Fenris is reunited with his human
Quick Backstory:
Several weeks ago I had a bad fall. I fell onto concrete and messed up my knee BAD. I went to the hospital. I was in hospital followed by several weeks of rehab in constant unending pain and worrying about the needs and fates of my dogs and cats. In all I was on my back for almost a month, unable to walk, the longest hospitalization of my life.
If you missed the diaries I posted previously about my Knee Saga, see the links to prior diaries below
1. BAD FALL GOING TO ER
2, STILL IN HOSPITAL
3. MAY LOSE LEG
4. BACK TO HOSPITAL-INFECTION
5. Rehab: Knee and Life
Below I wil give an update on my status of my knee, my plans for my discharge, and how this event will hopefully lead to some major changes in my life.
I will update this diary regulary over the next few days, so if you are of a mind to do so, bookmark this diary and check in periodically.
FUNDING HELP REQUEST
In accordance with the Daily Kos policy of limiting fundraising posts to Extraordinary and Temporary situations and no more than three dedicated fundraising diaries per twelve-month period, I am posting this request for funding assistance with links below.
Justification: I just spent a month in hospital and rehab, mostly flat on my back in a hospital bed. This was the longest hospitalization of my life. I am home, but I am so weak that a walk from the bedroom to the bathroom has me wheezing like I ran a marathon. I do not have sufficient control over my right leg to drive so I am stuck at home unless I call a cab. I have not worked since early December and I likely will not be able to return to work as a substitute teacher until March. This is the reason for my fundraising request. If you wish more justification, please read through this diary.
I can also use pet food & supplies from Amazon, as well as some grab bars and other health items I will add to the Medical wishlist below as I determine exactly where I need the bars and what size(s).
So to summarize, I need to cover zero pay from December through the start of March.
Amount Requested: $3000
• GoFundMe • KoFi • PayPal• Patreon • Amazon Pet Supplies • Amazon Medical Supplies •
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OK, I know why most of you are here, so:
Let’ go to the reunion pictures of the furbabies!!!
During the month I was away, I was very worried about the critters. My friends Robbie and Robin said that they only saw three dogs when they came to feed them. As there were 60 miles-per-hour winds right after I was in hospital, I was worried that the fence might have been breached and one dog got out. In addition, two of the three cat were never seen at all. I was worried about them, especially the kitten Khonsu. I had never been away from her even a single night before this. I worried that without me there she might go on walkabout.
Anubis Maukat was the first to get my attention. Anubis had spent almost a month alone in his cage. He was not in a good mental state. I picked him up and cuddled him while Robbie took the opportunity to change out his cage, which had gotten pretty bad. You can see it in his expression. I kept holding his head and looking into his open big blue eyes and he looked into my eyes and it seemed he knew me but did not react beyond a look of recognition.
As Robbie could not stay long, I could not hold Anubis for an extended period as I’d planned, and I put him back into the cage, under his protest, so I could let the dogs in.
Anubis Maukat is traumatized by a month alone in his cage.
Next, I turned to the doggos. I opened the back door and called out to them. However, unlike what I expected, they simply barked at me from a distance as though they did not recognize me. I wondered if they were not coming in due to Robbie, so since she had to leave anyway, she left and I went to my chair in the living room and waited. I could hear the doggos barking in the back yard. After about fifteen minutes, I heard one of them in the dining room and Fenris peeked around the corner. I help out a milk-bone for him, as all the doggos love them, and he slowly came up and took it and ran off to eat it. Then he came back and I gave him another and he again ran off. This happened a third time. Finally he came over and jumped up on me and I held him and he realized it was really me and he went into a loving frenzy licking and chewing on my face.
Fenris chews and licks his human’s face
Big eyes
Next up was Zorrita. Like her baby bother Fenris, Zorrita came over for a couple of milk bones before she too joined her brother on my lap.
Fenris is joined by his big sister Zorrita.
Zorrita gets some petting after a month away.
Zorrita is very happy.
Next up was tiny Dorcas, the oldest pupper (by about an hour). She too required several Milk Bones before she realized it was me. Dorcas did her usual greeting by jumping on the back of my chair and digging at my hair. I reached up and pet her.
Dorcas digs my hair, literally.
Dorcas gets a butt rub.
Last up was baby sister Brunhilda. Unlike her sister Dorcas and Zorrita, I have no pictures or video of Brunhilda being born because I had stepped out for a few minutes to use the restroom. While I was away, her Mama, Delight, gave birth to her and Fenris. I do not know which order they came in except that they are the baby boy and the baby girl. Unlike the others, even though she was the last one to come in, she did not require any milk bones to lure her up to me. When she realized it was me, she jumped on me.
Brunhilda gets cuddles.
The baby girl and the baby boy share long-absent cuddles and loving.
At this point, the three outdoor cats had not come in. I was worried about them, especially the two younger, Khonsu and Ma’at, as I had never been away from them at all. I went to the back door and I called out in a loud voice MEOWWWW several times. Immediately Ma’at emerged from the bushes and ran up to the porch. A couple of moments later I saw Apophis jump up on one of the blue igloo doghouse in the back and look at me. A grayish blur that could only be Khonsu appeared right behind him. Apophis and Khonsu both came running across the yard together.
I was at this point, exhausted as I was newly out of the rehab, I returned to the living room and sat in my chair. A few minutes later, Apophis came in and kept head-booping me aggressively as if to say “WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN!”
The first time I left Apophis, I had gone to a California Democratic Convention as I was a delegate and I left him for several days with Dad. When I came home, that night Apophis, who was not much more than a kitten then, kept jumping on my bed, walking on me the length of my body from foot to shoulder, looked down me and said MEOW MEOW MEOW, and jumped off. Then he would return and do the same thing a few minutes later, and this went on for several hours that night.
Apophis has his cuddle mat back
Then baby Khonsu came in. I was the most concerned about her as I had never been away from her for even one single night before this, and now I was gone for a month. She was very affectionate, and has continued to be as he keeps jumping on me and rubbing against me until I pet her.
Khonsu snoozes.
Khonsu snuggles
Ma’at was the last to come in. Unfortunately I didn’t get any pictures of Ma’at as she seemed to pop up only when I didn’t have the camera ready, and as an almost-black cat and it was night and the room was poorly lit, no joy in photography. So, here’s a classic picture of big-eyed Ma’at, named for the Egyptian Goddess of JUSTICE.
Ma’at is watching.
Ma’at is out standing in her field
A couple of days after I came home, I was finally able to get most of the dogs out of the house, so I let Anubis out. He immediately left his cage and hid under my bed. I let him stay there for a couple of hours and I sat on the edge of the bed and he came out. I picked him up and cuddled him on my bed and I put a cat harness on him. I’d ordered the harness for him before the accident with the idea that with him wearing it, I could leash him when I let him out and he would not be able to run off and hide and not come out when the dogs came in. The leash is somewhat elastic so I pulled slightly on it so he would get used to it, and he seemed to like the feeling and he purred. I managed to use the leash to lead & drag him from my bedroom to the cage. He did not want to go back in, but unfortunately he was hissing at the dogs so I did not want to take a chance on them chasing him and/or him hurting one of them. I’m going to use the harness and leash to take him out more often and I hope it makes him happier,and perhaps he will get used to the dogs with more exposure to them.
Anubis with his new harness and springy leash relaxing in my bed
KNEE REHAB
The journey home from the Rehab facility began with one final piece of incompetence on their part. See the previous diaries for other examples.
I had asked to go home about 9:00 am so that I could have most of the daylight to deal with the cats and dogs. Then I was told my ride would be at 11:30. OK. So 11:30 came along, I was packed and taken out in a wheelchair and the car they sent was so small that I, a 390 pound 6’0” guy, would not have been able to get in it even without my leg so stiff and inflated that I could not bend it. The staff kept insisting that I “try to get in” but I could see at a glance that it would not be possible and even if I I did get in, I would not have anyone on the other end of the ride to help me get out. So, I was taken back to my room to wait for a larger car. I waited, and waited, and waited. It got later and later and I was worried that I would not get home until after dark. I knew Robbie could not wait that long for me, and I dreaded the prospect of walking across my yard with my walker in the dark. Finally about 3:30, the new ride arrive and I got in and went home.
In the first few days, I did not move much. My leg was hurting and was swollen and inflexible. I made tiny steps using my walker through the living room and holding onto the walls as I went through the hall to the bathroom and bedroom. I had a hard time with balance and carrying things, so I did not eat much in the beginning and after a couple of days I was getting faint from lack of food, so I made more effort to get in and out of the kitchen. I ate a lot of cream-of-wheat with peanut butter and pine nuts. It was one of the few things in the house that didn’t go bad during the month I was away. I had some canned chicken and tuna I mixed with mayo which did not go bad. There was a loaf of bread in the fridge that was not moldy so I’ve been using it a slice at a time with the tuna and chicken. One day Robbie brought me a KFC chicken sandwich which is usually yum, but by the time she got it to me it was cold, but I was still grateful. I have a lot of canned food from my many visits to food banks so I won’t starve soon and this is a good excuse to use some of it up. I had been saving it for earthquake/disaster food, but I can get more later and this is a bit of a disaster.
My house is small, 800 square foot. There is very little space to walk inside. I’m not sturdy enough to walk outside on my own, and even if I was, the sidewalks in this part of town are broken up an full not just of cracks, but high ledges where tree roots have busted upthe concrete. I live in East Salins which is not the rich part of town so the city has not bothered to fix sidewalks since they were first put in in the 1970s. When I was a child, we did not have either a sidewalk or a curb, but dirt out to the asphalt.
More than the pain and inflexibility of my knee, I have experienced extreme exhaustion. Walking from one room to the next leaves me out of breath. This is slowly getting better but not fast. I have had a hard time sleeping that goes back to my time in hospital. For the past month I never slept more than two to four hours at a stretch and not much more. Since I came home, I’m slowly getting more and better sleep as if my body is learning to sleep again.
According to my doctor, I will not be able to walk well enough to go back to teaching for about six weeks. This is because as a substitute teacher I often walk a lot, up to two miles a day according to my phone’s pedometer. In addition to regular teaching, I will miss the chance to teach in the Coding Dojo afterschool classes, although I hope to be able to teach in the NASA classes later this spring. All that adds up to a lot of lost pay that I can’t make up.
I will eventually make a full recovery. I may need to be more careful with that leg in future as it may be more likely to collapse unexpectedly, but that is to be seen in the future.
An anonymous lurker is sending me a 450-pound power lift chair, so I had to clear out space for it. Robbie came by to help somewhat over the past couple of days, but she has been stressed because her family situation is difficult too. The chair should arrive Thursday and someone to assemble it will come the next day (hopefully). I will post pictures of it as an update to this diary.
One thing that my doctors are concerned about is my heart condition. I have a condition called “aortic stenosis”. It is, briefly, caused by a buildup of calcium on the aeortic valve which makes it stiffer and less able to close property and thus less able to pump blood through my body. When I was diagnosed after my cardiac stent was installed in April 2020, I was told that it would need surgery to replace it with two-to-five years. There is no other solution, i.e. no diet, exercise, drug therapy, or happy thoughts can correct it. Eventually I have to have surgery or I will die. Fortunately my cardiologist is a world-leader in this procedure and the technology is advancing quickly. He told me that if he had done that surgery in April 2020, he would have had to cut me open and saw open my breastbone to do the surgery. Now he said he can do it via going in a vein in my leg. He said that longer I can wait for the surgery, the more advance the surgery will get. Unfortunately my doctors are concerned that my extreme fatigue might be related to an advancement of my aeortic stenosis condition and I might need the surgery sooner than later. I will be having tests in the coming weeks to determine that.
I want to emphasize that just because I’m home that this is over. In a way much of what has happened is because after my prior medical incidents, the heart surgery, the kidney stone, the infections, the partial foot amputation, etc, I never got into a position to get my life and home into a good state due to a combination of lacking health and energy to physically do it myself combined with poverty of wondering each month if this was the month I would miss the mortgage payment.
Reordering my life.
I need to clear out my life. I have too many items I’ve accumulated both from myself and my family. It’s time to let go of some things just because they belonged to my father or mother. I need to reduce my possessions so that the truly important things won’t be tossed out with the trash when I am no more. Things like my writings, pictures, art, genealogy records. I have many boxes filled to be sorted. Unfortunately when some people have come over to help in the past, it usually results in some sort of argument that I need to throw out boxes of stuff without looking at it, and they get mad and quit helping because I won’t take their “help” to throw out everything. They assume that because they do not know what something is, it must not be valuable and I have some sort of hording mentality to not want to just throw out the accumulation of not just my life, but both my parents as well. I know I need to reduce and pass on much, and either throw out or scan many records, but I need time to do so. I have not had such time for years, and I hope in this enforced downtime to do some of that long over-due sorting.
I also need to take advantage of this downtime to set the start of my home video studio, both for online teaching and for production of educational videos. As a 62 year old man in questionable health, it is unlikely I will be able to teach for more than about ten years, so I need to set up for online teaching and video production to pay my life expenses in the future.
RETURN TO TEACHING
I am currently unable to return to substitute teaching because I am so weak and unstable that I currently can’t drive nor could I get from the parking lot to the classroom, much less walk the average of 2 miles per day my pedometer says I do on a typical day. I am also on very powerful blood thinners and if i were to fall, like on the playground, there is a good chance i would not make it alive off school grounds, and that would not be good for the kids to see.
I have been working towards the magic goal of getting employed as a classroom teacher, but I don’t know when that will happen. I have applied for some positions, but so far no luck. I have my teaching credential, but I got it in late summer after most hiring for the year had been finished. Now the openings are teachers who suddenly quit, have health crisis, die, or get fired. In short, my options for getting my own classroom before next fall center around a tragedy for someone else.
I’m working as a super-substitute, but I do have some demographic things working against me like being a 62-year-old 400-pound man who is not bilingual just starting out as a rookie teacher. I can’t help but think that while that is not why they would explicitly not pick me, it could be a hidden reason. When I mention this, a lot of people accuse me of being paranoid, because after agesim and sizeism does not exist in modern society in general and definitely not among the teaching profession </SNARK>
Even if I do get employed soon, I do not know how long I can work. I am thinking that I may get 5-10 years of teaching in before I have to stop. My plan includes setting up a video studio for both live classroom teaching from home as well as a video production of educational videos as my secondary income and retirement income. I have been planning my studio for a while and I plan to put it together soon.
CONCLUSION
I have a lot to do in the coming weeks. Please be there with me, at least in encouragement.
One thing that has been impressive is how many lurkers/never-posters have contacted me to express their sympathies and admiration and assistance. They have sent me Kosmail and emails and in one case a phone call to me in the Rehab center, which was very touching.
I will still need your good thoughts and wishes and assistance in the coming months. Many of you have used words like “inspirational” to describe how I have been getting through this and prior medical events and my father’s death and the teaching credential program. I need your help to continue to be inspirational to you and to the children I teach and to others in our communities. I hope I don’t become inspirational in a future homelessness.
I will be posting updates to this diary over the next week, so if you are inclined to follow me, bookmark this dairy and check in periodically.
Please don’t forget to comment and let me know you have read this, or send me KosMail if you are a never-poster/lurker. One suggestion I have is that you post your favorite picture of one of my critters. You can do this by going to a comment, searching in the image library for keyword “JTGCRITTERS”, and pick your favorite critter picture(s).
If you read through all that, thank you,
#jtg
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Dorcas can relax now that her human butler has returned
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