Why thank you, mslendzion!  You are too kind.

Was it the Drank that caught your eye? ::)

So Fun                                                                     Fri, January 13, 2012 3:24:16 PM
From: 2-4   
To:   Hubs

It was so fun to call and tell you of my adventures in the blizzard today. On my way home from a kick ass PT, I had a GREAT time listening to rowdy music like ,'There's Going to be a Heartache Tonight', radio blarin', belting out my favorite tunes at the top of my lungs, heat blasting, driver side window cranked all the way down to have my own personal snow storm & watching the flakes blowing around in my car, a big smile so wide my face hurt, just a jivin' and car dancing. 

Oh yeah, we're out of milk, but let it ride.  We have everything we need, you and me in front of a roaring fire.  :-*

'one
AKA
2-4

Friday 1.13.12

Thursday      Sleep   12:30 - 9am = 8 1/2 Hours! [/glow]
                     (Thank you, Ashton Kutcher!  Watching him in a downloaded episode of 'Two and a Half Men'
                      put me OUT literally within in minutes!

Breakfast        Toast 2 slices, butter and jelly, 1 c Skim Milk

2:20pm Late   California Roll, Tuna & green onion Roll, 12 oz Sapporo Beer.  Here in our Bible Belt
Lunch             state, restaurants are not legally allowed to sell 'to go' alcohol.  Wanting to avoid
Take Out        another stop to go to the liquor store in the midst of the blizzard for one beer and really
                     being tired after PT, I begged politely, using the bilateral surgery card shamelessly, and
                     the owner very kindly gave me the bottle of Sapporo as a gift!  Hershey's Bar and
                     1 cup of crappy Soy Milk because we were out of Skim Milk. :'(

6:30pm          Grillled Salmon and roasted Asparagus
                     1 c Organic Plain Yogurt, 2 TBSP sugar, 1/2 c Raspberries, 4 Crumbled Pecans                     

9:20pm           Vodka/Grapefruit Juice, 1 c Chex Mix
Cocktail Hour   Pain shot up to an 8 in an brand new place, my left buttock glute spasm.  Those Recovery
                      kisses can be brutal!  My groaning and cries are scaring the dog and distressing Hubs.

_______________________________________________________________________

9:00 - 10am   Ready for the Day, Laid out Clothes, Made the Bed, Organized
                     for the trek downstairs, Made Breakfast, morning grooming

10:40- 12:30  My First OUT PATIENT PT - Kristin worked me hard & did deep tissue massage to
                     break up the forming scar tissue and rock hard mass immediately below my
                     bilateral incisions.  We are sticking with my same PT routine until Monday to see
                     if I respond with increased pain to the massage.

12:30 - 2:30  Picked up take out Sushi.  Bought fresh fish and an avocado for tonight's dinner, etc.
                    Visited with a neighbor and finally made it home and had lunch. 
                                 
3:00              Showered and redid Makeup & Hair because now I can!  It's so nice to not be confined to
                     the Turret - my separate upstairs bedroom that I did my time in for 2 plus yrs for undiagnosed
                     end stage OA.
4:30pm         Recocery Pod to 10pm.

9:30pm          Pain shot up to an 8 in left buttock glute spasm.  My groaning and cries are scaring the dog and
                     distressing Hubs.

                      .
6 1/2Hrs Total  On my feet all that time, I estimate I walked at least ONE MILE AND A HALF
                       today.

10pm               Heading up to the Turret Room for what I pray to God will be some relief from that gosh damn
                       level 9 glute spasming, and to a much lesser pain degree the Charlie Horses in both feet. 
                       

Two4One,
I love your posts! What a great attitude you have. Poor Hubs! Who is suffering more, you or him!? LOL!!   ;D ;D ;D

Thank you, newdog!

Uhm, it's Hubs, yes definitely Hubs, who's suffering more - at least if you had to listen to his daily concerts on his tiny little violin, even as he swaggers around on his perfectly healthy hips.  Blast him! >:(

This is/was a rough one (recovery *cough* episode) tonight, and I almost veered into '10' category with tears and all.  Fortunately, the combo plate of prescriptions started doing their job in the nick of time.  Regardless of flare ups, my taper is still intact, and that's what's most important to me right now.  Yet, I do wonder if there are other hippies out there who managed their immediate post op pain with less potent pain medications compared to what they were previously prescribed for their pre op bone on bone OA?

Is that your doggie in the avy picture? Name please..... I know you mentioned it once before but my memory is shot.

Tell that therapist to lighten up on the scar tissue massage....YIKES.....

Luanna

Yes, that is my pride and joy. My Bichon Frise had just been shaved, otherwise he's a little ten lb fluffball.  Hubs named him Digo, spanish slang for speak because he's so vocal.  I named him Boo Boo after Yogi's little pal because he's so sweet and loving.

Boo was snapped sniffing my get well flowers, and Bichons are famous for sniffing flowers and being little gardeners!  Now, Hubs calls him 'Boosy Boo'.  They are charmers. I have some adorable photos of him that I was planning on posting in the photo sections, but I've procrastinated.

Saturday 1.14.12

OR:               "The Whole Dam Family and the Dam Dog (1905)" - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0235045/

Friday           Sleep:  'After Midnight' - Eric Clapton, (Awoken on & off by the Dam Dog), - 4:30 = 3 1/2 HRS Sleep 
2am - 3am     Awoken by pup crying in the night to go out.
2:15am         10mg Vicodin**Pain 6 ** in my Left hip flexor
3am - 4:30    Sleep

Breakfast      Oatmeal, 1/2 Banana, 3 crumbles Walnuts, 1/4 c Raspberries, 1 c Skim Milk, 1 c coffee & cream

Late Lunch    Panini - fresh baked Boule Bread sprayed lightly with olive oil, 3 strips Bacon, Mixed Baby Greens,
2:30pm         Tomato slices, 1/4 c Shredded Sharp Cheddar Cheese - all grilled & prepared to perfection, Lightly
                     Steamed Broccoli on the side, and 1/2 c fresh Raspberries and Blueberries.  Vodka/Grapefruit
                     Juice, and for desert, a  Homemade Hazelnut, chocalate chip, oatmeal & walnut Cookie with 1 c
                     Skim Milk

Dinner 7pm   Roasted potatoes, onions, mushrooms, red bell pepper, and a small piece of grilled apple
                   smoked sausage

9pm Snack`  Half c Chex Mix

Midnight        Ruby Red Grapefruit, YUM!   
__________________________________________________________________             

4:30 -7:30     Awoken again by Dog wanting out! It's kennel time tonight, buster, until you learn to hold it all
                      night and let Mommy & Daddy get some freakin' sleep.  Correspondence, Cleaned up Bedroom,
                      Groomed for the Day, Makeup, etc.

7:15am         Hubs miffed because he couldn't open my locked bathroom door, and definitely a bit put upon
                     I wouldn't open it when he asked me to.
                     I said "I need a private moment here, and I'll be out in a minute."
                     Hubs,"You've had private moments all morning!"  "I'll be out in just one minute,
                     Honey."  Hubs, "Fine! Whatever.  I'm leaving, and I'm going now."
                     "Honey, just hang on, don't go away.  Don't be mad."  Huffily, in an aggrieved,
                     slightly injured tone, "All I wanted to do was come in and say Good Morning!"

                     Then, he was gone, off to buy Milk.  I made coffee, made that kitchen sparkle, and had
                     all his morning favorites laid out for him when he came home, tiff forgotten, a
                     conquering hero presenting his Lady with her cherished Organic Grass Fed Cossetted
                     Cows' Skim Milk.  He's a Gem.

7:30 -            Made coffee for Hubs

7:45              Recovery Pod - Iced Hips.  Drinking the 1st c of Joe for the day

8:30 - 10am    Fixed Hair, made breakfast, cleaned up kitchen.

10am -11:30   Recovery Pod - Heating Pads, Had that 2nd c of coffee *Pain 6*

12:30 - 2:30    Prepped kitchen.   Made lunch for Hubs and I.

5pm                 Full PT
6pm                 Dinner
7pm- Midnight   Hubs and I spent a lovely evening together.  He's pretty cool. Everyday there is a new
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    milestone

Ok. Got the name for your new book.... R U ready???? ..........well it's.....

Me and Boo and Hubby too (if he behaves that is)  ;D

Luanna

Hahehaha ;D, Luanna!

Actually, I do have the name and a target date of April 3rd to finish my book.  It's a serio comic informative look at the plight of OA and how the process of hip resurfacing's recovery from day to day offers more than a return to an active life; the recovery offers a growth of the soul, perhaps even more beneficial than the growth of bone over our hardware and the physical healing of our previously damaged and withering bodies.

Do you happen to be a published writer?

Yep. I do be published. Mostly academic articles and a book chapter or 2. Then writing for 10 years doing educational content for global audiences while working as a content manager at Microsoft. So, not fiction but that's my next goal. I've got the technical stuff down but find the fiction really challenging.

Luanna

Quote from: Luanna on January 14, 2012, 04:29:04 PM
Yep. I do be published. Mostly academic articles and a book chapter or 2. Then writing for 10 years doing educational content for global audiences while working as a content manager at Microsoft. So, not fiction but that's my next goal. I've got the technical stuff down but find the fiction really challenging.

Luanna

Oh Lordy Luanna are you an academic too?  My only publishing is in the form of research and academic books.....yawn!!  Would love to write for fun and without numbers/stats!

Hey Luanna & Aeriel,

It seems we have some writers on Surface Hippy; how fun!
 
I've written 4 technical Policy & Procedure Manuals, twice as an employee and twice for my own two businesses.  I am a voracious reader and your basic omnivorous consumer of all things media, up to and including tales told around the fire, and I have a deep interest in and passion for protohistory passed on from our ancient oral traditions.  I have no published fiction YET, but I have dozens of radio and television appearances, written a couple of commercials, and had humor/informative public speaking gigs.  My plan is to parlay my various CV, all around life experiences and interests, and the already preprocessed grist of my mill, into a book, or perhaps 2 or 3.

With the founder and owner of Surface Hippy and with the beautifully creative, evolving posters here on this plane of a highly unique amalgam of regenerative raw power and restorative healing on a mass scale, it's a privilege to be counted as a member of this Hippy community.  I would not be surprised at all if this place acts as a springboard for countless fulfilled dreams and aspirations met far beyond the miraculous healing of our hips.

Happy Writing and Healing,
2-4

Sunday  1.15.12  Day 27

Saturday        Sleep: 'In the Midnight Hour' Wilson Pickett + 6:15am = 6 HRS! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KFYUJ63nk8
Breakfast           Whole Wheat Toast 2 slices, Butter, Jelly, 1 c. Skim Milk, 1 c
                        Coffee and Cream
Snack               1 cup Ruby Red Grapefruit

Noon
Brunch:             Vodka/Organic Ruby Red Grapefruit Juice, 1/2 c Chex Mix

3pm Early
Dinner:              1 1/4 c Roasted potatoes, onions, red bell pepper,
                         mushrooms, with Parmesan cheese, and Steamed
                         Broccoli with a pat of Butter, & a small piece of Apple
                         Smoked Sausage, topped off by a glass of Skim Milk &
                         half a slice of Deep Chocolate Hazelnut Cake from
                         the local Gourmet Shop!

5pm Snack         1 cup Ruby Red Grapefruit

6pm Light:         1 cup of Organic StonyBrook Low Fat, (I prefer full fat, but
Supper               it's not available except at a store across town.), 1 c
                         Blackberries, and 4 Pecan's crumbled.
______________________________________________________________

6:15 - 8:30       Correspondence
8:30-9:30am     Grooming, Makeup, Organized & Trekked the 14 steps
                        downstairs.  Made myself Breakfast

10am - Noon:   

Cleaned the Guest Bath top to bottom to riser (yuck).  I was able to do some new things for our home today by utilizing a new technique: lower myself slowly to the floor and lay flat on my stomach with a pillow under my bilateral incisions. In this way, I was able to clean all the hard to reach nooks an crannies without the risk of breaking hip protocol.  I shined our living room floor to ceiling massive mirror until it sparkled.  Damn, I'm actually proud of myself for coming up with that!  (I asked Hubs if he was getting any ideas seeing me prone on my stomach cleaning the bottom of that humongous floor mirror, and he says "Yeah, now you can clean the kitchen floor!" ::))

Noon Brunch:   

I don't recognize myself.  Before OA, (B.O.A. TM, which is a totally appropriate acronym, if you think of this inexorable disease slowly squeezing the life out of you until you're dead and your are bones pulverized enough so that you can be swallowed whole), I hated housework with a blinding hate of a thousand suns burning with disgust and repugnance. 

Probably I felt this way my entire life B.O.A because crazy, insane housework was a punishment as a child.  I wasn't one to have a normal job when I first moved away from home and clean up my place, or be a slob in my apartment.  Nope, from the tender age of 17 1/2, I worked 2 jobs, and later one lucrative job, at a time so I could afford to have a maid come and clean my apartment once a week and have all my meals catered by a local gourmet shop.  I also looked for the 'Dry Clean Only' label, so I didn't have to do laundry either.  I paid hired help my entire life from 18 right up to my late 30's and even quite some time into my current marriage. 

Replacement Hubs didn't think it was cool to siphon off money for "jobs we could do ourselves", while Former Hubs thought it was mighty fine for me to pay for the even more people that I hired, and he was real happy with having several latest, state of the art mountain bikes, Tag Heuer's, Zegna suits, and his J.M. Weston shoes, that I bought him too.  Former was a bad investment; attractive initially, but not much in the way of a return.  :-X

Now that I'm a phreaker TM, (post hip resurfacing esoterically activated kinetic energy restorer), or the the diminutive phreak TM (post hip resurfacing engergy activated kinetically) TM if you prefer, and have entered a new chapter of true wealth, free of the illusion of possessions that actually end up owning you, and I can't wait to see what's next.

2:45               Made an Early Dinner
3pm               Chair Time 1 and 1/2 hours, **Pain 5**, cleaned up
                      kitchen.

Good for U. Rising above the material things in life..... and valuing those that really matter. I'm not that evolved yet! I still prefer boats, and expensive jewelry....  ;) 

Your dinner sounded yummy and very healthy. We did salmon, roasted potatoes, and brocoli. Would like to have topped it off with a hot fudge sundae but didn't.... :'(

Luanna

Two4one, how did you get on the floor. I don't have that figured out yet without breaking the 90 degree rule.

Sunday  1.15.12  Day 27 Continued

5pm   Recovery Pod Rest -

**Pain is only a 4, but I'm feeling out of sorts with sweats and chills because I'm aggressively tapering off Dilaudid. 

I've done a successful taper before when Philippon's pre op protocol required I be narcotic free for 2 weeks prior to my first scheduled November 1st revision arthroscopy for my Right Hip and again for the second scheduled revision scope of the Left Hip in February.

After Philippon insisting on a ONE YEAR waiting list, after insisting I spend my family's dwindling resources to fly to his Vail Clinic not once but TWICE, after insisting I go through months of grueling, agonizing, and totally counter productive arthroscopic pre op PT, after insisting I redo all my already several times over replicated films & costing me yet thousands more for HIS state of the art Cat Scans, MRI's, & X Rays, and after finally concluding I had end stage, bilateral bone on bone OA in a blind spot on his films - just like all my other consulting surgeons' films' blind spots, Dr. Philippon finally turned me down for my long anticipated bilateral arthroscopy revisions. 

All I had after my lengthy, tortuous and ultimately useless ordeal, was the famous doctor saying "I'll help you get into a surgeon right away who'll do the bilateral THR that you need."  His promise was as empty and as useless as everything else he put me, a desperate patient in unimaginable pain, through.  Immediately after leaving his office, I put aside my anger and my tears that day in our Vail hotel room and began making call after call, right up until we caught an early flight home.  The next day, the first day we came home from Colorado, I successfully found my gifted and highly experienced  hip resurfacing surgeon, Dr. Philip Schmitt of the Detroit, MI area.

Now, as a person miraculously returned to health, free of OA, I have the privilege of writing about my hard fought and incredibly wonderful full recovery from this crippling disease we all fight and triumph over.  I wondered how, or if, I was going to use this forum to work through my two years plus experience of trying and failing, of searching, and then doing it all over again, and then again, and yet again, to find a diagnosis for my 'normal hips' and my clinging to the hope that somewhere, somehow, I was going to save myself.

I'm sorry about your travails, but glad you've reached a good state now.

I can't imagine the two year hejira you went through, but the end is good. I'm happy for you and like all who have dealt with this understand and feel both your anger and your happiness now.

QuoteGood for U. Rising above the material things in life..... and valuing those that really matter. I'm not that evolved yet! I still prefer boats, and expensive jewelry....  ;)

Your dinner sounded yummy and very healthy. We did salmon, roasted potatoes, and broccoli. Would like to have topped it off with a hot fudge sundae but didn't.... :'( - Luanna

Luanna,

This little wannabe yogini is not that evolved 'cause I am  married to Hubs after all!  His dream is to retire on a Golf Course with every toy under the sun! (OK, Toys ARE good, especially boats and ATVs.) Mine is a little different than his, natch :P.  My dream is to live either as an Ex Pat in Costa Rica, or to live Ellie May Clampett style with mah critters in the backwoods off the grid - http://www.thespec.com/whatson/article/527695--beverly-hillbillies-actress-sues-toy-maker-over-elly-may-barbie, or on a small houseboat - http://hookedonhouses.net/2011/04/24/the-braverman-family-homes-on-parenthood/ like Crosby's in 'Parenthood'! 

Wow, I'm sensing a theme here: Uh, I like freedom.  Luanna, please don't hate me but I forgot to post yesterday's 3pm Early Dinner Desert of Deep Chocolate & Hazelnut cake!  I'll get right on that now!

Monday 1.16.12  Day 28

Monday mornin' so good to me!

'Monday Monday' The Mamas & The Papas http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h81Ojd3d2rY

Sunday Sleep:  10:30pm to 5am = 6 1/2 Hours -
                         Waking up a bit on & off = 5 Hours of Sleep

Breakfast:          Oatmeal, 1/2 Banana, 1/4 c Blackberries, 4 Walnuts
9am                   Crumble, 1 c Skim Milk

Lunch
12:20                 Roasted potatoes, mushrooms, onions, red bell pepper, &
                          Parmesan cheese, broccoli, TWO Hershey Bars and two glasses of
                          Skim milk

Dinner
7:45pm               Panini with bacon, sharp cheddar cheese, tomato, avocado,
                          on Artisan multi grain locally homemade bread.  Broccoli,
                          followed by Angel Food Cake, Breyer's Vanilla Ice Cream,
                          Strawberries & Blackberries
Snack
12:30                 Angel Food Cake, Breyer's Vanilla Ice Cream, Strawberries &
                          Blackberries     
_______________________________________________________________________
5:30 - 8:30am    Correspondence, emails, etc., reading
8:30-9am           Showered, Gathered Gear for Downstairs Trek, Made Breakfast
9am - 12noon     Chair Time
Noon - 2:45        Recovery Pod, rested.  I'm not feeling well today due to tapering
                          my prescription pain medications and having withdrawal symptoms.
                          Then, 45 minutes of Grooming Hair, and Makeup, etc.

3:30 - 5:30pm    Out Patient PT Kristin worked me over, and she did deep tissue
                          massage that felt great!  I also did 15 minutes of prone Leg presses.
                         Scheduled PT 5x week through the end of March:  PT Tuesdays,
                         Thursdays, & Fridays.  Pool PT Mondays and Wednesdays.

5:30 - 7:30pm    Shopped a full Grocery list and put them away.  Cleaned kitchen,
                         prepped, and prepared dinner.  Made the kitchen sparkle after dinner,
                         made desert
8pm - 9:30        Recovery Pod - watched TV

9:30pm -            Trekked upstairs to The Turret Room and read, surfed, etc.