Relevancy22: Contemporary Process Christianity: Post-Evangelic Topics and Theology: Rel22 and Personal Updates + the Continuation of Our Existentialism Series

Rel22 Website Update

by R.E. Slater

A month ago I began a series of articles on Process-based (Processual) Christian existentialism using Whitehead's process philosophy as versus psychological existentialism built upon non-process-based philosophies. Each will give meaning to us in their own way... although as a Christian/religious person my own meaning will derive from a theological framework as versus the nonreligious existentialist who may be agnostic to religion or completely atheistic to it.

Further below you will find the series I was developing before becoming slowed down by this year's foot-and-ankle surgeries. Thankfully, though I slowed down a little bit, I have been fortunate enough to work at document production between energy slumps and pain medications.

Lately, I've been catching up the Relevancy22 website covering this past summer's current events which I had missed. I've also have provided a shorten process series re Segall, Davis, Whitehead, and Cobb, among others.

However, this isn't necessarily bad as playing catch-up to missed series allows us to take these series in all-at-once. Whether in my undergrad or graduate studies, I tended to read and study my classroom projects in "batches" as versus chapter-by-chapter. By doing so I could see and understand the bigger picture rather than absorbing the minutiae of data segmented between subject material.

With the advent of livestream cable I can now do the same with Cable TV series and Internet streams... I can watch and think through series all-at-once rather than piecemeal a week at a time. Perhaps it's age but I think it makes things easier to remember and understand.

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My Health Update

by R.E. Slater

Pictures of Nursing (3X / wk) and festering foot infections

which have required several surgeries this past summer and fall...

What Open Wounds Look Like Before

and After Using a Wound Pump

April through August 2023

Resting Up After Prosthetic Removal

& Cleanout Surgery

September 2023

My latest surgeries have gone well. What started out as "maintenance surgeries" later become "removal and fusion surgeries". Through the summer my surgical infections from January 2016 never left and never got better. At first they did... but it took three long years. But they never went away. So after eight years of up-and-down health limitations I finally gave in to reality in September of this year.

Looking at my foot I was nursing three open wounds with several more rising to the surface... my management of wounds had come to an end. I called the doc, saw him a day later, and we planned a surgery for the first Monday of the next week. The infections were spreading and he-and-I both wanted the prosthetic gear out of my body post-haste.

And so, the motility device is gone as I use this fall and coming winter seasons to place life "on hold" to heal up and get better. My last recourse was an amputation but at least up to this point I've not had to consider this (excepting, of course, the discovery of Boston's Mass General where a MIT specialist removes limbs in such a way as to decrease phantom pain nearly to zero).

At present, the infected prosthetic is out of my body and it is responding very well to the drugs and healing. My ongoing fight with health issues may become a thing of the past but my real I had ever been to keep the motility device in my foot. This is not to be as there is a 35% risk of becoming re-infected with a replacement device.

So after this summer's cleanout surgeries in April (#1) and August (#2) along with a long, long, long losing battle with the several infections still ravaging my body, I finally agreed with Infectious Disease and my Orthopaedist to a series of "rebuilds" starting with (#3) the full removal of the foot and ankle prosthetic which includes a surgical cleanout and the placement of an antiseptic cement ball into the empty space.

What came out - Internal Motility Prosthetic

September 2023

My Condition Presently between Surgeries

Nov 2023

the aftermath of a bloody surgical wound being cleaned up in the med office

I bought two inexpensive knee walkers to get around the house

the splint behind the knee required a rag stuffed
behind it to relieve the chaffing going on

Structural Gear to be Implanted:

a Titanium ball socket with foot fusion

January 2024

refer to:

Powder metallurgy with space holder for porous titanium implants: A review

Then (#4) a fourth surgery with another reopening of the ankle area this past November with the main ankle-bone's partial removal + another cleanout + placement of yet another antiseptic cement ball into the open space.

And finally, sometime this coming January of 2024, a (#5) fifth and final surgery removing (and reuse of sic, cannibalizing of) the remaining anklebone + cleanout + the placement of a custom-built titanium structural device into the fully emptied area + the fusion of the ankle to the foot. This would complete all surgeries unless infections arise again.

Overall, the series of procedures which I've been dreading has gone better than I had thought. Considering all the many years of competitive sports I played it could've been a lot worse. This problem here was related to a fall I had down a mountain at 14 years of age where I had to stick my foot into a crevice lest I fall off the cliff which was fast coming up.

Since my father didn't "believe in" modern medicine at the time I've played sports all my life on a partially injured foot which lately was turning upwards. I had had an early total knee surgery many years earlier with no problem so the foot surgery in 2016 I wasn't concerned about. However, infection rates run 4-6% in modern hospitals and I was one of the unlucky patients to experience it.

All-in-all this medical health year has gone well... it has required a lot of patience and pain management. Further, the antibiotic drugs left me fatigued with stomach v. nausea after-affects. I also had to undergo several iron-therapy infusions to offset the fatigue I was experiencing as my iron levels had dropped quite low.

But thankfully, I've never gotten any of the Covid variants my friends and family were getting even though I've had times where I felt like I may have contacted the mutating virus. In the area I live there are a lot of Trumpian republicans who adamantly refuse to wear a mask to protect me and others... and who also refuse to take their Covid shots... thus complicating our region's health factors along with my own lower resistances to Covid.

And yet, both my spouse and I have not been infected and have diligently kept up our vaccine shots so that this past July I got my sixth "bivalent shot" (re Covid-19's 4.0 and 5.0 variants), along with a pneumonia shot for older people and a season flu shot. Later, this coming January-February of next year I will receive a seventh vaccine shot (for BA2.75 + EBB 1.50 mutations). As I tell my church friends, I "glow in the dark" in the evening! :)

All for now,

Have a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

and remember our friends and strangers in Palestine, Gaza, Israel,

the Ukraine, Russian, and all the Migrating families from

South and Central America needing God's grace and help.

by R.E. Slater

December 18, 2023