4/16/24

er  Tuesday, April 16, 2024

Nodded off around 9 and Lilly got me up at 11 to let her out.  Geri came out (unable to sleep because of her knee pain) and applied a Lidocaine patch to each of my shoulders for which I was deeply thankful.   2 PSs, then lights on again around 3:05, used homemade walking stick like a canoe paddle to get to the bathroom.  Put green sharf around my shoulders for warmth and nodded off at some point,  waking at 5:59.  At 7 a.m., I let Lilly out, went to the hallway to go to the bathroom, and met Geri hobbling down the hallway with her painful knee/leg, using one of my canes - both of us incapacitated.

Pain, etc.   Yesterday at the VA, I was asked on checking in whether I wanted wheelchair assistance and I said, as usual, 'no' but I wondered if I was making a mistake.  When I was leaving, for the first time I had to stop and sit for a while in the ER waiting room to rest my lower back before continuing to the parking lot to get home.

I took 2 650 mg. 8-Hour Tylenol ltabs ast night before sleeping,  I don't know whether they provided any pain relief.  I generally don't think so although I've taken many of them, or of the Extra Strength tabs, over the last months.

My shoulders were too painful yesterday to engage in the PT stretches.  This morning my right shoulder is more painful than my left, a good sign or a bad sign?

I've developed dry mouth, needing to sip water frequently.

I've placed a pillow vertically on the BL to support my back and to keep my body from sinking so deeply into the chair, making it harder to get out of it, scooting and bouncing.

My right hand has been stiff, swollen, and achy all morning, and mostly on the other side from the thumb below which are the "post-surgical degenerative changes" to which Dr. Cheng attributed my wrist and hand pain.

By the early afternoon, I loosen up and the shoulders pain is better, ditto the hips and my right hand, though there is some residual pain in each joint, especially my right shoulder.  I did 3 of the 5 PT exercises but I need to go to the basement for one using a Swiss Ball, and I haven't figured out where and precisely how to do the Seated Shoulder Scaption AAROM with Pulley at side.  I don't have a good place to attach the pulley.  Today marks 3 full months of doing the PT exeercises and during those months I have mostly gotten worse, at least in the sense of going from pain in one joint to pain 'all over.'

Urgent Care for Geri.   I drove Geri to CSM Urgent Care in Glendale at 8:30 a.m.  She has effusion or 'water on the knee' which has had the knee visibly swollen and pain, very painful this morning.  Each of us was hobbling around using a cane this morning.  A pitiable sight.  

The Rock Pile.  When I returned from dropping Geri off, the dump truck with her half-ton of big rocks was here.  I asked the delivery man to dump them on the grass rather than on the north driveway so we would have easy access to the garage, especially while Geri and I are both incapacitated.  I fear it will be a while before Geri can work with those rocks as she intended.  Getting up and down from the ground and moving fairly heavy rocks around can't be good for her troubled knee.

Opinion  What it means when the mercenaries appear,  Elliot Ackerman, April 15, 2024 at 5:45 a.m. EDT, WaPo.

In the game of empire, expansion fuels prosperity and war sustains expansion. Except war is a dirty business, one that citizens of most wealthy and prosperous nations would rather avoid. Yet someone has to fight these wars and, afterward, secure the peace. Whether it’s Pax Americana, Pax Britannica or Pax Romana, pax imperia isn’t really peace; it is the illusion of peace sustained by the effective outsourcing of war. This doesn’t impugn an imperial peace — I certainly would have preferred to live in Pax Romana as opposed to the medieval turbulence that followed — but, rather, shows how these periods of political and economic stability are sustained.