2017 March 21

 Unfortunately, as I age, (as Cathy and I both age), the topic of main focus in life seems to be health. My heart attack on the Saturday after Thanksgiving Day in 2015 (I remember it well along with the resultant open heart surgery on December 1, 2015) started the ball rolling for me. Then early last year I fell from my bicycle and hit my face on the street. The street won, of course, and I am still working on getting my teeth back to normal. I broke a tooth up in the root area which necessitated removing the tooth, getting a bone transplant for the jaw, inserting a new stud and eventually I will get a new phony tooth, which I'm told, and I believe, will be better than than the original (prettier too). All of that tooth related stuff is lengthened by time needed to heal between the various procedures.

I started this entry a few days ago but was hoping to continue it. And here I am again.

I have a hand-written journal but this is so much easier. At first, my dilemma was that this, being an electronic version of the written word, might not last. But after pondering this for a time, I have decided that it likely will last. My reasoning is this: The leadership of the church (The Council of Twelve Apostles and the First Presidency among others) have embraced the use of electronic technology for a host of purposes including reading and marking the scriptures and adding "tags" to the scriptures. By scriptures, I'm using the broader definition that includes, of course, the Four Standard Works plus the conference reports and much of what is written in the Ensign magazine and many other publications. We also have the BYU Devotional addresses, many of which were given by General Authorities and other General Officers of the church. The Spirit whispers that good and worthwhile written words will last, somehow, throughout the eternities. Time will tell as they say.

Cathy is going through a very difficult period in her life physically. Her knees have been getting progressively worse as arthritis has made it more and more difficult to walk without great pain. Modern medical practices offer the knee replacement as a solution (for example I have had both of my knees replaced with wonderful results). But she has a very difficult time with anesthesia. I won't go into too much detail here but traditional anesthetic practice leave her very ill and sometimes unable to breathe. So she has resisted surgery but her pain is now such that she decided to proceed with knee replacement surgery. However, she has also experienced increasing back pain. She went to have and MRI and was found to have "extruding nerves: and bulging discs in her spine. Surgery is indicated and we will meet with the back surgeon tomorrow. Her knee doctor believes that knee replacement should wait until the back surgery has healed. So... stay tuned.