Just about a month ago my wife had a freak fall and broke three bones in her ankle, Badly (don’t look too closely if you are queasy about serious injuries). Joe Theisman on Monday Night Football bad.
I heard the dogs barking that were near as was out on the porch with some of the others. When I saw her ankle I knew I had to call 911, but at the same time I was trying to get control of the dogs...I can sometimes freak a little under stress.
It’s been tough handling the house with a dozen dogs (and I might find out Monday one is preggers, which was the plan after Karen retired, start breeding the dogs a little more)...the dryer stopped working the day Karen got hurt...it was fixed but wasn’t...which led to a load of wash that ended up sitting too long too damp in the dryer (a couple hours air drying seems to work...but not with a bath towel in there)…
The “world class” health care isn’t, I’ve had to transport her here and there. My mom last night said “if it’s money I’ll pay!”...yeah, it’s money but not my choice. Insurance companies suck. Even if I’m employed by one...the last 9 days she’s been on complete bed rest. Complete. I was amazed when I realized that this morning as I took her the less than ½ mile from the rehab to the hospital. I thought she was out of the bed a little to get bathed…
What do I know? I’m a computer guy, not clinical. I work with a lot of nurses that do have clinical experience, and one of them said something realistic about Karen having to spend another 6 days in the rehab after this surgery. I want her home. Sophia gently reminded me that she needed to be at the rehab still.
Our dogs don’t handle my absence well in normal times, now I’m out a couple hours most nights, and there is only one hoomin to spread the kisses around. a couple of the bigger males don’t get along, so there are always coordination issues; this last month I have had precious little time in my music studio. Usually I would go up there to work and get a chance over 4 hours to at least play the bass or guitar a little...not been convenient.
I have gotten a chance to tool a bit on meteorology, and revisit some of the ideas I never finished when I flamed out of grad school. I’m excited about what I’ve figured out, pretty sure my old transcripts are worth dirt after 35 years, so it’s all for the fun of it. In case anyone cares I have found that the average radial velocity in the 100 km radius of a storm center is a great proxy for the average force generated by this region of the storm, and hence a great measure of relative storm strength. I can use the same methods to approximate the vorticity profile of storm fairly accurately. And a popsicle stick with hash marks is a valuable tool to find the locations of the storm to measure for these averages...High tech stuff. And I’m using a spreadsheet! Not calculating using pencil and paper.
Anyway, surgery had been delayed about an hour it seems (just got a call that she’s in the OR), so it’ll be more like 3 PM when I can finally see her, and take her back to the rehab.
Then 5 more nights of this unexpected bachelorhood, and we can start taking the first few steps to healing.
Peace/love.