Travel to Panombia, Healing a Heart

[Note: This is another blog based on my weekly emails to my family on the mainland. Since much of my news these days relates to trying to age gracefully, this series might be called The Geezer Gazette.]

12/20/25

Aloha All!

 

Well, I see that you mainlanders may be getting a break from your deep-freeze weather, a nice warmup for Christmas.  We're pretty much the same for the rest of the month -- highs around 80 at our house, lows in the upper sixties, sunny mornings with a chance of afternoon showers.  The current volcano forecast is for the next fountaining episode to occur between December 22nd and 27th so there's still a chance for a lava Christmas present from Pele.

 

This week we finalized our plans for our trip to Panama and Colombia ("Panombia") next spring.  The Panama portion will be a custom tour we put together with a local company, and we will make a deposit soon.  This took some back-and-forth to tune the itinerary to our liking, and we're pretty happy with it.  It will be a total of 12 days in Panama, spread between Panama City, the Caribbean Coast, and the mountain area in the northwest.  Our activities will include touring the canal, guided wildlife walks (particularly birding), exploring historical sites, and perhaps doing some snorkeling.  To the extent we could arrange it, the itinerary will provide for the things we like when traveling -- nature, architecture, history, culture, interactions with locals, food.  Following the Panama portion we'll fly to Colombia for our cruise on the Magdelana River, starting in a coastal city named Baranquilla and ending in Cartegena. At the beginning and end of the cruise we'll spend time on our own to flesh out the itinerary a little.  We spent a good deal of time in Colombia on a previous trip several years ago, visiting a fairly large portion of the country, so we don't feel the need to make this an extensive trip.  Anyway, we made the final payment for the river cruise and all we have left is to make some hotel reservations and book the international flights.  We're getting pretty excited about this trip, our first foreign excursion since last year.

 

 In Geezer Gazette news, I'm progressing on my ablation consultation.  I have a virtual session scheduled for January with a cardiac electrophysiologist on Oahu.  If I have the ablation procedure it will be at Queen's Hospital in Honolulu as an outpatient.  Prior to the consultation, I have a second echo-cardiogram scheduled also in January.  This should provide an up-to-date assessment of how my heart is functioning, along with the data from my recent heart monitor.  Should be a fun month. 

 

What a Float!

Finally, we had our annual Kona Christmas Parade this week.  This has a uniquely local quality, as the photo here shows. I've got all the house decorations up that I'm going to this year, and the place looks quite festive.  Karen finished decorating our living room tree, and we have been enjoying the lights during dinner and then as we watch t.v.. We are behind on mailing Christmas cards, but this seems to be a disappearing tradition.  We're very likely to send our yearly letter by email rather than by snail-mail the way we have in the past.

 

Ok, that's it for the week.  Have a great Christmas, and treat Santa with extra kindness. He deserves it more than ever......... 

36-Foot Noodle, Laser Eye Hole, Ablation Blues

[Note: This is another blog based on my weekly emails to my family on the mainland. Since much of my news these days relates to trying to age gracefully, this series might be called The Geezer Gazette.]

12/13/25

Aloha Folks!

 

Life lurches on here. My big house project this week was getting our new pool cover installed.  It wasn't particularly hard, but it was awkward trying to wrestle the thing into place, like dealing with a 36-foot piece of giant linguini (or a 600 square foot piece of bubble wrap). The pool measures 36 x 16, but the cover is pre-made as 36x18.   I laid it out in our driveway and carefully cut off the excess 2 feet on the side.  Then, with Karen's help,

Santa on R&R

we folded it into a more manageable size and carried it to the back of the house where the pool is, negotiating tight corners and some stairs to do so.  We stretched it over the pool in the late afternoon and I attached it to the cover reel with less difficulty than I had expected. Earlier I had cut off the old cover from the reel in easy to manage strips, and my neighbor helped me transport them to the dump in his pickup truck.  Job done!! As I was cutting off the old cover, I got a close look at how much it had deteriorated. It was definitely time to replace it, making the project even more satisfying.

 

There are three big items in the Geezer Gazette this week.  I'll start with the most angst-producing and move to the neutral and then to the downright positive news.  My appointment with my cardiologist on Wednesday went very badly because the results of my 2-week heart monitor showed a new problem that will likely lead to an ablation -- the treatment where some of your heart tissue is destroyed in order to get the rest of it to function properly.  Maybe.  The overall success rate of the procedure is only about 60%, but increases to 80% for patients in my particular situation.  My cardiologist is strongly recommending I have it done.  I have a referral now to consult with an Electrophysiologist to get an assessment. Isn't this fun!!??

 

In more neutral news, I had my YAG laser procedure yesterday on my left eye (not to be confused with the new experimental light treatment, which is still iffy as to when it will be available).  Absolutely painless, even without any numbing drops.  It took a total of maybe one minute. I'm still assessing if it did any good, but even if it didn't, this was certainly worth a try.  I have another appointment at the end of the month for a shot in the right eye, then we'll do the YAG procedure on it, too.  Needless to say, I'm getting very familiar to the eye clinic staff......

 

Finally, some good news. The results of my bone density scan showed very little change from 2 years ago, meaning I'm still mildly osteopenic but not getting worse. In fact, the risk assessments for breaking something got a teense better -- 10-year risk of %7.6 overall, and 3.3% specifically for a hip fracture.  Whoopee!

 

Ok, that's it.  Watch out for frostbite.  Oh, and let's all hope that Santa doesn't get shot down by some authoritarian country's demented and deranged supreme leader. I wonder who that could be......

Surf Santa, Bones & Eyes, Big Chill

[Note: This is another blog based on my weekly emails to my family on the mainland. Since much of my news these days relates to trying to age gracefully, this series might be called The Geezer Gazette.]

12/6/25

Aloha Fellow Elves!

 

December arrived this week and so did a post-Thanksgiving pulse of snow birds and tourists.  The town is looking very Christmasy, with colored lights in the palm trees and bell-ringing Santa's helpers in board-shorts and Aloha shirts outside Walmart. The weather has turned seasonally cool, too -- I recorded an overnight low this week of a mere 63 degrees!  I even had to use my heating pad and extra blanket to stay warm (remember, we have no central heating).  Also seasonal is the high surf we've had a couple of times on our side of the island this week, to the dislike of tourists but to the delight of the local surfers.  Even with the frigid nighttime temps our new pool system has kept the water temp tolerable.  I didn't install my new pool cover yet, but I hope to get to it this weekend.  That should help even more, because the old one is pretty shot and probably has lost a significant amount of its insulating ability.  I also got more decorations up outside, including some strings of lights and a cute new pair of snowmen that were a Black Friday special at Lowe's (I was vetoed on the 8-foot tall Grinch that was available, too). 

 

We managed to get our nearly 20-year old artificial tree up, though it still needs to be decorated.  It's

Driveway Greeters

pre-lit, so at least it adds to the seasonal house-vibes at night.  We opted not to expend the considerable effort of assembling the tree last year, because as I've mentioned before, we were in Cambodia until the second week of December.  It is a fair amount of work to extract the heavy box from its storage spot in the garage, carry the 4 tree sections into the house, then join them together.  In our youth we used to carry the whole box into the house, but those days are gone.  Real trees are available here at the big box stores, shipped in refrigerated containers from the mainland. I love the pine smell from the unboxed trees as I drive by.

 

In Geezer Mortality news this week, I had three encounters with the medical establishment. On Wednesday I had a bone density scan to check on the progression of my osteopenia.  One of the many clues that your body has an expiration date is that your bones get brittle at the same time that your sense of balance goes kerflooey, making a fall in which you break something more and more likely. I'll get the results of the scan next week and go over them with my internist.

 

I also had an appointment this week with my optometrist. The exam verified my current prescription is the best I can do, and also revealed significant edema buildup in both eyes.  I saw my retina doctor yesterday and got an injection in my left eye, and Ill return in a couple of weeks for my right. 

 

My ophthalmologist also confirmed an issue with my eyes that may be contributing to the dimness/brightness problem (separate from the edema build-up).  My cataract surgery earlier this year has led to a slight haze in my eye tissue where the lenses were implanted.  This is  something that occurs in about 50% of cataract patients  It isn't the new lens that gets hazy, but the eye capsule that holds it in place.  It can be easily fixed with a quick laser procedure in which a small hole is punched in the capsule allowing light to pass directly through the lens into the eyeball.  I'm scheduled for this treatment next Friday on my left eye. I'll keep you posted. By the way. a hopeful a new treatment that might also help my non-edema dimness/brightness condition has recently received FDA approval.  It's a non-invasive procedure called photomodulatiom retina therapy. It was developed to treat dry macular degeneration. I don't have that problem, but the underlying mechanism of my non-edema vision loss (dimness, lack of edge distinction, sensitivity to bright light) might be similar.  The new treatment definitely seems worth a try if it becomes available here, though it probably won't be covered by insurance.  I'm desperate for any improvement I can get, so I don't care -- I'll pay for it myself if I have to....

 

Ok,  that's my news for the week.  Hope you are surviving your early winter weather ok.  And despite the ugliness all around, try to tap into the holiday spirit.....