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TKR Lavender's getting a new left knee for Christmas

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Hi @tiredwife Thanking you for your kind wishes. Feeling much better today wondering if the change in medications were the reason not feeling well this morning we went to the doctors for a follow up appointment for both of us and then so happy to get back for a walk in our park. Not feeling shaky anymore headache gone and feeling much more like me again. I was happy to get out of the house and fresh air and the sun today is beautiful. Roses seem to have got a burst of steam all of a sudden so many buds. Nice to see them still flowering no sign of the beetles now so flowers are not being eaten.

I can't believe it is going to be October 1 on Wednesday hard to believe how fast the summer went but the fall colors are starting to show more and the trees are so pretty. Sometimes a day to take it slower makes a difference and good to catch up on sleep and relax.

Still nice enough weather to wear shorts and the sun is nice and now sitting and watching a movie then a nap still feel a little tired but so nice to get out and visit our feathered friends in the park. Hope you are having a nice day wishing you a great week Holly
 
@lavender Glad you are feeling better. I cut back some of my rose bushes Saturday, they were getting leggy, and saw some had new buds on them. Chances are I will get a few more blooms before frost comes. October is one of my favorite months here, we are hoping for a lot of fall color because we have gotten lots of rain. Being outside Saturday pulling weeds, etc. was not a good idea. My allergies kicked in again (been a really bad year for it). I decided to stay in today and try to let my allergy meds work. Hubby doesn't have PT anymore so he went on a walk around the block (think he was just curious as to why the road was blocked off and torn up - broken water line). I'll be glad when the weeds die so I can go walking with him. You have a good evening.
 
Hello Holly @lavender
I do hope that when you are reading this, that you are feeling better.

Your body was telling you to rest and get extra sleep, so you must have needed it.

Take care,
Cathie
 
Hi @tiredwife Sorry to hear about your allergies not a nice feeling . Hoping they feel better and give you some relief . We have something around us that is making us both sneeze quite often and seem to be blowing my nose so much more then I have other summers. We usually take something like for it like Reactine but did not this summer.
Hope your roses are still going to give you some blossoms they are so pretty. Garden seems to be so green still keep thinking we should start soon to get it ready but the only plant that is turning yellow is our Solomon Seal it is ready but the peonies and hostas are still looking pretty good.

So nice your husband had a chance to go for a walk and that his pt is all finished. My surgeon recommended walks as the best form of exercise just as long as you take it slow and go as far as your knee can handle and prefers it over the pt for us.

Hope they have fixed the water line must have made a mess. Hope you can get out for some nice walks to and wishing you a nice sleep Holly
 
Hi Cathie @marmora Thank you for you nice post and so happy today to be feeling better missed going out for a walk yesterday just so tired and dizzy think it might be an effect of the medication changes.

I went to my doctors visit today and my doctor was very happy to hear that I had a date for my knee surgery. We had a little talk about how I was feeling and he said that my blood pressure has dropped a lot since my visit last week so the new medication is working just told me to please make sure that I do not miss a dose very important with this medication. At my last visit he took two medications away and replaced them with this one so think he is on the right track he is a great doctor.

I asked him how he felt about the idea of my booking a dental appointment just before surgery and he advised me to check with my surgeon just in case but said if it was just a cleaning then should be alright but maybe just check in case.

I called my dentist and asked when my appointment would be due we go every 9 months as this is what my medical plan covers so wanted to get it all taken care of before surgery his office is up stairs in a building about 40 stairs up so rather go now then after surgery. I have an appointment but she said she will help with whatever needed to co ordinate it to help she has booked me for a date a week before surgery and if something comes up she will help to set it up to suit the need to have it done enough time ahead to stay safe.

Hoping to get my pre-op appointments soon as so many appointments before and then plan when the others can be planned.

I usually get up and dressed but yesterday the best place was our bed and slept most of the day not something I usually do but think I needed it to. Going back to family doctor in 4 week so he can check to see if blood pressure medication is still alright and then he said I will be all set for surgery. I will see him again the week before surgery for my 3 month appointment and then all set till March so not needing to do as much after surgery.

Time is going fast but hope it keeps going fast anxious to have surgery all over.

Hope your knee is feeling good and that you are getting some sleep and that they pain levels for you are easier hard to have the pain on top of everything else and hope you are having more time in the pool you go to.
Off to bed and thanks again you are great Holly
 
Last night I was woke up by the sound of large rain drops I thought that was what it was but actually the sound of a skunk trying to find something to eat in our neighbors garbage bags.

I looked out the window all you could see was their bags being moved around and the popping sound was the very large skunk dragging the bag around. Looked out when getting up to go to the bathroom and he was back stayed till it did start raining and bigger then the skunk that I saw last week. Family of five skunks living around us and so lucky that he seems calm no spraying that a good thing for sure.

Raining today noticing lots of leaves have fallen over the past day hoping it clears up before walking in the park going for lunch at our favorite restaurant in the little town nearby and last day for anniversary coupon envelopes last time we were surprised to find a 25 percent off one. It was funny to watch but somehow a squirrel who was sitting on our fence had found what looked like a tootsie pop sucker.

He was patiently unwrapping that sucker and at first my husband thought he was holding a small screwdriver all you could see was the white stick bobbing around. Thinking it might have fallen out of one of the kids lunch bags . Found the wrapper in our garden looks like he managed to eat it as the sucker part is gone. The people next door put in a vegetable garden this year and finding tomatoes and eggplants on the top of our fence wondering what other surprises we will find in our garden when we get it ready for the winter. Tomorrow is the first of October where has the time gone but weather is still nice here. Hoping you have a nice day. Holly
 
@lavender Had to laugh at the image in my mind of the squirrel with the sucker! They like peppermints too! You have a good day. Enjoy your outing for lunch!
 
So many difficult decisions we need to make sometimes and how the need for care for elderly loved ones often ends in placement in nursing homes. The need for help is sometimes so necessary people looking for a way to make sure that their family member has the best care and the option for a nursing home is often the only way to ensure their loved one is safe. When my Mom was sent to the rehab hospital it was understood that the stay would be just till her cast came off. Wondered at the time how does someone with a broken bone manage to do rehab no way to bend a leg in a cast.

There is a health care centre less then five minutes just up and around the corner from where I grew up in the house that my parents still lived in. Instead of finding room here they sent her to a place almost an hour a way each way and her stay was almost three months being away that long when you are assured you are going home does things to people and she started to believe as did I now that going home might not happen how could this happen. During this time one of the women staying in the same place who shared the room with my Mom and awaiting to go home to her cats and husbands was taken away and visiting my Mom which we did each day she told us that her friend Evelyn was going to a home no one told her her sons just signed her in no concern she should have been talked to. Evelyn was a nice lady she had broken her hip and still very aware as I could see of what she was doing. Her daughter had gone on a holiday and would have challenged the decision but came home and found her mother gone.

My Moms fear was that she would go to a home to no reason still seemed to manage great as did my Dad at that time and he was finding it hard dealing with her not being home took him with us to visit.

My oldest brother as we later found out had been making plans for her to stay she did not and still does not believe he could do this to her my brothers two youngest decided that she would come home and went early one morning got her dressed had their van outside and loaded her into a wheelchair signed her out and told them she would no longer be part of their building. Three other women also left they went to a home to no one told them

My Dad at this time was fine but so stressed about what was happening and during this time he had a stroke went to see him one morning and started to make up his pills and he told me he would not go today his leg was sore and kept rubbing it told him he should go to the hospital he said he was ok he was afraid to end up the same way and he did three months later after my Mom came home he had a bad stroke and went by ambulance to the hospital this changed his life forever he was now in the system only in the hospital all his life to be born and then diabetic scare when they determined he had diabetis.

By the following spring he died so many changes taken from his home the place he loved raised the five kids he loved and now in a place he was just another person I blame the treatment my Mom had and the stress it put on him and he after the things with her happened was never to live the way he did again. I guess homes are alright for some other I have met like the home they live in and the care that they are given but others are just not the place that people should live the last part of their lives and sometimes they do cause the person that goes to the home to give up nothing to look forward to once they loose hope that they will go home they just give up. Hoping that if the day comes that I need to be taken away from my husband and our life together I fall asleep and never go. I have tried to put these images out of my mind and have managed but reading about @Nana moon 27 experience at the hospital and hearing how the women she helped were treated makes my think that something has to be done differently with people as they age who still deserved a good life patient care understanding for the fact that they still feel and know that they are having a few difficulties but are still people who still have value and people who love them and find it hard to see them struggle more home care options rather then placing them in a home. Saw so many of these people where my Dad was but unlike my Dad so many with out people who visit them. Holly
 
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@lavender I worked in 2 nursing homes as a CNA and in 1 as housekeeping. The biggest problem is they are often understaffed. The ones that are non profit are usually a bit better, not so much greed. I hate to say it but some people need to be in nursing homes. Some need the 24 hour supervision like Alzheimer's, and some have health conditions that need constant attention. My husband's mom went into a nursing home of her own choice. Her blood pressure is all over the place and they constantly have to adjust her meds. She can't walk much, and is pretty much blind. People she has known for years works there, so she is taken good care of. The best nursing home I had worked in has what they call the Eden project. The Eden project allows people to keep their pets if the animal (dog, cat, bird, fish) are healthy and friendly. It made more work on the people that work there because there were litter pans to clean, dogs to walk, etc. Some of the more able patients help do some of the animal care. The home even had it's own cats that were allowed to go anywhere the doors were open. If you didn't want them in your room you closed your door. It was kind of neat to see how much happier the patients were because of the animals.
 
NYT recently had an article on elder care. It is bad almost everywhere.
Tiredwife is right, staffing is a big problem.
The system is more expensive than it needs to be with the way payment is set up on US. Nursing homes are paid for, home care rarely is.
Very sad.


Sent from my iPod touch using BoneSmart®
LTKR Sept 13 2011
Revision April 15 2014
 
Hi @tiredwife The nursing homes you worked in sound like they had a few more personal elements that would make the people living there feel more at home. The one that my Dad went to in our city while my Mom was having her first knee replacement was actually nice reminded me of my Dads Moms house (my Gramma) and was very homey and although it was strange for him leaving his house a much better choice then the one he went to after this as this home was not covered by any insurance and costed a little more then the second choice. First home was located in a older house which was quite large and once owned by a family who turned it into a place where even couples could live together if they needed somewhere easier to take care of. Lots of pictures of things that older people could identify with and things they would remember growing up like a victorian house actually nice and the staff was very good at their jobs. Dining room with familiar type of old fashioned china wear and places they could gather small and cozy for watching tv and fish tanks birds etc. He managed fine here and had his own little room very nice.Some of the people he was with were people he grew up with one he worked with and something to talk about in common living in his own city.

The home he went to was not this way very old think it used to be a school one level which was good but so many hallways all over the place confusing for anyone trying to make their way around even for us visiting. The room my Dad was in had two people the man in the other bed died and no one thought of taking my Dad out of the room realized the body had to wait till the coroner came but thanking that we came to visit that day and took my Dad down the hall to sit in the exercize room asking why he had been left there. The curtain around the mans bed was pulled and window open as they do but my Dad was left in this room and it was winter time and someone messed up they were embarrased and tried to delay us from going in as they knew we would wonder why no one had thought of this

The room he was in had a bathroom that both sides were to share other room backed on to the bathroom on the other side and the man on the other side in the other room locked the bathroom door my Dad could never get in and having kidney issues this was very hard he could not understand why.

For someone who had lived alone not so different but someone who had lived in his own home too many adjustments he was not a complainer by any means just tried so hard. Too far from home during the winter months for everyone to make the trip to visit so other then the three of us almost every day to take my Mom and my brothers going once a week he was alone a lot and so many people there with Alzheimers that he had problems understanding why so many could not communicate with him. He made a friend across the hall and we wondered why this man was there to . His friendship with my Dad and the way he helped him get his bearings when he first arrived were so appreciated they ate lunch together and he was his friend.

I guess the problem is that my Dad wanted to home thought when my Mom was home from the hospital he would go home to told him while he was in the hospital he would go home and he did but he soon realized when no one told this again he would not return so things did not mean the same anymore and actually surprised when this proud man told me he thought maybe he would be better to die.

What a way to spend your last three months the rating on the home which is the same company as this one closer to home was a 2 so many bad reports of people being left , but no option of another choice. Depending on the staff working there I guess that would make a difference in the amount of care the patients receive but would not wish this type of living on anyone. He was put into palative care at a hospital a few towns away after falling and more strokes and died there. As the nurse that did his home care checks said she could not say where there would be a home she would recommend as in her opinion there were really no homes she would be willing to put her own mom into . She was the woman that did the placements not such a good piece of news.

Another problems is that there is a serious shortage of available homes none available in our city and my Dad was on the top of the waiting list.

The only home available was 50 miles away and no one or thing there was familiar to him which is a very important factor for people who are in the beginning and other stages of Dementia it was a farming town everyone there knew their surrounding but not someone who had lived somewhere else. I am sure your treatment of the patients you cared for was very good and you cared but not all do. The home you worked in seems to have put extra care into making the patients comfortable and was running on higher standards less changes would have been felt if they could take more of the things that they had and to take their dogs and cats and etc would make them feel closer to home. Holly
 
Hi @tiredwife I just remembered you saying the best ones are non profit and I agree with you as the first home my Dad was in was non profit and so much more available he made friends with the woman who cleaned his room she loved to talk about Harley Davidson motorcycles with him as she worked and put something extra into his day doing that he drove his motorcycle before he turned 80 it was something he loved to show her his pictures and she asked him when he got home if she could come around and visit him and would he show his to her. As I said I am sure you were very good at your job can see how much you care the way you take care of your husband and would have liked you to work where he was . Also I think it would be a difficult place to work the things you would see hard to see people die and not the easiest job by any means but what a difference to people who need some help. Holly
 
@lavender Yes the patients in the Eden project were a lot happier than the ones in the other homes, granted the Eden project had a little more chaos because of the animals, but isn't that a part of life. I just checked and there are some Eden project homes in Canada.
 
Came home today to another call from the OS office left a message so called back no answer so wondering what she was calling about maybe an earlier date or information about pre- op appointments going to wait a little longer and then call her back. Holly
 
@lavender We must have posted at the same time. Thank you, I tried to do my best while a CNA. It is a job that is hard on the body (messed my back up) and on the emotions. The odd saying about things happening in 3s is true. We always ended up with 3 deaths at a time.
 
Hi @tiredwife hoping to never need a home again but thanks so much for telling about the Eden home project it is good to know there are other options even if you have to go somewhere else keeping it in mind if ever needing one again. Also thanking you for being someone that obviously cared about how you did your job. Holly
 
@lavender Holly no need to thank me, everyone in the nursing field should be sympathetic to people's needs. Biggest problem is that they are so overworked that they just don't have the time! It was so nice the few times we were fully staffed! We had time to paint fingernails, chat with them look at their hobbies and photos, etc. I had a few that talked to me when no one else knew they could speak! I might have stayed in the job if it wasn't so hard on my back. You take care and stay clear of the skunks!
[Bonesmart.org] Lavender's getting a new left knee for Christmas
 
My Dad mom my Gramma was the first person I ever knew that had to go to a home she broke her hip at the age of 80 after living in her own house and over the years she took in borders at their house and spent most of her life doing what she loved cooking baking and taking care of people she also did all kinds of knitting and sewing so many talents and at the time she broke her hip my parents tried to think up a way of bring her to live with us but we were all at home still and no extra room so she went to a home. We visited her and my Mom took a packed little lunch to her cheese and some biscuits little extras she was always hungry and she was although missing her home content the home was in our hospital a five minute walk up the train track which ran behind our house and then a short walk up to the hospital doors but she was close to home and family so visits were easy to do.

My Gramma's aunt my great great aunt Maggie was the other person in a home very old at that time lived to 90 lost both legs to diabetis and still sat and did her little projects not missing her home as much as she had lived there up till this age and had all of us visiting her. I think the thing that would have helped in my Dads case is if he had of been closer to home he would have found someone there he knew probably talk about things he had in common with them and so many more people neighbors that worried about him could have joined in and visited to.One neighbor sent him letters from their dog which my Dad liked and one of the many dogs he kept dog biscuits for in the kitchen at home to share for them on their visits to the deck while out on their walks. Familiar things they know and that were part of the life the remembered are such an important thing for anyone to feel more at home. Holly
 
I can't believe it I called my surgeons office back so I would not miss her calling me back now have a new surgery date. I was hoping she would be telling me that the date was sooner but now the date is for the following Monday now December 22 wondering why the 18 seemed close enough . I asked if I would be home for Christmas and not sure she said it would depend on how things go and now wondering how with the holidays coming up I will manage to get my prescriptions filled as it was hard getting a hold of them when we were not dealing with a holiday. Hoping they are not planning on taking the week between Christmas and New Years off but now thinking I will just call my family doctor he will take care of the medications for me so no need to call them. Still happy to have the surgery but not comfortable about the other things maybe it would have worked out better to have waited till the spring and had it then.

I really like the surgeon not fussy on his secretary as so hard to get a hold of and not expecting surgery right at Christmas time but guess have to make the best of it and it will be nice to have it all over with. I guess a new knee will be a nice gift wish it was all over with now. My husband and I were planning on staying home this year my brother usually has us to their house to spend the time with them for Christmas dinner but my husband is telling me not to worry it will all work out fine. Holly
 
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