I called my Dad today to wish him a happy birthday. (This is an old photo but I think it captures him so well.)

He gave me a mild scold that I’d been talking about birds on my blog and avoiding telling what’s going on.  I allowed as how that was true.  But they’re so cute!

So.  How ’bout them peregrines?  Two were snoozing at the end of the ledge this afternoon, and one gets up after awhile and decides it’s time to go play.  He (of course it’s Veer, who else) nudges his sister with his beak. She’s snoozing. He tries again; nothing doing. He picks up that big foot of his and gives her a decided shove.

Veer–let me explain this to you.  I am ignoring you.  I am ASLEEP.  Notice the closed eyes?

He puts his foot out again and broadsides her.  Waits for a response.  Nada.

Does it again, at which point she turns her head away and does all but roll her eyes, which are now finally open.  VEER!  I. Am. NOT. getting. UP!

On the other side of siblinghood, yesterday, when Kya was up on that roof drying off from her ordeal, a report came in this morning that said that she’d flattened herself down in the way that’s referred to as “pancaking,” the way the babies sleep, with feet out behind and bellies flat, to soon see one of her siblings (one report said Veer, one, Ilahay) who’d flown up there to keep her company.  The arrival pancaked down beside her and stayed there till Kya was ready to pick herself up and give it a go again.  She was not alone.

She ended up eventually safely back in the nest.

I don’t know if that was her on the ledge today with her brother or if it was another sister.  C’mon! There’s a gorgeous world waiting out there for us. I’ve seen it!  Let’s go fly!

Give it a rest for now, okay, Veer?

Oh, alright, be that way, and he half flew half ran off down the ledge and away.

——————-

And just because it’s Dad’s birthday and he wants me to, okay, yes,  I’ll add a report.  My Dr. R finally got back from his sabbatical, something I’d been waiting for (along with probably half the population in town, it must feel like to him.)

Bleeding below the endpoint of the colectomy surgery, pain above in upper GI, although less of the latter now.  So.  I’m to go on prednisone again while hoping it’s not enough to set off a diabetes reaction again, come in for x-rays next Thursday and see him again the next day, and meantime he scoped that bleeding stapled-off stump.  (The big G search engine is not my friend on any further description here and that’s probably more than you want to read anyway.)  Totally Crohn’s-y looking.  Further surgery is one eventual option, but not yet.  Biopsies taken.

And I had not told him anything about it nor said anything to her this morning, but it was all I could do not to snicker as he surprised me by telling the nurse I’d “already been prepped” for the scope: she had shoved a pamphlet at me last week with pre-sigmoidoscopy dietary restrictions.  I’d tried to explain to her that there was no colon.

She insisted.

No connection.  Does Not Apply.

She still insisted.

I drank my thoroughly-dairy-containing hot cocoa yesterday morning and this with a feeling that it was an act of defiance.

Guess who was assisting at the scope.  Not that I’d said anything to her, but.  A lesson to myself not to roll my eyes at any nurse ever, even just from within, because you never know when you’ll need them, and besides.  Who doesn’t need a little gentleness their way anyway.  It was probably at least partly a language barrier, which must be very difficult for her and I of all people, with my deafness issues, knew it.

Meantime, I am enjoying my time chuckling at the antics of teenage birds acting so much like my kids did and my siblings and I before that, while grateful to good parents who helped us learn to spread our wings well.  Happy birthday, Dad!

How the heck do you drive this stickshift?!

Or, why the biologists committed to rescuing this species that almost came to extinction in the days of DDT are doing Fledge Watch this week with binoculars on the ground and all the trained volunteers they can find.

This picture is looking in the opposite direction down the runway from yesterday’s photos; that is the nestbox on the right.  Every now and then the camera will close in on the bands on the birds so you and they can tell which one we’re looking at.

No such luck this time: I saw a juvenile take off this afternoon, which was so cool, and mentioned it to a friend but told him I was sure it had to have been one of the ones who’d already fledged: it looked too steady and too sure of itself to be a first-timer.

Boy was I wrong.

At that time, according to the report that came in a little later, Kya took off.  She had a rough landing and decided to stay put on the Bris de Soleil for a few hours.

And then she decided she wanted to go home.  There was a sibling at the end of the high ledge by the nest box, watching: via the webcam, I could see a falcon in flight swooping around again and again, though I had no idea which one it was.  Then there was one swoop to just out of sight where I thought, wow, that didn’t look good. I assumed it was just a funky perspective of the camera.

It wasn’t.

The report that came in later said that she’d tried for the nestbox but hadn’t gotten quite high enough and had collided slightly with the building. She recovered, swooped around and tried again–and this time hit harder.  Down down down, falling noisily, grabbing at the vents on the side of City Hall for 30 feet with the noise getting the attention of otherwise oblivious people on the ground as well as the fledge watchers.  Everybody holding their horrified breath.  Then she caught herself, winged it, and… the people standing on the nearby garage had her coming towards them and were going, she’s not going to clear it!

And then she disappeared.

They ran.

She ended up in an alley with multi-story structures on three sides and no way she could see out.  A person was walking in her direction. One fledgewatcher yelled at the woman to stop coming closer! Another, the biologist in charge of the project, went over the fence that was in his way and took off his cap.  When he got quite close, Kya went on her back with her talons up, ready to fend him off. He stretched out his cap, she grabbed it, and he was able to swoop it and her up and hold her wings gently in to get her into a protective box.

She was then taken to the roof of City Hall, not far above the nest, where her parents divebombed the biologist–they knew what was in that box! Smart birds.  He doused her with water so that she would wait before flying again and could get some rest while he got the heck out of her way, rather than having her panic and tire herself out and do more damage.

And she’s okay.

Parenting. You send them out on their first solo drive and you pray like crazy.

Hi, Mom, hi, Dad, what’s for dinner?

Veer! Ilahay! You’re back!

Kya and Tierra were all over the nest area today, but didn’t leave it. Their siblings returned and hung out with them, joined at times by a parent, until the late evening, when Veer flew off again.

I thought I’d share a few screen shots. The white spot in the center of the back of the one on the bottom in the third picture?  Remember my Blue Jay shawl story? One of the others was on that upper ledge, and…

I asked the peregrine group if that could damage the fledgling’s feathers, given my experience with the bleaching effect of bird poop even when washed off right away and Stephanie‘s experience once with it actually weakening the fibers in her yarn. I was assured that birds’ feathers have a protective coating on them and not to worry.

Then one person chimed in about having once seen what her birding group had thought was a white-feathered turkey vulture. Till they saw where it roosted relative to the other turkey vultures. Oh.  Oops.

So I guess it doesn’t harm them after all.  Just makes them easy to spot.

Every night, Clara is perched on the high ledge by the nest box, keeping watch over her offspring so they don’t spring off.

Last week, the little ones would be mostly settled down for the evening even before it was all the way dark, barring their tails getting bounced on. (Veer!)

Today, the two remaining females spent a lot of time side-by-side, first on the lower ledge, and then finally, the last one, with her head bobbing upwards and back down to her feet again and again trying to judge the distance, okay, here goes nothing under me!, joined her sister for the first time on the upper.

Preening with a careful set of talons gripping the edge.  Looking out over San Jose.  Skittering backwards during wing-flap practicing, as the earlier two had done.  Finally, it was enough for awhile, and one hopped back down to the runway.  When food arrived to the ledge shortly thereafter via Mom , the other tried to eat it without the movements and the height getting to her, but finally gave it up and flew down with the prey to where it was a little safer.  Where the two could share.

But soon they were both back up high on the upper ledge or on the top of the box rather than inside it. They could now, so they did.

I looked at the cam tonight. It was late.  A parent peregrine was standing guard, as always.

And one of those eyasses was, instead of snoozing away in the box, standing on the far side of it from Mom on the lower ledge, looking out. Probably reading some chick lit under the covers with the city lights as a flashlight.

A quick side note: my email glitched last week, and if I didn’t answer you, it means my inbox didn’t get your comment and there was no address for me to respond to; my apologies. And, Don is home now and again grateful for your support, as am I.

My children went through a stage as babies where they were so eager to finally be able to stand that they would pull themselves up in their cribs and stay there holding onto the top till their legs shook from exhaustion, but they just couldn’t let go to sit down again.  When they finally fell down, crying because they couldn’t take it anymore, they would immediately stand right back up again, tired or no.  This was something new that they’d been wanting to do that they now knew they *could* do and it was just so compelling to them to keep at it. No pleading from me or making them sit down would work, that first day; the effort finally wore them out enough for them to go to sleep.

The second day, they remembered that legs could bend and they learned how to let themselves back down when they needed to.

I happened to catch the moment: the camera was straight behind Ilahay, the female falcon chick among the four that the peregrine group was calling “ledgelings” yesterday. She and Veer  were the first to get up the courage to flutter carefully to the upper ledge above the small runway that had been their home. They spent a great deal of time side-by-side up there towards evening.

She was again on that ledge today, looking out over the San Jose skyline below her. And then suddenly, as simple as that, she flew off  as if she’d been doing it all her life, out and out and slightly downward.  The camera, perfectly positioned, showed her there in the air supported by nothing but Life itself in all its glory. It was a heartstopping, joyful moment.

Off camera, a few hours later, Veer was practicing his flapping on top of the nest box when a gust of wind caught him, according to the watchers below, and he, too, learned he could at last fly.

She ended up on the rotunda dome of City Hall.  (The nest and runway are in that piece jutting out on the left side near the top of the main building.) Veer ended up outside the mayor’s office, where the blinds got pulled so as not to disturb the little political animal.

They went without dinner, there Where The Wild Things Are.  At nine pm, they were still clinging to those spots.

Tomorrow, I imagine, they will learn how to let go and climb upwards again.

(Added note 8 pm: Don is back in the hospital. Tests are coming up.)

I’m going to move the p.s. up here so it doesn’t distract. Right after my last and most serious accident, for those who may someday need to know this, a doctor told me to keep moving, gently and while consciously relaxing, all day. Do not take a nap.  Do not allow the muscles to tense up. Keep moving. Keep relaxing.

He was right. I was hit hard enough to have a head injury for life, but there was very little whiplash effect to the rest of me, which quite surprised me.

Okay, on with the post.

Afton sent me an email about mitzvahs, and the story that instantly came to mind after reading hers of something someone had done for her was this one.  I saw this man for maybe 60 seconds out of my entire life:

“Mrs. Hyde–you got rear-ended AGAIN?”

When the guy at the dealer’s bodyshop recognizes your voice…  And this was before my big accident, where my car was totalled from behind by a speeder and thrown into another one. So.

I made an appointment for an estimate and set out. Coming off the freeway at Stevens Creek, there was a homeless couple holding up cardboard signs. My light was red; I had a moment.

Back then, we kept MREs (Meals Ready to Eat) in our car all the time.  This was not long after the 7.1 Loma Prieta aka The Pretty Big One. We’d bought two cases as emergency earthquake food supplies and kept some in the car. You never know where you’ll be.

I rolled down my window and reached back to the pocket behind the passenger seat, and as I did so, the whiplashing I’d gotten suddenly distorted my face as I tried not to groan. I got the MREs, I don’t remember how many, and held them out to the man, who by then had come near my car for his handout.

As it went from my hand to his there was something absolutely electrical that passed between us.  It took me a breath to comprehend: he had seen the pain in my face, had seen me going through that willingly for him in order to take care of him, and in that moment it felt that God Himself was using that simple means to convey straight to the man’s heart that he was Loved in this world.

And to his credit, he was able to receive that.

I will never forget him. That great healing went both ways. He had made it worth what I was having to go through.  He had allowed it to be turned into a moment of pure Grace.  And I knew I, in turn, had to forgive the man who’d eyeballed me and then deliberately rammed my car in a moment of road rage.

It was lifechanging.

What are your mitzvah stories?

Trying to be productive while not wanting to miss a thing: how to get skeins turned into balls, finally, about 4000 yards’ worth that have needed it for some time.

Yesterday Veer spent hours on the lower ledge looking like he was trying to get up the courage to let go and take off but he just couldn’t quite bring himself to.  Then when it was getting too dark to anyway, he tried to rouse his sisters, who’d settled down in the nestbox–go, go, I wanted to fly today, what if I don’t get to, come with me now, let’s go!

VEER.  Shut UP.  So then he bounced across their backsides and tails with those huge feet of his, at which they got up and yelled at him. He ran out to the nearer ledge, walked behind the box, came back the other side and laid down too.  But not before he’d pushed them out of the coveted corner spot.

Little brothers!

Today after more of the same agonizing, he made the leap and flew to the upper ledge, somewhere only the parents had gone before.  He then flew along half its length, ran the rest, and stood there king of all he surveyed, flapping his wings, tucking them in, watching white down feathers fluffing past from the nest area, judging distances.  Finally his mother apparently thought, enough of this, and landed nearby up there with prey. He snatched it right out of her grasp and flew straight down to the safety of the runway.   Go Mom! Thank you for rescuing me from myself! Phew!

Teenagers.

I opened the door a half hour ago and got an instant flashback.  I don’t know where it is and the city’s emergency warning system has not sent out automated calls.  But the smell was heavy in the air–there was a fire out there somewhere. There’s also a stiff breeze going on, and I don’t smell it now.

We never had fire season growing up in Maryland, that’s for sure.

We also never had peregrines that I knew of.  Today the falcon fledge watch has officially begun in San Jose. I saw one of the females perched up on the low ledge above their runway near the top of City Hall, looking out over the city.  Her sister stayed just below her, and as the one turned her head this way and that, looking out at such a whole new direction to take in–down–her sister started pecking at her toes.

Like siblings everywhere, the one above reacted with, Stop that! She twitched her foot away, and when she set it back down, the other started pecking away at it again: are you sure that talon isn’t a tasty bug?  And again, till finally that huge falcon foot pushed carefully slowly against the other’s head and away from her: I. Said. STOP. That. NOW.

A few more pecks from below just to get the last word in.

Veer, the lone male of the four, disappeared from the camera for long hours yesterday. Males are smaller, so their feathers become fully grown out a little sooner; he’s easy to pick out from the crowd, small, dark and smooth, while the others still have a few puffs of white fuzz sticking out at funny angles, although, fewer by the hour now.  When Veer was banded, they put a black band on his left foot, the opposite side from his sisters.

This afternoon, all four were in the nest box.  He flew out of it, looking steady and sure as he went, baby awkwardness gone. He instantly disappeared out of view of the webcam; I don’t know if he stayed in their runway area.

All three females cocked their head to the side in lockstep unison, then further over to the side as they watched him go: how off earth did he DO that?

They will find out in the next day or two.

Don’s back home again, and I stopped by this afternoon and visited. I hadn’t seen Chipper and Pepper, his birds, since the day 16 or 17 years ago when we were going to remodel and Don’s wife Amalie invited me over to see some of the things they’d had done at their place.

Pepper did not deign to let me too near her, and scooted over to Don if I got too close.  She was so funny–her behaviors reminded me of a cat.  Look at me, adore me, but only do what I demand.

I asked lots of bird questions, and shared back as much of the Scharffenberger as he would allow me to.  It was good to see him back home again, and he allowed as how that was a better place to visit him–he could show off, there.

Thank you, everybody, for looking out for him with me. Much appreciated.

My friend Don found himself calling 911 in acute pain last night and is in the hospital. They haven’t pinpointed the cause yet.  He asked that I let my blog readers know.

He’s not at Stanford, rather another local hospital where I used to visit someone frequently and where my lupus support group meetings used to be held, so I know my way around there pretty much–that part shouldn’t be a problem.  I didn’t manage to get there tonight; visiting hours would have been over by the time I could have gotten there, but I hope to tomorrow. After yet another doctor appointment (the staph infection came back again after the antibiotics finished again. Round three.) I have asked and been promised that with the bag over it and much handwashing and Purell-ing, I will not be spewing germs around as I go.  But if any of my medical-profession readers feel otherwise, please let me know, even if I’d wish not to have to hear it.

Oh, and just to rat him out, his 79th birthday is next Tuesday, June 2.

I so hope he’s okay!

I got told to take some benedryl this morning and a massive dose of prednisone, which is a steroid, last night, prior to coming in for the CT scan, due to previously having had an allergic reaction to topical iodine. I wanted to argue with the radiologist that I’d been told by a doctor in the hospital, prior to a CT scan there, that iodine is a mineral and one cannot physically be allergic to it, only to what it’s mixed with.  But I decided, eh. Just make them happy. I took it.

Good thing.  Yesterday evening I’d been back to serious pain, holding my stomach to be able to walk down the hall.  Took the pred, went to bed… And although I was quickly wired to the max, the pain, I suddenly realized, was almost gone.

It was absolutely stunning. Pred has never touched my Crohn’s, ever, at any dose. They had me on 200 mg/day via IV in the hospital, and, nada.

I had a longstanding appointment anyway with my surgeon for right after the CT scan, and she was delighted.  “Different body parts sometimes respond differently to the same med, and you’ve only ever had Crohn’s in your colon before.”

She thought she saw a Crohn’s spot on the small intestine in the scan; the radiologist’s preliminary report didn’t think so or didn’t catch it.  Two pairs of eyes is a good thing. We’ll see how that settles out; as the surgeon cautioned, “I’m not a radiologist.” (Ed. to add: they talked, the radiologist went carefully over it again, and said no, it was normal. There is another test that could be run, but Dr. R will have to order it when he gets back.)

But there is now a definitely-maybe hope of being successfully treated. I can’t tell you how good that feels.  It’s not gone, but I’ll take all the improvement I can get.

Oh, and, I tried to knit my Monterey shawl during the long wait between the half dozen large paper cups of dye I had to drink and the actual scan, I really tried. But benedryl and no sleep and a complex pattern–I got about a dozen stitches into a row, shook my head at a mistake, couldn’t see what I’d done for the life of me–that’s when you know I’m drugged out–and tinked back to the beginning and stuffed it back in my knitting bag. I had carefully packed a spare ball of yarn and needles just in case, picked it up, and launched into a scarf in the Michelle shawl lace pattern.  Something utterly brainless, silk and merino comfort knitting to comfort someone else by.  So many people have knitted for me lately.  Time to get back to work on giving back.

I got in today.  The nurse on the phone sounded again reluctant, at which point I played the trump card of the Urgent Care doctor having said upper-GI inflammation and that I was to be seen in GI on Tuesday.  Oh. She let me in.

I adore the doctor I got in to see.  Nancy, she’s the one your shawl went to. (And she was not there Friday.)

It might not be a new flare; it might be an adhesion from the surgery. Or a fistula. Or even another blockage (don’t think so).  CT scan tomorrow with the requisite fasting and pre-procedure meds.

Meantime, here are a couple of chick flicks for those so interested. The second is of last year’s banding, with the parents screaming past the guy’s head every few seconds–you can tell why he’s wearing a hard helmet!

I slept in today and felt quite a bit better; yesterday was about as bad as I want to get.

Memorial Day has me thinking about my uncle. EG in the title, of course, is for the Enola Gay he flew on.

On a different note.  The baby peregrines are supposed to fledge Friday or so. (I’m wondering about the one that is two days younger than the others.)  The falconatics have a listserv where they’ve been talking about breaking out the chocolate in celebration come the day, and one said, we’d have to open a whole chocolate shop!

To which I replied that it would need to be dark chocolate to celebrate Clara silhouetted against the city lights.  Only, make sure it’s not a fly-by-night operation.

I’ve gone from a calm yeah, yeah, whatever–hey, no blood through the stoma, which they were glad to hear, so how bad can it be, to wanting to type a screaming NO NO NO NO NO!!! to semi-calm again.  Yes, we did go to Urgent Care, the deciding factor being that there’s no question they would have access to my electronic medical records there; the peer pressure via the blog was very helpful in getting me out the door, and thank you.

I did not know there was such a thing as drinkable lidocaine with maalox. I told the doctor I preferred chocolate.  He chuckled.  He came back awhile later and asked if it helped; it did. I got the impression he almost hoped it didn’t, that he wanted to be wrong.  Looks like upper GI inflammation.  That area would be your stomach, and…  What do they treat your Crohn’s with?

…oh.

He allowed as how he could do a full workup with a CT scan, but it could wait till tomorrow with the GI doctors taking over. Oh, right, sorry, Tuesday.

We got home.  The phone rang. My friends Valerie and Al: his mother was visiting, they wanted to go to Santa Cruz but she wasn’t up to the walk, would it be possible to borrow my wheelchair?

Hey, not only a wheelchair.  When they got here, I apologized for the ratty-looking air cushion that we hadn’t replaced because of the unspeakable price tag, so please, no keys in the pockets, it’s punctureable.  But the chair alone would make her sore after a half hour or so, and with the cushion she’d feel wonderful however long they took and wherever they might go.

I took a risk and let my cushion I can’t afford to replace go to make an elderly woman I’d never met before today more comfortable in her day, and it totally made mine.

Of all the times she might have visited, of all the days they might have decided to drive over the hill to the beach at Santa Cruz, I needed it to be today, which they could never have known.  And so they did.  I can just hear the wheels going bumpitybumpitybumpity down the boardwalk from here.

(p.s. Today is my son Richard and his wife Kim’s first anniversary, and I can’t tell you how grateful and honored I feel to have Kim in the family. Happy anniversary!)

There was a new receptionist yesterday, she made a rookie mistake, and I didn’t correct for it.   I shouldn’t be making rookie mistakes myself by now, that was my fault.

In Family Practice, the receptionists have seemed to me to be empowered to simply create you a same-day appointment if the need is compelling. It wasn’t till after everything settled down yesterday and I’d had time to think that I realized that maybe that’s just through the one woman I know there who’s been on that job for all the 22 years we’ve lived here; she knows me and knows that my doctor and nurse in FP know me–that I don’t waste their time.  If I say I need to be seen, I do.

So when I called early yesterday morning to the GI department, I wondered if we might be able to do that, given how compelling the symptoms were to me: just give me an appointment, okay?

The result is that the new receptionist, who I’m sure could not in fact do that, made the mistake of sending a message to a nurse rather than connecting me to that nurse’s voicemail to do so myself. Which I should have insisted on, so that the nurse (who was also new and didn’t know me) would get a clear message of symptoms and would hear my voice in the process–that’s actually pretty important.

So some of the blame is absolutely mine in yesterday’s mess.

Last night was rough. Today not so much–but.  I sent a note off to my Dr. R in case he or whoever’s on call might be checking his messages, and something about spelling it all out like that… I think I may well let myself be talked into going to Urgent Care later after all.

Meantime, thank you, everybody, for your support. It helps.