News From Hawkhill Acres

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Well, I hardly know where to begin. I guess it all started last winter when I developed some weird symptoms. I called it the “Marvin the Paranoid Android” syndrome, because it was a vague ache that seemed to come and go for no reason, at the bottom of my rib cage on the right side. Marvin’s pain was in his diodes all down his left side, but still. It seemed to taunt me, showing up for a few days until I’d decide to make an appointment with the doctor if it wasn’t gone the next day – and it was. Gone the next day, that is.

Things went on like that until my Spring checkup when I went in to see how much winter weight I’ve packed on this year and how my wonky thyroid is holding out with daily applications of Armour Thyroid pills. Doc G, a good man with the patience of a saint, suggested I have some blood tests, just to make sure the mysterious pain wasn’t anything we should be concerned with.

Of course, at the time, the pain had vanished entirely, so I forgot all about it and about the tests until I got a call from Mona, Doc G’s receptionist.

“Your tests were fine,” she said, which was no less than I had expected.

“Except that your TSH level is a little low, so maybe you should ramp back on the Armour a little.”

I told her I could cut it back from 120 mg to 90 mg and she said that’s what Doc G had written as a suggestion. I was about to thank her and hang up when she said, “Oh, there is one thing, one of your liver enzymes is a little high.”

With a pang of regret about that second glass of Shiraz I’d had with a friend a few days earlier, I nervously asked her what we needed to do about that.

“Oh,” she assured me, “It’s nothing serious, I’m sure. Probably just a fluke (egad, a liver fluke?) but it could possibly be an early sign of gallbladder disease. He’d like you to have an ultrasound just to be on the safe side.”

So I did. A week later, Mona called me again and gave me the good news: no sign of gallbladder disease whatsoever.

“Well, thank you,” I said, “That’s taken a weight off my mind.”

“Yup,” Mona went on, “Just fatty liver, but no gallbladder disease.”

Now, I’m sure Mona is a great receptionist, but when it comes to delivering news to patients over the phone, she’s on a par with – but nowhere near as funny as – the late Gracie Allen. I made an appointment to see Doc G and immediately swore off liquor, fatty foods and – for good measure – butter beans. (I hate them and they look like they have fat in them.)

Doc G took yet more blood, grilled me like Elliott Ness and managed to winkle out the fact that my grandmother had died from liver disease – cirrhosis of all things, which is odd because she was a teetotaler. I had forgotten that fact until I mentioned my liver problems to my oldest aunt, who then mentioned my grandmother’s liver disease which carried her off when she was only 5 years older than I am now.

I won’t bore you with a description of the tests and procedures that followed. Suffice it to say that I seem to have inherited my grandmother’s genes, although not her abstemiousness. Would that I had been a teetotaler and a vegan who spent her life living on raw brown rice and organic nettles. Instead, I swallowed (literally) the frequently touted belief that red wine is the perfect antidote to the fat in that Bugaboo Creek steak and garlic fries I noshed down a couple of times a week.

However, before I put David Crosby on my speed dial so I can ask him where he got his shiny new liver back in ‘95, I’m embarking on a crusade to save whatever is left of my own personal “whole-house” filtration system. I’m a researcher, for chrissakes. I’ve investigated everything from helminth therapy, to using banana skins to remove warts (it works!), to using soil bacteria to treat Depression.

In the last month, I’ve already radically changed the way I eat and drink. I’ve lost ten pounds and my blood pressure is slowly sinking downward. My shopping list looks like it was written by a Seventh Day Adventist who’s having a bunch of Hindu ascetics over for Lent.

My plan is to give it hell all summer and then have my enzyme levels checked in the fall. If they’re better, I’ll raise a glass of barley water and toast my researching ability. If they’re the same or worse, I’ll still probably be fine as long as I don’t eat or drink anything I really like. Apparently, livers are pretty good at working at diminished capacity as long as one doesn’t push them past their limits.

In closing, just a word to the wise. Before you hoist that next tankard of light beer, sip a mojito or chow down on that massive fried onion appetizer, you might want to make an appointment to get YOUR liver checked. I just read that Fatty Liver Disease is poised to be the next big epidemic. I’ve always been quick to find the Next Big Thing, but I really wish I wasn’t an early adopter on this one.

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I should know better. After all, I’m the woman who discovered, simultaneously, how funny Will Cuppy’s writing is and how far a person can spray doughnut crumbs, while I was in a coffee shop reading his book, “How To Be A Hermit”. Blame it on the mists of time – or the bossa nova -  that I got myself into hot water recently with another funny book in another public place. This time, though, it was in my doctor’s office – a place I seem to find myself in much too often lately.

If you haven’t read, “Never Hit a Jellyfish with a Spade”, don’t feel too bad. It was published in 2004 and I just discovered it at my local library. The author, Guy Browning, is a columnist for The Guardian of London, but don’t let that put you off. He’s funny. Damned funny. He’s also insightful, gently but never harshly sarcastic and a welcome contrast to the “if it’s cruel and mean it’s funny” school of humorists we seem to be inflicted with lately.

His columns tell you how to do things. For instance, the one I was reading in the waiting room was called, “How To Do First Aid”. Here’s an excerpt. I caution, however, that you read it at your own risk if you’re not alone. (If you’re eating or drinking, please borrow or buy the book before you read this and turn to  “How To Prevent Choking” on page 43.)

“In the case of bleeding, a well-tied tourniquet is vital. Rip off the hem of your petticoat and tie it tightly around the wound. Remember, most people bleed to death because of the delay in finding someone with a petticoat. Tie the tourniquet on the side of the wound nearest the heart. If you’re not sure which side this is, then tie tourniquets above, below and anywhere else that looks useful. The overall effect should be that the patient looks like they’re about to go morris dancing…

Generally, accident victims should not be moved until an ambulance arrives. However, you may find yourself in an area without good transport links, i.e., Britain. Prepare a basic splint from two sturdy bits of wood, shove the limb in quite forcefully and then lash it up really tight. The whole body can be immobilized in this fashion if required. If things take a turn for the worst, you can then put a lid on the whole lot and dig them in for a convenient burial.”

Go buy Mr. Browning’s books, but remember to buy a True Crime novel or a Barbara Cartland or something for those trips to the doctor’s office or your daughter’s piano recital or whatever.

Those of you who are still wearing the tinfoil hats I recommended in an earlier post may want to keep them on if you’re planning to go night-skiing in the Bangor City Forest. The rest of you after-dark schussers might want to borrow your kid’s bike helmet.  As reported in the Bangor Daily News article  “Owls Attack: Warnings Posted In City Forest”, Great Horned Owls aren’t going to put up with folks invading their territory.

My question is, “What are people doing, skiing with headlamps on in the dark?” Skiing in the daytime is one thing. But after dark? And, apparently, they’re also walking, jogging, running and biking after dark also. Sheesh! When do the nocturnal animals get a break?

I’ve run into a couple of territorial owls since I moved to Maine twenty years ago. One was a Great Gray Owl that swooped down on me in broad daylight when I was walking through a pine grove near a swamp on our rural property. I never heard it coming until it was right in front of my face and if I hadn’t ducked, its talons would have scratched my eyes. I was some unsettled, I’ll tell you, and left the grove at a run.

A short time later, on the edge of that same swamp, the geek and I ran into a mother bear with cubs. They were blatting at her and she was blatting at them and Geekdaddy and I were blatting at each other to get the hell out of there. It was some exciting for a few minutes.

Another time, on that same piece of property, I walked around a large tree and came face to face with a young moose and her mother. Like most young critters, Baby Moose was very curious and approached me, which didn’t go over very well with Ma Moose, who snorted and pawed the ground. We spent a very tense five minutes with me trying to edge away so that I wouldn’t be between the baby moose and its mom, and the young moose trying to circle me so it could sniff me.I finally got away by backing slowly out of the area, but I don’t think it’s a coincidence that a female moose was observed by my neighbor knocking down my mailbox a couple of days later.

Many of us who live in Maine learn the hard way that civilization is pretty thin once you get beyond the city limits. Or, in the case of Bangor, even inside the city limits. When I first stumbled upon the city forest, I thought it was such a neat idea, having a forest inside a city. Now, I’m not so sure it’s a good idea at all. Cities and forests are two very different things and maybe they should be in two different places.  Or, maybe they should be closed at night, so that the wildlife can go wild for a few hours without people shining lights at them and skiing through their front yards.