Fat and Happy

I'm getting fat.  If you've seen me in the last 6 months, this is not news to you.  I haven't had much to do for the last year besides sleep 'til noon, eat, poop, eat some more, and go back to sleep.  On the days that I cry incessantly for no reason, I am exactly like an infant.

Being fat is not helpful.  The extra weight complicates transfers, and the belly reduces the size of my lap which is really my only work surface.  Anything I want to move from one place to another has to balance on my lap because I need both hands to push the chair.  At some point, the belly can also interfere with hip flexion.  So far that isn't one of my problems.

You may see my added size only as a negative, but you're overlooking all the positive aspects.  I like to think that the extra volume increases my visibility when I'm out in the street.  When a driver sees me in a crosswalk, they think, "If I run over that gigantic wheeled invalid, I will undoubtedly break my car!"  Also, the extra weight increases my stability in turns probably.

At this point, you're obviously wondering, "How has he achieved these incredible benefits to his health and well-being?"  There's no one simple answer to that question, but I will share one important contributor.  Fresh baked cookies.

I use my toaster oven every day, and I don't know how I ever lived without one, but recently I realized I could use it to bake small batches of cookies.

I went to the store and got some pre-cut cookie dough.

I prefer these to the Nestle

 And I got some toaster-oven sized cookie sheets from Farberware.

I cut a silicone baking sheet to fit

And I bake it in the toaster oven for 11 minutes.

Preheats in 45 seconds

And then I have fresh baked cookies for dessert!

Yum!

This is just one of the ways that I keep myself squeezably soft!

Stairway to Awesome

Yesterday I felt incredible.  Very little pain and lot of energy.  Best I've felt since rehab.  Gus came over and we did a practice car transfer, and it was effortless.

Today I don't feel great.  Lots more pain.  We did a car transfer, and it went quite badly.  Sigh.

Gus has been busy the last couple weeks with a project he's been doing for a neighbor.  He does these sort of jobs for his neighbors sometimes, and I think he's kinda proud of this one so I thought I'd share some before and after pictures of it.

Gus's stairs

They look so good, I'm thinking about having him put some in my apartment.

Football

I wouldn't say I'm 100%, but I'm feeling much better.

My hip feels a lot better.  I think the pain is less than before surgery.  Some days it is anyway.  There are still painful days, but generally, I think things are getting better.  I'm not testing my range of motion much yet, but I think it's already better than before.  Everything isn't perfect.  I've still got to wear the boots because of this thing on my heel, and I have pain in my butt from sitting, and pain in my back from the hardware, but I have stopped bleeding, and I'm feeling pretty good overall.  And just in time too.  It's time for football.

There's so much football going on right now, it's almost overwhelming.  The Ravens don't look like they are going to be very good this year after losing so many players in the off season so I'm not too excited about that.  It looks like the Eagles' new coach is going to have them playing some interesting football this year, so I'm looking forward to see what they do.  They may not win a lot, but their games should be interesting, win or lose.

It's crazy how much football they can cram into a single weekend.  If you try to watch just the good college games on Saturday, and then all of the NFL games on Sunday, it takes the whole weekend.  Fortunately I have nothing better to do right now.

The Woods

I think I'm out of the woods now, but it was pretty hairy there for a while.

After the meds finally wore off, the pain came back, and the hip hurt like hell.  Besides that, the low blood count kept me feeling extremely weak and woozy for several more days.  All I wanted to do was sleep, but I still had to wake up every 4 hours to pee.

Sunday, almost a week after surgery, was the first day I finally felt like I had a reasonable amount of energy, and I felt like a lot of the pain had subsided.  Sunday afternoon I decided it was time to take a shower.  For the surgery, they put compression socks on my feet and lower legs to squeeze the blood back up toward my heart.  When my mom them off, she noticed that the pressure sore on my right heel had returned.

I was pretty upset about it because it means I have to go back in the boots.  The contracture boots keep my heels from making contact with anything, but they are not fun to wear.  The last time I had this pressure sore, I had to wear them for 6 months.  I don't know what they weigh, but I think it's 3 or 4 pounds each.  They make transfers harder, and they make it difficult to spend much time outside.  I view it as a huge setback.

So when my mom discovered the sore, I attempted to pull my foot in for a closer look so I could render my disgust more directly.  When I did so, I heard a noise come from the vicinity of my hip.  It was sort of a quick "fffffft".  When I looked down at my thigh, there was a massive amount of blood coming out from under the bandage.  It was more of my own blood than I'd ever seen before.  I'm not sure myself, but my mom thought it was about 1/4 cup.  Beyond that, blood was still flowing from a cut about half an inch beyond the end of my incision.

We both took a moment to freak out a little, and then we paged the orthopedic resident to get some advice.  They advised us that the dark color meant the blood was from a hematoma.  Basically the area of the surgery had continued to bleed internally, and when I bent my leg, it squeezed the pocket like a huge pimple until it burst.  They insisted I come to the hospital so they could take a look at it.  So I spent a big chunk of my Sunday afternoon at the hospital getting poked on by doctors.  They tried to squeeze as much blood out as they could by really laying into the site of the surgery with their full weight.  It didn't hurt much when they were doing it, but it hurt a ton the next day.  When they were done, it was still oozing blood at a pretty good clip.

Every few hours

So for the next couple days, we had to change the bandage every few hours and it still ruined several pieces of clothing.  It continued leaking for 4 more days although it slowed each day.

Between the blood and the pain, we thought it would be best if my mom stayed another couple days.  Fortunately Southwest is really nice about letting you change tickets so she left Wednesday instead of Monday.  By Wednesday, I was much more under control.  The pain was tolerable, and the blood flow was under control.

So I think I'm out of the woods.  I'm certainly not done recovering.  Not by a long shot.  But I think I'm done with the worst of it.  It should get easier from here.