Random Stuff

So my Martinsville friends came to visit me last Friday.  Most of them drove down from Maryland, and they hung out with me Friday night and crashed in my apartment.  I think it was the most fun I've had since my injury.  I hope I can go hang out with them at the cabin in October, but we'll see about that when the time comes.

I was able to take everybody to my favorite restaurant, Tribeca Tavern.  Here's a picture.

Jon, Mark T., Chris, Me, Matt, Wendy, TC, and Curt Tucker at Tribeca

My life is in such a routine right now that it's really nice to break out of that rut and have some real fun.

The weather has been warming up, and I've been taking more walks around the neighborhood.  I assume I'm getting stronger, but it happens so slowly, it's hard to really notice a change.

In the last week, I've had two dreams where I could walk, but in both, my legs didn't work right.  My legs would sort of support me, but I kept falling down when I tried to walk.  I think my brain knows I'm not supposed to be walking at this point.  Or maybe I've just forgotten what walking is really like.

I got a new bed this week.  I ordered from a store on the internet after extensive discussions with their sales guys about whether their mattress would help with my pressure issues.  I was very optimistic about it, but when it showed up, it was immediately apparent that not only did I not think it would help with pressure relief, the new mattress wasn't even as comfortable as the 10 year old mattress it was replacing.  Fortunately, they have a good return policy.

The pain in my butt continues to be an issue.  Some days are better than others, but none are pain-free.  I have no idea what I'm going to do about it.

Surgery is now less than a month away.  It's going to be interesting to see what changes after that.  That's all I'm really thinking about these days.

The Best of Times

It's been quite a while since I've posted.

When nothing is happening, I don't feel motivated to post because I have nothing to say.  On the other hand, when I'm really busy, I don't feel like taking the time to post.  Fortunately, the last 2 weeks have been the latter, not the former.

Gus and his family were away all last week, and I was worried I might be alone too much.  Fortunately, I had the opposite problem.  My friend Tobi came over most of the days that Gus was gone to help with all the things I still need help with.  She also took me to a doctor's appointment.  I'm still astounded by how many people in my life are willing to help me when I need it.  My friends continue to amaze me.  I can't believe how lucky I am.

Tobi also brings cute little half-asian daughter

Then I also had a lot of dinner guests last week.  I had saved up some leftovers to have for dinner last week, but I had so many dinner guests, the leftovers went bad before I got to them.  This is a good problem to have.

Gus doesn't usually come over until around 12:00 for lunch, and then he usually stays most of the afternoon, but Tobi's schedule dictated that she had to come earlier and leave earlier, so it forced me to get up earlier, and gave me a bunch of free time in the afternoons.  I used the time to shop for a new computer and to work on some programming skills I had been wanting to learn.  That was kindof fun.

Tobi' husband, Jimmy, who used to be my roommate came over one night to watch some of the NCAA tournament.  I went out to see a movie with Tobi (Oz the Great and Powerful), I went with Jimmy and Tobi to the local Farmer's Market and bought some cheese and a delicious sausage biscuit.  I got a cup holder for my wheelchair.  I did a couple vigorous walks around the neighborhood.  I watched a couple movies I had been saving for a special occasion, and I generally felt really good.

A sorely needed wheelchair addition

I've been feeling really good the last little while, and it's pretty exciting.  My heels are healing nicely.  I still have quite a bit of pain in my butt, and I'm going to have to figure out what to do about that somehow, but in almost every other regard, I've been doing great.  Even the program has been really great this week.

I'm just waiting for surgery, and after that, I should finally be back to where I was in rehab.  I can't wait.

I'd like to write more, but this weekend is Martinsville, and while I can't make it up to the cabin yet, my friends are on their way to my apartment right now to hang out before they go, so I have to go get ready.  Should be a fun evening.

Holding Pattern

I'm reluctant to admit it, but I've been doing quite well the last week or so.  I'm still dealing with pain in my ischials, but everything else is getting a lot better.  I'm sure something will go wrong any minute now, but right now, I'm pretty happy.  My hip feels okay, and I have scheduled surgery on my other hip for early May.

In the meantime, I'm just killing time, waiting for something to happen.

Gus and his family just left for Kansas for 10 days or so, and I'm reminded how lucky I am to have them in my life.  I honestly don't know how I could have gotten this far without them.  Some of my other friends are going to try to take up the slack without them this week, but I still feel naked knowing Gus isn't around.

Turns out I'm also going to miss little Evelyn.  Uyen sent me a video this week.

It immediately made me think of this.  I'm okay with being compared to Mr. Wonka.

Extremes

It's interesting how my life seems to be a series of extremes these days.  Just a couple weeks ago, everything seemed to be going wrong, and I was completely miserable.  Then suddenly, things turned around, and for the last week or so, it seems like things have been about as good as they could be.  Well, as good as they could be given my revised expectations.  It's not like I can walk or anything.

On Monday, my replacement seat cushions for my wheelchair arrived.  Those have really helped with my sitting pain.  Turns out the technical term for your butt bones is "ischium" or "ischial tuberosities".  Mine still don't feel great, but they feel soooooo much better than a couple weeks ago.  They no longer feel like the bones are going to come poking through at any time.  They do still feel sore all the time though.

My leg spasms are slightly worse than they were last week, but right now the things that bother me the most are pretty much behaving themselves.  Also, the pain in my hip seems a lot better this week, to the point that I'm thinking about scheduling my next surgery.  That's pretty exciting.

I'm still wearing the boots, but my heels are getting a lot better.  My left heel is essentially healed, and my right is on the way.  You can see that there is new skin under the remains of the blister, and it's only a matter of time before all the nasty old skin falls off.

I've had quite a few visitors in the last few days.  I mentioned Titus and Brittany in my last post, and since then, I've had dinner with Mike and Sue, David and Kristen, and last night with Julie.  It's been nice to have so much company for dinner since lately, it's been getting harder to get people to come hang out.  I'm not exactly lonely, but I certainly don't have the flood of visitors I had when I was in rehab.  I can't say I don't miss it.

Speaking of visitors, Gus's family will be out of town from March 23 through March 31, and I'll be all alone, so I'd love to see anybody who wants to stop by that week.  Especially if there's food involved.

And speaking of Gus's family, for the last year or so, I've been spending a lot of time with little Evelyn, and she's been growing up right before my eyes.  I guess that's what they do.  Anyway, when she started coming here, she could barely color inside the lines of a coloring book picture.  Lately, she has been drawing her own pictures.  Sometimes they're of her family, and sometimes she includes me.  I think that's precious.

Guess which one I am

A Good Day

After a couple days in bed, my butt felt a little better yesterday.  Not great, just not quite as painful as before.  So yesterday Titus and Brittany came down for dinner, and we had a good time at Buffalo Wings and Rings.

Friends and food

I love these guys.  I love that they still come visit me as often as they do.  I think I see more of them now that I live 30 minutes away than I did when I lived next door.

We also had some Blue Bell ice cream, and Titus gave me a haircut.  All the time in the wheelchair made my butt hurt more today, but it was worth it.  Now I'm going back to bed to rest my butt, but I wanted to share that I had a good day.  Still taking them one at a time.

Two Steps Back

I had my appointment with Dr. Dahners last week, and it went about as well as could have been hoped.  He said he saw no evidence of bone regrowth, and that I could schedule the next surgery whenever I'm ready.

The problem is I'm not ready.  The right hip still hurts quite a bit, and I've given up hope of that ever changing.  I really don't want to have to deal with both hips in pain for the rest of my life, but that's seeming like how it's going to happen.

Last week was really good.  I had some changes in meds that seemed to make a big improvement to something that has been bothering me since I got out of the hospital.  I consider it the biggest problem I have, but it's something I don't like to talk about on the blog.  I was ecstatic that it was finally getting better after 8 months of constant discouragement.  I actually felt like going out and having a little fun.  I was actually looking forward to writing this blog.

The I got to the weekend.  The thing that had been improving suddenly got worse than it's been in a long time.  I had stupidly allowed myself to believe things were getting better, so that has been a huge emotional blow.

At the same time, I've started having pressure issues with my rear.  The seat cushions I have for my wheelchair have started to come apart, and I didn't realize how bad it was until I started experiencing pain in my butt.  It has gotten worse every day for the last week or two, and the last couple days it was so bad I didn't want to get out of bed at all.  I got up last night for a few hours to have wine and cheese with some friends which was a lot of fun, but really painful.

I think I'm starting to develop pressure sores on my rear.  There's no visual evidence when you look, but it feels like my hip bones are tearing through from the inside.  Any time I sit up, it feels like I'm sitting on a hot skillet, and it's a horrible problem to have for someone who can't stand up.

Oh, and I'm still wearing those boots for my heel issues.  That's still no fun.

Gus went and got me a temporary replacement cushion for my wheelchair which hurts a lot less, but it's uncomfortable in other ways, and I just found out I can no longer fit my legs under my dining room table because it's thicker and sits me up higher.

In the context of everything that's going wrong right now, I can't even give any attention to the fact that my hip seems better.

Since I've been spending so much time in bed the last couple days, I've had time to think, and I realized my injury happened a year ago next month.  That was a crazy realization, but then I thought about how little progress I've made in that time.  Whenever something gets a little better, something else gets worse.  And then invariably the first thing gets worse again later.  I think my right hip is the only thing that is better now than when I left rehab.  That's pretty depressing to think about.

I guess my leg spasms are somewhat reduced.  I'm going to go get back in bed and think about that I guess.

Food, Drink, and Friends

As I had hoped, Friday and Saturday were just fantastic.  Let me tell you about them.

Gus has a weird food hang-up.  At least I think it's weird.  Everybody that lives in the south knows that Waffle House is delicious.  Gus agrees, but he thinks it should only be eaten on cold, gloomy days.  I agree that it's better on those type of days, but I think it's pretty darn good on nice days as well.  Anyway, on Thursday, Gus decided we should think about Waffle House for lunch on Friday, but we had to wait for Friday to check out the weather before we would know for sure if it was okay.  So I was in suspense for 24 hours, trying to figure out what I would order, but not wanting to get too excited in case Friday dawned warm and sunny.

Fortunately for me, Friday was cold and rainy, and Waffle House was in the cards.

Gus, Evelyn, and Uyen at the Waffle House

So greasy, so good

My lunch was a bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich on Texas toast, and a waffle with coffee.  Delicious.  I wanted to get something else, maybe some grits, but I was expecting an even better dinner, so I didn't want to over-do it.  As it was, I was incapacitated until about 5:00.

Fortunately, I was able to find some room by the time my brother-in-law arrived around 7:00.  He found time to come for a visit last night, and I took him to my favorite local restaurant, Tribeca Tavern.

Jon at Tribeca

Tribeca has a lot of good food, but their hamburgers are incredible.  They grind the beef on-site every morning, so it's fresh enough that you can have them cook it as rare as you like.  It's also moist enough that even cooked medium, the meat is succulent and extremely flavorful.  I feel like restaurant hamburgers are usually a fallback menu item for people who don't like more exciting food, but at Tribeca, the burgers are definitely worth getting excited about.

An exciting hamburger

After dinner, Jon and I headed back to my place to have a few beers and hang out with Gus for a while.  I hadn't seen Jon since Thanksgiving, so it was nice to spend some time with him and have some fun.

Jon was gone by the time I got up this morning, but that was okay because this morning was my whiskey class with Tobi.

Tobi picked me up, and we arrived at Lucky 32 restaurant ten minutes early for the 11:00 class.  The class was run tag-team by Lucky 32's head chef, and a lady who is employed by Jim Beam as a regional whiskey ambassador.  It sounds like a pretty sweet job for somebody who enjoys bourbon.

Head Chef Jay Pierce making gumbo

The class included three courses of food, Cajun gumbo served with a cocktail called a sezerac made with rye whiskey and absinthe, a curried lamb over rice with the whiskey tasting, and a slice of bourbon chocolate pecan pie with coffee.

Whiskey and rye

American pie?

The whiskeys we tasted were all from Knob Creek, and included their 9-year old small batch straight bourbon, their rye whiskey, and their 120 proof single-barrel bourbon.

The food was really excellent, and I learned a lot about whiskey production and history, but the most valuable thing I took away was a much better understanding of how to correctly appreciate whiskey.

Here's a brief summary of what I learned:

• Use a glass that concentrates the vapors so you can appreciate the aroma.  This will help you understand what flavors to expect.  A rocks glass will let the aroma disperse and disappear.  If your venue does not have snifters, a wine glass will suffice.
• To appreciate the aroma, sniff with your mouth open.  If you don't, the alcohol will likely overwhelm your senses, masking the smells you're looking for.
• If you consume whiskey on the rocks, it will disperse the flavor far too much.
• It is appropriate to order your whiskey neat with a glass of ice water on the side and a plastic drinking straw.  You can use the straw to add small amounts of water to the whiskey until you achieve the flavor you want.
• It is correct to water down your whiskey until you remove the bite that you experience at the back of your tongue.  The bite will burn your palette and prevent you from experiencing the full flavor of the drink.  Adding 20% water to the whiskey is a good rule of thumb, but higher alcohol content requires more water.

This last rule was a revelation to my understanding of whiskey.  I have often felt when drinking whiskey neat, that the alcohol overwhelmed the experience, especially for drinks with higher alcohol content.  Once you understand how to properly water your drink though, you can make any whiskey palatable, and get down to the actual flavor of the product.  Apparently it is common for even master distillers to use water in this way.

Tobi and the class

So anyway, from a food and drink perspective, I just had about the best 36 hours I've had in years.  When we got home, Tobi gave me a 300-page whiskey reference book which she believes will help with our continued pursuit of whiskey appreciation.

More than you need to know about whiskey

After Tobi left, I needed a nap, so I slept for almost 4 hours.  Then I got up and wrote this post.  I have to say, I'm jealous of 2-days-ago Jason.  He knew he was about to have a good couple days, and I'm sad for right-now Jason because his fun is over, for now.  But I do want to thank Gus and Uyen and Jon and Tobi for making the last couple days so memorable.  Now I just have to figure out when I can do it again.