Me, a shark, and the Mall of America. Obviously.

The other morning I had a nightmare that I was swimming in a lagoon and there was a shark.  I was with another person, maybe my sister but maybe some guy (in typical dream fashion they morphed together) and there were people on the rocks above us yelling about the shark.  Naturally, I freaked and tried to swim to safety.  While I was trying to get away from the shark someone threw a dog in to prove to me that it was there or to help distract it because clearly putting him into a feeding frenzy would be helpful!  I remember thinking well, it was only a Rottweiler so I guess that’s okay and within seconds there was a huge cloud of blood twenty yards away.  I somehow managed to escape and woke up with my heart racing.

I’m not sure where my fear of sharks comes from and it doesn’t prevent me from swimming in pools or oceans but it is a pretty unyielding fear.  Yeah, I said pools.  I’m afraid of pool sharks.

Growing up I was afraid to swim in a pool alone because I was convinced that there was a tank behind the light and the grate around it would open releasing a shark into the pool.  Oddly enough my sister shares a similar pool shark fear; I think it may be because we saw a James Bond movie where this happened.  Pretty recently I was swimming alone when the grate fell off as I swam by and I freaked- I mean intellectually I knew there wasn’t a secret tank waiting to release a hungry shark but that didn’t stop my irrational fear.

Well, I guess you can just add “fear of pool sharks” to the ever growing list of weird stuff about me.

Yep, it’s true.  One month from today I will be thirty years old and I have decided to own it.  Thirty is not going to scare me- I have and always will be young at heart.

The advantage of having friends older than you is that you can ease in to your new age.  My friend Marc turned thirty in August and he is same old Marc and my best friend has been rocking the big three oh since December.   To help with the transition I have been thinking of myself as 30 since January 1- so much so that last week when a student asked my age I had to stop and think before I answered!

30 seems big and I guess it is but I have decided to be okay with it, besides, I know lots of cool people in their 30′s and beyond (and just imagine how old they feel that I will soon be out of my 20′s).   I am looking forward to the new chapter in my life that this decade brings and who knows, maybe I’ll run for the Senate now that I’m eligible!

With Al Gore’s invention of the Internet and our reliance on DVRs came the invention of the spoiler alter- a term used to describe crucial elements of a movie, book, or in this case, the results of the Olympics.  Those simple words can help a person avoid the pain of finding out a result before they are ready.  I still am scarred from the summer of 2003 when I walked into a room at camp and learned that spoiler alter Sirius Black was the character to die in Order of the Phoenix.

Wednesday was a big day for the Olympics with Lindsey Vonn, Shani Davis, Shaun White, and Apolo Ohno all competing.  I took Mum to see Valentines Day after school so I did a quick email check before leaving work and boy did I regret it.  CNN sent me an update announcing Vonn’s gold for downhill!  If that wasn’t bad enough as I got in my car the people on the radio wouldn’t shut up about Vonn’s historic win.  These people at CNN and MPR could learn a thing or two from Nightly News’ Brian Williams who announces a spoiler alert each night during his broadcast as he reports on the Olympics.  What makes me even more angry is that NBC hadn’t even aired Vonn’s win yet!

Despite having the results of the downhill ruined for me I still enjoyed watching Lindsey ski to gold and watching White win gold after his first run.  Tonight we have more Lindsey, Shani and Apolo and I can’t wait!

Iowa: 39 states down, 11 to go

My fist encounter with Buddy Holly was when I was about seven or eight and my dad was taking my sister and me ice-skating- I remember hearing “Everyday” and loving “the little piano.”  When we lived in London we went to the production of Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story at least three times.  I can also remember learning how to drive stick in the senior center parking lot and talking with my dad about someday visiting the Surf Ballroom and going out to the crash site.

February 3^rd was the 51st anniversary of Buddy Holly’s death and on Saturday February 5th we drove out to Clearlake, Iowa to honor Buddy’s memory.

the rentals out front

We walked around the Surf Ballroom where Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper played their last show then had a bizarre lunch at Bennigan’s (who knew they still existed) and took a ten minute bus ride out to the field where the plane went down.

A pair of Buddy Holly glasses mark the start of the half mile walk to site where the plane went down.  What struck me the most was how desolate it is- there is nothing there fifty years later.  I didn’t want to have my picture taken with the memorial but I was glad to be there to honor Buddy.  Over the years people have left things behind-guitar pics and other personal items- in honor of the four men that died there.

It was special to visit Clearlake with my dad- who not only loves Buddy but also resembled him in his youth.  What was even better was the fact that my mom was with us and was able to walk the half mile through snow and ice.  Before her brain surgery she wouldn’t have felt comfortable doing something like this let alone actually do it.  This was a great big reminder of how far she has come at a time I am needing a little reminding.

Over the six weeks we have been struggling to find the bestsetting for mom’s programming and it has been hard on all of us.  It is hard on me and my father because we want her to be okay and obviously it is hard on mom.  I tell her we are going backward to go forward but it can be hard to believe that when you are not seeing results and falling a lot.  Mom has had her brain implants programmed twice and has a range that she can work in to raise and lower to find the right setting.  Everyday we get closer.  Everyday.

I’m not talking your usual quotations outside of churches because I expect that.  I am talking inspirational quotes on service station signs instead of an advertisements.  I get such a kick out them and have begun to document them.

Here are two for your viewing pleasure.

Off to Iowa today to see Buddy Holly.

On a side note you have to go see Crazy Heart it was phenomenal.

Happy Birthday, Elvis!

TCB, along with a lightening bolt, was Elvis’ personal and professional moto.

Yesterday would have been Elvis’ 75th birthday and in honor of the King I have decided that we will be playing Elvis all day long and I will be making peanut butter and banana cupcakes just like the one seen on the header to my blog.

A few years ago I took a road trip to Memphis with my two best friends with the expressed purpose of going to Graceland and it was amazing.  I guess I have always been fascinated with the destination since Paul Simon released his album in1986 and I was performing routines to it on my balance beam in the basement.  Not only did I fall in love with Elvis but I fell in love with the city of Memphis a real shock to someone who considers themselves a true New Englander.  We went to Graceland, the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel, where I touched a bus from the Freedom Rides, and took in a baseball game with the tickets given to us by a restaurant owner we had met the night before.   My dad and I, who share the deep love of music but have no musical talent, always said we would visit Graceland but never got around to it so I was pumped when Meg and Ash agreed.   Since my trip to Memphis in the spring of ’05 I have become an Elvis fan.  What can I say?  I love him.

Elvis’ birthday tribute weekend comes at a time when Dad and I are starting to think about another legend of rock and roll, Mr. Buddy Holly.  Buddy Holly is one of three things that makes my father cry (the other two being firetrucks and Jack and Bobby Kennedy- we added something to the list this week but I can’t remember what it was).  If you ask my father Buddy Holly was still developing and emerging as a true creative genius when he died and we may have lost more from the future when he died than many other rock tragedies- Janice was Janice, Jimmy was Jimmy, but had Buddy lived, the shape of music today would be very different- he was so full of promise.  Bold words but I am inclined to agree with them.  Mr. Holly was killed in a plane crash in Clear Lake, Iowa on February 3rd, 1959 along with Richie Valens, the Big Bopper, and the pilot, Roger Peterson.  In a few weeks the rentals and I taking a day trip to Iowa (my 39th state to visit) to honor Buddy.  As of right now we plan to listen to Buddy Holly music the whole way down, visit the crash site, and at least drive by the Surf Ballroom where Buddy played his last show- I don’t think we will attend the concert because it is $100 a ticket.

Going to Clear Lake may seem silly to some, like visiting Graceland, but there is something so compelling about them to me as if I feel pulled to visit them.  I think my connection to things like this has to do with my love of history, to experience things that people before me have- to go there and touch and connect.

One of the interns at the Mayo Clinic had a well-thumbed paperback in his pocket entitled “Guide to Neurology.”  We joked about how confidence-building that was and that only “Brain Surgery for Dummies” would have been a more reassuring book for him to have.  For awhile I have been thinking about how to explain Parkinson’s disease and the strategies  used to combat it simply so a dummy like me could understand it.  Here goes:

The brain is an incredible organ.  Your brain fires hundreds of signals without you being aware that messages are sent to your muscles each time you stand, walk or take a sip of coffee. The brain produces dopamine, a substance that essentially amplifies the signal to get it through.  In people with Parkinson’s, the cells that produce the dopamine are dying.  In most cases, the cause is unknown.  Think of the brain as an AM radio station sending messages; if the signal isn’t strong enough then static or other noise distorts or blocks it from getting through.  When this happens the muscles hear the wrong thing, causing tremors or spasms or no signals at all, causing “freezing,” something that has been more common for Jan.

In the 1950’s two artificial forms of dopamine were developed and remain the foundation for the treatment of Parkinson’s.  In the early stages of the disease, one takes Sinemet three times a day and everything is fine but after about five years, something strange starts to happen.  The brain figures out that something foreign is affecting it and blocks it, first sporadically, then on a more and more regular basis.  Virtually all the pharmaceutical advances in the last fifty years have been to fool the brain into letting the Sinemet in and to prevent the body digesting it until the drug has a chance to get to the brain.  It is like a battle- each of the new drugs help for a while, then the brain figures out how to block them.

Remember the radio?  All the medical emphasis has been to increase the signal’s strength to overcome the static.  But what if you could decrease the static?  Turns out that just about all the noise or static that impedes the signals getting through come from a pea-sized area on each side of the brain.  In the 1990’s they did surgery to nuke (cauterize, really) the part of the brain that created the static.  Michael J. Fox had this surgery.  Again, it worked for about five years, until static came from other parts of the brain.

So what if you fought noise with noise?  Imagine being in a crowded restaurant.  You can’t hear your dining partner across the table so you stand on your chair and scream “shut up” at the top of your lungs.  I guarantee that the place will silence instantly.  However, in a few minutes (possibly even before you are thrown out) the ambient noise will return.  The surgery Jan had was to put an electrode into the middle of that pea-sized area on each side of her brain to fight noise with noise about 300 times a minute for the next five years, until she needs to have the battery replaced.

Jan was awake for the eight and a half hours of the surgery.   One of the devises that the surgical team has listens to the static as each probe is implanted.   She said that when the probe hit the pea-target, the static was so loud that she thought it had started to rain heavily.  They turned on the electrode, and the sound stopped.

Jan’s battery-powered brain hasn’t been turned on for good yet, but she is already having remarkable results. She had the surgery Wednesday, came home Thursday, took it easy Friday, but then went out to lunch Saturday, did a few errands and then saw the new George Clooney movie.   All of this improvement is called a honeymoon effect—Jan is getting benefits similar to the earlier cauterization surgery that will wear off over the next couple of days and weeks.

Chihuly sculptures at the Mayo Clinic.

I can’t close without some comments about the Mayo Clinic.  They have been on Newsweek’s “Ten Best Hospitals” list since they started writing one.  They claim to be the largest integrated medical facility in the world and I for one believe it.  They have 50,000 employees in Rochester, Minnesota, a town with a population of 85,000 two hours south of the Middle of Nowhere.  They have more important art (Miro, Chihuly) than many museums.  The day of Jan’s surgery, hers was one of 118 surgeries at St Marys, one of the two hospitals that are part of the Mayo Clinic.   St. Marys has four nurses whose job is to keep families informed while their loved ones are in surgery.  I got six status calls from them during the day.  Dr. Kendall Lee, the god who performed Jan’s surgery, met with me after the surgery and he was beaming, just radiating.  He used the word “terrific” four times… and he has done this surgery about four hundred times before, he was that pleased.  Dr. Lee, like everyone at Mayo, is on salary.  He would have been paid the same for playing golf that day as he was for making an incredible improvement in Jan’s quality of life.

Jan’s battery-powered brain will be programmed in a few weeks.  Each implant actually has four electrodes from which the technicians can select for the best result.  They also will experiment with power levels and frequencies for the best result.  Then we will see how brain surgery for dummies was really smart.

Thanks, Jordie, for letting me add to your blog.

Generally I don’t hold a lot of stock in lucky things- I don’t have or really believe in a lucky number and never have had lucky socks or a rabbit foot but I do believe that an outfit can affect the way I feel- I always feel good when I wear my turquoise shoes and the same thing goes for my pink cardigan.  A word about the cardigan, clearly I love it but I think that it is one of those things that could be dangerously close to ugly for some people so when I wear it I have to wear it with confidence.

Last night I slept in two-hour increments but am still feeling pretty good today.  I have already received three texts from Dad telling me that mum was in pre-op where they will attach the “head cage” and then take the internal MRI and that an intern came in with a “guide to neurology” in his pocket which was pretty funny.

Thank you for thinking of us today and all your warm wishes we are all touched.