My opinion...

 ...seems to be what brings me to my blog these days.  Whatever it takes to get me started, I guess.  I'll see a news story and something (sometimes, all of it!) will either resonate with me, or make me fightin' mad!  Sometimes it's not that intense.  Today, it was a story about a man who has gotten the first larynx transplant.  He'd lost his voice to cancer and/or cancer treatment.  Along with that, he had difficulty both swallowing and breathing.  This was a life-changing, life IMPROVING surgery.  Wonderful, right?  The part that got me mad as a wet hen was the caveat that some doctors oppose this surgery because "a person can survive without a larynx and transplants can be tricky, complications can develop, so is it worth the risk?"

And this is what is wrong about western medicine.  It's all about keeping us alive as long as possible, quality of life be damned. They tell the patient, "Oh, we can beat this cancer!  It has a blah-blah survival rate!"  And the patient jumps in with both feet.  Then some come out on the other end of treatment with some life-altering and often miserable consequence of the treatment.  "Yes, but you're AVLIVE!" the doctor proclaims.  "But life is no fun!"  They don't care... well, deep down, they may care on a human level, but they did their job - they kept you alive, and miserable life is surely better than dead, right? I'm sure some people might agree, but there might be people who would opt out of treatment if given ALL the information about what to expect after treatment.  The key is to ask the questions that will put the doc on the spot and force the truth to be revealed and then do lots of research as well before making a decision.

Mark used to go to his doc appointments by himself and he would come home and I would say something like, "So what did he say about ______? And he would say something like, "I didn't ask."  I'd give him some shit about it and he would say, "I figure he told me everything I needed to know."  So I started going with him so I could pick the doc's brain. When Mark was diagnosed with bladder cancer, they really wanted to do chemo before removing his bladder.  If I hadn't been there, he probably would have said, "Ok" without any questions. (Doc knows best, right?) But I had plenty of questions.  "Why BEFORE?"  The answer was to shrink it down in case some was outside the bladder walls. So my next question was, "Well, can't we make the decision about chemo AFTER, when we find out if you got it all or not with surgery?"  The answer was yes, that was an option.  (So I'm thinking... they were willing to put his body through this process of poisoning it for some months, the misery of losing his hair and feeling like crap while the poison works, on the off-chance that the cancer had spread outside the bladder.  Nice.)

Big question Mark would never ask, but I knew the answer to it from one of Wes' friends who had gone through chemo... "Mark likes to smoke pot.  Is it ok to do so while he's going through chemo?"  The answer was that he would need to quit because there are impurities in pot (such as mold spores) that can be detrimental to someone who's immune system is compromised by chemo. He would be free to start back up as soon as his immune system had recovered, about 6 months. (Wes' friend DIED when he defied doctor's orders and smoked before his immune system had recovered.)

And then one more thing we learned that probably would never have come out if he'd been alone.  At some point, I could see Mark didn't hear what the doc said.  Like so many older people going deaf, instead of saying, "What? Can you repeat that?"... he just acted like he understood with a bit of confusion on his face.  I was very familiar with that "I can't hear you but don't want to admit it" face.  I turned to the doc and said, "He's about half deaf, can you repeat that?"  I think it was at that point that the doctor admitted that this particular chemo (I had no idea there were different kinds!) typically seriously compromised the hearing and would probably leave someone like Mark completely deaf.  Mark and I have always been on the same page when it comes to music - it's one of the most important facets of our lives and I can not imagine life without it... Add to that that he was always a social butterfly who loved to just sit around and yak it up.  Complete deafness would have been isolating and miserable. (But he would have been ALIVE!)

Now, subject change!

I'm sure I've said it a few times already, but WOW what a great year for my plants!  There are only a few now that haven't done much. That new parasitica Black Margin I got from the young lady at the men's club event remains quietly perky.  Looks fine but has yet to pop any new growth.  The other two I got from her are doing fine and growing.  Which is kind of weird because the other two are both variegates, which are notoriously slow growers.  Go figure!

Below is Rhaphidorpha hayi, a "shingle plant" I got from Lowe's a couple years ago.  It came on this piece of wood, but it's never clung to it, which is how shingle plants are supposed to grow.  I suppose if the environment was truly humid, it might develop the right kid of roots and cling.  Anyway, this is what's left of it and it's looking pretty good, but I spray the board and plant every day.  I wish I knew a better way to grow it so that it would thrive.  I've thought of maybe some screen with some moss that I could spray daily.  

Another one doing very well is H. juannguoiana, which I shorten to Juan.  This one got beat up in the hail in '22 and had a point where it started to dehydrate and I took cuttings.  And it came back.  It's had several blooms on it this year and it's looking fat and happy!  I love how the leaves get random darker spots and how very succulent they are!

 

H. aff. (which is short for "affinis" which means "similar to") clandestina is one I mentioned not long ago beccause it had begun to put on new growth.  Well, it's poppin' all over the place.  It was slow to come back, but now it's got 3 strong growth points, doing quite well.  I'm anxious to see how it looks come fall!

And just an FYI... I acquired the TRUE clandestina 3 years ago and it's growing like crazy and wow, the leaves knock my socks off!

 

This next picture is the seedlings of Pseudorhipsalis romulosa that's I've grown from seed. Yes!  Me from seed!  I'm not good at it - at least not if I do it on purpose. That Schizobasis bulb that seeds so profusely falls into everything and those pop up everywhere.  And once in a blue moon, a Crown of Thorns must drop a seed because I will find a baby seedling under the mama plant.  But when I try to grow from seed, it never goes well.  Well, now I can say "rarely" instead of "never"!  I have this one, and I've got a baby Pachypodium lamerei I grew from seed (!!!), and a Haemanthus albiflos.  The Pachy and Haemanthus are both still at a stage where I could lose them.  But here's the little pot of Pseudorhipsalis:

It gets quite red in sun.  My others are outside and absolutely fire-engine red!

 
This one is a NOID, possibly a form of acuta??  I don't know... that doesn't seem quite right.  But it hasn't bloomed yet.  New leaves are a nice bronze, and somewhat thin.  Then they mature into green and more succulent:

 I have two similar species, both in my bedroom window, that are budding up.  Neither is a first time budder, but I do look forward to their blooms because they remind me of fin, who has a really nice flower.  First one is meredithii x crassicaulis, second one is EPC-392.

I don't grow many tropicals - that shingle plant is one of a few.  They usually don't do that well because my natural ability leans toward succulents.  I know some people think that Hoyas seem tropical, but they are really "honorary" succulents.  In fact, when there is a succulent show, they are on the list.  They do require more water, but they are survivors and if you let them go a bit too long, they recover unlike many true tropicals.  So I got this Philodendrum from Karin a couple years back.  I'm terrible with Philos and the like so I fully expected it to go into the toilet pretty quickly.  But it's done fine.  In fact, it got a little crazy and I whack off a couple feet and stuck it in water and let it root.  Today, I put that into the pot with the mother plant.  So here is Philodendrum mayoi...

So proud of myself!!

 One last thing before I stop today, and that comes from the department called "you're never too old to learn something new".  Maybe six weeks ago or so, I decided to put one of my two surigaoensis (which I shorten to "surge") in the GH.  It hadn't shown any signs of new growth and I wanted it to get a "boost."  In 2019, I had a large branch that started to dehydrate and I took it off, put it in a pot and set it in the GH.  It rooted very quickly, plumped right back up and turned into a grand plant itself, which is how I ended up with two.  So the one I put in the GH is the original one, and it very quickly burst out with new growth!  After some of the leaves matured (also quickly), I decided to bring it back in to it's spot.  My reasoning was that new leaves in the higher light of the GH wouldn't be as large, and it's the sheer size of the leaves that make it so spectacular.  And since the other one hadn't really started growing, I went ahead and put that one out where the other was sitting, hoping it would have the same effect.  So, two lessons learned.  First one I should have known... leaves growing in the house are weak and will BURN easily in the GH!  I had to cut off a few burnt leaves and I feel awful about that!  What a douche I am!  But the second lesson is about some species obviously loving the heat.  It's only been out there a week at most, and there's a new vine with new leaves!!  AMAZING!!  Mind blown again.  I'll bring it back in once it develops a couple more vines...

And that's it for today!