You Stab ’em, We Slab ’em!

Visiting nurse called this morning to set up time to come. I recognized the number so answered, “City Morgue, you stab ’em, we slab ’em”. ….. Silence for about three seconds then peals of laughter as she said, “I guess you are feeling pretty good this morning!” – she was right. It was my second good night in a row apart from the fact that Hairy Potter punctured my leg with a claw while jumping off the bed at 2am. Due to the Xarelto, such a thing is never remedied with a small piece of Kleenex. The forensics team would have had no trouble at all in finding my blood on the bloody towel I had hanging from my walker this morning!

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Knee report at 10 days PO: Another decent day in the books. After the visiting nurse was here this morning, she indicated I’ll be discharged from Home Care on Monday. If all goes well, I’ll be discharged from Home Therapy on Tuesday and start my outpatient regimen with three visits to the clinic a week. My Pain and Torture overseer will be the same one I had last Fall for the other knee so that is a good thing … I think.

As I am writing this, I suddenly remembered that I actually began the day at 6am with a cause for celebration!!!! I actually, no lie, managed to change my underwear without any assistance from my girlfriend! After slipping the old pair off (that was easy) I carefully lined up the leg hole and tried several times to toss (think ring toss) if over the big toe of my surgery leg foot. I kept missing and thought perhaps it was because I was doing it in the dark so I took my cell phone flashlight in one hand and the shorts in the other and continued the effort, with no joy. Finally I put the cell phone under my chin in a position where it was illuminating the floor and I put my fingers through one leg hole and tried to lasso the big toe with the other leg hole. Success!!!! But now there was the problem of pulling the shorts over the foot when they kept getting stuck on the toe. At one point, they slipped off and I had to repeat the lassoing process … all the time grunting with the moderate pain that was being created by the turning and twisting of my body. I finally got the toe “roped” again and carefully used my good foot to coax the shorts down toward the heel so I could pull them up. Once I managed to get them up to the knee, the process of getting the other leg through was easy. I was so proud of myself!!! Independence instead of Depends! I thought. Now that I was ready for the day I made my way out to the recliner a full hour earlier than usual and I found great satisfaction in telling my girlfriend that I had changed my underwear and she could just stay in bed for another hour.

Stopping in the bathroom on the way to the living room I was surprised to discover that my shorts had no fly in them! That didn’t seem right … until I reached behind me and found it along with the realization that I had put them on backwards. And so … I trudged with the walker out to the recliner where I repeated the process … somewhat more easily than the first time … but still not easily.

I was tired when I finished. After proudly affirming to my girlfriend that I had indeed put my own underwear on … she had the temerity to tell me that they were inside out … she could see the label!!!!!

I refuse to let that little detail deter me from my inward celebration of a little piece of independence!
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I’m hoping that the fact that I have had both knees replaced will not cause people to regard me as being a faux-knee person. ;-(.