January 4, 2011 – WOW! The new year is here and life is getting back to normal. Christmas went very well with family and friends for dinner. I cooked for the two days before Christmas, making the Christmas braid – cheated and used frozen dough but you could not tell the difference. I will go back to the old way next year because I love the feel of kneading dough, but it made it much easier this year. I did make the filling from scratch. I just cannot imagine using canned poppy seed filling. They make it way too sweet for my taste. You are supposed to taste the poppy seed flavor mixed with the nuts and the butter and cream, NOT sugar.
I made my usual cranberries from scratch and put them in the fridge a couple of days before Christmas. They are so easy though. You just take a package (or two depending upon how much cranberry sauce you need) of cranberries from the produce section, add an orange or two and some sugar and water and cook until they all pop. Then you cool and put it through a strainer and you have cranberry sauce. The oranges are simple to use – zest off about half the skin and add it into the sauce and squeeze the juice and pour it in. Then you only put in enough more water to make the quantity of liquid called for on the package. It is easy, it tastes great – much better than canned – and it has no artificial ingredients.
I made the thing the day before Christmas – and I was afraid I had messed up this time. I had picked up Instant Pudding instead of the cook kind and being still unable to drive, I was not sure how it was going to work, but work it did and it made everyone at the table happy Christmas day.
During this ramp up until Christmas there were still a few other things that had to happen. I still had shopping to do and Donna came and got me to take me to the mall a week after I had the stitches out. This was still two weeks before Christmas but the mall was crowded and I was still not walking comfortably, although I was walking pretty well. Longer distances still tired me out. Sooooo – we decided to take the wheelchair we had borrowed from my friend Diana. Oh my gosh!!! I will have so much more concern for people in wheelchairs in the future. Not that I have been rude to them, but sometimes I just sort of glance past. I will start looking them in the eye and saying hello and smiling. Everywhere shop we went into was the same. The clerk would ask Donna what we wanted – she would defer to me and I would tell them what I wanted. I would hand them my credit card and they would had the card and the slip to be signed back to Donna. “Hey wait a minute!” I was thinking. “Here I am, down here.” Of course Donna would tell them it was my card and I had to sign and they seemed so surprised that I was capable. I was amazed. I had heard these things before, but never really thought a lot about it – but I sure will now.
It was the same when I was on the walker. People just sort of walked past me as though I did not exist. Although I will say people were good about holding doors open for me. And at my church, our pastor arranged to have a wheelchair at the door three days after I got out of the hospital so I could attend the Christmas concert. That night people were also great about moving a chair out of the way so the wheelchair could sit at the end of the row and I would not be in the way of the dancers – and the concert was wonderful, even though sitting in that position for almost an hour and half was not easy on my leg. I was ready for the pain meds when I got home.
When I saw my doctor on Dec 15th, he and I were in agreement that I would get off the narcotic pain medicines that had come home from the hospital as soon as possible. Actually they had been prescribed by the doctors at the PT REHAB Facility and not my surgeon and he did not like my being on oxycontin anymore than I liked being on it. I did not even begin the Hydrocodone and Tylenol mixture that was the second drug they sent home for me to take. However, the desire to get off the meds was at war with pain levels for another couple of weeks. I started immediately cutting down to half a tablet instead of a whole table every eight hours and that seemed to be ok. Then I decided to not take anymore. That was on Friday the 17th and it did not work at all. I finally had to give in, get up and take meds and go back on the half dose for several more days.
That meant I could not drive – in this state driving on prescription narcotics can get you in jail just as fast as driving drunk. And frankly, the way I was feeling, I was pretty much drunk with the meds. I was fuzzy anyway. So Donna and Diana drove me to PT the week before Christmas. Yes, even on Christmas Eve there was PT.
PT is supposed to be Physical Therapy but sometimes in the beginning it felt a little like Physical Torture. My therapist is wonderful though. Pat pushes just hard enough to keep her patients pushing themselves just a little harder, so each day I did a little more and a little more. That first week, I was sure it would be nothing but pain, but I was wrong. By the second week, I had graduated from the walker and am using a cane – and then only when I am out of my house. In the house – it is just me and my legs.
The hardest thing for me to learn to do was walk. You know, you really do not think of how to walk. After all we all learned to walk as babies, so walking is just something we do naturally. We do not realize that if we do not put our foot forward correctly, we are basically walking stiff legged, like a monster from an old horror movie. I had to learn to say – out loud – “Heel, toe, Heel, toe”, for each step I took, until my knee started bending naturally again. Let me tell you – those first steps hurt and I wanted to just slap the therapist who started me on the heel, toe thing, but in the long run she was a blessing and I am walking naturally again. I have a tiny limp and of course I still have the darn cane with me so it is obvious something has changed, but the limp actually is better than it was before the surgery and I expect it will be totally gone soon.
Finally during that week before Christmas (and yes I keep going a little back and forth in time, but it is just the way the story runs) I was able to cut it down to a quarter of a tablet and the day after Christmas I was able to take the narcotics away and replace them with Advil. It isn’t pain free totally, but it is a sort of a dull ache that is bearable and I CAN DRIVE AGAIN. Yes, the Monday after Christmas I drove myself to PT for the first time. That was wonderful. Actually before I drove myself to PT, I drove myself to the beauty shop on the corner and got my hair cut. It was a given it was going to get cut that day – either I was going to take the nearest scissors to it, or I was going to find someone who knew how to cut it.
A friend invited me to her New Year’s Eve party and I decided to attend for a little while. I still tire way too easily to even think about staying up past midnight, but I did go and since there were several people there from Via de Cristo, I had a good time. I am somewhat shy about meeting new people so sometimes I avoid going to parties and the like, but I am glad I started the year out that way. I also had my black eyed peas for luck – I hope they work as I do not want this year to be a repeat of last. Our family just had too many things happening last year that were not good, illness, unemployment, unhappy teenagers (yes I know they are unhappy all the time, but this was serious stuff), money worries – just not a good year. I have high hopes that 2011 will be better than most.
December 26th dawned cloudy and for me sad. I hate the letdown after Christmas but I think everyone feels it – we just try to hide it with all this rushing around with after holiday shopping and the like. Unfortunately for me, I was locked into the house and unable to drive, it was a Sunday and I could not even get to church and I was so exhausted from the cooking and company on Christmas that I am not sure I would not have slept through it even had I made it. I got started on a crying jag and could not stop. I would get myself almost settled and someone would call – and it would start all over again. I missed my two younger sons and had hoped right up until the last minute that they would make it for Christmas but they were moving and did not get here. My granddaughter was back east visiting family there so she was not here. My mom passed away on Christmas and that something I never forget even for a minute during the holidays and I miss her terribly. I do not care how old you get, you will always miss your mom after she is gone. I also miss my dad a lot – the holidays were always so special in our house when I was growing up. Even though we did not have a lot of money, my parents always made it special and usually the day after Christmas we were outside sledding or building snowmen or something so there was no time for Christmas blahs to set in. This year though, I really got them. Finally at about 7:30 in the evening I just gave up and went to bed.
Normally I leave my tree and decorations up until after the New Year, but Angel and Maxi were escaping into the living room every chance they got and I needed it down. My son came over and helped me get the tree down and he took all the decorations that were higher than I could reach down so that I could pack them away. He carried my tree box into the garage, but for days after I still had plastic boxes in the living room. The dogs were using the captain’s chairs from my dining room table as springboards to jump onto the boxes and then onto other places they were not supposed to be. Finally I could take it no longer and knee or no knee I carried or dragged all the boxes to the garage. I still do not have them put up on the shelves since they go higher than I can reach without a ladder and the knee is not going to make it up or down a ladder yet, but at least they are out of the living/dining room. I dragged the chairs out too – one into the den and one into my bedroom. Actually that one is now in my bathroom since standing to put on makeup and dry my hair is still a little difficult and it works nicely in front of the mirror. Angel and Maxi are happy again. I am not stressed and worried that they will eat a part of the artificial tree that will hurt them. They cannot get up on the table because the other chairs slide in enough they have no room to work. All is well in our happy home. That is good because I was having to bribe them back into the family room with treats and they were eating more treats than food and that is not good. Thank goodness they race around the yard a gazillion miles an hour so they at least do not have the issues with weight that we humans have when we over indulge in treats.
So now the new year is upon us and this week I am back to normal. I am an on call sub for our pre-K at church so my PT appointments are in the afternoons. I volunteer at one of the local schools as a reading/writing tutor for third and fourth graders and was able to get back to “my” kids this morning. They were as glad to see me as I was glad to see them. Once I am done with therapy I am going to start going two mornings a week because one is just not enough for some of the kids. They would have me come every day if I could. I love working with them and I love subbing with the little kids in Pre-K. Sunday I was able to get back to teaching my 3rd through 6th grade Sunday school class – they are such great kids and they keep me on my toes because they ask such great questions. Next week we will start our Thursday night program with the kids, Godz Kidz, and that is always fun. And this month I will start a Wednesday night Women’s Bible study that sounds like it will be fun and enlightening. And of course I am working on our next Via de Cristo weekend. And still going to PT. So life is moving along – there is going to be a little delay on things I had planned to do on the house. I simply cannot get into the yard on my hands and knees moving rocks and digging out borders, but I will be back there soon. I did get one border in and a couple of flower beds built in the front and I will get back to that as soon as I can kneel again. That is one thing that just is not happening yet!!!
