Yesterday was a great day. Very little pain, great progress on the exercises, and lots of walking. After lunch I took my pills and (2 Percocet) with the intention of letting them come on for about fifteen minutes and then doing my work out. But instead I sat down in my chair and passed out for an hour and a half. So I made the mistake of thinking that I could cut my pills back to every 6 hours. After all I wasn’t in much pain and I was making great progress. Wrong. Today I’m paying a very heavy price and hoping I can get back ahead of the pain curve.

I’m using a cane now and last night I actually slept through one of my percocet doses. Today I actually bent my knee 91 degrees! The goal is 115-120 so I have a lot of work, but I started at 50 so I’m feeling pretty good about it.

Becky and I are playing out our nurse-patient fantasies. Except I always thought she was the one that was supposed to wear the white nylons!

Ouch! The first two or three days involved some major pain, much of it self inflicted. Or inflicted by thy physical therapists. It’s for your own good, son. But I have good drugs, percocets and they encourage you to take them so you can get through the amazing pain the first time you try to bend your leg. Percocet dreams are strange. It’s been like this infinite line of people conjured from my imagination walking past and saying wierd things to me, and I’m never quite sure if I’m awake or asleep.

Something fucked up the first night in the hospital, I think they overdosed me on the iv drip narcotic. I’m not clear on what happened because I was SOOOO out of it, but I know there were a lot of people in the room yelling at me to keep my eyes open and wake up and to stay with us. They’ve been pretty straight forward about it since, but haven’t really said how much danger I was in or exactly how it happened.

I came home from the hospital on Thursday and Becky has been nursing me back to health. I can walk (a little) without crutches and can already bend my leg more than I could before surgery. Needless to say all those ligaments need to be stretched out since they haven’t had to lengthen to that extent in decades. It’s a process. But I’m glad I did it.

I might have had a different answer on Wednesday.

This seems as good a day as any to resurrect my blog. When you write a public blog, journaling your personal life, it’s a a bit dicey, the most interesting stuff is the most private. There’s been a lot going on in my life that I’m not interested in sharing with the world, or even the few people who ever read this.

I guess the big news is that tomorrow I’m getting a new knee. I’ve been walking pretty much one legged for several years now, dragging my non-bending right leg along with every step. It really doesn’t hurt that much but if you watched me walk you’d think I was in pain. One reason it doesn’t hurt is that I’ve become so sedentary that I don’t put much stress on it anymore. I almost wish it did hurt more, so I would feel better about having the surgery. I’m having a little buyers remorse today. I can’t help thinking about the fact that if this doesn’t work, there’s no going back. Plus, I’m feeling a little disloyal to my knee. It’s been a good knee, we’ve had an abusive relationship, but on the whole it’s been a pretty decent body part. And now I’m giving up on it, replacing it with a new fangled contraption of titanium and teflon, or whatever they make these things out of. I feel like I’m being disloyal.

Another thing that’s bothering me is that in the past I have not been a very good patient when it comes to doing my rehab. That’s probably one of the reasons my knees are in such bad shape. After a basketball misshap, I’d pretty much ignore the exercises that I was given and then return to playing way to soon. It seems like I’d just get to one hundred percent when I’d tear up a knee again. I really don’t have much cartiledge left. But this time around, I think it’s work hard at rehab or be a cripple, so I hope I can shake off my old lazy ways. I’m a little nervous about conquering my sloth.

On the mental health front, I’ve been very good lately. I guess it’s the right mix of medications. I’m not nearly as restless as I usually am, I can concentrate at work and am getting so much more done than ever before. I think I used to waste three hours a day in five second intervals. I can get through the most boring paperwork tasks that I have without going completely nuts or simply not being able to start them. I don’t hate my job, and am taking it one hour at a time instead of thinking about “just two more years and I can retire.” In fact, we came out money ahead at the end of the year (not counting the debt we’ve taken on for the girl’s college) and for some reason that made me think that the job is OK. It gives me the feeling I’m getting something out of my efforts, other than just keeping the wolf away from the door.

The down side of this is that I don’t get obsessed anymore. You say “That’s a downside?” Well it is a blessing in the sense that I’m not drifting away from what I’m supposed to be doing to day dream about the obsession dejure, but on the other hand, my obsessiveness has been part and parcel of my creative drive over the years. This blog, my artwork, the guitar, basketball all those fun things that I’ve pretty much taught myself over the years. And right now none of those things seem worth doing. I have a hard time doing much more than my job, the house chores and read a book. But I guess I just have to let that situation play out.

“Several offices in the midwest will remain closed on Friday due to the winter storm.”

Of course they read off our office at the end so I had to listen in suspense, but I’m snowed in! Rebecca’s office is probably open, but she’s staying home as a matter of principle.

Our office closed at noon! Fist time ever. I’ve blown the driveway out twice and it really hadn’t started yet. It’s coming down pretty hard now, it’s supposed to go at an inch or better an hour until tomorrow. Now we’re famous for blizzards around the middle of March during the State Tournaments, which makes me wonder if this is the mid March blizzard come early and we’re going to have an early spring, or if we’ll get this AND a mid March blizzard. Hope so, we really need the moisture, and it’s what keeps us rugged. It’s very wet snow, so it’s perfect for snowballs, I hear kids screaming and laughing outside now.

I love snow days!

I think Helen Mirren is HOT!

Not much going on. Playing the guitar, smoking cigars and going to Gopher Women’s Basketball games. I wish we didn’t have to be so politically correct so I could just say the “Lady Gophers” but that’s just so twentieth century.

I’ve taken to hanging out at a local smoke shop. Since I don’t drink, it’s kind of a nice male bonding thing to do. Gets me out of the house and makes me smell really bad.

Rebecca’s laptop went belly-up just before Valentine’s. Although I had no intention of replacing it, I was browsing Craig’s list and found someone selling a brand new MacBook for $850. They’d won it in a silent auction and weren’t really interested in having a Mac (poor misguided fools). They thought it was the low end one and I couldn’t really tell from the packaging. I offered them $800 and they took it. I got it home and when I fired it up it was the next level up. 2GHz, 1GB RAM, 80 GB drive. That model retails for $1300. I never get deals like that!

I also just used my bank card points to get an 80 gig iPod. I can put all my music, my photo collection and a couple of movies on it and still not dent it’s capacity.

I just watched the Dixie Chicks video, “Not Ready to Play Nice.” Now I’m not a big Dixie Chicks fan, but after what the country radio assholes did to them after they spoke out against the war, I found the video very moving. It’s really cool.
I love old time country and I’m really a redneck by heritage, but I guess I’m a redneck with blue state politics.

Guilty pleasure: The Wreckers