Status Update
One week down, seven to go before Cyndie can hope to be allowed to put weight on her right leg. Not that I’m counting. I’m noticing promising progress in her pain control as she is reducing narcotics and replacing them with over-the-counter alternatives.
I wish we could say Delilah is showing as much improvement. Even though she is no longer throwing up like she had been, her energy has dropped and she’s totally rejecting the vet-prescribed food and meds that are intended to help her. We’ve been throwing money at the problem and have learned there is no blockage visible by X-ray and her blood levels all fall within a healthy range.
Taking Delilah for a walk has become an exercise of my patience. Instead of pulling me down the trail like usual, she now trails behind as far as the leash reaches. At one point, as she stood foraging for grass to chew, I hooked her leash to a fence post and continued on to feed horses without her.
Normally, she would bark and bark if we left her behind. This time, she didn’t seem to mind one bit.
I think Cyndie and Delilah are unconsciously in a contest to see who gets better first.
Between my tending to each of them, I have continued to chip away at tasks we had hoped to take care of before snow arrived. Yesterday, I finally retrieved Cyndie’s prized “door-table” that she sets up on two plastic sawhorses in the woods under a big tree. It’s a novelty that she loves having, but it sees little if any use throughout the summer. It is now stored in the barn for winter.
I also pulled out the ATV snowplow from the back of the garage and installed it on the Grizzly. In the morning, it seemed like I was going to have snow to scrape off the driveway but by the time I was ready to plow, the snow had again melted from the pavement.
It looks like we installed heating in the asphalt. I’m pretty sure that residual ground warmth is fading fast. Our temperatures are due to drop for a few days, swinging us from unseasonably warm to colder than normal for mid-November.
Eventually, I will need to plow the driveway. For now, I am more than happy to wait.
It feels strange to walk the snowy trails without Cyndie. Winter will be half over by the time she gets to join me again.
It challenges one’s ability to live in the moment when you can’t put weight on a leg for two months and the immediate moment involves uncomfortable surgery pain. It’s safe to say that both Cyndie and I are setting our sights on a day that is weeks away. For now, that’s the moment we are living in.
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My Workplace
I don’t mean to boast, but for those of you who are forced to work under harsh fluorescent lighting, walk on static-generating commercial-grade carpet, or stand on cold tile or hard concrete floors surrounded by dreary walls, my experience is worlds away from yours. My workplace is the great outdoors with all the sights, sounds, and smells that come with that.
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Problem Postponed
My concerns about clearing the snow off our driveway were unwarranted. The warmth still in the ground was slowly melting the snow from below. Upon first light yesterday morning, I could see that plowing would be unnecessary. As the day wore on, the surface of the driveway just continued to lose snow cover, even though light snowfall continued off and on all day.
It wasn’t enough new snow to overcome the dark, wet driveway surface. Sure looks like a new layer of asphalt, doesn’t it?
Being new, it lacks the texture of the old, worn pavement we replaced. Sure, the old surface was breaking apart, but it provided traction! As a result, the new driveway threatens to be much more slippery than we are used to. I hunted down an empty bucket and started putting in a variety of sand and gravel so we will have something to throw down on bad sections after the residual ground warmth completely fades.
By then, I will be less concerned about driving the ATV along the shoulders when plowing because they will be frozen, too. The postponed problem will no longer be a problem at all.
Here’s hoping… Look at me, wishing for it to get freezing cold. That’s not usually the kind of desire an old man professes. Must be my inner child talking.
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Worst Combination
I’ve been dreading this possibility for months. The worst combination of plowable amounts of snow falling before the ground is thoroughly frozen played out yesterday right before our eyes. The unfinished shoulders of our new driveway are too soft to support driving on them, let alone scraping them with a plow blade.
Since we didn’t receive a huge amount of snow by the end of the day yesterday, I’m contemplating just pushing what snow there is to the edge of the asphalt to create small snow banks over the existing shoulder. Before the banks freeze too hard, I might try flattening them enough to create a base layer over which I could drive and plow after future snowfalls.
In the beginning moments of accumulation yesterday morning, I headed outside to clean leaves off the pavement in front of the shop. It’s a job I intended to do a week ago but a certain person’s emergency and follow-up surgery have disrupted a lot of the before-snow plans we had hoped to fulfill.
Nothing like raking leaves that are already getting covered by snow. By the end of the day, the area in the picture became a parking spot for my car. I moved my car out of the garage so I could put Marie’s car under a roof. If the snow lets up today or tomorrow, it will save me from needing to scrape windows if she decides to brave the winter driving back to her place in Minnesota.
With the two of us watching over Cyndie, the metal-jointed woman has been making pretty good progress managing her pain and healing her incisions. With Marie running the kitchen, I have been freed up to take the dog outside and to keep the horses well-fed.
And now, I’m adding the role of chief snow shoveler to my other primary duties.
🎶 It’s beginning to feel a lot like… winter.
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Who’s Boss
These days I’m on my own in tending to the horses and we have added a third feeding at mid-day to their routine. As a result, I am singularly tasked with managing two different serving sizes among the four horses. The general routine we have tried to maintain has involved closing the upper gates temporarily to break them into pairings of Light and Mia on the left and Swings and Mix on the right.
Oftentimes, they arrange themselves perfectly after they see us coming, but not always. Although, even if they start in the desired positions, it is pretty common for at least one of them to decide they need to go check on the other pan on their side, just in case it tastes better.
Or something like that. It would not be beyond them to also be flaunting a little dominance when they are feeling it.
The last couple of days I have taken to showing the interlopers that I am the boss of all of them. For example, Mix eats slower and gets served a larger portion than Swings. When Swings decides it’s time to saunter over and nudge Mix off her pan, I have been taking the pan away from Swings and serving it back to Mix, holding it while she tries to finish.
There can be one or two more maneuvers that transpire but it seemed to me yesterday that Swings was starting to recognize my intent and accept it without protest.
When circumstance has allowed, I have also experimented with changing who gets paired or switching to three horses on one side and one horse on the other. Since Mix and Mia both get the same-sized portion of feed, I like having them together on one side. Then I don’t have to care if any of the four try to switch.
We grant these horses so much autonomy that it is refreshing to occasionally brandish my authority with enough clarity that they have no reasons to doubt who the boss is when Cyndie and/or I show up.
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For The Record: Lest there be any confusion resulting from the fact our home is located in Wisconsin, *this* John W. Hays is now and always has been a Minnesota Vikings guy. Sometimes I have been inclined to whisper that fact instead of showing it off proudly. After a performance like the one yesterday against NFL’s second-ranked Buffalo Bills, where the Vikings came from behind and then survived an overtime battle culminating in an endzone interception to win 33–30, I just wanted to make sure nobody was mistaking me for a Green Bay Packer backer. Especially since I couldn’t bear to watch the last drive in overtime by Buffalo and took Delilah for a walk and fed the horses.
[silly grin]
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Outwaiting Inevitable
And there go the last 14 hours. Gone. It would have been nice to sleep through some of them. Okay, I’m exaggerating. I slept a couple hours at a time, twice. In between, I was standing out in the yard holding Delilah’s leash while she searched for grass long enough to chew and swallow.
The moon looked pretty cool through the clouds at 2 a.m. I didn’t see it at 5 a.m.
I was desperately hoping for vomit, but that never happened. At least, not yet. Hers, not mine.
For whatever reason, her symptoms are hinting that all is not right yet, but not manifesting in any obvious drastic changes. Is her throwing up inevitable? Time will tell.
I continue to keep one eye on her, one eye on Cyndie, and one eye on her mom when she needs help in the kitchen. It’s got me feeling a little crosseyed at times, but I can wait out the chaos with my sights set on the day when Cyndie’s bones have healed enough for supporting weight.
Is it inevitable that they will heal? I sure hope so.
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Like November
It’s beginning to feel a lot like… November. Finally. The temperature stayed below freezing all day yesterday and we experienced a misty drizzle that created a shiny frozen glaze over surfaces.
The upper area of the paddocks just beyond the overhang had become a sloppy, muddy mess after the recent rains. Now it has become the classic ankle-twisting gnarled and knobbly frozen surface that makes cleaning up piles of manure an exercise in futility. It completely stymies my desire for impeccable cleanliness in the area where the horses linger longest.
This morning on our walk, Delilah and I enjoyed a little visit with the cows who seemed particularly curious about our arrival at the corner where our properties meet. I don’t know much about cows, but it got me wondering about how they view the world of wild animals that travel these acres in comparison to their confined domestic status.
It probably isn’t very different from the experience of our horses, but the horses give off an aura of awareness that the cows appear to lack.
After Delilah’s vet visit yesterday, we have her on a strict bland diet of rice and meat and are giving her some anti-nausea medication to see if her stomach can regain its control in keeping contents contained.
I am extremely grateful to have not needed to clean up vomit for more than a day. Here’s hoping for two in a row.
Cyndie’s mom came over yesterday and spent the night offering her help in kitchen patrol. Our kitchen is not optimized for her methods so she is sounding just as taxed as I do when I pretend to cook for Cyndie, and I know where most things are stored and how our appliances work.
I’ve become chief fireplace officer and video entertainment system tech.
Pain management appears under control for Cyndie now and she is doing her best from the confines of her recliner to advise on the location of searched-for items, hoping to stay ahead of Marie’s and my frustrations as we do the caretaking of the caretaker.
Not that I’m counting, but only 8-weeks to go before Cyndie can start putting weight on her right foot again.
By then, November will be a distant memory.
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Managing Meds
When I walked into the hospital yesterday around 11:30 a.m., the temperature outside was 69°F. When Cyndie and I departed from the hospital around 3:00 p.m., it was 51°F. Somewhere between those two times, I made my way to the pharmacy within the hospital to pick up the medications prescribed by the doctors. There were seven of them. They barely fit into the bag. The clerk needed to walk around the plexiglass pass-through barrier to a half-door on the side to hand it to me.
I don’t remember this many drugs involved in Cyndie’s recovery from joint replacement surgeries.
Apparently, surgery for shattered bones is more painful than those for artificial joints. Speaking of pain, this go-round for Cyndie has been difficult to witness. The efforts of hospital staff to control her pain produced less-than-ideal results.
There are advantages and disadvantages to recovering in the hospital. One big advantage is that drugs can be administered by IV, which is faster acting. Some disadvantages experienced by Cyndie included understaffing and limited resources. The nurses are stretched beyond their limits to care for all the patients and oxygenation monitors needed to be shared among rooms. They didn’t have enough cold packs to keep them frozen between uses.
They also can’t give non-prescription meds which become a great augmentation of pain control once home, interlacing Tylenol or Ibuprofen between doses of the narcotics.
Getting home allowed us to fill the gaps that Cyndie faced in the hospital.
It also means I become the one responsible to make sure the narcotics don’t slow her breathing so much she doesn’t get enough oxygen.
No pressure there.
We created a chart to help us know when it’s time for the next dose of each. Now if we could studiously record when scheduled meds have actually been taken, that’d be just great.
Regarding my other patient, Delilah’s vomiting continues. We attained a vet appointment for this afternoon. I sure hope it doesn’t result in more prescription medications.
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Two Patients
That was one heck of a day, yesterday. It turns out that I have two patients to take care of because, in addition to Cyndie recuperating from her surgery, Delilah is experiencing a problem with continued vomiting.
Delilah’s condition isn’t too concerning at this point because she is regularly drinking water, pooping healthy, and is full of her typical spunk at normal times. It is, however, inconvenient to have her making disgusting messes unexpectedly at the worst times possible.
We can’t rule out stress as a possible contributing factor but there is also a possibility we have a bad batch of food or she could be developing an allergy to an ingredient.
I’m pretty sure Delilah doesn’t grasp the concept but I have her fasting for a while in an attempt to disrupt the troublesome routine she has fallen into. Then I will need to decide what food I will start testing to see if we can solve whatever is ailing her.
Tuesday night didn’t start out well for her because the thunderstorm we endured was quite dramatic with booms of thunder that shook the house. She was having a fit in her overnight crate trying to bark back the storm that wasn’t letting up. I tried staying up late with her to give some support but that didn’t seem to ease her distress much.
After a few-too-few hours of sound sleep, I was woken by Cyndie at 3 a.m. because she could hear Delilah throwing up. With her splinted leg propped up on pillows, Cyndie couldn’t do anything about it.
Last night, Delilah threw up again, just before dinner time. I was in the middle of cooking my own dinner and manning the phone tree of contacts with reports on Cyndie’s status. The doctor had called me to say everything went well and there were no complications. It was time to walk Delilah and tend to the horses but I was waiting for a sitter to show up and take care of those tasks.
I put Delilah on a leash in the front yard, tossed paper towels over the mess in the front entryway, answered my phone, and turned over fish fillets baking in the oven.
I thought last night was going to be a moment of rest while Cyndie was tended to by professionals. Nope. Forgot about the other patient here needing TLC.
At least Delilah doesn’t seem to realize anything is ailing her. If she had a bum leg, she’d still try to run anyway. That’s the way dogs are.
Good thing Cyndie doesn’t take after her dog.
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Good Citizenship
Neither wind, clouds, nor a barely attached foot kept Cyndie from fulfilling her goal of voting in person yesterday in the 2022 mid-term U.S. election.
It wasn’t a sure thing for a while there. As we were driving home from the lake last Friday, Cyndie was on her phone trying to find somewhere she could get in for surgery right away. Not sure when she might end up being anesthetized, Cyndie called our town clerk to find out her options for voting in a situation like hers.
She broke her leg after the deadline for requesting an absentee ballot, so she was told that her only option would be to make it to the polling location for our township on election day between the hours it would be open. If surgery was going to happen on Tuesday (yesterday), the clerk said she could try to show up just as they open at 7:00 a.m. and someone could bring a ballot out to our car for her to fill out.
There were no other options for voting if emergency situations arise close to election day. It seems like a strong case for requesting an absentee ballot whether or not it is known to be needed. Vote at your convenience and no waiting.
Luckily, our Tuesday schedule was wide open. We were busy on Monday and surgery is happening today.
We chose to head out after an assumed morning rush of people voting on their way to work and before a possible lunch rush. Living in a rural area, it’s not really an issue. There were two electronic voting machines and three booths for manually filling out a ballot. Two people were signing in before us and several people were voting.
Cyndie picked an electric option and since they were then both occupied, I selected manual. I fed my completed ballot into a machine reader and then Cyndie came with a printout of her votes from the electronic ballot device and fed it into the reader as well.
It seems the only thing their electronic device does is color in the selections for you. The choices from both methods were ultimately recorded by one machine.
The flow of voters was consistent while we were there such that the poll workers were kept constantly busy but the waiting was a mere matter of seconds for our township neighbors fulfilling their civic responsibility of voting for our representatives in local and national government.
I didn’t watch the news last night and avoided any hype about results. Regardless of the outcomes, we will continue to put our shoulders to the wheel of healthy progress and send love out into the world.
I read an interesting perspective on navigating the election storm written by Dahlia Lithwick. Think about the weather and the stars. The weather can get rough and the direction we are going can be obscured by clouds. Hang on long enough and the stars will be visible again to guide us toward our goals.
I vote for love. Follow the stars in the sky.
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Relative Something 