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THR Just a little better every day -- I'll take it!

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Recovery is all about trying new things and going back to the old if they don't work. Meds are sometimes the hardest to get right. But you will naturally wean yourself off your meds when it's time. When you start forgetting doses it's a sign. Until then - regular meds means mobility! You are doing great Stargazer!
 
Jaycey is so right, sometimes we have to test the boundary with our meds or physical activity to actually know where the boundary is.. Sounds like you are doing very well Stargazer.
 
Things are going well, but... the novelty is wearing off! Coming up on 3 weeks post-op. It's been less painful, easier, not quite as inconvenient, and an all-together better experience than I expected. But I am over it. Enough. I'm doing my best to act as though I merely have a sore leg that needs just a little more and a little specialized care. It's a kind of denial, but denial is often under-rated as a coping strategy. It's harmless enough as long as I don't do anything stupid (don't shake your bad leg to get a shoe to go on all the way -- learned that day before yesterday from experience; no showering when there's no one to hear if you fall -- figured that one out without the experience, just pure blind prudence). It doesn't take much Percocet to be 100% comfortable, but it does take some.

March resolutions: stop working by pulling the computer up to the edge of the bed! Adjust the office desk and chair and move back in there when you feel the urge (or the contractual obligation) to perform digital magic. And stop dressing like a patient -- maybe you'll stop feeling like one. We're not talking wing collars and overcoats for heaven's sake; just pretend it's casual Friday, at least.

And yes, I do know that 2 1/2 weeks is still early and that I'm going to have to pay attention for months to come. But not ALL the time.
 
Ah Stargazer, you have reached an important milestone. The between week 2 and 3 time. You summed it uo
Well the "I'm over it" phase. Your initial supply of positive thoughts are drying up and many of us are reduced to tears, lol! Fear not for you have turned a important corner. I can't take credit for the phrase.
The credit goes to my OS' nurse, after calling after one of my weepy moments :)

It sounds like you are doing quite well. Hang in there.
 
Portrait of the patient within sight of normalcy: taking all things slowly, the promised land is in sight.

I am so pleased to tell you that it's easy at this stage to simply forget that I've become slightly bionic. The hip just feels a little sore; it's felt worse after a hard day's bicycling or after an aggressive racquetball match (one of those where you bounce off the walls and off your opponent a few times). Had my last home nursing visit this week; will enjoy my last PT visit on Friday. Today's was just "keep up the same exercises and walk a lot; use the cane as needed, practice walking smoothly without it when you feel steady." Around the house, I keep filling both hands with stuff like a normal person would and walking off without my third leg, only to remember and have to go back for it. This afternoon, I walked to the mailbox for the first time since February 11 -- may not sound like much, but it's a quarter mile round trip on pavement, and it's very steep. It was too much, but how you gonna know if you don't try?

The skies tonight and for the next few nights are supposed to be clear, so tomorrow I'll configure the telescope to earn my monicker. I was just too tired to embark on that potentially frustrating set of chores today -- too many wires, too many connections, too many toys that have to play together. (You noticing the same pattern I am? Concentration and endurance is a tough combo; either one is OK, but the combination is too much.) Tomorrow I'll start early, take it slowly, solve one issue at a time, and be ready by nightfall. Then I can sit here at the computer, scritch a cat, sip on coffee, and watch the photons come down -- and if I must go outside to tend something beside the telescope in person, I'll step carefully (or shut it down and wait for another night).

My business commute is from the bedroom to a home office, so driving is not the big deal it is for others. Honda coupe, manual transmission -- my PT owned something very similar and assures me that it'll just be a few weeks longer (drive your wife's automatic Subaru if it's life and death; otherwise, leave everything parked till the OS signs off next month). Narcotics -- off for 96 hours. One rough morning (chest pain, anxiety, cold extremities... yeah, me and Keef man, we're like this) but acetaminophen has kept things well under control since then. I'll take more oxycodone if I actually break a bone, but that's about what it's going to have to come to. No more itching, no more fog, and most especially no more mornings when I spend a few hours deciding once a minute every minute not to call 911. (If "shortness of breath" had appeared on the list of complaints, I'd've dialed in spite of the inevitable cascade of alarum, sirens, and bother.) Maybe it was a coincidence that I enjoyed all those symptoms the first time I went >24 hours opiate-free in 18 days. Maybe not. Let's not find out. Your mileage may vary!

Life isn't perfect, but for the first time it's peachier than it was before surgery. Pretty soon it'll be peachier than it's been in years.
 
So great to hear life is becoming normal Stargazer . Lots to look forward to. When you work from home, how any hours are you able to put in a day? I'm really itching to put my mind in gear again. I had to leave the world of narcotics early because of nasty side effects, so I can't really drift off into happy land to fill the time. I wouldn't mind working from home for a long time, seem to get more done than in the chaos of the office. Keep up the good work, you are an inspiration!

-Susan
 
I don't know about this "inspiration" thing. It's just that there are a few jobs here that have to be finished by the end of each month or there's no pretending to be in business. I had to ramp up from 2-3 hours at first (one week post-op, when I could only get maybe half an hour's billable work done per day) to 6-8 hours (at about half normal effectiveness) during week two post-op. The last few days of the month (2.5 weeks post) were spent just gritting it out as long as it took, efficient or not. 10-12 hours a day? More? Less? Who keeps count? The magazine is live on the web and how long it took doesn't matter -- I haven't missed that deadline in seven years, so why start now? Next month will be routine, and last month is graciously over. I did insist afterwards that the first few days of March were totally off-duty, but I need to get well and truly back up to speed or I'll be hopelessly behind.

Anyway, once off narcotics and back at a real desk (FWIW, you can make a nice enough computer desk out of a piece of cardboard and a walker, but sitting on the edge of the bed with a mouse on your physical therapy chart makes for lousy ergo) it's become almost easy -- would I rather get work done or think about nuances like whether my scar itches or burns? Easy question.

I still don't quite trust my judgement, for reasons I can't quite fathom. That is, I'm happy to do meat and potatoes code and maintenance all day long, but if a client comes to me and says, "Do you think we should do this or that?" I find the question unanswerable due to overwhelming contingencies. Just imagining the alternate futures is exhausting. ("One world at a time...") So far, everyone has been patient, but pretty soon now I'll have to start making up answers and selling 'em like they make sense. It will be much easier if they really do. In another week or so, it will probably all be fine. The trick is to not panic. Everybody's mileage will differ, but for me the real obstacle was (is) concentration / focus. Sheer endurance --butt in seat time-- that came back much faster.

If I had the option of working "at the office" or "at home" I'd take "at home" for now simply because getting up and dressed and commuting into the office would take a large percentage of my available mental resources. Filtering friendly chatter from "communication" would take the rest. I always liked my coworkers when I did the office thing, but I do remember all that talk, talk, talk. Fondly sometimes, but I wonder how we ever got anything done. I'm very glad I don't have to deal with a lot of people right now; separating noise from signal is just about too much. Fortunately (or un) the only office there IS for me is the third bedroom that long ago disappeared under computer gear and work surfaces. The cats don't talk that much, and they never insist on driving across town for lunch.
 
Stargazer
I would love to work at home but unfortunately the type of work I do requires me to go into the office. I have my 8 wk post op with my OS on Wednesday. I'm hoping he gives me a 2-3 more weeks off. I have a hour to an hour and a half commute in both directions in very busy rush hour traffic. The thought of the commute is worse than the actual work time spent at the office. I don't know how I'll hold up for 8 hours under the stress at work either. I think I got a bit of a slow start because I couldn't bear full weight for the first 4 weeks. I need to get out and get more physical exercise and I hope my OS feels that way too. I want to walk without a limp sooner than later and without a cane.
My OS doesn't prescribe PT at this stage of the game so I would like to get out to formal PT and find out how to do things safely like- How do you and can you sit on the floor to do exercises and get up again? Same with the bathtub sit down and how to get up? What exercise are physically appropriate at this stage of recovery? I don't have the answers to these things. I need to find out more before I try them on my own and cause any problems due to my stupidity.
You're lucky you can work from home but then again, I haven't taken the time to even think of work. Don't work too hard! Deadlines are not in my vocabulary. Retirement sounds better and better but the problem is figuring out how much do you need to retire? and is it going to last to see you through. Of course medical is always in the back of my mind too. Life is too complicated!!
 
Oh amen to all of that. Just amen.

I, too, worried about how to do all those PT exercises that the drawings show being done on the floor. Then I realized they could be done in bed without the gymnastics of getting down to the ground and back up again. Also, life is easier because there's been no problem about weight-bearing. Last week one of the cats needed attention and before I even thought about it, I was down on the floor with her. Had to figure out how to get up, of course, but getting down was no problem (neither was getting up, as it turned out, but it did take some planning).

Won't prescribe PT?!? That seems very odd to me; I've found a little PT coaching to be very valuable, but what do I know? On the other hand, it's always something: my insurance would only approve one home nursing visit of the six or seven the OS ordered; the twelve PT house calls, no problem -- fortunately, the home health service company is being easy to work with on that, at least so far.

Best of luck with extending your recuperation. (An hour+ commute? Shoot me now.)
 
Stargazer, so good to see your lovely writing again. I'm one day behind you, and going back to work Monday. I've also had trouble with concentration, and I get soooooo tired. I nap almost every day. Well, one day at a time. We'll see how Monday goes, and then take it from there.
 
Yes, the photos are great, would love to see them in color.

I so enjoy your style of writing.. Love your humor, and the fact that you are taking each recovery day as it comes.. It gets better :)
 
Thanks, Guys. LuluOhio: about 45 years. Really. But the technology changes so radically from time to time that one essentially starts over every decade or so and brings forward some core set of skills that are only approximately applicable. In the beginning there was Tri-X, then High Speed Ektachrome, then hypersensitized film, then early CCDs, then the current raft of more refined CCDs. And that's just sensors; similar metamorphoses have changed what one can expect from optics and (especially) from mounts and guiding. Under computer control, a good mount and proper guide sensor keeps stars locked to the film / CCD with micron-level precision, ten times better, effortlessly, than we used to be able to do, laboriously, with an illuminated cross-hair eyepiece. I can't wait to see what's coming next -- as long as I can afford to play.

Poppet: well, I have decent (not great) three-color data to add, and now that I have a clean monochrome base ("a luminance channel") for the image, the next cloudy spell should give me plenty of time to layer it in. The next clear spell should give me a chance to improve the color channels. A color version will appear -- maybe today, maybe in a day or two -- at the same link. "Stay tuned" as they say.

While it may not be strictly in keeping with the forum, let me say it is really nice to spend so much time NOT thinking about incisions and drugs and canes and restrictions. One month post-op, thus does normal life return! It's lovely.
 
Yes, life becomes very normal as the weeks and months pass..

Looking forward to color :) - thank you, SO and I love to wander through the National Geographic shots of the Universe.. Pretty amazing!
 
Like I'm going to get more sleep this morning anyway? Went ahead and prepped the color data, such as it, only for you<g>. Hit the same link and scroll down. Amazing how much more detail in M106 becomes apparent: ruddy gas and dust clouds, old starlight near the center of the galaxy glowing as if tarnished, while the outer spiral arms light up with bright blue youngsters. Foreground stars, a hundred thousand to a million times closer than the spiral, light up in as many different shades as there are stars. (The color data is still a little "thin" and mottled; another night to get more and better color information would be welcome.)

This is the sort of thing that turns up in a moon-sized patch of sky, empty to the unaided eye. You can hide it all, many times over, with your thumb held at arm's length. The obvious metaphor: there's not very much "ordinary" about "ordinary life." Look closely and it's extraordinary from one end to the other, from way up yonder all the way down to the ground.
 
One month and a few days out, things are pleasantly boring about recuperation. Which is to say: not much to tell, but since I've started blathering on about it, might as well keep on. A little too much itching (coconut oil, long recommended, is finally on its way), and a little too much variety in the way the scar feels (does it burn, or does it sting? why is there an 18-inch long swath down my leg that goes numb when it does that? why do all those feelings simply go away if I touch the area in question?). Nothing alarming. I can make up a plausible story about nerves "reconnecting" or regaining function and mistaking noise for signal. Touching, giving them something to feel, seems to "focus" them, get them back on track, choose your metaphor. At any event, I feel the touch, the noise gets ignored, and all is well for another hour or two.

I can climb on an exercise bicycle at last and will ramp that up this week after adjusting it to be sure I'm on the safe side of 90 degrees at the hip. We have a full evening planned -- dinner with friends, concert with friends, reception for the performers with friends -- the first such a thing since I don't know when, since long before I had this fixed, back before my left hip decided not to work so well, maybe a couple of years? I'll take my cane but the odds are about 50:50 that I forget it somewhere and spend too much time Monday calling around looking for it.

I haven't seen a PT or nurse in over a week. At the PT's final visit, he watched me walk up and down the hall and suggested exactly the right exercise to smooth out my gait (which had acquired a kind of "just home from the sea" roll). Sit, straighten the leg ALL the way out, lock the knee, hold for ten seconds. Repeat a few times. It's the muscles you use in football, I mean soccer, he says (he's not from around here), and you're wanting to use them for the first time in a very long time; they're probably weak from years of favoring that leg, not from surgery. Exactly.

The car and the motorcycle --they're on battery tenders-- start up on the first touch, but I'm at least three weeks from having clearance to use either one (partly because that's how long till my next OS visit, partly because I like having doctor's orders to be driven all around; familiar roads look very different from the other seat; I see things I never see when concentrating on traffic, pedestrians, dogs, gravel, slush, and all the other hazards of the day). And that's about all the news there is. "Boring" is vastly underrated.
 
[Bonesmart.org] Just a little better every day -- I'll take it!
Really nice post, Stargazer. I'm for boring----sometimes it's the best thing there is----comfortable and dependable. Enjoy your evening.

Take care and keep us posted. We care.
[Bonesmart.org] Just a little better every day -- I'll take it!
 
Yay Stargazer no news or boring is pretty awesome. It is such a relief to be done with the surgery and getting better a bit every day isn't it? Keep up with your boring recovery sir, you're doing exceptionally well.

-Susan
 
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