A Low-High Week of Recovery

I'm glad I decided to give myself at least another week to recuperate from surgery before taking on any more activities in my search for 'youth'. The week has been very up and down.

Monday - When physical therapy came to my home, she marveled at how well I was walking, graduated me from laying down & sitting down exercises to sitting up and standing up exercises. Yea for me! My flexibility measured from 3 degrees to 98 degrees. Almost straight to past a right angle. Another yea!

Tuesday - I felt stiff. The muscles in my 'new' knee just didn't want to bend, and I knew I wasn't walking as well as I had been, but didn't know what I'd done 'wrong'.

Wednesday - PT came and confirmed that my knee was not bending much because it was so swollen from water retention. My flexibility began at 7 degrees--we didn't go any further than that, it was so depressing. After helping me through a workout, she piled pillows and folded blankets on my bed and told me to lay down at least twice a day for an hour with my legs propped up on that stack. A miserable day, but hopefully it would not keep going like that much longer.

Thursday - I knew as soon as I woke up that this was my 'Magic Depression' day. The way I understand it, at some point after surgery, all the left-over operating meds finally drain out of your body, and that change in chemistry makes you severely depressed. This was the day to check in with my General Practitioner, and I groused my way through that office visit. It's a good thing my doc has a sense of humor and great patience with his patients. I apparently had not picked up any nasty germs for him to attend to, so I was sent home. I kept telling my son I just wanted to 'punch out the day and go to bed'. I did spend quite a bit of time in bed - feet properly raised - but I never figured out how to punch the day out.

Friday - much better! Pain was pretty negligible, legs were the proper size. When PT came, my flexibility went from 2 degrees to 104 degrees! Yea for me!. The exercises were tiring, but I managed to up the number of repetitions I did, plus add a new exercise. Yea for me again! I was feeling so good that when the phone rang, and the hand unit wasn't at my desk, I got up and walked to the next room to answer it - without my walker! I managed it, but doing it wore me out so much, I went to bed around 7:30 that night. I didn't feel a bit guilty about it, because I'm still recovering.

I still have about a week before I get my staples removed, and we don't know how much more physical therapy I'll need, but I should be able to drive after that. Yipee! Now I can finally go to the store and get that bag of potatoes we haven't had these past 2 weeks.

Now that I'm through the major part of recovery, what do I tackle this week? Something that won't demand a lot of my time, because I'm still doing PT, still progressing towards full strength. I'm going to concentrate on brushing my teeth, something I usually forget more often than I remember.

What's Next?

Colored my hair. Check.

Got my knee replaced. Check.

What's the next thing for me to do in my Battle Against Age?

It's a long list, with lots of things for me to do, new habits to establish. Which one should I do now?

Actually, this past week has been a bit of a wake-up for me. I've known for a long time that you can't just wave a majic wand and everything is changed, your life is now hunkey-dorey. It takes weeks of actively deciding to do one thing, day after day, before doing that thing becomes a habit. And once you have achieved that habit, you can start to establish the next habit you want.

So I've had a busy week. Surgery on Monday, return home on Thursday, and I'm still on pain meds, still need help from my family for even the littlest things, like putting ice around my leg, helping me get socks on.

In my few moments of being fairly lucid this past week, I pondered what I could tackle next week. The entire household is kind of like standing on its head, and I want to add one more complication to it? Am I TRYING to fail?

No, I'm not. And there's no rule that says I have to tackle something new if I'm not finished with something else. Yes, the surgery is done, but my body is still recuperating. I check in with doctors on the 13th, the 12th and the 15th. In the meantime, I need to concentrate on my physical therapy, my spirits and just getting myself back to healthy. A healthy me will be so much better than the pre-surgery me or the still-recovering me.

That's my chore for the next week, and probably longer than that; to continue to recover. Because there are no magic wands, and some chores cannot be accomplished in a week or less.

Working Around the Insurance Companies

A friend is on vacation this week, and she’s having fun, despite having to shave some of her medications every 2 or 3 days. Here’s the deal;

She has medical insurance through her former employer, the same medical insurance she had while she was working, but since she’s retired, the actual insurance company has changed. Apparently, this new company wants to ‘save’ every penny it can. No matter what the cost to the people who rely on them for help with medical bills.

My friend was diagnosed many, many years ago with chronic depression. After taking antidepressants and getting counseling for several years, she felt she had it under control and her doctor helped her wean herself from the antidepressants. She did well for over a decade.

Almost a year and a half ago, she realized the depression had snuck back into her life, and she asked her doctor to prescribe some antidepressants. There were some new ones available that he thought might be a good fit, the insurance company (at that time, the old one) had no problems approving them.

The insurance company changed, and the friend felt that particular antidepressant wasn’t working well, so her doctor changed her prescription. The insurance company threw up all sorts of road-blocks; ‘This drug is a level 2, and should not be prescribed without a clear indication this strong a drug is needed’, and who knew what else. Happily, her doctor and pharmacist argued with the insurance company on her behalf, and eventually, she got her new antidepressants.

All seemed to be going okay, although she still felt more depressed than not after several months. When she mentioned that to her doctor, he agreed to up her dose. She had just refilled her prescription based on the old dosage, and simply increased the number of pills she took each day from 2 to 3. Realizing her insurance company would need to ‘approve’ this higher dosage, she called her doctor’s office a FULL WEEK before she needed more pills so that the change could be made, and (she hoped), she would be able to refill the higher dosage without any problem.

She had to go for 3 days without any antidepressants before the insurance company finally approved the change in dosage. Once she started taking her pills again, it was a full week before she felt she could function.

When she realized she would be on vacation when it was time to refill her prescription, she cringed at the idea of fighting with the insurance company over an early refill. She would get home only 2 days AFTER she ran out of pills, but she didn’t want to go completely without for 2 days, and be unable to function for 4 or 5 days after that. So she’s been carefully skimming her dosage down to 2 pills every 3rd or 4th day, and taking the full dose of 3 pills the remaining days. On those days when she only takes 2 pills, she returns to her room a little earlier, in case some fogginess overtakes her as her drug level dips, and the following day, she may start her activities a little later, to give that drug level a chance to start raising.

She thinks she’s exercising some control, but the fact is, the insurance company has won. They have become the de facto death panels.

Airflight Technology

Okay, so Trudy flew home from vacation in Orlando, and almost as soon as she got home, she came down with “airflight crud.” It’s to be expected, right? Everybody knows that when you’re stuck in a confined space with 100+ other people, you are exposed to all types of germs, greatly increasing the chance that something will get past your body’s defenses and settle in for a visit.

This connection is so well known, there are even ‘medications’ that were developed to help you avoid catching other people’s illness. The most common kinds are a combination of vitamins, zinc and maybe some herbs. Such remedies might help, if your body is low on these ingredients. But it’s kind of like that old question about prunes as a laxative; Is 6 enough? Is 12 too many?

Are airliners equipped with air scrubbers? Even if they are, I’m not sure that would help prevent the spread of sickness. I’m thinking air scrubbers remove things like dust and CO0, but that squirmy little germs find a way through. Does anybody know A) do airliners have air scrubbers, and B) do air air scrubbers stop germs?

If nothing else, the flight crew could spritz the cabin with antibacterial air freshener between flights. Maybe that would help confine the available illnesses to catch to those brought aboard for this flight, and not something from 3 flights ago.

Hurry Up!

When I was young, I wanted technology to hurry up so I could partake in new endeavors. Hurry up and send people to the moon, so I have a chance to go! Hurry up and make aircars so I can have one! Hurry up and find other planets, outside our solar system!

I haven’t yet made it to the moon. I don’t have an aircar, or even a hybrid car, and I don’t think anybody is even trying to make a hover car anymore. And they have started finding other planets around other stars, even a couple that might be considered vaguely ‘Earth-like’. But I never became an astronomer or even an astro-physicists, so I’m not involved in any of those discoveries, and probably never will be. Bummer!

Now that I’ve slipped into middle-age (when I was young, someone who was my age would be considered old), I still want technology to hurry up, but I’m looking a lot more at medical technology. Hurry up and find a better way to deal with bad knees. Hurry up and find a way to make me no longer reliant on reading glasses! Hurry up and find a way for me to actually lose weight and not have to live on dry salads and/or exercise 12 hours a day!

Today, I went to a pre-screening to see if I qualified for a new study of a new lasik surgery procedure that would eliminate my need for reading glasses. I did not qualify. I was at the upper end of the age group they were looking at, so possibly if I were 5 years younger, I would have qualified.

Hurry up! I don’t want to be ‘a little too far gone’ every time one of these new procedures comes along!