Personal History October 2020

    Our lives changed significantly mid-march of this year when the covid pandemic shut everything down.  One week we had a full schedule of work at the Payson Temple and the Family History Center and the next week nothing. We were serving as temple workers, working the mid-day shift on Thursdays, and I was doing two shifts, Wednesday evenings and Friday mornings at the Center.  We had family names, mostly from my own research, to do temple work for, and were meeting our goal to do three endowments per week for these persons.
    Wendy and I decided on a conservative strategy for protecting ourselves from Covid 19 infection.  While we recognized that there some things like employment and schooling might need to be carried on, we saw ourselves as potentially at greater risk than younger, healthier people, and we needed to take the necessary steps to protect ourselves from risk of infection.   Therefore we have been very careful, we stayed home constantly, had no visitors in our house, wore masks and kept social distances on the limited necessary instances when in public.  Once in a while when we got super lonely, we would make a street visit to our families (masks and distances sitting on chairs in the front yard) or invite them to do a backyard dinner visit (again distances and mostly masks).
    I tried to fill up these empty hours on my writing.  I had published my first book, “Nearer to God: the Book of Mormon and the Good News of Christ,” largely my various studies on the Book of Mormon, in 2012.   Now I found that I had enough writings to publish a second book on Church doctrine, “The Higher Law, the Temple, and Families,” and I got that book to print in a couple of months.  Since then I have largely worked on my personal history.
    In this time period, I also have had two significant distractions, that is, medical procedures.  On May 15th I had two heart-related procedures to correct atrial fibrillation.  These were ablation and installation of a pace-maker by Dr. David Wang (pronouced Wong).  Ablation involves inserting wires into the heart through veins in one’s groin and cauterizing spots on the top part of the heart that are causing the heart to misfire.  I wrote about this in a recent blog about being “carried along” to find medical solutions.
    Recovery from these heart-related procedures seemed to go smoothly and quickly.  I immediately began to feel stronger and have more energy.  The most uncomfortable thing about recovery was that I needed to wear a strap around my chest and left arm for a month to keep me from lifting my arm and possibly disturbing the positioning of the leads from the pace-maker into my heart.
    Then just at the point that recovery from the heart procedure was complete a new problem arose.  Early in July I had new vague symptoms.  I wasn’t feeling as good or strong.  We were at the cabin on Monday morning July 6th.  I had had some problems walking.  I had a headache.  I felt weak.  I called the cardiac PA, and she suggested I go the emergency at Utah Valley.  I was seen by Dr. Edwards, who diagnosed my situation as having a brain bleed.  I had surgery the next day.  In the surgery, they made a large U-shaped incision on the left side of my head.  They suctioned out the blood and cauterized places where there was still bleeding.  Medical people seemed to assume that I had fallen to cause this problem, but that was not true.  Dr Edwards told Wendy that it looked like the bleed had been going on maybe 6 weeks, there was old bleeding and fresh bleeding.  He speculated that it might have started with blood thinners that were administered during the pace-maker procedure.  I guess we will never know.
    The recovery from the brain surgery was quite a bit more challenging then the  heart procedures.  I was in recovery for two days then moved to the rehab unit on the 7th or top floor of Utah Valley Hospital and was released to go home on Wednesday, July 15th.
    I enjoyed being in the unit.  For one thing, the view was wonderful.  The 7th floor has windows nearly 360 degrees around.  There was a great view of Timp, of Utah Lake, of the south part of Utah Valley, and BYU and the mountains to the east.  Also the staff were ultra supportive and positive and a joy to work with.
    The rehab unit had three components, physical, occupational, and ________.  The latter seemed to be focused on mental acuity and a couple of therapists gave me a bunch of tests.  They seemed to be like old IQ tests from my college training and involved solving a series of not too difficult mental puzzles, which seemed rather fun to me.  After a couple of sessions with persons from this specialty, they decided to that I had not lost any mental ability, so I was left to work with the other two specialties.  With the latter, we started with real basics, like getting up, getting dressed, going to the bathroom, taking a shower, walking.  I was weak.  I had a problem with balance.  To some extent lacked confidence in what I was capable of doing.  Staff persons did not allow me to do much for myself at first, as a protection against falling.  Someone had to be there holding my arm even if I was just moving from my bed to a chair, or if I was taking even one step.  
    I progressed fairly quickly in the rehab process, though, and by the time I went home I could confidently walk by myself within our house.
    At first, the rehab exercises had a lot to do with balance, like staying upright while standing with feet together and my eyes closed, and walking in less desireable conditions like in grass or rocks, or using stairs.  Eventually the whole emphasis was on regaining endurance through walking.  Wendy was wonderful to support this process.  At first it was expected that she stay at my elbow or that we hold hands as we walked.  After a little while, that security was not needed.  At about that point we started to track mileage and steps using a health app on our smart phones.  I kept gaining endurance.  We started walking on the Spanish Fork River Trail.  Initially I could get to a log about a quarter of a mile from the start, where I rested in preparation for the return to our car.  Gradually I could go farther, until about a month ago, I made it to the park which is over a mile each way.  I celebrated my first 10,000 step day (about 4 miles) early in September, and am now in my fifth week in a row in which I have had six 10,000 step days each week (laying off on Sundays).
    Weather has been unusual over the last few months.  Here in Utah the summer was exceptionally hot, with hardly any rain.  The fall has been unusually warm and dry also, except for a couple a exceptionally cold spells.  This last week we have had an arctic front with some snow one day and freezing lows in the teens.  Other places, also are seeing more extreme weather, like Louisiana which has suffered through about six hurricanes.  Here in the west we have had a large number of forest fires, made worse by dry weather and strong winds, especially problematic un California.