This sucks...

UPDATE: Gerard passed early yesterday morning (1/27). Neo tells us what's next.

 

 

Gerard is in hospice.

 

Steve Crowder

Sondrak has moved....

 ...that is all.

Eggnog, Irish Whiskey, and Irish Coffee

BUMPED for this year yet again.

I'm once again posting the egg nog recipe, with a side note that started as a tweet to some friends:

Instead of brandy or burbon, this year I am using Tullamore Dew. It is far and away The Best Irish Whiskey, unlike that cursed sinn feiner (spit) Jameson's. It also makes the Best Irish Coffee evar.

OK, this is turning into a post. I'll pass it on.

You have the egg nog recipe. Irish coffee below the fold.

Ike's egg nog:

A Quick Thanks...

...to those who found their way here via Gerard to wish me well. I get so few comments that I rarely check them, and just happened to do so the other day.

Getting better after the relatively minor setback. (Below)

Just takes time.

Getting Better All The Time

Spent half of last month in the hospital because of yet another bladder infection. IV fluids and antibiotics did the trick. Back to home PT for a while, Best news is no catheter, which greatly reduces the risk of bladder infection.

Which I'm all for. Two is enough.

(In other news, I decided the site needed a change, so a new look.)

I Am A Neurological Mess...

...according to one medical professional familiar with what I've been through in the last three months.

The short version is thus:

• Total knee replacement
• Go home
• Start falling down
• Fall down hard enough to squish the dressing hard enough to make Hitchcockian spatter
• Get re-admitted
• Surgery to repair the open wound (looked like a watermelon with a big wedge cut out of it - I have pictures!)
• Go to the nursing home I think fondly of as Bedlam
• Develop a UTI and sepsis - hold at a LaGrange point for about 5 days (no memory except 3 little snippets) until getting back to low-Earth orbit, then touching down five days later.
• Lost 25 pounds
• After a month at Bedlam, off to the surgery center to release pressure on my cervical spinal cord.
• Weakness, numbness, and lack of range of motion, endurance, strength, and sense of touch slowly returning with physical and occupational therapy. 
• Lots and lots of physical and occupational therapy. 

Three surgeries in two months. 

Neurosurgeon says 18 months of healing. And I may not get everything back, but we stopped the continuing damage.

It wasa scary to wake up every morning, wondering what I won't be able to do today.  Now, it's kinda fun to wake up and find out what I can do today.

Friends remark that I seem  to be in good spirits in the middle of all this. I try not to worry about the things I can't do.

I also think about the man I saw in therapy, who was re-learning to correctly say the names of a fork and a spoon.

I got no problems.