An update from my daughter

I'm nervous at this point, six days away from Rachel's surgery.  If I'm nervous, I KNOW she has to be.  At her request, Cliff and I will not be at the hospital during the surgery, but we will pay her a visit that evening, accompanied by her daughters.  She will come home the day after surgery.  
You can read her latest update HERE.

Forging ahead

Yesterday I saw the orthopedist and had the staples removed from my incision.  Now I can take a shower!  I've had over two weeks of taking sponge baths, and although I was raised on sponge baths (except for a Saturday night bath in a washtub), a shower is much welcomed.  
Today I start going to therapy, instead of having a therapist come to me.  I'll still be doing my exercise routine at home, though.  My grandson's girl friend secured me an exercise bike (free... thank you, Heather), which is supposed to be an excellent tool for recovery from knee surgery.  The home therapist said to limit myself to three minutes per session, for now.  
I'm still taking coumadin, which the doctor is monitoring closely.  I take a pill daily, but if the level in my blood gets too low to suit the doctor, she has me take two pills for a day or two; it's to prevent blood clots.  I'll be really glad to get off that stuff.  I was told I'd be taking it for a month, so I have less than two weeks to go.  
Yesterday evening, with possible storms in the forecast, I fired up the tiller and tilled between the rows of my garden, then put in a small row of green beans.  The tiller really doesn't require my using a great deal of strength:  It pulls itself.  The tiller we have now moves too fast to suit me when the throttle is wide open, so I did slow it down to a reasonable pace.  I'm not exactly Miss Speedy these days.  It felt good to handle this chore again by myself.   
I have no problem walking unaided when I'm at home with no shoes on, but yesterday with sneakers on, I held on to Cliff's arm going to and from the doctor's office because every once in awhile my knee would give... it wasn't nearly as steady!  Danged old shoes are an instrument of the devil anyhow.  I have to concentrate on walking properly and not allowing myself to limp.  
The pain is less all the time, and if I had to, I could probably get by just fine without the pain meds.  As it is, I'm only taking one at a time now, on an "as-needed" basis... usually no more than four a day.  The one I take at bedtime is the most necessary.  
Won't it be wonderful when I have something more exciting to talk about in my blog than my surgery?  I'm sure that day is coming!

Ouch.

Over the past two days, I heard statements like these from the staff at NKC Hospital:  "You're a rock star!" "You're one in a thousand."  "Nobody has this range of motion on the day after surgery."  "You seem to be an over-achiever."
(That last one cracked me up, by the way.)  
Well, when a person hears things like that over and over, she can get to thinking she's pretty special.  Especially if she isn't having the level of pain everybody expected her to have.  
This morning, I have only one thing to say.  
"OUCH!"  
Oh, I'm doing fine, but I think if that guy in therapy got hold of me now, he wouldn't be calling me an over-achiever; he'd probably be thinking of me more as a sniveling wimp.  I imagine I'd be doing more than my share of groaning and moaning as I attempted to do what he demanded.  
I just wanted to set the record straight; This rock star found her feet of clay.  
I'll keep my readers updated on this journey I'm taking.  


I did have a good nights sleep last night, though.  That was wonderful. 

Giving blood

Today I will have my first experience ever of donating blood:  I'm donating it for my own use when I have knee surgery three weeks from today.  
There have been many times I wished I could donate blood for someone, but it wasn't allowed:  I once had hepatitis A.
  

"Hepatitis A is a highly contagious liver infection caused by the hepatitis A virus. Hepatitis A is one of several types of hepatitis viruses that cause inflammation that affects your liver's ability to function.You're most likely to contract hepatitis A from contaminated food or water or from close contact with someone who's already infected. Mild cases of hepatitis A don't require treatment, and most people who are infected recover completely with no permanent liver damage.Practicing good hygiene — including washing your hands often — is one of the best ways to protect against hepatitis A. Effective vaccines are available for people who are most at risk."

I didn't even know I had it until after the fact; I never got very sick, and wouldn't have figured it out except that as newlyweds, we went camping and Cliff spent the whole time in the tent, vomiting.  When we got home he went to the doctor, who looked at his yellow eyeballs, asked him a couple questions about his red urine, and said, "It sounds like you have hepatitis; Who were you with four weeks ago that could have given this to you?"Well, as it turned out, I was the culprit.  We recalled that one Sunday when we went to my parents' house for dinner my mom had exclaimed, "Look at the whites of your eyes!  They're just as yellow as can be."  She mentioned that my skin, too, had a yellow cast.  I had an constant uncomfortable feeling in the pit of my stomach at the time, but since I was slightly pregnant, I figured that was the cause.    

Although my case of hepatitis was mild, Cliff's was scary-awful; the doctor wanted to hospitalize him, but we didn't have insurance and Cliff begged out of it.  I didn't know anybody could upchuck that much for so long, and it seemed like it took him forever to recover.  To this day, there is no medication to take for hepatitis.  

By the way, we've all heard of certain diseases a person can "catch from the toilet", and some of those stories are myths.  But any doctor will tell you that you can, indeed, get hepatitis from the germs in a public facility; this is another reason why you should wash your hands after using the rest room.  You can also get hepatitis A from eating contaminated food in a restaurant; all-you-can-eat buffet, anyone?  

So today, for the first time, I'm giving blood.  For myself.  And I'll be charged the same price as if it I were using somebody else's blood.  

The trouble with having had hepatitis A is this:  When you mention you've had hepatitis, doctors tend to freeze in place as though you said, "I have leprosy."  Then they carefully quiz you until they are 100% sure it was the "A" variety of hepatits that you had, because they don't want to mess with someone whose had the other varieties.          

The last on this subject

There's certainly no way to top that last entry, so I won't even make an attempt. If you didn't read the comments left there, you should; I think you'll get a smile out of them.

Mrs. Linklater suggested I might have porn searches ending up on an entry with the word "breast" in it, but so far that hasn't happened; I checked my sitemeter. If that were to start happening, I'd simply change one of the letters in the word to an asterisk. Let's face it, though: With all the chicken recipes on the Internet, that would be a particularly unsuccessful word to use in a porn search.

I should mention that when insurance is paying for a mammoplasty, insurance chooses the size the new breasts will be, typically a "C". It's going to take some getting used to, let me tell you, after so many years of being well-endowed. I didn't know I had developed such a pot belly, since I couldn't see my belly before, looking down. Now, I can. You'd better believe I am sucking in my gut a LOT these days, as I sit at the computer.

Sugar wondered if Medicare pays for breast reduction. According to this source, indeed it will. There are guidelines, but they are the same as the ones for any insurance: Indentations in the shoulders, skin problems underneath, discomfort in the back and neck. You must need at least a pound removed, typically a double D. I know Sugar has a lot of health issues, so she might not be able to get the procedure done on that account.

I will go to the plastic surgeon Friday and get the tape removed. The stitches are the kind that absorb. He'll take an "after" picture to go with the "before" shot he took on my first visit, and hopefully I will be done with him.

Cliff did not meet the surgeon until the day of my operation, when he came in to draw a map on my chest. When he was finished and left the room, Cliff said, "What school bus did HE get off of?"

He does look like a kid, doesn't he? His nurse told me he averages doing one breast reduction per week.

I'm glad I had this done. Breast reduction has the highest satisfaction rate of any other plastic surgery, 95%. Everyone I've heard of who has had it is happy with the results.

This will probably be the last you hear on this subject.