Wednesday, March 07, 2012

Welcome Home

John recently had knee surgery, and just came home today from a stint in a rehab facility. He's doing really well, all things considered.

While it would be really nice if we had a national healthcare insurance in the US, such as Medicare for all, I am quite grateful that the MegaCorp I work for provides health insurance benefits for domestic partners. It's not the best insurance possible, but it's pretty good. Next year, I'm going to more seriously research the alternative plan that is available to employees to see if it might be better.

In the short 45 years of my life, rights for Teh Gay people really have advanced tremendously, including 7 states which provide same-sex marriage. In those 7 states, there is no "gay agenda". The battle is over, and Teh Gay won... meaning that there is nothing left to fight for, except, of course, federal recognition of those marriages. That's the next thing we need to shove down the throats of the Loon Brigade.. after we pull our dicks out of their throats first of course.. heh

John's rehab went really well, and he went from using a walker to using the cane.. completely skipping the Jimmy Valmer sticks. He did have some issues with pain, and at the hospital they dosed him with dilaudid.. which is about 8 times more powerful than morphine. That sent him to another planet.. he thought he was in New Jersey. Amusing but a bit dangerous.

It's so nice having a housekeeper. She's cleaning the house.. washing the clothes.. doing the dishes.. getting all the stuff John brought home cleaned and put away. She's doing the grocery shopping, and putting all the stuff away.

Chiquitas Maximus is awesome.

....

I'm struggling a bit to figure out what to write about. I'm not that enthused about it, and still have no desire to give a shit about politics.

I slept about 8 hours last night, but I'm still sleepy. When Chiquita leaves, I think I'll nap.

8 comments:

Kor said...

Man when I had knee surgery I was on the Valmer sticks for like 3 months. Also didn't help that my name is in fact James...

John said...

Kor,

What kind of knee surgery did you have? I had total knee replacement, along with a lot of ligament/tendon repair/replacement. My surgery was 2/20/2012, and I worked like crazy to get on the cane by 3/5/2012. I sometimes go back to the walker if I do too much on some days.

John

Kor said...

Mine was a reconstruction job, the ligaments that held the patella in place had become elongated (apparently I have some kind of condition where mine aren't very elastic).

Basically they had to cut out the part of my shin where the ligaments that connect to the base of the patella where located and move that to another part of my leg and screw it bad in to regain proper tension. Then they went in with the endoscope and cleaned up inside the joint. I'd reach a point where my knee joint would dislocate and twist out on almost a daily basis so there was a lot of tissue damage they had to repair (my knee was bleeding internally on a constant basis so it looked like a melon).
But yeah sticks for a few months with the leg locked in a brace that they slowly unlocked giving me more range of movement. No one had couched before as I had couched.

Kor said...

Wow... what on earth happened to my sentence structure? I hope you got the idea :S

Tom said...

Don't worry.. I won't nit-pick it. :)

Sounds like what you had done sucked bad. John just had his knee sawed out and replaced with some metal.. couple weeks later he's walking around fine. heh

John said...

Yeah, they sawed through my femur and tibia, removed all the bone (damaged by osteoarthritus) and the attached knee, then installed an artificial knee that is cemented to the existing femur and tibia bones. They had to do quite a bit of ligament and tendon repair/replacement as well. I just had the right knee done for now, and will have the left one done soon after the right one gets all healed up.

Kor said...

Sounds like recovery from that sort of stuff has come a long way in the past 6 years. Your Op sounds like something that would take you off your feet for a long ass time.

John said...

The artificial knee is pretty amazing, and the surgeon is aided by computers to make bone cuts, placement of artificial mounting brackets and the artificl knee placement, plus movement, placement and repair of tissues, ligaments. They have you up and walking on your new knee within 24 hours of replacement with a walker, then intense physial therapy. I am very pleased and surprised at how quickly the whole procedure has been going. Overall it has been good, but there are some pesky little bugs like....it hurts like hell to ride in the car. But I will endure a lot of things just to be able to be home, and no in the hospital rehab facility.

Now I have to figure out when I am going to get my left knee done.