Remembering Dzidra Traun

This is my mom with me as a baby and Grandma in Pennsylvania where my parents grew up

Grandma and Owen at our wedding in 2002

Grandma cross-stitched this table cloth for me for my 21st birthday.

Me with my Grandma in about 1982

For those who don't know, my grandmother passed away a few weeks ago. My dad is putting together a slide show for her memorial service, and I'm contributing some photos. Here are a few cute ones of my grandma, who we will miss very much.

Be Vewy Vewy Quiet... We're Hunting Wabbits

Last year for Christmas Owen received this stunning stable jacket in which he rides the tractor. This year for Christmas I requested that he get an Elmer Fudd hat to complement his ensemble. Various family member rose to the challenge and found this - and despite much hilarity when unwrapped at the Christmas tree it has become the coveted hat in our household. It has warm, fuzzy ear flaps, and is reminiscent of the furry Russian hat my father would don while wearing his housecoat when rushing out to the school bus to hand me my lunch in the morning in elementary school. I was mortified at the time, and now I realize I have married a younger version of my father.

Go on - Git!

So as if we haven't had enough to deal with amongst the throes of the holiday season, we've had a good cold snap and the marsh on our property has frozen. The cattails leftover from last summer are all brown and sagging. They unfortunately had grown up over our west property line fence and now that they are brown and saggy they have dragged the fence down with them. I didn't realize anything was amiss until we got this hard freeze and the cattle who are normally turned out on the farmland to the west of us decided to stroll on top of the ice, over our sagging cattail inundated perimeter, and greet my horses over the one remaining strand of fenceline separating my horses from the marsh. Apparently no one told my horses that they have quarter horse bloodlines, because they are absolutely convinced that these large black angus cattle are merely masquerading as herbivores, and at a moment's notice could morph into equine-eating machines.

Since Owen is out of commision recovering from his surgery and my horses were useless against this foreign threat, tonight it was up to me. I marched out into the frozen marsh wielding my plastic pitchfork, reasoning that if a 1500 lb cow can manage to stay on top of the ice my hulking frame certainly shouldn't crash through. I shouted; I waved my weapon; I attempted to strike fear into the heart of every bovine present. They nonchalantly moseyed slightly further west.

Having evicted them from our property, I proceeded to inspect our perimeter fence and made the discovery hitherto presented. Realizing I was no longer the threatening menace as I initally presented myself, the cattle determined the dead cattails were more appealing than I was foreboding and all came back over to eat.

I'll try it again tomorrow with backup humans to help me repair the fence. Hopefully I won't wake up in the morning with 30 cattle knocking on my door for breakfast. If that's the case Cecil might just have to cowboy up, find the quarter horse within, and get tacked in his jumping saddle to herd them back onto the farm. Go on - Git!

Success!!!

Well, the surgery was a success this morning. It only took the doctor 45 minutes to remove the fragments. I got home around lunch time and have been resting since. I am able to walk almost normal now (no more hunching over and shuffling my right leg). He also instructed me to walk more. In fact, he said that if I feel pain in my lower back, it is the pain from the incision and walking will help alleviate it. So, I was supposed to walk a total of 1 mile today, 2 miles tomorrow, three, then four, then five miles as the days go on. I am so glad that I am seeing such good results today.

We did have a little bit of excitement today just before lunch. I was sitting at the table drinking some lemonade when I started to feel nauseous. Kim grabbed me a trashcan and within a couple minutes I passed out (no vomiting, thankfully). Kim held on to me while I was in the chair and my step mom, Susan, got a cool wet cloth to wipe on my face and neck to try to revive me. After several minutes, they dragged me and my chair over to the couch and I was able to slide from the chair to the couch. They elevated my legs and I slept a little. After about 30 minutes, I finally came to. That is the first time I've ever just passed out like that. It was kind of weird. I could hear them talking, but I had no way of responding. This was a side-effect of the anesthesia.

It is quite a relief to have the surgery done and to see results so quickly. Thanks to everybody who prayed for me.

Under the Knife

Well, I go under the knife Thursday morning at 7. The surgery takes about an hour and a half, then there is a about an hour recovery time while they will monitor me and allow the anesthesia to wear off some. Then, I get to go home - no driving, though, for 24-48 hours. So, I'll probably be back home around lunch time. Then, it will be a bunch of resting with some walking around. It is nice that it is an outpatient surgery, so I don't have to stay over night. Well, keep me in your prayers. I'll post more after the surgery to let everybody know how it went.

A Thousand Words

A picture is worth a thousand words, so I thought I would post some pictures from the MRI I had just before Christmas. I added some labels to help identify things.

This first one is a side-shot of the spine. I have two herniated discs - L4/L5 and L5/S1. I have labelled the vertebrae that are L4, L5, and S1. The L4/L5 disc is between the L4 and L5 vertebrae. The L5/S1 disc is between the L5 and S1 vertebrae. As you can see, the L4/L5 disc is really pressing on the spinal cord (long white-ish line to the right of the vertebrae). The L5/S1 disc is also pressing on the spinal cord, but not as severely. To give you an idea of scale of the image, the L4/L5 disc is protruding about 8-9 mm in this picture.


I was also diagnosed with degenerative disc disease. That didn't sound too good. I've done some research on-line (ah, Google - the great purveyor of knowledge) and found a couple peer-reviewed articles from an MD, and it isn't as scary as it sounds. Apparently, current estimates are that at least 30% of people ages 30-50 have degenerative disc disease although not all are diagnosed. Also, contrary to my worries, it doesn't mean I will have major back problems and will be crippled later in life. (That's still a possibility, but not as a result of degenerative disc disease). In general, the proteins in the disc that cause inflamation which causes back pain deplete as the disc deteriorates, and so most people have less pain as they get older. If I'm reading the MRI correctly, you can see the L4/L5 and L5/S1 discs are deteriorating because there is less white in them compared to the other discs visible in the image (I need to double check with a doctor that this is how to interpret the MRI).

This second picture is a cross section of my torso at the L4/L5 disc. The front of my body (stomach) is towards the top, and the back is towards the bottom. Here, you can really see the extent of the herniated portion of the disc. This part is actually fragmented (broken) off of the disc. If you were to draw a line across the fragment from its top right to its bottom left, it would measure 9-10 mm. I have an appointment tomorrow with a specialist to see whether or not surgery will be required to remove the fragment (highly likely).


I had an epidural steroid injection on December 23 that has helped reduce the pain by quite a bit. However, I'm still having some back pain and pain down my right leg (since the fragment is pressing on the nerves that go down my right leg). I never expected that I would ever have an epidural since I always associated epidurals with pregnant women and I'm not pregnant...I think...that I know of...

If you want to see the pictures zoomed in, first click on the picture to get the full size image. Then, you can usually press ctrl + (the control key and the '+' key) to zoom in (or hold down the control button and turn the mouse scroll wheel). In Firefox, ctrl 0 (control key and the zero key) will return the zoom level to normal (might work in Internet Explorer).

Family at Christmas

For Christmas Owen's sibling were all in town, and I got to meet our niece, Greta, and our nephew, Evan, for the first time. They came and saw our place and we got some cute pictures. In the horse one you can see Greta has a future as a pony clubber and Evan was distraught because he tried to put too many fingers inside the horse's mouth.