The Blog is back!

Us at Cape Point, SA

And what an extraordinary time we had in the Cape Town area of South Africa! We set out by air on 25/12 and arrived in Simon’s Town at a B&B that evening. In 24 short hours we were different people. This has happened more than once in my life wherein I/we are rather beat up and in desperate need of a break, only we are in it too deep to notice. Boulders Guest House was the appropriate remedy. It is on False Bay, on the other side of the cape from Cape Town, a very quaint and quiet place that is all of 30m from the water and has African Penguins everywhere.

In the morning I would awake and go outside very early and watch the sunrise, see the bird life (mostly the penguins), relax and renew, while Lynne would sleep in. The penguins are amazing in that they seem so clumsy on land and are sleek torpedoes under water. In point of fact they are fairly fleet on land as well. After night fall they head inland and often are heard calling (a donkey like bray, hence the original name Jackass Penguin) from drainage ditches, rain water outflows, under cars, and in back yards. This is nesting season and as they mate for life they are paired up not only on the beach but way up in the scrub as well.

We went out to the cape on two occasions where we saw unique bird and plant life, the mixing of two oceans, and baboons that walk by you with a casualness borne of familiarity with human cousins. Heaven help you if you have food in your vehicle or on your person, it will be contested with fierce determination and you’ll lose. We drove around the bottom of False Bay and up into the wine country, past tree farms, and the like, very familiar to a Northwesterner.

After eight days it was good to come home to a weekend here before we get at it next week. I say “home” with a little oomph behind it as we agreed that we are from the States but now our home is here in Bots. It took awhile to make the transition but it feels good to have made it.

And in two short weeks we’ll be heading to Philly(!) so I can have my head examined. I have been having what I call “spells” ever since the first month I returned from Sudan. That would be October 2006 and yes they have gone undiagnosed for that long. They are a lot like one’s computer returning to the desktop for 5s and then back to what one was doing, disorienting but not serious. I and a psychiatrist had always thought they were some variety of PTSD as Sudan was challenging at many different levels. After a couple of years, a trial of meds, and one superficial workup (my responsibility not any doc’s) I have decided these bother me more than before. So Lynne and I will travel to Philly to get them worked up at Penn. They are probably seizure variants and can be treated, but for the most part are just really annoying.

Our kids are understandably vested in this, being a touch, what?---touchy, about my initial reluctance to undergo a full workup as the episodes have become rather usual if not inconvenient. Being the red blooded “guy” and stubborn doc that I am I didn’t want to worry anyone and didn’t want to take the time to work these up, feeling they’d either go away with time or I would get used to them; nope. So after trying to work them up here but risking significant fragmentation of care and incurring the disapproval of valued and cherished daughters-in-law, to say nothing of their spice, I’m headed to Bryn Athyn, PA in two weeks to stay with family and get my bleeping head examined at Penn. I never in my life thought I tread those hallowed halls, much less that they’d let me back in.

That’s more than enough for now, Happy New Year!