On my walk today, I focused on moving my hips forward by contracting my glutes and my thighs. There are two schools of thought about the best foot position when walking. Gokhale, among many others, advocates the turned-out position, arguing that the glutes are automatically engaged when the feet are in that position. Katie Bowman argues for keeping the feet straight forward, parallel to each other. I have seen people with their feet turned out, their arches collapsed, and their knees hyperextended. Turning the feet out doesn't guarantee anything. Of course, keeping your feet in parallel doesn't guarantee anything, either. I keep my feet in parallel because my feet naturally turn in. I'm one in a million. Turning my feet out would put a terrible strain on my ankles, knees, and hips. I believe the feet are turned by the hip rotation. As I already said, turned-out feet don't guarantee turned-out hips. If the hips don't turn out, regardless of the position of your feet, you're not walking correctly. Few of us do. As I watch most people walk, they swing their legs through the hip joint without rotating the hip. It gets us to where we are going, but it's not the best use of this remarkable engineering job called our bodies.
Contracting the glutes and the thighs does something to move the hips in the right direction. I have been thinking of my hips as casement windows. When I push off on my right leg, bringing my left forward, I think of the front of my right hip opening like a casement window. It's like pushing the right hip bone back. If there were eyes in my abdomen, they would be glancing furtively back to see who's following. Turning the hips out turns the whole leg out. I am bringing my left leg forward by pushing my right hip back. Try it. It will do wonders for your stomach and tush muscles.
My friend Melissa called today. She's an OBGYN who has done a tour of duty in Seattle during the shutdown. She and her husband were rushed back here when it was thought they had the virus. They didn't. I'm not sure if that is good or bad. It would have been great if they had it and had immunity now. She mentioned that while things are relatively peaceful here in Hawaii, Boston is still getting 150 new cases per day. Oh, boy.
Kaiser called while I was on the phone call with Melissa. Could I come into the optometry unit here in Kona at 4 pm today? The scheduler asked if this would work with my schedule. I laughed. I told her I hadn't been out of the house since the 14th. I had no schedule. The poor woman said defensively that she didn't know that. Ow! Unfortunately, I didn't make it clear to her that I was laughing at the absurdity of my situation, not her.
I got another phone call from Kaiser about an hour later, asking if I could make it in by 1 pm. I grabbed my computer, my Kindle, and a sweatshirt. Kaiser is usually kept as cold as a meat locker. Once I was on the road, I realized I had forgotten my face mask. I had some microfiber clothes sitting in the passenger seat. I tried to fix the bigger one into a mask. Not large enough, but I could use it to hold over my face. They gave me a standard paper mask at the check-in desk, where they took my temperature.
While I was waiting for the optical clinic to open after lunch, I stopped off at the pharmacy to see if I could get a pill-splitter. Mike had had one. I think I got rid of it, thinking that I could split all the pills I had by hand. That was the wrong conclusion. I looked over the shelves in the pharmacy and could not find a pill-splitter. One of the clerks signaled to me, asking if she could help. I told her what I was looking for. She reached behind her on a shelf and handed me one for free. That was easy.
The optometrist did her own imagining, nor accepting the pictures I brought that Sandor had taken and looked at my retina. My retina is fine and dandy. She said there was only a small difference in my macular pucker from the image taken a few months ago. While I waited for my eye to dilate, the optometrist checked with the scheduling nurse at the ophthalmology department in Honolulu. My name is on their list. They are not open except for emergencies because everyone is on virus duty. I will be called in June when an opening is available.
The optometrist sent my images to the doctors on Oahu. I received a return call later that afternoon. If I haven't told you already, I love Kaiser. Mike loved Kaiser. We have gotten the best medical service in our lives and accompanying Mike to his death.
Dr. Hu from the ophthalmology department called. He spent a good half hour on the phone with me. He had the image of my macular before him, and I had one before me on my computer. He patiently explained what was happening with my eye. It seems that extra cells are growing on the edge of my macular, I think. Those extra cells remind me of the skin tags I find on my body due to age. The extra cells pull on the macular, separating it from the retina. In his opinion, this is annoying but not necessarily an immediate danger. He told me what to look out for light flashes and large floaters that don't go away. If these occur, I am to call immediately or risk losing my vision in that eye. Since he is a surgeon who works for Kaiser, and therefore does not earn extra money for each operation, and/or he does not do this type of operation, he warned that things can go wrong due to surgery. Don't be so fast to rush into it.
Dr. Hu said he would schedule a phone appointment with Dr. Ibarra, who would do this surgery. He would tell me what the risk factors. This sounds good to me.
As I talked about the risks involved with macular surgery, I realized that I had another problem that obscured my vision. Thanks to age, I have drooping eyelids, particularly in my left eye. The eye lift, yes, it's cosmetic surgery, carries less risk and may do something to relieve some of my vision problems. If nothing radical is going on with my macular, I will focus on this.
In the meantime, Meaali'inani found some medications that may help reduce the progress of the macular pucker. Dr. Hu was comfortable prescribing two of the three eye drops Meaali'inani had prescribed. I was prepared to pay for them out of pocket. This way, my medications are covered by Kaiser. Yay!
Judy had called and said that she meant to bring down her wet/dry vacuum cleaner for Yvette. She was feeding Luke and trying to get him to fall asleep. Jazzy and Adam were out shopping. The stores do not allow parents to bring their children into the store. What in God's name do single parents with young children do? My life is so easy compared to others. I repeatedly checked with Judy to see if she wouldn't like to try the machine again to see if she could get it to work to her satisfaction. Both she and Paulette said they were done with the machine. I went to pick it up.
Paulette loaded it in my car's back seat because I couldn't get my trunk open because of the broken latch. This machine looked nothing like mine. Nothing. When I got home and took a good look, I saw it was a different brand altogether. Mine is a Bissell floor and rug cleaner; Judy's is a Hoover Floormate. It's a good thing they still had the directions.
The series of pictures of Mike and me taken by Yvette arrived a few days ago. Damon had ordered them weeks ago, but they never came. Shutterfly finally said the package was lost in the mail and sent out another copy. When the package arrived, I set it on my kitchen counter and opened it immediately instead of leaving it in quarantine for three days. I finally moved the packaging to the laundry room, adding it to the pile of cardboard that I could still recycle at the transfer station. I noticed that there was something heavy in the packaging. There was another picture of Mike and me. It was taken in the 'Grand Canyon' on Kauai by a priest Mike knew from Kona who had been transferred to a different parish. We look up at him with our arms around each other with these great smiles on our faces. God bless Damon. He has been wonderful to me.
I saw the end of The Blue Rose. It is definitely a cliffhanger. There are so many suspects, so many people who might have reason to kill Rose. I couldn't eliminate any of them. The murderer was somewhat of a surprise.
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MUSINGS:
A Plato.
I have found a few ways in which Plato and Marx were on the same page.
1) They both believed there was such a thing as a perfect candidate for a ruler.
Plato believed in some noble soul who would be the perfect philosopher prince.
Marx believed that when the proletariat ruled, they would fulfill his dream of an equitable society.
Both men ignored the human condition. Dear Plato, there is no such thing as a perfect human being. Dear Karl, just because someone knows what it means to be oppressed does not mean they will not oppress when they get the chance to.
Both men were utopians.
2) Plato believed that the nuclear family should be dissolved, and everyone should be raised as citizens of the state as their primary identity. It sounds to me like Marx had a similar vision.
Dear both of you: you are again ignoring the human condition.
I do not believe that everything we are is determined by genetics, far from it. However, I do think millions of years of development of our nervous systems before the establishment of the state, any state, had some impact on who we are today. We have to find a way to cope with this reality.
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