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Wednesday, September 28, 2011

they say I'm not dead yet

and I'm feeling very much better.

2-week post-surgical exam says... no tub or swimming yet, but the mass from my knee is nonspecific and non-threatening.

this provided a chance again to stop in at Ax-Man and paw through the tube buckets.  thought I found a couple decent 6EA8s.  both had 8 volt Tubes From Hell in the boxes, lost that $5 bet.  win some, lose some.

Monday, September 26, 2011

back at work

break in the action, but I'm back, and through hundreds of emails that could be deleted.

Thursday, September 22, 2011

geez, you pay for your good days

paid with a really rotten night.  it would appear that two short road trips... one for lunch, one to pay a bill... and hauling a little cardboard from the garden to the trash was way too much for Knee 2.0.  up almost all night trying to find a combination of covers/none, pills/none, and bracing/none that would stop the pain (3 to 3.5) and allow me to sleep.  a miracle I didn't wake the wife.

upshot was that pressure on the inboard side of the knee was evil, EVIL.  any pressure.

a little swollen today, but symmetrical.  so I'm taking it really easy.  got a decent nap, in fact, almost the whole afternoon.  feeling much better.

lesson learned.

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

woo-hoo! field trip!

rolled up the cardboard protectors in the garden from the five doors the wife stained and varnished last week, took 'em to the recycling bucket.  then I drove to the gas station for some budget pop 12-packs, and down the road to Subway for lunch.  knee felt good.  start getting up a little earlier, and stop having to take a generic T3 equivalent to damp the aches and twinges so I can sleep at night, and I can see going to work next Monday.  time will tell.  the doc is saying Wednesday the 28th to the disability folks at work, so I'd like to be able to rehab early and find out how many of my 200-odd passwords have aged out.

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

two days later

it's been a long week since I got a bunch of doctors draw a pentagram (rough one) on my knee and start poking around in it.  feeling better.  it's still weak and "spongy" to walk on, but mostly pain free.  I do have twinges and a minor ache that are persisting.  but for having a big mass of crud of some sort carved out and removed through a hole a little smaller than a half-inch, we're doing OK.  swelling is greatly down and symmetrical.  really ought to take a little field trip tomorrow if weather permits and see how it's holding up.

Sunday, September 18, 2011

well, one trip out and I'm worn out

went to church today.  worn out.  puttered a while in the shed, but I think it's nap time.  for sure there's no going in to work tomrrow.

Friday, September 16, 2011

blood. blood! bwa-ha-haaaaaa!

since I didn't get any specifics about times, dates, astrological signs, etc after my surgery (I am Aquarius with Pisces rising, btw... which means I'm all wet and everything I do is a little fishy) I called the surgeon's charge nurse.

scandal!

apparently the stuff was supposed to be in the plain-vanilla discharge instructions from the hospital (on the order of "discharge?  EWWWWW!")  but I learned today was the day I could take off the surgical dressings from my arthroscopy, and should have been doing leg lifts for exercise.  so I did.  the holes cut in my knee had been doing a bit of seeping, almost through the 8 layers of gauze, but not to the 2 layers of gamgee (you Hobbit fans can look that up.)  one still was a little wet and red, so I put two new layers of no-stick pads on it, cleaned the area, and put the 8-inch wide elastic bandage back over it.

Son #3 got the FFNB loans paid off along with everything else today... and Friends and Family National Bank and him went out for supper.  I didn't even limp and roll enough to be saying "arrrrrr, matey" with every sentence.  today I went the whole day on "hospital Motrin", and not on T3s.  so I'm doing better.  stamina is still not great, however, so next big trip out is church Sunday.  if I get through that, I think I'm doing well.

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

crap

there are things happening on their seeming own with the wife's WinSeven laptop that massively piss me off.  just installed firefox in hopes I can actually freakin' publish this damn post.

using her machine on the davenport, because I got the knee job done yesterday.  no chance of getting to the second-chance pc in the shed, up and down all the darn stairs.  there was not a polyp in the knee, it was a big ol' mass that pretty well took up all the inside of the knee.  they got most of it with arthroscopy.  really not having much pain, but mobility is quite limited with the gob of dressings and super-wide elastic bandage on it.

hope to get back to work monday.  at this point, it's rather like Lurch comping around.

Monday, September 12, 2011

significant basement progress

got everything but the riser for the shower plumbed out last night.  got the garage door reinforcements in and the counterbalance reset.  got the dangling 120 volt stuff tied up and ready for lights and the fan.

did NOT get the shower pan liner and top layer in.  did NOT get the new shutoffs in the walls, rigid, for the sink and toilet.  did NOT get the bulkhead framing done.

so be it.  have to be at the hospital at 5:30 tomorrow for surgery at 7:30, and I am damn well going to get some sleep.  it's legal and safe and it will hold a few weeks.

pity we lost forward motion a couple months ago, but there ya go.

there might be more random nonsense and less filtering by decades of convictions in the next 48 hours.  if it gets really nutso, we'll charge admission for the improved entertainment value ;)

Thursday, September 8, 2011

new computer at work, redoing basement bathroom

and we got a cite from the city for our bags 'o' evil from gutting the basement... clean it up by the 16th.  called the community service officer who issued the citation, told him we wouldn't have started if there wasn't a clean-up day october 8th... and we're OK to haul the creepy crud to the city garage on the 8th.

we're mudding the basement shower at this point.  tonight, liner and mortar coat, then finish studding out bulkheads in the basement ceiling around pipes and such.  the old ones were a freakin' interconnected hodgepodge.

just had my pre-surgical physical for the knee job, and we're good to go.  hooked me up to the 14-lead EKG, and a twisted-sounding voice from nowhere said, "Master, IT'S ALIIIVVVEEEE!"  must be all the bruises I've got from the basement confused the muses.