Still alive.

It has started to hit me, the second week after joint replacement surgery, just how long of a haul this is going to be.  I'm still walking with a walker, can't reposition my leg by myself and it's almost been 2 weeks!  Physical therapy is, as predicted, kicking my butt.  It's awful.  We find out what motions are very, very, very difficult and then we do 10 of those, then 10 more.  I'm lying there on the PT table, sweating, panting, out of breath, trying to move my leg 1 inch in the required direction and then again, and again and again.   It's pretty awful.   I have it 3 times this week, plus a doctor's appointment with the surgeon to see how I'm doing.  Fun times.

I've watched pretty much every episode of Big Bang Theory and also about every episode of Friends (I keep falling asleep and miss some) and now I'm watching Frasier. I've also been playing a lot of Words with Friends, because they have offered a free trial of their lightning round.  That has saved me.  It helps when I'm dealing with a lot of pain, to zone out and focus on the game. 

When I finish my second week, on Wednesday, I'm going to start setting more goals.  Right now I have PT goals and diet goals (I'm sticking to it!) but starting Wednesday I'm going to have daily crochet goals and book writing goals and cooking and doing dishes goals, trying to ease my life back into normal and also trying to get some things done while I'm off that I might not ever get done otherwise.   

Someone asked my son what he's been doing lately and he said "mom's surgery", for a while that's all we all did, take care of me (them) and try not to whine too much (me).  For days and days, that's all any of us did.  Now we're branching out.   I'm setting my goals and the kids are going out and seeing their friends again now too, starting this past Saturday.  I'm not sure what my husband is doing, other than working and taking care of me, but hopefully things will ease up for him soon as I try to start doing more things on my own. 

It is a long, long haul. 

 

It's over.

I'm recuperating and being extremely spoiled by my fantastic family. 

Well, crap.

I'm was in the middle of my week working for my co-worker.   It wasn't as stressful as it has been in the past because I am learning how to do things and I had more help than usual.   Then yesterday, I worked the desk all day alone and I did pretty well.  I came home in a good mood, feeling pretty happy about things in general, and then, about 9:30 last night, I was doing a very easy mild yoga routine and my knee went out of the joint again.  It was very, very, very bad.  I haven't had pain like that before with this knee, even the incident in January that finally made me decide to have surgery wasn't this bad.  I have to use the walker that I bought for surgery when I get up and first start walking.  After I'm up a minute, I can walk a little bit without the walker.  It also hurts all the time now, even when I'm sitting with it propped up and iced.   I only slept about an hour and a half last night due to pain and anxiety of having to call my boss this morning.  I don't even know what they did to replace me and I'm sure nobody is having a good day.  :-(   I hate that.   I really hate letting my co-workers down when they were depending on me.  There's no way, though, that I could have done the walk into the building with or without my walker and I'm pretty sure I couldn't work on an hour and a half of sleep, not to mention negotiating the shower, the stairs down out of my house, the uneven flooring in the parking garage. 

Sigh.

 

Getting closer.

Honestly, I'm glad this is the week I have to work for my co-worker and next week is the week I have to have surgery because now I am just in get-it-over-with mode.  I can't wait until all of this is over, over, over.   Today is my last day to volunteer and I guess I will go and do it.  The temptation is not to, just to go ahead and start my leave, I don't know why.   I guess because the next week is going to be so, so busy and exhausting, but I really don't think resting today would help.

I've got most of the things to do checked off my list.  I bought my walker yesterday.  That felt like a weird thing to do.    I still need to buy a bath seat.   I was hoping that my family would get my shower re-done so that it isn't so hard to step up into, but they didn't, so that's going to be a huge struggle for me after the surgery.   Not looking forward to that, but I will persevere because I can't go a day without a shower.

In other news, I got some lab results back from my rheumatologist.  Since I've been on this MRT LEAP protocol diet to help with inflammation, my inflammation marker, C reactive protein, went down from 7.0 to 4.8!  I'm very excited.   That's solid evidence that the diet and the fasting are working and hopefully will help me stick to it.  It's hard and kind of alienating at work when I can't eat anything and they have a lot of food-centered parties.  Yesterday was someone's birthday so they had lasagne, fettucini and cake and salad.  Guess who ate salad with her own dressing that she brought from home?   Eventually, the nutritionist says I will be able to add foods back in, just to eat them occasionally and not to make them everyday food choices.  I can live with that.  Next, we are going to have my daughter tested to see if this will help with her migraines.   I sincerely hope it does.

Speaking of my daughter, she's in a gallery exhibition with the other students in her class and has her own section of the wall.   Since I won't be able to go to the reception, which is post-surgery, I went on my own on Thursday to take pictures. :-)

We also did some watercolor work at home.  This is hers.

And this one is mine.  

Youngest son went to talk to his advisor at school the other day and he does not have to do the internship and IS on track to graduate in May.  Exciting!

Oldest son is trying to get a full time job in IT and we have our fingers crossed for him and daughter-in-law WAS accepted into graduate school!

Lots of good things happening.  I need to focus on those and not stress!

Still in limbo.

I'm still in limbo, waiting for surgery.  It's something like 17 days away right now.   I've got to go for my preop testing tomorrow and I'll have to miss the day of work for that.   I'm still going to have to cover for my co-worker next week, all week, but they have sent someone down to train as the back-up, back-up for that job so she will be there to help me.  We can work on it together and hopefully when I'm gone she'll be able to do the job and when I come back, I'll be able to do the job better.  I gave her my notes and hopefully, she'll give me her notes and we can approximate what the main worker does all the time in that position.  The actual daily duties are very small and take maybe one hour a day and then the rest of the 8 hours is dealing with whatever situation comes your way, by phone or by people actually walking in and handing you things.  It's very stressful.  I'm almost dreading working those days more than I'm dreading the surgery.  Almost.

But anyway, I'm trying to get everything done so that if the surgery really knocks me out of commission for a month, I'll have some things done.  I got the main part of my Easter shopping done today.  I've got about a billion phone calls to make and a bunch of tiny details to attend to.  I hope to get those done mostly this week, then next week I'll work 40 hours for my co-worker to go to spring break and the following week is the surgery.

Yikes.

Here's some art my daughter has been doing, just to share a good thing.  :-)

It's getting real.

I'm going to have to have major surgery in a few weeks.  After my last surgery on my parotid gland, I said I was never going to have another surgery, but here I go again.  I don't want to, but I have to do something.  My knee is so very, very, very bad.  Yesterday I went to the rheumatologist and reported that I was feeling pretty good, very little pain, then went to the grocery and my knee decided to see how bad it could be.  I barely got out of the grocery store still upright and could barely walk for the rest of the day.  Thankfully, my knee joint slid back into place or whatever it does while I was sleeping last night and I was able to work today. 

We've had a good week this week.  I enjoyed work both of the days that I worked (doing my own job, not my co-workers!) and my daughter and I went on an adventure on Wednesday to get gluten free treats for her and to a goat dairy to get some goat's milk and cheese for me.  It was fun.  She started her new very part time job this week, which I'm very happy about.  It's a good opportunity for her and will help her have something to put on her resume.  She's acting as an assistant to her art teacher, helping the kids find things and directing them to the supplies they need and showing them how to do some of the techniques.  It's right up her alley, getting to use some of her art skills.

Two more good weeks, then a bad week working for my co-worker when she goes on a vacation for spring break and then the surgery.

I'll be glad when that is all behind me.

I am still having fun with my letter board.

Countertops again.

Countertops done!

Here's the link from when we painted them brown 10 years ago.  (My daughter was 12!).  It looked good at the beginning, but 10 years of constant wear and tear and they looked like this.

Then they looked like this, smooth matte black.  We kind of actually liked it. 

The solid matte black was actually a big improvement.  But, now, after 5 hours of sponge painting, they looked like this, ready for the top clear coat. 

And now with the top coat. 

Now all that's left is the caulk.    It looks fantastic.  The top coat has glitter in it, so it's sparkly.  We love it.  I keep running my hand over it, every time I pass by.  :-)   I'll let you all know if we have problems with it chipping, etc.  We may put another top coat on in the future, to ensure that it keeps looking like this. 

Life Goes On, It's March!

I'm still working at the hospital,  (Some day I may look back at this and think "Oh yeah, I was still working at the hospital then!")  but I don't know if I will forever.  I like it okay.  I really don't like having to do my co-worker's job when she is out, but I think I'm getting a little bit better at it.  There's a good team of people there and they answer questions and pitch in if I don't know how to do something and together we muddle through.   I feel like I'm saying "thank you" all day long when I work for her but it's necessary, because everyone is so helpful and I still have to ask a lot of questions.  Hopefully, it will get better.  I think this is maybe my 8th day of that job?  I've been in my position for a year and almost a half, but her job, it's really just been a few times since last August.  I hope I don't bug them all too much.  That's my main worry at this point. 

We're still working very slowly on remodeling the house.  I will share pictures of the countertops if we get them done this week.  That's the plan.  So far, we've done kitchen flooring, painted the front door, painted one of the walls that has been beat up by having boys in the house, painted the kitchen and bathroom, painted the baseboards, put a deck box on the porch to contain all of my husband's tools (making the porch look 1000% better), got new living room furniture and rug and entertainment center and pillows and finished our gallery wall.  Still to do is a huge list, including flooring in 4 more rooms  - - - it just never ends when you're a homeowner, it seems.  Renting looks more appealing sometimes but my son and daughter-in-law are renting and it seems that they have to call the landlord a lot about things, so I don't know.  I guess that's just life. 

  I'm looking at knee surgery in just a few weeks now.  I'm going to be doing some prep for that, seeing other doctors and getting lab work and stuff done.  I'm going to make a list of things I want to accomplish while I'm off work, so the time is not wasted.  I want to finish my afghan, do some reading of real books and not just social media, possibly write a book and stay on my diet and lose some more weight.  I hope this list does not all go to pot when I get home from the hospital.  :-P 

Today, I'm doing one of the doctor's appointments and I want to go to Whole Foods and get some weird flours so maybe I can do some better baking.  This week I made weird oat flour blueberry muffins that kind of tasted like pretzels.  I don't really want to repeat that!  They were really, really bad.   So far on my diet, I can have buckwheat, millet, amaranth and oat flours, and I think they need to be mixed together to come up with some kind of flour blend, so that it doesn't taste too much like any of these.   So far, I've tried the buckwheat and oat flours and I don't really care for the flavor of either.  I hope the other 2 are more bland.  Oh, also, I can have soybeans, coconut and almonds on my list, so there are 3 more flours I can try.  I can't afford to buy all of them though, these things are pricey.  I'll see what I can find.

This is just a kind of a "stream of consciousness" post, isn't it?  Sorry, that's just how my crazy brain works (or doesn't). 

Have a great day!!