Weekly Review October 14 '16

It is already afternoon and I need to go pick up Seth from school soon, and I don’t feel like I have accomplished much today so far. For starters, the day started out late because I was up a lot in the night and didn’t wake up until nearly 8:00 this morning. Why was I up a lot in the night? Frank had surgery yesterday but he was not the one who kept me up last night. It was Snickers. First of all, I heard him heaving and throwing up in his crate. Then later he started whining so I let him out of the crate and let him outside and changed the towel in his crate. An hour or so later he was whining again and I took him out again. I heard him whine again after that, but Frank told him to go back to sleep and apparently he did because the next thing I knew it was almost 8:00. So I was still wearing pajamas when I took Seth to school, and I didn’t even care. That’s how my day has been. I have managed to exercise and get a shower and make the bed, and that’s about it—besides taking care of Frank, of course. But at least I’m not still in my pajamas!

I guess I’ll start with Frank’s surgery instead of going back to last weekend first. He had his surgery yesterday afternoon, and it went well.  It turns out the tear in his ACL is very small, so they didn’t need to repair that. They did fix the tear in his meniscus and there were some loose bodies stuck in there that they removed. Frank has been able to put weight on his leg since the surgery, so that is good. It still hurts, but he says it hurts in a different way. The old pain is gone. Now it just hurts because of the surgery, and we know that pain will go away, so that is encouraging. It just feels a lot better knowing that he is on his way to recovery instead of just waiting to do something. Right now he is lying down with a compression / ice thing on his knee. A guy in our ward who used to be a physical therapist loaned us this thing he has which is really nice. It’s a wrap that he puts around his leg and it’s attached to a machine with a reservoir. You put ice water in the reservoir and when you turn it on, it circulates the ice-cold water into the wrap. It also compresses a little around his leg. You can set it to different temperatures and levels of compression and you can also set it to go on and off for different time intervals. Frank is supposed to ice his knee for 30 minutes and then go off ice for 30 minutes. So we have it set to come on for 30 minutes and then go off for 30 minutes. It is really helping his knee feel better and it’s nice for me too because I don’t have to keep track of time and keep adding ice like I would have to do with a normal ice pack. I’m keeping busy enough making sure Frank gets his medicine at the right time, and feeding him and getting him drinks and so on.

Now I’m back from picking up Seth from school. I forgot to give him his medicine today and when I mentioned that to his teacher, she said that he was a lot less focused today. So that means the medicine really does help him, which is good to hear. Anyway, I’ll finish up with the medical stuff before I go on to other things. Frank had an MRI done on his right knee on Tuesday. I took the films with me to his surgery yesterday and the surgeon looked at them. He said nothing on there jumps out at him. There might be a very tiny tear in his meniscus but nothing that needs surgery. He thinks his knee has a very deep bruise from the wreck and also hurts because he’s had to compensate so much because of his left knee. He thinks therapy will help the right knee. So that’s mostly good news—no more surgery, at least—as long as the right knee stops hurting eventually. I think it will. Frank has a lot of physical therapy in his future for both knees as well as his neck and back, but in the end I think he will be feeling a lot better.

In other medical news, I took Frank in on Monday to get his CPAP. I’m happy to say that it is not very big and it makes so little noise that I can’t even tell if it’s on or not. Frank is having some trouble with it, though. Every night around 2:30 am it starts blowing oxygen in so hard that he finds it difficult to exhale. So he hasn’t worn it the whole night yet, because he takes it off when that happens. He called the company this morning and they said that definitely shouldn’t be happening so hopefully they’ll be able to get it fixed or get him a new one. However, it is helping with the sleep apnea problems. He doesn’t snore when he’s wearing it, for one thing. For another, he doesn’t stop breathing nearly so much. When he got the CPAP, they told him that during the sleep study he stopped breathing about 29 times per hour (a second or two each time). During the hours he wore the CPAP the first night, that number dropped to about 3 times per hour. So I think in time it’s really going to help him and he’s going to feel a lot less tired. The first night he wore the mask, we had Seth come in and look at him in it so he’d know what it looks like and it wouldn’t scare him if he came in during the night and saw it. Seth actually thought it looks really cool, which made me laugh. Like a guy in Halo or something.

I think that is all the medical stuff for this week! On to other things. Last Saturday it drizzled / misted all day. Frank and Seth both desperately needed haircuts and both of our cars desperately needed oil changes, so we got all of those things done. This required a little bit of driving on Frank’s part, but not much. We also watched the BYU game in the afternoon and were glad to see BYU win! We didn’t see their last game because it was really late at night but it sounds like it was a really exciting game so I’m sorry we didn’t get to see it.On Saturday evening I made some cookies which is noteworthy since I almost never bake. I wanted to take some cookies to the a family in our ward mostly, which is what motivated me to make some. (They are the family whose father / grandfather died suddenly last Friday.)

On Sunday Frank stayed home from church but Seth and I went. That evening I baked again! This time I made pumpkin chocolate chip muffins. I decided I wanted to do something for the four ladies I visit teach BEFORE Frank’s surgery since I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to visit them or do anything for them afterwards. So that was my motivation for making the muffins. Plus I love anything pumpkin and I knew there’d be leftovers. :) On Monday I took muffins to all four of those ladies and actually got to talk with all four of them—two of them for a long time and the other two for shorter visits, so that was good. They were all happy to get the muffins, too! That was a super busy day though because I also did laundry, vacuumed, bought groceries, exercised, took Frank to a client’s for a little while (I’ve actually done that several times this week) and prepared for Tuesday’s den meeting. Oh, and we had FHE that evening too.

Tuesday I took Frank to his MRI and that evening Seth and I had den meeting and then afterwards I had Cub Committee meeting. So that was a busy day too, along with the regular chores. Seth didn’t have school on Wednesday because it was another Jewish holiday (Yom Kippur this time, I think). It was weird but kind of nice to have a day off in the middle of the week. He played at a friend’s house for a few hours. Meanwhile, I had Wal-Mart shopping to do and Frank came with me. Unfortunately, there were no open handicap parking spaces and when we got into the store we discovered that all the motorized riding carts were gone too. So Frank had to walk around (I told him to just sit on a bench in the front and wait for me, but he didn’t want to do that) and that was really painful for him. In the afternoon I mowed the lawn and then I spent another couple of hours digging up all my old iris plants and planting some tulip and daffodil bulbs so we’ll have flowers next spring. All I had to work with is a small trowel (the full size shovel would have been much easier but we lost it at a service project a few years ago and keep forgetting to buy a new one). By the time I finished, I was feeling really sore and I realized that was a really unwise thing to do the day before Frank’s surgery because sometimes when I do things like that, my back goes out. I was very stiff and sore that evening but Frank put some of his muscle stuff on my back and I used his nice heating pad too and I also said a fervent prayer when I went to bed that night that my back wouldn’t go out. And my prayer was answered. Although I was still sore the next day, it was mostly my legs and hands that hurt, not my back. My legs and hands still hurt today but less than they did yesterday. The palm of my right hand is really tender and I notice it whenever I do something like shift the car from park into drive or open a pill bottle—two things that I have to do pretty frequently these days! Anyway, the front flower bed does look a lot better without the overgrown iris plants. When I was at the grocery store yesterday morning, they had lots of beautiful mums at a great price so I bought a couple to put in the flower bed. I got a pumpkin too, so now the house (the outside, anyway) looks ready for fall. It’s been cooler this week (quite chilly most mornings) but most days have been sunny and crisp and beautiful—my favorite kind of weather, actually.

Yesterday Frank had his surgery in the afternoon. In the morning I got the laundry done and vacuuming and bought groceries, so the day went pretty fast for me. Probably not for Frank, who was lying around without a lot to do and he couldn’t eat or drink anything either so that’s never fun. I arranged to have a lady who used to live in our ward pick Seth up from school and take him home to play with her kids until I could pick him up later. (Her kids go to the same school as Seth.) I’m glad I did that because otherwise I would have had to pick Seth up when Frank was coming out of the anesthesia. As it was, I was able to get Frank home and settled before I had to pick up Seth. Frank got a little sick on the way home but we were prepared for that and then right after we got home Snickers threw up on the stairs! Great timing, dog! Just what I needed right then. (He does seem to be feeling better today, though, thankfully.) Frank was really hungry after we got home of course, and he was craving Boston Market which happens to be near the house where I needed to pick up Seth, so I went to pick up Seth and then got us some dinner. I had planned to pick up some food for dinner anyway—thought I’d give myself a break!! Frank didn’t sleep great last night, but it wasn’t a really bad night for him either, so we are grateful for that.

In between all the craziness of appointments and so forth, I have done a little bit of reading (a lot of that in doctor's office waiting rooms) and I finished A Man Called Ove. It was really good and well worth reading, if you want a good book to read. Ask Frank how many times I laughed out loud while reading it! (Plus it's also sweet and poignant.) Now I am reading another book by the same author called My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry. One of the ladies in my book club recommended it so I got both books from the library at the same time. This book needs to go back in a few days so I am trying to finish it. So far it is really good too. In the meantime, I picked up the book we are reading for book chat now (Go Set a Watchman) yesterday so I will start it as soon as I finish this book. I also started reading The Bronze Bow to Seth last week. Another one of my childhood favorites!

Well, Frank is waiting for me to help him get his knee wrapped up so he can get in the shower and after that I need to make dinner and I think that is most of the news from these parts anyway. He just took the big bandage off his knee a little while ago, and it doesn’t look too bad. They just made two small incisions-one on either side of his knee. The stitches will come out next week.

Thank you for your prayers everyone! Please pray that Frank will have a speedy recovery!