Great day. Great peeps. Great news.

On Valentines day, I busted John out of the house for 5 whole hours of play... that's the most time he's spent out of the house in 4 weeks of dealing with staph. We had a great picnic in bird rock, watching all the surfers and kite boarders from the cliffs above, explored different hoods around SD and ended the day at Point Loma Nat'l Cemetery... wow, such a beautiful and peaceful place to honor those gave their lives for our country.
On Monday, I finally got to meet Sarah and Zack's baby, sweet & spunky Thea... hopefully soon I'll have photos to post of them. Thea's so cute and a big flirt. At 14 months, she is hyper verbal. She greeted me with "Hi Annie. How are ya?"... ummm, did I mention that she is 14 months? Wow.

John's good friend Pat was in town on business. We enjoyed hanging with him for a bite to eat. Later on in the evening the adorable Em Stoltz surprised us with a last minute visit from Santa Monica. What a pleasant surprise to see her twice in one week! A huge highlight yesterday... and I can't emphasize how BIG this is... was our check-up appointment with the surgeon. After looking at the healing progress of the wound, he surprised us by removing John's wound vacuum!! WhooHooo!! No more changing of those !@#$ sponges, no more nonstop wound-sucking machine, etc. One machine removed... One machine to go! And if all of that is not enough great stuff... this was our valentine's sunset...

Another tough winter day

After a kickin masters swim workout in 70 degree weather today & some time with John on the beach... I came home to the below headline. No complaints from us in San Diego.

49 States Dusted With Snow; Hawaii's the Holdout

ASSOCIATED PRESS, February 12, 2010: There was snow on the ground in 49 states Friday. Hawaii was the holdout. It was the United States of Snow, thanks to an unusual combination of weather patterns that dusted the U.S., including the skyscrapers of Dallas, the peach trees of Atlanta and the Florida Panhandle.

Sexual Healing... is good for me

I always did love that song... now I'll always have such special memories when it plays. Not sure if I'm bringing levity to John's day. Or not. Maybe not.

Pilgrimage to Mecca

When it comes to John's recovery, we're takin whateva we can get!

Flea market find

Our latest flea market find. She has a contemplative quality that sort of grew on us...

The Wound Vacuum

Warning: this post is going to be pretty ugly. Literally. We decided to track the healing progress over the 6+ weeks. Yes, it's raw... but it's a fascinating up-close look at how the body heals. We're typically sewn up after surgery, and we don't get to observe what's going on in there. So.... here it is.

They surgically removed a big chunk of inflected flesh out of John's left hip -- about the size of a smallish lemon -- leaving the wound open to monitor the infection. It will heal from the inside out.
This photo is one week after surgery...
that ridge you see along the inside edge is new growth in just one week's time. The day after surgery, this wound was completely scooped out -- a clean hole. That first week's growth was amazing.

They stuffed the wound with sponge to soak up all the fluid. A plastic tube sucks the fluid from the sponge into this portable machine attached to John... the "wound vacuum" (that's really the name).





















Every M/W/F a wound specialist comes to our house. She gives John lots of local pain meds. She pulls the old sponge out of his wound, cleans the wound, and stuffs a new sponge back in. The white one goes into the deep tunnels & the black one fills in the surface area.















When she's all done, she attaches the plastic tubing and seals up the wound.





When the wound-vac is turned on, it compresses, air-tight, and continually sucks 24-7.




Ummmm, can we give a little shout out to the pain meds!!! After viewing this, you may need some pain meds yourself! John's all about good drugs these days. Sorry if this was a bit much visually... but it's what we're living & breathing these days... our routine until March 15th.

The PICC line

After 3 days in the hospital, John was released. He is home now with a PICC line in his upper arm (operates like an iv, but a 20-inch catheter is fed up the vein in his arm and across his chest. It dumps the antibiotic next to his heart).








The picc line is attached to a little machine
that administers the antibiotic 24/7.

We had nurses coming for the first week
to change out his iv bag, but they taught
me how to do it...so now I change the bag
and flush his catheter every 48 hours.

He makes it look so... fun?

John's Femur: a bit of a.... situation

John's recovery from his femor rod removal surgery on Jan 5th was going well. He was spinning, swimming (all with the surgeon's approval), and feeling great. On Thursday, Jan 21st, he came home from a physical therapy appt in intense pain. As in worse than the day of surgery. He couldn't walk, his hip area was massively swollen, he was running a fever and felt sick. Our surgeon in Boulder referred us to a local orthopedic. Friday's ortho appt resulted in a hematoma (internal bleeding) diagnosis from the PT. John was told to ice & elevate his leg, and give the body time to reabsorb the blood naturally. Fast forward 2 days: on Sunday morning, the upper part of his incision re-opened from all the swelling. Fluid was oozing out. We rushed to the ER.

After spending the entire day in the ER, we got confirmation that his incision was infected (massive swelling was pus; not a hematoma). Into emergency surgery he went... they removed all infected tissue and irrigated the wound/femur. John was admitted to the hospital and put on a Vancomycin drip. New diagnosis: a staph infection -- they confirmed during surgery that it was deep; it had gotten inside his femur. Infected bone is more complicated to treat than infected tissue, so were were told to clear our schedule for the next 2 months. For two days we waited on tests to find out what strain of staph he had... hoping it wasn't MRSA, the staph that is resistant to all meds, is often fatal, and often reappears months or years later. Thankfully, we learned that John has MSSA, which is easier to eradicate. Also, MSSA can be treated with nafcillin, an antibiotic that is more body-friendly. The vancomycin that he was on in the hospital is some seriously nasty stuff. The surgeon told me that if John had MRSA, they'd leave him on vanco... but that it often causes lifelong kidney problems, hearing loss, and an inability to digest many foods. That was tough to hear... it's the only drug that kills MRSA, but it also attacks your body. Lots to be positive about: no MRSA and no Vanco!

early morning light

Loved how the sunlight was making these Cholla Cacti glow. Tried to capture it with my camera, but these shots do no justice to being there.

The Salton Sea

Our day exploring the Salton Sea was quite surreal. That a place can be so polluted, so toxic, and yet so beautiful and peaceful at the same time is a bizarre juxtaposition.








Most of the birds and fish are diseased from the toxic, high-salinity water. All along the shore there are thousands of dead fish & fairly regularly you'll find dead birds. After reading about the toxic water, we were shocked to see people fishing on the shore.









I saw this gnarled tree hugging the shoreline about a mile off the highway. John could tell I was hoping to check it out. He sighed, pulled over, and waited for me... he couldn't join me because he was still on crutches at this point. He's grown so patient over the years of putting up with my random roadside explorations.















What was not apparent from the highway was that this tree was a nesting ground for these huge egrets. There was a massive colony of them offshore on a sandbar. Most of the trees in this area have been eaten away by the salts and toxins in the lake. This tree was the sole survivor, and hence, all the nests (5 in this tree).












Not sure if you can see how white the earth is surrounding the tree. All the dirt around the Salton Sea is covered in dry salt, similar to badlands in death valley. Lucky for me, however, as I trapsed out to this tree in flip flops.... this particular section of earth had about 2 inches of bird crap layered on top of the salts. It was very... earthy.












Few people live out here, so far removed from jobs, necessities, society. It's barren desert and life is harsh. The few who do choose to live out here seem to be very, ummmm, eccentric.


This picture captures the white crusty salt formations along the lake's rim.




The Salton Sea was formed due to a man-made environmental disaster in 1905. A canal bringing water from the Colorado River to the SoCal desert was breached, and massive quantities of water drained into the desert for a period of almost 2 years before it was (finally) repaired. The result is one of the largest man-made bodies of water on earth, and certainly the largest accidental lake. It is one of the most taxis, bacteria-rich, and stagnant bodies of water in the US.

The Salton Sea is 220 feet below sea level, only 5ft higher than badlands in Death Valley... which is the lowest elevation on earth.








This bizarre, beautiful ecological disaster area is one the curious photographer in me could spend lots of time exploring. I hope to get back there soon.

Westward Bound

Jan 1st: returned to B-town after christmas holiday.

Jan 3rd: handed over our house keys to short-term renters. They had a 10-week project with a local ad agency, which sounded like the perfect amount of time for us to get to know the San Diego area.

Jan 5th: John had outpatient surgery to remove the titanium rod from his femur (long story).

Jan 9th: After allowing a whopping 3 days for recovery (John isn't one to sit around & do nothing for too long), we hit the road...

Jan 10th: Arrived in Cali!!!

Palm Springs was on our route to San Diego from Boulder. Yes, it's kinda cheesy. One envisions hoards of retirees playing golf and baking poolside. In the middle of the dessert & everyone has pristine green lawns... very Vegas-esque. But in the middle of January, 75 degrees and sunny was a great way to spend our first week.
John's recovery from his femur rod removal was going really well. After the prescribed 10 days of being on crutches and doing nothing, the surgeon gave him a free pass to start spinning easy on the bike, restart his core exercises, and join me at the Palm Springs lap pool. This lap pool was the bomb... always empty, always warm, and huge! To once again be lap swimming outdoors in the middle of January is a luxury to us. It's the small things in life, right!

Why GypsyLivin?

Above: View from our living room in Solana Beach.

2010: the start of a new decade.
2010: the year we try out dual-state existence: Colorado and California. Apparently we have a thing for states that start with a C. We always aimed to become sensible, grounded, grown-ups one day. But after 5 years of marriage, we're well into our mid-30s and it still hasn't happened. We're nomadic, even when we intend on staying put, and we kinda like it that way... so why fight it? Instead, 2010 is all about embracing a dual-state life, a little bit o' GypsyLivin.

Six years ago we moved to Boulder from San Francisco. We adore Boulder and our peeps there so much... the mountains, the sunshine, the community, the plethora of outdoor play. It's all such good stuff! And yet... after a few years of living in the middle of the country surrounded by upper-middle-class-white-folk just like us, we missed - no, craved - California's diversity. We're talkin on every level: every type of terrain, culture, food, ethnicity, race... you name it! Oh, there is that one little feature that we missed: the ocean. Yeah, I suppose that counts for something as well! Sooo.... here we are.... back in California for a couple months, trying on for size this concept of living a Cali-rado life. We're currently in Solana Beach (see photo above), enjoying San Diego's north county lifestyle. More on that in a future blog... I have some catching up to do first. Here's to a fantastic year!