My Turn!

GONNA DO A BIG SCREAM.

I wake up at least twice in the night, usually. It’s because I’m 45 and I drink a lot of water so I have to pee a lot. This is easy enough to do whilst half-asleep, but if we ever rearrange our bedroom, I’ll probably die.

So the other night, I got up like I usually do and took a step and my right knee decided to have some kind of pain party. So now, instead of being hurty because I did things to it (like, say, jumping split squats or something else horrible), it’s hurty ALL THE TIME and making my life difficult.

We have discussed my approach to medical issues before. The “you’re not dead, there are no bones sticking out or spurting blood, therefore you’re fine” way of life has worked out pretty well for me so far. But I can’t very well bully Freddie into participating in his recovery and ignore my own nonsense, can I? I lose the moral authority I need for yelling if I do that, so I made an appointment to see my doctor and we’ll go from there.

I have always had trouble with my knees (thanks, Ma) but this is worse than usual AND it’s my right leg so if I am incapacitated and can’t drive, we’re fucked because Cap’n Handlebars isn’t allowed to drive and The Teenager refuses to learn. She’s only 14 but come on, kid! Take one for the team! So let’s hope this is something that can be helped via a brace or something and not require immediate surgery or similar.

In other news, Greybeard The Pirate is doing okay. We have had to have some discussions about how recovery isn’t going to be a straightforward process – there will be times when he feels like he’s regressing and there will be days when he doesn’t feel like he’s getting any better. That’s all normal and he needs to accept that. So far, so good. He’s been great about recognizing that he’s doing fantastically well, even if it doesn’t always feel like it.

Today is the one-month mark, by the way. ONE MONTH. It feels like YEARS. Time is weird.

Recovery is going well. We are waiting on this prism film thingy that will stick onto the one side of his glasses and help with the double vision. If, for some reason, it doesn’t work, I hope someone out there has a spare room that I can live in because I will run away from home, I swear. But since there wasn’t any other option offered, I’m confident that it will work just fine and I won’t have to leave my family to save my sanity. Once he can use both of his eyes and not rely on the eyepatch, the pirate jokes will dry up but he will be much more useful to the outside world. It’s very hard right now for him to read and type and the texts he sends me are hilarious. Between him not being able to see and autocorrect, it’s a whole new language he’s speaking.

Everything else is going VERY well. I am allowing him to walk around the neighborhood on his own now, which is good for him. The dogs are super pissed off by this, though, because they’re both absolute maniacs on the leash so he can’t take them with him when he goes out. Maybe if they were LESS UNTRAINABLE, they’d get to go on walkies too! But while he’s got balance issues and my knee is falling off, the dogs will have to be content with pooping in the backyard like everyone else.

The tooth situation is also resolving nicely. He still looks absolutely bonkers but he’s going to have a root canal and a cap or a bridge or something which is a lot less hassle than an implant, so that’s good. It’s still going to be a giant pain in the head but a bridge situation is a lot quicker than the implant would be. I have both (my dental x-rays usually elicit a “wooooowwwwww” from folks who aren’t familiar with them).

We’re starting to see some of the bills bounce off the insurance now, too. Thank goodness we HAVE insurance because some of the numbers I’m seeing are basically imaginary amounts of money. The final bill from Morristown Medical Center is listed as “pending” which… yeah. It can stay that way for awhile because I’m not at all interested in what that is going to be. The rehab stay (5 days) came out to just under $9,000 and we’re on the hook for some of that. It’s fine. We just ran the household budget and it’s all doable! It just sucks. The healthcare system in this country is fucking bullshit.

Overall, we’re doing fine. Near-death experiences seem to be a thing that we can handle but I don’t really want to do it again anytime soon. Yesterday he said, “I guess I’m not going skiing this year.” NO, YOU ARE NOT, CAPTAIN DEATHWISH. For the next little while, our sporting life will be contained to things like jigsaw puzzles and strolls around the block. We’ll postpone our foray into the Circus Arts until 2021.

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