one monkey typing

Our cable modem connection has flaked out the last two mornings, and come back around noon. Last time this happened it was low signal level. The guy came today (happily while it was not working), plugged his blinkenlights into it, and agreed there was something wrong, but they'd need to send a lineman out; he's just an installation and basic troubleshooting guy. Oh well. The original estimate was for HIM to show up on Monday, now they say the guy who can actually fix it will be out on Monday. So I guess I'm ahead of the game.

It's probably a broken seal allowing things to get wet, and starting to work when the sun dries it out. But it's probably in a box up the road somewhere.

We visited J a couple of times yesterday. She got up and walked to the door and back. Checkout is now delayed until Monday. She says walking isn't bad, but getting up and back down again is NO fun; she's quite sore. But she's off IV mostly, on oral painkillers, so things are progressing about as expected. The next few weeks are going to be slow for her.

I've spent the last day removing land mines from the house; she doesn't need to be dodging crud on the floor, and if I make the passages as wide as possible, it's (barely) conceivable that the damn cats might get out of the way. OK, that's a pipe dream, but at least she'll be able to go around them or kick them out of the way. Hopefully by Monday I can have the house fairly safe for her to navigate.

Well, jennlk is out of the OR, awake (when I left her) and quite uncomfortable.

The doctor did wind up doing fusion of both L5-S1 as expected and L4-L5 as was warned as a possibility. He said that the deterioration was fairly extensive there as well and it had to be done or there would still have been considerable pain.

There was a fair amount of blood loss due to decompression of the area, but nothing much out of the ordinary. The doctor was not concerned about that.

Jenn is on IV fluids and a morphine pump for now, with a fair amount of pain (after 1st post-op painkiller but before the morphine, she said "8" on the 1-10 scale; but I think her "8" would be my "11") She's required to lay flat for 24 hours before the bed can even be inclined.

In all, the surgery lasted a bit longer than expected (5.5 hours) and the doctor did a bit more than expected, and had some things that just wouldn't cooperate, but in the end seemed to think it was an acceptable outcome. We've all had a long day, but things have gone about as expected, and we all are hoping for the best. The "best" still means months of recovery, but hopefully with a real life at the end of the tunnel.