Black and blue

Well, for the past week I've been helping Mom and Dad out. Dad had his knee replace one week ago, today, and is black and blue and red all over. I have some colorful pictures of his bruised and broken leg, but I have no way of getting them on the computer yet...thanks to Dad's weird sense of technology (where is the card slot on your computer?!). I'll post them, though, when I get home.




All things considered, he's doing very well. He hobbles around and can get himself to the bathroom, up the stairs, and even down the street to the corner. He keeps on top of the pain pills...which sometimes make him sick...like this morning....("Is that what we ate?") His physical therapist said he was doing very well, and he does his exercises several times a day. Hopefully he'll be much improved in a couple of weeks.

Mom is doing much better, too, now that the cardiologist changed her medication. She is acting like herself again--instead of being so tired and worn-out all the time. She wasn't eating much, because she had no appetite, etc, etc, etc. Now she's eating better, talking better (no cough), sleeping better, and she even pulled some weeds in the garden. All of this makes me feel like I am not leaving the invalid to care for the invalid when I go home.

In other news, I took L to a pediatric surgeon today. When he was born, he had hydrocele (which is fluid in the scrotum), but when he was about 18 months or so, it seemed to disappear. Well, in the last couple of months, it's looked like he's had a hernia down there, so we went to get it checked out. The surgeon said he's confident it is not a hernia (not bowel that is in the scrotum), but that it is the hydrocele, which is back again. It is only on the right side, this time, though...whereas when he was younger, it was on both sides. So, the fix for it (since it is highly unlikely to go away on it's own, and it could get worse) is to operate. The surgery is essentially the same as a hernia repair, though. He'll go in and sew the "hole" closed which is allowing the fluid to enter into the scrotum, and drain the fluid that is there. It's just an outpatient surgery, so that's good. We have it scheduled for Aug. 20...just in time to get the big kids ready for school again.