Knee Problems...

Don's got knee problems. Arthritis. Necrosis. Less than 1/2 of a meniscus. It's a pain. Really... it's a pain. 

Things were going fairly normal (as normal as could be for him) until his 40th birthday party which his lovely wife decided to throw for him... at a bowling alley! The knee in question was already not feeling great that day, but it was too late to back out. It was a surprise party, and it was all I could do to "randomly" choose going there for a "date night." He was surprised! And we had lots of friends show up to celebrate with us! He had a "Good Lordy, Don's 40" cake. Things were swell... well, until about 2 frames into the 1st game, when he turns b/c I said his name. *POP* goes his knee. :( He says nothing throughout the whole 3 hours we are there... but it's pretty obvious it's not okay by the time we get home.

This starts months of pretty intense pain that just doesn't want to cease. 

What the VA wants to do is just put Band-Aid solutions on it b/c he's WAY too young for a knee replacement. While I understand this, it is really frustrating knowing he has to deal with this every day.

Fast forward a little and here we were at the VA on October 22nd having a scope done to clean out some of that junk in his knee (torn meniscus) hoping this will relieve the sharpness of the pain and where my blog story really takes off. Forgive me for the length of this post. You know I can't really get a good story unless I use as many creative words as possible. :) 

The day of the surgery, I meet Don and his mom and our younger two kids at the VA after I take our daughter to school.  I went back to the room where Don was "waiting"... I guess they call this the pre-op room. It might as well have been called the crap-we-took-too-long-on-someone-else-so-you'll-have-to-wait-twice-as-long-as-we-originally-told-you...anyone-got-Yahtzee!? room. We waited for over 2 hours in that little room.

A couple of male nurses walk in and out of the area, one of them had a very straight, no-emotion kind of look on their face. I looked at Don and said, "Wow. How would you like to have that guy for a nurse?" We chuckle and talk about other stuff. (I forgot to mention they had Don change into what looks like an anti-radiation suit-type gown that dons the saying "Do not use in MRI." I'm now thinking, "A magnet would have been really fun right about then.")

About 1/2 hour before Don gets carted off to the OR and after the doc comes in to double check everything, that same nurse comes in and starts strappin' Don's arm to prep it for an IV. I'll put it to you this way. I'm almost certain they put him through a class on how to insert an IV just moments before entering his room. It was awful! It looked like he was bludgeoning don's vein, attacking it, making it bleed then walking away. Don and I give horrified looks to one another. He comes back! Oh crap. You're done for! The guy forcefully gets it placed, with much grimacing from Don... then I notice the GUY ISN'T WEARING GLOVES!!! ew. Seriously. Isn't that a code violation?!

 

While waiting, we found a CD and CD player near the bed. Three actually. The first was Toccata and Fugue in D Minor. AKA: "Frankenstein." HAA!! We were rolling, especially listening to it on the low-fi speakers on this 1990s CD player. Feel. The. Bass. We thought it would be funny to play that as they were wheeling him out but refrained from doing so. We also found a Tim McGraw CD and a Phil Vassar CD circa 1993. We sang a little and the nurses passing by would glance in past the curtain.

We were bored by then, so we started flinging the tabs that were on the edges of the doors over to indicate which service we needed... like "nurse" or "anesthesia" or "Specialist"... At one point, we had over 1/2 of them. Only one person looked at it and had a weird look on their face as though they weren't even sure what the heck the things were for! (that or they thought something must be really wrong with the dude in room 2. 

Caden was really worried about how horrible Dad's IV looked.
Really. Caden was holding his own wrists. (Notice the metallic gown.)

Caden and Declan and Grandma stop in. Tick Tock. What is taking so long? "We are waiting for the doc." So, the boys are running around this little room when all of a sudden, Caden finds a retractable magnetized door that holds TP on the other side. WOW! Toilet paper. They both play with that for a while, opening and shutting it... then Caden's eyes are drawn to the large black button just underneath the toilet paper... he pushes it. *FLUUUUSHHHH* The hidden toilet flushes. His bewildered look says it all. "I was not expecting that," he says. hahaha By this time, Caden has Declan saying in his monster voice "TOILET PAPER!" every time the TP pops out of its cabinet.  

So, the moment arrives when they take Don to the OR. They say, "Say your goodbyes and see-yous!" I looked at Don and said, "Well! Have fun!" They start carting him out, and I repeated something Don and I were joking about earlier... "I hope you come back with two legs!!" hahah To which the entire medical staff that was with Don GROANED! lol  I think the doc actually said, "Ohh, we're not doing THAT kind of surgery!" but no one laughed. I was laughing. :) and I'm pretty sure Don was, too... of course, that could have been the Valium. *shrug* I'll take what I can get.

We went on a walk while Daddy was about to go to recovery. This part of the trail terrified Caden.

The surgery went well, and it was a little funny watching Don come back to consciousness. Caden was with me. The "recovery room" was a GIANT room with lots of curtains with people all behind them just waiting to wake up. They had told me that he was having a hard time waking up, so I should come up and try. Was that them telling me that my sweet loving voice was going to coax him out of his drug-induced snooze?   *Deadpan voice* "Don. Wake up." haaha

 

We rounded up the clan and got him fitted for crutches and got him to the car.

 

The doc told him to not ever think about running again and that this is his last scope. The outlook for his knee is poor. It will be a long time before he can consider knee replacement, but things are looking okay for now; and we have some funny memories of waiting for the surgery to begin. Now, if we can just figure out what those pictures of the scope actually are of!

Don's knee after the bandages came off the next day.

AND THE COLOR IS...

YELLOW!

Ten paint samples and 13 gallons of the final paint color later, we have a yellow house. Again. I'm quite happy with the color, though. The house is cute in its yellow splendor and definitely still notable amongst all of the other different colors of houses that we live among (not one of them truly yellow, might I add). I thought the 13 gallons we had to use to cover the old color was a bit overboard, but we have a hunch that the previous yellow was the original color. It was sucking the new paint in as if it were thirsty from years of neglect.

                                                                                Before:

(That's my brother doing what ended up being many hours of prep work, caulking, washing and puttying.)

                                                                             
                                                                                    After:

Looks sunnier and brighter, don't ya think!? :) We like it. :) And our neighbors are probably glad we didn't choose purple. ;)

Paint.

What is so hard about picking out paint? There are thousands of tints to choose from. There are even these little color guides to help pick juuust the right shade. There are all sorts of tools and ideas out there... surely a person could have a hay-day picking out a brand new color for their abode.

Except for me. 

I was born with many talents. Interior decorating, cleaning and choosing colors to go on my walls semi-permanently are all things that I am completely challenged with. And when there are more options, it becomes harder and harder. Oh sure, what's the big deal? You buy a color you like and throw it up there. Voila. Done. Except the problem is, I find that when that one color I like is spread all across the wall (or in this case, the exterior of our house), it turns into a beast, staring me down as if challenging me. "Do you want a piece of me?? Do you?" I also do not want to redo it if I completely hate it. Thus, I choose with extra caution, consulting my better half time and time again. 

Don jokingly pointed out this crazy purple color. I looked at the swatch and then chuckled with the sight in my mind of my "front door" neighbors frantically running out of their house with their arms flailing, "STOP! Crystal! Did you know he's painting your house purple?!?!" Lord, spare us all. We would surely be THAT house in the neighborhood... When giving directions, the neighbors would now say, "Go until you see the purple house... yes, I said purple... and then take a right..."  I'm sure the traffic would line up in front of our house as if we had 10,000 twinkling Christmas lights set to music in the middle of July. Anyway, I digress. 

But I might as well have chosen purple with the amount of time and energy it is taking me to pick even the simplest of colors. Do we want to stick with yellow but punch it up a bit? Then I think it'll look good two-tone... dark on the bottom and light on the top. or vice versa. or maybe we should stick to one color.  *sigh*  But ANYTHING but neutral (which is sounding better all the time b/c you  just can't go wrong with it.) It's exhausting... for me.

Please let it be done soon! (and let me be happy with it!) 

Crystal Mc

School is Here!

 Well, another summer has come and gone! We now have a 2nd grader, a pre-K-er and a toddler. Some of the fun-filled activities we've done this summer include going to water parks, swimming, the Children's Museum, LOTS of sprinkler action, the zoo, testing out Mentos and Diet Coke geysers, a dance recital and lots of play dates. With the 100-degree + heat every day for a month solid, it was hard to get outside and "play" without water being involved!

We even managed to squeeze in a trip to Colorado! This is our first vacation since our honeymoon.... NINE years ago. It was such a fun time, and seeing the Zahller clan is ALWAYS a fun time! When I find some pictures from that vacation, I'll post them.

Moira gets to ride a real school bus this year! She is SO exctied! She's waited 2 years to actually get to ride in one... because you know school just isn't school unless you are riding a bus! ;) (vans don't count, apparently.)  She had a great 1st day of school... and I think her teacher will be a great one for her this year!

Eating ice cream after school!

 

 

 

Moira and the bus

 So excited for her to be a 2nd grader! :) Declan walked around the house yesterday going "Momo??? MOooooooMooo! Where she go?" Me: "She went to school." D: "What? Moooo Mo?" Me: "She went byebye." D: "Whhhyy??" lol  Big adjustment for the little guy. Caden won't start school until the last week of August. Until then, fun times with my little guys before that one starts! :)

Well, apparently, the "powers that be" are the hoarder-types and keep blogs that haven't been touched in 4 1/2 years. :) Thank you, Maureen, for reminding me that I started a blog when Caden was born and never touched it again! :) hahah

I'll pick up at today:  Memorial Day 2012.
Today was the 1st time I went to the grave site of my father-in-law. It was sad. All of the memories of the day we buried him were still fresh in my mind. The brief service/acknowledgement of servicemen and servicewomen went well and the 21-gun salute is always a reminder to me of the reality that many of our veterans and current service people have to deal with (not the salute, itself, but the firing of a weapon) daily. Our prayers and remembrance goes out to all of those who served. Thank you!

We stopped by the store and picked up some fried chicken and sides and decided to have a picnic with Jo, Grandma Rieck and all of us Mcs at Walnut Grove. That park has lots of memories for me, as well, because we used to have a family picnic there every year with the Aulners. :) It's been so long that I couldn't remember which pavilion we used... but it was pretty neat to be back there again. They also have updated the park since I've been there. That made things harder to envision, as well. 

We are just about to roll the carpet for summertime out! Mo has 1 more partial week of school left, and Caden is done with PreK until fall again. Where does the time go?! Declan will see no change in his schedule except there will be one more child in the house trying to boss him around. ;)  

Don took a trip to Washington DC for ALS (amyotropic lateral sclerosis) Advocacy day to raise awareness to get some funding for research. he said it was a good trip... and apparently in this picture, he didn't have anyone to help him take his picture. I call this the Don-shington monument. ;)