ProfessorTomoe

I have good news! "Pavane" is tentatively scheduled for play on the Classics à la Carte radio program on San Antonio public radio station KPAC, 88.3 FM, sometime this Friday, April 14th, between 7pm and 9pm CDT. You'll be able to listen to the show through the link below, I believe, or if you have an Amazon Alexa device, simply say "Alexa, play KPAC-FM." Full disclosure: Classics à la Carte is hosted by my brother-in-law, James Baker. KPAC-FM is a member of Texas Public Radio. https://www.tpr.org/show/classics-a-la-carte

I went to the orthopedic surgeon's office yesterday and saw his assistant about the continued severe pain in my torn right rotator cuff. While corrective surgery is still out of the question, I did manage to get a different cortisone shot while I was there. Turns out the first shot I received was of Kenalog, and it didn't do me much good. Yesterday's shot was of dexamethasone. It hurt considerably more than the Kenalog shot did (it's still a bit sore deep down inside, even though it was ultrasound-guided). Again, I'm supposed to give it a week before it kicks in. We also discussed some items for me to discuss with my pain management doctor. One of them is a nerve block, something I've never considered. I've got a telemedicine appointment with the pain management team on Monday, so we'll see how that goes.

***The Edema Chronicles for April 13, 2023 Today's weight, taken at around 7:20 a.m., was 318 lbs. Another day skipped. No snuff.

***The Edema Chronicles for April 11, 2023 Today's weight, taken at around 5:30 a.m., was 317 lbs. Sorry, skipped a day. Wasn't feeling up to snuff.

***The Edema Chronicles for April 9, 2023 Today's weight, taken at around 3:50 a.m., was 319 lbs. Grumble mumble warrgarbl...

***The Edema Chronicles for April 8, 2023 Today's weight, taken at around 5:58 a.m., was 313 lbs. I weighed yesterday at a doctor's office and came up 314 lbs, so not as big a jump as it sounds.

***The Edema Chronicles for April 7, 2023 Today's weight, taken at around 2:03 a.m., was 317 lbs. Ladies and Gentlemen! It's time to play Fuuuuun With Fluctuations!

***The Edema Chronicles for April 6, 2023 Today's weight, taken at around 4:30 a.m., was 315 lbs. Let's try 315 again, shall we?

***The Edema Chronicles for April 5, 2023 Today's weight, taken at around 3:22 a.m., was 317 lbs. I weighed myself during the middle of the day on the 4th and got 317 as well, so my report of 315 may have been off. Don't know why.

Yeah, but they're a double-edged sword. They make you go, but they're liquids in and of themselves.

***The Edema Chronicles for April 4, 2023 Today's weight, taken at around 2:15 a.m., was 315 lbs. I spent a lot of time urinating Monday, and I had relatively little to eat or drink. Maybe that has something to do with it.

***The Edema Chronicles for April 3, 2023 Today's weight, taken at around 3:36 a.m., was 322 lbs. Hopefully I've hit an upper limit.

Oh, and I tried playing my Pavane at 72 bpm and at 76 bpm - the verdicts were no. Too plodding, too ponderous. 88 bpm is it for me, thankyouverymuch.

I think I ruined Mrs. Prof's morning. She apparently didn't realize (or had forgotten) that a pavane was a 16th / 17th century dance in slow duple time. She just thought it was a name I'd come up with for my song. Seriously, she'd forgotten about Ravel's and Faure's Pavanes. So, when I referred to @mlooney's answer, she was thrown for a loop and accused me of being my usual elitist academist self once again (I wasn't). Things are patched up now, fortunately.

Thank you. As for the speed, it's quarter note = 88 bpm, so it's not terribly fast. I don't know what the traditional pavane runs at, sorry. I blame artistic license.

Got a new piece of music out! It's more of a test to see if I can still write, since I haven't written anything for almost a year. Here's the piece: https://soundcloud.com/lee-jackson-12/pavane Please let me know what you think. Thanks!

***The Edema Chronicles for April 2, 2023 Today's weight, taken at around 4:22 a.m., was 322 lbs. My new scale doth desert me in my time of need. Et tu, Detecto?

***The Edema Chronicles for April 1, 2023 Today's weight, taken at around 4:57 p.m., was 319 lbs. This was taken using my new, more accurate scale. No April Fool's joke.

The thing is that my pain isn't in my joint. It's in my rotator cuff, which is cartilage holding the joint together. I don't know - I just hope it works. I'm giving it until next Friday.

I saw my orthopedic surgeon today, with the intent of having a pre-op appointment to get ready for my right shoulder rotator cuff surgery. He examined me and was happy with my progress. After the exam, I expressed some fears I had about what would happen to me after the surgery. You see, I was under the impression that I wouldn't be able to push off my right arm to help myself get out of a chair (which I need due to my bad knees) for 6 weeks. "Four months," he corrected me, making an already bad situation worse. I laid out some other concerns, and finally asked if I could go into a rehab hospital after the surgery. "There's nothing to rehab in your shoulder," he said, and told me no. I asked him what my options were. He said that I probably shouldn't have the surgery. Oh, great. Well, maybe all is not lost. He mentioned a couple of more conservative, non-surgical treatments we could try. One of them wasn't covered by insurance, so that one was right out from the start. The other, a cortisone shot into the joint, guided by an ultrasound scan, would be covered. I told him to go for it, and he did, on the same day. It hurt a bit, but hot as bad as others I've had. The shot should take about a week to kick in, if it's going to help at all. The pros to this are that I'm not going to have to deal with a year or more of rehab, and extraordinarily painful rehab at that. The cons are that I'm never going to completely get rid of this pain, but then again I may never have gotten rid of it even with the surgery. We'll see what happens.

I bought a new scale. Best wide scale as ranked by the New York Times. "Eat Smart Precision Plus Digital Bathroom Scale with Ultra-Wide Platform, 440 lb Capacity, Bath Scale for Body Weight, Grey" https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0032TNPOE

***The Edema Chronicles for March 30, 2023 Today's weight, taken at around 5:58 a.m., was 321 lbs. This was without my jacket. My weight, taken with my jacket on about an hour earlier, was 320 lbs. I need a new scale.

***The Edema Chronicles for March 30, 2023 Today's weight, taken at around 5:48 a.m., was 320 lbs. No weight recorded for March 29, 2023, because frankly, March 29 sucked.

I have the same issue that @mlooney has. Stool softeners have not helped me much. About the only thing that has made a difference is a diet change, to include a ton of yoghurt and salads. Sad but true.

I got up to take a shower prior to heading out for a lab test this morning. Headed down the hall, and the walls started tilting on me. Whoa. Shower and lab test postponed. As a result, I wound up sleeping solid from noon until around 11pm. No breaks. Prior to that, though, the clinic called back and asked me how I was doing. They were worried that my anemia was acting up. I'm supposed to call them if it happens again, even if it happens after hours.