My birthday

As I mentioned in the previous post, I had surgery the day before my birthday. This didn't seem like a bad idea at the time, because I assumed that my knee wouldn't stop me from enjoying my birthday. That turned out to be true, but the anesthesia gave me two straight days of nausea, including on my birthday, and I couldn't eat a thing.

Needless to say, I didn't do much for my birthday except open a few presents. Amber got me the Lego Marvel Avengers game, the Lego Batman movie, a universal socket wrench, and a tripod phone mount (for "me"). Olivia got me some sticky paddles.

Carmen used some old legs of jeans to make me one of my favorite gifts, two "hand pillows".

I wasn't moving around too well, since moving my head caused extreme nausea, but the boys were eager to help.

My big present was a table-top drill press. I'm very excited to use it, but need to think of a project first. On that day, though, I was probably more excited to stop moving my head. No birthday cake for me, thanks.

Knee surgery

For quite a while I had a bump on my knee. I'm not sure exactly when it started, but it got big enough that it impeded me kneeling and just generally looked weird.

Surely, I thought, this would be no big deal for some doctor to cut out of me. Ha.

My insurance required a referral from a primary care physician. Not having gone to the doctor for many years, I no longer had one, so Amber was kind enough to track one down for me.

His diagnosis was that it was a cyst, which is what I had also assumed, and referred me to a dermatologist. The dermatologist required a fax of the referral, which PCP begrudgingly did after acknowledging that it was not unreasonable that I did not own a fax machine.

The dermatologist took a good 20 seconds to look at it and decided it might be attached to my knee, and that I should see an orthopedic surgeon instead. All he could do is do a biopsy, which I declined since that would be done by whomever was willing to cut it out of me anyway. I strongly suspected it wasn't attached to my knee and that he just didn't want to do it, but not having much choice, I badgered my PCP again for another referral to an orthopedic surgeon.

After hearing nothing for over a week, I received the referral in the mail. Luckily, the orthopedic surgeon did not require it to be faxed. When I finally got in to see him, he took 15 seconds to look at it, declared it not attached to my knee, and agreed to remove it, but said that it would have to be done at the surgical hospital, with full anesthesia. Not having much choice, I agreed.

After donning the hospital gown and compression socks, they knocked me out with what was supposed to be the lesser of the anesthetic options, and I woke up with an enormous wrapping around my knee, feeling terrible.

The surgery was the day before my birthday, and I threw up multiple times that day and multiple times the next day. I didn't eat for two full days and didn't feel fully recovered until several days later. Apparently anesthesia doesn't agree with me.

The surgery was a success. I went back a couple days later for a follow-up appointment and got to see the incision, which was much larger than I was expecting.

But the lump was gone, along with my knee hair. I'm hoping only the hair grows back.

Damon's surgery

After months, maybe years, of hearing issues with Damon because of fluid build-up, he had surgery to put tubes in his ears. He also had his tonsils removed while they had him knocked out.

He was all smiles before the surgery.

But didn't feel so hot afterwards.

His sisters made him this sweet poster, though, and it didn't take too long to get a smile out of him.

We can already tell that his hearing has improved a lot, which has made everyone's lives a lot easier. His voice also changed quite a bit (more high-pitched and nasally), which has taken some getting used to. But mostly I'm just glad that he's ok and doing well.