Good Morning All. Clear and 68° here in North Central Texas. Once again the wind is gusting at 0 mph from the SE today, I'll do the burn trash early this morning. No change in the forecast, warm and dry for the next ten days, range 68°-92° until Tuesday night when a cool front arrives.
Yesterday was a busy day for us as I alluded to in a short post last night. Started off with a routine day after visit to the ophthalmologist who did my wife's cataract surgery Tuesday. Second eye is recovering faster than the first and all is well. However before we left the house, an ongoing swelling just under my wife's knee started oozing fluid. The swelling has been there about two weeks and she thought that it had something to do with scar tissue from her knee replacement surgery a while back. So while she was at the eye doctor, I called the orthopedic surgeons office and arranged to take her by after we were done. The nurse there was just going to take a look and re-bandage my crude attempt at medical practice. The doctor was in surgery all morning so I also set up a 1:20 appointment for the afternoon. We headed home after that. In the interim, she spoke to the doctor and described what she saw, and called us to come back immediately to pick up orders for a blood test at the lab in the hospital across the road from his office. By then we were less than five miles from home, but we turned around and went back since she indicated that it was urgent. Stopped back by his office and picked up the order and went over to the lab and experienced extreme hospital protocol, but we were done in 45 minutes time and headed back home since it was just over two hours until the appointment. Went home, ate lunch and I took a 25 minute nap. Returned to the appointment which lasted 90 minutes. He took a culture and sent us back to the lab to drop it off. No such thing! We had to wait until a lab technician could come out and take it from us. Another 30 minutes wasted. Meanwhile the doctor's office also set her up with a MRI appointment at a facility 30 miles away. It was the only one with an open slot yesterday. On the way there, another call from his office re-directed us to a different MRI facility, which was 4 miles further but was at least in the direction that we were already headed. We were there from 4:00 until 5:45. Then we headed back to Denton to pick up an antibiotic from the local Walgreens. Since my wife hadn't eaten all day, we treated ourselves to an expensive dinner at Outback. Bottom line is that there is an infection, and the MRI will tell whether it is in the bone or muscle. If it is in the muscle, it can be carved out by the orthopedic guy. If it is in the bone, a complete redo of the knee replacement by a "recovery specialist" will be needed. Her orthopedic guy has done them before, but would prefer that a specialist do it instead of him. So it looks likely that we might repeat what we went through with both of the original knee replacements once again. Downside is that they remove the old implant and you go totally immobile without a knee for 1-2 weeks while they manufacture a "custom" knee replacement. OTOH, it may just be in the muscle... So the original planned 50 mile round trip turned into a 225 mile marathon. Whatever the outcome, we're cancelling the vacation trip to Gulf Shores AL in mid October.
Meanwhile life goes on. Grocery/beer trek this morning followed by the follow up visit to the orthopedic surgeon at 11:30, at least he's less than 2 miles from the grocery store. He should have the good/bad news options by then.
Thanks for the likes yesterday for the progress update;
Tom O, Patrick, Christian, James, Hughie, Sherrel, Joe, Mikey, Rick, Tom.
Just a couple of slices of French Toast this morning Flo.
No time in the train shed yesterday since I didn't get home until after 9:00. Slept late this morning and I now have no time for an archive search, so no pictures today.
Steve J - Dang, I thought that my layout surface was the only one that looked like your picture yesterday! The first place that I look for tools is the last place that I used them!
While I advocate replacing plastic couplers as soon as needed, I have always found that the trip pins are metal and should work with uncoupling magnets.
Hughie - I like the Hernando's Hideaway reference even though I didn't see the movie (The Pajama Game).
Since the conversation has continued to remain civil here regarding Covid, I will make a few more comments if I may.
First and foremost I do not begrudge anyone who does not get vaccinated due to medical reasons, but I don't believe that they are the ones who are spreading the virus. I am truly disappointed by some of the reasons given as to why some people haven't been vaccinated.
I totally disagree with mandates. The President's executive order just gives corporations cover to mandate vaccination. They still have to wait for a bureaucracy (OSHA) to come up with the rules. As many of us already know, that could take months or decades! Rules or no rules, many large companies are going forward.
Comparison to the flu is not a true comparison. The flu causes about 30,000-50,000 deaths a year in the US, Covid has already cost over 800,000 in 18 months.
A lot of the Covid numbers are suspect to begin with in my opinion. They have been and still are being manipulated by politicians and some in the medical field to their benefit. That doesn't mean that the overall numbers are too far off though. However why do we still count recoveries as cases?
Too many people are opening their mouths without true facts, Dr Fauci comes to mind. Who do we really trust any more??? The whole scenario has gotten way too politicized by both the past and present administrations. Politicians are speaking out of both sides of their mouths at the same time. Preach mask mandates and then hold fundraisers where no one has a mask!
I got both jabs in Jan-Feb this year after losing a 42 YO niece in November before vaccines were available. That's not the only reason, I am in four "at risk" groups and I also have grandchildren too young to be vaccinated. Even if it's not fatal to them, I don't want them to be unnecessarily ill. We don't really have any knowledge of any long term issues with the vaccines yet, but short term there doesn't appear to be any.
If we count the individuals who now have natural immunity from having had the virus along with those who have had the jab, I think that we are better off as a nation than we are being led to believe. I still advocate getting the vaccine if you are able. No sense in getting sick if it's something that can be avoided. At the same time, I believe it is a responsibility of all people to be cognizant of the effects on fellow citizens of not being vaccinated. Of course recently that is mainly affecting others who have made the same decision. Let's not endanger those who are not able to be vaccinated because of medical reasons.
Why is the President mandating vaccines for many Americans while ignoring the hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants who are overrunning our state down here???
Enough said.
Everybody have a great day.