One more time, getting wet, a little progress

I met Mama at the doctor’s office yesterday afternoon. She has not improved enough to avoid intervention. We are scheduled to have the knee manipulated under anesthesia Tuesday of next week. Mama is at 95 degrees of bend. The minimum the doctor would settle for was 110 degrees. He did tell Mama and I that if she was not in pain he would be willing to wait and monitor her progress, but since there is pain in the quadricep – the large muscle on the top of the thigh – he feels compelled to break the scaring loose one more time and get the quadricep to stretch out the way it needs to for her to have full function of the joint. Neither Mama nor I are enamored with the idea of another hospital visit, but we will try once more.

What else can we do? We certainly do not want Mama to be left with the limited function she now has. Wearing the brace has made a difference. It has reduced the swelling. Partly because we are not trying to force the knee to bend. The doctor did notice that. But in two weeks we have gained only one degree of bend. I did suggest that we bring the brace to the hospital with us, so he could apply it to the leg after the manipulation. That would allow Mama to keep the bend he forces on the knee. The doctor agreed that that would be a good idea. So, next week we go back to the hospital. Hopefully for the last time – at least the last time we go there for her left knee. I have often told our children that pain is our friend. It keeps us from overtaxing ourselves, cautions us when we are near limits and allows us to guard parts that are in the process of healing. Right now, for Mama, pain is not her friend. If we do not overcome it, her knee will lock up at some comfortable bend for the rest of her life. Not the worst fate, but not the outcome we wanted going into this surgery.

It was raining when we got home so I hesitated to go out and feed the animals right away, but it did not show any signs of letting up. Eventually, I went out while the soup I had put together boiled on the stove. I through I was through when I got done with the goats, but our cry baby steer reminded me that I had not given them any cubes since Saturday. When I went over to the barn lot well house to feed them I saw that the hay was completely gone. We had one bale on standby, so I had to take the time to put that out for them. We are fortunate to have a place to put the hay in the dry. Under the equipment shed I build some time back. It makes a difference when it comes to getting the most out of a bale of hay. Less waste. Less rot. Plus, it gives the cattle a dry place to eat. It does cause me a little more trouble to keep the area cleaned up between bales of hay, but I suppose it is worth it. It makes Mama happy. She does not like to see her cattle standing in the rain eating a wet bale of hay. It takes the three of them about ten days to eat a round bale of hay. The bale they just finished would have gotten about seven inches of rain on it over that period of time. I was pretty chilled by the time I got back to the house. It was a good thing I had made soup for dinner.

I worked on my second side business for a couple hours last night. Extracting the required information out of my aging brain is a challenge, but I made some headway in those hours. By the end of the week I will have accomplished what I need to have done on the first of two documents required for review. It is a bigger task than I had anticipated. I am feeling wholly inadequate for the task at hand.

We will see what the decision is once the documents are evaluated.