnosis of neuropathy, which means, “You’ve got numbness in your toes”.

This morning, I’m noticing that there is a change in my right big toe. I don’t have a good way to describe it other than…my right big toe is number. Not number like counting, number like, more numb.

It’s not painful but it is kind of effecting my gate when I walk. There’s just a touch of a limp when I’m walking. I think I’ll end up adapting to how this feels and just go on.

In the meantime, I have documented the numbness here and I will keep an eye on things to make sure nothing changes color or gets number…excuse me, more numb.

Cartoon Update

Back on January 13th, I wrote about my website, www.adventuresofretiredguy.com. You can check that out to see what I wrote.

Here is the cartoon I have posted for today.

This is now an update concerning what I wrote.

I have made it through my month off and as expected, I did not do a very good job of building up my inventory of cartoons. The goal was to get about two months ahead.

The reality is I have about three weeks.

I did slack off and coast for the month, as I suspected I would. But I ran into a problem right after the first of the month where my iPad died.

I was working on it, in fact, I had just finished a cartoon and sent it to the website, when the thing just winked out. That was it. It was dead.

It was kind of devastating because I had a lot of material on that iPad. I had lots of cartoon ideas and lots of set up drawings. I will now have to recreate those drawings.

The iPad is essential to how I create these cartoons, so I had to get a new one. I went down to the Apple Store and first, had the old iPad checked out to make sure it was really dead. The guy said the Logic Board was fried.

So, I went on to look at a new iPad. I decided I wanted to go from the 11-inch screen to the thirteen-inch screen. $800.00. Add another $75 for a cover and ultimately another $154.00 for an update Apple Pencil and I have spent about a grand on this new iPad.

Because of this, I lost the first half of the month to draw cartoons.

You would think that would make me buckle down and really get to work for the last half of the month, but that’s not the way I’m built.

As I said, I'm about three weeks ahead on actual drawn cartoons and I have a bunch of ideas down on paper to create new ones.

I'll be working at V du V winery tomorrow, so I'll get some cartoons done then and again on Saturday.

In the meantime, I shall just slog along and try to get the inventory built up.

Lunch wid’da Boyz

One of my favorite Retirement Activities is to go to lunch with people. For the most part, those people are “guys”, but I don’t feel limited by that.

On Tuesday, Susan and I went to lunch at Jimmy John’s in Lincoln Heights for our 31st lunch. It’s a group of about 10-12 folks who get together on any month with 31 days. We know each other from church. I would not classify this lunch as ‘the guys”.

I have a regular weekly lunch date, loosely scheduled around Thursday, where I go to lunch with Rob (who I’ve known since kindergarten) and Mark (who I’ve known for about 45 years). The routine is we go somewhere to get a sandwich and take it to the Hub Tervan, where we enjoy our sandwiches with relatively cheap beer.

Today I went to lunch with Geoff and Mike. The routine with these guys is we go to different places and check out their food.

The destination was the Logan Tavern (ya see, I known how to spell it right) and we enjoyed their footlong hotdogs. Ten bucks! I had the chili dog which was quite a meal.

Beer was also included as well as lots of conversation.

I was hoping to ride my bike to the lunch, but the day was quite rainy.  The weather service recorded .17 inches fell today. And I’m too much of a pussy to ride wet.

100 Miles

I went out on a bike ride today and got to 100 miles on my Odometer.

Here’s a picture.

That picture pretty much sucks. The glare from the sun pretty much took away any detail. You can barely see the 100 number on the odometer at the bottom of the screen.

Here’s another after I got home and out of the sun.

So, I have made my first milestone (perhaps my first 100 mile stone) with my e-bike.

It was a great ride and it’s nice to get out. It's still kind of chilly but I bundled up and had a nice ride.

March BP

The notations AM-AD and PM-AD indicate days I took an anti-diarrheal pill to help combat the side effects of Ofev, the medication I am taking to slow the scarring in my lungs. The main side effect is the Big D. The "Hy" with a slash through it indicates days I did not take Hydralazine due to low blood pressure. Additionally, my average blood pressure for the month was 115/71.

Health Update

I went up to Northtown Mall yesterday for a walk. It was the first time I've been up there in quite a while. 

I haven't been doing any regular exercising. I've gone out on my bike when the weather has been favorable and I skied about 2 weeks ago, but nothing you could call regular activity.

The walk yesterday started out strong. I felt really good while walking and thought I would try for 3 laps around the mall. That would be about 2.25 miles.

I stopped to sit and rest after two laps for about five minutes. When I started walking the third lap, the energy and vitality I felt at the start was no longer there. I felt a bit weary...not to the point of passing out...just feeling a little shaky.

I ended cutting the full lap short. For distance for the day, I'm calling it two miles.

Both yesterday and today started out with low blood pressure. In the range of 110/60. Yesterday I felt pretty good. Today, a bit shaky.

It looks like it might be warm enough today to warrant a bike ride, but I'll have to see how I feel as the day goes on.

February BP