Recovery

It has been months since I last posted here. My last entry concerned my accident that damaged my left knee.

Following the accident, my knee became very swollen. The pressure building up from the swelling caused blisters to form on my leg, the blisters popped and became infected, and I wound up in the hospital for three nights / four days with bottles of antibiotic pouring directly into my veins. After I got out, I got therapy for the swelling and went to a high-compression thigh-high support stocking -- which is difficult and painful to put on or remove. As the swelling diminished, I switched to regular support hose supplemented by an elastic knee support. I mostly don't use the knee band any more as the swelling continues to go down. The knee continues to be numb and sometime tingles like small creatures were walking on it.

I continue reducing the amount of insulin I require -- my daily dose of Lantus, the slow insulin, is down to 48 units from a high of 110 units -- although I've been suffering an increasing number of low blood sugar episodes, about once a week now. The low blood sugar episodes seem to follow days in which I've had particularly bad diarrhea, and I just started taking a new medicine that may help correct the digestion problems.

I have jumped through almost all of the hoops required for getting an insulin pump and should receive mine soon. The new pumps come with continuous blood sugar monitoring, which should help me head off any future episodes of low blood sugar. It should also help me control the highs, too. Originally expected to be released at the beginning of the year, the new pumps didn't get federal approval until late July or some time in August.

My spine has gotten worse. The arthritis was originally only diagnosed as severe in the upper spine, with the lower spine rated as moderate; now it's all severe and they're calling it "degenerative disk disease" instead of arthritis. The arthritis in my right hip and right knee are at least as bad as ever and I now have problems in my right wrist, having to wear a wrist support most of the time to reduce the pain.

Annoyingly, I have a new problem: if I try to get up early in the morning, I get severe headaches. I like to get up at 7:00, sometimes earlier, but I've been unable to move before 10:00 frequently of late. If I try to get up despite the headache it just gets worse and worse until I can't do anything.

Football season has started. I didn't watch many games in the pre-season and I'll probably continue to pass on watching all but the most interesting. Even by recording the games and fast-forwarding through the commercials, the games last too long for me to sit through them comfortably. I flinch every time the announcers mention that somebody has had hamstring problems ... my left leg hurts in sympathy. Delia has promised to buy me a lift recliner (the chair stands up and pushes me out instead of my having to struggle to my feet to get out), to make television viewing more comfortable and to get me to elevate my legs the way the doctors have ordered me to do. I've picked out the model I want, one of the larger La-Z-Boy models. We were at the store twice this week and I spoke with the store manager this morning on the telephone. It's just a matter of finalizing the deal.

Delia and Cathy have been after me increasingly lately to agree to move my computers upstairs. Delia doesn't want me having to walk half-way around the house to do downstairs or to come back upstairs while Cathy simply wants the increased space and privacy she'd get. I'd lose some privacy and I'd have to clean my stuff up and get rid of a large portion of it. They'll probably win, likely next year, so I'd better start throwing stuff out now.