Back to the quiet times for the moment

Well, Number One Son and his females have gone; headed to their new home in Arkansas.  That should be interesting and we certainly wish them the best of luck.  Our dog is still running around the back yard sniffing for evidence of that intruder dog.  I never even saw the two cats.  Apparently they were happy enough with the sister in whose room they got to stay.  

The intruder dog is a bulldog.  He is really quite friendly; almost too friendly.  He likes biting games with peoples hands so he needs to be corrected from time to time and isn't getting that correction.  When he is calm, he's a great guy.

That's him relaxing after I'd been scratching his belly.  He even raised his leg to give me better access.
 

So now we are back to exciting stuff like doctor's visits and vet visits for our dog.  Yep, three doctor's visits and two vet visits scheduled for the next week!  Of course one doctor visit is with my wife's surgeon and we are thinking he will be pretty satisfied with her recovery.

He gave her instructions to leave that tape on and just let it fall off naturally.  Well, it's covering the stitches so tearing it off doesn't sound that smart even to me!  She's also got a visit with her regular doctor; just a regular thing.  My visit will be with the dermatologist; a checkup on a thing they removed a few weeks ago.  Aging does bring these not so wonderful side effects.

Our son asked if we had any trips planned and the answer was basically 'no'.  Right now we don't want to put the dog in a kennel so that takes international travel or cruises off the table.  We have had people visit just a month or two after we moved somewhere and we won't do that to them.  So that leaves us a choice between a little trip over to California or maybe the other way to Arizona.  We might do something like that.  There are plenty of places we haven't visited in both states and it would get the dog used to traveling.  So far the farthest he's been in our vehicles is Las Vegas. Since 3 or 4 thousand mile trips are our norm, he may as well get used to days in the truck!

Gotta go.  The dog just came in to point out to me that I'm late with his breakfast.  Take care.  Thanks for stopping by and keep washing those hands!

Busy busy - for me anyway!

We are just back from a quick trip up to Washington state.  The occasion was a memorial for my wife's late step-father who passed away last February.  It was his birthday and the family just got together to say a couple things.  It was quite touching at times.  At other times it was kind of painful.  Life goes on I guess.

We flew up on Thursday and came home on Sunday; not exactly a long visit but we had things to do.  We haven't been doing much flying lately and it was a pretty good experience.  We flew Alaska Airways where we've always had pretty good treatment and this was no exception.  The flight attendant managed to drop something out of an overhead onto me so decided she needed to buy me a drink to make up for it.  I've got to figure out how to make that happen more often!  The landing back here in Vegas was the smoothest I've ever felt.  It was so amazing I had to compliment the pilot.  Vegas is surrounded by mountains and often is kind of gusty but this time you literally couldn't tell when you actually touched down.

I did visit the surgeon who did my discectomy on a followup last monday and got official permission to go do things.  Good thing because we were just back from Washington!  Still, it's good to know he thinks I'll live.  Unfortunately I'm still an old crock so all my aches and pains won't be going away.  As they say though at least I'm on the right side of the grass.

We got home and now have a painter in fixing a couple cracks in the ceiling.  One especially is being a bit of a challenge.  The topsoil around here is pretty flimsy stuff so the builder will dig a hole 3 or 4 feet deep and fill it with compacted gravel trying to start the foundation on something stable.  Of course, stuff happens and a few cracks happen.  (There are homes in the valley that were not built on a gravel base and are in the process of collapse.)  Anyway, these cracks were in the living room and my wife wanted them fixed and she was sure she didn't want an amateur job.  From all the work, I'm thinking that was a great idea!  The guy had to take out a section of drywall about 3 inches by 30 inches; replace it and then resurface it.  He says part of the problem is that the builder didn't install the drywall in same direction as the joists.  I never knew it mattered but what do I know.  He is doing lots of fooling around to get it looking good.  My wife and I will get to take care of the ones in the spare bedroom but those are much smaller and won't require the drywall work.

We got home in time to find our cactus in bloom.  Well, one bloom.

You can probably imagine why we have always considered the cactus to be male.

And a very proud boy he is!

So that's most of the news from around here.  Hopefully I'll get back to nothing to say soon.  All this activity is quite tiring.  Thanks for stopping by though.  Have a good one.

It's done and I'm thinking I'm glad

My surgery is done that is.  Let me give you all the gruesome details.  We drove into Las Vegas last Thursday and checked into one of the local hotel-casinos - The Palace Station Hotel and Casino - it isn't 4-star but is was $50 a night and only about 10 blocks from the hospital.  It was clean and comfortable and the staff were very nice.  My appointment at the hospital was at 08:00 so we didn't want to be getting stuck in traffic!  We had dinner with our daughter then crashed. 

Next morning we were bright and early at the hospital.  This was Valley Hospital.  I can see why the doctor likes it; it was only about five minutes drive from his office.  It isn't new but is certainly large and seemed to have all the goodies.  So we check in and get all fixed up for the operation.  Don't I look happy?

The surgery I'm waiting for is ACDF:  anterior cervical discecomy and fusion.  It means they go into the throat from the front, push everything out of the way then remove the failing disc replacing it with a special piece of plastic.  Finally they use a plate and screw the plate into the two vertebrae.  A bone graft may be used or not.  In my case the doctor expects the vertebrae fuse without the need for an external bone graft. 

My wife sat with me and we read for a while then  two hours later, just as projected, I get rolled away to the operating theatre.  The next thing I know is I'm waking and my wife and daughter are visiting.  Well, I'm told that is what happened, my memory is pretty foggy. 

This would have been around noon and I wasn't totally around until around 3 or 4 in the afternoon when I started feeling hungry.  (No food since the night before so it's reasonable.)  Around 5 p.m. they brought me food:  chicken parm, pasta and some salad.  I managed about a third of the chicken and pasta.  The salad didn't sound like fun.  I was cutting it into really small bites but it was working.  

Over the night I got to play with the pain medication pump.  You have this button that you press to give you a little jolt of pain medication.  The machine is pre-set to a certain volume of medication and how often you can receive it.  They set it for, say, 10 minutes.  If you press it before 10 minutes has passed the machine ignores your request.  If it's been more than 10, you get your medication and the timer is reset.  They had me set to pretty-often so during the night I did find myself flying once or twice but I don't really care for the feeling so eased off. 

By mid-morning I was ready to be out of the hospital and was asking everyone if I could get out.  In retrospect that was probably a bad idea.  I didn't understand how much better the drugs are in the hospital!  In the end we left about 3 p.m. with a prescription for oxycodon.  It is a good hour and a half over the pass and back home so it was nearing 5 p.m. before we landed and got situated.  I was glad to be home but I was soon to understand that thing about the quality of the drugs!  Mostly I had a sore throat.  It wasn't until Sunday that we figured out that I could be taking another medication with the oxy.  Since then it only hurts to swallow.  Before it was downright painful most of the time.  I do have a fancy neck brace.

The incision isn't particularly large, it really looks like only a couple of inches long.  I guess it was big enough though.  Before the procedure I would have numbness in the fingers of my left hand that would gradually climb up the arm until my whole arm was painful.  That hasn't happened since the procedure.  My very finger tips are kind of tingly but it hasn't gone any farther.  So that's a good step.  Also the pain I've had in my middle back has stopped.  I'm not sure if that has to do with the surgery or if the three days bed rest did it.  Probably the latter.  In the good news column I have lost about 3 lb.  I can't really recommend it as a diet but I'm looking for every possible good thing here!

Gotta go.  I'll update my blog when I find something new to say.  Take care and thanks for stopping by.