¡Buenos días a todos from the Old Pueblo! It is 8am and 46F (10C) with an expected high of 62F (17.2C) with sunny skies in Tucson. I am so looking forward to hitting highs of 70F to 80F and my old body just does not tolerate cold weather any longer (yep, 60F is chilly for me)!
My week has been taken up primarily with medical appointments. I saw the endocrinologist on Monday and the good news is that my thyroid levels are now within normal range. It has taken nearly a year of playing with the dosage and lab work every four months. So my next appointment is in six months instead of four. On Tuesday, I saw the pain doctor and got the much-needed steroid injections on both sides of the lumbar region of my spine. No muss, no fuss, no denials…the insurance just covered the treatment. What a joy! The numbing felt like bee stings and there was a bit of ‘filling’ discomfiture, but nothing terribly awful. The most onerous part of the treatment was when the assistant came in to wash the betadine off my back and I screeched like a little boy because he used a washcloth with cold water! Apparently, there is no hot water at the clinic! Next time, I will wear an old shirt, then go home and wash in a nice warm shower. The upside is that I have felt relief from the excruciating, searing low back pain that has been ever-present since September 29, 2022, when the insurance company denied the treatment! For the past two nights, I have slept soundly, not awakening from my own moans and groans of discomfort! The pain doctor has dual U.S./Ireland citizenship, so we chat about his childhood years in Ireland and my travel to Ireland during the procedure.
Yesterday, I saw the neurologist, who I love! He ordered the MRI of the lumbar spine and the CTA of the head and neck in early March. The deterioration of the spine is more severe than two years ago, and there are two regions of nerve bulging between the discs. The CTA scan showed additional sclerosing of a middle cerebral artery, which is why I have more trouble pronouncing three syllable words. I will see him again in another six months. I no sooner returned home from this appointment today and the old insurance company called to find out why I left them! They got an earful, and I told them that for the kind of reimbursement they get from Medicare, they should be doing better for their senior customers. To deny scans that were done two years prior, and make someone live in pain for six months is unacceptable.
I love my new bookcases and have been setting up my genealogy sources, so they are handy as I work on profiles and do searches. Instead of going into another room for various texts, they are now at my left hand. Given the amount of space in the cases since the Murphy bed was removed, I can add some of my Japanese artifacts, like the old Kokeshi dolls that I collected when I lived in Japan. My most recent purchases are two really beautiful hand carved totem poles, one about 2 feet high and the other about 1 foot high. It is strange how they blend nicely with items from Japan! Perhaps there is some truth to the notion that our Indigenous Americans migrated thousands of years ago from East Asia and crossed the Bering Land Bridge into North America (https://www.nps.gov/bela/learn/historyculture/the-bering-land-bridge-theory.htm). The totems and Kokeshi dolls fit right into the Wright design of the office as well.
And now to genealogy. Just last night, I went as far as I could with Sir John Baldwin. He has a Notables sticker (Wikipedia page points out that he was the lead judge in the Anne Boleyn trial among other things), photos are added, I weeded out incorrect family members, provided additional sources and last night completed information on his Will along with information about a memorial for him and the family from his daughter Alice’s will. I sent a Discord note to several pre-1500 England Team members after I was done and asked them to review his profile (my first major pre-1500 profile), particularly for typos, readability and how to shorten redundant sources since WikiTree does not use ibid or op cit. I cannot seem to get the hang of how to do those shortened versions. I also asked them to review Sir John’s brother William’s profile and his uncle, John Baldewyn. Once I get feedback, I will review and update Sir John’s parents and siblings and then move on to review the profiles of my Baldwin ancestors from Buckinghamshire. I think I might also have found the connection between Sir John’s and my Baldwins, but do not want to act in haste. Also, there might be discrepancies/errors in the William Dormer profile (Sir John’s father-in-law). I now have two sources to suggest that he was married to ‘Agnes Wydeville’ the daughter of Earl Rivers, which would relate him to Edward IV. This will take some major discussion with the pre-1500 England Team, though.
Pip, thank you as always for wrangling the chat! And to all my fellow Chatterers, I hope you enjoy a happy, healthy, and productive fourth weekend in March 2023.
