End of summer

I know, I know, summer doesn't officially end until September 22nd, and the traditional end of summer is Labor Day, which is very late this year, September 7th. But I've always felt that the end of August is the end of summer. So there.

This has been kind of a weird week, due to my knee surgery on Thursday. I had to spend Wednesday consuming only clear liquids (Sprite, iced tea, a lemon popsicle, some hard candy) so that my stomach would be really and truly empty when they did the procedure. This is a Mounjaro thing, because it makes your stomach empty more slowly. 

They sent me so many instructions (take this, don't take that, stop this a week before, stop this two days before, wash with this, don't wear that, on and on) that I was getting kind of confused. But the one thing they didn't mention was what time we had to be there. On Wednesday I got a text asking me to confirm that I would be there at 6:45 am (I thought it was at 9 am). I called and sure enough, that's when we had to be there. Oh well, good to know.

We arrived at the very pleasant and new-looking surgery center in plenty of time, filled out paperwork, and signed a bunch of things. At about 7:15 they took us back to the preop area, where I was put in a lovely gown, a hairnet, a sock on my bad leg, and a compression stocking AND a sock on my good leg, oh, and a heated blanket. 

A nurse studied the veins in my hand and decided to put the IV in the crook of my arm instead. She said, "They don't like me to do this, but the vein there is much better." I was happy about this because I hate having an IV in my hand. They tested my blood sugar and it was 105, which is very good for me. My blood pressure was 129 over 69, which is a bit high, but I was probably a little dehydrated.

Then Rocket Boy went off in search of a cafe (he'd had breakfast, but that man is always hungry), and I was wheeled into the surgery room. The nice anesthesiologist asked me if my heart rate was always slow. I thought about that. When I was younger, yes, I had a very slow heart. But not in the last 10-20 years! 

The surgeon, anesthesiologist, and nurse all stood around waiting for me to go to sleep and at first it didn't seem like I was going to. Hm hm hm, OK, when's it going to happen? And then I was out and then I was awake and it was all over.

I was in a lot of pain when I woke up, kind of cramping aching pain in my leg. The surgeon came by and he said the back of my knee was "very tight," whatever that means, so they had to kind of dig around to do what they needed to do. I guess that was the explanation for the pain. My nurse gave me first one thing and then another, and finally she got permission to give me something called Toradol, which is like super duper ibuprofen, and that did the trick. The pain finally subsided and then I could go home. 

I spent most of the rest of the day sleeping, only waking up to take more pain meds and eat a little something (wheat thins, a banana, a piece of banana bread coffee cake). Rocket Boy had made his famous 4-cheese macaroni & cheese, so we had some of that for dinner. They had stuck a scopolamine patch on my back (for nausea) and I kept it on until Saturday night because it was so wonderful not to feel any nausea.

Friday was much the same as Thursday (except I didn't have surgery again). I could hobble around slowly, so I fed the cats and did some dishes, but mostly I just lay on the bed and read and slept. And took meds. 

Saturday was the same, except that in the middle of the afternoon Teen B showed up again! He had taken the bus that gets to Boulder at 2:48 pm. I don't know if we're going to see him every weekend or not, but it was certainly nice to have him come by. Again, he only stayed a few hours, caught the 6:10 bus back to Fort Collins. While he was here, Rocket Boy was nice and went to Starbucks for us, getting me an iced pumpkin cream chai and Teen B an iced pumpkin spice latte and a hedgehog cake pop.

I am a little worried about Teen B because he is already convinced he is going to fail Freshman Comp. I dragged him, kicking and screaming, through 9th grade language arts, 10th grade language arts, 11th grade language arts, and 12th grade language arts, so this is not exactly a surprise. But I had told him, you're in college now, I'm not doing your homework for you. It is not clear whether saying that is going to be enough. He still expects me to help him. And of course he seems to have an impossible teacher who has already assigned a whole bunch of stuff for them to write, much worse than I ever did when I was teaching freshman comp at CU. Arrrgghh.

He may end up dropping the class. Maybe it would be for the best. 

We're continuing to deal with our peeing cat, Sillers. I washed the blankets on our bed twice this week before my surgery because she had peed on them. Fortunately I had put a pee pad under the blankets, so the urine didn't soak down to the sheets and mattress pad. But still. She's also peeing on the carpet in our room, and quite possibly elsewhere as well, since she wanders all over the house and I don't think she has much control over her bladder anymore.

Finally I got annoyed and ordered some big fancy reusable pee pads from Chewy, plus more Nature's Miracle and a package of cat diapers. They arrived on Friday. I figured she could wear a cat diaper at night, when I can't watch what she's doing. But so far I haven't managed to get a diaper on her. You have to stick their tail through a little hole, and while I'm doing that, she wriggles away from me and the diaper.

At least both cats like the new pee pads (you can see Sillers rolling around on one in the picture at the top of this post). It's soft, like a blanket.

Well, I think this is about all I'm going to write today. My knee does not like me to sit in a chair for long periods of time, it wants to be elevated and iced. I did take the bandages off this morning (after 72 hours) and my knee looks very nice! Three little incisions, each with their little black stitches. The knee is very swollen and tender -- the other knee is swollen too. When I weighed myself on Friday morning I was up six pounds! But that's from the swelling. It will go down. I decided to stop taking the oxycodone today, and that seems to have been the right decision. Still alternating ibuprofen and acetaminophen. I miss the scopolamine patch -- my usual nausea is back. They gave me some other drugs for nausea, but I feel like I shouldn't take them, because this is Mounjaro nausea, not from the surgery. Oh, I don't know. Maybe I'll ask my doctor about it.

On I think September 8th I have a follow-up appointment and then after that I think physical therapy. But at some point I should have a more functional knee. Looking forward to it.