ReleFANt

Who says the Bible isn't relevant today? There is an Old Testament story about Elijah coming to a town and he ran into a widow who was very poor. So poor, in fact, she only had enough food in the house for one last meal for herself and her son.  But Elijah told her of a prophecy from God and so she went home and somehow there was enough food to feed her, her son, and Elijah for as long as he was there.  Not sure how long he was there, but it was for days.  The point of the story was that God provided when there was no other provisions.  (I Kings 17:7-16)

Fast forward to July 28, 2014 in Newark, Delaware.  Our central air conditioning has been hanging on by a thread.  We have put some money into it but it is dying and, after 17 years, it needs to be replaced.  It was running in the morning so I made the mistake of taking the fans and putting them away. Naturally, the A/C immediately seizes and dies.  I called the A/C guy and he said if I can come up with half of the cost to replace it, we can pay off the rest as we can.  Just a few days ago I had been going through our files and looking for something and made a note of the credit card balances.  Not much to work with there and we have been working hard to pay them down.  Essentially, there was nothing left in the cupboard.  But on this day I looked again and told God that we were doing our best and we needed a break.  All of a sudden out pops an old credit card with almost the exact amount of credit available for the down payment.  Now an argument can be made about not getting into debt and so forth, and I am fully aware of that, but I am choosing to thank God for supplying for our need.  No other way to explain it.

UPDATE:  I waited to post this until Lucie returned from camp - no sense her worrying about things while she was away.  The new AC is in and it was near record low temps the few days we were without it!

Knee PT Is Over For Me

Wednesday was my last physical therapy session for my knee rehab.  It went well.  They took before and after measurements and strength readings and on Wednesday, my right knee was just as flexible as my left and both were stronger than average.  The beginning sessions were mostly stretching - the latter sessions were strengthening.  I am cleared to do most things except run (no problem there!), heavy lifting, or actions that require twisting in the knee.  I will wait till December or so to play basketball again but it is really feeling great.

I am pretty thankful that my work was flexible enough that I could go to PT three times a week.  And the insurance covered it.

The weather has been nice enough lately that I can get out and walk - not just for myself, but for Mocha too.  We walk around the neighborhood and then straight into the pool...

I KNEE-ded That

Well I am on the other side of knee surgery now and feeling super!  It should be no surprise now how quickly things can turn around.  The surgery went fantastic.  Never had any pain.  Of course I aggressively relaxed if such a thing is possible.  I set up my couch with the TV remote, laptop, cell phone, house phone, light dimmer, pillows, blankets, eye shades, water, pills and the wonder machine - an electric water cooled knee wrap that pumped ice water from an Igloo cooler through tubes into a wrap.  All together, it worked great!  A friend recommended a short TV mini-series to watch so I downloaded that and made myself comfy.  To add an extra thrill to the week, the family decided to go on a "cleanse" diet to help get us ready to start losing weight.  That was a bit more "painful" but we didn't cheat and we made it through (and Mom - Lucie even had me eat 6 whole tomatoes on "Tomato Day!").  At the end of the week, I was down over 9 pounds (3.5% body weight - you do the math...).

Today was the first day of physical therapy and I was apprehensive that the pain I had avoided so far was going to come back in a big way.  Wrong.  PT was excellent.  I knew my legs were in great shape (it's just the rest of me...) so there is really very little for me to do.  Mostly stretching and flexibility exercises.  Probably 3-4 weeks, 3 times per week.  Insurance was supposed to be $50 per session but the PT place called my insurance company and then told me that I had met the deductible cost for the year (that's no surprise) so the $50 was waived!  I called the insurance company to verify but the agent said they were wrong.  Bummer.  I knew it was too good to be true.  30 seconds later the insurance company called back and said THEY were wrong - it was a matter of semantics but I had met the out-of-pocket expense for the year so yes, in fact, I did not need to pay the $50 co-pay!  Great!

So with that news, the weight loss, the leg feeling so much better than pre-surgery, my brain being no worse than ever and other things, life is looking up again.

Over The Pill

The other day I turned 50 but I don't want to talk about it...  But I will blog about it.

Seems like a bunch of relatively minor health issues have been piling up on me lately.  Most of them fixable if I lost about 40 pounds...  Torn meniscus in my right knee, a migraine headache, stomach virus, cholesterol is high, blood pressure is high, weight is high, there was a fear (and actual brief diagnosis) of two strokes...  The birthday celebration wasn't one of the happiest days in my life - a good portion of it was spent at two doctor appointments.  (Lucie did pull off a church surprise party so a bunch of people did sing Happy Birthday to me and we had some excellent Costco cake!)  Could be a lot worse - I recognize that.  So now I am lined up for knee surgery, the "strokes' turned out to be insignificant anomalies in my brain, taking more fish oil pills for the cholesterol (I can now hold my breath underwater for 43 minutes...), and I am taking a low dose blood pressure pill (and monitoring my blood pressure at home).  The good news is that there is no more room in my daily pill container so that means nothing else can go wrong...

Career Ender?

What you see here is a college collage.  Ha!  It is a collection of pictures of me playing intramural basketball at ORU.  (Pretty skinny guy back then!)  But even in these pictures from 30 years ago (WHAT?!  30 YEARS?!), you can see I was having problems with my right knee.  The middle MRI image shows the torn meniscus I will be getting repaired soon (green is good; red is bad).  Hopefully I will be back to playing again.  On the other hand, the last basket I made playing somewhat competitively came from an assist from Elliott so perhaps that is the best way to let it go...

Pool Peace

2014 turned out to be the best and easiest pool opening that I can remember in the 10 years that we have had this pool.  Maybe it was because this was the first time in 10 years that Elliott helped me...!  Ha!  Usually the pool is a green, slimey, stinky mess because the safety cover I have on there is porous and allows decaying leaves, bugs, etc. through.  They in turn decompose into the pool all fall, winter and spring.  This year we had a solid ice/snow cover all year so that kept a lot of the debris out resulting in pretty clear water at the opening.  I will have to think about putting some sort of solid cover down before the safety cover maybe this fall.  Anyway, I had to replace the salt chlorinator this spring and I poured about a dozen gallons of bleach in to shock it.  Whatever the formula, it all came together with no issues, leaks or fights.  Even the new (replacement) deck cleaner attachment for the power washer worked great.  I am pretty happy with that.  And so is Mocha as you can see in the video below:

Don't Call That Dog Britni, Call Her "Lifesaver"

A couple of weeks ago, 12 year old Britni the beagle became very lethargic.  Wouldn't eat, barely moved all day - just seemed like she was on her last legs.  She would go out to do her business but couldn't handle the stairs or anything.  I just figured it was old age and we didn't want to spend a fortune on testing.  She didn't seem to be in any pain - just unmotivated, maybe even confused - sometimes she would just wander around aimlessly.  I consulted Google and it was possible she had CCD (Canine Cognitive Dysfunction) or a stroke or other things.  Then at times she would perk right up and almost seem normal.  Those wild swings made me keep thinking and researching.  I thought perhaps she was diabetic so our nurse friend procured some test strips and Lucie managed to capture some of Britni's pee and test it.  Negative.  More research.  Perhaps she is hypoglycemic.  The "cure" for that is to give the dog honey.  So I did and it was like a miracle.  She bounced back in a couple of hours and was pretty much her old self.  So I started drizzling honey on her food (which she now ate right down) and in a few days, she was charging up and down the stairs again, full of energy, barking and howling and just being annoying like she always is.  That doesn't answer the underlying cause which we may eventually get checked out but for about 2 weeks now, the honey is all the fix we need.

But how does that make her a lifesaver?  Well, during the diabetes testing, that same nurse friend's husband began complaining of excessive thirst and other issues.  So on a whim she did a test on him and found his blood sugar was off the charts high!  Off to the doc they went and he is now on meds and a modified diet.  I don't know if Britni's episode occurred directly to discover our friend's condition but I will give her credit.