Nice job decorating, MK

Pure sugar = pure awesome

A little tardy on the latest update, but all is well. I survived a four hour therapy appointment and apparently did well enough that my speech therapist thinks I don’t need to continue with that track any longer. I had my long-awaited appointment with the ophthalmologist and received a pair of “magic glasses” that have greatly reduced the need for future eye patch use. They have optical film from 3M (see above) that utilizes prism technology to correct my double vision. My left eye is slightly crossed, but this stuff really helps correct that (and it’s so nice to have both eyes open all the time). The extra good news is that there is nothing wrong with either eye – the double vision is caused by the nerves that control the muscles that direct each eye and the doctor is optimistic that this will eventually correct itself. I will also be starting therapy next week to work specifically on eye exercises to help this process along.

In other HCMC appointment news, I met with an awesome neurologist who showed me the “before” and “after” CT scans of my brain from the day of the incident and from when they discharged me from the ICU. It was really cool technology and the way she explained it made it crystal clear how serious the situation was on October 8th (and how much improvement there was after three weeks). Have I mentioned how big a fan I am of the staff at HCMC? I’ll return there again on Friday for another CT scan that will hopefully continue the trend. That will also be Colleen’s last full day with me, as she returns to work on Monday. After that, my next big appointment will be on December 4th, when I meet with the lead neurosurgeon to discuss continued recovery plans and possibly a return to work date.

We saw both Charlie Parr and Hippo Campus at the Palace Theater with no issues from the lights or sound levels (the infamous Palace talkers are another story). On the advice of my friend TG, I picked up a pair of Vibes earplugs, which seemed to work well at the Hippo Campus show (and dampened the discussions of the people sitting near me). Saw one Wild win (Ottawa) and one Wild loss (Arizona) at the X with my uncle, also with no sensory overload issues. Stopped by the stadium for the start of the very loud Packers game, but found it totally manageable. Left that game before halftime to beat the train rush, but had a great time seeing people and delivering thank you cards.

With the Thanksgiving holiday, it was a busy week for seeing family and friends. Had lunch one day with a friend at Dark Horse and went over to the Inver Grove Heights AMC to see Ralph Breaks the Internet (which we both liked). We took my mother-in-law out on Thanksgiving Day for lunch at the original Buca di Beppo in St. Paul, then had a more traditional dinner at my aunt and uncle’s house in the Mac-Groveland area.

This will be my last “weekly update.” Truly thankful for you all – thanks for reading!

Cheers, DK

Week 3 Update
Week 2 Update
Week 1 Update
Brains!

NFL-approved yard of Snickers

Can’t wait to work again

So convenient, no?

…but super expensive

The third week out of the ICU started with lots of family time and a return to HCMC to meet with a neurosurgeon P.A. to have the sutures removed from the top of my head. Since we were so close, I also stopped in at the office for a short visit. It was so great to see everyone (and get more hugs than I can ever remember). After Colleen’s excellent suggestion, I also took the opportunity to clean out my office refrigerator and empty the trash and recycling cans. During my appointment, I was cleared to attend sporting events and concerts, so I hope to return soon for the basketball classic (as a fan) and get back to the Xcel Center with my uncle to catch a Wild game. My first concert should be a perfect one to ease back into live music – Charlie Parr tomorrow night at the Palace Theater up the street.

I was hoping the Monday appointment would be more definitive on determining clearance to return to a number of things, but that was not the case. It was great to get the sutures out (which didn’t even register on the pain scale compared to things in the ICU); a return to work estimate will have to wait until next month. We added some new future appointments and had to reschedule a few others, so now I have a pretty full schedule the next few weeks. It looks like spring will be a fine goal for a return to driving (seizure risk) and biking (warmer, head injury risk). My planned 50th birthday ski trip will have to wait a season, but truly just glad to have a 50th birthday. Haven’t talked much yet about a return to running…

My brother flew up from Orlando last weekend and my sister came down from Duluth, so we spent a lot of time together. We had Carbone’s for lunch at my aunt and uncle’s house on Saturday and my brother wanted to take us out to one of his restaurants in St. Louis Park Saturday night (Yard House). He’s now with Darden Concepts as a corporate trainer and really seems to like the company. Colleen, SK and I introduced him to the magic that is Raising Cane’s the day before he flew home. Also on the foodie radar this past week: lunch with another aunt and uncle at Handsome Hog, lunch with my friend and mentor Doug at Buttered Tin and SK’s first solo server shift at Saint Dinette. I’m really spoiled with so many great options within walking distance of our place (and to have so many kind offers to buy us lunch).

It’s been very strange defining my weekdays by Price Is Right in the mornings and Jeopardy in the afternoons, but I have been working on things other than sitting on the couch and watching TV. I designed some new personal business cards and the thank you cards with SK’s custom artwork arrived this week. Finding addresses and hand writing cards takes a long time, but is actually great therapy for me. I also rolled out the artwork on all the social media platforms, as there are so many people to thank (and I don’t have all those mailing addresses). I’m just amazed at all the communities who have supported us throughout this medical emergency:

• U.S. Bank Stadium colleagues
• Allina Health colleagues
• Minnesota Sports Facilities Authority staff
• Minnesota Vikings staff
• National Football League IT staff
• Hennepin Healthcare doctors, nurses, EMT and support staff
• Metro Transit Police
• Minneapolis Police and Fire Departments
• Fortune Bay and the Bois Forte Band of Chippewa
• High School for Recording Arts
• Northwest Airlines alumni
• St. Paul Central and Ramsey Junior High alumni
• WeRunMpls and the online running community
• MMR

This whole time period has felt like soccer’s stoppage time – I feel like every day I get beyond Oct. 8, 2018, is a bonus. It seems crazy to me that this could be one month or another 50 years. Appointments next week include the long-awaited ophthalmology session on Friday with Dr. Chang to discuss my daily occupational therapy eye exercises (see above) and options for prism glasses to help resolve the double vision.

Cheers, DK

Week 2 Update
Week 1 Update
Brains!

Lunch with Doug @ Buttered Tin

Dinner at Yard House in SLP

The second week out of the ICU was (thankfully) low-key. I had no outpatient appointments at HCMC and my vision is to the point where I have one eye that’s really good at close-up screens and one that can watch TV clearly. I’ve done my occupational therapy eye exercises every day and ordered a cheap pair of standard glasses from Amazon that I’ll bring to my ophthalmologist appointment on Black Friday – they want to customize the plain lenses to help correct my double vision. On Monday, I’ll return to see the neurosurgeon for an incision check (and hopefully the removal of the two sutures on the top of my head).

I should be getting my AARP card in the mail any day now, since I now have not one, but two daily pill boxes full of medications (see above). It’s actually not too bad – four pills in the morning and two at night, but it’s still a big change from the rest of my life (always had a goal of no pills). Only had to take Tylenol one day this week, when I woke up with a fairly intense headache. Last night I decided to elevate my head more with a second pillow and that seemed to help. Today was the first day I felt tired at the end of the day, but I really didn’t do much physical therapy-type activities.

Yesterday and today friends visited me at home, which was really nice. I have a fairly full schedule next week, but please let me know if you’d like to swing by Lowertown (a person can only watch so much Netflix per week). I received two awesome gifts this week: One from HSRA (big thanks to TC, Saintanne and crew) and one from my good friends at MSFA. My custom artwork thank you cards should arrive tomorrow, so that will be another project to start working on while I’m home. My brother flew up from Florida tonight, and I’ll be visiting lots of family this weekend. Nice to see the Wild playing good hockey too…

Week 1 Update
Brains!

Took a lot of coordination for delivery, but it’s beautiful

They have the meats

Secure building = I get all the candy

Pizza night in the neighborhood

Parlour St. Paul has super-boozy malts

Best chain burger ever

Is the purple grape?

Thank you Grand Marais Ben Franklin

…just like me

Thanks, Sven and Ole

Nicely done, Chef Shane

They haven’t taken these away yet

That was a lot of food

Downtown Arby’s rocks

https://www.mnstatefair.org/about-the-fair/attendance/

Thumbs way down on my one new item this year – the pepperoni chips (and I love pepperoni)

The Pronto Pup sticks are longer and sharper this year and I’m not eating as many

Have you turned it off and back on again?

Kicking it off @ LuLu’s Public House

Too bad Birch’s Lowertown is going to miss most of Saints season

So proud of kid one

Some hits, some misses

Thanks for the reminder, CK & SK

Love this place so much

Chicago Mix (of course)

Bacon, wild rice and cheese from Von Hanson’s Meat

https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-an-ex-cop-rigged-mcdonalds-monopoly-game-and-stole-millions?source=twitter&via=mobile

Hard to compete with Cane’s (and DQ, for that matter)

More cookies than I’ve ever seen in one place

Coming soon to the office – ice cream if the future

Twofer between lunch and dinner

She’s making my dinner

I love to eat. Growing up, this was never a problem. I was a scrawny little kid, I ran in high school and stayed active through most of my adult life. Sure, I gained a little weight as I got older and my metabolism changed, but I felt like I could always eat pretty much whatever I wanted, as long as I stayed active. In my mid-forties, my running performance actually peaked, as I got faster and stronger (and amazingly got back to my high school weight). Life was good.

Then something changed.

The last two jobs have been stressful. Work priorities overshadowed personal priorities when it came to staying active. Stress eating is a thing. Ready access to all-you-can-eat buffets and fast food doesn’t help. Race results backed way off from the string of PRs and I had my first DNF (although it was a 50 mile trail run with 25,000 feet of elevation change). Then my doctor told me a number I didn’t want to believe…

Between 2012 and now I had gained 36 pounds. My arms and legs are pretty much the same, but the dreaded “donut around the middle” that so many men gain as they age had crash-landed in my little universe. Most of my lab results and other vital signs are perfectly normal – it’s that BMI that’s slowly creeping toward the obese level. I can still run and bike and golf and ski, but now I need to look at additional options if I want to get back to a normal weight (and head off other health issues).

As I wrote in my first mini post, I decided to go in and talk to my doctor about all these things. He looked at my knee and determined it was fine to start back slowly, with some stretching, added warm-up and cool-down periods during runs and an initial goal of keeping the pace slow. He also said I can bike and golf as much as I want. For now, I’m hoping to run 30 minutes three times a week, bike home from work 3-4 days a week and golf once or twice a week (closing those three pesky Apple Watch activity bands daily).

Two nerd colleagues of mine that I mainly know through social media started talking about something I hadn’t heard before: the ketogenic diet. Both lost impressive amounts of weight in a relatively short period of time and also talked about eliminating fatigue, increased focus and several other benefits. I asked my doctor about the health risks and he was not concerned, recommending that I research it further (along with diets like Whole30) and decide if I want to try one.

To be honest, once I figured out what a carb was, it became clear that they were pretty much my whole life. Almost everything in my snack drawer at work was loaded with carbs, my work fridge is full of “regular-strength” Coke and Mt. Dew cans and most of my favorite meals when I go out to eat include some form of grain and/or potato (not to mention pizza and pastas). My first question to Bynkii was how the hell can you stop eating those things? His response: I just did.

So now I’m in the process of researching this very interesting nutritional science and deciding what the priorities are for the rest of my life. My initial reaction was no way – this would be too hard. But as I read more, I think I can at least start to consider these types of changes (and things like cyclical or targeted ketogenic plans might be optimal compromises). Plus all the bacon, steak and cheese you want?

Mmm…bacon, steak and cheese…

Long live Gordy

Nice to see Lynn at the candy store

Don’t ever change, Gordy

My favorite thing about the Fourth

One more until the big one…

Nicely done, Dinette

Last week I attended my second Cisco Live! conference in Orlando (last year was my first in Vegas; next year will be San Diego). It blows my mind how much it must cost to host 25,000 people in a facility like the Orange County Convention Center – setup, food twice a day, video production for keynotes and sessions, utilities, staffing, etc. And then there was the customer appreciation event Wednesday night at Universal Studios, which not only included exclusive access to the original park for four hours, but also had free food and drinks everywhere and big name concerts from Leon Bridges, Cake and Sam Hunt. No wonder my annual maintenance bill never goes down…

Speaking of bills, I needed to do this trip on the cheap, so I stayed with my brother and his wife and leaned on them for ground transportation (along with some 25% off Lyft rides). He took me to Animal Kingdom on Sunday night after I arrived so I could check out the new(ish) Avatar stuff. Na’vi River Journey has the cool Audio-Animatronics Shaman of Songs, while Flight of Passage lived up to the nearly two hour wait. We had dinner at the excellent Satu’li Canteen, which really elevates the whole theme park food quality experience, in my opinion.

My conference pass this time was a new intermediate “Imagine” badge, so I didn’t get access to all of the sessions (or a T-shirt or backpack). It did get me into all of the keynotes and Innovation Showcase presentations, though, along with the “World of Solutions” trade show, the party at Universal and free food for breakfast and lunch each day. I found most of the sessions to be useful and not just a week-long sales pitch to buy new stuff (like you get at some conferences). I learned about a lot of new technology trends, including improved security techniques, software-defined networking and container-based development, along with the evolution of the Cisco platforms and products we’ve deployed at the stadium (which thankfully I don’t need to replace right away).

After the conference wrapped up, I had a little extra time to kill before flying home (I wish the standby rules for Delta were more customer friendly). I spent some more time checking out all the changes at Disney Springs, where I had had dinner earlier in the week with my brother at Art Smith’s wonderful Homecomin’ restaurant. World of Disney was half-closed for remodeling, but I still managed to find some things for people. It was interesting to see retail additions like UNIQLO and the dining scene continues to impress with the likes of Morimoto Asia, Jock Lindsey’s Hanger Bar and The Boathouse (in addition to all of the old favorites). Also caught Deadpool 2 at the AMC and made a quick trip to Tampa to check out the very impressive Seminole Hard Rock Tampa complex.

See you in San Diego?

The Best Mac & Cheese at Walt Disney World

Iron Chef, no more! Hitting up Art Smith’s Homecomin’

They aren’t going to let Toyya and I play there any more

Kinda like finding a “Bort”

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/features/far-and-away/america-s-coolest-drinking-city/

MK schooling me @ Big River Pizza

With a mini grilled cheese to boot

Tried a new one ?

Hope Santa made it to the U on time

A little hard to ride after half a Carbone’s large

Took long enough this year

Finally got Grumps down to see MK

Should be drop-dead tired, but I’m not

https://www.gofundme.com/help-rebuild-muddy-paws-cheesecake

Not quite the same, though

http://www.startribune.com/grand-cafe-in-minneapolis-named-one-of-the-country-s-best-restaurants-by-food-wine/479192163/

Isn’t that right, Luna?

Plaza Inn FTW

Just warmer (and with pigeons)