Americans tend to say, "in the hospital," as if there were only one.  Brits will say "in hospital."  Much as we might say, "I'm at home, rather than at the home.:

Well, all in all, I am in the hospital.  Been here since Friday. Likely going tomorrow to transitional care.

And, of course, i just want to go home at be with Tori, my tortoiseshell cat.

So much has happened

When I last posted,

I was 68. 

I could walk without a cane 

This month I turn 70. 

My mobility and strength are limited 

Although I still do part-time teaching, I'm retired from full-time teaching

Come July 1, I'll be retired from being a licensed local pastor in the United Methodist Church 

Seems like a good time to return to blogging 

A Microsoft-free Mac. (Don't worry - it's not an anti-MS rant.)

Five years ago, while I was in the hospital, I took advantage of tax-free weekend and ordered a new computer - a refurbished iMac. I still have in my (home) office today. I very much needed a new desktop Mac at the time and I saved hundreds.

Last Sunday I was again the hospital and it wasn't tax-free weekend, but I found a fully-loaded Macbook Air, 11 inch size, in the refurbished section  (refurbished isn't used - it's never been open, but was ordered, then the order cancelled; by law it can't be sold as new")   And again I saved hundreds. It's got the fastest processor, the brand new Haswell i7, eight gig of RAM, and - sweetest of all - a 512 gig solid state hard drive.  It boots up in eight to ten seconds.

It arrived Wednesday afternoon and I've finally got all my necessary files transferred over.

One thing I didn't transfer:  Microsoft Office 2008, the second most recent version of Office for Mac.

OK, PC friends, this is not an anti-Microsoft rant.

It's a sign of how things have changed.

A new version of MS Office would cost me - at the cheapest - $95.  A year. Yes, it is cloud-based; yes you can collaborate with others on documents.  But over five years on a computer, you've paid $500 for the privileges of creating and viewing documents, spreadsheets and presentations.

I've long been a user of Apple's suite called iWork:  Pages, Numbers, and Keynote.  Over the years it's become much more compatible with Office. Now the compatibility is almost absolute.  It's cloud-based (or you can still keep all your docs on your hard drive).

And it costs $20 for each module. Once. Not once a year. It imports from and exports to MS Office formats.

I've also been using a little word processing gem for years - Mac only - called Nisus Writer Pro.  Nisus has been around since the days of 1980s Macintosh and it's evolved beautifully.  It will do everything from a simple letter to a fully laid-out document, prepared for publishing.

It costs $79 once.  I create my church bulletins with it.

I've set my Mac to open any .doc or .docx, or .xls or .ppt, etc., with the appropriate iWork program. I've set things so any .rtf (rich text format) opens in Nisus Writer Pro.

Another advantage of iWork, being cloud based, is that I can even access - and edit - my work using a web browser on any Windows PC.  Which means PC users can edit - with log-in permission - documents I created on a Mac.

Plus all my iWork documents can be viewed and edited on my iPhone and iPad.

The world is changing. No one software company will ever be the dominant one.

I hope my 11 inch Macbook Air (I've nicknamed him, "Toby") appreciates what I've done.

Nisus Writer Pro:  Nisus Writer Pro

iWork: Apple's iWork (scroll halfway down the page)

It's been since May when I last posted here.  How many blog posts could I have done, had I been faithful, to cover all that has happened since.
I've gone on at home peritoneal dialysis, four times a day. I've endured multiple related infections and illnesses.
I''ve spent eleven days in the hospital to discover where a blockage resulting from a failed umbilical hernia surgery was. Now it'll take me weeks to get my energy back, but the problem is solved.

Related experiences:
Arriving at the doctor's office too week to stand.
Being taken in an ambulance about 300 yards from the Jackson Clinic to the Jackson General Hospital, across the street from the clinic.

But I'm on the mend, I have a beautiful new Macbook Air, and I promise to post more updates and reflections.

Long Distance Funeral

Apparently I once conducted a funeral without even being present.

I had taken a week's trip to Upstate New York to visit family. When I returned and entered Short Creek United Methodist Church on Sunday morning, the lay leader greeted me, smiled and said, "I hear you preached a really good funeral this week."  

"Really?" I replied, "And just where was that?"  

It was at Duff UM Church, the other church on the two-point charge. The deceased was an elderly woman, a member of Duff in her youth, but who had been living for years in Indiana. The family had brought her back to be buried in Duff Cemetery. 

So how did I get to conduct the service while being nine-hundred miles away?

When doing the write-up for the local weekly paper, the reporter realized the pastor conducting the service was not listed. So he called a member of the church, but one who had not attended the funeral. All she could provide him with was my name as church pastor. 

After church I picked up a copy of the paper and there it was:  "Service conducted by Pastor Gary Drum."  

To this day I have no idea who did the service (and probably have no way of finding out). But somewhere I still have the newspaper clipping attesting to my, um, versatility. 

Clowns, mimes, robes, and artifice

I don't like clowns. Never have.

I don't like mimes. Never have.

I don't like magicians. Never have.

I don't like tuxedos. Never have.

I don't like wearing robes, either in church or in academic processions. Never have.

What I really don't like is artifice. 

When I was a young boy, yes, I did dress up for Halloween.

In my many experiences in theatre, I've worn costumes.

But that wasn't artifice. I wasn't dressed up to say, "Hey, look at me, I'm wearing a costume." I wore the costume for a purpose. On stage, the purpose was to tell a story, so what I wore wasn't a costume; it was what my character would naturally wear. The same with my Halloween costumes, which my mother and I made (never bought those pre-packaged store costumes).  The purpose was to become the character. I wasn't saying, "Hey, I'm dressed up as Captain Hook" (my all-time favorite, complete with a hook that would probably attract the attention today of Child and Family Services), but "I am Captain Hook!" 

In the Middle Ages, academics wore robes to keep warm in drafty classrooms. To wear an academic robe today is artifice.  The same for clerical robes.  To wear one today is, at least for me, artifice.

Now I know some dear clergy friends who feel very differently, and that's fine. They find wearing such things to be natural for when they are in the pulpit; I doubt they wear the robe when, say, mowing the lawn. 

The same with men's formal wear. Tuxedos were first worn in the late 19th century by dandies, by people wanting to stand out from the crowd. Their first appearance created a lot of controversy. 

Today a tux is basically a uniform, a way to blend in, rather than stand out. 

Uniforms are fine for staff at a restaurant or a retail store. It helps me know who to ask for service. But to wear a uniform otherwise is to blend in, not stand out. 

So what about magicians and mimes? We know there is no real magic done by magicians. It is all pretense. Same with mimes. And clowns. And the makeup is a real put-off. They aren't trying to be someone. 

I like reality. 

A little background about my situation

Kidney failure officially came in late January, but it started decades ago.

I have congenital hydronephrosis. That means I was born with kidneys that were only half tissue and half fluid right from the start. Not a problem for years, because one needs only one kidney - a fully functioning kidney - to live normally.

The problem was, that's really all I started with - two halves making a whole.

I didn't discover this, however, until I was 28, when it showed up on X-rays.
Again, that didn't present a problem at the time, but it did seven years later.

Horrible lower back pain led to the discovery of a massive stone - the size of a child's fist - that had to be surgically removed. I recovered and all seemed fine until ten more years passed and another surgery. From then on I was regularly monitored, but kidney function remained just fine, or at least nothing to really worry about.

Until this past year. Serum creatinine, which measures how well the kidneys clear wastes from the blood, continue to climb, but still within functional levels.

Then, in January, it his 9. Normal creatinine is about .5 and most folks who go suddenly to 9 are suddenly dead. That I was still active and vertical sort of confused my personal doctor and he sent me to a nephrologist.

And that led me to this, sitting four times a day next to an IV pole, transferring dialysis fluid from and into the peritoneal cavity.

Next Monday I begin training to use a machine called a cycler, which I'll connect to at night and it works while I'll sleep, leaving my days free away from an IV pole.

Yes, it's quite expensive. But we are all paying for it. End stage kidney failure dialysis is covered under Medicare Part B and would be if I were younger and not yet on Medicare, but didn't have insurance coverage. (My Medicare supplement I pay for covers all the co-pays and deductibles.) So you can imagine I'm not open to any debates about universal health care.




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