Scattered Thoughts . . .

A t 6:30 this morning, I got up for the third time to use the bathroom...  which itself is becoming more and more common as I get older...  but what was a bit unusual this morning is that I ended up in excruciating pain as a crumpled mess on the bathroom floor.  Getting up out of bed was extremely painful so I knew I was in for a rough morning at least for a short while.  I certainly wasn't expecting what happened though.  Getting out of bed was so painful this morning that I actually thought about grabbing my cane.  I quickly dismissed that idea, I think, because if I had to wake up enough to remember where I left my cane or to go looking for my cane, I would not be going back to bed after using the bathroom.  Too much thought would wake me enough that falling back asleep would be impossible.  I actually have two canes now but I have no idea where my older cane is located at the moment.   After carefully and painfully swinging my feet down off the bed and standing, I limped toward

A bit more time has passed so I thought I should write a bit.  I haven't been writing much lately simply because I am accomplishing nothing each day...  well...  weekly...  hmmm...  monthly...  okay, pretty much for the whole of 2021.  I actually long for 2020 again.   I'm still laid up with a sprained knee.  To refresh, I started 2021 with an ankle injury.  I couldn't even put the smallest amount of weight on my ankle for weeks.  Within about four months, I was back to trying to build up my muscles around the injury.  Unfortunately, all that time off my left leg and consequently hobbling around on my right leg caused some problems with my right leg and, more specifically, my right knee.  I am fairly certain I have sprained my right MCL. By June, I was able to get around again.  I was playing soccer with Lukey and Kenzie daily.  I still had some pain and I continued wearing a brace but I seemed to be recovering nicely.  It was a long recovery but it was looking like the wor

M y right eye is back to feeling normal again so I guess my scratched cornea has healed.  It was quite painful for a while! In the beginning of the pain, I didn't remember doing anything that could have caused a scratched cornea.  Then one evening when I was tending to my eye in front of the bathroom mirror, I did something that reminded me exactly of what caused my scratched cornea.   I had picked up my eyeglasses with one hand because the eye drops were in my other hand.  Usually I use two hands with my eyeglasses so that I don't cause bent lopsided eyeglasses.  This time I had the eye drops in one hand and tried putting my eyeglasses on my head with the other hand.  I suddenly remembered that I did the same thing a few nights previously... Back a few nights previously, I had something else in my right hand when I attempted to place my eyeglasses on my head with my left hand.  Unfortunately, I misjudged distance and I poked my right eye with the right temple tip of my eyeglas

T he few who actually follow this blog probably think that since I haven't mentioned my ankle injury lately that my ankle is back to normal.  That is not true.  No news isn't always good news. While it is true that the swelling is down and the pain has subsided quite a bit, I am still walking delicately on that ankle and my range of motion is still fairly limited.  When I do too much walking, it still swells a bit.  Then the ice packs come out and  I'm still resting with the ankle elevated too.   The pain, for the most part, isn't nearly as bad now.  I do get twinges of excruciating pain when I do something stupid like put too much weight on it or trip when working in the yard but, overall, the pain is just a dull ache most of the time.  I'm also getting weird tingling in my ankle like I have one of those useless, torturous TENS units attached to my ankle.  Sometimes it develops like pins and needles.  I assume these types of sensations and pain is a sign of my ankl

After a month of significant pain in my ankle, hobbling around and residing on the couch with very little relief, this morning was the first morning that I awoke feeling halfway decently.   My ankle can finally support a bit of weight and I am limping a bit less this morning and even without the use of my cane.  The pain has significantly subsided too.  There is still a bit of pain but I'm no longer in the 8-10 pain scale range! I'm going to continue taking it easy on my ankle for the next few days...  continue with some icing occasionally...  at least through the weekend.  At that point, I'll start a physical therapy period by slowly and carefully increasing my range of motion with no weight on my foot.  Then, over the course of days, I'll slowly add a bit of resistance and weight to the therapy and exercise.   Considering I've already had one significant set-back that set me back about a week, I'm only cautiously optimistic and I'm convinced I need to take

Working on the refrigerator for five hours yesterday clearly placed my ankle injury a step or two backwards in the recovery process. I had difficulty sleeping last night due to the pain in my ankle.  It is abundantly clear that I did far too much standing on it yesterday.  At rest, I am back into the area of three on the ten point pain scale.  While walking...  well, hobbling, really...  the pain is in the range of five to six and I am back to needing the use of my cane.  Today, I'll be residing on the couch again with my foot up.  The ice will have to come out of the freezer again and get wrapped around my ankle too.  It will be a day of sleep (hopefully) and movies. It's bad enough when you cause a step or two backward because you did something you enjoy.  I had no desire to work on the fridge yesterday...  I needed to work on the fridge and, honestly, I don't enjoy having to fix things.  Not at all.  I enjoy designing things and building things but it really annoys me to

I've been actively working on building and installing a new half bath in our house over the past couple of weeks. "Actively working", considering my health, means working on it only on relatively good health days for a few hours each morning. To say this is a slow moving project is an accurate statement. One of the problems with only working on a project of this sort a few hours at a time is that I spend far too much time setting up, cleaning up and searching for tools I put away a night or a few nights earlier. Unfortunately, I don't have the energy to do anything longer than a few hours in a day so I do what I can when I am feeling capable. My health is kind of lousy today and tonight so I am spending a little time on the computer and thought I should share about a problem I had with this bathroom project over the past few days... The new drill and hole saw necessary for this small half bathroom installation. The latest frustrating problems arose while w