Working My Way Back

Well. Hello. Yes, I am still here and still living, although it's been questionable at times these last many weeks.

In my last post I wrote that I was home and recuperating from my knee surgery. Things pretty much went down the dumper from there. The knee rehab was going well, but I developed the absolute worst pain I have ever had in my right leg from my hip down to my toes.

After several doctor visits, an ER trip, x-rays, MRI and such, I was admitted to the hospital for pain management until my doctor could do the surgery I needed to remove bone spurs in a couple vertebrae. The nasty spurs were severely compressing the sciatic nerve and causing the extreme pain. Surgery was delayed due to the blood thinners I was on following the knee surgery, but eventually happened.

Right now, my incisions have healed in both places, but I do not recommend that one has two major surgeries within three weeks if they can avoid it. It is not pleasant. I have been released by home health care and have started outpatient physical therapy. Recovery is slow going. I am a little better each day, but still have pain and numbness in my lower right leg and foot. We are told that it will take a while for full recovery because the nerve compression was so severe and there is still swelling and inflammation in there. But I am plugging away at things and do my exercises every day and try to obey all the rules. They say my left knee is doing very well.

During all of this Golfer has been absolutely wonderful. There was a span of time when it was all I could do to get myself to the bathroom and back to bed. He took over everything and did a wonderful job! Thanks, and I love you, Golfer!

Bikini came for a week to help us and Nurse J is always just a phone call away. So we had them for back-up!

I am going to name this period of time "Our Summer of Discomfort". Besides the personal pain I've been in, we've had some interesting things going on around here. The Dismal Swamp is burning and there have been many days when the wind was a certain way that our air quality was awful and stunk.

Then we had an earthquake. Over the years, Golfer and I have experienced tornadoes, some flooding, blizzards, and hurricanes but this was the first earthquake for us. We did not care for it!

The latest thing was Hurricane Irene. We made all the preparations and did all the things we should. ( I should clarify that and say that Golfer did all those things) We lucked out here and did not have any major problems. Others in the area were not so lucky and are still without power. Ours just flickered a few times. The back yard was a mess with some downed small branches and many twigs and leaves, but no major damage to our house. We did cancel a planned trip to Myrtle Beach though. And I cannot believe that the swamp fire is still burning after all of Irene's rainfall!!

So, life goes on. The list of things that I would like to be able to do grows longer every day. But I know that I must pace myself and not overdo. I do not want to ever do anything that will bring back that pain.

I hope everyone is well and happy. Stay safe!