kmkat and her kneedles

Munday mutterings. On Munday.

1. Familiar :: home
2. Style :: fashion
3. More than :: enough
4. Glistening :: slippery
5. Obstruction :: traffic construction
6. Orifice :: spinning
7. Hugely :: inappropriate
8. Tempest :: teapot
9. Sauce :: spaghetti
10. Herbs :: green

* * * * *

In other news, gravity and I had another disagreement last Thursday. I tripped over something at the recycling center when I was running errands, ironically on my way to an ortho appointment about my hip. 

Result was face>>asphalt; also, knee>>asphalt. 

I didn't bother to get a photo of my knee. Picture a swollen right knee with colorful bruising spread out over a larger area, and you've got it. Also, my left hand/wrist look perfectly fine but is annoyingly sore. 

They x-rayed my knee when I was at the ortho ("As long as we're going to x-ray your hip...") but there was nothing broken, just soft tissue damage. "Just"? I was disappointed; anything that hurt that much deserved more than a "just".

Anyway, I'm mending. Vicodin that night, ibuprofen since.

Gravity really sucks.

News from the family

Younger Son (Matthew).

He forwarded this to me with the comment, "I was just thinking you could rally some of your fellow knit/blog moms to try and make it a little tastier/safer."

Dear Friend;
 
Did you know that Kraft Macaroni and Cheese is formulated differently for countries in Europe than for the U.S.?
 
Crazy, but true! The fact is, that in 2008, Kraft removed artificial colorings, like yellow #5, and chemical sweeteners, like aspartame, from the products that they distribute in Europe, Australia, and other developed countries due to consumer concern over scientific studies that link these synthetic ingredients to hyperactivity and asthma in children. But, they haven’t done the same thing here in the U.S., our voices are needed to make that change here too!
 
Please join me in writing to the Kraft CEO, Irene Rosenfeld, a mother of two herself, requesting that Kraft remove these same ingredients from their products here in the U.S. 
 
http://momsrising.democracyinaction.org/o/1768/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=27297
 
Kraft took these chemicals and additives out of their European products. If we want Kraft to do this for us in the U.S., then Kraft needs to hear from us!  Their products are in the vast majority of American households. Together, we can affect remarkable change and have these ingredients removed from the products that Kraft distributes here in the U.S

Thanks,

Along with this:

Dear Charlie Super [not her real name],

Thank you so much for sending a letter to Kraft.  As I'm sure you know, the more letters Kraft receives, the more impact we'll have, so take a moment to spread the word. Just forward the email below to your friends, family or co-workers.  Together, we can move mountains and have these terrible ingredients removed from the products that Kraft distributes here in the U.S.

Thanks for all that you do,

Kite [not her real name either]

So in answer to the question, Do I use my power for good or awesome? I choose good. Write to Irene Rosefeld @ Kraft if you are so moved. 

Smokey Bear.

When he picked me up from the hospital yesterday, this self-described lazy, good-for-nuttin' bear had just worked 4 out of the past 5 shifts. Hospital is a bit short-staffed this summer in the mental health units -- nurses on vacation, others taking their own mental health day(s), a slight surge in admits -- so the opportunity for picking  up double shifts is there, and he is taking advantage. I don't remember the exact figures, but when we counted up his shifts in August he is working something like 365 shifts in 31 days. Heh. That's good for the old bank balance...

Elder Son (Andrew).

I don't remember if I blogged about this, but Andrew failed anatomy last fall in his first semester in med school. There were multiple causes -- it was a pure memorization course with zero logical thinking required (not his kind of thing); the US and world were going through the biggest economic meltdown since the Great Depression, and my summa cum laude econ graduate couldn't resist following the news closely; there was a presidential campaign and election going on, and my intensely political son, ditto; and he didn't particularly like the professor. These are not excuses -- he knows now that he should have allocated his time differently. Live and learn, kid...

When he failed the mid-term exam he called home in utter shock and despair. This was the first thing he had EVER failed. Mom and Dad didn't give him a lot of sympathy. If I recall, my comment was, Remember all the times you have told us about not studying for a test and somehow pulling it out of your as and getting an A because you knew just enough and could bullshit your way through the rest? Eventually that tactic will bite you. And it did.

He studied his ass off the second half of the semester, conferred regularly with the professor, did everything he could to ensure that he passed the course. But it didn't quite work, he failed by 1 point.

The remedy was that he would have to take anatomy again and pass it; the first available opportunity was to take it in summer school with a bunch of undergrads at NYU, his old alma mater. He borrowed some more tuition and rent money from whatever source his med school funding is coming from and prepared for a less-than-exciting summer. 

In May he learned that there was another alternative: a nationally administered test given twice during the summer, that, if he passed it with at least a 70%, would satisfy the professor that he had learned anatomy well enough to proceed in med school. He signed up to take it the first time it would be given, late June, I think. As soon as second semester finals were over he began to study in earnest.

Taking the test in June meant that he had freed up the rest of his summer, so he arranged a trip to Senegal; he would replace another student who, due to family health problems, would not be able to go and perform a public health research project. Andrew has been particularly interested in the health situation in Senegal for several years; he and another med student have been trying for a year to create a (501(c)(3) (non-profit) group to work there and to raise funds for their efforts.

But once again, the best-laid plans, etc. He emailed in mid-June that he didn't feel he was ready for the test and so was rescheduling it for August and canceling his Senegal trip. He was being ultra-responsible but was extremely (and understandably) bummed at how things were going.

Well, to make a long story short -- oops, way too late for that! -- he passed the test and is now walking as though he had dislodged a 16-ton weight from his shoulders. Which he has. Congrats, kiddo!

* * * * *

My knee and ankle surgery went just fine. Very little post-op pain, probably due in large part to the constant cold packs on the affected areas and the steady level of Vicodin in my blood stream. I can walk fine if I need to but have orders to keep the leg elevated for 72 hours.

Here is the *foreign body* that the surgeon removed from my knee. It is a piece of cartilage that looks and feels like a baby tooth:

The hardware the other surgeon removed from my ankle:

I am sure those two longer screws at lower left are from somebody else's bone. There were only seven short screws in mine -- I counted them on the X-ray, plus there are exactly seven holes in the plate. The surgical nurse came into the post-recovery room once to take back something that had been originally put into my show-and-tell package; I think she screwed up, pun intended. (But I have complete faith in the surgeon, so I won't hold the nurse's little error against them.)

Thanks for all your good wishes here and on Facebook and Twitter -- y'all are great!

Sunday bullets.

I need to catch y'all up on stuff; hence, bullets.

* MRI last Thursday. Loud, but since they were looking at my knee rather than my head, not particularly claustrophobic.

* Will get results Monday.

* Earlier on Thursday felt the floating thing in knee occasionally wedge itself into the joint when walking, thus making it impossible to straighten leg.

* Thinking this means arthroscopic surgery to remove bone chip.

* No biggie.

* Tried to get new lens for glasses to replace one that cracked when face plant occurred. Called place where originally got glasses.

* LensCrafters is scam place.

* Told me I couldn't get just one lens, had to get both, new one would be made by different technician, might not match, visual irregularities, blah blah blah... $500.

* Two words for them: Quality.Control.

* Me, aghast: "Five hundred bucks? Sorry, I will go somewhere else and get new glasses."

* Them: [snippy snippy uppity uppity] "...[blah blah]..."

* Went to Sam's Club.

* Eye exam + new glasses =  $321.

* Take that, LensCrafters!

* Screws, plate, and long bolt securing ankle broken last year will come out, day surgery, August 28.

* Ortho surgeon still a cutie and bit of a hunk.

* :-)

* Technicolor knee & leg fading to more or less normal colors. Boring.

* Even normal-colored knee & leg still painful. Annoying.

* Other leg, both arms, back, head all intact and relatively normal. Reassuring.

* Trying to find comfort in above.

* Glass half full, etc.

* Worked at county library/Friends of Libraries booth at county fair Saturday.

* First time in seven years working there that temperature and humidity below 90 (32℃).

* :-)

* Knitting sock in public attracted another knitter.

* Pleasant knitterly chat ensued.

* Was told I should enter my socks at the fair.

* Subsequently checked out knitting and crochet entries.

* Very sad.

* Couple sweaters† knit from nice yarn, one pair of socks in Tofutsie, a lot of items knit or crocheted in acrylic.

* Anything I have knit in the past five years, including dishcloths, is at least as good as what I saw (except for the sweaters -- see † below).

* Already planning what to enter next year.

* Not that I am competitive or anything.

* Chatted with UW-Extension guy who is 4H coordinator for county.

* (On his governing committee; that's how I know him.)

* Remote possibility that I may be judging 4H knitting sometime in future.

* Went out for dinner last night with three other couples from lake.

* Most excellent new-ish Vietnamese restaurant in Grantsburg, small town 37.5 miles north of here.

* Long way to drive for a meal.

* Meal worth it.

* Group chatted with owner after dinner.

* She and boyfriend worked in restaurants in Twin Cities for years, wanted their own.

* Thought this location in Grantsburg would be good because there were no other Asian restaurants nearby.

* Nearby = 40+ miles.

* Perhaps that should have been indication of local interest in Asian food?

* Business very slow at first, picking up now.

* As previously mentioned, food = excellent (aspargus basil shiitake mushrooms with grilled shrimp).

* Must re-visit restaurant; many other items of interest on menu.

 

That's enough for today. Go now and enjoy the rest of your weekend!

† The winning item was a sweater knit by a woman whom I know slightly through the local fiber guild. I didn't read the entry card beyond her name, but I expect that she spun the yarn (wool/llama blend, I think, and from her own animals). It was an Icelandic-style, fair isle circular yoked pullover, thick and warm enough to substitute for a winter coat. The other sweater -- knit by the woman with whom I chatted -- was a deep red lacy pullover  with a shawl collar in wool/mohair/alpaca blend. Both sweaters were lovely and definitely worthy of the winning ribbons. It was the rest of the entries that failed to impress me.

Highlights of my convalescence.

I have been saving this post just in case there were more *highlights* that needed to be included. Nah, I think this is enough.

* * * * *

My beloved morphine pump in the hospital.

(I know I took a photo of it, but apparently at some point I deleted it. Dang.)

After the surgery, I had to give myself an injection of blood thinner to prevent deep vein thrombosis. Daily. For ten days.

Luckily, I have never been prone to needle phobia, so this was not particularly traumatic. The needle was so very thin I almost couldn't feel it going in, although injecting the blood thinner burned a little. But every injection site -- they were all across my midriff -- developed a sweet little bruise. I shall spare you to that view.

OTOH, I got my very own sharps disposal container.

Are you jealous yet?

#2 son got rid of something I had wanted to eliminate for a long time.

That's the passage from the original house (behind him) into the addition (the plywood floor). The opening was a large window in the original house; during construction we cut out a piece of the wall below where the window had been so we could easily walk back and forth. But that opening was not wide enough for the wheel chair ::grumble::

Now it is ::happy face::

Next, he removed a barrier that was never a problem before but which now kept the wheelchair out of my office.

After that 2x4 was gone I could roll right in there, eliminating the problematic transfer through the door from wheel chair (which has brakes to keep it immobile) to office chair (which doesn't) ::more grin::

Once he was done, I could roll over almost all of the second floor, which is the main floor of the house. Yippee!

A few days later I discovered that if I go backwards in the wheelchair by pushing with my foot and cast, I can zip around the house really fast.The next day I discovered that if I do that, I get a stiff neck from watching where I am going. :-( So I zip around but don't bother to look behind myself much. Watch out, dogs! Wheelchair, coming through!

I can do laundry and even move the basket of clean laundry back to the bedroom. Here is my foot, aka trailer hitch, towing the basket.

Most of the doors that I wheel through are wide enough for the wheel chair, but sometimes it is a tight fit. The victim(s) in this case are my knuckles, which I have mashed into door frames -- hard! -- on both the right and left sides.

The purplish area around the second knuckle from the bottom is the residual bruising from my latest mashing. Both times I have done this -- right and left -- I broke a blood vessel in the affected hand like I did last year. But that experience had taught me to be alert to such things, so both recent times I quickly put pressure on the affected area to keep down the internal blood leakage. I may be slow, but I am teachable.

Although I attempted to telecommute after the ankle break, it was just too difficult. So I went back on leave of absence until February. But my buds at the office didn't forget me.

Someone else didn't forget me, damn...

That's just for the operating room and the overnight hospital stay. It does not include the surgeon's bill, the several many outpatient visits, nor the physical therapy yet to come. Right now our medical insurance is duking it out with our auto coverage, saying that since the accident happened as I was exiting the car, the auto insurance should cover some or all of it. From what I have learned so far, State Farm (auto) will cover a smallish piece of the total; the rest (fingers and toes crossed) should be 100% covered by our medical insurance.

On the rare occasions when I have had to venture out into the world on my own, without Smokey to wrestle the wheelchair and to chauffeur me around, I have had to use the walker. The main floor of our house is the second floor, and I get down the stairs to the first floor and back up the graceful way -- on my butt. Taking the walker down was not too difficult, but bringing it back up was. Here was my solution:

Two dog leashes, one attached to each side of the walker, and the two clipped together behind my neck. I dragged it up the stairs behind myself and still had both hands free to hoist myself up a step at a time. Sometimes I amaze myself.

* * * * *

Today was my first physical therapy session. The PT was impressed with the range of motion I had already regained, but warned me about *cheating* on the weight-bearing. Maybe it was just the power of suggestion, but my ankle hurt for the rest of the day after I started to worry that I might be doing harm to it by putting a bit a weight on it. That would really suck. So I am being careful again, no weight, just hop along on one foot behind the walker. My goal is to be walking unaided by mid-December, and I don't want to jeopardize that.

This is my dream.

Not.

But I admire this* kid.

Here's a video of him landing his first backflip in a wheelchair.

Aaron humbles me. I was so proud of myself for learning how to maneuver my wheelchair in tight places and figuring out the trick to getting over threshholds up to 2" tall (using my uninjured foot to lift the front, i.e., small wheels, of the wheelchair). The stuff he does is amazing. I especially loved that he was teaching a younger wheelchair-bound (or should it be -enabled?) kid.

Go, Aaron!

* The video accompanying the Las Vegas Sun article about Aaron has his mother, too. What a good and brave mom!

Update.

Thank you so much for all the good wishes that you have sent my way. It seems to be working -- the surgery went off without a hitch on Friday. I stayed overnight in the hospital for pain management -- is it wrong that I fell totally in love with my very own personal patient-controlled morphine pump? -- and came home Saturday. There were some bad moments Saturday as we got home; the morphine had worn off and the pain pills had not yet kicked in, and my ankle hurt as much as it had the night I broke it. Tears and hugs ensued, and eventually the pain was back under control. And I slept pretty much straight through to Sunday morning.

I have a delightful x-ray of the ankle showing all the screws and the plate that the doc put into my ankle, but I can't show it to you -- camera is in my tote bag next to me but cable is in my office. That seems to  be often the case; the thing I want/need is not within reach and thus could just as well be a million miles away.  Smokey's rheumatoid arthritis keeps him from being as mobile as he would like, so we both are trying to exercise as much patience as possible. This can be a challenge, but a good lesson to learn, nevertheless.

Oh! My Bear just brought me what needed to show you the x-rays. All together now: Thank you, Smokey!

Thus endeth for anatomy lesson for tonight.

 

Arrrrrr! Ankle! A small favor!

It's International Talk Like a Pirate Day! Arrrrrr!

* * * * *

Thank you all for the outpouring of sympathetic "ouch!"-es in the comments! It made checking my email totally pain-free :-)

The official update:

Ankle = broken in two places. One significant break near the bottom of the skinnier shin bone, one fleck fracture at the bottom of the other, bigger bone. Surgery scheduled for next Friday, 9/26, to allow for swelling to go away. Then a cast and crutches for 6 weeks, no weight on that foot; then 6 weeks in a walking(?) cast, followed by lots of physical therapy.

So much for our 99% certainty that the ankle was not broken. In our defense, neither did anyone else at the clinic until the doc looked at the x-ray.

Insurance issues dictated that the surgery, etc., be done at Fairview Lakes Hospital in Wyoming, MN (45-60 minutes away) instead of St. Croix Falls Regional Medical Center (20-30 minutes away). The upside is that the ortho surgeon at Fairview may very well be a better doc for my situation; he did an advanced surgical residency at Yale and his speciality is rebuilding ankles :-)

For now, and until next Friday, I have an enormous, soft-ish, slightly compressive dressing on that foot and ankle and shin to help control swelling. I am instructed to spend 110% of my time with the foot elevated, preferably above the level of my heart. (For the record, this is exactly what Cathy-Cate of Hither & Yarn recommended; anyone with a medical issue is hereby directed to her blog.) I have a wheelchair and 2 different walkers, plus crutches borrowed from a neighbor who broke her ankle -- in a much worse way -- a few years ago. As ankle fractures go, mine is just average, not spectacular. (yay)

Plus, after visiting the various doctors, I now have my very own vat of Vicodin :-)

I'm trying to figure out how to work this broken ankle thing into a contest. Stay tuned...

* * * * *

From today's email (and which I already forwarded to many of you):

Please pass around to everyone you know. Maybe something good can come from this nightmare of Sarah Palin’s VP nomination!

For $10, or even $5...it doesn't have to be a big donation.

Instead of (in addition to?) us all sending around more emails about how horrible Sarah Palin is, let's all make a donation to Planned Parenthood in Sarah Palin's name.

And here's the good part: when you make a donation to Planned Parenthood in her name, they'll send her a card telling her that the donation has been made in her honor.

Make sure you use that link above or choose the pulldown of Honorary or Memorial Donations, not the regular Donate Online link.

Here is the link to the Planned Parenthood website:

https://secure.ga0.org/02/pp10000_inhonor

You'll need to fill in the address to let them know where to send the "In Sarah Palin's honor" card. The address for the McCain campaign headquarters is:

McCain for President
1235 S. Clark Street
1st Floor
Arlington VA 22202

Twisted. Really, truly twisted.

Yep, that's what I did all right. Twisting force, stretching or possible tearing of something or other. I would show you a photo of my own ankle, wrapped in an Ace bandage, but my camera is not within reach and there ain't no way I'm gonna go get it.

I got home kinda late last night after the monthly county board meeting. There had been one or two controversial issues to be decided,and the public comment section of the meeting, usually limited to 30 minutes, went on for over an hour.So it was nearly midnight when I got home.

Anyway, I got home, parked Smokey's van -- he was installing a different stereo and a cruise control in the new Aveo -- and attempted to dismount from the driver's seat. Since I had parked as far as I could toward one side of the slab in front of the garage in order to leave him as much room as possible where he was working, the van was right at the edge of the slab. There is a slight drop-off/washout there, and I stepped right on that edge. Twisted my ankle, fell, and managed to wedge my shoe and foot in an extreme position -- left foot twisted outward from my lower leg at least 90°.

I freed the foot and just lay there and yelped like a Kat™ in pain. Which I was.

Luckily Smokey was still working on the other car and so was just a few feet away. He is naturally ultra-calm in these situations, in addition to having 35 years of nursing experience. He had me just lie there for awhile; brought me a blanket and a Vicodin and some pillows. And a stuffed animal and my iPod. When, after 30-40 minutes, the Vicodin had taken effect, I managed to get myself upright, but I couldn't put any weight at all on the ankle. He brought his wheeled walker -- purchased several years ago when his rheumatoid arthritis was worse than it is today -- and we used that, plus our quasi-elevator, to get me upstairs and into bed.

It's definitely better today, although I still can't put enough weight on it to walk unaided. We will give it one more day to see how much more it improves, then go to the doc if it seems advisable. (Even if it were broken, which we are about 99% sure it isn't, a doc would have waited 24 hours to set and cast it anyway, in order to let some of the swelling subside.) I borrowed a pair of crutches and another, smaller, walker from our neighbor who shattered her ankle a few years back. We are all just one Oops! away from disaster.

In the meantime, whatever shall I do during this time when I am chairbound? Too bad I don't like to read and don't have a nice, sedentary hobby that could keep me amused...