News and Views

Yesterday in physical therapy, I raised my arm over my head using its own muscles for the first time since surgery. Straight up in the air, pointing at the ceiling. I was very excited!

This is significant, since many people never recover this capability after rotator cuff surgery. My Dad for example was never able to raise his arm above his shoulder after his rotator cuff surgery.

This gives me great confidence that I should regain full use and strength of the arm.

***Geek interest only disclaimer.***

Lately I’ve been using the Pale Moon web browser. It’s a modification of Firefox, optimized for speed and simplicity. (I was going to call it a “fork”, but since each time they update Firefox they soon create a new Pale Moon based on it, it’s not really a true fork)

It was optimized in several ways. They removed seldom used features, such as parental controls, and accessibility. They removed support for older processors — don’t try to use it with a Pentium III, though a Pentium 4 will work.

Is it faster? Benchmarks show that it is, but I can’t really say from my own experience. Web page loading varies so much from day to day and minute to minute that it’s hard to say for sure. But it seems to run fine.

It’s been 4 weeks since I had my rotator cuff repaired in my shoulder.

So far physical therapy has been purely maintaining and improving range of motion. The rest of the time my arm is in a sling. However, this week we started some simple, light, strengthening exercises. Boy, is my arm weak! I can barely hold a towel against the wall with it. The therapist doesn’t seem worried about it; I guess that’s normal. He did say that he’s moving me along a little faster than normal, based on my progress. That’s good news.

In two and a half weeks I go back to see the doctor, and he’s supposed to tell me that I can ditch the sling. Looking forward to that day!

Mom/Grandma got some new hearing aids yesterday, and it looks like they are going to be a big improvement.

She got the Bernafon Verite 6 from Costco. After putting them in, she thought they weren’t working at first because sounds weren’t distorted or tinny sounding like they were with her previous hearing aids. Yet she could hear us talking even in quiet voices, so obviously they were working.

Later, sitting at home in her apartment, she suddenly looked up at her cuckoo clock and said, “I can hear it ticking!” She hasn’t heard that for a long time.

They come with Bluetooth, a wireless connection. It allows her to hear her TV directly through the hearing aids, and also answer and talk on the telephone without touching the phone.

The TV part works well, but there is a bug or defect in the telephone system. I could get her cell phone working fine, but not the home phone. So for now she will have to continue actually picking up the handset to talk. But I’m pretty sure we will get that worked out eventually.

So welcome back to the hearing world, Mom!

After shoulder surgery, the doctor said there was very little I could do for the next week, especially using the right arm. I can type on a keyboard, and I can walk. I asked him about walking a dog. He said, “As long as you hold the leash in your left hand.”

So for the past few days I have been walking Apollo in the morning, one lap around the lake.

Meanwhile, I have been using the cold therapy machine almost 24 hours a day, and taking pain pills. The cold therapy machine is like an ice chest that I fill with ice and water, and then a pump circulates the icy water through a pad that is velcro’d to my shoulder. The cold is soothing, reduces pain and inflamation, and helps with healing. It’s been a week now, and I am cutting back to only wearing it at night. That is a relief in itself, since I can now get up and walk around without detaching and reattaching myself every time.

There’s still some pain, especially at night, but it’s getting better. Last night was the first night I didn’t need any Vicodin, just the milder analgesic Ultram. I tried to get through a couple of nights earlier in the week, but by 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning I gave up and took Vicodin. I’m getting through the days without anything, and it’s not bad at all.

Walking with Apollo has its challenges too. He pulls pretty hard when we first start out; he’s excited and wants to get to that next bush. But I have him pretty well trained now to slow down when he hits the end of the leash. Although the jerking is on my left arm, my whole body feels the shock and it reverberates in my right shoulder. By the time we get home, just the bouncing of walking has me ready to sit down for while and rest that shoulder.

The worst part of being one handed is when he makes a deposit on the ground. I have to tie the leash around my leg before I can get out the poop-bag and clean up after him. But we seem to have figured it out together, and he enjoys getting out every day for a walk.

No bike rides for a while — it’s too hard to ride with just one hand, and if I fell off I could hit that shoulder on the road and undo all the repairs. That’s not worth the risk.

Wednesday afternoon I go back to see the surgeon, and he schedules physical therapy. They have in-house therapists that have worked with them for years, so although I’d like to keep it in the family, it’s not worth driving to Queen Creek or Pittsburgh.

I had my rotator cuff repaired yesterday in a 2-hour operation. I was home resting a couple of hours later.

They gave me a nerve block so my whole right arm was numb and paralyzed. It wore off in the middle of the night, and I had to start taking hydrocodone. I’m still on pain pills, so I may be less coherent than usual.

They drilled a hole into the bone and screwed a plastic screw into it to sew the tendon to. He said my bones are very hard and he broke a couple of screws before he got one in. I guess hard bones is good news.

My arm will stay in a sling for several weeks, though I have to take it out a couple of times a day to do some simple limbering exercises. I’m typing this from within the sling, actually easier than I expected though moving the mouse is not.

I also got a cold therapy machine. I (Gisele) fill an ice chest with ice and water, and it pumps the cold water through a special pad strapped to my shoulder. I’m using it almost 24 hours a day — it feels good and should speed healing.

Gisele’s getting lots of practice waiting on me. I hope to start doing more for myself shortly.

I’ll publish updates as things change.

I just discovered a very neat application that allows you to easily share files between your computers, phone and friends.

Dropbox can be installed on Windows, Mac, Android and even iPhone (Wow!). You can take a picture with your phone, drop the picture in the Dropbox (or just select “Share” and choose Dropbox), and it appears in the Dropbox folder on your computer. You can designate folders as public, so that anybody can view pictures dropped into those folders.

You can also use Dropbox to share files between your computers, so that it can serve as a backup, or as a painless way to move files between computers.

I’m sure there are lots of other ways to use it, but for me the most interesting one is to immediately share or transfer photos.

Last week Richard, Dale and I did a short overnight backpacking trip in Roger’s Canyon in the Superstition mountains.

We started at about 4800 feet elevation, hiked about 5 miles down into the Canyon to about 3500 feet.

There are lots of oak trees along the trail, with some cottonwoods near the streams. There was lots of water flowing, so fortunately we didn’t have to take much with us.

One of the most interesting features of this canyon are the abandoned Indian Cliff Dwellings. They were occupied about 600 years ago, and show some wear from the years, though they probably look better than my house will in 600 years. There are three main caves, with the most interesting one a little difficult to get to. Not extremely exciting, or complex, nevertheless it was interesting to see them up close.

We camped under cottonwoods, and built a huge fire that night. Richard and Dale slept in tents, while I slept under the full moon. It got a little chilly in the morning (around 40 degrees), but we all managed to keep warm. The fire that Dale rebuilt made it easier to get out of bed.

The hike out the next day was harder than the hike in. We met about 25 boy scouts coming in as we went out, so we were thankful that we hadn’t delayed our trip by a day. I don’t think it would have been so peaceful!

You can see more pictures at my gallery.

I got a new phone this week, the HTC Thunderbolt. I’m trading up from the original Droid, which I’ve had for almost 2 years.

The phone works on Verizon’s new 4G (“LTE”) network, and it is FAST. Speed tests show that I’m getting between 10 and 20 Mbps down, and between 3 and 4 Mbps up. This is comparable to my home cable connection. Verizon has the fastest 4G network by far right now, but that may change as they start selling more 4G phones.

The result is web browsing that is about the same experience as on my computer, except for the small screen.

Though small compared to a computer, the screen is larger, and the processor faster than on my old Droid, so the overall experience is much improved. The downside is that battery life seems limited, especially when using 4G. It doesn’t look like I’ll get a full day out of it if I use 4G a lot, but hopefully with a charger in my car it won’t be a problem.

Simon and Garfunkel had a song called “Old Friends”, that has the line: “How terribly strange to be seventy.”

I’m not 70 yet, but I did turn 60 today, and I have to say that it is terribly strange.

How different 60 looks from this perspective than it did when I was a youngster (under 30). Back then, even 40 was old and 60 was ancient. But I don’t feel old! I feel the same as I did when I was 25!

Or do I? My recent cataract surgery made me aware of how changes that creep up on you can go undetected. I was astonished after surgery when suddenly I could see everything so clearly. My vision had faded so slowly over the years that I didn’t realize how much I had lost.

Have my other capabilities and senses faded the same way, so slowly that I have not been aware of the changes? If I could suddenly run, or jump, or work or think or remember as well as I could at 25, would I be just as amazed?

Probably. Undoubtedly. But I can also remember back to my youth and be sure that I am much more content now than I was then. The angst of high school and the slow growth of self-confidence and “comfort in my own skin” over the years is one of the changes of aging that I am aware of and do not regret. Wisdom is a hard thing to define, but the years of experience that wear us down also teach us how the world works and help us make better decisions. Physically and mentally I know that I am in a slow decline that will continue as long as I live. But fortunately, along with the decline is a growing understanding and acceptance of the world and the inevitability of my arc through it.

OK, I’m 60 and it’s terribly strange. But it’s not bad!