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TKR Winner winner, chicken dinner! Bionic Liz's new RTKA

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Good to hear your good report Liz. And glad to hear a little of your humor as well even if it is a little muffled. Praying for these next couple of weeks to fly by without any issues. Baby that toddler knee when you can.
 
Liz, thanks for checking in. I hope the two weeks pass quickly and the two of you can relax a bit. Hopefully you will both come back to full health in the early days of spring! In the mean time try to shoo the 20lb cat away from the 75 foot O2 tubing! Continue to heal friend.....
 
Was driving today and on the radio heard about a survivalist seminar here this weekend. Made me think of you and hubby! How are you two doing?
 
Saw you around the forum and wanted to check in to see how the husband is doing as well as your knee.
 
Hi Liz, it's good to see you posting again on a couple of other threads.
How are you and your husband getting on?
 
Hey you guys! I'm finally up for a brief breath of air! Life has been hectic - but mostly in a good and healing way :angel:

Hubby is pretty much back to normal now. This is the first week he is back at work (although he did monitor a couple of 1/2 days last week while I ran errands). He's off the O2, and no longer even needing naps. We've taken a few mile to mile and a half walks around our hood - his saturations are good, and he's not even very out of breath.

We've gone to a slew of Dr's appts... He also had an ultrasound of his legs to see if we could find the origin of his clots... No clots or scarring in his legs, so the mystery is still afoot. Now he has 5 months more of the blood thinners, and then he'll have to decide if he wishes to stay on them forever, or take a chance and go off them. Tough decision.

I've been doing both our workloads, and on call the past two weekends... But he did that for me when I was down, so it's the least I can do for him. Our workload is already crazy busy (days b/w 30-54 surgeries) - it's like playing whack-a-mole... One goes down, another one pops up! Trying to do anything (even talk) during these times is nearly impossible. I've just not been very good at keeping up the pace!

We've had some fun, funny, and crazy moments. For a while, Bill's brain was very subtly affected by the hypoxia. He would forget things, mix up dates and times, and 'miss' things that were told to him verbally or in emails. Made for some very interesting conversations :scaredycat: until we had a heart to heart and attributed it to the hypoxia. We also binge watched a series called Boardwalk Empire - not for the faint of heart! Loosely based off the mob stories from the prohibition era. First one I saw, I thought "eh, it's okaaaaay", but by the third episode we were hooked. It was also something we could do together since his activities were pretty limited. We finally finished the last season (5) tonight! :rolleyes:

The funny moments lately all involve our cats to some degree or another - the most recent is our cat who had decided a running faucet is his enemy - and when on, he will fervently bat at the stream of water with his paw - splashing loads of water all over the bathroom and mirror! Other times, he likes to 'dig' in the toilet bowl :eeeuw: The greatest, though, was after Bill had meticulously vacuum packed all of his (our?) survival rations (red wheat, white wheat, rice, corn, oats, flour, etc)...and left them on the guest bed. The next morning, I went in the room to get a document, and our cat (the same hilarious but BAD, mischievous cat) had chewed on each and every vacuum packed sack... making them.... Well, not vacuum packed any more! :heehee: Oh, poor Bill!

This past Saturday, we did manage to get out to the local town St Patty's Day Parade - which they now call the 'spring festival' in an effort to be politically correct. It was a good time - we dressed up, watched the parade (we have the Rockville Drill Team - it's a bunch of ladies carrying power drills :snork:) and we walked a little over a mile, but came home with some Gelato, so it was worth it :spin:

The knee has been.... Temperamental :wink: I had about 2.5 weeks where it looked like it was doing really well and the swelling was going down - I could even run in place. Then out of nowhere, it just decided to swell, stiffen, pull, and hurt again. This was last Wednesday, and it's not changed much since then.

I'm *trying*to take mile long walks at least every other day (when Bill can sit for me at the computer) - I've also been pedaling my little desk-cycle even though it has a small radius of rotation. I've gone back to water-babies (aqua aerobics for you mature folk :cool:) twice, but I just put on the waist floatie and bobbed around using my arms. I'm still afraid to try kicking!

Still have the pinch behind the knee when I flex - some days I don't have much ROM because of it, other days are better - but it's always there. Otherwise, things like the IT band and tight hamstrings come and go. Still have achy pain, but Tylenol suffices now. All in all, have definitely seem some improvement, but I'm still impatient and want it healed NOW! :tantrum: :loll:

We also decided to get a mini trailer for camping until the one we pick up next year is ready... So we got a little T@G trailer - just enough to sleep in and cook on. We will drive 6 hrs to Phoenix this weekend to pick it up. We are being baptized by fire to this whole "camper/RV" thing - and it IS a thing! We even bought ourselves a one person stand up tent, and a pop-up-potty to go inside :unsure:. For us, it will be like 'glamping' but when I type it, I feel like the biggest redneck :rotfl:

So there's the update! I'm trying to read and catch up on threads - I've really missed you guys! But it's probably good I've been busy, as it's kept me from micro-managing my knee!

:cheers2: cheers to everyone!
[Bonesmart.org] Winner winner, chicken dinner! Bionic Liz's new RTKA
 
Well, you probably figured it could've been the running in place to make the knee angry. :hissy: But so good to hear you're both doing well!
 
Wow, Liz, all things considered, that's a really good update. :yes!: :yay: :spin:

It's just wonderful to hear how well Bill is doing now. You guys really had a miracle there.

As for your knee - you've had to ask a lot of it and I think it's doing OK. If/when one of my knees complains a bit, I consider that it has two very large foreign bodies inside it and I allow it to be grumpy at times. My knees are 2 years and 5 years old, so they don't complain very often at all now, but your knee is still only 3 months old, so it's really doing remarkably well.

Well done, both of you! :flwrysmile: :flwrysmile:
 
Ha ha ha! @KarriB... Perhaps 'running in place' was a bit over emphatic.... Maybe a short 3 second 'jog in place' would be more accurate. Although, to me, jogging = running = pure H-E-double hockey sticks! Never been much of a runner myself :dead:
 
@Celle, thanks! It is a true miracle he survived, and every once in a while I have a flashback and have to make him promise me he will stick around for a while longer :friends:

Oddly, since I'm thumb typing, it took a while to type my update - my swelling has randomly gone down some, and now my knee just feels sore, like an overworked muscle - except one that also got hit by a mack truck! :heehee: Looks like it will be a tylenol night!

Anyway, I'm OK with it - at least it gives me occasional glimpses of improvements to keep me hopeful :wink: I've decided I'm still not glad I did it yet - but at least now I'm on the fence instead of wondering if I made the worst mistake of my life LOL. That's definite improvement!
 
Glad to hear all this but fear for your mental state. Have you lost it altogether? Trailers? Tents? Pop up potties? Just nooooooo!
Key words - upgrades, en suites, 5 stars...
 
Liz!!! So great to see your posts. Sounds like you're dealing with life and moving forward. So good to hear your hubby is also doing so well!! I too have started going into the water (this week will be my first time @ 3 days) I too am not kicking. Saving that for a couple of months. I am very good at the freestyle stroke without kicking so it's a great workout for me. I also do my exercise in the water. I'm not ready to attend my water aerobic class yet, but I meet my local knee twin during the hour before class. We kid and say we're having the TKR exercise class. A man came in who had his TKR 1 day after ours and did a full squat and even laid on the pool desk to show us an exercise he does - he is the miracle - we are the normal - at least that's what my knee twin and I told each other.

Sounds like you have a great future ahead of you with your camping. I had a 5 gallon bucket with the seat and disposable bags that I placed in my living quarter horse trailer! I paid extra for the camouflage pattern!! :)

Take care and pay attention to what you do that makes the knee swell or hurt. :)
 
Was the husband planning on taking the vac packed survivor food camping or saving it for the apocalypse? I just love the stories of his ordering!
 
Spex10 said:
Glad to hear all this but fear for your mental state. Have you lost it altogether? Trailers? Tents? Pop up potties? Just nooooooo!
Key words - upgrades, en suites, 5 stars...
Click to expand...
Liz has it right.... Tents Trailer Camping . Under the dark skies of Utah and Arizona.. Something to be treasured.
Ha ha at least we can crawl into tents now!!
We put some five thousand miles on our little trailer since surgery.. camped some 40 nights in Florida.. Condo and hotels oh no..
Liz watch that you don't fall for the next trailer too soon... You do wind up looking at others rigs when camping!
 
@jaschembra, You and your friend are angels. I might have been so jealous of the miracle man that I may have accidentally bumped him into the pool :whistle:

I'm kind of jealous of your camp toilette (better @Spex10?)... Ours is 'Royal blue' which I suppose works well with a 'throne', but just doesn't maintain the harmony with nature that one might desire :wink:

As for the swelling, it's definitely random. Luckily, I haven't had much of a chance to alter my 'routine' lately, and my knee gets pretty much the same treatment, although on different days. I will confess to walking 2 miles today, since the swelling was partially down this morning, still. Seems to be holding steady, so we'll see what the morn brings. It aches a bit right now, but we also have a big thunderstorm outside :blackcloud:

@KarriB, it's definitely for the apocalypse-to-be. He also got gallon containers of freeze dried fruits, eggs, buttermilk (?really?), powdered milk, etc. Let me just say that should disaster ever happen, as long as we have water, we will be eating like Kings! He's so funny - he even created a spreadsheet with expiration dates on everything so we can know when to chow down on all our luxurious vacuum packed entrees before they go bad :heehee:

Since he's been off the steroids, he's been a bit less...'emphatic' about it all. But I have no doubt it will all come back around again. Oh, and did I mention we now have 2 vacuum packing machines? I'm guessing one for back up purposes? :rotfl: Gotta love the hubby!

@little red canoe, I'm going to have to put a trailer chastity belt on my eyes. Two trailers in 3 months - I'm just as bad as my survivalist hubby! :doh: I think we're going to have to become more social, as I hear people like to come 'visit' teardrop trailers.... But mostly we just want to get away :snork:

YES, the dark skies of Utah are amazing. I'd never seen the Milky Way except in a planetarium until I moved here 5 years ago. If I sleep in the guest bedrooms (which have BIG, TALL windows), I can almost always see a shooting star. It's all so surreal to me! Luckily, both our trailers have big front windows for stargazing :ok:

The time-lapse scenes start at about 51 sec in....

 
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