September 2015
Sunday September 27
A spider web near the garage
Not surprisingly our lives are still being dominated by my accident last week. We were both a bit surprised when the physios approached me on Monday afternoon and told me that I could go home provided that Ann could pick up crutches and a walker from the Red Cross before they closed at 4:30. Ann dashed across the bridge from Halifax, got there with 20 minutes to spare, and we were soon both back home again.
We have moved into the guest bedroom on the main floor so that I don't have to negotiate any stairs. I will not be able to put any weight on my right foot until I see the orthopedic surgeon again in early November, so I'm stuck with using the walker until then. There are many things that I can't carry around, so we have arranged the furniture so that I can move what I'm carrying to a table, put it down, move myself, move it to a chair, move myself, and so on until I reach my destination. However, it's been inevitable that Ann has had to shoulder the responsibility for dealing with myriad small tasks that I normally would have at least helped with.
This morning, the Bermuda Bowl, the world bridge championship started in India. The first session was at 2:30 AM, a bit too early for me, but I dragged myself out of bed at 6 to watch the second and third sessions. As usual, Canada has started out with a less than stellar performance and after the second session we were dead last out of 22 teams. We did a bit better against one of the USA teams in the third, so we are now 20th. Hopefully we will continue to improve so that we at least have a chance of making it to the next stage (the top eight teams go through).
This afternoon Ann went to a party for Katy's first baby-sitter, Jan, who is retiring after more than thirty years of looking after other people's kids (she also brought up two sons of her own). I would have gone but she and Paul live at the top of a long narrow flight of stairs that I was not confident that I would be able to handle.
Tonight I made my first foray into the outside world after spending a week confined to the house. Ann and I were invited to dinner by our friends Mark and Shirley. Cathy and Roger were also there and we had a very pleasant evening. It was nice to get out of the house again.
As I finish this page off, we are keeping an eye on the lunar eclipse from our back deck. Perhaps I will have a picture for next week's page.
Sunday September 20
Ann and I on the Valley ride a couple of weeks ago. (Picture taken by Marci.)
Most of you that follow this page at least semi-regularly have probably heard by now that I had a run-in with a young bicyclist last Thursday that ended up with me in the Dartmouth General with a broken hip. We are having our garage roof replaced (more on that below) and the contractor has a large trailer in our driveway that impedes the lines of sight, so when I pulled out of the driveway on my bike looking for cars on the road I didn't notice the youngster barreling down the sidewalk at high speed. Presumably he didn't notice me either. He clipped my front wheel with his knee, luckily doing very little damage to himself, but whipping me over sideways so that I landed with considerable force on my hip. Ann managed to get me up and into the house, then Carl came over and helped to get me into the car and we were off to Emergency. Two or three hours later, after x-rays and consultation with the ER doctor, it was clear I wasn't going home any time soon.
I was transferred to a semi-private room mid-afternoon where I spent the time getting hungrier and hungrier while we waited for a possible operation that evening. Eventually the orthopedic surgeon arrived to say that he wasn't feeling well and that he wouldn't do any more surgeries that evening. As the cafeteria was now closed, Ann went and got me a sandwich and coffee from the Tim's down the street to get me through to the next day.
As the regularly scheduled surgeries are performed up until 4 PM, Friday was more of the same: waiting in my room, getting hungrier and hungrier (no food after midnight), until they decided whether they could operate that evening. At around 6 PM a different surgeon, a young guy who normally works at the IWK in Halifax but who takes some weekend shifts at Dartmouth General, arrived to say that he would be operating on me shortly and to make sure I understood the options: they were to fix the broken bone with pins or to replace it. I opted to fix it which is not without risk but is the best option if the bone heals properly. I was taken down to the OR waiting room shortly thereafter. The operation lasted from about 7:30 until 10 and I was kept in the recovery room for about an hour before being taken back to my room.
In the recovery room they had me take some pretty potent drugs for the pain but since then I have been fine with regular Tylenols. Today I hardly notice it unless I try to move my leg and even then it is quite manageable.
For the past couple of days I have been reading a lot, watching a bit of TV (but there's not much to watch, as usual) and doing my exercises. The physios had me on my feet the day after the operation but I won't be able to put any weight on the right leg for a while yet. Now it is basically up to them to decide when I can go home; they have to be sure that I'll be able to cope in our house. It will likely be another two or three days.
I've also had visitors. Ann has been here for a good part of each day since it happened and my friends and colleagues Nancy and Holly have been checking up on me regularly and keeping me supplied with reading material. Tomorrow, Holly and I were supposed to give a presentation at a meeting of the international research group that we belong to, but now she will have to do it by herself. I've also had to postpone a trip to Ottawa that was planned for the first week of October.
Meanwhile, as I mentioned above, there have been things going on at home. We are having the house painted, the eavestroughs replaced and the garage roof fixed. Yesterday, when the contractors starting replacing some of the fascia on the garage, they found a large nest of carpenter ants and some rot in one of the corner support beams, so the amount of work to be done is a bit more than we were expecting; however, it will likely all be done by the time I am out of here.
Last weekend, back in my mobile days, Ann and I decided to get a bit of exercise on Saturday by biking out through the back streets of Dartmouth to the Cole Harbour Salt Marsh Trail, then back into Dartmouth via the Shearwater Flyer Trail. Then on Sunday we went for walks on Lawrencetown and Conrad's Beaches. Both very pleasant but not activities that I will be able to indulge in for a couple of months at least.
Monday September 7
Horses on a farm in the Valley.
On Saturday, Ann and I drove to Wolfville again to take James his bass which would not fit in the car with the rest of his stuff last week. Somewhat surprisingly, there is room for it in his dorm at the foot of his bed. He has joined a big band at Acadia in which he'll play his trombone and perhaps his bass as well. He's decided to play in only one band so he'll have plenty of time to do other stuff as well (maybe even some school work).
While in Wolfville we took the opportunity of joining the NS Ramblers for a delightful ride through the countryside near Port Williams and Canning. You may recall that we rode through the same area back in May. Then, the countryside was alive with blossoms but this weekend the trees were laden with apples and the fields full of vegetables. When the ride was over, we picked up James and his room-mate Duncan and took them to New Minas to do a bit of shopping before we returned home.
We spent yesterday closer to home though we did go for another bike ride, this time just down our section of the Trans-Canada Trail. Today was another day of chores but we did take time out to go for walks on Lawrencetown and Conrad's Beaches. There was a bit of wind so the surfers and the para-sailers were out in force.