My column for Sunday. By Bill Bouldin Del Rio News Herald The Good Wife got a new knee this week. It’s her first knee replacement but far from her first major surgery. You see, she suffers from a bad case of The Dwindles. For as long as we’ve been together, she has shed a major body part at the rate of about one every ten years. Viewed individually, that’s not so bad but taken in aggregate, it does get bothersome. An eyeball here, an ovary there, it all adds up over time. By now, she’s dwindled down pretty darn close to the bare minimum of Manufacturers Original Equipment, and she’s begun shop the aftermarket. Her latest acquisition is the Zimmer Titanium Total Knee Replacement, which I gather is the orthopedic answer to 21 inch chrome rims with iridescent lug nuts. Still, throughout it all, she remains amazingly upbeat. In fact, before they put her under, she asked her orthopedic surgeon if she could have her old knee to put under her pillow, to see what the Knee Fairy brings her. Instead of the old knee, the doctors gave her a spinal block and access to all the pain meds in the hospital, which is way better than anything the Knee Fairy could have brought. If there has been one constant in her life, I think it would pain - great and small – from aches, injuries, cramps and surgeries she has undergone through the years. Not surprisingly, pain killers have been her boon companions, and remain so today as she recovers from the knee replacement. Like most things in life, there’s a learning curve to master with pain killers. For instance, she found out (If she ever forgot) it’s important to stay ahead of the pain with the appropriate medication, before it gets out of hand.. I can relate, but only on a very basic level. Many years ago, a routine chest X-ray found a spot on my lung that looked ominous, so I was whisked off to M.D. Anderson Hospital in Houston for thoracic surgery – “chest cracking” in the parlance of the medical profession. In less time than it takes to tell about it, the good doctors cut me from a-hole to appetite, pried open a couple ribs, flopped out my lung and took a biopsy of the suspect tissue. The biopsy came back benign (turns out the spot was nothing more than scar tissue from fungal infection picked up in Southeast Asia), so they stitched me up like a baseball and sent me home. As a parting gift, they gave me a mason jar full of big white Tylenol pills with the number three stamped on them, and told me to take one every three hours until they were all gone. I had the surgery on Monday and was back at work in the newsroom by Thursday, popping the pills as instructed and feeling pretty good about myself. I remember distinctly the moment I let the pain get ahead of me. I had taken my very last No. 3 Tylenol pill at about noon, and it was near three o’clock when I stood up from my desk and started to walk to the water cooler. Mid-stride, it hit me. “OhChristOhChristOhChrist – THAT HURTS” was all I could get out before collapsing. All that time, those big white pills had kept me from knowing just how severely my body had been traumatized by the surgery. I envision my learning curve at the time as a backward L, emphasis on the backward And so we go.. The Good Wife is back home now, showing off her walking skills and for all I know, looking in the Zimmer catalogue for a matching knee for the other side. And so we go. INTERESTING HOLIDAYS THIS WEEK: October 20th – Brandied Fruit Day. 21st – Babbling Day (just after the brandied fruit, of course.) 24th – National Bologna Day (when are they going to get real, and spell it baloney?) Enjoy.
Posted on: Fri, 17 Oct 2014 13:37:52 +0000
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