Without salt, sugar, fat, carbs and soda, life gets tasteless

I know a man who suffers from a debilitating disease. He's like a walking chemistry lab as the doctors work to keep his body in balance, literally through science and pills. In the last several years, he's lost a lot of weight. I asked him what his secret is and he said, "food doesn't taste good anymore."

I laughed when I heard the answer because food has always tasted good...until now. My latest setback came Tuesday afternoon when a nurse told me that I was "mildly diabetic and had kidney failure probably due to higher than normal blood sugar levels so for the next three months I should restrict my sugar and carbohydrates and then we'll test you again."

Regarding the kidney failure, the nurse told me to stay off coffee, tea and pop. Only drink water. I was already off of caffeine so I haven't been drinking tea and coffee, but I did enjoy the occasional diet root beer or diet, caffeine-free Mountain Dew, but those choices are now gone as well. Like a line from one of my favorite movies, the dad says to his mis-behaving little boy, "Gee, your water looks tasty."

Really, I thought...what can I eat? My darling wife called my doctor's nurse and suddenly we were registered for two classes in May. One is with a dietitian and the other is with an expert on diabetes.

I haven't had the classes yet, so to be on the safe side, my meals have become pretty bland -- as in no taste and no reason for eating. Suddenly I feel like my friend with Parkinson's. There are times when I get up from the table and I want to go throw up because the meal tasted so badly.

All I want is something that tastes fairly close to what it used to taste like. My wife is a real trooper and works very hard to make sure I comply with the doctor's recommendations. So what I'm saying is no knock on her cooking skills...but honestly, sometimes I think my tongue is covered with wax because what I'm eating has no taste.

There are exceptions. A tuna fish sandwich on no salt bread still tastes pretty good. In fact, it tastes better than it did when I was eating other things. See, that's all I ask for. Just give me food that tastes like it used to.

I've already whined elsewhere about my attempt at homemade, no salt sausage and how terrible it was. I ended up throwing out most of it.

Well, my dear wife tried it again...thinking she could add a few more ingredients and it would taste better. Well, it didn't. She made it for lunch one day along with some "applesauce" pancakes. I had to put peanut butter and sugar free syrup on the pancakes to give them some taste and then cut up my sausage patty and eat a piece with every bite of pancake. I know dad hated it as well as he was more than willing to give away his sausage. Generally, if you make an attempt at some food on his plate, you'll end up with a fork in the back of your hand.

A week ago, I had lasagna with low sodium spaghetti sauce at my sister-in-law's house, and that tasted pretty good. In fact, I had a second piece and a second slice of garlic toast. But that was before I was cutting back on my carbs.

So tonight, dad and I will be dining on baked fish, baked potato (only pepper and low fat, low sodium margarine) along with a small salad. Yeah, that's right...I'm on a blood thinner so I have to also watch how much green leafy vegetables I eat as that seems to counteract the blood thinner.

Every day I drive by seemingly endless restaurants and fast food joints that I used to patronize. Now, they are only fond memories...like your first kiss or your first true love. They cook with way too much salt, and the portions are gigantic compared to what I get to eat.

So to sum it up...if you can eat and enjoy food, go get 'em. But please understand if I'm walking a little slower to the dinner table now days and leaving less satisfied.

I saw a lot of changes and I was against them all...

The title is a quote from an old man who retired about 15 years ago from a pipeline company in eastern Montana. At the time, I thought, "What a scrooge." But as I get older, I'm starting to feel more and more like him.

So I was thinking back to all the technologies that I've seen come...and a few go.

When I was in college, we wrote stories using a typewriter and then took our stories to someone who would set them in type. My first job out of college was at a small newspaper in a small town in western North Dakota, but the newspaper had better equipment than the college. It had something called a "Compugraphic" where you could write your story and it would come out of a computer ready to be waxed and put on a "dummy" page of a newspaper. I remember thinking that the Compugraphic would probably be the end of my career because I had a hard time learning how to run it, let alone master it. But the threat of starving to death without a job somehow persuaded me to learn to operate it.

From the newspaper in Beach, ND, I went to a newspaper in Baker, MT, and back about 10 years...at least when it came to technology. I was back using an electronic typewriter to write my stories, which I handed to a lady named Susan, who worked on the Compugraphic. But then I took a job at Mid-Rivers Telephone Cooperative in Glendive, and they had a state-of-the-art Compugraphic. They also sent me to Denver to learn how to operate this beast. After some training, I became proficient at it, but probably not an expert. I remember the paper was expensive for the Compugraphic so you didn't want to make a lot of errors.

Mid-Rivers also was the first company I worked for that had IBM PC's. I remember going to training on the PC's that required floppy disks to store data. The trainer told us that floppy disk was a "car" and we had to remember to put the "car" in the "garage." In other words, the training was very elementary. But it beat writing stories on a typewriter because it was so much easier to make changes and edit.

From Mid-Rivers in Glendive, it was on to MDU in Bismarck and back to the Selectric typewriter. Again, we had a lady who used a Compugraphic in the printing department, and she had the exact model of what I'd used in Glendive. If we made a mistake on the typewriter, we would make our changes with a pencil edit, and then hand it off to our secretary who would retype it before we sent it to an executive for final edit.

And then we got a computer. That's right. One computer for about 10 of us in the communications department. The slogan at MDU must have been, "We'll spend no dime before it's time."

Having one computer is like begging for a fight. Let's face it, computers are far superior to typewriters so who wants to use a typewriter if there's a computer available...although generally it wasn't available.

Then there was a retirement and a promotion and suddenly MDU had a technology champion as president and we all had shiny PC's sitting on our desks. Also, the floppy disks had given way to the compact disks. Writing was easier and more efficient with a computer. In time, we would quit using the compact disks and start saving our work to a large computer through a networking system.

So with everyone using a computer, except for those that retired or would soon be retired, we were introduced to e-mail. This again was about five years after I first heard of e-mail. Suddenly, we didn't have to talk to anyone anymore. We could just send them an e-mail. I liked this technology.

Another technology I was introduced to was the pager. If you handled calls from the media, you had to carry a pager so the media could get a hold of you. It generally wasn't a happy week if you were carrying a pager and it went off. Once, it was in the middle of the night and the pager beeped. We were in the midst of a bad thunderstorm and the media was calling because of outages and downed power lines. So I called the MDU dispatch office and got the latest information about how many crews were out working and relayed this to the media that kept calling throughout the night for updates. I also had an angry newspaper publisher call me because the Bismarck Tribune was without power and they wanted to start printing the morning paper.

In 2002, I went to work at the Lignite Energy Council and we had computers and a network along with e-mail, so I felt write at home. They didn't have pagers so I was extremely happy.

Until I learned that pagers were yesterday's news. Today's technology was cell phones and I would be required to wear one in case the media came calling.

Like the Compugraphic years ago, I'm proficient on the cell phone, but I'm not an expert. I don't know all the bells and whistles, but I do know that cellphones can do a lot more than just make calls. I can now text my sons and look up things on the Internet. I can also take pictures.

So in the last 30 years since I graduated from college, I've learned a lot about technology and how it has shrunk my world and made me more efficient as an employee. But I've got probably 15 years left to work. I'm sure there will be more changes. And like the fellow that retired back in the 1990s, I'm less interested with each passing year to make changes and be more technology savvy. My guess is that the decision about when to retire will be brought about by some new technology. I'll throw up and hands and finally say, "Enough is enough."

The benefits of procrastination

Last December I bought a new suit, new shirts, pants, etc. I had every intention of throwing away all the stuff in my closet that no longer fit. However, tomorrow always seemed like a better day than yesterday, so I didn't do it.

Now having lost a considerable amount of weight and needing to lose a lot more, I'm counting the benefits of procrastination. Because of my lack of action, I also don't have to buy a new wardrobe. I have one...or two...and they are good ones.

Luckily, I don't have any leisure suits or striped, bell bottom pants and flared silk shirts from the 1970s, but I do have clothes that I doubt meet the fashion standards of today.

For shoes, let's start with the classic black wing tips. Going north, we have argyle socks. Then there are suit pants and suit coats of different colors and styles going back 25 years. Let's face it, suits wear like iron.

I have a variety of dress shirts starting with white and moving all the way to cream. Actually, I also have a shirt the color of every arc in a rainbow. But I've been limited to white and cream because those have fit. Now they all fit...except for the big ones.

Where this weight loss really hurts is in the jackets and coats. Because all of my outerwear have been up-sized over the years and the old ones wore out, I'm currently stuck between a rock and hard place. My big green puffy winter coat -- that I've had since the boys were in high school -- kicked the bucket a week or so ago when the zipper blew out. I know they were in high school because I was taking them to school one morning when the zipper blew out on my big puffy blue coat.

However, the good news here is that Spring is expected to arrive in North Dakota some time in the next month. So I won't need coats and jackets for a couple of months and maybe by next fall, I'll have a better idea of what size I should buy.

Now the best news is that my belts are also looking way too big. However, I don't know yet what size belt to buy, so again, to be on the safe side, I'm comfortable walking around with my pants down to my knees until I settle on a size.

Turns out, I'm finally fashionable with the low hanging pants and clear view of my boxer shorts.

"It is what it is..."

On March 16, I left my hospital room, my wife and dad for a little exploratory surgery known as an angiogram. As I was being wheeled downstairs to see if I had blockage or a heart attack, the only words I could think of was "it is what it is...and we'll make the most of it."

You can't believe my joy to hear the cardiologist say that I had no blockage and had not had a heart attack. This gives me a better chance for a recovery as none of my heart had died from lack of oxygen. What I did have was cardiomyopathy, which is a diseased heart muscle. In my case, the cardiologist said it could have been caused by a virus. My heart was weak, scarred, enlarged and beating irregularly.

Still, I was uplifted by the number of heart medicines and the people I know who have made miraculous recoveries from heart failure.

My saga begins probably back in January after we returned from Hawaii. I don't remember being short of breath when we walked the breadth of Waikiki, but I do remember being short of breath when I saw my pulmonologist in Bismarck. He oversees my CPAP machine, which reduces my apneas when I sleep. I think that appointment was January 18 and at the time, I chalked up my shortness of breath to walking up a hill in the cold January air.

My next excursion to a doctor came at the end of February when I thought I had bronchitis, which is something I have a proclivity for. My doctor prescribed a steroid and an antibiotic, much like he had in the past. But something was amiss as I went in a week later to find my ankles and feet had swollen. This time he added a week to the antibiotics since my lungs were still filled with gunk and changed my water pill to something stronger.

Still, I felt my condition worsening and a week later went in again. This time, however, the doctor found that my heart rate was more than twice as fast as normal. Thus I earned a trip to the hospital.

There I  had x-rays, an EKG and an echocardiogram along with the angiogram to determine what was going on with my heart. Three days after entering the hospital, I was more or less being tested to my tolerance and how well the different heart medicines would perform. To do this, I had to wear a heart monitor and have my blood checked every so often.

Now I really can't say enough good things about the nurses and doctors working on my case. They did their best to make me feel at home, but a small hospital room is not my home and you don't enjoy many freedoms when tied by a four-feet length of plastic tubing to an I.V. pole.

So when my release came on March 21, I was more than ready to go home. The last thing to be removed was the I.V. from my left arm. I had been stuck like a pin cushion as my veins wanted to "roll" or "collapse" about as soon as a needle came in contact with them.

Now I'm recuperating at home and learning all about my new low sodium, water restricted, low calorie diet. It will probably be a couple of weeks until I return to work. However, when I do, I hope my body is in harmony and my heart is beating properly.

A lot changed in the last week. I look at it as having "crossed the Rubicon."

I just thank my lucky stars that I have a supportive family, co-workers, friends and a great staff of medical experts who work very hard on my behalf.

Thank you to all who whispered a prayer. It wasn't the least you could do, it was the most. And I'm very grateful.

Yellow roses

Christmas 2005 was bittersweet. We were at my mom and dad’s home in Roundup for the holidays. Mom had recently fallen in the middle of the night and half of her face was black and blue. This one morning she was sitting in her favorite chair when she reached in her pocket and pulled out a $10 bill. She told me the money was from her sister Ginny, who lived 50 miles away in Billings. Ginny wanted to buy her some flowers for Christmas so she sent the money to mom, who now made the request to me.

I took the money and went to the local florist in Roundup. I knew that $10 was a lot of money to my Aunt Ginny and I also knew that my mom liked beautiful flowers, especially roses. So I added some money to the kitty and brought back a bouquet of roses for mom. She was surprised and said, “I don’t think you got these roses with the money Ginny sent.”

I shook my head and told her that it wasn’t the amount of money, it was the thought. Ginny was thinking a lot about her sister to send $10 for flowers. Both her sister and I wanted mom to have a special bouquet of flowers so we pooled our resources. Did she like them? You bet, and she posed with her flowers like a blushing bride even as her discolored face told the story of how fragile her health had become.  

Mom had a myriad of health problems. She was diabetic and she had congestive heart failure. She ate a handful of pills with every meal and required shots of insulin to moderate her blood sugar. She was receiving invasive treatments at the Roundup hospital to remove the water from around her lungs and heart. This had been done every two months, then every month, now it was every two weeks. She was short of breath and lacked oxygen in her blood so had to be hooked up to an oxygen machine day and night.

Still, it seemed, mom’s family was in denial about how sick she really was. My dad, who had become nothing but skin and bones as mom could no longer cook, kept waiting for her to recover so she could bake him a pie and make meat and potatoes just like she had for 60 years. He wasn’t the only one in denial. Somehow, it seemed, we all believed that mom was somehow going to shake this and get better. After all, when you asked her how she was doing, she always had the same canned answer, “I think I’m doing a little better.”

This mirage would shatter the first week of March of 2006. My sister Janet, who lives in Rapid City, had gone home for a visit. In the middle of the night, mom got out of bed to use the bathroom and collapsed because her blood sugar had crashed. Janet called the EMTs to get an ambulance. Her second call was to me, and I lit out for Roundup – an eight-hour drive.

Upon my arrival, I sat in the hospital room with Janet, dad and mom. Later in the day, Janet left to return to her family in South Dakota. However, before she left, mom told all of us that she had wished Janet hadn’t called for an ambulance and that she had died last night.

Believe me, that’ll get your attention.

The next day was a Thursday. As I made dad breakfast at our house, he told me he wasn’t feeling well so thought he would stay home from the hospital. So I went to visit mom by myself. When a doctor arrived, he said we had some choices. We could put mom into the nursing home as she needed more care than dad could provide, or we could put mom on hospice and she could go home. The hospice nurses would see her several times a week plus provide other services. The main point, however, was that mom would be going home to die and would never be in a hospital again.

Earlier in her life, mom had worked at Roundup Memorial Hospital as a cook. But now, the hospital had become a chamber of horrors for mom. The nurses were pricking her with needles, the therapists were asking her to do this or do that…and to top it off, a sweater she had gotten for Christmas had been stolen from her room during the night. Mom was perpetually cold. At home, dad had the wood stove burning in the corner of the livingroom and the indoor temperature simmered at about 80 degrees. Still, mom would always be wearing a sweater…about six feet away from the stove. “Willis,” she’d say, “Put another log on the fire.”

When the doctor left her hospital room, I asked mom what she wanted to do. She didn’t say she wanted to be put on hospice. She told me, “I want the second thing the doctor said.” Somehow, it seemed her decision had become “the word that need not be ever uttered.”

To mom, it must have seemed like the weight of the world had been lifted from her shoulders. She now knew and accepted that she would be dying, but dying at home, in familiar surroundings. The rest of the day, mom sat in her hospital bed and recounted story after story to me. Some of the stories were about my brothers and sisters and some were about hers. It was as if she wanted to share her most hidden secrets, plus she wanted to tell me exactly how she wanted her memorial service and where she wanted to be buried in the Roundup cemetery…as close to her brother Vern Anderson’s grave as possible.  

I signed the hospice papers for my family and the next day, a Friday, mom went home. The nurses appeared, a hospital bed was set up in my parent’s bedroom and – it seemed – the countdown had begun. Normally, someone on hospice is given less than six months to live. Mom would die in the middle of June…early one Monday morning. In the interim, all of her five children had the chance to see her and support her. My middle brother Randy, for instance, literally spent a month sleeping at the foot of my mom’s bed at night waiting on her every need. During the day, my youngest sister Susan was mom’s shadow. After that, we hired ladies to come in and care for mom. These were some of God’s special angels. They would cook for her, read to her, play cards with her, even sing songs to her.

In May, mom celebrated Mother’s Day and among her gifts were yellow roses from my niece Karen, who at the time lived in Seattle, Washington. Mom loved her roses. A couple of days later was mom’s 82^nd birthday and she received 82 birthday cards…some from the people now reading this blog. But by the first of June, we knew mom wouldn’t be with us long. It was simply a matter of time.

I brought up the flowers because I want you to know her family is still buying her flowers. Probably like you, we buy our deceased relatives flowers every Memorial Day. For mom, it’s roses. However, the flowers are not only a symbol of our love. But they are a remembrance of a wonderful mother and wife and grandmother and cook and housecleaner and army wife who lived through the Depression, who married a soldier in World War II, who bore six children, five of them who lived, who loved every moment of life and never thought about dying until one afternoon in March sitting in a hospital bed.

But if there’s a point to my story, it’s this. The flowers that will always mean the most are ones we give to our loved ones when they are alive. Don’t wait for Memorial Day to think of buying flowers. Valentines Day, a birthday, an anniversary or just-because-you-care-day…are all the best times to remember our loved ones with flowers. 

Hooked again....Family Feud this time

Those stupid game applications on Facebook are annoying. In the fall of 2009, I found myself hooked on Cafe World. After making it through the winter vacation where I cooked, served and single-handedly captured first place in the world of computer cafes, I went cold turkey. I swore off games on Facebook...that is until this past Christmas vacation when I started playing Family Feud.

Now my family has a weak spot for this game. We've been playing it on the computer for several years. However, we eventually tire of it until someone remembers we have it downloaded and we start up again.

But at Christmastime, Scott was playing Family Feud on his computer only it wasn't the downloadable game. It was Family Feud on Facebook. So you can compete against your friends.

Pretty soon, I was playing, Derek was playing and Belinda was playing.

Then they got tired of it. Then it was just me playing...on my profile, Scott's profile, Derek's profile and Belinda's profile.

That's right. I'm keeping up my end of the bargain by playing at least eight games of Family Feud every day. This has been cutting into my hours of watching Fox News or reading the political news on The Hill and Politico.

You start on Monday morning with everybody's score the same - zero. And by Sunday night, one of the four Van Dykes has consistently been the winner. That's because one of us is always moving to a higher level sometime during the week and getting a bunch of bonus games to play. Belinda, for instance, got eight bonus games this morning. Although, she probably doesn't know it because she doesn't actually play.

So I must have been playing Family Feud most of the morning. As it stands now, Belinda is in the lead, followed by Derek, then me and then Scott. However, in actuality, they are all me.

I seem to have an addict personality...especially when it comes to Facebook game applications.

So once again, I'm going to have to swear off Family Feud on Facebook, just as I did Cafe World.

I'm sort of the Charlie Sheen of Facebook games. "Yeah, I could live without Family Feud, but life would be boring."

Well, actually, no...life would probably be more interesting if I wasn't playing so much Family Feud. I might have more time to blog. Or write my speech for the upcoming Toastmasters contest.

So, I'm laying it on the line. I'm giving up Family Feud. Now if only Charlie Sheen could give up cocaine and porno stars.

By the time this blog is published, my addiction will be over. However, it was fun while it lasted...two months. My head is now full of useless trivia that I learned by answering questions that all began the same way: "We asked 100 people what dogs do in public that humans would be embarrassed to do."

In case you don't play Family Feud, the top answer is "Pee on a tree."

A little tin press

A question you hear a lot when you’re a child is, “What do you want be when you grow up?”

For me, the choice was self-evident. I wanted to be a newspaper reporter. When I was about 10 or 11, I bought a toy press from a store in my hometown that sold gifts, cards and toys.

The printing press was made of tin and had little rubber type that you could put on a wheel and turn it to make an impression on a piece of paper. It was time consuming work and based on technology that even in the 1970s was out of date. However, that little press did what it was intended to do – it sparked my imagination.

By the time I was a freshman in high school, I was writing up sports stories about our high school teams for our hometown newspaper, the Roundup Record-Tribune. My senior year in high school, I was the editor of our school newspaper and had chosen the University of Montana as my college because they offered degrees in journalism.

A high school guidance counselor encouraged me to start college during the summer after my graduation. He pointed out that my high school had less than 200 students but the University would have about 8,000 students. He didn’t want me to have culture shock and drop out, so suggested that I attend summer classes – mostly with teachers who were coming back for continuing education courses – and I would be better prepared for classes in the fall.

This was a grand idea. Missoula, Montana, in the summer is a treasure trove of activities and I soon was involved in many of them including a Sunday morning softball game on campus. It turned out many of the players would later be my professors, so it was a good way to meet them.

After my freshmen year, I again went to college in the summer, which allowed me to graduate from journalism school in three years.

My first job after college was as a reporter in Beach, North Dakota. I soon discovered that a month actually working for a newspaper taught me more than college did in three years. I was covering city government, writing engagement announcements and even taking pictures of automobiles for newspaper advertising. The one thing I wasn’t doing was writing sports. So after six months, I decided to quit, go live with my parents and search for a job as a sports reporter.

My goal was to work for the Billings Gazette. But alas, after a two-month search, I landed a job in Alliance, Nebraska, writing sports. This was a short-lived job. After two-days, I quit. I found that the publisher had lied to me about my wages and benefits package so I re-packed everything I owned into my car and drove back to Roundup to live with my parents again.

A month later, I got a call from a newspaper publisher in Baker, Montana, who wanted me to be the editor of his newspaper. The editor of the newspaper in Roundup had put a good word in for me, which resulted in this job offer.

I snapped it up and moved to Baker, a town about the size of Roundup and one that had many of the same interests and both revolved around the oil exploration and production businesses. Still I wasn’t writing sports, but I found living in Baker very comfortable. There were lots of young people because of the oil boom and I liked to party with all of them.

Two years later, I was offered a job with Mid-Rivers Telephone Cooperative in Glendive. This marked a big change in my career because I left newspapers and moved into public relations. However, reflecting on the change, I really didn’t realize it at the time. I actually applied for the job in the first place because I thought it might bring some opportunities for my Baker newspaper to do some printing jobs for the cooperative.

Luck was smiling on me, because my neighbor in Baker worked for the telephone cooperative. And while my neighbor had a reputation for hating everyone, he liked me. That was partly because I was a part-time bartender in Baker at his favorite watering hole - the Windjammer.

After three years in Glendive, I found myself married to a gal who played on the same volleyball team as me. One day I told her that if MDU had a job opening in their communications department, I would apply. Even if it meant moving back to North Dakota. I had met a lot of MDU employees both in Baker and Glendive and I liked them all.

Well, that weekend in the newspaper, there was a job opening at MDU and I applied. I was one of about 90 applicants. A fellow by the name of Jon Metropoulos came to Glendive to do a first job interview. As luck would have it, I went to college with his son who also attended journalism school. I must have misunderstood Jon because somehow I though there was only three people who had applied for the job. Well, this gave me a lot of confidence as I thought I had to be better than the other two. Perhaps, Jon was telling me that they would narrow the field down to three and interview those three in Bismarck.

A week or so later I got a call asking if Belinda and I would come to Bismarck for a second interview. So we stayed in the Kirkwood Motor Inn, had our interview, had a nice dinner on MDU and I thought if nothing else, it had been a nice weekend. About a week later I was offered the job. I started in December 1985 as the editor of the utility’s employee magazine.

A lot of changes occurred in the ensuing 16 years and by 2001, MDU was no longer simply a regional utility and I was no longer the editor of the employee magazine. I had been promoted a couple of times and was working as manager of the corporate communications department. Until I wasn’t. I had been downsized. So in February of 2002, I took a job as a reporter for the Bismarck Tribune writing education stories.

This job lasted until September. However, being a reporter again was a shock to my system. The biggest shock was the cut in pay. I was making less than half of what my salary had been.

In October 2002, I went to work for the Lignite Energy Council, where I continue to work today as the vice president of communications.

My wife and I have lived in Mandan for 25 years and we’ve been married for 25 years. We’re the parents of two adult sons and life has been good for us. And to think it all began with a little tin press that I bought at Annie’s Gift Store in Roundup.