Something Beats Nothing Every Time

(It is important to note this was mostly dictated and since Apple is terrible at technology it doesn’t really fit stylistically with the rest of my posts…)

Day 1
I did sleep in bed last night, which was very painful. Had to get out of bed three times to go to the washroom of course because peeing is fucking stupid when you’re 56. Pain is not too bad until I move, unsurprisingly. Probably gets to about a six at times but the morphine is doing pretty well handling that. I am able to stand on my leg. I did stand on my leg in the kitchen for a little bit today and it wasn’t too painful, but I can tell my knee is cracking and moving around a lot more now than it was before I had my hip problems so that’s pretty disappointing. I’m gonna have to make sure that I’m strengthening my knee as well as my hip as time goes along but I do recall that my knee was affected after my back surgery too so I am going to assume it will pass.

Basically I’m just sitting on the couch watching the TV and nibbling on some small amounts of food I had hiccoughs for an hour yesterday and I have not pooped yet since the surgery. Not sure when that’s gonna happen but I am farting a lot, well a bit, so I don’t think I’m constipated. I just don’t think I’ve eaten enough food to really pass through yet. No jaundice this time, I did seem a little bit yellow yesterday but certainly not to the degree that I was the last time so that’s good news. I’m drinking plenty of water so hopefully that won’t happen and besides I think it’s too late for it to happen at this point.

I did my exercises. I gotta do those three times a day. That’s pretty easy to get done and the painkillers are making life tolerable so things are not bad at this point for day one of recovery. As far as the exercises go, I can pretty much do everything. The one thing I cannot do is lift my left leg up more than 45°, which is fully expected. All my other exercises are pretty easy, including the hamstring curls the calf raises and the quad flexions and all that stuff is all fine. I think the big indicator of strength and recovery of the surgery site will be the leg lift. I am aiming to be able to lift up to one step as a starter, at this point I can barely get my foot off the floor.

Day 2
Last night sleeping was terrible. It’s because everything gets locked up when it’s cold. It’s just so painful to try and get in and out of bed so I ended up coming down to the couch at 4 AM to sleep down here. Once I take the drugs everything seems to be a little bit better, and once my hip is warm it’s definitely better. I’ve just been walking around the house for about 10 minutes, which isn’t bad but the pain from the incision is quite bad, very tender. I did use some ice yesterday and some ice this morning. Hopefully that’ll help a little bit. I got a pill stuck in my throat this morning because it’s a gel cap. It stuck in my windpipe and wouldn’t come out cause it couldn’t cough it up so that’s been disgusting the last couple of hours. It’s so freaking hot now too, 40’s with the humidity so every time I get up I get so hot and sweaty. It’s gross, a lot of effort, but I can put weight on my leg which I guess is a good thing. I got my new (cotton, nice and thin) house coat off Amazon yesterday which is also helped because that other one is just too thick and boiling hot but I’m still so sweaty. I’m gonna ruin this couch pretty much.

I took my medication at 7 AM which means I shouldn’t have had more morphine till 11 but I took some at nine so I can’t have any more until three. It is easy to see how people accidentally overdose with opioids because you literally just forget how many you have had. The big deal of the day is that it’s 11:30 in the morning and I just pooped and showered. I can stop worrying about being constipated which along with the jaundice are things that can be serious issues. Managed to get on the scale, and my weight is 246. Not good. Wonder how much is swelling because there is a LOT of swelling from my ribs down to my knee. Used ice a few times today after seeing my waistline after shower. I also have a massive bruise developing just above my waistline which isn’t painful however, the incision is at the stinging part now. There is no better word for it than that and it is such a different sensation than the rest of the pain. It can get up to 7 on the pain scale however most of the day I am around 4

Day 3
Slept on couch, was much better. Took meds at 7 so next morphine is 11 then 3 then 7. Morning is quite painful until morphine kicks in, probably around 7/10. I still have no feeling in my leg so I’m icing my quad, but I can’t feel the ice right from my hip down to my knee. I have to admit I wasn’t expecting the numbing to last this long or be this effective but I guess with that much mass being affected there is no other way.

I went to the basement and got underwear today so that was an adventure. Other than that, recovery is pretty slow at the moment. I’m still at the point where it’s a big decision whether to try and get off the couch or not because it’s pretty painful getting up and getting back down on the couch so I have to make sure it’s worth it. That said I am getting up once an hour now to at least do something. Hamstring on left quite sore. Throat still sore from the intubation. Incision is stinging as is my lowest quad which is weird. I am getting to the point now where I can lay and sit in slightly different positions to make sure that I don’t get immobile. Leg extension can almost get to 90° now but it is producing a lot more pain after my exercises. I’m at about an eight that’s why I’ve been doing them right around the time that I take my pain meds. I am also learning that dictation through an iPhone is really only about 75% effective which in 2024 is pathetic. All in all things are going slowly still, I expect the pace to pick up a bit towards day 7.

So we went to England for Christmas (see how I ignored my 2 year silence) and upon our return I started with a dry cough. Well, it has been 5 weeks now and they can’t seem to figure out how to fix it. I was given a course of antibiotics that did nothing. They gave me puffers that also did nothing so today I went back to the walk in for the third time and the guy gave me a dose of dexamethasone which he says should last me 6 months. He did however say that it is not pneumonia but he is not sure what it is. Could be a new flu or something but he hopes this does of 3 tiny pills will fix everything. Nicole has pretty much the same thing but Elyse seems fine so far. Being old sucks.

Of course the vacation was fantastic, so great to see my family and old friends however we managed to pick up an addiction to #WILTY which fortunately we have here in Canada on Prime. The irony of me being the least healthy person in the room on our return never sits well with me however whatever this thing is that I have it makes my breathing almost unbearable, I have no energy or appetite but I still have to push through working. I cough so hard I actually vomit which I never believed was a thing until now. This also means no workouts for the time being as I try not to tax myself too hard. I wanted to make a note of this because in the long term it may be good to know what I had.

As for the business our rent went up 70% in December which is going to put a lot of pressure on us going forward. It means bigger classes so advertising will have to be a thing to do from now on. Other than poor health and no money things are going great!!!

I am finding with increasing regularity that I am forgetting some major milestones in my life. That and I seem to be referring to them a lot more as I age. So here just as a placeholder and a page that I am sure will be lost to the mists of time in no short order are some notable things that have happened in my life that for whatever reason I keep forgetting.

Dec 31 2002 – Back surgery 1
April 24 2013 – Back surgery 2
November 13 2018 – Back surgery 3
October 26 2018 – Last day at NYGH (I think)
January 2 2020 – Last pay from NYGH, officially self employed
May 7 2019 – Fell from loading dock breaking shoulder
July 31 2019 – Shoulder surgery
March 17 2020 – First lockdown for COVID-19
May 29 2020 – Open again
October 7 2020 – My uncle Jeff passed
October 20 2020 – Lockdown 2 TEAM still training with tarps
December 26 2020 – Stay at home order issued
February 22 2021 – Open for TEAM still tarped
March 1 2021 – Face shingles. Still nerve damage in March 2022
April 3 2021 – Lockdown again back to zoom classes
June 21 2021 – Open again had moderna booster shot and wiped me out for 4 days (as did the second one also moderna)
August 25 2021 – Tore bicep spotting kips
Jan 5 2022 – Lockdown again, more zoom, plebs restless about mandates
Jan 31 2022 – Finally open fully again vaxxed people only
March 2022 – Vax mandate lifted and tomorrow no more masks

Is it really any surprise I haven’t been writing here for so long, we have been locked away with little to do and less to report until now. We just had our first competition in almost exactly 2 years and the girls have been real troopers getting to this point.

Will this signify a return to my writing? I know my typing is so much worse than it was when I was at NYGH and writing regularly and I also know that my health issues should probably be documented here for my own recall. My protein in my urine which they thought signified kidney failure is not moving at all, seems it is more genetic than alarming. My blood pressure is better than it was and the worst physical issue I have at this point is my left hip. I stopped doing squats of any kind after my third surgery and since then my leg (I guess) has become more of a problem. So I am squatting and doing some legs at the gym again now to see if I can stop the pain but if not I am afraid of thinking I may have a hip replacement in my future.

It is a crazy time right now. Back in January a new virus was discovered, a new coronavirus called Covid-19. Since then the virus spread from China around the globe and has cause a massive pandemic causing governments around the world to close towns, force people into at home lockdown and basically halt the economy. Here in Ontario we were forced to close on the eve of our March Break camp causing us to have to refund $2000 in fees. It has been almost 2 weeks since the lockout and there is no end in sight. We had hoped that we would be able to open April 4th however it looks like that is optimistic now. The schools are out and in an unprecedented move the Province is thinking about cancelling the school year. The football season across the world is suspended with all major sports events cancelled including the 2020 Olympics. It seems like a cheesy horror film to say that all the schools and stores are closed and people aren’t allowed to leave the house but that’s the reality now. The Government has promised aid for us as a business since we are missing almost $50K a month in revenue every month we are closed. There have been almost 1000 infections in Canada with a few deaths however the virus is extremely contagious as they found in Italy Spain and China and now in the USA where Trump, asshat that he is really didn’t take it seriously to start out and now is the most infected country on the planet.

Bizarre is the best way to describe things. Elyse is home from school every day now and the gym is a ghost town. We can’t go to LA Fitness because everyone except essential services is on lockdown. We spend most of our time working on the gym to prep for opening again but there is only so much you can do. Big projects like painting are going to have to be done and cleaning out the pit however we can’t have anyone in to help so it’s gonna be a bit of a job for me to get that all done. Our landlord has told us he may be able to give us some rent relief but if this goes for more than couple of months things will start to look bleak. The only thing we can do is hope that if there are casualties of the sickness on an industry scale that we are not the first and we can pick up some much needed business from the ashes. It’s a crappy thing to say but when there is a bear chasing you all you have to be is the second slowest to survive…

It is incredible to me to think that it’s been 13 months since my back surgery especially when I know just how much difficulty I have reaching things on the floor. Not only that but I am almost back to a fairly normal routine with my shoulder now 6 months post surgery. It’s odd to think that only 5 months ago I couldn’t even reach the push to start button in the car my shoulder was so bad. After getting out of the sling my recovery was painful and painfully slow but since at my age time just spins out of control it seems like no time since then. So how am I doing? Well, my cardiologist says my heart is getting better, the thickness in my heart wall is down and while I still have protein in my urine and less than optimal kidney function I am getting slightly better. That said, my legs are still immensely painful, I have random cramping of my right leg due to the nerve damage and my left leg is suffering due to the inordinate amount of work I ask it to do making up for the lazy one. I can’t really reach the floor very well, I can only just manage to put on my own socks and I really need to find a way to increase the flexibility of my back and legs without risking injury which is the ultimate catch 22. It is now winter and the snow outside makes it treacherous for me to be out and about, I have slipped and almost fallen a couple of times on ice and I actually did fall getting off the ladder after putting up the Christmas lights. Although that sounds dramatic the truth is I caught my chunky running shoe on the bottom rung and keeled over like a sleeping cow being tipped landing softly but embarrassingly on the driveway. I am still sleeping on the recliner in the living room and even though I tried last weekend to sleep in bed I am terrified that I will roll over on my shoulder and rip it apart. At some point I will have to try to string a few nights together and see if I can get back to sleeping like a human again.

Oddly, this is now becoming a list of reminders of when things happened for me since my memory is presently absolute Swiss cheese. I rented a man lift to replace some lights in the gym and by some I mean we have 28 arrays of 6 lights each and were running with a total of around 65 lights instead of the full complement of 168. So I put in about 30 more brighter lights and the place looks so much better for it. Now I am known for not being afraid of much in life given what I have endured but let me tell you being 20ft up in the air at the top of a cherry picker is unbelievably scary for someone of my size and age. Logically I knew the thing couldn’t tip over but it swayed like a drunk on New Year’s Eve and felt like I was about to be catapulted into the abyss. It’s not something I am dying to try again but in all honesty the lift was fun to drive around the gym and with the exception of repeatedly hitting my head while going through doorways and on the frame of the lift itself while entering it was a very fun experience. Terrifying but fun. I am also of the realization that I will probably require painkillers and muscle relaxants for the rest of my life given that my ambition to get stuff done is not dulled by my knowledge of the pain that will follow.