1st test scheduled for Wednesday, February 2nd

So, U of Penn Presbyterian Hospital just called to schedule my catherizations for Wednesday, February 2nd.  The nurses will call the day before for the exact time that I have to be there.  And, they will provide other instructions like fasting after midnight then too.

still in limbo

Meet today with the cardiologist, Dr Ross Zimmer, from Univ of Penn Medical Center who coordinates cardiac care for all heart operations among various south Jersey cardiac medical practices.  He treated the appointment mostly as a second opinion.  He does agree I most likely need the valve replaced and selected a cardiac surgeon for me by the name of Dr Wilson Szeto.  The next step is catherization both sides of heart blood vessels.  This is an outpatient surgery unless they find something demanding immediate treatment during the procedure.  I do not know when this will happen but should get a call about the appointment in the next week.  Hopefully, I will meet with Dr Szeto either before or after the procedure.

And the winner is ... a heart valve replacement operation

Now that the house renovation was finished, I was contemplating what my next adventure should be - arranging a reunion for graduates of Edgarton Memorial School between 1957 and 1967 or getting into the historical society to do some organization of the material - but the choice was made for me.  I need to get my stenotic bicuspid aortic valve replaced.  That means open heart surgery with me on a heart-lung machine getting a plastic valve put in the place of my faulty one.  I will need warfarin (yep, rat poison) for the rest of my life to prevent dangerous clots and plaque buildup around the plastic valve.  This is not a fun adventure but a necessary one.

So, what the heck is a stenotic bicuspid aortic valve you say and why is it important?  The aortic valve lets the oxygenated blood out of your heart into the blood vessels so that your cells can convert sugars in your blood and cells into energy for your muscles and brain.  Pretty important, I'd say.  A normal heart valve is tricuspid (has 3 flaps) but mine is bicuspid (has 2 flaps).  That is significant because it cuts down on the amount of blood that can flow out of my heart in one pump.

To explain, take a round plastic lid from a margarine container and cut it down the middle with one single slash, then squeeze the edges of the lid towards each other and examine the opening, seeing two "flaps". Now, take another lid and this time make a Y shaped cut instead of a single line.  When you squeeze the edges of the lid together, you see three flaps and the hole will let more liquid through more easily.  As a child I had less stamina and lower peak performance of my contemporaries, and this is why.  Regardless of how much harder I worked to get faster or last longer or be more efficient in movement, my heart valve was rate limiting (techno speak - that's me) and I could not overcome that.

Stenosis means stiffening.  So, now do I not only have a defective valve but it doesn't even work as well as when I was younger.  It doesn't open as far as it used to.  Hence, I huff and puff going fast or climbing stairs.  This usually is accompanied by heart pain, but I have either come to ignore it or I just don't experience it.  The doctor is not certain.  I do know that I can feel heart pain if I shovel snow as I did last winter, and so I don't do that anymore.

When someone has this condition, the doctor looks at pain level, how much blood is flowing, the size of the heart chamber, and the size of the valve opening to determine when the valve should be replaced.  This year's echo cardiogram showed the blood flow is up (thanks to Pilates) but the chamber is showing enlargement (for the Grinch, heart enlargement is a very good thing; for a human, it is not), and the valve opening is very severely restricted to 0.5 centimeters.  Anything under 1 centimeter is considered severe.

So, it's time to do this before it becomes an emergency situation involving an ambulance and a helicopter.  I will be meeting with the liaison between my cardiologist and the University of Pennsylvania hospital later in January to plan out the tests and surgery.  They may stick a teensy camera in a vein and run it through to my heart to see the valve in operation and check for other problems.  That would be an adventure indeed.

Unique desk mixes old and new elements from house

The base is an old radiator cover from the original house - I don't know if my great uncle or my grandfather made.  I took out the louvered doors to make a shelf for my sister's pc tower to sit on.  The top is an old door from the attic that didn't work once they wallboarded up there.  Since it had the insets, we filled them with leftover bamboo flooring.  Once we cut a hole for cords, it was ready to go.

Art installed ... better known as a sign

 So, I found this 34 inch by 76 inch by 3/4 inch piece of plate glass when we moved the ice house.  It stayed outside during the winter and I pondered what I could do with it.  The piece just was too heavy and large to make into a coffee table.  This summer I remembered that as a craft project during my girl scout years, we had etched glass.  I looked up what was required of the glass and whether it was possible to buy the etching acid in a large quantity.   And, voila, the idea for using it to identify the house was born.

I then had to find out how to make a stencil and what works is clear contac(tm) paper.  Next step was to figure out what I wanted to etch into the glass beside my last name.  It was pretty obvious though - a pigeon to honor that the original Davis (my grandfather) had been co-owner with Dyer of the largest pigeon farm on the east coast in the 30's and 40's.  I asked my mom to find a simple dove graphic and letters in a font that did not have many or any serifs and would be thick.  We put the dove on two regular sheets and each letter filled on sheet of paper.  

The next step was for me to tape them on to the contac(tm) paper and cut them out with an exacto(tm) knife.  The letters were easy but the pigeon was not.  Getting the tail feathers right was tedious as I had to make sure the stencil did not get so skinny it would tear when I removed the backing.

The next step required a sunny day and an extra pair of skilled hands (thanks Doug!).  We set up sawhorses and Doug put the piece of glass down on them so I could scrub and dry both sides.  The wind and sun did the final drying and kept the oak leaves off.  I had made the stencil from one continuous piece to ensure that the spacing between the letters and dove was correct and to make sure they were all center aligned.   This was correct but that made getting the backing off the contac(tm) paper hard while keeping the whole thing correctly aligned on the glass.

I applied the etching acid thickly with a brush made for doing pastels on canvas.  I swirled it a bit to make the pigeon appear more feathery.  That was sort of successful.  Fifteen minutes later, water rinsed it all off and there was the bird and the DAVIS.

The temperature was slated to drop into the 30's that night, so Doug moved it into the new garage.  A week went by and the temperature came up enough to pour concrete.  So, Doug put pressure treated posts in the ground and braced them and poured concrete to anchor them, making sure they were straight up.  Next, he built a frame that the glass would fit into that would attach to the posts.  This material is also pressure treated lumber.  Once the concrete was set, he added bracing in the back to the posts because we were concerned that wind might make blow the whole thing over.

I had chosen to site the art at an angle to the house because the prevailing wind is from the north and would have hit the side of the post square on.  I am hoping the angle will help deflect some of the force of the wind when we have a storm.  

In the spring, I will be able to paint the pressure treated wood, but for now it has to cure before I can do that, so it is au naturel.  That also lets me decide whether the paint color should be red, gray, or white.  Any votes?

And, if anybody asks if I am opening a business, I will insist the sign is art and it was the pigeon or a set of pink flamingos (Thanks, Sandra).  BTW, the pigeon shows up very well when the sun is shining directly on the glass, not above or behind it as in the photos above.

Fireplace, rainy day, football reminded me fondly of Seattle

Bushes and fireplaces

Some necessary items have been taken care of but they don't make good photos like shelves in closets.  The weather cooled off so I started in on some landscaping -- privacy hedge to be out of leyland cypress and two leyland cypresses to grow up in front of glass block windows in jack and jill bathroom.  These are primarily to block the late afternoon sun and just a bit more sense of privacy in the evening.  I also put in a red crepe myrtle for a bit of color from late July through September.  All of these have plenty of space to grow.  Sod comes next since the cool spell was interrupted by another heat wave this week.

The tile installer I had been waiting for all summer was also available and he put marble and glass tiles over the brick facing and threshold for the bedroom fireplace (was the original living room) and used marble tiles to make a raised hearth on either side of the living/room dining room fireplace.  The raised hearth is basically a box of 3/4 inch plywood to provide a surface to glue onto and to support someone stepping or sitting on it.  There are also 4 rows of matching marble mosiac all around each opening.  The tile installer also used (and had to cut them down to make them fit exactly) black pencil on the inside lip of the opening sides.  You do not see it but it butts up against the metal frame of the fireplace and the wall board encasing it.  The mosaic tiles overlap the pencil tiles.  Next effort is to create the wooden part of the facing and a wrap around mantle.