Posts Tagged ‘surgery recovery’
Easy Patient
It was almost “just another Thursday” except for the fact Cyndie was only one day away from surgery on her ankle. Her extensive experience with the routine of recovering from surgeries makes her a pretty easy patient to watch over. She has been in good spirits throughout the whole process, surviving the first night with only minimally interrupted sleep from pain.
You may think she is doing so well because of the care I’ve been providing, but I can’t take credit. It’s the healed ankle bones that are all the difference. More specifically, it’s that she doesn’t have pain from the shattered bones and she is not forced to avoid putting any weight on her right foot.
Cyndie’s brother, Steve stopped by for a visit and provided good energy. He and Asher got along really well, especially when Steve accepted Asher’s challenges to wrestle by dishing out plenty of roughhouse competition.
In the afternoon, Cyndie occupied herself in the recliner by making a “snuffle mat” for Asher. My sister, Judy provided inspiration with photos of mats that she makes. The project fit well with the homemade dog chews Cyndie had just sewn for our pup.
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Asher took to it like a natural, individually sniffing out and chomping each little morsel Cyndie had scattered. It occupied him for about a minute or two.
I allowed him some off-leash time around the outside of the house while I moved all the deck furniture to storage behind the house for the winter. He was a good sport and stayed close but went nuts doing Zoomies to burn pent-up energy.
I think he senses something weird with Cyndie’s behavior and is rising to respect her space while looking toward other avenues to get his needs met. At the same time, I think he really misses the “old” version of his momma.
It won’t be long before she is back to her old ways.
Last year, I was more concerned with how soon she could return to tossing around hay bales. This year, I’m looking toward how soon she can get back to entertaining Asher when he gets overly whiny.
I really wish I could convince him to simply “use [his] words!” whenever I can’t figure out what he wants.
He is not what I’d call an easy patient.
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Plates Removed
Thank you to everyone who offered good vibes for Cyndie’s surgery yesterday. I am happy to report that everything went according to plan. We made it in and out without any complications.
Getting one of the first surgeries of the day was a blessing. A year ago, her appointment was in the afternoon and after she was prepped, we had to wait almost two extra hours due to an emergency procedure that got inserted before hers.
I snapped a photo of Cyndie in the recovery bay post-surgery.
Those aren’t her real eyes. The photo has been enhanced to preserve her dignity. She came out of the anesthesia very slowly and was not yet in control of all her faculties when they brought me back to keep her company.
Instead of having a problem with pain, this time she endured a fair amount of feeling nauseous as the drugs were wearing off. Once I got her home and she got a chance to eat a little chicken soup, her gut settled down considerably.
It became obvious very quickly that recovery from this surgery would be a lot less onerous than a year ago. The key difference is that she wasn’t able to put ANY weight on that foot for 8 weeks while the bones were healing. This time the bones are good to go. She can stand on it as soon as she feels able.
The surgeon offered to give her the hardware if she wanted it (after they cleaned it up), but we forgot about that in the excitement of leaving and they never produced the goods. We’ll have to take his word on whether he actually removed it all or not, until the next x-ray.
Speaking of cleaning things up, the doc mentioned he took a little snip of the previous scar and added an extra stitch at the bottom to improve on the look he left her with last time.
When everything heals up Cyndie’s ankle will feel better and look better, too!
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Two Shoes
It felt like it had been a while since we got out to see the world beyond our place. For Cyndie, it was the first time she had stepped out of the house in a couple of weeks. The landscape looked like a postcard with the trees all flocked white with frost.
We were on our way to an appointment with Cyndie’s trauma surgeon. Upon our arrival, Cyndie was immediately directed to “Imaging” for X-rays of her repaired ankle.
It occurred to me that Cyndie and her surgeon might be a little biased in their assessment of the surgery outcome. They both want it to be as positive as possible.
That is exactly what I heard from each of them. I asked how soon she could carry a bale of hay and received some chuckles. I didn’t get an answer, but my point was made. The doc knew what my priority was.
He seemed a little surprised that Cyndie hadn’t walked on it at all up to this point, grabbing the boot to see if the bottom was significantly scuffed. We were in no hurry to overrule the doctor’s order. He said to wait, so Cyndie waited and I completely supported her staying off it. We had both grown eager to move on to the next “step” of her recuperation.
The surgeon said her foot looks great. He really had no negatives to mention. He issued a new order for her physical therapist, detailing what to work on. With great humor, he discussed all the issues Cyndie asked about and more. He pointed out where Cyndie will likely experience pain from tendons that haven’t been used for months, talked about shoe choices, and recommended “Superfeet” insoles for added arch support.
As we left the office, Cyndie crutched away while using that right foot a little bit for the first time since November 3rd.
First thing she did when we got home was dig in her closet for a pair of shoes. A pair. She hasn’t needed two shoes for so long, single left shoes were the only thing showing up.
Tomorrow will be the first PT day where she can put some weight on that foot. The therapist will need to guide her with advice about gradually increasing the percentage of walking pressure while still using crutches for support.
After being patient about doing any walking at all, there is no need to suddenly get impatient about losing the crutches completely.
I saw a comment yesterday about raising children that stated, “The days go by slowly but the years go by fast.” It feels like Cyndie’s ankle rehab will be slow in days, months, and probably a whole year.
I don’t expect her to be throwing around hay bales anytime soon.
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November Third
It was a Thursday, almost three months ago on November 3rd, when Cyndie took Delilah for a walk while we were up at the lake place. We had just spent two days watching some major tree trimming and removal on the Wildwood properties. As Cyndie reached the top step of the bridge that crosses a lagoon, Delilah bolted after a squirrel and yanked Cyndie back down to the ground. The impact snapped bones at her ankle.
Today, she sees the surgeon who screwed plates to her bones for an assessment of the healing and, hopefully, the doctor’s permission to begin physical therapy to walk again.
This has been our life since that fateful incident:
- Thu Nov 3 – Anxious trip to Hayward Hospital emergency room with a suspected broken ankle.
- Fri Nov 4 – Drive home from the lake with Cyndie in the back seat calling around for an appointment to be seen by a surgeon.
- Mon Nov 7 – Drive to Woodbury for analysis by a trauma surgeon, then to Stillwater for a CT scan and COVID test.
- Wed Nov 9 – Cyndie has surgery on her ankle in Stillwater, receiving metal plates and many screws to hold things together.
- Thu Nov 10 – Delilah’s stomach issues (vomiting) becoming increasingly worrisome.
- Fri Nov 11 – I bring Cyndie home from Stillwater hospital. Delilah has the first of a series of vet appointments.
- Sat Nov 19 – Delilah has been refusing to accept prescribed medication and a new diet.
- Mon Nov 21 – Delilah was put to rest by the veterinarian due to suspected acute pancreatitis.
- Tue Nov 22 – Discover cut on Mix’s leg that requires a visit by the equine vet for assessment and treatment, including medications.
- Wed Nov 23 – Mix refuses to accept medications I added to her food. Johanne from This Old Horse starts coming twice a day to administer meds.
- Mon Nov 28 – Drive Cyndie to Woodbury to have stitches removed from her ankle.
- Tue Nov 29 – First big snowstorm of the year that needed to be plowed.
- Wed Dec 14 – Drive Cyndie to Stillwater for bone density test.
- Thu Dec 15 – Second big snowstorm requiring plowing.
- Thu Dec 22 – Mia gives me a big scare with an episode of choking in the middle of eating her evening feed. Minor snowfall forces more plowing.
- Mon Dec 26 – Plowing required to clear drifts from the driveway as a result of blowing snow.
- Wed Dec 28 – More plowing is needed to clear drifting snow.
- Tue Jan 3 – Another brutal snowstorm.
- Thu Jan 5 – More snow. As soon as one session of plowing is done, the process starts all over again.
- Tue Jan 10 – Farrier visits to trim all four horses.
- Thu Jan 19 – Heavy, wet snowfall triggers another round of plowing and shoveling.
In the previous ten and a half weeks, per the doctor’s order, Cyndie has avoided putting any weight on her right ankle. We have had our eyes set on this day as the time when she might be allowed to begin the process of returning to the fine art of walking on two feet again.
It feels like it’s been a long time since November 3rd but the time we anticipate it taking Cyndie to recuperate fully will be magnitudes greater, along the lines of possibly a year or so, if not longer. It’s a rather harsh notion to consider, given the challenging terrain of our property.
Today’s assessment by the trauma surgeon about the amount of healing that has occurred in her broken bones is very important to both of us. It makes January 23rd the next milestone after November 3rd from which we will begin measuring her ultimate recovery to safely walking on both her feet without supplemental support.
Here’s hoping for some great news!
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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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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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Survival Tactics
After two weeks of recovering from knee replacement surgery, Cyndie returned to be seen by the surgeon’s assistant and have the bandage removed from the incision. Now able to walk with only a cane for support, she let me wait in the car and navigated her way to the appointment unassisted.
The prognosis was excellent and the incision looks fantastic. Apparently, all my tender loving care is doing wonders for her. That, and the fact she has been downright heroic about balancing exercise and rest.
I was saved from needing to do the grocery shopping because Cyndie shopped online and we were able to pick up the order from the store on our way home from the doctor’s appointment. She is reclaiming some of the meal prep roles which eases some of my caregiving stress. There is nothing more challenging for me and my limited kitchen prowess than becoming responsible for feeding the head chef at a time when healthy meals are more important than ever.
And Cyndie even prepared and froze many meals in advance of her surgery to help me out during her convalescence. The master of reheating faced new complications in dishing up servings for a person other than just himself. In real estate, it’s “location, location, location.” In the kitchen, it’s “timing, timing, timing.” Heating more than a single portion of a single item threw a wrench into my old solo living survival tactics.
After getting groceries put away and laundry dried and folded and lunch dishes cleaned up, I snuck in another version of a test ride on my new bicycle. New shoes tested very well. New pedals needed tension adjusted on the clips. The seat needed to come up another fraction. The new computer sensor is working for speed and cadence. I’m starting to get the hang of brake lever shifting.
Only one problem remains. Something in the drivetrain is making a noise when I put pressure on the pedals and I have yet to figure out what it is. I can’t even say for sure whether the creaking sound is coming from the crank or bottom bracket or further back by the rear derailleur. A return visit to the bike shop is planned.
All this activity culminated in a brief rest when I returned to the house. I just wanted to sit down for a moment and check messages on my phone, maybe play a few rounds against my frenemies in “Words with Friends.”
That didn’t last very long. I conked out. Cyndie thought it looked cute that Delilah and I were napping together.
My nap seemed to energize Cyndie because after Delilah and I got up, she walked downstairs for the first time in over two weeks, went for a walk outside in the sunshine down to the shop, and later cooked dinner on the grill out on the deck. She then proceeded to recline with her leg raised and cooled by the fancy rented machine to control swelling after all that exercise.
She’s like the perfect patient wielding her own excellent survival tactics.
I’d like to know what she did with my wife.
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Double Shifts
It’s only been four days since Cyndie’s knee surgery and I’m already longing for the day she can lose the walker, get off narcotics, and become even fractionally more self-sufficient. Between responding to her needs for assistance, becoming the (previously prepared by Cyndie) head food-reheater and server at mealtimes, and covering all of the animal care jobs myself, I’m getting dizzy.
Every time I find myself cast in the role of needing to feed Cyndie, I am reminded why I never looked for work waiting tables in a restaurant. My poor brain doesn’t like trying to remember multiple requests delivered all at once. And thinking about those words, “all at once,” how in the heck do people get the timing down to prepare a meal with all the food ready at the same time?
I find myself repeatedly choosing to feed us one at a time. Assemble a plate for Cyndie and then come back and do it a second time for me.
Cyndie is very patient and understanding, so most of the frustrating pressure I’m feeling is self-induced. I know that. But knowing that doesn’t do much to calm my stress in the critical moment of assembling a meal on the plate for serving. When the stress is magnified by a last-minute request to watch an episode of “Ted Lasso” on the tv monitor brought out to the coffee table by the couch while she eats, my circuits start to overheat a bit.
You see, the computer-to-tv cabling had yet to be worked out so I needed to hunt down an HDMI cable, get the necessary power cables, and then search through on-screen menus to figure out how to mirror the laptop screen to the tv. I could always deal with the audio later.
As it was, I begged to deal with it all later and resorted to simply watching it on her laptop for the time being. …After she had already finished her dinner and before I had started mine.
Last-minute timing is not my strong suit.
I will work on mastering the temporary computer-to-tv setup in the living room later today, once I’ve got all the animals fed and Cyndie’s coffee and breakfast served.
Onward. Double-time.
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Mostly Waiting
Most of my day yesterday was spent waiting. Cyndie did almost the same amount of waiting, but she was anesthetized for part of it and in a pain-management-induced stupor for others. I had the easier job, despite the tedium.
Prepped and waiting, I snapped a shot of Cyndie looking her best in a very fashionable hair net and hospital gown. The procedure was a knee replacement, her second. We filled some of the wait time by chatting with her surgeon and later the anesthetist, who described a very interesting path to choosing his career. He served time on military mobile medical units and also was assigned to rapid response teams that travel to foreign cities where U.S. Presidents fly, providing “in case needed” precautions.
The woman who performed the surgery came highly recommended and lived up to a comment from one of the nurses that she works fast. For all the waiting before and after, the portion of actual replacement surgery took a little under an hour. The doctor came out to report everything went smoothly and suggested I get some lunch while Cyndie sleeps off the residual anesthesia effects. She said it would be at least an hour.
It was closer to two. When they finally called me back to see Cyndie again after she woke up, leg pain was her biggest complaint. Still, they had her up and walking moments later. After more waiting, during which they monitored vital signs and increased her pain meds, the medical transport team showed up to whisk her away to a hotel for overnight monitoring.
The view out her third-floor window:
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Maybe the new knee will turn her into an athlete. Maybe it won’t. At least they were able to make her more comfortable.
Does it show?
They had her hooked up to a machine that ran chilled water around the knee to control swelling and pain. I was allowed to end my waiting and head home to take care of animals and sleep through the night in my own bed. Nurses will be checking on Cyndie all night, something I am very happy the are doing instead of me.
I’ll pick Cyndie up this morning and take over primary care. It’s nice to have had the first night worry-free and know she was under the watchful eyes of trained professionals.
It’s one of the greatest honors of my life to be allowed to play the role of Cyndie’s closest supporter in times of extra need. The waiting part is over now. Let the healing begin!
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Baking Therapy
After surgery, most people opt for physical therapy to aid in healing and recovery. This weekend Cyndie appeared to be working on reclaiming her former knee strength by way of baking Christmas cookies of almost every variety. With the COVID-19 pandemic decimating innumerable facets of what we consider normalcy this year, I am awestruck over Cyndie’s motivation to carry on her massive holiday baking tradition without the usual support staff of friends or extended family.
To do it all alone is wildly impressive. To do it alone on a painful wounded knee is rather beyond the call of duty if I do say so myself.
The sum total of my assistance involved taking full responsibility for animal chores, which I was doing anyway so she wouldn’t have to walk more than she already does around the house.
I couldn’t even maintain my reputation as a taste-tester. The batches were coming out of the oven too fast to keep up. I think I exceeded my self-inflicted strict ration of ingested sugar simply by breathing in the smell of fresh warm cookies all day long.
I just didn’t have the gastrointestinal stamina to pound that many test tastes in such a short span of time.
I am curious to find out how the baking therapy worked out for her knee on the day after. She has a follow-up appointment today with the surgeon to check on progress. I wonder if he might suggest eating fresh-baked holiday cookies to help her deal with the residual pain of the excavated bone behind her knee.
It would, at the very least, be easier than working upright in the kitchen all day…
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Relative Something 