Photo: My Cutie Pies! Sharing the new bed :)
I'm pleased to say I've continued to not have to take painkillers. Most excellent! Plus, I've been really active this week. Much has been happening including a number of intense rain storms (this is California's rainy season - we need the rain, too!) passing through. And, so, with our property situated in the country this means there is always something to do.
Like raking and removing gunky redwood needles and mud off the gravel driveway. If this gets mixed in with the gravel then the road can turn to mush. Actually, this is the first time I have had to do this. We had someone use a piece of machinery that moved on tracks rather than on regular wheels. And this, unfortunately, tore up areas of the road and loosened the surface a bit. It then rained and created a reason for me to exercise my upper body ;) (In addition to this, the next day I was also channeling water off the road so that it ran away from the houses and down to the creek.)
My dear friend Raphael arrived on the scene as I was halfway through the road job, he proceeded to help out. Thank goodness! The next day I was rather sore in my chest, and then I remembered, oh yeah, I was raking heavy wet stuff off the road! (I got a blister on my hand so know I really was pushing it a bit). Only just five weeks since the surgery and I'm pretty much doing everything normally - good, eh?!
The surgeon, in his after care handout notes, descibes the scar tissue as been about 40% tensile strength at six weeks of what it will be at one year. The surgeon also remarked to Ron, that, if I was more active soon after surgery then I would have more pain in the short term. But in the the long term I would reap the benefits and be stronger physically and will have full range of motion sooner. Well it looks like it would seem so.
More rain is forcast for tomorrow. Our reservoirs and aquifers are replenishing themselves. This is so good as we had our 7th or 8th dryest winter last year. And we only get rain in the winter here. Where would we be without water? (And love, and friends, and chocolate, and...., and....., and.....)
P.S. Wildman continues to be very healthy! Seems like he just had an upper respiratory infection and got run down and dehydrated. So, no thoracic surgery and tons of pain (him and us) and mucho dollars spent! Sometimes low tech is good ;) We do know now that he has a weird something in his lung. That's okay. Weird "somethings" are part of life. We'll keep a close eye on him and do further testing later.
