Well it has been almost 4 full months since the wreck.
My right hand and wrist are slowly getting stronger, the Dr has me doing certain stretching exercises for it, but says it is still far too soon to use a Powerball yet.
It is pretty stiff, I will never get the upward motion back. I can now bend my wrist downwards, and I am working on the rotation, but it will never have the range of motion needed for riding a bike that has handlebars like the stryker does, the 'fist in the wind' type bars.
Thankfully my new bike has bars that are more in line with the 'rams horn' positioning, which means side to side rotation of the throttle, and use of my throttle boss will enable to me ride my bike next year.
Ribs are slowly healing. The ones they were unable to plate are giving me the most trouble, right up under my collarbone. The pain from that rib travels to the point of my shoulder. I have been able to sleep on my left side for short periods though, and since this is my favorite sleeping position, it is a luxurious feeling to be able to lay on those ribs even if it is only for a half hour, to rest my right shoulder, which has developed very painful arthritis.
I have never been able to sleep on my back unless sedated. That goes back to childhood trust issues and always feeling vulnerable. I have spent my entire life curled up on my side, usually with a gun under my pillow. Since toby came into my life, he has replaced the gun
and he insists on sleeping on the outside so he can protect me. He also spends part of the night, just watching me sleep, and letting me know I am watched over. He is such a sweetie.
They are still trying to determine if my left kidney is working at all. I am still on blood thinners, and high blood pressure medication, and of course the pain meds. I haven't had to take more then 2 pills a day for pain in the last couple weeks. That first week after the index finger surgery was horrible, Morphine in 12 hour time release capsules, plus norco on top of that because it hurt so damned bad, and antibiotics on top of THAT, my gut was NOT happy.
The index finger is a whole other rodeo, of all of the injuries I am dealing with and recovering from, THAT little thing has been THE biggest pain in the ass.
I told you guys how the screw head broke during the procedure, well they put this pin in there, to help hold things the way he wanted it, and the hooked end was placed on top of my fingernail.
Of course, since the end of the pin was exposed to air, the way they bandaged it after the procedure, it collected bacteria and whisked it right down into my blood stream. My body also reacted to the nerve block injections they did at the base of that finger as if I had been badly burned. The Dr said that apparently my hand convinced my brain that my fingers had been burned, and all three fingers blistered up on the tips as if someone had held a blowtorch to my finger tips.
Just effing OW...
So 5 weeks out from the procedure, I was airing it, because my skin hates band-aides, and at this point, I am just keeping a band aide over the tip to cover the end of the pin, and silly me, I start to play with Toby on the bed. I was feeling pretty good for once, and forgot that I didn't have that damned pin covered. Hooked end got caught in the blanket and whisked the whole thing right out. Didn't hurt at all and the finger actually felt better. It bled and the hole had sealed up within 2 days.
Needless to say the Dr's medical assistant was NOT happy with me. I went and got xrays that will be sent down to them, but I told her, I didn't care what the xrays showed, "no one was touching that damned finger again ever nuh uh no way". She now calls me their little Rebel lol.
So a few other fun things... the fires up here and north of here have been horrendous, We were supposed to be in Oregon labor day weekend. Toby was finally going to get his training session in with Larry. Well due to extreme smoke and fire danger, and super high triple digit temps, we postponed our trip and rescheduled for the following weekend.
It is a good thing we stayed home. There is a stretch of power lines, that come off of the
main line on our neighbor's land, that services our place. The pepper wood trees had grown up into the wires, and the wind caused the branches to make the wires touch. Huge fat blue sparks, the nastiest buzzing crackle and POOF forest fire right behind our trailer.
Thank God we were home, that the water was working ( it doesn't always), that we had good water pressure and enough hose... 911 couldn't get my address straight, I finally just threw the phone down and ran for more hose, and Toby dove into the middle of the conflagration and started watering it down. With the strength of wind and all the fuels the fire had to feed on, if we wouldn't have been there to get right on it, The entire mountain would have gone up in a very short time.
I called our ranch owner during all this, and she got the ranch crew up there with a water truck and so on, got Cal fire straightened out as to where to go, and got PG&E on the way to fix things. Toby pretty much had it under control by the time everyone showed up, but there was a log that caught pretty good, and they did a really good fire line around it all. It amounted to only about a 8th of an acre or less. However, Brian, one of the ranch guys who is also on the fire crew, said if our response hadn't been so fast, with the wind that was blowing, It could have been a huge disaster. The location of where it started and the fact that it wouldn't have been noticed for quite some time if we hadn't been home meant it would have taken out our place, the old main ranch house, and about 5 other neighbors in the 'wind path' up the hill at the very least. Even with the best of circumstances it takes 45 minutes for our local fire crew to mobilize and get anywhere up here.
Toby got thanked by a LOT of our neighbors. If we had been in Oregon as planned, we would have come home to everything gone. The only thing we would have had left is our suburban and what we had packed for the trip.
I was so stressed out by all that it took 3 days for me to calm down, then we go to Toby's urologist and get more scary news. Toby goes in on oct 4th for biopsy of his prostate, and we won't know the results til the 18th. Regardless of those results, he has to have surgery on his prostate, it is actively growing into his bladder. The Dr put a camera up there and what we saw scared the crap out of me. I haven't been able to get through one day without crying.
Toby did a lot of reading up on prostate issues, and told me, worst case scenario he has at least 5 years left, best case another 20 years, but it still brings me to tears just thinking about it.
I told him it is time to sell every damned thing we own, and get that motor home we have been wanting, and a good little cargo trailer for the bikes and get some more fun under our belts for as long as he can ride.
That is our goal now. Get a good solid RV that has a tow package and hit the road, and go see some places, and have some more good times. If I didn't have these cats, and the dogs, I would simply say screw it, put everything in storage and we would just hit the road on the bikes.
We were also told by our landlord that we might have to take down our goat barn and shed etc because of a dead tree behind the shed. Ross, RaeAnne's husband, is pretty old school and the only way he knows to take dead trees out is to drop them.
He said "all that has to be taken down so I can have that tree taken out". Toby was crushed to say the least, that shed, while nothing spectacular is his man cave, gym, music room and so on. He hasn't been feeling the best lately, and the thought of it all having to come down, plus me being in no condition to help him, has had him pretty depressed.
So yesterday I texted RaeAnne, and asked her if she could please have who ever was going to take the tree down, come look things over BEFORE we did all that, because it would be a huge punch in the gut, to have the tree guy come, and tell us "oh I could have gotten this out easy, without you having to dismantle everything".
It turns out that our neighbor Cody will be doing the tree work, and he took one look at things and said "I can get that out of there in a couple hours, don't tear stuff down. I will just climb the tree, limb it on the way up and take it down a small piece at a time"
So all I have to do is temporarily lay my hot fence down, which is very easy since it is all plastic step in posts, get a couple of minor things out of the way, and cody will climb around up there and clear a lot of snags and other tree branches so he has a clear field of view to toss the wood over the into the area behind our 'homestead' where we can wheel barrow it out to the drive way to make it easy for him to load into his truck.
It was such a weight off my heart to hear him say that, and I am so glad I asked RaeAnne to send him over to check things out before we basically tore our entire lives apart.
Another blessing that we received, was from Cody's wife, she has a friend who's young female pug got bred by their rat terrier before they could get her spayed.
Cutest damned puppies I ever saw. Jenny texted me about them, and while they sounded cute and all, I simply said, well if we can make it to the fair we might get one, but going anywhere is still hard so we stay home a lot. I figured puppies that adorable would all find homes. Apparently she decided that things had been too rough for us lately and we needed cheering up, and showed up on our doorstep with this little wigglefloof with a black face and bandy legs lol. He is such a character. We named him Machaca (shredded beef lol) and call him Chaca for short. Or, Hey you, C'mere... you little... etc
He is shaping up to be a really good little dog, roly-poly like a pug, and the black muzzle and eye mask, but a good healthy muzzle, not all pushed in. Strong legs with white paws and socks on the front, and a pretty golden tan coat. He has plenty of attitude too lol but is quite the little love bug.
So I am hoping the year winds down and stops tossing us curve balls, I am praying for a nice quiet winter with no problems we can't easily deal with or at least classify as 'first world problems'.
I hope you guys have all had good summers, and lots of saddle time, I am really working on getting my strength back so I can get my bike off the stand. Can't wait to get back in the saddle myself.
Life is short, tomorrow isn't promised, hug your loved ones and let them know how much they mean to you.
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