walker

Alive But Not Kicking

Fandango33 Comments

I’m still in the hospital for what was supposed to have been outpatient procedures. I’m still in a lot of pain, but my surgeon insists that the pain I’m feeling now is the “short-term” pain from the surgery itself. He said that the fractures have been stabilized. So the pain should diminish as the body mends itself from the surgery. He did say that the normal recovery period for this type of surgery is around six weeks, and that during the six-week period I should do “No BLT.” What that translates to is no Bending, Lifting, or Twisting. Sorry Chubby Checker. Doctors orders.

Hopefully, I can go home later today. But before I do, I will be meeting with the physical therapist and the occupational therapist and they need me to get up and walk around using a walker.

In the meantime, I have been sleeping a lot, even during the day, because at night the nurses come into my room every 90 minutes and wake me up to check my vital signs and to give me meds. So aggravating.

JusJoJan — Frustration

Fandango21 Comments

I am not so naive that I thought the nerve block and steroid injection procedure I had on Friday would be a miracle cure. I was at least hoping, though, that it would reduce the intensity of the pain I’ve been experiencing in my lower back since I fell on my ass two months ago.

The pain management doctor told me to be patient. He said that relief could start to be felt in a day or two after the injections or it could take a week to ten days. And today was only day two.

Yet when I woke up this morning, the pain was so intense that I had to revert to using a walker, instead of a cane, just to get around my house.

It’s gotten to the point that I hate to wake up in the morning when I struggle to get out of bed, especially since in my dreams I am always a younger, able-bodied, and pain-free man. And that realization upon awakening that I am not able-bodied and am in a lot of pain is frustrating. But the alternative of not waking up at all is certainly not acceptable.

Okay, that is it. I wasn’t planning to write another whiney post about poor me and my back injury woes, but when I saw today’s JusJoJan prompt word, “frustration,” that is what I was experiencing. So here it is.

I notice that tomorrow’s JustJoJan word is “invigorating.” Hey, my current feelings of frustration may be replaced by something more positive, more invigorating tomorrow, especially if I wake up and the pain level has diminished. Even if just a little.

Wait, didn’t I say I the first line of this post that I’m not naive?

Written for today’s JusJoJan prompt, “frustration,” as suggested by Barbara. Check out her blog here. AI image generated at Leonardo.Ai.

WDP — Walk or Run

Fandango9 Comments
Daily writing prompt
How often do you walk or run?
View all responses

I’ve never been much of a runner. But I do like to walk. In my younger days, I was actually a bit of a hiker and would visit national, state, Thanks and county parks with hiking trails. And, for most of my life, I’ve had dogs, and those of you who have dogs know that they keep you walking, too.

However, 2023 has been a rough year for me when it comes to walking. I busted my hip in January and had to have partial hip replacement surgery. After my initial in-hospital rehab, I had to use a walker to get around. It wasn’t until late April before I could walk using a single cane instead of a walker.

Even now, eight months after the accident and surgery, I still need a cane to get around. I have gotten to the point that I can accompany my wife on some of the dog walks, and I do practice walking without the cane around the house, but that doesn’t amount to all that much walking.

Maybe 2024 will be a better year for me when it comes to walking.

MLMM Friday Faithfuls — The Journey from Spry to Decrepit

Fandango17 Comments

For Jim Adams’ Mindlovemisery’s Menagerie Friday Faithfuls, Jim has asked us to respond to his prompt by writing anything we want to write about the aging.

Before this year, if anyone asked how I felt about aging, I would have said, I’m okay with it. As a septuagenarian, I thought I was aging gracefully. I was feeling pretty chipper, able to take long walks, ride my e-bike all around, and do lots of things — but not all of the things, of course — that I used to be able to do as a younger man.

Sure, I’ve had some maladies, like BPPV (vertigo) and tinnitus, but they surfaced when I was in my thirties, so not exactly a product of aging. Just maybe bad genes.

I suppose the first truly age-related condition I had occurred in 2019, when I had to have a non-cancerous growth removed from the middle-ear portion of my left ear. While the growth was successfully removed, I came out of it being essentially deaf in that ear. I also lost my sense of taste. Ultimately my sense of taste has, to a large extent, returned. But not my hearing.

With my hearing in my right ear — my “good” ear — starting to deteriorate due to, yes, aging, last year I made the decision to get hearing aids. I shared that with you in this post. It was having to wear hearing aids that made me start to feel old.

But it wasn’t until this past January, when I wasn’t feeling my age and went up on a ladder to clean out my gutters, that I have truly experienced aging.

Not me!

I fell off the ladder, fractured my left hip and my right humerus at the shoulder. I had to have emergency surgery to repair the hip and have been undergoing physical therapy ever since. I spent the first three months after the surgery using a walker to get around and I still require a cane to take all but I few steps. And I still have limited movement in my right shoulder.

In a couple of weeks I’ll be starting my sixth month of physical therapy and if I can’t get a significantly improved range of motion in my shoulder, I may need arthroscopic surgery on that.

So as to aging, now, for the first time I’m really feeling my age. I’m feeling old and feeble. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to go on long walks or to ride my e-bike again. I used to look in the mirror and see an older man who was in relatively good shape. Now I see an older man who is just this side of decrepit.

TGIF — Good News, Bad News

Fandango10 Comments

Paula Light, at Light Motifs II, has this prompt she calls TGIF. She encourages us to take this opportunity to openly chat or jabber about anything we want.

On a personal note, I’ve got some good news to chat with you about this Friday. I have graduated from a needing a walker to get around to using two canes like one would use walking sticks. I can walk faster using the canes than with the walker, and I can maneuver around things easier, so that’s some decent progress with respect to my hip rehabilitation.

The other bit of good news is that I actually drove a car today for the first time since mid-January. I accompanied my wife for her annual appointment with an ophthalmologist — well, supposedly annual, but because of the pandemic, it was her first “annual” visit since 2019 — and she had to get drops in her eyes. That meant I had to drive us home. That was fun!

But I also have some not so good news to share with you. I’ve worn hearing aids since April of last year and they’ve been great. Until last night, that is. Suddenly I’m not hearing any base sounds, only treble, and that makes everything I hear sound brassy and tinny, including my wife’s voice. And when we’re watching TV, the actors’ voices either sound tinny or it sounds like they’re whispering.

I’m not happy about that. I have an appointment with my audiologist this afternoon. She said they first want to give me a hearing test to rule out that my hearing has further betrayed me, of if, in fact, the issue is with the hearing aids themselves. I hope it’s the latter and they can fix it.

And on that note, happy TGIF, everyone.

Three Month Update — Great Expectations

Fandango39 Comments

Three months ago today I fell off of a ladder, broke my left femur at the hip socket, broke my right arm humerus at the shoulder, and had an emergency partial hip replacement surgery on my left hip.

I knew that my recovery period from these traumatic injuries would be a long one. It would involve a lot of physical therapy and work on my part. I was told that it would likely take six months before I was fully recovered from both my hip and my shoulder injuries.

Still, I had set some expectations in my own head about where I’d be at the so-called half way point, three months into the estimated recuperation period.

I expected by now that I’d be able to ditch my walker and make due with a cane. I expected by now that my pain-free range of motion in my right shoulder would be significant. Those were my great expectations.

But my great expectations have turned out to be failed expectations. I still need a walker to get around and I don’t see that changing much before the end of this month, if not later. And my range of motion in my right shoulder is still very limited.

So I admit, I’m feeling a little bummed out. But maybe I will make adequate progress over this next 30 days that I’ll be feeling more upbeat by mid-May.

SoCS — Emptying

Fandango10 Comments

For this week’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt, Linda G. Hill has given us “the last thing you emptied.” She wants us to think of the last thing we emptied or something we empty often and use it as our response to this prompt.

I consider you to be a friend so I’m going to tell you something that I haven’t told anyone else. I’m trusting you to keep this between us. Do we have a deal? Great.

I know I shared with you in this post a malady I suffer from, Old Man’s Syndrome (OMS). It’s an affliction that usually starts to manifest itself when men enter their sixties and begin to feel the aches, pains, and indignities that come with old age. It also means not being able to sleep through an entire night without having to get up to pee.

My OMS occurs virtually every night somewhere between 2 and 5 a.m. That’s when I wake up and have no option but to get out of bed to go pee. It doesn’t matter whether I stop drinking fluids right at dinnertime or continue to imbibe until just before bedtime. At some point during the night I have to take a leak.

But again, you know all that about me. And you also know that just over two months ago I fell off a ladder and broke my hip. I had to have an emergency partial hip replacement surgery and am recuperating from it as we speak.

But you didn’t know what I’m about to tell you, and I’m only telling you this because Linda asked me to. You see, I still need a walker to get around. And that includes getting from my bed to my bathroom when my nightly need to pee occurs. Sitting up, getting out of bed, reaching for my walker, and half rolling, half limping from bed to bathroom while half asleep, doing my business, and then half rolling, half limping, and getting back into bed is a bit of an ordeal.

In order to avoid that hassle — I can’t believe I’m actually telling you this — I keep a men’s urinal bottle like the one pictured below, at my bedside.

When I wake up and have to pee, rather than struggling with the walker to get up and go to the bathroom, I reach over and grab the men’s urinal bottle, strategically position it between my legs, position my thingie at the wide mouth of the bottle, and let it flow.

I know it sounds gross, but I’ll continue to do this until I can get out of bed and simply walk to the bathroom and pee without having to use my walker.

When it’s time to wake up in the morning, I get my walker, grab my men’s urinal bottle, and then half roll, half limp to the bathroom, and empty out the bottle of nocturnal piss into the toilet. Then, of course, I rinse out the bottle.

Remember, you promised not to tell any one, so let’s keep this confession between just the two of us, right?

TGIF — Almost Over

Fandango14 Comments

Paula Light, at Light Motifs II, has this prompt she calls TGIF. She encourages us to take this opportunity to openly chat or jabber about anything we want.

This is my first TGIF post since Friday the 13th, which for many, is an unlucky day. But for me, that Friday the 13th was the last day that I was able-bodied, as on Saturday the 14th I fell off a ladder and fractured my left hip and broke my right arm near my shoulder. Hence, I haven’t had much to TGIF about.

But almost five weeks after The Incident, things are starting to look up a little. I still need to use a walker to get around, and I still have. 50% weight limit restriction on my left leg, but I am starting to put a little more weight on my left leg and hope, within another two to three weeks, to begin being able to bear more weight on my left leg and maybe advance from a walker to a cane. And maybe a few weeks after that to migrate from in-home PT to outpatient PT.

My right shoulder and arm are still not doing great, but I’ve got daily exercises that I’m doing to try to get back my strength and to improve my range of motion, but there’s a lot of physical therapy ahead to look forward to.

Today I received a California Temporary Disabled Person Parking Placard for our car.

This will be helpful for my wife and me when my wife has to drive me to doctor appointments and physical therapy, which she has to do because I haven’t been approved to drive yet and probably won’t be until April. So at leased now we’ll be able to park in handicapped parking spots next to the building entrances. Every little bit helps.

And on that note, happy TGIF, everyone.