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Botched Hip Procedure

A little background before the upcoming appointment Friday with Dr. Park, the surgeon who performed my hip replacement back in January. Hopefully better light will be shed come Friday, subsequent to sacrum and lumbar MRI’s accomplished last week.

An unusual sensation emanated from the base of my spine accompanied by severe autonomous clenching and chronic muscle strain throughout my lower abdomen and thighs when I stopped the pain medication approximately 10 days after surgery. There were 2 problems associated with the surgery, the 1st of which is mostly resolved, with the 2nd remaining to be diagnosed.

Beginning in January 2018, I waited while the VA slowly and methodically slogged through one conservative treatment after another. Neurological and orthopedic exams, steroid injections and of course the months-long waiting periods in-between amounted to well over a year from the time I knew I had an end-state arthritic hip, to when I finally received the surgery. So the entire right side of my body compensated by developing an acute chronic strain condition. The right thigh in particular, became so deeply strained and sore I was often barely able to walk at all by the end of the day the first half of this year. Now after 6 months of misery, that problem has only just recently begun to show signs of remission. Within the past month or so, I have started using the cane more in my “right” hand, supporting the new left hip, which seems to be doing great, with only minor healing discomfort remaining.

Now for the bad part. I’m still grabbing the cane with my left hand due to: Either my lower abdomen was crushed like a bug with some sort of clamp on the operating table while my left leg was being sawed off and re-attached with a new hip joint, or the L4-5 annulus was torn tossing me around somewhere like a sack of potatoes. My first guess was a mashed-up sacrum. Dr. Park said it could be a stress fracture in my pelvis. L4-5 annulus tear seems to match the primary pain source from what I can decipher in the MRI reports. I was interpreting this as the worst of the muscle strain, but now it’s pretty obvious what is going on down there. Whatever it is, I’m effectively crippled.

It’s not just the VA, and could happen to anyone. I’m probably one of the lucky ones. Surgery is risky business. People make mistakes. Thankfully not a botched hip “replacement,” considering the new hip seems good so far. I’ll have questions to ask, and suggestions to offer regarding the patient clamping and handling procedure(s).

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What's Up, Dad?

Caught this shot of the boys with Anna, waiting for their next handout. The mutts are still wet from playing in the creek:

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Personal Focus

Lately I’ve been shifting my healthy balance point more towards the detail-oriented mode.

There’s just not that much left to really give a crap about anymore.

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Summer 2019

…Got off to a cool, wet start a couple weeks ago. The month of June was mostly rainy and cool in Frederick. The mountains got tons of snow this spring. People in Steamboat woke up to a foot of new snow on the ground the 22nd of June. This region will probably go from high desert to rain-forest after another hundred years of climate change.

Flowerbeds are looking nice and the Yellow roses of Texas are still red. The trees have been keeping me busy. The bigger they get, the more trimming they need. At least I haven’t had to buy firewood for quite some time.

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Solution, or Root of All Evil?

Why do these mutherfuckers think money is the solution to all problems? I guess when you have it, it is. They can pay their hookers to shut up, write off millions evading taxes, and give tax breaks to the rich. Why not throw some towards the Middle East and see if that goes away? The Lebanese have already told them we can keep our money. You can’t buy freedom and happiness for people. Nobody is trading basic principles of human dignity for U.S. dollars.

This dipshit needs to take a long vacation with Ivanka while they both disappear from the public eye, along with their egregious stupidity. This is just fucking insane. Go fuck yourself, little boy. He can’t even fool a troglodyte like me with the ‘ol smoke-n-mirrors trick. Took about 2 whole days to start the backpedaling. Let’s see you pull another Mideast Peace Plan out of your ass. What a miserable piece ‘o shit.

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The Cuntvanaugh Court

Careful not to cut off your noses to spite your faces.

That POS hunk o’ concrete you just wrote a blank check for is looking like it needs a little nose-hair trimming. Why not spend the money on something nice/new? Oh right, forgot – it’s not about a war memorial, it’s about Christianity.

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Pond V6 (Update 1)

Pond activities seem to have normalized/stabilized this year. We still have a small (3gph) leak somewhere. No biggie, but another round of liner work to include the sump will be called for during the off-season. Fighting early season algae blooms, etc, nothing unusual.

We finally caught the goldfish thief, at least one of them. Turned out to be a Great Blue Heron. These birds are BIG, and pass through here every year on their annual migration. I had previously assigned the racoons as perpetrators, always among the usual suspects when these things happen. Jax has shown a couple the door rather abruptly in recent years, so don’t doubt they are involved. But we already lost three of the biggest goldfish to predators this year, so I re-stocked with some small and very small replacements, bringing the total population up to 15.

Here’s a few short vids:
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Spring 2019

Just a few shots to show the views around here as we approach the end of another Rocky Mountain Front Range spring. The weather has been a bit cooler and wetter than recent years, but really more normal than anything else.

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Wonder How Much this Cost?

The Congressional Research Service just released a study showing Cannabis has no effect on driver impairment. Myself and surely millions of others could have told you that a long time ago.

 “There is as yet no scientifically demonstrated correlation between levels of THC and degrees of impairment of driver performance, and epidemiological studies disagree as to whether marijuana use by a driver results in increased crash risk.”

This is what happens when we ASSume: States all over the country are arresting and prosecuting people for an imaginary crime. We ASSume that, because there is limited knowledge on the topic due to decades of illegitimate suppression, we’ll just keep it right alongside our favorite vice alcohol, for traffic enforcement purposes. Brilliant. I bet some southern states even still have a racial clause about it hiding somewhere in their punitive traffic codes.

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Post-Op Followup

Going in for my 4th post-op interview with VA Orthopedics Tuesday. It’s not good. The new hip is fine – very happy with that. But unfortunately my lumbar sustained collateral damage in the procedure back in January, and I have not recovered from the surgery. They were in denial after the symptoms settled out and began solidifying a few weeks ago, so now I have to return and demand attention. I never had any complaints about the VA before now. But lately it takes forever to get anything done and seems they treat me like a hypochondriac these days. I am beginning to doubt whether or not another primary care appointment with VA gets on my schedule ever again, considering how long it took to push this most recent surgery through the system.