This has been a ridiculous year for me hurting myself.
Since we took care of clearing out my mother’s place of perishables and delivered stuff to her at the hospital yesterday, today was going to be a laundry day for all of us, and I was looking forward to staying home.
Then I fed the outside cats last night, took a good look at what we had left in their kibble bin, then at the weather forecasts. I decided it was worth making a trip to Walmart to get more kibble, just in case.
We had some snow last night, so I did some scraping of sidewalks and shoveling of paths this morning, after feeding the outside cats. As I was finishing up, I found these bundles of adorableness.
That tabby is one that sometimes lets us pet it, I think. The one we names Sweetie during our botched trip to the vet. There are two that are hard to tell apart; Sweetie lets us touch, the other doesn’t. I haven’t been able to pet Colby lately. He just towers over the other kittens! The mostly black one that’s on the left is, I think, Domino. The one that would have been big enough to spay during our botched vet trip, except that would have left Bug and Sweetie stuck in a strange place for hours. Again, I’m not sure, because there are two mostly black kittens that are hard to tell apart. Domino lets us touch, the other one doesn’t!
That done, I decided to check the hours for the feed store at my mother’s town and discovered they were open for short hours today (the other feed store is not open on Saturdays at all), which meant I only needed to drive for about half an hour, instead of about an hour. Plus, I could get bigger bags.
So I headed out in the late morning. The highway was pretty covered with packed snow and ice, and every now and then, I would get completely blinded by snow kicked up by oncoming traffic. Still, it was passable, and I’m glad I decided to go today rather than wait. We’re supposed to get more snow tomorrow. We’re going to have to clear as much of it away as we can, so it doesn’t build up too much on the driveway.
I picked up two 40 pound bags of kibble at the feed store, though I seriously considered getting three, just in case. They cost more at this feed store, though, so the budget decided that two was enough. We will be fine until after New Year’s. I’m just not going to assume we’ll be able to get out and do any shopping before it becomes a necessity.
My daughters had started up the laundry while I was gone, and one of them met me at the garage to help carry the bags in, so I wouldn’t have to drive up to the house. All was going well.
When it was time to feed the outside cats for the evening, I got up to leave my bedroom/office. My door was partially closed, so I started swinging it open to leave.
Somehow, I manage to absolutely slam my left knee into the edge of the door.
Hard.
Hard enough that my daughters came running down the stairs when they heard the noise to check on me!
One of them helped me get to the bathroom and, when I told her I was planning to feed the outside cats next, she took that over for me.
I knew I would need to be proactive, which meant taking my anti-inflammatories a bit early, as well as my prescription painkillers, which I hardly ever need to take. I’ve been taking them more often since I had my fall on the concrete floor in the sun room a few days ago. My right knee is decidedly colourful right now.
My older daughter was a sweetheart and reheated some leftovers for me, so I could take my meds with food (the anti-inflammatories can be very rough on the stomach if they’re not taken with a full meal). When I had the chance, I took a look at my left knee and found a remarkably rectangular red mark, the exact width of my door. 😄
Good grief.
This summer, I tripped on a branch stub of the tree trunk I was working on and had a fall severe enough I had to get my daughter to bring my husband’s walker and help me get up. My left arm and shoulder still hasn’t fully recovered from that. Then, blinded by my frosted over glasses, I tripped on the open door of a cat carrier and fell, hurting my right knee and jarring the left side of my body, which I am still recovering from. Now, I’ve somehow managed to bash my own knee against the edge of a door. Minor injuries are expected, given the sort of work I do outside, but this is the first year I’ve hurt myself this badly, so many times!
On the plus side, I quickly applied Voltaren to my knees (both of them, since my right knee still hurts), which tided me over until the pain killer and anti-inflammatories kicked in. So I’m feeling pretty okay. We’ll see, over the next few days, just how much damage I did to myself.
I was telling my daughter, I feel like I should just crawl into a cave and sleep for the rest of the winter!
I managed to do a bit of shoveling after my morning rounds. I was going to head in and grab breakfast before going back out to use our little snow blower to widen some areas my brother cleared yesterday and clear more paths in the snow.
My glasses fogged up while I was putting away the snow shovel in the sun room. I thought I was good to step around a cat carrier on the floor.
I was wrong.
My foot caught on the open door and tripped me up. I fell hard on the concrete floor. My right knee getting the worst of it.
I’m not injured, thankfully, but I know I need to stay off it. I’ve taken my anti inflammatories (I was able to skip them last night) and pain killers with my breakfast. My daughters are going to have to take over the outside stuff for me.
Meanwhile, my daughter has treated the most affected joints with Voltaren, and made sure I have a cane handy, if necessary.
I did remember to contact the garage about the truck. While doing my morning rounds, I took the charger off (the battery was fully charged) but didn’t have my key, so I didn’t test anything. The garage recommended a trickle charger rather than a battery warmer. Depending on the brand, that costs about $150-200. I’m looking to book an appointment after New Year’s to get a diagnostic and, if the battery checks out okay, see about getting a trickle charger installed.
For now, it’s time to lie down. I’m going to have to find that balance between resting my joints, and moving them around to keep them from stiffening up. I didn’t land on my hands, but more my elbows. I also hit a small bucket on the way down – how I managed that is a feat, considering where it was tucked aside – shattering the plastic, made brittle by the cold.
We have GOT to get more of the inside cats adopted out.
Last night was a rough one.
With my arm still giving me grief, I tried going to be early again. While I could move my right arm forward and back as normal, if painfully, I still couldn’t get it move more than a few inches straight outward.
When I go to bed, I often has several cats that insist they MUST be either right against me, or me, and they don’t often give me a chance to finish getting into bed before they do it! Cheddar is one of several that has decided where I sleep is his spot. He’s a big boy, so moving him with one wonky arm was a challenge! Others will move as I pull the covers back, but not Shadow in the Dark. He’s one that likes to curly up near my face or against the back of my neck, and he won’t move. So lifting the covers usually results in him being rolled over and over, then he lies there, all sprawled out, looking at me like I’ve offended him somehow!
That’s not unusual, though.
Butterscotch made things unusual.
She’s been doing quite well, and even gotten to the point that she has started to leave my room, if only to go as far as the steps to the dining room, or peak around the corner at the basement door, to look down the hallway, before running back into my room.
Lately, however, she has taken to growling and snarling.
Sometimes, I can see that there’s a cat nearby that she’s snarling at, but they’re usually just there, and not even looking at her. A couple of times, one of them would go at her, but it seems more a response to her snarling, and not the other way around. Other times, I’ll hear her snarling, and I can’t even see any other cats around her.
Well, it seems that having so many cats in my room, usually covering my bed, sleeping in groups, is stressing her out to the point that she isn’t going to the litter boxes. She’d have to go past the other cats to do that.
The first time I heard the odd noises, I found her squeezed onto one of the boxes I’ve set in front of the wall shelf, under my craft table. I’ve got other boxes inside the bottom shelves; with the table there, they can’t be accessed for us, but when they were empty and I thought the cats were just using them as places to sleep, we discovered they were defecating in them, so we blocked them off with empty boxes. One of those overhangs the edge of the shelf, and she was squeezed between the box on the floor and the overhanging box.
Then I started hearing a very strange sound indeed.
The sound of hard turds dropping onto the box she was on!
I managed to get her out of there, but then she went into a shelf above where I sleep; the shelf I keep my glasses in, as well as where I put my phone on a stand to charge at night, among other things.
I got her out of that, and she squeezed herself into the space of another shelf, in between my cookbooks and the top of the mattress. I tried lying down again, but more noised had me getting up again to investigate, and this time she was digging into the shelf that I use for some of my clothes. I got her out of there and tucked her into the nearby cat cave, and she stayed there.
Not for long.
I was again awakened by strange noises, and this time I found she was making a mess on my bed, between my pillow, and my leaning sheep – a large stuffed sheep I sometimes use to lean against when sitting up in bed, but is normally stored in the shelve under where I keep my glasses. It’s large enough to almost fill the space completely.
Well, this time, it was a very messy mess.
My daughters are still timing things so that one of them is always available to help me with his, so I messaged my older daughter to help me. We wiped up as much as we could, then stripped the bed. The fitted sheet and the leaning sheep had to be washed, along with one pillow case, but the mess was bad enough that we had to strip the waterproof mattress cover for washing, too!
By then it was past 1am – so much for going to bed early!
While my daughter got the laundry going, I started putting out wet cat food. That lured all but one cat out of my room. I set wet cat food out in the bowls I have there, which allows for Butterscotch and a few of the the shier cats to get some, without being pushed around by the other cats. This time, I was able to close the door and keep the other cats from coming back in during the night.
Of course, that meant frequent interruptions by cats trying to claw the door open.
Eventually, though, I did hear Butterscotch going into a litter box, which should have been a good thing, but… something didn’t sound right. So I used the flashlight on my phone to try and see her.
*sigh*
Yeah, she was using the litter box, finally, but didn’t quite go all the way in.
She ran off again and hid in her cat cave while I got up and cleaned up the mess.
*sigh*
After that, things did finally quiet down, and I managed to get some sleep, but all this having to get up and check things was quite painful.
I have discovered on thing, though. While my girth may make it seem otherwise, I’ve got some pretty decent abs! I had to sit myself up many times using just my abs, and not being able to use my arms at all.
With just Butterscotch in her cave and what turned out to be Susan sleeping somewhere else, I actually was able to get some decent sleep, if only for a few hours.
This morning, I felt good enough that, when my younger daughter went to feed the outside cats, I went along to help out, then do the rest of my rounds and switch out the trail cam memory cards.
I was very happy to demonstrate to her that I can now lift my right arm straight out again! While there is still some pain, I have almost full mobility of my arm again! The level of improvement since yesterday is amazing. I’m so relieved! There were times I seriously considered getting my daughter to drive me to the hospital, but giving it a couple of days of rest seems to be what I really needed. In fact, while writing this, I just tested my arm again, and I could do a full rotation at the shoulder, with no pain! Not even my left shoulder, which was not strained as badly, still has more pain now than my right shoulder does. I’m so relieved!
While doing the morning feeding, neither of us tried to do a head count. There were clearly fewer cats than usual, but they were also running around a lot, making it hard to keep track. There were these two, though…
The cats still aren’t going into the sunroom as much as usual. Checking it just a short while ago, there was a small pile of maybe three or four cats on the platform, and that’s it. Usually, we’d see about 6 or ten on the platform, and almost as many under the heat lamp or on the cat bed below, plus more in the shelf, at the food bowls or just wandering around. It’s going to take time for them to start feeling safe in there again.
These two are almost always in the sunroom. Syndol can’t get enough attention, but the little one (can you believe they’re only about a month or so apart in age?) is now getting to the point of enjoying pets and being picked up. We’d brought this one into the house a couple of times to give his nethers a thorough washing. He was so patient about it, the girls have named him Patience.
Even his tortie sister has started to allow me to pet her more often, and will tolerate being picked up more. Which is good, because it means we can bring her indoors for overnight fasting at the end of the week, before taking her to get spayed. Oh, how I wish more of the females could be socialized enough to get them done! My daughter was able to pet Broccoli this morning, but she wouldn’t let me near her. I did manage to pet Junk Pile – the first time in ages. She seemed shocked at being pet, and liking the shoulder skritches, but didn’t allow it for long. Even Caramel was around, but I only managed to touch her while she had her back to me while eating. Brussel won’t let us near her, but she will go into the kibble house and even into the sunroom. Sprout keeps her distance. If we’re around, she won’t eat at all, and she prefers to eat from the bowls under the shrine, across the yard. We’ve seen Slick around, I think (aka: Octomom), and there’s another grey tabby that’s more spotted then striped that I think is also female. That one will eat at the kibble house or on the cat house roof, but is even shier than Sprout, so we haven’t been able to confirm, either way. Another one we have not been able to confirm is one more from that late litter of either kittens; a small grey tabby with dense longer fur. It will go into the sunroom to eat, and I’ve been able to sneak a pet on its back, if it can’t see me, but that’s it. Given how it won’t let us near it, I’m going to just assume it’s female. 😕
Anyhow, that’s the current status.
In other things, my daughter was able to help me move a chair out of the living room so I have access to the aquarium greenhouses again. With my arm mobile again, my goal for today is to get the big aquarium ready for seed trays, then hopefully actually get seeds started. We’ve got the red onions, yellow onions and shallots that should have already been started by now, plus some peppers and eggplant. Possibly some oregano and thyme, too, but those can probably wait a couple more weeks. I’ll have to go through our seeds that need to be started the earliest and make some decisions. With having to build or rebuild so many beds, once things are thawed out enough, I’m going to work on the assumption we won’t have room for everything we want to plant. Especially for things that would need to be planted in ground, like corn.
We shall see how things work out. For now, I’m just glad to 1) be pain free and mobile enough to get back at it and 2) not have any unexpected running around to do, but actually be home to get my own stuff done!
Time to grab a stool and get at those aquarium greenhouses!
I have been feeling pain in my left hip for some time. I got X-rays and they found the beginnings of osteo-arthritis, which is not surprising, but also bone spurs, which explained the pain I was feeling. That pain is pretty much always there, but not very severe. About the only time it’s a problem is when I sleep, as it means I can’t lie on my left side for very long. Otherwise, it doesn’t really slow me down. At least not more than anything else does. :-D (image source)
I’d hurt my right hip some months before and had it X-rayed, too. It also showed mild osteo-arthritis beginning, but that’s about it. That hip had stopped bothering me.
Until a few weeks back. While walking across the dining room, I suddenly couldn’t put weight on my right leg. There was something wrong with my hip joint. I was close enough to the dining table that I could grab a chair and sit down. After a while, I was able to get up and “walk it off”.
Then the pain went away as suddenly as it started.
I then basically forgot about it.
It happened again, yesterday evening. All I was doing was sweeping the floor. Without warning, I suddenly couldn’t put weight on my right leg, due to pain in my hip joint. My daughter had to come over and pull a chair out for me to sit down. Later, I was able to use one of my dad’s canes that we simply left where he kept them, hanging on arm bars (there’s a reason I left them there!) and made my way to my office chair.
Now, I’ve dealt with a lot of different kinds of pain. I’ve broken bones. I developed post traumatic osteo-arthritis in my feet and knees long ago, along with bone spurs in my heels and knees. I have bones that dislocate pretty regularly. Joint pain, muscle plain, pain from what turned out to be a large cyst that took my innards for a waltz. Typically, they limit me to a certain extent, but I can still maintain a level of activity that gets the job done.
Just don’t expect me to be able to kneel down, then get back up again, without help! :-D
This pain, however, is different.
This time, it didn’t go away.
I was, eventually, able to put weight on the leg and walk without the cane, but the pain stayed. I still have most of my range of motion, but for some things – like shifting my leg in my chair as I type this – it goes from not hurting while I’m motionless, to pain that prevents me from moving the joint.
It doesn’t feel like OA. It doesn’t feel like bone spurs. Still, I was able to go about and do my rounds outside, without a cane, and basically walk around like normal. I just had this pain, right in the joint, that wouldn’t go away.
I was trying to describe to my husband what had happened yesterday evening, since he had already gone to bed by then and missed it. He said it sounded like maybe something got in the joint.
Which brought back a flash of memory.
When I had my right hip X-rayeds, months ago, mild OA was not the only thing they saw.
They also saw loose bone fragments. I believe fragments were visible when I got my left hip X-rayed. Not unusual with OA, really.
But that might be my problem. Loose fragments may be getting into my joint, causing pain, then migrating out and my joint feels normal again. Except this time, it’s not clearing, so it still hurt when I make certain motions.
Just a little while ago, while sitting on my office chair, I tried to get up to reach for something.
And I couldn’t put weight on my right leg again.
I can still get about, using my left leg and a whole lot of things to lean on. My husband – the one with excruciatingly painful back injury – was sweet enough to bring me a cane so I could at least walk to the bathroom.
*sigh*
After I’m done writing this post, I’m going to have to see if I can walk on it again.
I guess this means I have to get another X-ray to confirm, and see if there is something that can be done about it. At the very least, I’ll have to call my new doctor’s office and see if I can make an appointment or something.
What a pain. Literally and figuratively.
Well, I certainly am not going anywhere in these temperatures. I’ll see how things go over the next few days. Until then, I’ll just have to keep a cane hand and, if worse comes to worse, use my dad’s walker to get around.
Today, my husband finally had his appointment in at the heart clinic in the city. It was in the afternoon, but they say to come in 45 minutes early. We figured out when we would have to leave to make it with plenty of time, then left a half hour earlier than that, for time to pick up gas along the way.
It was a very good thing we did!
Not long after we left the town we fueled up in, we drove right into a downpour.
Things have been hot for the past few days, and will continue to be hot for the next while. It’s not even noon as I write this, and we’re already at 25C, with a “real feel” of 29C. We’ve also had a lot of thunderstorm warnings, but aside from one quick pass, they have been missing us. We have, however, been getting some decent rain. I haven’t heard locally, yet, but the municipality next to ours announced their burn ban has finally been lifted. I expect ours is, too.
This afternoon, we’re supposed to get temperatures of 29C (feeling like 36C) and thunderstorms through the evening. If rain is all we get again, I’ll be quite happy.
The grape vines are quite appreciating the moisture.
The Re-Farmer 