I'm out the door on Tuesday at 6:11am to walk. I make one lap of my block and run into Ed and Anneta (who live on the street behind me and who I've run into on early morning walks). They see the cane and "another bicycle accident" comes out of their mouths. But I tell them of cancer to the gums and jaw and etc I see the smiles on their faces dim. As we talk it's almost as if they are in a state of shock and I'm trying to cheer them up (rather than vice versa). I'll just have to cheer them up by recovering quickly. After forty minutes of walking I take a sponge bath since I don't want to go through the wound water-proofing rigmarole. I read the news and markets. Both at mid-morning and mid-afternoon I cook vegetables and then run them through the blender. This works - the "goop" that I produce has good taste but is just missing the vegetable texture. It's okay, it's a positive. The mail, suprisingly, gets delivered after the hold and I read through that. And I make a physical therapist appointment for Wednesday and work on making a speech therapist appointment. I have paperwork to do, such as renewing my driver's license and converting a non-profit's banking from a bank that was boughtout to the new one. And I also tidy up the kitchen and bathrooms that have seen a lot of use as I dress wounds and use antibiotic gels and try different combinations of foods that I can pulverize and eat. (This is getting better as the neck swelling goes down, as expected.) Today is a slower day than usual.
I start Wednesday with a walk to the post office to send mail off. I finish with another forty minute walk. At home I trim the roses and take a shower and read the news and markets. After noon a physical therapist comes to visit and I show her what I'm capable of and my shortcomings. She says I'm doing well and suggests some flexibility exercises for the ankle subject to what Thursday's doctors appontments reveal. Later in the day I get a text from Ruby, my emergency contact as well as my friends for thirty years, indicating a nurse has been repeatedly trying to get hold of me and cannot. I look at my phone and see one missed call with a voice mail. It is the nurse. The single call came in at 5:00pm and Ruby's text came to me at 5:07 am. I don't think a single call counts as repetaedly trying to get hold of me. I call the nurse back and he has already said he's coming over at 3:00pm on Thursday before I can say anything. I tell him that I have follow-up appointments at Cedars-Sinai and will probably not be home at that time. I hear the deflation over the phone. The nurse is just trying to run roughshod over me. He says he'll call back on Thursday to make an appointment for Friday or Saturday. Cool. But I can tell that a) I don't care for this nurse, and b) there isn't anything that I need from a nurse. Later there's a sharp jolt to the entire house and at first I think it is an earthquake. Then I start to think that a car has run into my house (after all there were the car tire tracks in my lawn a couple months ago). I look outside and there is no car stuck against my house and I see other neighbors looking around. Thus it was a 2.9 earthquake centered four kilometers away. This is the third earthquake in the last two days that we've had.
I go walk for fifty minutes on Thursday morning and take a sponge bath afterwards. Today Ruby picks me up and I see the two of the three doctors who did surgery on me. The leg doctor says that I am healing very fast and I can get rid of the boot. I don't even need the messy yellow tape anymore and can just wrap the leg in gauze. I can walk and, more or less, do anything I want. The jawbone doctor sees that things are going well as the swelling subsides and the jaw flap is consolidating well. The laboratory anaylsis of everything they took our of me shows no cancer in any of the lymph nodes and none in the bone. Howerver, just to be on the safe side, they will want me to do radiation starting in a month. Finally I get up the courage to ask this doctor when I can be on a bicycle again. He surprises me when he says now. He says I am healing incredibly fast and just take it cautiously. I will probably stabilize myself without the boot while walking first and maybe get on a bicycle for a short ride next week. I remind the doctor that I told him when I first met him that I have weird genetics and that I heal very quickly. He syas he remembers that and he is convinced. Traffic on the way home is a disaster and Ruby drops me off quickly because she has to get to another appointment. I grab dinner and relax and look forward to continued recovery.
I start Friday with a long walk and then stop in at the grocery store. I've carried my backpack and a recyclable shopping bag with me and I fill both of them with supplies. And then I walk home. The roses get a good trimming and I have a full shower since I have no more bandages on or areas to protect from water. After the shower I put moisturizer or antibacterial gel on the wounds but let them stay open for the entire day. I'm worn out from the long walk and toting gorceries home so I take some time to the read the news and markets and then FP2 for the F1 race from Spain. Later I watch some golf and just rest.
I'm motivated on Saturday for a long walk and I get in sixty minutes with very little use of the cane - just using the cane near curbs or broken pavement or danger zones. It feels good to get in a full shower again and then I read the news. The F1 qualifying session from Spain is fun because there are drops of rain to cause panic. In the end, six different manufacturers take up the first six places on the grid. I take some time to fill out paperwork for doctor's appointments at new facilities and then I take all of my bandages and medical supplies and remove them from the dining room table (where I could see them and be reminded of care that I needed). The extra medical supplies go in a closet and I just keep the ones that I need in my bathroom. In the afternoon and evening I relax with golf and the first game of the Stanley Cup finals ice hockey playoff game.
I start Sunday with a 55 minute walk, losing time along the way. AFter a shower I watch the F1 race from Spain with a predictable winner but good battles through the rest of the field - with some cars showing good improvements with their first mid-season upgrades and others not. I watch some of the golf tournament to pass the time. Today I have two visitors: the ex-nerighbors son (who still owns the house and rents it out) and Ralph (a co-aerospace engineer I've known for forty years). Each visit is about an hour long and I enjoy the company.
On Monday I don't lose the time and get in a sixty minute walk. Afterwards I trim the roses and watch the first part of yesterday's IndyCar race from Detroit. At noon there is a CSULA Zoom meeting with a senior design team who we failed and we want to listen to them to improve the experience for the students and see how we can prevent the failure from happeneng again. After the Zoom meeting I watch the last half of the IndyCar race and relax a bit. At mid-afternoon I go into the garage and lift weights with very very light weights. It's stil a good workout because I haven't lifted in three weeks and I've lost a lot of weight because its difficult to eat enough using the blender. I'll probably be sore on Wednesday despite the very very light weights. And it's important to get back into some semblance of a routine after the surgery and as I recover. Later I watch tthe ice hockey playoff game.
On Tuesday I get out for a sixty minute walk during the which the back of the knee hurts a bit. This is relatively far-removed from the operation, so probably a limping gate is putting different forces into the muscle than usual. The "pain" or "weakness" at the back of the knee sticks with me throughout the day as I walk around the house. I get a visit from a home healthcare nurse who just takes my vital signs and leaves since I have no wounds that need dressing. I take some time to complete the switching of banks for the non-profit. This includes activating new debit cards, changing the web hosting billed debit cards, and cleaning up the paperwork files. Hopefully that transition is complete. Later I start checking airplane flight prices to Hanoi, Vietnam just as a precursor for when I am healthy again.
As bad as Tuesday was due to the left leg weakness, Wednesday is a great day. I start with a walk to the grocery store and I load up a backpack and recyclable shopping bag with supplies and walk home. The left leg threatens to be a problem. Thus I resort to taking an Aleve. We weren't using Aleve near the surgery since it can cause bleeding, but this is far removed from the surgery and I only take one Aleve. I wait for the gardener who took care of my lawn when I was in the hospital and I pay him and then get ready to get on a bicycle. What? Three weeks after the surgery I'm getting on a bicycle for an exploratory "let's see what happens" ride. It's a good ride and it feels great to be back on the bicycle. The leg doesn't hurt or feel uncofortable and my prime concern - the incisions around the swollen neck - are not irritated at all by the helmet straps. I'm certainly tired after the ride but I notice that walking around the house is much easier and I have no muscle stiffness. We'll see how I feel tomorrow. In the late afternoon a different physical therapist comes to visit and gives me some stretching and stregthening exercises for the left leg and left ankle. And, of course, she has her own opinion as to which side the cane goes on and how high it should be. But I just go along with her suggestions and then ignore them because I'm not really on the cane anymore - I carry it while walking and keep it near me after sleep or resting. But today's walk I barely used the cane.
According to both subjective impressions and my FitBit, my sleep has finally returned to the REM and deep sleep levels prior to the surgery. I don't know if it was the trauma of the 12 hour surgery or the general anesthetic, but it feels good to have decent sleep again. On Thursday after good sleep, I start out walking at 6:11 am. At first the back of the left knee is a bit stiff, but as I walk it gets better and better. This is good. I walk for more than an hour and take a break before mowing both the front and back yards. I walk carefully while mowing the lawn since it is more uneven than the sidewalks and streets. I get in a good shower, apply moisturizer or antiseptic to the closed wounds, and read the news and markets. Near noon, as has happened lately, I start feeling chilly and so I put on sweats. Granted we've had many days of gray May and June gloom, But I wonder if the chills are from the surgery. Nonetheless later in the day I do the exercises that the physical therapist gave me to do and watch the ice hockey playoff game.
I start Friday by sleeping in an extra half hour and thentrimming the roses and reading the news and markets. At a reasonable time I get on the bicycle and ride for fifty minutes without incident. After a shower I drive for the first time since the surgery. I get gasoline, visit the library for two new books, and get to the grocery store for heavy supplies (that are harder to carry when walking). AT home I wash the hardwood floors and then watch FP2 for MotoGP and Moto2. And then kinda let the day slip away.