Just got back last night from a trip to Portland, OR for a visit regarding “my” clinical trial … which really belongs to a few dozen of us who remain on this exciting Abbvie-951 clinical trial.
The product — which I think is now called “pro duodopa”– is available in England as of last week.. Everything has been working well for me, and I’m forever grateful to have been allowed to continue on this study. The difference between how my body responds to this new method of liquid injection — versus the pills that you never were sure of whether you were too early or too late (or both) — is remarkable.
I’m not graceful, by any means, and I still fall. (As an aside, my grandkids think it’s funny (well, five of the six of them are boys under the age of four).) But I don’t fall very often. When I can remain in the moment I do pretty well. I think it means focusing on what I”m doing and avoiding random thoughts. But then again, I can overthink or overfocus on something …. and that makes it worse.
So it’s a horse a piece. 🙂
What’s on your reading list? (Welcome to today’s Random Thoughts episode, ha ha).
I read Bradbury’s “Something Wicked This Way Comes” for the first time. Don’t know why I hadn’t read it before — I love Bradbury — but it was excellent as expected. I hadn’t read him for a couple of years and I had forgotten — well, not forgotten, but I hadn’t spent time enjoying — how descriptive, how sensual (in the literal appealing to the senses (that is, you can hear, smell, taste, or feel something that he wants to set as a backdrop)).
I’m in the middle of Mari Sandoz’s “Old Jules,” basically a portrayal of Jules Sandoz, Mari’s father. The book isn’t really a biography inasmuch as it’s a thorough, almost Ken-Burns-like documentary about life on the Plains in the 1860s – 1890s. Life was rough back then! Even the climate was (or seems, anyway) rougher than we have it today.
Actually, her description of the weather is similar to the weather I experienced growing up in Iowa and Nebraska … every winter we’d get days where the highs are zero degrees (fahrenheit) down to minus 20 or minus 30. I remember a two-week span in the mid 1980s — December, 1983, in fact — where the HIGHEST temp recorded during the two week span was minus 8 degrees. Yikes. Brutal.
But I’m straying from the topic. What is the topic? Oh, books. Yes, I’m in the middle of Old Jules and am thoroughly enjoying it. The depiction of her father growing up in the Midwest (which, for the most part, was really the west at the time) is illustrative of her talents as a writer . I’ve got this image of a grizzled not-quite-old man who was rude, boisterous, and a rebel to most government authority, but who loved his neighbors and those whom he knew needed someone to watch after them.
He was vocal in his charges against political figures, especially those who didn’t necessarily work hard for what they got but instead were given positions through nepotism. He even ran for a state position. He was the local postmaster for a number of years and lived in a 3-foot high dugout (cave, more or less) for a number of years before marrying and “moving up.” I haven’t finished the book, but it seems that he was married at least four times. Turns out that he needed a woman who was at least as tough as he was, someone to keep him honest and accountable. He was very smart and therefore was a community leader, though he was reluctant to be leading any individual. Anyway, more on that later.
What’s on your listening list? Recently … I’ve got:
- Beethoven’s 9th symphony, second movement
- “Hocus Pocus” by Focus
- Chick Corea’s “Spanish Heart” album
- Maynard Ferguson (MF Horn), back before he went commercial … I made the mistake of playing Maynard’s “Primal Scream” right after “MF Horn,” and I had forgotten how his earlier stuff is so much better (IMO) than his later work. But maybe that’s just me. I love the Conquistador album but maybe that’s because the first time I saw him was on his Conquistador tour (I was a high schnool junior). Fun memories.
- Oh, and I can’t leave out Blue Oyster Cult’s “Godzilla.”
Enough rambling for now. Between the start and end of this post I have also eaten two bowls of cereal, made a cup of really good coffee, and did some tidying up in preparation for my parents’ arrival this afternoon. See ya.