jimsjournal
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jimsjournal |
July begins -- 07/01/10 |
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July 1st -- we're halfway through the year! (Gee, didn't 2010 begin just a few weeks ago?) I guess I'm also about in the middle of my personal repair work for the year. My dental work for example: two teeth extracted in January (two separate events) with bonegrafts, then a few weeks later I got crowns installed on the two titanium screws that had been installed in 2009. On Monday I went to see Dr. Nager (my periodontist) and he installed the titanium screws but one of them (the upper front one, the one whose absence is visible) required some additional bone graft work, which means that although the one should be ready to have a crown put on sometime in August, the one that needed the extra bone grafting work will might not be ready for a crown until October. I've been going without my moon boot for almost two and a half weeks now (except for a couple times when I overdid walking and had to give my foot a bit of a rest) and I'm walking fairly well. A bit of a limp -- well, not quite a limp, it's just that there is less flexibility in my right heel and ankle than in my left. The healing from the surgery seems to be progressing quite well, but there is still a bit of discomfort and tightness at the back of my foot, especially if my stride is too long. My next appointment with my podiatrist is on July 26th, by which time I hope healing will be complete and I will get approval to go from easy walking to vigorous walking and also to start jogging. My hernia repair surgery is scheduled for tomorrow morning. I've got to be at the hospital at 6 a.m. and surgery is scheduled for 8 a.m. That's good. Get it out of the way early in the day and be out of recovery and home by early afternoon. (And then take a nice long nap.) I've got a stack of books to read -- more than even I could read in a week. However, I doubt that I will be posting any entries here over the next three or four days. When I had hernia surgery in 1989, I made it up the three steps to the front porch (of the house we lived in then) and onto the living room couch (which opened into a bed) and I spent the next week on the first floor of our house. That incision had been closed using staples and every time I moved it was like being stabbed, so I was not about to climb stairs. A week after the surgery I had my post-op visit to the doctor and he removed the staples. What a relief! (My surgeon has promised me that he does not use staples.) I think it was the next day after that when I decided I was going to walk all the way down our block and back. I had thought of walking around the full block but Nancy persuaded me not to even think about that yet. I set out, with her holding my arm, down our driveway, right turn, down the sidewalk in front of our house, across the neighbor's driveway, down the sidewalk in front of their house -- this was really getting difficult, I felt as if I had walked miles -- crossed the next driveway and walked a little bit further -- and decided that if I went any further, I might not have the strength to make it all the way back home. That was a very humbling experience. Oh, sure, in another day or two I did make it all the way to the far end of our block, but I had learned something about recovery from surgery and the time required to regain strength. That's why I don't see myself doing anything more than taking very short walks until after the middle of the month... There probably won't be any updates here for a few days (ah, but that's nothing new!) because I think for the next few days I won't find sitting at a computer to be very comfortable... So... no fireworks for me this 4th of July. Gee, and I didn't get around to visiting any of the fireworks shops that have sprung up since a couple of weeks ago when the state legislature accidentally authorized a much wider selection of pyrotechnics than they had thought they had. (Not exactly a collection of rocket scientists.) Oh... here are links to two amusing videos on YouTube... One is by a guy who used stop motion techniques to create a robot dog that looks like the fighting machines in Star Wars. He calls it At-at Day Afternoon. The other is of a 13 year old kid who turned a vacuum cleaner into a device that lets him climb walls just like Spiderman. Jill's Road Trip Report: She has been having a good time with her friends in the Los Angeles area and she has been seeing many of the expected sights. They also made a side trip from there to Las Vegas, stopping at a ghost town on the way, staying overnight at CircusCircus, and stopping at a creationist dinosaur exhibit on the the way back. Today I think she is going down to San Diego. She will be heading back late Saturday night, taking a red eye flight from LAX that will reach Newark early Sunday morning, and then catching a flight from Newark to Providence. She has packed an incredible range of experiences in her trip.
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