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.

back at work

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.