This week.

I guess its week 7 since the surgery.  I'm not getting around all that well, still have quite a bit of pain, but I'm going back to work (probably) in 2 weeks.  I'm also interviewing for a job that I impulsively applied for next week! Indeed.com sent me an email alert about this job even though I tried to unsub from their email alerts when I got my current job.  The job just looked so good in the ad, I applied for it on the spot and they called 1/2 an hour to an hour later.  I had a phone interview and next week, I'm going to have an actual interview.  It may be a good thing, I don't know.  That's what I need to find out at the interview.  It's certainly a shorter commute, 20 minutes, instead of an hour, and probably not as much walking to my workstation.  We'll see.  At home this week, we're planning to have a party tomorrow for my son's college graduation.  We fixed our deck which had rotted and now we have a nice new deck and as of yesterday, a nice new picnic table on it.  In the picture below, Duncan has already broken it in for us by sleeping on it, right in the middle.  I had my breakfast out there this morning, very nice.  I enjoyed it.  It's nice to have another place outside to sit, a different view from the front porch.  The pictures of the two tortoises/turtles (whichever they are) are because during construction, these 2 were found living under the old deck.  I don't know if they've moved back in or not.  They were last seen heading for the hills because of the noisy construction.  Hopefully, they are home now, in their little adjoining apartments.  All of these are backyard pics as I have been spending a lot of time out there this week.  It's been nice.  We've been upset as 2 of our dear friends have had a major falling-out with each other and we wonder if they'll ever reconcile.  It's been heartbreaking but there's nothing we can do.  :-/   Having the deck and the party to distract us has been good.  I guess.  If you pray, please join me in praying that these two dear people will find a way to reconcile.  

I'd better get busy, the party is tomorrow!  

 

It's been 6 weeks.

I'm surviving.  I've gotten more back into normal life, sleeping in my bed, doing the dishes, working on projects, etc.   I still can't drive, so I'm kind of at the boring part of my recovery.  I do have a lunch out with my girlfriends tomorrow, thank goodness.  I need to talk to them about a lot of things.

We had a turkey in our yard yesterday.  I can't really go anywhere, so I guess God is bringing the entertainment to me, LoL. 

I'm working on a book about childhood and so now I'm trying to fight the self discipline battle to make myself work on the book instead of playing the Sims, watching Youtube or playing Words With Friends.  As always, it is a struggle, but I have been working on it pretty steadily the last few days.   :-)

Kind of an artsy shot my daughter took of the full moon last weekend.

In other news, youngest son did graduate from college!  We're having a graduation party for him here at our house, so for the next week or so, we need to work on cleaning the house and repairing the deck so we can have a cookout.  It's exciting!  Our second homeschool graduate who is now a college graduate!

Gallery Showing.

Here's my daughter's art at the gallery.  We went to see it, the took her out to eat to celebrate. 

One month since surgery.

Okay, I'm ready to be done with this, be pain-free and back to life.  Or maybe just as much pain as I had before.   :-/   I'm not sure.  I know that I needed to do this, but getting through the weeks and weeks and weeks of pain and torture (also known as physical therapy) has been hard.  I wish there was some way to miraculously heal, but there isn't.  It's inch by inch or literally a matter of degrees.  At PT yesterday they were able to bend my knee 93 degrees.   That's good, apparently. 

So, today it's been a month since I slept in my bed, took a normal shower, walked without a walker, went to a store, went to the library, went to work, went to church, drove myself anyplace ... it's been a long month.   I hope to add some of those things back in the next month.   Wish me luck!

On the good side, the weather's been really nice, a bunch of the flowers a friend of mine gave me after my mom passed away are blooming, my family has been great to me, I'm getting a lot of art done and my young adults are experiencing all kinds of personal growth, having to handle all the things I used to handle for them. That's been a good experience for all of us, something that we needed to do.  I tend to want to do everything for everyone so they won't be inconvenienced and that has not been good for them.  I guess this is one of the lessons I had to learn the hard way.  I wish I'd quit doing that!!

3 Weeks Today.

It's been 3 weeks since I had the surgery.  Three weeks of walking with a walker, having ice on my leg, having my leg propped up, nearly constant asthma issues, having to be waited on (it's getting a little better in that regard) and sleeping in the recliner in the living room.  The last couple of nights, I have been able to spend some time in my bed and that's been good, but my tolerance for the leg lying flat is only a couple of hours.  My tolerance for riding in the car is about 10 minutes.  Unfortunately, we live at least 20 minutes from everything, so that's not fun.   I do think that maybe next week, I may be able to get out and about.  It's just unfathomable what an injury has been done to my leg and how long it's going to take to get over it.  Usually at 3 weeks after a surgery, you're pretty much back to normal, at least for all the surgeries I've had, but not this one.  This one is big.   Major.  I'm doing okay, really.  My family is fantastic to me and I appreciate that.  But, I'm ready to be okay again.  Really, really ready.

Here are a few pictures of what I've been looking at during my confinement at home,  my decorated walker and some of our pets, 2 of whom are in cones, again. 

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.