Category Archives: Personal

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

Posted on by

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.

Still hobbling in there

Posted on by

Although it seems like I have been wearing a sling and a leg brace for months, my knee surgery was only a little less than three weeks ago. I had a post-op appointment with the surgeon last Wednesday. He said I would probably be able to ditch the brace in four weeks. It cannot come too soon.

I start physical therapy this coming Wednesday for my shoulder and my knee. The doctor had recommended that I try to bend my knee a little when I’m lying down without the leg brace. I can bend my knee maybe 15 degrees — not very much — before my thigh gets so tight it becomes a little painful. I wonder what the therapy will be like.

The good news is that they pulled the staples from the knee incision, and I can now take a shower without taping a plastic bag over my knee. I can actually walk around the house and feel stable and relatively safe, but only while wearing the brace. I have even taken the dogs out for a very short constitutional. Our driveway is so steep that I can take only little baby steps on the way down. I took Zoe all the way down, but when it came to Sam, I detoured into the front yard instead. So, I got a good look at the green disaster that is our yard. It needs mowing. A lot.

Leah has been taking the dogs out, of course, but she has been having her own problems. So, since I seem to be fairly steady on my feet, even with a peg leg, I have volunteered to take them out in the last few days. They go out one at a time, because they are too hard to control when they’re out there together. I’m not sure what normal is for my surgeries, but I have had essentially no pain over the last couple of weeks. If I’m careful, I think it’s safe. Of maybe safe-ish.

The bad news is that Leah fell again Sunday night. I was in the living room and heard a bang from the kitchen. I found her lying against one of the cabinets. She was hurting, but not injured. I’m not sure why she fell, and neither is she. All we know now is that she is a falling risk, and needs to be a lot more careful than she is. This was the second time she has fallen in the kitchen. She wasn’t injured either time, but we can’t count on that outcome if she falls again.

We saw Leah’s surgeon last week. His conclusion was that she needs spinal fusion surgery, but it was obvious to him that I’m in no condition to take care of her. It has only been within the last few days that I could even slide myself into the back seat of our car without having Leah hold my bad leg up. I can finally get into the car without help, but I can’t straighten my leg, so there is no way I can drive. My shoulder is probably a bigger problem than my leg. When she fell, I couldn’t help her get up, because that really takes two good legs and two good arms. Or at least one good leg and two good arms.

If I can get out of my leg brace in a month, and if I can get my knee to bend far enough to get into the front seat of the car, I might be able to drive. At that point, it might be almost possible that we can start thinking about getting surgery for Leah.

This has driven home to me, at least, the problem of living so far from friends and family. Neither of us has friends or family within less than a full day’s drive we can call on in an emergency. If Leah had been injured and couldn’t get up, I would have had to call for an ambulance. And I wouldn’t even be able to meet her at the hospital. We have a few neighbors that I might could call on, but it’s iffy.

In the meantime, we are two vulnerable people who are going to have to be very careful doing all the things that most people don’t think twice about.

Hobbling along

Posted on by

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

Posted on by

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.

Highlights of my day

Posted on by

i’m going to skip capitalization and might leave more misspellings than usual in this post. i will explain .

friday was the day of my rotator cuff surgery. i walked the dogs just before dawn, and we were waiting at outpatient registration by 8 am. after they took me back for prep, they injected about a dozen different medications. prednisone for nausea. a couple of pain meds. antibiotics. some other stuff.

they gave me this stylish cap because i was getting the special on hair highlighting, or so leah told me. i recently got a haircut [yay second vaccination!], so there wasn’t much hair to work on.

despite my expression, this was before all the injections.

after they injected the sedative and stuck a mask for oxygen and anesthesia, and i was out, they stuck a syringe into my neck and gave me a block that paralyzed and numbed my right side from the rightmost part of my diaphragm to the tips of my fingers.

shortly after that, by my own perception, i woke up dazed and confused. i couldn’t understand why they had me carrying around a bag filled with someone else’s arm, but it turned out that they had placed my right arm in a sling.

after freely emptying my bladder, a requirement for release, and a few other adjustments, leah drove me home. there i was able to explore the effects of the block.

my arm felt cold and dead, until i touched my hand and realized it was still alive, at least in some cruel parody of life. at this point as i write this, about 12 hours after the block, i can make weak grASPING [dang. hit the caps lock] motions with my fingers, but have absolutely no ability to extend my fingers in the opposite direction. see below.

you might hear zoe whining in the background. she likes peanut butter and was afraid i wouldn’t be able to open the jar. leah came to the rescue.

as to my rotator cuff, i have no doubt that if and when my power of movement returns, and my shoulder heals, i will have a fully functioning shoulder. the same surgeon who did my left shoulder did this one, and my left rotator cuff has been operating at or near 100 percent for more than a decade. he’s a good surgeon, and the ladies agree that he is “cute” as well. the ladies keep asking whether i agree. he’s certainly passable in a surgical mask and cap.

he told my wife that operating on my shoulder was much easier than some he works on [probably including the strapping young man who waited in line after us] because i have no fAT [what, again?] on my shoulder. so, collecting all my body fat around my waist finally paid off.

aside from an arm that feels literally dead, or in its death throes, my only after effects have been slight nausea, lack of appetite and a terrible taste in my mouth, that, i assume, comes from all the chemicals my body is trying to eliminate. the block will wear off in a matter of hours, maybe by the time anyone happens to read this post, and i expect to have some level of pain. i have been supplied with drugs for that eventuality

in the meantime, i expect to have my first night’s sleep in weeks that isn’t interrupted by shoulder aches and pains.