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THR Rockin again

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End of a long day...relaxing in the recliner for a few minutes while I wind down and get a bit sleepier. Enjoying a small bowl of vanilla flavored coconut milk ice cream...it was our first batch in the new ice cream maker. we will be experimenting with non dairy based ice creams since my hubby seems to be sensitive to milk products. i want to try mint chocolate chip next.
Got a new exercise from the PT yesterday...side stepping. She seemed a bit miffed when I said I had been doing it in the kitchen for a few days already! Told my husband I wasn't sure she would appreciate the practicing I did with it today...I practiced sidestepping while I painted deck railing! We have a massive deck and the railings are peeling so this is the summer to get it repainted. I did the top rail, the outside of the next two rails and the inside of three of the four rails. Was careful to not bend too much and stayed very stable when moving with paint brush and little paint bucket. Decided I would do two bays and that was about right. Was just starting to get sloppy tired and get paint all over me when I quit. Will keep chewing away at it in small amounts for the remainder of the summer. It made me feel like a useful member of society to work on a necessary chore for a bit over an hour. Tired me out but was a very satisfactory kind of tired.
Took a couple of pics of our gardens on the south side of the house...they are looking down on them from the afore mentioned deck! Shucks, will have to figure out how to compress the file it is too big. Too sleepy to figure it out now...night all. Hope everyone sleeps well.
 
zauberflöte I think my energy is generated by fear! Lol I keep thinking how quickly August 6 is coming and that I will have to jump in feet first and full time. Teaching is actually pretty physically taxing...I have to be able to walk pretty far just to get in my room...not to mention hauling my backpack with laptop etc...and the first week I have to physically move lab tables, bookcases full of books and my teacher desk to where they belong in the room. When they clean over the summer they take all the furniture out of the room to strip and then wax the floors. I will have to get all my friends to help me cause each table is probably about 80-90 lbs and even the chairs are significantly heavy.
Just did my first real outing. Today is two weeks from surgery....so my husband took me to Home Depot to get some herbs and flowers for a garden bed he just pulled all the peas out of and dug ollas into for water. We decided to make it a kitchen herbs bed. I pushed the cart till near the end when it started to feel too heavy. Bob checked us out and I just headed for the car to rest. I probably would have done better but our home health aid made a bad decision with my FIL this morning before my outing and he had a major poopy accident on the carpet in my bathroom. I had to go downstairs to find the little spot bot carpet cleaner since I couldn't remember where we had stashed it, or where the stuff for it was either. So before I left I had gone down the stairs and walked up the hill outside to get back in the house and worked the spot bot over the rather large affected area. Sometimes living with FIL has some interesting wrinkles.
Oh well, I survived and am tucked up in bed with ice, feet elevated and a lovely lunch. Planning on reading some geology textbooks and figure that will send me off to zzzzzzland pretty quickly. Afternoons are siesta time in the heat anyway...that is my excuse and I am sticking to it!
 
nmscienceteacher take one day at a time and don't think about August or even before. Day to day or if that's too stressful moment to moment. You can not dictate this recovery. Glad you are getting some rest!
 
nmscienceteacher oh gosh, I am sorry about the accident... m-i-l at her house has similar problems, but has full time care, and someone comes to clean for her as well.
Your little snuggery with lunch sounds lovely! :sleep: enjoy!
 
Saw my surgeon today and got the blankety blank staples out...they were killing me. There were 46 of the nasty things. I now have some ridiculous number of steri strips...and then my dear darling surgeon decided I needed to have it all covered up with gauze and medi port tape till Saturday...so no shower till then unless I cheat! Am tempted to! But I will try my best to be good.
Tired tonight. Painted a section of the deck railing before PT came. Walked with two canes up five houses and back...went to the surgeon, helped make dinner, made some gluten free chocolate chip cookies (out of a tub...so not much work) and scarfed down four of them cause I really wanted a treat, then got father in law down to bed and I find myself dozing off in my recliner. Thinking of just leaving the mess in the kitchen and doing it in the am...too tired to function right now. Night all, hope you all sleep well.
 
I CHEATED...AND THANK GOD I DID
Told Bob today that I had to shower so we were going to be good and cover the tape construction the surgeon swaddled my incision in but the tape was itching and the skin was getting red and weepy so we decided to take it off and start over...but the medi port tape was welded to my skin! Mind you my incision is about 15-16 inches long and he put a good 2 inch buffer of tape all around the gauze pads that covered it so we are talking significant surface area here. We tried to remove the tape and it was clear the skin was coming with it...so we had to break out the GooGone. We had tried to buy adhesive remover and can not find it. The pharmacist suggested the Goo Gone and it does melt the adhesive if you get enough on so we saturated it and spent a good 15 min gradually working the goo gone into the tape and under it all around the incision. In the process I got my hand and fore arm covered in gooey semi-dissolved adhesive! Finally got the damn thing off and took a much needed shower and tried multiple products to get the gooey mess off my backside to no avail. Got dressed and resigned myself to pulling my clothes off me every time I sat, or stood up...figured eventually there would be enough cloth lint to coat the area but my clothes were really getting stuck so I finally decided to slather myself in baby powder...at least I won't stick to everything my skin touches! This is probably not what my surgeon had in mind...but I honestly think I would have had an acre of raw oozy skin surrounding my incision by tomorrow night so I consider my actions a necessary cheat! I am sure in a couple of days this will be funny...right now my skin hurts too much to see the humor. My husband decided my surgeon was having a hypoglycemic moment when he put that much tape on me.
 
oh nmscienceteacher YUK! I'm sorry! You're not the only one to have that reaction-- I can't remember who it was, but they described just what you had with the red and weepy skin from the adhesive. I am very glad you did cheat-- it would have been a major mess if you hadn't. I'm trying to think of what to put on it to soothe it? let me tag sqwerlie and ByGosh , nurses both, see if they have any ideas.

I bet the OS didn't read the directions-- surely one doesn't need THAT much tape??!!!??:heehee:
 
Great shower story nmscienceteacher! But sorry was such an ordeal... and painful utimately... yuk. You OK now? Goes to show that NOTHING can stop us from that watery nirvana! :bow: You painting more this weekend??? It's on our to-do's as well... have several connecting decks and Lots of railings... thinking of powerwashing first - any suggestions?
 
nmscienceteacher The way to remove adhesive from the skin is with acetone, which is in nail polish remover. We'd use it in the hospital to get the residual gluey gunk off of skin from tape, or sometimes to ease the tape off of a particularly hairy arm or leg, so we wouldn't rip their hair out when pulling the tape off. ouch. But if you have raw and weepy skin, or even red and irritated, I'd be very reluctant to recommend using it on your skin. Maybe some nice gentle appliation of plain, unscented baby oil with a well-saturated cotton ball would help some, or whatever skin lotion your skin is ok with- something gentle, not perfumey. Just don't rub and irritate the area any more than it already is. The last thing you want is a huge open raw area around the incision. You can try putting some 4x4 gauze across the area and using hypo-allergenic tape to keep it on so the area is covered, if it needs to be, or if the skin is open at all.
I do remember this happening to someone else, too, but I forgot who.....They got weepy raw skin from the tape.
Take care of it, and be careful, you don't want any skin infection. If it looks bad, call the OS for advice. What a bummer to have happen to you! Good luck with it and let us know how it is. You can even take a pic and post it, and tag an admin or moderator if you need advice. Just a thought.
 
SeaSiren Are you talking about painting painting, as in with a paint brush, outside, on a deck? You? With bilateral hip replacements a month ago? Oh dear, please be careful. You don't want to hurt those million dollar titanium twins, there. Just lay down and watch for now, OK? Or I'm gonna have a heart attack here over you! :beg:
 
Hahaha you dear gal ByGosh! I may 'help' but when I said it's on 'our' to-do to paint... it's really on his 'honey-do' (Tony's) to-do list! :egypdance: I will likely sit on a lounge chair with iced tea and cheerlead (oh and I'm sure an occasional 'hmmm missed a spot dear'!) I don't want you to worry my sweets - no heart attacks!!! xoxo to you!
 
nmscienceteacher..

Read your comment...

I have to be able to walk pretty far just to get in my room...not to mention hauling my backpack with laptop etc..

Consider getting yourself a cabin size trolley case, I use one for work all the time.. You don't want to be lugging all that around hon!
 
nmscienceteacher, what ByGosh said about removing the adhesive is what I would have said too. We did use acetone, but I wouldn't with the open sores. Baby oil or even olive oil should soften up the adhesive so you can get it off. I feel so bad for you...having to deal with a reaction to the adhesive on top of everything else just isn't fair. :console2:
 
SeaSiren ! I wrote that above comment before I heard about your fall. Now I'm really having a heart attack over you! :thud:
 
Skin is less red tonight...thank god no open sores...will try calendula ointment tomorrow after it has had a rest. Would never have thought of acetone...will get some to melt the thicker lumps in a few days after it recovers. Thanks for the info...
 
nmscienceteacher, Don't rush the hospital release -- stay until they are confident you are ready to go home. It will be good to be as independent as possible once you go home. You don't want to run into any problems when you don't have the hospital staff there to help you. My OS told me that most of his patients are released on the second day (because of the SuperPATH procedure), and I asked if I could stay longer if I feel I need to. He said I definitely can, especially because most of his patients leave so quickly and Medicare won't give him any problems for the extra time. You need to take care of yourself right now, and let others take care of you, too. The extra resources available at the hospital are a blessing right now. Keep the faith!
 
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