Author: kwundrow

Let the Road Rise up to Meet You

Posted on by kwundrow

In a few days my wife and I will be packing up my Jeep and heading for the open road. We will pack on our bikes and golf clubs along with some clothes for all seasons and head south on Interstate 39. This trip is going to be different than our usual style. For my wife’s comfort, we would normally have it all planned out right down to the means of transportation and accommodations as well as site tours. On this trip we will leave almost all of that to chance and whim. I have no doubt we will survive and I have no doubt there will be hick-ups. But I also suspect that we will stumble onto several whimsical surprises. It is these whimsical surprises that I look forward to most of all.

I love my wife and have always tolerated and at times greatly appreciated her need to have plans laid out and surprises avoided, but truth be told, that is not my style. My daughters refer to any trip with dad as an adventure. I am a restless, impatient, let me see where this road leads me sort of guy. I will admit that the road didn’t always lead me where it was supposed to but I also made it to my destination somehow. The fact that my wife is tolerating this upcoming trip is either a testament to her willingness to humor me or at the least an acknowledgment that time has broken her will. I am excited for the trip to begin for only then will the adventure reveal itself.

Life is like this. We can go through it planning every step along the way seeking to avoid the surprises or we can take a more adventurous approach. Before we get carried away, remember that the lion share of my career was spent as a planner. I will be the first to acknowledge the benefit of goals and plans to meet them. It’s just that there is also a need for spontaneity. It’s a balance of the two that allows one to truly live. The goals are met in the planning and they in turn afford us the freedom to find the surprises that await us in the spontaneity. We can choose the direction we will point our vehicles or even the course we will travel, but to truly enjoy the journey, we must let the road rise up to meet us. The reward will be worth the risk. The surprises perhaps whimsical. The road can take us places we may never had considered and reveal to us experiences we would never have realized.

This Thursday we will get up, hop in our car and begin the trip, my expectations and imagination already miles ahead. I can’t wait for the road to rise up and take us where it would have us go. No need to wish us luck, we packed it in our bags.

Follow our journey at http://www.kenismsblog.com

I Rolled the Window Down Today

Posted on by kwundrow

I debated with titling this blog as I did or “It’s Wisconsin, Wait a Week”. I was headed home this noon from a meeting and when I realized the temperature outside was now in the 50’s, the window had to come down. What a glorious feeling as finally, the spring like breeze slid through my open window and cascaded around the interior of my car. All that stale winter air trapped inside my vehicle for the last four months was pushed out and replaced by the hope of sunshine and warmer days ahead.

Now to be true, we need some perspective here. Just five days ago, the temperature hovered at five below zero with a wind chill of negative thirty degrees. Spring was something we wistfully spoke of but believed had been banished forever. With a foot and a half of snow on the ground and no warming trend in sight, hope had been buried somewhere under the five foot drift marking the edges of my driveway. My lawn mower hid timidly behind my snowblower considering permanent retirement.

The irony of this is that in another four or five months, we will treat weather in the 50’s as the time to pull out our sweaters and roll the window back up. We have been slowly cooled through our long winter to the point that 50 degrees somehow feels like we should head to the beach and at the very least don a short sleeve shirt. We are conditioned, slowly and deliberately to accept our fate. When the change comes, what was intolerable before is now not only comfortable, but enjoyable.

But wait, this too is likely fleeting. Give it another week and we may be right back into winter. What we need to remember if this unthinkable possibility becomes reality, is that for even a day, spring proved that she was not dead, just waiting to push winter back where it belonged. Spring will eventually defeat winter and will bring with her the promise of summer.

So what is this all about. Simply put, our weather is a metaphor for life. About the time we are ready to give up hope, everything changes. Hope re-emerges as a warm breeze ready to renew our faith. An intolerable condition gives way to new opportunities and we are reminded to never give up hope. If you are currently suffering through a tough time or maybe just the depression of a long winter, remember that tomorrow the breeze may just swing around to the south and change will bring back renewed energy. So for now, roll down the window and let the breeze in. With it will come a promise of better weather ahead.

Sign Said, Last Gas for at Least 200 miles.

Posted on by kwundrow

It was to be a simple trip. My daughter Bailey and I would be attending her cousin’s wedding in Bishop, California. After a late flight into Las Vegas and a night on the infamous Strip, we picked up our Pontiac G6 that next morning at the car rental agency. From there it was a four hour drive across the desert to our destination in the mountains of California. Except for a modification to my brother’s speed in the lead car, he thought the speed limit was 95 when in fact that was the interstate’s numeric designation, the trip was uneventful. We stopped for lunch in Beatty, Nevada half way across the desert and arrived in Bishop by mid afternoon.

The next two days passed quickly and on Sunday, after the wedding festivities had wound down, Bailey and I left for Las Vegas. A few facts pertinent to the story. It was late Sunday afternoon, I had not driven the rental since we had arrived on Friday and we no longer had the accompaniment of my brother as he was staying a few days longer. These facts will play heavily in the events that were to follow.

Bailey and I are known to have a habit of visiting sites that are near our route when traveling. This Sunday afternoon would afford us an opportunity to pass near “The Ancient Bristle Cone Pine Groove”. Some of these trees were over 3000 years old.

We had crested the first of our three mountain passes when we came upon the road to the grove. Not being able to resist, we took the turn off and headed toward the site. Poor planning step one, the road into the grove was over 10 miles one way. We arrived at what we thought was the grove only to realize it was a vista just below and the actual grove was still another mile or so up the grade. As we started our climb, I noticed, somehow for the first time, the fuel gauge on our G6. The gauge was already nearing the “E”. Poor planning step two, not having driven the vehicle all weekend, we had not considered our fuel supply. We were now faced with a critical decision. Drive back to Bishop, some 50 miles behind us or count on a gas station somewhere ahead. At the time the decision seemed obvious and, poor planning step three, we chose to drive on. Had we been paying attention on the drive out from Vegas, we would have been painfully aware that the only gas station had been in Beatty complete with a sign that said, next gas at least 200 miles. This was the same Beatty that was still some 100 miles ahead. Did I tell you the gauge was nearly on “E”? By the time we reached the highway we had left to drive into the grove, the low fuel light was now on and the gauge was glaring back at us on “E”.

Time to update you on our conditions, beside the fact that we were counting on something that didn’t exist, we still had two more mountain passes to clear. Add to that, mountains don’t tend to offer great cell service and mountain passes even less. Needless to say, we had no cell service, a car reading empty, and 100 miles to go.

At this point, the science of physics becomes important. Cars run on fuel, altitude climbs are hard on mileage efficiency and wind resistance only makes matters worse. Here, in no particular order, were our scientific conclusions, coasting was better than driving, braking causes resistance, using the AC reduces mileage and rolled up windows create less wind resistance. Did I remind you the temperature was in the upper 80’s. The last two decisions, no AC and rolled up windows, were tough ones, but we were determined to make it to Beatty even as the vehicle was warning us otherwise. As to the coasting and no braking conclusions, you would be shocked by the speed a 3000 lb vehicle can reach coasting down a winding mountain pass. You would be further amazed at how long we could let this go each time before lightly using the brakes to bleed off some of our speed. One of our conditions was now working in our favor for the moment. It was late Sunday afternoon and we had the road to ourselves. But this also meant that when the car would be finally completely empty, WE WERE ALONE.

We somehow made it up the last pass and were now coasting down the last grade where we could see Interstate 95 off in the distance.
This highway would lead us into Beatty or at least put us in proximity of fellow travelers. But what seemed to be in reach was just another mirage. Distances in the mountains and now down on the desert floor can be deceptive. What seemed to be right there was actually close to 20 miles ahead. Down on the desert floor, no more coasting available and more heat than we could take, we were willing the car to reach for the interstate. If we could get there, then maybe we could at least be saved. As we neared the entrance to the interstate, the road took a jog back to the north before winding onto the interstate. Off to our right was a long abandoned bordello and a parking area that ran along the edge of the interstate. The needle on the fuel gauge had long ago passed “E” and the decision became easy. We left the road, shot through the abandoned parking lot and up the side of Interstate 95, easily cutting off another half mile. Desperation was now becoming our co-pilot.

We were now on the interstate and had at least the occasional car or two to give us comfort. We also had picked up cell service again and the first call went out to Triple A. A pleasant voice took our call but informed us that if we were still running there really wasn’t anything they could do. We would need to call back when we are actually out of gas and stranded. My daughter asked where the agent was located and when she replied New Jersey, Bailey told her that we weren’t. Once she explained where we actually were and that we had just passed a sign that told us Beatty was another 60 miles ahead, she responded with a phrase closely resembling the phrase Steve Martin gets from Bunny at the rental desk in Planes, Trains and Automobiles. And so we motor on. We are now down to considering drafting the next semi we can find.

About this time my wife calls from our safe and cozy home back in Wisconsin. She is checking in on how we are doing. Being the considerate and wise daughter I raised her to be, Bailey tells her we are just great and that we will be in Beatty soon, under her breath, “one way or the other.” Any whiff of what was really going on and we would have been subject to an embarrassing lecture and then an Air Force rescue in the Nevada desert. And so we motor on.

The Pontiac G6 has decided it too refuses to give up or the fuel gauge has been set extremely conservative to thwart the effort of optimistic drivers like us, pushing the limits. Either way, the road mileage markers become more and more promising and then suddenly, from a slight crest in the highway, we view Beatty up ahead. Still five or six miles distant we begin to believe we will make it. Fear has now been replaced with determination to complete this epic record. At about a half mile out we spy the gas station up ahead on the right. We can take the jog to the left, turn at the light and head back down to the gas station. Or, we can cut through the motel parking lot, across an alley, through the grocery store parking lot and roll up to the pumps. Of course, we chose the later. As we pulled alongside the pumps, and as God is my witness, the car stuttered once and shut down. Bailey and I jump from the car and with fists held high, yelling at the top of our lungs, did our gas dance around the now quiet vehicle. One gentleman looked at us and said “that drive across the desert can be a killer.” We just replied “Oh Yeah! Don’t we know it!”

Beatty NV motel

It was a year latter, and we were on a family vacation in Hawaii. The car rental agent said we would be getting a Pontiac G6, but he wanted to upgrade us at no cost to a little larger car. Bailey and I looked at him and in unison said “we’ll take the Pontiac.”

Was it automotive ingenuity or just dumb luck? Or maybe, was it a car with a soul that said no one gets stranded in the desert on my watch. Either way, an epic story and a happy ending.

One Man’s Treasure

Posted on by kwundrow

I had just parked my car this morning after a masterfully executed parallel parking job in traffic, when as I exited the vehicle, I found a quarter staring up at me from the pavement. Now there are several ways to react to this found treasure. Most would likely dismiss it and possible have never risked traffic to even pick it up. After all, what does a quarter buy today…a gumball or maybe an after dinner mint? Some would pick it up just simply because it was something. Still others, like myself, would see it as an omen and maybe even a message. I viewed it as a message. A message from my Uncle Len.

Leonard Wundrow was my father’s younger brother and the source of most of the Wundrow joke reservoir. Any time that Uncle Len would stop by the farm, and that was often, we would be regaled with a litany of his jokes and stories, many I am sure, the kind my mother would have censored had she had the chance. There was never a dull moment when Len was involved.

But the story I want to share concerns Uncle Len’s past time. He would go for walks, head down, searching for the lost treasures of those who had passed before. Those little pieces of change that fell out of the pocket each time you reached in for your keys or a pocket knife or some other small tool. A penny here, a nickel there and if you were lucky the occasional quarter or even half dollar could be found if you knew where to look and you kept your eyes to the ground. Uncle Len was a pro and by the time he retired and found hours of additional time to search, a veritable force to be reckoned with. His house held jars full of coins waiting for their trip to the bank. Each day we would get the report, the tally for the day of treasures found.

Uncle Len’s secret, knowing where and when to look. Near the parking meter, outside the bar any early morning or in the park the morning after the fair. Locate the beer tent remains and the treasure could be impressive. He would sometimes take us with him and we would be shown the tricks of the trade but sworn to secrecy on his high production sites. One morning, the day after the VFW Fair had pulled up stakes and rolled out of town, Uncle Len hit the mother load. After a productive area pass of pocket dropped coins, Len found, tightly rolled up, a C note. Yes, My Uncle Len had found a one hundred dollar bill! His glee was contagious, his question possibly a bit naive. He was musing as to why any one would roll up a hundred dollar bill into such a small tube. They could of used it for a straw! He even considered using it as such to which we immediately said “DON’T!” I will leave it with you there, just as we did way back then.

We loved our Uncle Len. He was a character that kept his family and ours always on your toes. When he passed, he left the missing person syndrome in every family gathering that followed but he also left his legacy. To this day, and to a person in the Wundrow families, we can not pass a dropped coin without hearing his voice saying “you gonna pick that up?” So you see, this morning, with traffic whizzing by, I never thought twice, I bent down, stopped traffic, and retrieved the coin. Stepping back onto the sidewalk, my wife asked what I was doing. When I showed her the coin, we looked at each other and said, “Uncle Len’s watching us today.”

Legacies are the essence of who we were that we leave behind when we go. I can only hope that long after I am gone, I will have left some legacy, even if it just a quirky habit like viewing the little things as a treasure.

It would not be fair to end this story without reporting on what we did with the quarter. We left it in the tip jar at the cafe where we enjoyed breakfast and shared a memory or two of Uncle Len. Anything else would have seemed sacrilegious. Who knows how many hands that quarter will touch or what it might help accomplish. Thanks Uncle Len. One man’s treasure.

Body and Soul

Posted on by kwundrow

Body, Mind, Heart and Soul, these were the words that piqued my interest today. I am currently going through a healing process and it has become clear to me how intertwined and dependent these four terms can be.

Let’s start with body. When we are not feeling well, when we have gone through a trauma, when our body needs to be healed, we go to a doctor. They diagnose the problem, assign a regimen of medication, maybe therapy or in some cases, a surgery. The medication assists our body in healing itself. Therapy or surgery, actually repair the damage and begin the process of healing. This is a physical process and in most cases the first place our system looks for the fix. But what if this is not the only issue or possible only a symptom of the real problem.

We might need to consider the mind. The body often can’t heal completely without the healing of the mind. The mind may be causing us to deal with anxiety. “What if I can’t get better?” is the question we begin to want answered. If I want a complete recover, I need to be ready in my mind to deal with the process. Sometimes, there is no true physical issue. The phrase “all in your head” comes to mind. It is true that the perception of pain is in fact all in my head. The pain is real, but it is the mind that interprets the inputs coming from the source of that pain. At other times, the issue is not physical pain, but emotional stress, possibly to the point of depression. If the mind is to be healed, we may need the help of a professional or at least the ear of someone willing to listen and help us confront the source of that anxiety. Just as we can heal the body, so can we heal the mind.

Enter the heart. In this setting I am not talking about the heart as an organ. That would include it in the discussion of the body. I am referring to the heart as the repository of our emotions. If we have suffered a loss, we could be suffering from a broken heart. Not a heart that isn’t functioning but rather a heart that has suffered a loss too big to ignore. At times we may be walking around feeling like there is a figurative hole in our heart. The heart may be the hardest to heal. It unfortunately, at the very least, takes time. Sometimes it requires that we must find a reason to move on. We cannot replace what we lost but we can use the memories to help us find the strength to move on.

And then there is the soul. To talk about healing the soul, we must first understand what it is. The soul is the essence of who we are and who we are meant to be. It is not a physical organ. We don’t know where in the body it resides. We feel it rather than see it. We use the term, “nourish the soul”, but what do we feed the soul. I believe we feed it a dose of purpose, faith and positive thoughts. Stress, lack of faith in people or processes, hopelessness and negative thoughts or behaviors, diminish the soul.

I began this piece with the statement that these four concepts were intertwined. That to truly heal, the prescription must treat all four. To focus on one and ignore the rest, leaves us only partially healed and vulnerable to a relapse. If we are to heal the body, we must heal the mind, heart and soul as well. The prescription must include the medication or repair that the body needs, the help necessary to calm the mind and then restore it to full function, the time needed and a reason for the heart to carry on, and finally, attention to the soul to restore our purpose and provide the nourishment to strengthen us for the process. Just as the doctor will recommend a regiment of medication for the body, knowledge and understanding of the healing process, including the time needed and the ups and downs that will inevitably occur, will help to mend the mind. For the heart, the prescription must include a positive attitude, the opportunity to both face and deal with the healing and strong belief that the people around us truly care and hope for our complete healing. As to the soul, we need to want to heal. We must restore our soul to the strength it will need to regain who we were meant to be and the reason to heal.

I have, over the past several weeks, experienced healing of body, mind, heart and soul. The surgeon fixed the worn out knee while the nurses and physical therapists helped me regain my mobility. Through the early stages of the recover, I fought with the anxiety of sleepless nights, recovery that seemed too slow and the stress of fighting through the pain. The physical therapists were there to encourage me and to calm my anxiety when it would block my ability to heal. My heart was dealing with the loss of my independence and mobility, but my friends and family, and especially my wife were there to listen and remind me that they cared. Their concern reminded me I was never alone and that I could feed on that concern to find the strength to keep working toward my recovery. As to my soul, it never left me. I knew the road ahead when I had made the decision to have the surgery. Each and every person who became a part of the healing strengthened my soul to regain what I had been losing; the positive attitude that had existed before the pain had begun to diminish it.

At sometime, we all face the need to heal. When it is the body only, the process is faith in the diagnosis. But never lose sight of the other three; mind, heart and soul. Each can be dealt with alone or addressed as a group. But in any case, we don’t really need to nor do we accomplish the healing alone. Remember that the people around us are the prescription we need to complete the healing.

On the Road Again

Posted on by kwundrow

I’ve been lax in updating my progress since getting my latest bionic knee. It’s been six weeks and I thought I better say something.

I adopted a mantra along the way to answer the reoccurring question, “How are you feeling?” My response has been, “Better than yesterday but hopefully not as good as tomorrow.” Two thoughts on this. First, it hasn’t always been true. There have been days where progress clearly took one step forward and two steps back but that is to be expected with this kind of recovery. Sometimes you work the exercises a little too hard only to wake the next morning too sore to do your best rehab. Fortunately, there have only been a few of these and they seem to be fading in the rear view mirror.

The second and more random thought about this statement, is that it really could apply in general. As good as today was, there is no reason to not hope that tomorrow just may be even better. If we can approach life with this positive attitude, we won’t be likely to miss the opportunities that can in fact make tomorrow even better than today. As I said, it was a random thought, but in this shut in, cooped up, measure every little bit of progress day to day grind, two hours of sleep a night routine, one has a lot of time to think pretty randomly.

I have with my past updates tried to recognize my heroes, the surgery staff, the hospital nurses and eventually the host of physical therapists. I added to that those friends and neighbors that have, without even being asked, stepped in to clear my sidewalk and driveway, drive me to appointments and just plain showed up when I needed a little conversation break.

Today marks the six week anniversary of the surgery. I am walking without a cane for the most part. My wife/ nurse / coach / still makes me take it with me outside of the house for some added support in this weather, but in reality, I just end up carrying it. I have started to leave the house now with much more regularity and have returned to my old bad habit of going out for breakfast and consuming too much coffee. I even returned to the gym a couple of times to start building back up what I clearly lost. I will accept the new aches and pains as something refreshingly different and just my upper body muscles saying thank you.

The big progress marker, I got cleared to drive again. Deb, bless her heart, has been driving me everywhere, and I have been….well a s**t about it. It is a difficult task to be the rider when you have always been the driver and especially hard to take when my style is, to put it mildly, a bit aggressive. I have a new and far better understanding of why our elder parents fight so hard when they are being asked, mostly told, to surrender their driving privileges. Of all our independent activities, most of them have no bearing if we can’t drive. Don’t get me wrong, I am not advocating for hundred year old’s out cruising the boulevards, but we all need to be a tad more empathetic when approaching that treacherous crossroad on life’s highway.

I am close to dancing, but just have a few more “stretches” to go. Their target, the PT people, is 120 degrees of bend and 0 degrees on extension. Currently my numbers sit at 110 and 4 degrees respective, close, but not enough just yet. As I near this end of my recovery journey, I want to thank everyone who has been kind enough to check on my progress and at times, to just be there for me when I needed an ear to bend instead of my knee.

With that said, I’m going to close. It seems I still have miles to log before I am caught up on my driving and right now, I feel the need for speed. Beware you drivers out there going too slow. This whole recovery thing has been slow enough.

The Four “P’s”

Posted on by kwundrow

Two weeks have passed since I had my knee replacement surgery. Up to this point I was not quite ready to write about the experience. This reluctance has been due to multiple reasons not least of which was the inability to focus on something other than the pain. Additionally, I felt that until I could regain perspective, the dialog would be too negative.

The knee is an incredibly complex joint and to have it removed and replaced requires a great deal of tolerance and motivation to even begin to approach the rehab required to not only heal but to regain the functionality. That journey has taken me all of these first two weeks and I have a lot more work ahead. The good news, each day restores a little more strength and a little more flexibility and that makes the journey a little more bearable.

Lying in the hospital, trying to justify what you have done, considering the possibility that you could have just accepted your condition and continued to limp along, you get the warning of the four P’s; Pain, Pee, Poop and Patience.
Pain is inevitable and the gate I must go through to get to a pain free knee going forward. The doctors and nurses explain that it will be the management of pain that will help spell success. And thus begins a carefully balanced approach to just how much medication will leave me lucid enough to function while still knocking back enough of the pain to allow me to begin the regiment of exercises. I am happy to say that though rough for awhile, the program is working and each day is a little less uncomfortable with longer periods of both sleep and almost pain free periods.

The second P stands for pee. From the moment the surgery is over, the simple act of peeing becomes your first hurdle. It is explained that until I can pee, I can’t go home. It is funny how a topic you would not generally bring up at a gathering, “I think I will go for a nice pee. Be back in a minute”, is now seemingly all they want to talk about. Good news, I conquered the act within the first twenty four hours. And with that, at least I was cleared to start planning on going home. A little rehab would await before I was completely cleared, but this had been an important step. Once I could show some motion and independence, I would be on my way. Not to skip a very important step, they needed to guarantee I wasn’t going home alone. My coach, Deb, would take over the nurses’ role in the next stage of my recovery. There is no way to diminish the role she has played in all of this. She assists, she monitors and she encourages me at every step of my journey. She loads me into the car and delvers me home.

Poop, like pee now becomes the goal. Where peeing was not so difficult, pooping is another task all together. It seems the opiods, designed to hold back the pain, hold back appetite, and yes, pooping as well. I get introduced to my new favorite cocktail, apple juice and Miralax. Each new trip down the hallway is followed up with “Any luck in the poop department?” Like peeing, this just seems like everyday conversation. “Had a good bowel movement today?” As with the first two P’s, pooping finally resumed sometime around day four of returning home. I must say, a real relief both figuratively and literally. I think I announced it as a lumberjack would, “Log jam cleared,river traffic flowing again.”

That just leaves patience. Pain management, peeing and pooping were all important steps, but patience is the real trick. Somewhere along the way I had made the decision to stop living with the limitations of my increasingly arthritic knee and crossed the decision threshold to agree with the knee replacement. Now, rehabbing my new knee and dealing with the associated pain, it was too easy to question my decision. How long would this take? Would I ever completely recover? It becomes so easy to dismiss everyone’s judgement of my progress in favor of my anxiety driven over analytical self analysis. It is only through good analogies from my physical therapists and a daily dose of comparisons to yesterday, that the timeline begins to take shape. As slow as it might seem, I start to mark progress.

My journey is only two weeks old. Driving is still four weeks off. Simply climbing stairs another week away. I am told that at three months, I will feel well enough to stop questioning my decision and at six months will dance into my surgeons office for my checkup. In the meantime, I’ve accomplished those first three P’s and have a better handle on the patience.

My final goal, become a more patient patient.