Category Archives: General

What’s left of Oregon

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As I drove home from the pharmacy Thursday afternoon I noticed for the first time that I could look out the windshield and see Oregon. Or at least smoke from things that had burned in Oregon.

The smoke plume from the Oregon wildfires has reached all the way to the east coast, including our little town of Rome. This is a normal view from our front porch.

This is the view Thursday afternoon.

The ridge in the distance in the first image is barely visible in the smokey image.

It’s not as noticeable in the photo as it is in real life. The smoke is thick enough that there is a distinct grayish haze in the narrow valleys on the mountain.

The US government has a web site that shows the smoke plume. The location of air quality measurement sites makes the image a little hard to see, but this is a segment of the Southeast.

The blue dot in the lower left corner is our location on the mountain outside Rome. We are just outside the heaviest part of the plume. The network news said there might be a hint of the odor of smoke, but I couldn’t detect anything.

I mentioned that I was on my way home from the pharmacy. I had been to the pharmacy to pick up some prescriptions for Leah, who is finally home after her surgery. We reported as ordered to the hospital at 7 am Monday. She didn’t make it up to her room until about 5:30 that afternoon, mainly because of lack of rooms. The surgery itself lasted a couple of hours.

When the surgeon talked to us before the surgery, he said that an MRI taken the week before showed small fractures in her hip near the lumbar region. He said the fractures were the result of osteopenia, the early stages of bone density loss that can lead to osteoporosis. I suspect that the fractures were caused by her two falls when she landed hard on her rear end. I think they added to the pain she has felt for some time.

She spent the next three nights in her hospital bed, and I did something somewhat similar to sleeping in the recliner beside that bed. On the whole, she was probably more uncomfortable than me. She was in a lot of pain from the surgery, but I think at least some of the nerve pain in her legs has been lessened. She has been on pain relievers for the nerve pain so long that she has developed a tolerance for those pain medications. That makes it that much harder to get relief.

She seemed better Thursday, and said she actually felt better. But she was still hurting enough that she went to bed early Thursday night. I am hoping the pain continues to lessen and she starts feeling better. Life has been hard for her the last few months.

The stray, Mollie in bed, and me in the front

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The stray cat, which, in looking back at some texts, I realize has been around since February, is still visiting our front porch. I managed to shoot him with my phone on Monday.

He, or she, as the case may be, was watching for a chance to eat. Chloe, on the left, didn’t know the stray was there. Dusty was sound asleep.

Here’s an enlarged image.

Cute little kitty, right? But mean little kitty, too. It jumped on Mollie Tuesday afternoon. I saved Mollie by shouting at the cat, which does not stay around if a human appears. Mollie did not seem grateful, or at least any more grateful than any other cat has ever been.

One of our neighbors said the cat has been eating her cats’ food. It certainly looks well fed. Leah had been worried that someone dumped the cat because it was pregnant. We haven’t been able to get a close enough look to tell its sex, but it has been around long enough that if it had been pregnant, it would have already had its litter. So far the stray has not brought a tiny kitten around for us to admire, and we sincerely hope that does not happen.

Speaking of Mollie, which I was doing earlier, she has found a new place to sleep.

This is typical cat behavior; if a cat sees a horizontal surface, it will sleep on it. It’s better if it’s a soft surface, but that’s not necessary.

Mollie has been pulling the curtain around herself so she can pretend that no one knows where she is. Sam pays Mollie no attention.

This is the dogs’ bed. Sam sleeps there, but Zoe does not. Zoe sleeps at the foot of our bed, which does not please Leah.

On the human side of the household, I had my fourth session of physical therapy on Tuesday. I think I’m making reasonable progress with my knee and my shoulder. The real news, though, is that I rode home from PT in the front seat of our car.

For the last five or six weeks I have had to sit sideways in the back seat with my right leg extended across the seat. I had to approach the door backwards, then slide across the seat because I couldn’t bend my right knee far enough to get into the the front. At first I had to let Leah pick up my leg so I could slide into the car. I had reached the point that I could lift my leg all by myself, and pull myself across the seat using the grab handle on the opposite side of the car. I was feeling pretty good about my new skill at entering a car, but I decided to try the front seat on Tuesday. I managed to get my right leg bent far enough to get into the car, and there was plenty of room to stretch my legs out almost fully. I’ll never ride in the back seat again.

The surgeon had let me have 30 degrees of motion on my knee brace last week. That and some new but limited flexibility made the difference in getting into the front seat. I am scheduled to see the surgeon again Wednesday of next week, when he has promised to give me 70 degrees of motion. I can’t actually bend my knee that much right now, but maybe with enough PT I will be able to by then. And that will make getting into the car even easier.

And soon after that, I hope, I will be able to drive again.

Hobbling along

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It has been a week since my knee surgery, and almost two weeks since my rotator cuff surgery. I guess I can say that I am doing as well as could be expected, given the circumstances.

Leah took me to a post-op followup Wednesday. They took out the stitches in my shoulder and took off the bandages and leg braces to get a look at my knee. This was the first time I had seen it. The incision is about six inches long, from my lower thigh, all the way across the knee. There are 28 staples holding it closed.

The staples are supposed to come out next Wednesday. The doctor is also going to set up some physical therapy for my knee at that time. In the meantime, he said I can use my half-walker and put some weight on the knee, as long as the brace is locked at full extension.

I have not had significant pain from my shoulder or my knee. I was taking hydrocodone for my shoulder, and was supposed to continue that for my knee. I was taking two pills at bedtime for a couple of days, but I stopped that Monday night. Not only am I not having enough pain to need the medication, there are also some fairly unpleasant side effects from an opioid like hydrocodone. I’ll be glad when that stuff is out of my system completely.

All told, I guess I can’t complain too much about my condition right now, especially since Leah is having to do all the work, plus deal with her own pain issues. Her laminectomy in December didn’t resolve her nerve pain issues, and the pain medication is not doing a very good job, either. That is very much a work in progress.

once more unto the breach

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About six days ago from when this posts, I was getting close to the operating room, where a nice, young surgeon was planning to repair my torn rotator cuff. Now, a few hours from when this posts, I will once more be in the operating room, where the same young surgeon will repair my knee.

I had been adapting fairly well to having only one working arm, especially with two working legs. I had taken Zoe, our big, lumbering dog, out for a quick constitutional, and was starting up the three steps leading from our garage into our kitchen. And then something happened. I don’t really know how, but I was falling and twisting on the first or second step, completely unable to stop myself. I ended up wedged facing out between the steps and a bookcase we have against the garage wall. My right knee had a dent about the size of a pingpong ball and the shape of the edge of a stair tread. My shoulder was unharmed. I assume I somehow managed to twist around to protect it, but no one but the dog knows, and she isn’t talking.

I called out, and Leah rushed to see what had happened. I was not able to get myself out of the wedged position I was in. I couldn’t bring my good, left arm to bear, and my right arm was, of course, useless. I simply didn’t have the strength to get myself up. Leah brought a chair out, and I was able to scoot around to it and eventually climb up. I found that I could just stand on my right leg if I locked my knee, but otherwise I couldn’t support my weight with that leg.

To make a long story short, I tore the tendons that connect the quadriceps muscles to the knee cap. I can’t raise my leg because the muscles are no longer connected to their attachment point. I have been hobbling around with a cane and a leg brace to keep my knee from buckling.

We went to the surgeon’s office Wednesday, and he said we could repair it as early as Thursday. So I went for that. Better to get it over with. Leah was not happy, since that gave us essentially no time to prepare.

The doctor said I could stay in the hospital overnight or come home the day of the surgery. I chose to come home, but that might have been a mistake. I expect more pain with this surgery than with my shoulder repair. The shoulder repair was arthroscopic. The knee will not be.

The doctor wants me in a wheelchair for a couple of weeks, and then maybe a leg brace.

We got a wheelchair, but that’s probably the least of our worries. In addition to two dogs that will need walking, we also have to figure out how to get me from the hospital into our house. As it is now, I can back up to the rear door of our car and scoot myself across the seat, an inch at a time, until I can get my right leg into the car. Then, I have to reverse the process to get out. It turns out that leather seats and pants are not mutually slidey. And the little hump on the bench seat between the two outer seats is really big when you’re trying to slide over it with only one good leg. I don’t know how this will work when I get our of surgery.

The good part of this is that relatives have come out of the woodwork to offer to help. We have a cousin who lives in Texas Valley who volunteered to come over and help me out of the car and into the house. Another cousin and her husband, and my aunt have also volunteered to do anything they can. I posted on Facebook, looking for a dog walker, and the wife of our neighbor who graded our current lot volunteered to help any way she could. So that was encouraging. Anything will help at this point.

Spring creeps up

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Our little mountain is not too high, maybe 500 or 600 feet above the surrounding lowlands, but it’s high enough that spring reaches the top just a little later than the bottom. Here is the recently scalped area at the bottom of the mountain, where all the pines were removed. The hardwoods in the undisturbed area are pretty green now.

Up top, the hardwoods are just starting to show new leaves.

The very few dogwoods left on the mountain have also opened their blooms more than at the top, but they are so ragged and sparse these day that I don’t have good photos of them.

Although spring is nice, we are having some health issues these days. Leah had surgery, a laminectomy, on December 21, to try to resolve some nerve pain. It was not successful. Now her surgeon says that she needs a spinal fusion because the condition of her spine poses a risk of weakness and numbness in her leg, which poses a risk of falling. Understandably, Leah is not thrilled to have surgery again so soon, especially since spinal fusion is a more serious surgery than a laminectomy.

I also need surgery to repair my torn rotator cuff, and my surgery is already scheduled for April 16. I don’t look forward to the surgery or the recovery, but I do look forward to having two working arms again. In the meantime, I will need Leah’s help for things like driving me to physical therapy and possibly putting on my socks. So her surgery will have to wait until my arm to closer to normal. Then, once I’m better, she will need help during her recovery, which is likely to be more painful and longer than mine.

But wait, there’s more!

A little over a month ago our newer dog Zoe started vomiting in the mornings. Now, dogs do sometimes barf for various reasons, so one time in the morning is an inconvenience, not too much to worry about. Three days in a row is worth worrying about. So, off to the vet, for a diagnosis of pancreatitis. That’s not good. In fact, it can be life-threatening. There was no obvious cause for the condition, and not a really well-defined treatment. She got a course of antibiotics, and the vet wanted her to have a special diet, part of which no longer includes any table scraps He also put her on omeprazole every day. Omeprazole is a generic Prilosec, the same antacid Leah takes.

So, Zoe was getting a little dab of peanut butter with a hidden capsule every evening, and she was no longer throwing up.

And then she ran out of omeprazole. The next morning, she threw up again. And then the next morning she threw up again. And then the next morning she threw up again. And then that afternoon, she went back to the vet, who put her back on omeprazole. And the next morning she did not throw up. It’s seems pretty clear to me that Zoe will be on an antacid for a while.

So far, that’s about all we’re facing right now, although I may have an issue with a painful spot on my leg, which hasn’t been diagnosed to my satisfaction. Our health problems are going to have to start taking a number.