I sometimes think a 10" praying mantis (if such existed in the modern world) would give a full grown human a run for their survival money. Badasses indeed. And fast.
No need; it’ll be cold again in another 6 months. 
Back home from the hospital. Surgery went well. The block is starting to wear off, which means pain is on the way. Got some oxy and Tylenol to deal with it. More story later.
Hooray for success. Boo for pain, but it kinda goes with the territory. As my doc always said, it’s much easier to keep pain away than to make pain go away. Lead with the pills, not with the stoicism.
Take care. I love painkillers but because of that I am wary of them. Give us more updates on how you feel.
Speaking of painkillers I remember when I was composing part of a storyline for one of the “finish the” stories we used to do. I called my sister the pharmacist to ask how much laudanum would be fatal to a relatively heatlthy average sized man. There was silence for a bit on the line, then, hesitantly, she asked me “Why do you need to know?”
Good to see you. Stay ahead of the pain!
Ya gotta be fast to catch a hummingbird.
Sleep. Rest. Now that we know that you woke up, I’m thinking most of us are in agreement that now you should get some sleep. Oh, and listen to pilot, be proactive in your pain management. It will make a big difference in your healing.
May the pain not be as much as anticipated.
Cookie! So glad you’ve reported in! Count me as another vote for keeping ahead of the pain.
So all that praying stuff is just to deceive people into thinking they’re holy and no threat? Paging Reverend Swaggart…Reverend J. Swaggart. Please meet your party at Conintercourse DD.
VanGo, thank you SO much for recounting your personal experiences! I’m so sorry you went through all that misery for so long, and that it took an incredible 8 years to fix! Today a nurse told me she went seven years with an ACL that was totally shot because the doc didn’t take her seriously and never did an MRI. I’m starting to wonder how the species survived.
My lovely wife just waited a year, punctuated with inadequate/dismissive/incorrect diagnostic pronouncements, to have a labral tear in her hip idenyifid. She’s finally having arthroscopic surgery next week.
What the heck is up with all these incorrect diagnoses and patients having to wait?
One of my MD friends says this is how it is, and it’s somewhat worse for women.
nellie I totally commiserate with you about the PA. We’ve had competent PA’s in the past, generally for less problematic medical issues. However, for more specialized medical issues, like myelodisplastic syndrome or the knee issues that you are encountering, I don’t think that PA’s have the specialized training/knowledge needed. You did the totally right thing to make an appointment with the surgeon! After about 2 appointments with Hubs’ Dr’s PA, we refuse to let them schedule an appointment with the PA anymore.
Happy Birthday to your brother and your son 
Cookie Yay! Happy to hear that surgery went well 
Well, instead of going to the Fitness Center, I took a 2 hr nap, 2 hours! About 5 minutes after I woke up, my Sis called and said she was done with a ‘rating’ of the golf course that they measured last week and that she’d be by shortly. We had a nice visit. Then I mowed the front yard, made a coney dog.
Hubs went to see some Indiana Jones movie this afternoon then went to the Fitness Center after I very strongly encouraged him to do so. I don’t want him to lose the progress he made with the PT that he was doing. He used the NuStep and said that he went .1 farther than Monday and cut about a minute off the time that it took him to do .1 less on Monday. So, I applauded his progress.
Meanwhile, our daughter flew to NYC for an exhibition of her artwork along with the artwork of others who had been in the same on-line art class from September through June. She sent a pic of the Statue of Liberty taken as they flew over it.
Evening all. Ate dinner and then went back and exercised some more at the gym, managed to do so while it was raining outside, so good time management by me. 10Pm here and I’ll be heading off to bed pretty soon after typing this. Temperature is down to 74-75F so will probably open a window and turn off the AC, something I’ve been doing for the past week or so.
nellie, agree with Brother, you did the right thing about seeing the doc, I wouldn’t have had much confidence in what the PA was telling you either, it seems like you know more about it that he did. Hope you get the Straight Dope from the Doc.
catglove, Good on both Husband and Daughter for their different, but important, progress.
Cookie, glad to see your return to Mumper-land. Echoing the advice of others, keep control of the pain and follow Doctor’s instructions.
I keep a close eye on my knees, so far nothing has failed there but after reading all the problems of others here, I just hope mine hold out.
JtC, I have a friend who is a pharmacist, I would trust her more than most Doctors I know. Glad NF hubby is doing better.
See, you’re cheating!!! 
red, good luck on stopping the dinging. That would drive me mad.
Pilot, you and Her Ladyship did a good thing, but I concur that it will probably happen again and maybe the next folks won’t be a gracious as you are. And sadness for friend, exiting this life is seldom a quiet and peaceful thing.
OK, need to finish this up and head off to do a little reading and then it’s lights out time. Catch you all on Firday.
It’s so frustrating! The one thing that gets me about this highly-qualified doc is that he wrote off my high pain level at the end of March as arthritis pain, when both he and the radiologist called the cartilage loss “minimal.” Now I’m wondering if he thought I was just being a drama queen.
That’s exactly my take on it, which is why I still can’t understand having a PA handle the MRI results and treatment plan! Back when I still had active lupus, I had to see my rheumatologist’s PA because the doc was booked up. (I made the appointment three months before.) I’d ask her a question, and she’d have to run to ask the doc, then run back to tell me the answer. This happened several times.
My friend who’s a retired nurse called this evening. She’s not as knowledgeable about ortho stuff as our dear Boo, but she was the Director of Nursing at a big metro hospital. She’d told me the other day that the PA would merely be regurgitating what the MD told him and was appalled when she heard what actually happened.
Sleep fitness! I think you’re onto something there…
Thanks. I wish I had Cecil to go with me. He’d suffer no fools.
You did exactly the right thing for yourself. I would have been very concerned if you had not insisted on talking to the doc after how the PA handled it. Write questions down before that appt. Take notes during the appt when he answers your questions. Ask very directly about the risk/benefits expected from each part of the procedure. If you can find a friend to go with you, do. They can take notes and also be sure you got to ask all your questions. Make sure to ask right out loud: “what is the worst that could happen with the surgery? What are the odds of that worst result happening? What are the non-surgical treatment options?”.
I wish you could take JtC or me with you Monday. We both carry a pretty big stick and aren’t afraid to use it.
And please tell your brother he has an admirer on the windswept prairie of Nebraska. I like the cut of his jib!
Excellent advice, eloquently put.
Or my Thursday nights…
This whole situation is wrong on so many levels. I don’t blame anyone for the mass exodus. I’ve been very grateful to Hubby’s grand-boss that he’s not requiring them to be back in every day.
VanGo, that seems to be the norm everywhere. It’s crazy insane what’s happening with the weather.
You’ve got that right. I’m just trying my best to find any modicum of light to shine around.
nellie, I agree with everyone else. I think the doctor will be less annoyed with you and more with his PA. It’s always good to get a second opinion when you don’t feel good about the first one - even if the second opinion ends up being what should have been the first.
That reminds me that I need to have the dealership look at my seatbelt dinger. It does pretty much the exact same thing for no reason.
Cookie, I’m glad you’re back and successfully surgeried. Rest up and come back when you’re feeling better.
Sadly, there are still some in the medical profession that think anything a woman says regarding their pain or issues is them overreacting.
This sounds wonderful! Congratulations to your daughter!
Had a fairly good day today, though I spent most of it in bed trying to rest my back. For whatever reason, it was really hurting a lot today. But advil and a heating pad worked wonders.
I got a message from my niece today (my nephew’s one, the one that lives over near Dad) with pictures of a car in the trees. I asked her to please tell me that it wasn’t Poppy’s car. It was. She thought I knew. She was there to get him back home. The car was looking incredibly beat up so I was worried that Dad would be in a bad mood, but he was actually in high spirits. I talked to him for a little bit after he got home to get the full story. Apparently, the tires went off the road just a little and got caught in the grass. Dad didn’t have the strength to wrench the car back on the road, so he just let go of the wheel and let it stop on it’s own. The impact wasn’t even bad enough to deploy the airbag, so that was a major positive. And Dad wasn’t hurt at all. He thinks he might be able to fix what’s wrong with it. I’m hoping that if he can, he gets one of my nephews to help.
Then I had a long, good talk with my nephew, the one whose wife sent me the pictures. I’m so very proud of the man he became. He was more than a bit of a hot head and raised a lot of hell in his younger days. But between his wife, his kids, and his responsibilities to his job, he’s become an upstanding man. I told him today how proud I was.
Hubby’s still enjoying spending time with his folks. He hasn’t called me yet, so I haven’t gotten full details. I’m hoping that he will tomorrow. I miss hearing his voice, but I don’t want to call him in case he’s in the middle of something with his parents. But I may drop him a note telling him I miss him in the morning.
Speaking of morning, this little fishy should probably think about heading into her own bed. I’ve been sitting a little too long and I think now is the time that I take a Flexeril and use the heating pad once more. Have a great night/morning/day, all!
Do it now. It never hurts to tell someone you love them too often.
Well, unless you are one of those stalker sorts that keep their loved ones chained to the basement wall. You could probably say it too often then.
Yeah, my lovely wife’s problems were blamed on arthritis. She insisted on a referral to a rheumatologist who said, yeah, no.