Where has the time gone?

 The last InnovaScapes post was in October last year?   Whew!  What, what?

And the last two posts in October included passages about the impending Trump election, raising concerns that I would certain support fully at this point.   But, this blog is not really intended nor appropriate for political discourse, so we'll move past that one.

The October 5, 2024 post did however include a one-sentence news item about Hurricane Helene -- "spreading widespread destruction to areas with little warning, killing hundreds and leaving countless thousands with out food, water, or shelter.  Tragic."

What I did not yet know was that I would be one of those affected by Hurricane Helene, and it was not a very pleasant discovery.   Unbeknownst to me for a few days, "Hurricane Helene led to a significant shortage of intravenous (IV) fluids, including saline solutions, in the United States. The hurricane damaged a major IV fluid manufacturing plant in North Carolina, which produces a large portion of the nation's supply. This disruption has caused hospitals to ration IV fluids and explore alternative methods for patient care." (Wikipedia).      

In mid-September, I was scheduled for hip replacement surgery in early November (I'd had one years earlier for the other hip), but just after I wrote the blog post, my surgeon called to say that this outage of the Baxter Labs facility in North Carolina was severe, and my surgery (since it was elective) would be postponed until April 2025.   What?

Well, it turns out that this one lab produced something like 60% of America's saline solutions, and "Blam, sorry Ma'am" the country is out of luck.   I did muse about how could one company get a virtual lock on such business, sounds pretty monopolistic to me.   I did not pursue this line of reasoning further.

I finally got the surgery on April 2, 2025, and also finally, on May 13, 2025, Baxter Labs said, "Hey, we're back in business, hooray"     https://www.baxter.com/baxter-newsroom/hurricane-helene-updates

Meanwhile, lasst autumn, my hip got worse and worse.  I went from a cane in October and November (actually, a shillelath, not a cane.  Shillelaths ward off evil spirits, canes are for cripples), to a four-wheeled walker of sorts in December.  By January, all the way to April, I was virtually house-bound, with adequate pain levels to justify pounding Aleve at higher rates than recommended.

And, voilà, today the surgery has healed, and I am able to walk again without mechanical aids, provided I don't do anything silly, like try to walk on uneven ground, or more than one hundred yards at a time.  In effect, I got so out of shape from no exercise, that I am unsteady, and using Physical Therapy folk to recover is taking more time than I had expected.

So, yes, I could have been writing blog posts, but it has been hard to even sit at the computer.  This idea of getting older with slower recovery times is not a perfect plan, but compared to the alternative, here we are.   Meanwhile, time moves on, and our company AstroVirtual has made progress that I can report on a bit in the next post.   I will also note that I did use the computer time that I could tolerate to begin an AstroVirtual blog, which you can find via the AstroVirtual website (https://www.astrovirtual.com/astrovirtualblog)

So, for now, InnovaScapes Institute is up and running, and posts might again be moderately regular.

Cheers,

Chuck