I Told You I Would Share Everything

December 19, 2011

I Told You I Would Share Everything

Yikes, I have driven over my pee bag or had problems with it twice this week.  Once I thought everything was connected but it wasn’t so I filled my seat cushion with pee so they had to get me out of my chair again and give me dry shorts and a new lift sheet and a new cushion.  I thought it was quite humorous but I don’t think they did.  And then on Saturday in my new chair which doesn’t tilt so there isn’t a place to hang the bag, and they finally found one they thought was safe but it seems that the front wheel wore a hole in it and I stopped at the nurses’ station and went back to visit some friends and Darcy was behind me and said there’s a big trail of pee coming from your chair.  When I got into the room and stopped it then became a pool.  So the nurses came in and emptied the rest of the bag and sent me to my room where I got a new bag.

Physio and OT are going really well as I am trying to get a lot stronger before my surgery on January 19^th.  My iron was a little low in my blood, just a touch under normal, but the doctor here thought we should bump it up as high as we could get it for the surgery.  I have to go to the hospital on December 30^th for preadmission and then again on January 12^th for preop.  I assume they will be taking lots of blood and other stuff and explaining the surgery and what it will be like after.  I have been told here that I will be somehow weight-bearing on my knee the day after surgery.  I don’t know how they will get me up, it could be on a tilt table where they strap you to the table and then tilt it upright.  It should be fun…..  I am assuming I will have a lot of pain pills.  We will see.

Thanks for all the birthday wishes but I think 65 is just a number and the only important number I really remember is my 16^th birthday when I could get my driver’s license.  But I want all you guys to keep working to keep the Old Age Security fund topped up.  Thanks a lot.

Thanks to the Rocket and Robert for bringing the cake on Thursday and sharing it with me and some of my buddies.  And thanks to George, Grandpa and John for bringing the cake on Friday morning and written on the cake was “Happy Birthday Rented Mule” because George told all the people at OT and PT to work me like a rented mule, but they also told me that I have now graduated from ‘rented mule’ to ‘jackass third class’.  Thanks to all the visitors on Sunday, it was a great day.

So back to my fitness training, I can now sit up on the edge of the bench for several minutes without my hands propping me up.  The worst problem sitting up is my lower back but I will just have to work on that.  I didn’t get up today on my foot but I probably will every day for the rest of the week.  I am on the bicycle for a half hour and I have increased the tension.  I started at one and I am now at six.  And according to the machine, when I am pedaling forward the left leg is doing 45 to 50% of the work so hopefully it is getting stronger.  So until the January 19^th surgery I will be trying to get that leg as strong as I can.

 In OT they are really working hard on my right arm and shoulder to get it stronger and my left arm gets an hour workout as well and the hand is starting to move more every day.  Tomorrow I am going to the mall with my roommate, and perhaps one other person, with Darcy to do some Christmas shopping.  It should be very interesting because that will be the first time I will be out in my wheelchair.  The biggest problem is I have to put on long pants which I have only had on once in the past four months.  The strange thing is Darcy got me a golf shirt with a collar and that is the first collar I have worn since the injury.  For everyone else after a few minutes you can’t feel the collar, but I could feel it on my neck all day.  It’s a really nice shirt but I think I will have to cut the collar off.

It’s either me learning the routine here or the nurses learning my routine but everything is going a lot smoother now and I was probably a big pain in the butt to the nurses when I first got here.  Most of it was probably due to my knee which was very painful but something seems to have happened to it in the past few weeks because I can move it around a lot easier now and they are amazed I am not yelling at them when they move my left leg.  It could a combination of things:  on the bike again helps strengthen my quads; and I have a constant motion machine that I use a minimum of an hour a day that bends my leg from about 15 degrees straight out to a flexion of 92 degrees.  The goal is to get the knee to bend a 100 degrees or more before surgery.  We shall see. 

My claustrophobia is improving every day.  I can now ride in elevators by myself and not have a panic attack.  I never ate in my room because I could feel a panic attack coming and would eat in the lounge which I called my private dining room, but now I have no problem being in my room in my wheelchair.  That in itself is an accomplishment.   I have one more hurdle to cross though and that is to use the washroom on a commode and I will be working on that for the next little while.  I’m spilling all the beans now.  I used to use the excuse that I wouldn’t ride in elevators because I wanted the exercise walking up the stairs, but it really was that I couldn’t get on the elevator.  So my recommendation to anyone who has panic or anxiety attacks is get some really good counseling which I have had here and I’m on some medication which seems to help.  It’s like an anvil has been taken off my back so it’s working for me and hopefully if anyone else out there has panic or anxiety attacks, admit to yourself what the problem is and address it. Remember, mental illness is like any other disease, if you have it admit it and you can probably get it cured.  I’ve lived with this for probably 40 years and I have made many, many excuses and got very good at avoiding places that would give me a panic attack.  So if any good comes out of this crash, getting over my panic attacks is a huge thing. 

I’m sitting in the lounge on the fourth floor looking out onto the field where there are four deer grazing, and I have seen a coyote there and a flock of turkeys.

Thanks for listening.