I have been noticing Gary’s arms lately, probably because of
our 35th anniversary, and it’s brought to mind memories of the stuff
he has done through the years we have been together. I’ve seen him put up sheetrock in various
houses that we’ve lived in so we could make bedrooms for our kids out of
unfinished basement space. (I remember
when the muscles in his right arm were a lot bigger than the ones in his left
and he was all worried about that until he realized it was because he’d been
working so hard on the basement, and since he’s right handed all that hammering
build up his right arm muscles.) He’s held babies till they fell asleep and
then kept holding them. He’s given
priesthood blessings. He’s cooked
dinners (some not terribly successful, think “apple-ham-spaghetti-curry. But others have been fairly tasty, and the
efforts were appreciated.) He’s always
offering to help out on various service projects for scouting, church,
etc. I wonder if anyone else knows how
hard those arms have worked, and how little he complains?
I have had a very rapid decline in the health of my knees
and hips. It ticks me off. Here I am, minding my own business, getting
some exercise like I’ve been told to do and WHAM. I can barely walk. And I wake up in the middle of the night
almost screaming because of the pain.
What’s up with THAT? That’s only
supposed to happen when you get old, right?
So I go in to the doctor to see what’s going on and they do x-rays. Turns out I have severe arthritis in three
places in each knee (can’t remember the technical terms but something like the
ends of both bones and the backside of the kneecap or something like that) and
also the hip. (Makes me wonder about the
hip they didn’t x-ray, but oh well.) So
today I went in to Kaiser before my insurance runs out (on Friday) to get shots
in the knees (yes, it’s a horrible thing to imagine… BIG needle) so hopefully
that’ll relieve some of the pain. (The
shots were uncomfortable, the first one not so bad but she scraped the bone a
bit pushing the second one in so I flinched.) The doctor didn’t want to do the
hip as well. She is in family practice
and the hip needed to be injected deeply enough that she felt an orthopedic
doctor needed to do it. Well, since I
lose Kaiser on Friday that’s not enough time to get an orthopedist (?)
appointment so that’s not going to happen any time soon. If the pain can’t be managed this way (and
hopefully I can do some light strength training to build some muscle around the
affected joints for extra support, some swimming, stretches, etc.) I will have
to have knee replacements and perhaps the hip replaced too. I am kind of wondering what in the world
happened to make this happen since I kind of feel too young for this to have occurred,
maybe it’s one of those “it’ll come back to bite you” things from the poor
nutrition as a little kid?
Whatever. All I can really do is try
to get it taken care of now so it won’t kill my quality of life. I have grandchildren (and at some point,
great-grandchildren) to squire around at WDW.
(Makes me glad there are no stairs at the condo…)
Even though I still feel a little bit bad about not having a
job, with this new health development I am more at peace with the decision to
leave the University. I wasn’t taking as
good care of myself as I needed to, and certainly I wouldn’t have been able to
do the extra things that I’ll need to do now to build up my strength and
endurance. Shoot, when I got home from
work I was pretty much done for the day and I need to be able to swim and do
some light weight training several times a week. There are a few other things that staying
home is going to give me time to do, also.
I was wanting to try making lefse, and also that “rice cream” dessert
from Norway. Also, I will be making some
of the gifts this coming year for birthday/Christmas, which I am enjoying.
I am very excited about the upcoming wedding, even though I
have no idea when it will be. J Planning weddings is fun, and Audrey has some
wonderful ideas and likes beautiful things.
Of course, we have to keep it reasonable since there’s always the money
issue, but we’ll do what we can. And Sam
will make a great addition to the family.
(We’ve already thought of him as family for a long time.)
I’m also excited about the classes that Bridget’s signed up
for, because SHE’S excited about them, and it’s been a while since she was
excited about school. I think she did
the right thing, taking time off and having a little bit of a break.
Okay, I think that's about all I can think of.
