Stay-at-Home - Day 47 - A New Set of Wheels

I started the day out by seeing the ankle specialist who showed me my CAT scan and corroborated four breaks with a potential fifth, but he also said that everything looked really stable and that I was doing really well. I'm allowed to put weight on the foot now, but ordered to remain in the walking cast for the full six weeks, and perhaps two more. I guess I can't have everything, but at least I am allowed to put weight on if it doesn't hurt - no stabbing pains allowed. 

I now have two mobility options - the conventional crutches
on the left and the knee scooter in the middle. I'm delighted
that I'm doing better and that I have some choices now. 

After the doctor (who wants to see me again in four weeks for a third round of x-rays and another in-patient visit), we headed over to the shop. I had several mail orders to fill and pack and some other inquiries to pin down (do I have the item, or not, and how long I'll hold it aside for the customer). I even walked down the very evil stairs I have at the shop because that's where the bathroom is located, so it's really impossible to not go down stairs sometimes. 

After several hours, we zipped over to the bank and then, finally back home, pulling into the driveway just as a UPS truck was delivering something two doors down from us. I was expecting my knee scooter today, so we just unpacked our stuff from the truck while the truck moved up to our house and a box was carried up. 

I'm really happy with my scooter. DH took it out for a quick
test run and was surprised at how fast it is. It's not massively
sturdy, but quite sufficient for my needs at a great price.
I'm relieved I'll have it to use at the shop. 

DH was kind enough to start right in on assembling my knee scooter while I did the shipping labels for the mail orders in the computer room. By the time I was finished getting the labels printed and onto the boxes and envelopes, he had the scooter almost ready to go. We adjusted the height of the knee pad and handlebars a bit, to fit me better, and I took it for a bit of a test. It's fast, really quick. Has a large turn radius. but no real problems. By lowering the handlebar, it fits fine into Minion, so I'll be able to take it to and from, if needed. I think I need some flames for the scooter, and I'll have to figure out a name. It'll be a blessing at the shop, because even if I can walk with more ease, I'm still crutch dependent there if I'm not using the scooter. 

So, all in all, it was a good Thursday. We're planning on relaxing tomorrow, the last really warm and nice day before we have to return to work next week. We'll head back to the shop on Saturday to do the week end report and finalize our steps in making us open once again. The door is cracking open and the sunshine is starting to paint the floor boards. Quarantine is ending. As always, Stay Safe, and Be Well. 

Prescriptions for Life

I am supposed to take a Fosomax every Tuesday morning.  I took my the last pill that I had in my current prescription last week, and I have not refilled my prescription.  Fosomax is used for:  ALENDRONATE  (a LEN droe nate) slows calcium loss from bones. It helps to make normal healthy bone and to slow bone loss in people with Paget's disease and osteoporosis. It may be used in others at risk for bone loss. 

My bones are very bad - more than 20 years older than I am which is why Fosomax was prescribed for me.  I have been taking it for several years now, but I'm leary about continuing to take it because of the new data that has been getting a lot of press.  Apparently people who have taken Fosomax have an increased level of fractures, osteonecrosis of the jaw, esophageal cancer and other side effects.  The ones that are concerning me are the sudden fractures which usually are across the thigh bone at times where there is no strain or stress - just "out of the blue", and the osteonecroses of the jaw which can effect dental work and surgery, basically making the jaw extremely fragile and honeycombed.  I want to discuss this and my hormone pills with my doctor, but probably won't get a chance to make an appointment with her for a bit.  I think I'll up my calcium intake and try to be more conscientious about taking those and leave the Fosomax off my schedule.  If you want to read more about these side effects, just follow the link. 

"I risk jaw death and cancer but my bones might be strengthened?"
"When the drug works - yes."

Apparently Facebook has another security breach.  I am a member of Facebook, I use it daily to keep track of my friends and post a quick thought on my wall.  I don't have personal information on it and try to keep an eye on that.  But hackers are getting better and better, so we always have to keep watching and changing our privacy settings to keep safe.  Sometimes it seems as though our ability to keep in touch with more people is actually a curse, but I find that I love being able to contact my friends and relations world-wide so easily.  So the electronics and computer revolution is a blessing for me. 

I'm Pushing Boundaries Again...

Apparently I'm an enigma. Or at least am pushing boundaries. I went to see the bone doctor yesterday morning. First his PA poked his head into the room to tell me that the doctor would be there in a few minutes. He looked closer at me and asked:

"Where's your sling? Did you not get one?"

"At home", I answered. "I wore it for about 20 minutes, took it off, and I haven't put it back on since. It gets in my way."

He shook his head, left the room, and shortly afterwards the doctor arrived.

"Hi, I'm Dr. Pxxxx. Where is your sling? Did we forget to get one for you?"

"No, I have one. It's in my drawer at home. It just doesn't work with my lifestyle."

Looks of disbelief cross his face. "But you broke your elbow. In fact, you broke TWO bones."

"Yes.....?" said I, wondering what the point was to this dialog.

Apparently I will live, even though I am not wearing my sling. In fact, because I have been working my arm as much as I could, he said that PT wise I'm "in the advanced class" and, if I keep on working things slowly but firmly, I might regain as much as 95% of my arm function. My personal goal is to regain 99%. We'll see... I return to see him again after MCWC, so I can now concentrate on the conference and worry about my arm later.

After a few errands I returned home. I had decided to make my charms for MCWC out of the new Copper Clay. I sat down, punched out lots of charms (used almost all of 200 grams of Copper Clay) and today I'll start to refine them. I want to get them fired on Sunday so that I can start the enameling next Wednesday. I want to use sifting as well as painting to do these, so I'll be trying out some more new techniques to get these finished. I think it'll be a lot of fun and I only hope that the firing will actually work :-))

Studio and Doctor - Wednesday Blues

Studio day - a day I look forward to all week. I only have three weeks to design, make and enamel my charms for the Metal Clay World conference, so I'll be focusing on that today. But I start my day out with a doctor appointment to see how badly I messed up my arm when I broke it on the 6th. I slept last night without pain pills, even though I did wake up in pain at 2:30 am. I was able to turn around and go back to sleep until my alarm went off an hour later. And my range of motion has improved. But I can't straighten my arm completely and that worries me. And there are still some angles, etc, that cause me "through the roof" pain. It will be interesting to hear what the doctor thinks about my injury and my recovery.

Back to my charms - I'll look at Archivers for a particular stamp, but if they don't have one, I'll have to work with clip art and try and make a PPP for the image. I want to make the charms from the new copper clay - a media that I haven't worked with at all up to now. And I want to enamel over the copper, add a CZ and some gold foil, and basically make them fairly elaborate. In three weeks. Yes ... I know ... I'm an idiot. But my DH gave me an "extra day off" certificate for a holiday gift and I may just need to play that card next week or the week after. I suspect that next week will be the crux week, so that may be when I need my extra day off. I'll see how things go today.

Oh, and I need to get the cable guy back this afternoon to re-hook up one TV that I missed last week. I guess I should get that scheduled?.....

Balance

One of the things intrinsic to being female (at least I've been told so throughout my life) is our ability/right to change our minds. Looking at the wireworked portion of my BFAC project for the past two days, I decided that I didn't like it and changed my mind. I cut it apart, grabbed different wire, (a different color in a different gague), and revised the focal drop. I am MUCH happier with it now. It is the right color and it doesn't dominate the item but balances it out instead. I may be adding a little bit more to it, but pretty minor. I could ship it off today and be happy with it. It is a lesson to pay attention to the inner voice that says things must be changed. Sometimes you must listen to that voice to make a much better creative product.

I am deeply into the beta of Iris's latest story. I ran out of energy last night - I guess the pain in my arm finally started getting to me. Of course, the wirework I was doing was certainly not helping my arm - I am ambidextrous for many things, but not for wirework. I overworked my right arm at the shop and then again last night. But the spiral that I added to the piece really works, so I'm much happier.

I read that Hillary Clinton just did exactly the same thing to her right arm earlier this week. She fell and broke her elbow in an impact fracture. She must have fallen harder (or I'm just more stubborn) because she has to get surgery on her elbow. Researching my injury, it appears that 2/3 of the people with this type of fracture need to have corrective surgery. I'm hoping that I won't have to have anything of the sort - the whole idea of elbow surgery frightens me badly. And usually I'm all in favor of surgery and legal drugs - LOL. But not this time. So, best wishes to Hillary as she recovers.

Late and Explanation

I'm really late posting today. But I have excellent reasons.

Reason #1 - When I awoke this morning and went to get on-line at 3:45 am, I was unable to establish an internet connection. My network was down. After trying a variety of standard operating procedural things to get things back up and running, I finally gave up and called Comcast. I'm a business customer, not a residential one, so I get really good, fast service. After it was determined that there was no signal coming from my modem and that it couldn't be jump started on their end, a service call was entered for me. The the tech would have been here at 8am, but I had a business meeting across town at that time. So I set it up for 9:30 am instead.

The tech did get here at 10:15 am - not too bad, all things considered. It turns out that lots of things were problematical. But he replaced a bunch of cables with newer versions, eliminated a lot of noise on the line, and got everything back up and running in record time - really nice guy too. So I'm back up and running now.

Reason #2 - While the Tech was here, I received a phone call from my clinic. I had fallen on the 6th of June while at Bead & Button and had hurt my right arm quite badly. I went to the clinic on the 12th because I do have osteoperosis, and I was concerned that I might have broken something because things were still hurting me a lot, especially overnight. The doctor took X-rays and prescribed pain pills, but he didn't see anything. He did leave the film for the Radiologist to look over. Well, the Radiologist determined that I have a "radial head impacted fracture" in my right arm. Now I have an appointment with an Orthopaedic man next Wednesday and will find out how badly I've been injuring it since I broke it since I've pretty much been using the arm as much as possible for days now. But at least it explains why I'm in so much pain. It's nice to have a real excuse :-)

My BFAC project is in front of me. The necklace is finished, but the centerpiece still needs wire work. The problem is that the process of weaving the wire in the pattern I'm doing hurts my arm. So I'm really slowed down. But I'll get it done. Now I only hope I'll get my charms done in time for Metal Clay World. I promise I'll post a picture of my BFAC piece when I get a chance to photo it this weekend.