Early February 2019, I took my first flight since November 2017 Heart Transplant, HTP, to Waikiki, HI (carp pond). My great niece lives there and she showed me around. It was great. My hotel was across the street from the beach but seemed more for Asian high school tourist groups than for funning Europeans/Westerners.
My next flight, to hang out with my friend, Tom, and his wife at their crib in Buenos Aires, BA, was at least as enjoyable and I met more local people. I took advantage of the return flight to stop over and visit my sister in Houston TX. And as a result I was afforded the opportunity to experience something I have been trying to avoid for at least a year.
These trips were all tests of my post HTP condition on multiple indices. I felt better than expected on the six hour trip to Honolulu. I did not get sick and did not become claustrophobic or panicked. No blood clots developed in my legs to travel to my brain and give me a second stroke. My niece picked me up from the airport and from my hotel I explored the beach and shore near my hotel after she returned to work. This exploration turned out to be a real test of my ability to walk. I’d hired a martial arts personal trainer at my LA gym to get me in shape but had taken it upon myself to practice boxing-style rope jumping since he was teaching me to box. Well, it had not sufficiently occurred to me that such jumping put too much repeated pressure and weight on my right hip—which had been nailed together when I was thirteen years old. The pounding caused excruciating pain that rest only temporarily relieved for days after each jumping session. By year’s end even upper body weight lifting caused my hip to hurt so much that even a slight twisting of the hip to turn around resulted in a near fall to the floor.
That twist threat impinged the Buenos Aires trip. In April 2019, I took Tango and Salsa lessons at a Downtown LA, DTLA, dance studio. I could not complete the lessons because 45 minutes of learning resulted in tremendous fatigue. Shortness of breath was improving post HTP but the dancing informed me of my limits. I visited Steven’s Steak House in Commerce CA’s regular Salsa event and must admit to intimidation by the salseros’ efficiency and grace. The dancers looked different than those in New York City because they were noticeably older, shorter, and generally a bit more heavyset. Our proximity to Mexico led me to expect less Salsa and more of something like Cumbia, a dance I don’t think I’ve ever seen, and dancers there to celebrate a birthday did do what might have been Cumbia danced to Mexican-style music. But they too danced Salsa eagerly and with skilled abandon.
In the DTLA class, a Tango pivot that requires a hip twist was so painful that I determined I had to get my right hip fully replaced as soon as possible. So before embarking for Buenos Aires I set up an orthopedic appointment to get a date for the surgery. I’d wanted to put it off until January after the summer and year end holidays, but realizing it was unwise to even attempt Tango in Buenos Aires made me so mad I just said I gotta get this over with! I was in BA only three evenings but never really asked to attend a Milonga—even when in San Telmo, (pizza boxes below) where the dance was born. Tom and I took a short walk of about two blocks, me without my cane, and my hip was burning up all night afterwards.
Arriving in Houston I had a decided limp and the seats/benches of exercise machines in my sister’s gym were too wide for me to painlessly open my legs to work my chest muscles. I did not try to explore her neighborhood, as I had the Waikiki neighborhood, because within walking distance, there appeared little of interest. Even “corner stores” were many blocks away. I saw many scenes and images in both Waikiki and Buenos Aires that I’d have loved to photograph but even with a semi-pro camera my hip pain would make almost all literally out of range. I did not see comparable things in Houston. Perhaps I was not on foot enough.
In Houston, however, my sister had to drive trembling and fearful we’d be caught out in one of the now frequent floods I’d seen on TV. Suddenly, rain poured ceaselessly for hours with great force and emergency warnings came on TV as we dined in a Chinese restaurant (caged fish photo). We drove home through thick traffic along visibly flooding streets where water sprayed up as far as my car window. Thunderous lightening dashed across the skies as we limped along. This new climate/weather reality is what I’d tried to avoid. In LA, I have turned the channel rather than watch news feeds of weather emergencies further east. What could I do about such things? Nothing more than folks could do about the forest fires that had sent smoke into the my hospital room in 2017, as I recovered from the HTP in Beverly Hill California.