Palm Springs Holidays December 2021
“Not Again!”
“This last month has been quite a year” neatly summarized the whirlpool of big life events that captured us late last summer and early fall. Disappointingly, our first week, then the whole month of December, was feeling like a repeat. The good news however, was that all of the disruptive events in Palm Springs were much more trivial. In the previous onslaught, some were actual life and death events, whereas this December, the upsets were all first-world problems.
The Frustrations Began Small
Day #1 in the desert, December 1, started with the disappointing discovery that the 6-month pass that we had bought for several years for the Indian Canyon hiking and biking venue had been dropped, so it was pay double for a year pass or pay the the daily rate. Hardly a big deal, but it burst our bubble on our first afternoon back in the valley because we had enjoyed the ease of having a pass. But any closure here-or-there over our 3-month stay due to covid or flash flood damage to the single road would make buying the annual passes a really bad choice, so we sadly declined the $125 option.
More disruptive was receiving a package with coveted, new electronic gizmos that only lacked tread marks to convince us it literally had been run over by a truck. The little box was totally crushed, and the 2 devices were smashed. A call to Apple recommended exchanging them at the nearest Apple store, but the staff there refused to cooperate, so it had to be shipped back. Amusingly, they requested that Bill find a better box for the return, like it mattered at this point. And, disappointingly, Bill’s Apple AirPods Pro devices had supposedly been delivered to the trailer park as well but could not be located. Our big mail-order season was off to a rough start.
A day later, my much-anticipated massage appointment in 36 hours with a new practitioner that had been on the books for weeks was abruptly canceled. I interpreted his text message saying “I’ve been a little under the weather and I’m trying to sleep as much as possible” as code for a mental health crisis. Nothing to do with that other than to wish us both the best in our separate journeys and hope my ongoing self care would unravel my chronic issues. A month later, and I still hadn’t heard back from him, a lose-lose.
“Not Again!”
“This last month has been quite a year” neatly summarized the whirlpool of big life events that captured us late last summer and early fall. Disappointingly, our first week, then the whole month of December, was feeling like a repeat. The good news however, was that all of the disruptive events in Palm Springs were much more trivial. In the previous onslaught, some were actual life and death events, whereas this December, the upsets were all first-world problems.
The Frustrations Began Small
Day #1 in the desert, December 1, started with the disappointing discovery that the 6-month pass that we had bought for several years for the Indian Canyon hiking and biking venue had been dropped, so it was pay double for a year pass or pay the the daily rate. Hardly a big deal, but it burst our bubble on our first afternoon back in the valley because we had enjoyed the ease of having a pass. But any closure here-or-there over our 3-month stay due to covid or flash flood damage to the single road would make buying the annual passes a really bad choice, so we sadly declined the $125 option.
More disruptive was receiving a package with coveted, new electronic gizmos that only lacked tread marks to convince us it literally had been run over by a truck. The little box was totally crushed, and the 2 devices were smashed. A call to Apple recommended exchanging them at the nearest Apple store, but the staff there refused to cooperate, so it had to be shipped back. Amusingly, they requested that Bill find a better box for the return, like it mattered at this point. And, disappointingly, Bill’s Apple AirPods Pro devices had supposedly been delivered to the trailer park as well but could not be located. Our big mail-order season was off to a rough start.
A day later, my much-anticipated massage appointment in 36 hours with a new practitioner that had been on the books for weeks was abruptly canceled. I interpreted his text message saying “I’ve been a little under the weather and I’m trying to sleep as much as possible” as code for a mental health crisis. Nothing to do with that other than to wish us both the best in our separate journeys and hope my ongoing self care would unravel my chronic issues. A month later, and I still hadn’t heard back from him, a lose-lose.
This new installation in front of the Palm Springs Art Museum captured how we were feeling.
On December 3rd, we did our first big, all-day hike from the valley floor, walking halfway up to the Palm Springs Aerial Tram, which had its unexpected twists and turns. It was sobering to be corrected when I said to the orange clad Search and Rescue (SARS) crew with a dog at their feet and a helicopter in the air, “I assume you are on a training mission.” They replied “No, it’s the last sweep for someone who went missing.” The exchange ended when I said: ”I’m going to the 5,000’ level, I’ll keep an eye out” to which he said “You won’t find anything, it was back in June, we are looking for pieces.”
Hours later, Bill said “This is what happened to that guy” when we were separated by a short distance and were both briefly lost. We were high on the familiar trail but the social trails and new, ad hoc cairns had left the usually sketchy route in disarray. We’d each successfully and independently made our way up the trail another 1000’ in elevation but we both got sort of lost at the same place, on our way down.
I did my usual course correction by turning around and retreating to the new cairn, made a 90° turn from there, expecting to intersect the trail, but had no success. I hollered, Bill heard me, and then he couldn’t hear me. He must have moved just enough to be out of earshot. I used my walkie talkie to reach him again “Saying watch for me as you come down, I’m off trail, but should be quite visible to you.” That’s when he informed me that he too was lost. We both fired up our Gaia navigation apps on our phones and in a few minutes, I was on the trail and Bill was about a minute behind me. A non-event but one that got our attention, especially considering the earlier “pieces” comment by the SARS guy.
Perhaps less than an hour later, I took a trivial fall with a soft landing on a rock slab but slid into a low cactus, which I didn’t even realize in the moment. I didn’t go back to look at the plant, I thought the event was so minor, but I was sure wrong! In a couple of minutes, I knew I was in big trouble. Any movement I made, either bending or twisting to examine the back of my pants, triggered the searing pain of dozens or more spines digging into my flesh. I called to Bill, who had paused behind me, for help.
Two weeks later, we spied the cactus that Barb slid into.
Bill suggested that I take off my pants, which had hundreds of tiny, golden, spines embedded in them, with an imprint of the cactus leaf surface in the fabric. Palm Springs is a rather free-spirited place, and I knew I wouldn’t attract too many stares continuing 3 miles down to the trailhead and walking the mile back to our trailer on city streets without pants, but I wasn’t keen on it. I had already learned the hard way that the wiggling needed to remove my shoes, socks, and pants would be very painful and with this level of distress, I was at risk of falling again and wanted to retain the protection my pants afforded should that happen.
As a compromise, Bill stuffed a pair of fleece knee-highs I carry for extra warmth down my pant leg to create a barrier between my skin and the now prickly pants. It helped enough that I wasn’t tempted to try any other remedies on the trail. Somehow, the bottom of my pants on the other leg had also become loaded with spines and Bill ever-so-carefully rolled up the cuff and secured it to prevent grinding the spines into either leg while we walked. Containment was our goal, removable of the tiny spines on the trail looked impossible.
It was a labored, 3-mile descent from there in fading light. I was in a tolerable but distressing amount of discomfort. I really didn’t want to fall again or risk having my clothes move much because I had spines the full length of my pants on one side and at the ankle on the other.
Bill offered to fetch the truck when we hit the pavement, but it was baffling to visualize positioning myself in the truck seat without escalating the sense of pain, so we continued walking in the dark on the unlit streets back to our trailer. Palm Springs shines lights upwards to show-off their palm trees but declines to illuminate many streets for pedestrians! At that point, I didn’t care too much if I got hit by a car or not.
Once we arrived at our trailer doorstep, I again noticed the curious, almost total decompensation that I can experience at the 9- or 10-hour point on a hiking day. I’d been able to press-on, to keep walking, but once I switched out of that survival mode, I became almost useless, just like at the end of less eventful, but grueling hikes. Bending a little to remove my shoes was mentally overwhelming because of the multiple points of pain it triggered, and I could no longer think clearly.
The spines in Barb’s pants were a perfect imprint of their pattern on the leaf.
Bill sat on the trailer steps wearing heavy kitchen gloves to protect his skin while I carefully lifted one foot to the step below for him for him to remove my shoe and then sock, putting each in a separate bag to avoid contaminating items with the fewest spines. Then I slowly switched feet, and he repeated the process for the second foot. Next, he helped me off with my pants, putting them and the knee-high socks into separate bags as well. All I could do was be statuesque, I couldn’t bear to move, and no one seemed to notice me half naked on our dark RV pad.
The easy part, removing my spine-loaded clothing, was done. Next was the hard part: experimenting to find the best way to remove as many spines as possible from my painful, damaged skin.
Duct tape is the classic spine removal tool. Early in our desert hiking experience, we learned from other hikers that if you went to the ER with cactus spines in your skin, that they’d remove them with duct tape, so think about doing it yourself.
Our “laboratory”, my buttocks and leg loaded with spines, was huge and we quickly exhausted the experimental options. We tried duct tape, shipping tape, and athletic (adhesive) tape, each combined with the prescribed “press it on, rip it off” technic. Nothing was satisfying, so we tried all the tapes again, using a sweeping motion, which seemed superior to the hair removal model of waxing and ripping. Eventually, Bill kindly bagged all my clothing, took it all inside along with my pack and poles, and then took a little time to tend to his needs. I kept experimenting with the tape, trying to remove more spines in the areas I could reach.
Inexplicably, the only spines on the other leg were on the cuff.
We had been showering in the roomy RV park shower house, but I decided that the walk over there and the need to wear some clothing to do so was beyond my mental and physical capacity, so Bill removed the items we’d been storing in our trailer’s little tub and shower stall so I could shower at home.
We’d just bought a 3 pack of Jetz double-sided sponges, and I used one for a washcloth. I selected the soft side for my upper body and used the coarse scrubber for my spine-ridden legs. My old-lady skin tolerated the scrubbing surprisingly well and I was pleased not to be risking transferring spines into my exfoliating cloth I normally used.
At last, hours late, we ate our dinner and then Bill took another crack at removing the nearly invisible spines with tape and tweezers. I graduated to lying on our bed under the bright ceiling light, but he still couldn’t grab-hold of many spines. After another bout of applying tape, I requested that he cover every patch of spines, which were now well highlighted by the red inflammatory response in my skin, with the athletic tape—duct tape was too harsh for me. I’d quickly learned that taping down the little buggers so they couldn’t move diminished my pain. It was the answer to my unanswered question on the trail: “How will I ever sleep tonight and tomorrow night?”
Taping the tiny spines in place to prevent them from wiggling in the night as I wiggled, was magical. I actually slept surprisingly well, and we catapulted our understanding of spine removal to the next level. Even though the latex-free athletic tape we stocked wasn’t especially tacky, its adherence became stronger with time and the warmth of my skin and was well anchored by morning. Bill successfully harvested a number of spines when removing the tape in the next day. We turn everything into an experiment….
Twenty-four hours later, we were still extracting some of the probably several hundred, almost invisible spines from my buttock, thigh, and ankle. I coincidentally had a routine dermatologist appointment on Day 5 and even she couldn’t dig out the particularly annoying spine in my buttock with the aid of her magnification, bright light, and sharp forceps. She did prescribe a potent antibiotic and steroid cream to apply twice a day to the affected areas, which seemed helpful but wasn’t decisive in speeding my recovery.
Spines or no spines, there is always something in Palm Springs to trigger a smile.
Fortunately, the hiking pants I’d worn that day were close to qualifying for a rag, so contrary to my usual reluctance to retire aging hiking pants, I easily threw them away. The pants were hopelessly covered in spines: there were so many that the invisible spines were visible. The neoprene covid face mask in my back pocket had likely shielded me from dozens of impregnated spines because it was literally stiff from them, and it was discarded as well. None of the other garments, including the knee highs or my underwear, seemed irretrievable.
I cleaned-up my shoes and remaining clothes by hand washing them several times, one garment at a time, and then tossed them in the laundry barrel to be machine washed. One sock that had been through these multiple washing had a single spine in it that was annoying at the beginning of a hike but then disappeared from my radar.
What an adventure! In over 10 years of hiking in the desert, this was the only show-stopper cactus encounter we’d had. I felt lucky to be almost 100% comfortable at 24 hours post-event though the still-annoying spines embedded in my hands would have to find their own way out, which they did in a couple of days.
The Skyrocketing Price Tags on our Troubles
The “spine in the butt” event was on Friday, then on Monday we both got bad news at the dentist. Bill was told he needed some major work done, though it wasn’t urgent. Bill booked it for next December because the dentist was too busy to start it now, which would be necessary to complete it before we departed on March 1. A mere $4,000 was the estimate!
The same dentist always quivers a bit when he sees me. Apparently, my dental situation is like a card house about to collapse and if one tooth fails, disaster will ensue. He says that there is nothing to do now, that my home care is perfect, and he doesn’t know what we’ll do with my mouth when teeth start failing. He always ends the conversation abruptly with me sensing that he hopes I’ll die before he has to deal with it. When pressed this time after he pointed to a particular tooth, he did comment that the bone loss was too great to support an implant. Bummer!
The always fast-moving river water at Whitewater Preserve was gone 2 days after a big rainstorm. We happened to be there on one of the rare days when it disappears underground.
It Wasn’t Just Us
Between Bill’s dentist visit on Monday morning and his Endodontist visit Tuesday afternoon, was more unwelcome excitement, but back out on the trail. We were leading our first official hike of the season for the desert hiking club at the end of our first week in Palm Springs, for which even being on the trail, had been a near thing.
The week-long rain threat had me emailing our 7 hikers at 6:30 am that the hike was on for 8 am, as scheduled. We were sprinkled upon at the trailhead and again at the summit turnaround 2 hours later, but everyone was delighted to be on the trail that day. Many were starved for like-minded company and almost all were thrilled to do this totally exposed hike under a heavy cloud cover because it can be so hot, even by mid-morning in December.
A little before noon on our return segment, a capable hiker misstepped and tumbled off the edge of the trail and down a short distance on a very steep, loose bank. I arrived with the 2nd half of our group in time to see the man who tried to grab her sliding down the slope as well. The best that we can piece together, she landed face down and the man skidded into her, causing her to somersault before I got there.
Part of the group relaxing at the peak before the tumbles.
“We need a rope!” exclaimed a hiker in my group but no one ever brings a rope on these hikes, so that was a non-starter. Given the very narrow trail and lack of anything solid on which to tie or brace, it was hard to even imagine how we could use a rope in this situation.
Calm and collected, Bill first started with “Put your left foot on that big rock” but unfortunately, the rotten rock instantly disintegrated, and she slid a little farther and so did the man. I held my group back above the scene so as not to trigger more rock sliding and Bill finally was able to direct the duo onto the trail where he stood. The group reunited, we and others pulled out first aid kits, and Bill proceeded to clean the blood off her face to examine her wounds.
The woman was outrageously stoic, later explaining to Bill that she grew up with 3 brothers and got no sympathy from their parents for getting banged up. Amazingly, embarrassment was her biggest emotional response. Torn clothes, bruises, bangs, and open wounds didn’t slow her down much. As best that we could tell, the man had nasty scraps on one hand and arm and accepted the tail end of the antibiotic packet Bill used on the woman.
Another hike leader wrote me the next evening, curious about the rest of the story. She commented that the hiker “looked pretty banged up” and was amazed that she was out on the trail in her group the following morning. We happened to see the acrobatic hiker a week later and she’d skillfully camouflaged her still-swollen facial bruise with make-up and her wounds were healing well. It could have been so much worse.
Bad News at the Dermatologist’s Office
The next day, I saw a dermatologist for a routine skin check and to look at a nasty spot on my lip. She didn’t use the term “pre-cancerous” but the fact that after treating it for 2 weeks with antibiotics and steroids, she wanted to consider “burning it off” was alarming. She made it clear that it would be very painful for a week. It was while I was there, that she looked at my slow-to-heal spots on my buttock and leg from my cactus spine encounter 5 days prior. We’d had so many upsets, so I wasn’t feeling especially resilient about having a week of 24/7 lip pain on my January calendar.
The following day, we came rushing back for an afternoon Telehealth appointment only to discover that it had been cancelled—we’d missed an email sent 25 minutes before the appointment was to begin. Hardly a crisis, but it was a failure of a coping strategy, which is to control what you can control; we’d thought showing up for that appointment had been within our sphere of control.
More Intrusions
It looked like we’d have a few smooth sailing days until the rain forecast kept getting worse and worse for the next week’s hike. Once it hit 100% chance of an inch of rain, there could be no waffling, we’d have to cancel. Next up however, was wondering about the club board meeting later that same day, the one where I planned to use my new Apple AirPods Pro in the living room. Planning around flash flood alerts for a 30-minute drive through town was tricky.
It was flooding so often that they were leaving some of the signs out.
Never a dull moment: Bill returned to Costco to have his eyes re-examined because the 2 new pairs of glasses he ordered our first days in Palm Springs just weren’t right. The optometrist carefully re-evaluated Bill’s prescription and eyes and declared that something was amiss with Bill’s eyes. Bill was referred to a specialist with the assumption that his mild cataracts weren’t mild enough and were interfering with his vision. It would be another 10 days to be seen in the next office.
A few days later after the disappointing news about Bill’s eyes and about 10 days after the Endodontist told Bill he needed an expensive procedure to save the tooth, Bill started feeling a bit of discomfort in the gum and his appointment was moved up. He started the antibiotics that were previously prescribed for the surgery already on the calendar and had the procedure done two days later. It wasn’t the presumed infection but a granuloma, a chunk of tissue gone awry in the healing process that needed to be removed. Zip-swish: the abnormal tissue was removed, a tiny bone graft was deposited, stitches were in place, and a relieved Bill was on his way!
But much to Bill’s horror after being a little too cavalier at lunch later that day, the sutured wound began profusely bleeding and wouldn’t stop. After hurriedly consulting Dr Google, making a call to the Endodontist’s office to learn that he was leaving for the holiday weekend in an hour, and calculating that drive time to the alternate office where he was located was 30 minutes, Bill got the bleeding stopped on his own.
Calming down, applying pressure, and icing did the job, but it was close. The residual fretting about having dislodged the sutures had receded by the next morning and then it was a matter of mindful eating and not smiling to avoid pulling on the sutures for a week. Bill resorted to cooking his fresh pears and carrots for breakfast, skipping all other fresh produce, and using our smallest spoon for eating.
A week later, Bill had the sutures removed. His gum had healed satisfactorily but not neatly. It would be another 6 weeks before his body tidied up the ragged edges left behind. No worries, nothing to do for it, but another little thing to monitor before closure could be declared, literally and figuratively.
The next day, Bill’s future became wildly more complicated when the Ophthomologist informed Bill that it wasn’t easily removed cataracts distorting his vision but a more obscure ‘membrane over the macula’ condition that might need to be removed. Fortunately, it wasn’t even close to being macular degeneration, but involved the macula. There would be an appointment with a sub-specialist in early January and likely a lot more ambiguity about when to treat and whether to treat. Darn, covid had worn-down our reserves for dealing with uncertainty and this next journey looked to involve harder decisions than we had anticipated.
My 2nd attempt at bonding with an excellent massage therapist collapsed while Bill was receiving his disappointing ophthalmologic news: the massage therapist texted a few hours before my appointment saying there was a glitch, leading to a 2-week delay. She couldn’t yet set another appointment for me. Sigh, my dreams of weekly massages for our 3 months while in the desert were dwindling to half: a dozen down to a possible six.
Marilyn makes everyone smile, except the Art Museum folks behind her.
We aren’t entirely sure why medical care moves more quickly in the desert but perhaps because it is a highly desirable place to live that it is overstocked with physicians and dentists. Or perhaps it’s the proximity to LA. Regardless, for big ticket medical and dental procedures, we can usually get good care quickly. Ironically, it’s the ‘wants’ with fewer zeros behind them that are hard to come by. We and others groan that in this 40-mile-long Coachella Valley, in which the population seasonally fluctuates between 200,000 and 800,000, there is no proper sporting goods store, like REI, from which to buy quality outdoor; RV repair appointments can take months to get; and an excellent sports massage is nearly impossible to find. It’s an area with an odd mix of excess and shortages.
Happy Excitement
The good news in Coachella Valley, even with its peculiar markets, is that its proximity to LA (100 miles) means that it is well served by all the delivery services so we can online order at will. In the few days before Bill had his back-to-back appointments with the Endodontist and the ophthalmologist, he ordered a pair of Bose hearing aids.
We were still excitedly enjoying and settling-in with our Apple AirPods Pro ear buds for hearing assist but, in the name of science, had decided to treat ourselves to a pair of the much more expensive, FDA-cleared, Bose hearing aids. Bose had sought and received FDA clearance (not approval) of their devices in May 2021 before the over-the-counter market was to be opened to all in late 2022. They’d withdrawn their first product from the shelves after a brief stint and we gambled on the revised one being better. At $850 a pair, they were indeed a gamble, but the 90-day return policy won us over.
After our delight with what Apple could do for our hearing with their hearing assist being an add-on to an existing product, we decided to speed-up our journey on the steep hearing aid learning curve by trial and error. The Bose had great reviews for the price when compared with legacy hearing aid company products and we decided to become lay experts on the products before the over-the-counter market exploded in a year. For us, hearing better was worth spending serious money on to get it right.
Our observation of friends and family with hearing aids was that they were initially pleased, but then they felt that that their hearing aids weren’t quite right. They’d spent $1500 to $3000 or more but felt boxed-in with their decision, with nothing to compare the performance of the aids to other than their failing natural hearing. I suspect that the audiologists were telling them that they couldn’t have better and that they had no way to judge that opinion except by doing what we were doing, which is to pay the money and try multiple products. No one that we knew had been willing to take that expensive next step. Starting at the lower price point and out from under the influence of the audiologists made us feel empowered. Perhaps it would take ‘wasting’ some money along the way to get the best product for ourselves but the cost-benefit ratio in doing so was literally sounding worthwhile.
Two different strategies for improving our hearing: Apple & Bose devices.
Unexpectedly, the Bose hearing aids were faster and more potent than his morning coffee for waking up Bill’s foggy brain. Difficulty fully shedding the haze of sleeping had been an onerous and life-long challenge for him and suddenly it was gone. It seemed that the instant infusion of more high frequency sound immediately brightened his brain like the effect of an intense light.
The Bose had a 90-day return policy, which we considered a no-risk deal. We anticipated that we’d still enjoy the Pods on the trail to enhance conversations while also being able to listen to books and take phone calls (increasingly from dentist and doctor’s offices) and use the Bose aids the rest of the time. And, if in a year when the FDA was expected to blow open the over-the-counter hearing aid market there was something better, we’d try those too. Telling us the importance of maintaining your brain’s capacity to hear well was singing to the choir.
Whoosh!
December, and a third of our time in Palm Springs, had whizzed by in a blur:
…Bill had 3 vision appointments with only 1 anticipated and more to come in January.
…Bill had 4 dental appointments but only 1 anticipated with more to come in a year.
…Barb had 0 massage appointments though 2 had been scheduled and 5 had been anticipated.
…We had 2 urgent trail situations with 0 anticipated.
The series of atmospheric rivers helped decorate San Gorgonio for the holidays.
We, like many, unceremoniously greeted the New Year with a bit of apprehension. A year ago, we were both more scared and more hopeful because of the vaccine was hitting the scene and Trump leaving it. This year, we weren’t sure we wanted to open the door to a new year but of course, it would barge in with or without a welcome.
Initially, we’d ignore our vision for 2022 and focus only on the potentially difficult appointments in the first week of the month, enjoy the absence of rain, and revel in hearing better. Though we hardly dared to think about it, we hoped covid would recede so we could all resume risk-free travel in 2022.