Pain in the… [UPDATED]

It’s off to the doctor’s office with me. If you’re wondering what’s happening, I’ll give you a hint:



UPDATE: In at 10:30, out at 12:30. They put me OUT for the procedure, so I didn’t feel a thing besides the IV… and the horrible purging procedure yesterday, anyway. Doc said “we removed one polyp, nothing evil.” There shouldn’t have been anything evil up there… all that got shot out the tailpipe last night.

The nurse said I’d probably want to have a nap when I got home to sleep off the rest of the anesthesia, and she was right. She also told me no booze until tomorrow, which kind of shot down my plan for this evening. Tomorrow is, however, another day!

Big V's Scary Week

As some of you remember, my nutty one-legged sister in law is diabetic. And she’s never been the most stable isotope on the periodic table. Most of that side of the family have an amazingly high clue-immunity… you can see where this is leading. The reason she’s one-legged is that she doesn’t take care of herself very well, refuses to adjust her high-carb diet to accommodate the diabetes, etc. Lately, her continued avoidance of reality has taken its toll on her kidneys.

Sunday afternoon, she checked into the hospital to get hookups for dialysis. It was supposed to be a two-night thing, including her first dialysis. As usual, her body chemistry had to get un-whacked by a day or so of decent diet before they were comfortable doing the surgery. So that happened on Monday. Everything sailed right on through, no problem. I visited her on the way home from work, since the office is about a mile from that hospital.

The “fun” began Tuesday morning. Her blood pressure started dropping, and continued to drop, to the point where they thought she was in cardiac arrest and started doing chest compressions. The head nurse, who dropped by when the wife met me there in the evening, said “you scared the crap out of me.” She remembers Big V saying I can’t die, I have to take care of Skylar. And perhaps that’s the only reason she’s still here to annoy the rest of us. :-P

Needless to say, the two-nighter dragged on another day or two. They rolled the dialysis machine into her room and hooked her in… and her numbers responded very well. So well, in fact, they were in the normal range after the second dialysis. They ended up unhooking her and sent her home late last night. No more dialysis! That’s a very good thing, because guess who would be taking her down there? (wife, not me)

Now, if she gets her act together and starts eating right, she'll stay reasonably healthy. And I’ll be watching for flying pigs…

Spring #3 comes in like a… kneecap

Winter #3 brought snow and a little ice to FAR Manor, and a recurrence of the winter congestion that lingers for weeks. About the time the snow started melting in earnest, I was finally able to get outside and let Mason play around in what was left. He had a good time all in all, and had a howling fit about having to come inside to get warm and dry.

Then Spring #3 really got itself going, right at the end of February, and it promised a real spring to come (not soon enough). I even drove home with the top down on my Miata one sunny evening, at least until I got about 10 miles from home. There hasn’t been a Winter #4 yet, but it had better hurry up if it’s going to get here. The best part is that weekends have often been warm and sunny, while the crappy weather comes in through the week when I have to be in the office anyway.

Tanya, Queen of Kneecaps

So… the last weekend in February. Absolutely gorgeous. I spent a few hours cutting firewood for the not-so-warm nights, then washed my car. Somewhere in there, I banged my knee—the one that isn’t all that good to begin with, of course. I can’t remember how I did it, but thought at the time, “I hope I didn’t knock another bone chip off it.” But it stopped hurting after a couple minutes, so I completely forgot about it and went about my business.

Until evening, when it started hurting. And continued to hurt. By Monday, I was wondering where Reality the crutch had gone (it’s not in the closet where it belongs). To make matters even more fun, that stomach virus going around caught up with me Tuesday, because I couldn’t outrun it. I learned how to limp very quickly to the bathroom.

At work, there’s a first-aid kit with various useful things. There’s a dispenser of stuff called Pain-Aid, which is half aspirin and half ibuprofen. This combination seemed to improve things immensely. By Saturday, it was feeling fairly good… and then the wife had a bunch of errands that needed to be run and no time to run them. Off I went, limping around this store and that, and you can guess the result: by that night it was screaming again.

Rest and ibuprofen (and the ice cuff) have helped; today, it has been mostly usable. Still, it’s off to the doc tomorrow morning to check it out. Once it’s working right, maybe I can enjoy Spring #4.

Home for the Holiday

Home, home again

I like to be here, when I can

— Pink Floyd

I took the three days off work that the office was open this week, but it wasn’t even a staycation.

Last week, the wife went into the doc’s about her knee. Over the years, it never really recovered from the car wreck that brought Daughter Dearest into the world a month early, and a chicken house accident certainly doesn’t improve anything. It finally gave up about a month ago. The doc suggested trying this and that, which weren’t likely to be a permanent fix if they worked at all. The wife said, “Let’s cut to the chase, not mess with stuff that isn’t going to work, and just replace it. Because that’s what’s going to happen after these other things don’t work anyway.”

That hardware is going
to be around for a while

The “system,” usually glacial when it comes to elective surgery, got its act together more quickly than expected, and she went in for a new knee on Tuesday. Yup, that was how I spent my birthday: dragging myself out of bed at way-too-early-thirty, taking her to the hospital, playing solitaire on my phone in the waiting room, then joining her in her new room. The operation itself was a breeze, but the recovery will take a while.

Lots of people have said to tell her to make sure she does her therapy. No problem there—she’s been trying to get ahead of the curve, trying to flex her leg a little a few hours out of the operating room. Her actual first therapy session went well, with her gimping around the bed on a walker.

With Thanksgiving looming, Daughter Dearest and I wondered about the timing. Still, there was plenty of dinner on the table, including the rolls I made from Grandma’s secret recipe. We didn’t have any shortening, but I found online that coconut oil is an acceptable substitute and we do have some of that. They turned out just fine. She called me in the morning, and told me to pick her up after I ate.

So it was off to the hospital, wheelchair to walker to van, then down to the in-laws to join the rest of the crowd for the second round of face-stuffing. There were jokes about her and Big V having a walker race, but Big V has more experience. I thought that “Two Gimpy Sisters” would be a fine name for a punk rock band.

So there’s a few things to be thankful for this year: thousands of copies of Accidental Sorcerers sold, Mason started pre-K, wife is going to be able to walk well for the first time in years… and Daughter Dearest is more like her old self than she has been in a while.

The Drumbeat of Life

Sometimes, instead of writing wibbles, you just need to put on your ear protection, pick up the sticks, and have at it:

A lot of stuff has happened this month, and somehow I managed to not blog about it. Mason’s 4th birthday was earlier this month, a day that kicked off our vacation at the retreat near Helen. This time, The Boy came, new girlfriend in tow. She and Mason hit it off pretty well, and her family has a racing team. (Mason approves.) One of the highlights: The Boy wanted to go tubing, so we piled in the van. Well before we got to Helen, Mason was asleep. “You guys can go,” I said. “Just call me when you’re done.” Then the tubing places were closed. Oh well, it never really got hot this summer, so that water was pretty chilly. Mason ran his hand in it the next day, and was glad he didn’t try to go tubing.

The proper tool needs
to be the proper size.

Then there was the steps project. The manor came with this little brick-lined walkway going from the driveway into the back yard. It has eroded a little, and Mason has always had trouble taking that big step down. Wife has been poking me about building some steps there, and I tackled it. First, we dug out the step-down, which was easier than usual because it has been so rainy this summer (making the ground nice and soft). We have a shovel that’s a perfect size for Mason, so of course he got into the act. And he actually helped. He scooped up loose dirt and tossed it into the wheelbarrow.

I poured a concrete footing, which involved horking 80lb bags of concrete down to the worksite. My brilliant idea was to lay a board across where I wanted it to stop, dump the dry concrete in, and add water. It worked, but it took a lot more water than I’d expected. But after a lot of raking and stirring and hosing, I got all the stuff wet, then smoothed it out. Then, I stacked the concrete blocks I was using for steps in the wet concrete, using more to glue the layers together.

As I was working on the last of it, my left shoulder decided it had had far more than enough, and went on strike. I worked through it, carrying the last bag with one arm—I was like 90% done, and I couldn’t walk away being that close to finishing (defined as being able to walk up and down ugly steps, the esthetics can wait until I’m better). It slowly improved, but I went to the doctor just to make sure I didn’t have a torn rotator cuff or something equally bad. She opined that it’s a tendon, and gave me a round of steroids. In some ways, it’s worse now because it’s better—I can use it for light duty, and it wants to instinctively reach for things that I’d usually use my left hand for, so at bedtime it’s aching quite a bit. I might end up going in for physical therapy… depends on what the doc says when I go in for my usual 6-month checkup today [UPDATE: yes, physical therapy].

Oh, and Mason has started pre-school. He’s in the 4yo class, despite still being 3 when he actually started. The teacher listened to him talk and what he talked about, and said “he belongs with the 4 year olds.” So he’s going to have some regular interaction with a lot of other kids, for the first time in like ever. He should get to really like it in a few weeks. Right now, he’s in a contrary phase, which for the in-laws is constant. I hope it’s just a phase with him.

Sick for the Holidays

What I’ll look like, if this cough keeps up.
Source: openclipart.org

At least I have an excuse for not blogging much lately, even for #FridayFlash. The afternoon before Christmas Eve, I began to feel fatigued while running an errand. That’s often the first sign that I’m about to come down with what’s officially called an ILI (Influenza-Like Illness). But a cup of coffee erased the fatigue, so I figured it was just lack of sleep.

Unfortunately, I woke up shivering around 4am that morning. I thought to myself, “No, I can’t get sick now!” but viruses don’t give two tin toots about the in-laws coming in later that day. I dragged myself through the last-minute preparations in the morning, then went back to bed for the afternoon. So I missed out on a rather large feast, for which I’d made rolls, but I was too feverish to care much.

Then the wife got it, too. Christmas Day, we both sat in the lounge chairs, trying to be part of the thing. The Boy was here, fortunately—and even more fortunately, he limped in with a deteriorating CV joint, so he was more or less stuck at FAR Manor for the week. Between himself and Daughter Dearest, who got along pretty well this time, they kept Mason busy shredding wrapping paper and blasting through his presents. Snippet, whose boyfriend also has an iPhone, uses FaceTime to “see” Mason every couple of weeks, and they pinged in to watch Mason open the big box of stuff they sent him. That works out pretty well: during those calls, she mostly focuses on Mason, who usually grabs a handful of toys and plays while she talks to him. Being a thousand miles away, she can’t get on The Boy’s nerves or tempt Daughter Dearest to commit ditzicide.


The next day, I was feeling well enough to drive, and took the wife to the doctor’s. I figured she had what I had, and would be feeling better the next day, but I still wasn’t in any condition to argue. They took a throat swab, and she had strep. At that point, I should have asked for a swab as well, but here’s where I brain-farted. I figured since I had a routine appointment scheduled for the next day, I could get it all done then. The appointment was actually scheduled for a week after the next day. I continued to feel incrementally better with each new day, but figured it was better on the half-dozen co-workers who’d be at the office if I stayed home and used the VPN. Oh, and The Boy got his car fixed and departed on time.

So I finally got to my real appointment, which included an application of The Glove cue banjo music. I got the throat swab, and yup, I had strep too. The antibiotics are already doing their thing, but I have this almost-dry cough that won’t go the eff away (cough syrup is effective for maybe 20 minutes). I’m either going to hack up a lung or have washboard abs by the time it’s done.

Here’s hoping your holidays were pleasant and disease-free.

Long November, Sick Grandkid

This “winter” has been one long November on Planet Georgia. The mini-winters that make up the season have been few and far between so far. I’ve actually had to stretch the definition to designate the last couple of days Winter #2 — it didn’t stay below freezing through the day, and the forecast sleet and “wintry mix” never materialized. I guess the Mountain West and Europe have been getting all their winter and ours to boot. It’ll be March in a couple weeks, so time is running out.

Meanwhile, the weather got to Mason: he’s had a cold for the last week and a half. He was pretty good about it at first, but in the last few days he’s run out of patience. He’s cranky, doesn’t want to eat much, and his sleep cycles are all out of whack. He really needs to eat; it would probably make him (and us) feel better. I really don’t know how he manages to get by on a handful of fruit and liquids (juice and a little milk), but he doesn’t look starved yet. And yet, he’s spreading the misery. Mrs. Fetched says she’s taking him to the doctor tomorrow, but she’s been saying that for a week now.

However, he has figured out how to use the iPad. He can wake it up and find a game (or Adobe Ideas, a nice finger-painting app), even if he doesn’t quite understand how to play just yet. His favorite game is Otto Matic, right now. Even “better,” he’s figured out that my iPhone has most of the same games — which means I can’t give Twitter a look without Mason crawling into my lap and trying to grab my phone. It did come in handy over the weekend though, when we were trying to keep him from nodding off in the car before lunch: I handed him the phone and he took it from there.

Tax time is here, but I’ve already done ¾ of the work: just waiting on Mrs. Fetched to get me the business expenses and car taxes.

I downloaded the Blogger app for my iPhone over the weekend, thinking maybe it would help me compose stuff at lunch. Kind of, yeah… if it bothers to save drafts. Google needs to do some serious work on that app, or make a mobile-friendly dashboard. It’s best feature is (again, when it saves) the ability to upload photos from the phone.

Oh, remember Prince Stinky? He disappeared for a couple weeks, but came back with a little matted fur but otherwise fine. I think he has a first home somewhere nearby, and comes here to visit when he needs a little weirdness in his life. Mrs. Fetched is making noises about getting him fixed, so he won’t spray everything (Daughter Dearest says he even scented my car last weekend).

Winter and headcolds both go away, so things will soon improve at FAR Manor. Just gotta wait it out.

Let There Be Light

You know I wouldn’t pass up a chance to re-use this picture, right?

Tuesday evening, I was playing with Mason under his bed for a few minutes. When I went to get up, I put my left knee down on the register grate… then put my entire weight on that knee. HURT I limped around for a few minutes until the pain went away and didn’t think much of it.

Until that night, when it hurt enough to wake me up. Ibuprofen was my friend then and for the next two nights. It never got to the point where I couldn’t walk on it, or needed my friend Reality the crutch, but I didn’t like it much. From then until Friday afternoon, when the pain subsided, I didn’t do much tweeting, blogging, or writing. I’d planned to post yesterday’s October Horror Spotlight on Thursday, but it was one of the casualties of the week.

So when I got home from work on Friday, I got crackin’ on my #FridayFlash and got it posted.

But Saturday brought new issues to the fore. Ever since the fluorescent fixture in our bathroom crapped out again last winter, we’ve been getting by with a lamp on the vanity. It hasn’t been a wonderful workaround — it gave just enough light to be useful, but took up space and we kept trying to flip the switch. We finally decided to do something about it and picked up a new fixture at Home Despot.

As with any project, I realized I needed more parts once I actually got started, not to mention getting the wrong parts for the next thing, so back I went. With everything I needed, the actual job took less time than the round trips needed to get the stuff. (I took the picture with auto-exposure set to −2 so the light wouldn’t blow out the whole picture.)

A less annoying, but still necessary project, completed the electrical work at FAR Manor. One of the dimmers in the living room wasn’t working right, and I decided to get something that didn’t have a large protruding knob that Mason or Skylar could put a lot of sideways force on. What I really wanted were the new touch-plate dimmers, but they didn’t have any rated to work with dimmable CFL or LED bulbs. So I settled on sliders with rocker switches.

One of the things I got on my second trip was a wall plate and a 3-way switch. It turns out that they don’t have a wall plate with two big rectangular cutouts (slider size) and one small (regular switch size). So I replaced the working switch with a rocker so I could get a plate to fit them all.

Unlike the bathroom light, where I just had to turn off a switch to have safe working conditions, we had to find the breakers for the dimmers. Once that was accomplished, I got to work… OH $#¡+ the 3-way switch was on another circuit we hadn’t shut off! Mrs. Fetched fixed that by hitting the main breaker, and I got that job finished without any further tingly zappage.

So I have a good dimmer and a good 3-way switch in the parts drawer now. I think I know where I want to put the dimmer…

Viruses Suck

I’m talking about the biological kind, naturally. Panda had it earlier this week; he got it from his kids who brought it home from school. Daughter Dearest and I came down with it Friday night, Mason yesterday, and Mrs. Fetched has it now. It's this stomach virus that induces nausea and diarrhea (or as it’s pronounced in the local dialect, “die rear” — rather appropriate).

Fortunately, it only lasts about 36 hours. I never threw up, although I thought I would once or twice, and ate two mugs of soup and a piece of toast all day yesterday. I had better lose a couple pounds over this.

Wednesday (cough cough) Wibbles

OK, that’s enough of that. The “new” Blogger editor was sitting and spinning so I gave up and went back to the old one.

So it’s after midnight, and thus technically Thursday morning. Oh well, it’s still Wednesday night somewhere.

Mason has an ear infection, brought on by his back teeth coming in. I have some unspecified virus, according to the doc, that’s been going around Sector 706. Two different causes, but we’re both feverish, congested, and we both sound like we’re about to cough up a lung on occasion. I was well for about four days between shucking the first whatever and catching this one. I’d sleep all night anyway, or most of it, if Mason wasn’t waking up miserable.

Today (that is, Wednesday) was Mrs. Fetched’s and my 26^th anniversary. We had a dinner out, just the two of us. Kind of nice for a change. I bought us an AppleTV to go with the new HDTV as an anniversary present, and pulled some YouTube stuff in just to show off. The Boy has a Netflix account, and he said he’ll punch it in so we (Mrs. Fetched, really) can pull down movies to watch. Me, I’ll probably use it to stream Groove Salad or some other ambient station when I’m trying to put Mason to sleep.

With White Pickups pretty much wrapped up, I pulled it (episode by episode) into Sigil, a Free authoring tool that uses ePub as a native file format. From there, I gave it a more novel-like format, including actual chapters, and added some more story toward the beginning. There’s still a lot to go, but I pulled it into Calibre (a free ebook manager) and convert it to MOBI so I could load it onto my Kindle. I’m busy reading Thoreau’s Walden right now, but I’ll be soon marking places where the story needs more fleshing-out. I’m sure the ending (and other parts) will need a little work, but that’s what drafts are for, right? Whether I find a publisher or go indie (still trying to decide), the novel will have editing improvements and extended material.

Speaking of writing, I’ll have a #FridayFlash ready to go. It needs a little work as well, but that’s the beauty of flash fiction — it can be fixed up well enough in an evening or two.

I can’t wait to get better… I have stuff to do outside. I never did get the winter garden started, although the rain (and snow) never did let the patch dry out enough to dig up. I still need to finish clearing up the bank out by the road and hacking back the vines there. At least I managed to lose four pounds compared to June (at my last checkup), even with Eating Season. But I need to get exercising too. Maybe I’ll stay healthy for more than four days this time. :-)

Rest of the Week Roundup

All the other stuff that happened this week…

Yesterday came the last step of that little procedure I had last Monday — in other words, they took the stitches out. Once again, this went smooth as warm butter: I hardly felt it, even when they warned me to “let us know if this one hurts much.” Of course, it’s right in that part of my back that I can’t reach, so I still can’t scratch it when it itches. They told me there might not be much of a scar, which is kind of a bummer; scars are part of my history, reminding me of things that happened. “Yeah, this one is from when I was 7; I was riding my bike down the dirt road by my house and I hit a loose patch of dirt and went into the ditch.” (and so forth)

Some (ahem) twit took out the name LibTardBot on Twitter and attached it to a skr1pt. Basically, it scans the public timeline for tweets containing the word “teabagger” and retweets them with a pre-programmed insult. At least, I think it’s a script: with teabaggers, it’s hard to tell. Either one spouts their talking points on cue, and neither one can actually learn anything — it’s all programming.

Mason is getting better… actually, he’s pretty much over the ear infection and other sickness. The amoxicillin started helping almost immediately; by Saturday night he was wanting to get down and play a little instead of being clingy all the time. But he was still fighting an infection, and between that and trying to be his usual busy self, he was waking up ravenous in the middle of the night. He’s starting to get that back to normal too, fortunately… he slept all Wednesday night and only woke up once last night (and The Boy & Snippet got him). He’s also doing what The Boy used to do at that age: point at stuff and go “dat” (as in, “what’s that?”). He loves pulling wires, pushing buttons, and so forth… yup, geek in training! He figured out the OFF button on the TV this week, much to my amusement (nay, delight) and everyone else’s chagrin. I applauded him and Mrs. Fetched said, “No, he’s not supposed to do that! I popped his hand last time!” So when he went to do it again, I tried to tell him NO but was laughing too hard.

He has fat little feet, like the people on the Axiom in “Wall-E.” I’ll try to get a picture soon. As much as he runs around, I’m stunned that he has any foot fat at all.

The Boy & Snippet were nearly handed a perma-ejection this week. Personally, I’d have gone ahead and done it; I have no clue why Mrs. Fetched gave them Yet Another Chance. Daughter Dearest is a little cranky about the whole situation, and has threatened to move out a couple of times. Maybe the only reason she hasn’t is that I’ve threatened to move in with her. Meanwhile, M.A.E. and Moptop are still here, but they now have a firm departure date — two weeks from today. She lined up various public and private agencies to help her out, and she signs the lease on her apartment on Monday. Yes, she’s had a lot of help from Mrs. Fetched and others, but she’s taken a lot of initiative, found a job, talked to the various aid people, and basically made a lot of things happen. If The Boy and Snippet put half that kind of energy into getting their act together, nobody would have a problem.

Mrs. Fetched has been on me for a couple of weeks to pull some stock out of my account to raise some moolah for DD’s college (and, I hope, kill another credit card or two). I farted around for a while, then couldn’t get into my account. As it turned out, the delays were good because the price went up a buck & a quarter in the meantime… so I got to keep 40 or so shares that I would have otherwise had to give up to raise the same amount of money.

What kind of oddball things have you seen this week?

While My Grandson Gently Sleeps

A little update while Mason’s napping…

My stitches itches. But that’s pretty much it. Except for a tiny stinging, it hasn’t hurt at all. I’m supposed to get the stitches out on Thursday, and then I don’t have to worry about scratching it anymore.

Daughter Dearest went to Savannah with her roomie-to-be this week. The roomie’s mom does a lot of traveling, so they make an extended outing of it. It’s been really nice for DD, it’s a few days away from the cRaZy and time to do some girlie things. We picked her up last night and brought her home…

… to a very dark house. Some storms came through, and the power went out around 9 (about an hour after we left). J, Kobold, Brand X, and Evil Lad NOT were up here for some reason. Snippet rounded up a few candles and lit them up so they could navigate. We have plenty of LED flashlights in the bedroom, so we got ours and were able to move around pretty well after that. Somewhere in all that, one of The Boy’s friends decided to drop in around 11 p.m. You have to wonder sometimes… Mrs. Fetched told The Boy to send him home ASAP, and he left after ten minutes or so. The power came back on around midnight, and everyone went to their respective homes and beds.

Mason’s more than a bit under the weather at the moment. The Boy and Snippet got sick with this early in the week, and Mason decided to catch up. He started not feeling good Thursday afternoon, as that’s when he started getting clingy. He had a fever on and off much of yesterday. Mrs. Fetched called the doc yesterday evening and they were booked for the day, so this morning Snippet and I went looking for a place that would look at him. The “family care, minor emergency” place up at the freeway doesn’t see anyone under 3, and opened about 20 minutes late, so we went up to the hospital were Mason was born and took him into the ER. They were amazingly quick about getting him in; I stepped out to use the bathroom and the ER doc was poking and prodding him (which he objected to at full volume) by the time I got back. He has an ear infection, which some amoxicillin and some infant acetaminophen should take care of.

Oh… and DD’s new roomie is OK, and so is her vegan mom. Her brother asked her out last night. Wouldn’t be a problem, except that he’s 32. He’s a big guy, recovering from a parking lot accident in which he had a leg and shoulder broken up pretty badly (the car that hit him was totalled), so at least she could put some distance between them if necessary. But it’s a little disconcerting.

And that’s all I got. New White Pickups episode goes up, as usual, Monday morning.

My Little Cyst (with photo!)

A while back, I mentioned in passing that the doc checked out the Eternal Zit on my back and told me it was a cyst. I got the appointments confused and thought she was going to yank it the next day, but it actually happened on Monday of this week. I figured (correctly) that they would use a local pain-killer on me, but I had no idea how I’d feel when I was done, so Mrs. Fetched offered to drive me. No problem.

So I got there, and a brand-new medical assistant intern put me on the scales… and promptly kept sliding the slider the wrong way. (Yup, she’s blonde, but I figured it was first-day jitters.) They hauled me into a corner room I’d never been in before, and I shucked my shirt and emptied my pockets.

“Hey, you brought us your pocket knife!” one of the nurses said. “We won’t have to use ours!”

“Knife?” I replied. “I figured you’d just drill the stupid thing out!”

Having never had this done, I was a little surprised at the numbing process: they stick you several times, around the cyst, because poking the cyst could make it more difficult to get out. The second shot is the one that hurt most; after that, I have no idea how many times they stuck me because I was pretty well numb. In came the doc, and she got to work…

“That was easy!” she said, “I thought it would be bigger.” She laid her prize on the table. It took her less time to do the work than it did to prep me.

“Looks like a blueberry that’s not ripe yet,” I said… and it did. It even had a stem at that point. My initial squeamishness went away fairly quickly.

“You must have some around your place,” she said, cutting some suture. “I planted some, but they all died.” She sewed me up and slapped a bandage over it. The admonishment to take four ibuprofens in the afternoon wasn’t needed; all in all, there was very little pain and a little more itching.

Being around all the weirdness at FAR Manor has rubbed off, because I had to get a picture:



The little round dark thing right of center is the cyst. It got knocked around a little bit and the stem went away before I could get the picture.

State of the FARf

Shortly after Mrs. Fetched got off the phone Friday afternoon and told me about my doctor appointment coming up Monday, my phone and computer also got in on the act. I punch those follow-up dates into my phone on the spot so I'll have some warning.

But when Big V somehow managed to end up at the manor, with Splat's kid Skyler, it was a somewhat less than restful night. Big V passed out in the rocker that we use to get Mason to sleep, so he was up for quite a while… The Boy and Snippet ended up taking him upstairs with them until he wore himself out. Each of the babies woke up through the night, and I just don't sleep through that… so when morning rolled around, I didn't start rolling until it was impossible to get to the doc's office on time. I called and they said I could be 20 minutes late without having to reschedule, so I jumped in the car and booked it. I just made it, even with the obligatory slowpokes, but just barely.

Blood pressure was good, even with the hassle of getting there. They ran an EKG, which seemed to go OK since I didn't get referred to a cardiologist. She put on The Glove… and assured me she'd take to dinner first next time. That wasn't so wonderful, since she found a bump that didn't belong there. Now I get the full reaming, boo hiss. A large "eternal" zit on my back turned out to be a cyst, and that will get yanked tomorrow.

Might as well get all the scary stuff out of the way since I'm still employed, right? At least Big V was at her own house last night.

Breathing is Good

I cut out of work a few minutes early yesterday afternoon, being Friday and all. As always, especially at any time before 6 p.m., the first three miles out of the office could almost be walked faster, and can certainly be bicycled faster (I’ve seen it). So as I was sitting in the clot, the smellphone rang.

“Come by the hospital,” Mrs. Fetched said. “Mom’s here, and it’s not good.” Well… after you’ve said in the hospital, then it’s not good is sort of redundant. But Mrs. Fetched sounded upset more than usual during one of these episodes, and my first thought was that her mom’s aneurysm blew… but when her blood pressure soared from seeing the cows knocking down sections of fence earlier this year, I figured if that didn’t do it nothing would. But it was another issue.

Mrs. Fetched’s parents went to Ryan’s for lunch yesterday, even though her mom wasn’t feeling all that good and only ate a bowl of potato soup. She got behind the wheel, said something along the lines of “this is it, goodbye,” and keeled over. He freaked out, which is understandable, and gave her chest squeezes to keep some air moving around. Then he saw her cellphone in the van, called 911, and got back to it. The paramedics took out her teeth, got her some oxygen, and took her on down to the hospital.

So I met them in the emergency ward… several people were walking (or sitting) around with face masks, which I figure were people showing swine flu symptoms (the masks do a better job keeping the virus in sick people than it does keeping it out of healthy people). Mrs. Fetched and her dad got me up to date with what was going on, and we sat around doing not much of anything for most of two hours. The ER staff at the hospital managed to misplace her teeth, and tried to claim the paramedics didn’t turn them over at first… this resulted in Mrs. Fetched going into “DO SOMETHING NOW (without actually doing anything to solve the problem)” mode, which cost us about two hours this afternoon.

Meanwhile, her mom recovered enough that they moved her from ER to ICU, and took out the ventilator shortly before noon. By the time we got down there, she was sitting up and able to talk. A gaggle of relatives filed in, and she finally got worn out. Mrs. Fetched and her older sister (not Big V, as you’ll see shortly) pitched in and got business taken care of. Right now, her primary concern is getting her teeth back.

Not to be outdone, Big V went into some kind of convulsion yesterday. As expected, she’s not doing a thing to take care of herself — her diabetes is pretty much eating her up, and she doesn’t seem to care. So now she’s in the same hospital, getting surgery on her foot (due to an infection). So there’s two members of the same family in the same hospital, and neither car wreck nor fire was involved.

A rather strange Saturday, even by FAR Manor standards.

Now it’s Mrs. Fetched’s Turn

OK, that’s it: Tonya Harding is now our official mascot at FAR Manor.

The heavy rain may not have brought it on, but chicken houses prefer to screw things up at the worst possible moment, so of course that’s when the water line (or water main, if you will) broke and created the usual havoc. So for the last few days, Mrs. Fetched (and everyone she could recruit) have been up to their knees in mud and so forth — there’s also a foot of water standing in the pump house, since some debris has clogged the overflow pipe.

I was working at home today, when the phone rang about 11. Mrs. Fetched’s mom: "She hurt her knee, I think she has to go to the doctor. Bring the crutches."

"Fine, I’ll take her.” I had accomplished the two primary tasks of the day, and it was almost lunchtime anyway. As it turned out, she didn’t need the crutches; Mrs. Fetched’s mom has a walker and loaned it to her. I packed her in the car and took her to the chiro-cracker, which is whom she wanted to see first. He took x-rays, saw that her knee joint was a little uneven, and did what he could to straighten it out. He seemed to think it was otherwise OK, just stressed a lot from the mud work.

"Stay off it for a few days," he told her, "ice it, and wear a knee brace. Put a little weight on it when you can." She took a fairly long nap this afternoon, after which she sounded a lot more like her usual self, and I got her settled in the chair where I mostly lived a month or so ago while nursing my own knee issues.

So Mrs. Fetched finally gets to rest a little while. and no cheating. That means I’ll probably be the one sitting in a boat tomorrow night, running a plumber’s snake up the overflow pipe into the pump house. In the rain. With any luck, the boat will be off to one side.

Kneecapped Again, The Final Chapter

The Great Unwrapping was yesterday. The doc was pleased with his handiwork, and told me I could pretty much do whatever I wanted as long as I could stand the pain. He suggested some lifts and bends, and ice when needed, but other than that he seemed to be “just do it” and it would be 100% in the next two or three weeks. (You can still see the nurse’s initials on my kneecap, that’s how they made sure they poked the right one.)

He did say I might have some chronic pain with it, which could be taken care of with a “partial knee replacement” (very partial, as it would once again be an outpatient thing) — but he said they also wear out over 15–20 years, so if I can wait until I’m 75 it will probably outlast me. ;-) But with the two bone chips removed, and it behaving most of the time even before, I hope it will just go on as normal. The chips came off the left side of the right knee; the doc showed me pix of what was going on in there… I forgot to ask for copies, but I really couldn’t make heads or tails of it anyway. It’s just meat. MY meat, but what else can I say?

Well… if it hurts, I now have some pain-killer:



While we were on vacation, someone came by and dropped off what appears to be 18 cases of Planet Georgia’s Finest — there’s 12 quart jars in each case, so that adds up to Lush Paradise. Mrs. Fetched was obviously in on it, as she told me about it and that it’s like 15 years old… and wonders if it’s any good to drink. Her idea, not a bad one entirely for the whiskey, was to treat it as ethanol and mix it with gasoline as an extender of sorts. But at least some of that is apple brandy, which would clog up fuel filters. I opened one of the brandy jars this evening; it smells pretty good and a sip confirmed it. She’s all “I don’t know how you’ll feel in an hour,” and I would like to know how it was made (if there was a radiator in the still, forget it) before enjoying it too much.

Guess I just need to heal up.

Kneecapped Again, Update

OK, so… yesterday, the bum knee started to get a little better, but I went to the doc’s to have it checked out anyway. She sent me to X-ray, where the shots turned out a bit dark because I couldn’t get the leg straightened all the way out, and found what looked like a bone chip. “I don’t think it’s in where it’s causing any trouble,” she said, but referred me to the orthopedist who fixed Mrs. Fetched’s knee (after a chicken house incident) and DD’s ankle (after a dodgeball incident) just to see what they thought and how best to deal with it. She also told me to start putting some weight on it to keep it from getting too stiff. Hooray… now Reality is one crutch instead of two! I mostly carry the crutch and use it when the knee starts to gripe a bit.

I slept fairly well last night, and woke up able to completely straighten my right leg, so it’s definitely getting better — the swelling going down agrees. It will bend through about half its normal range now. I tried driving down to the in-laws’ for lunch, and that wasn’t so wonderful (especially when I had to use the brakes). Maybe by tomorrow…

With lunch out of the way, Mrs. Fetched drove me up to the orthopedist’s. There was some confusion where we were supposed to take the X-rays with us; fortunately, the doctor’s office is a minute away and Mrs. Fetched had them long before I got called in. I was set up to see the P.A. first, perhaps so a “just keep on keepin’ on” case could be taken care of without involving an expensive specialist… fine with me. He took one look at the X-rays and said, “Whoop, looks like a bone chip in there.” I told him what my doc said, and he replied, “I might have to disagree. Let me get [the orthopedist]. So in he came, and said, "Yup, you’ve got an extra part rattling around in there. That needs to come out.” To hear him describe it, the arthroscopic surgery is going to be about as routine as a brake job; I’ll be in & (walking) out of the office in a day, the day being August 5. I’d love to get photos, but I get a bit squeamish at seeing myself get poked even if I’m numbed up first. Maybe I can persuade Mrs. Fetched to take pix or get video.

Kneecapped Again

It has been a while since the last one of these… in fact, I had to go look it up.

Seeing as I’m off work for the next two weeks (hooray!) but we won’t be leaving for Michigan until later in the week (boo!), I figured it would be a good time to look into some of the maintenance issues at the rental place. We’ve known about the rain gutters for a good long while, but there was also a recent problem with the A/C unit kicking the 50-amp breaker (very bad). I threw some tools into the crate on the back of the bike and putted down there.

Big G (not Big V, we both have issues with her) was there, which helped a little. After making sure the breaker was off, I inspected the wiring and found a small kink where some wire was showing through the insulation; the wires were exposed to the elements but the rest of the insulation looked OK. I wrapped that up with some electrical tape and sealed up the wire nuts, just to be sure. Then we cleaned some crud out from around and inside the coils and hosed them out as best as we could. It kicked on later and seemed to be working fine.

With the small job out of the way, I started on the gutters. When The Boy (at age 10-ish) and I put up the gutters, I also bought and installed screens to keep debris out. They mostly worked, but some have rotted over the years and others broke off… and plenty of crud had collected in there. The roof isn’t very steep, but Big G “doesn’t do good on roofs” and I’m quite comfortable up there anyway… so he handed me a blower and I got a bunch of debris off there (and out of the ridge cap). My knee started giving me a little pain, but it does from time to time and usually goes away. It has been like that since my early teens — a disinterested doctor dismissed it at the time as “growing pains” — so I can still pretend I’m 30 even if the knee is acting up.

With the roof dealt with, I turned to the gutters themselves. I knew there was a wasp nest on one side, but got caught up in what I was doing and got too close. One of the SOBs got me on the left wrist, which hurt for a minute then stopped. And my knee stopped hurting, too. Acupuncture? Or maybe just my brain dampening the pain receptors? Whatever. I took care of the gutter on the other side, blowing all the crap out and nailing up a place where it had come loose. The gutters on the other side need more than that… the fascia board was cracked where the nails had gone in all the way down one 8-foot length, and the one on the end looks rotten. I’ll have to get new boards (and screens), paint the boards, then pull down the gutter to replace those boards before nailing it back up again.

After I’d finished on the roof, and we were looking at what limbs need to be cut off an oak tree, my knee buckled. Very painfully. I hadn’t had one of those in a long time. After getting home, I should have stayed home instead of going to the retail district to get lunch and repair parts, but live and learn I guess. I’ve got the ice cuff on it now; I expect it to be better before we make the long drive north.

How did it happen? I blame the chicken houses: I was helping to run feed last weekend, which entails a lot of bending and stooping to shake the pans and flats. My legs were quite sore the next day; my left leg cramped up pretty good around the back of my thigh, and was like that until this morning. I’ve been putting more weight on the right leg all week, and I guess the knee decided it needed its own vacation. All in all, an inauspicious start. But I’m hoping that’s the worst of it, and things will get better from there. At least I’m out of the honey-do loop for a day or so.

Whew

So today was the father-in-law’s catheterization, in which the docs would seek (and perhaps repair) any major blockages.

They found a couple of minor blockages, but they weren’t enough to impede blood flow. Given that he’s been feeling better since they replaced the Lasix with a different medication, one that wasn’t beating on his kidneys so much, they now think perhaps the root of his problem was kidney- rather than heart-related.

He’s going to spend one more night for observation (post-catheter thing) then send him home tomorrow. There will likely be more tests to confirm the current guess diagnosis, but he seems to be out of the woods for now. I hope he wants all his stuff back. ;-)

UPDATE: You know, last night he was in a semi-private room and didn’t have O’Liarly on. And he was feeling better. Coincidence? I think not!