Two Weeks Postop! And yes some of the cherry blossoms are FROST burned

 First of all Philip thanks you for all of your judgments about his awesome surgical dressings. He likes knowing that his excellence is noted.(If all the nursing students were this much of a diva I think the professors would go mad!) 

I can hardly believe it is two weeks post op! I still sometimes wake up and think I am still awaiting surgery….likely this will be one of those PTSD type things.  Also I will get back to the good Kaiser docs when I feel up to it. And like say “Hey if you knew how to do the correct diagnostics when someone’s head is falling off,  you could likely make more $$ fixing it!” No actually I will tell my favorite docs what the correct diagnostics said and also what the EDS docs here did to repair it. They were so anxious that I get care and I am sure they will want to learn from this.

Pain is slowly getting better.  It is definitely better than the immediate post op suffocating pain. 

Swallowing:  I worked pretty hard on swallowing yesterday which of course made my neck and shoulder spasms pretty bad before bed but I am getting closer to coordinating the swallow process. I can get Speech Therapy help again after we get back to SR.  

Overall strength:  I am doing short walks and evaluating my HR and endurance to see if I can manage the plane trip. I am SO anxious to get home to my own bed and coffee pot and chairs.  I can walk SO much straighter than I could before surgery! I was so ataxic and it is good not to run over people around me involuntarily.  

Healing:  I think healing looks great as much as I can tell from the photos that Phil takes.   I had that infection after my c4-6 Cage and that set me back quite a bit.   This trip is looking good w’o infection at least so far. 

I will keep napping and then walking in between naps and attempts at eating/drinking and tomorrow we see Dr. Naranayan to get cleared to travel.  (If you have ever had surgery or illness like this you just cannot stop yourself from napping!) 

Cherry Blossoms.  I wasn’t going to be able to go and see them in the basin anyway but even around the hotel and the University they got wilted after the very cold weather (in the 20s but felt like colder due to wind) and frozen.  It is such a shame because they are just gorgeous.   I will see more as we drive to the EDS clinic but you can appreciate them just the same! It has been so cold since we got here that I have to remind myself of the sweaty heat of the DC area when Kirk lived/worked here. 

Potty Mouth: Nope. Still there. Isn’t going away. They did not find a pod of poopy words in there when they were doing surgery they just found a lot of nursing words and also then some NoDAK words and things like that. So they just left it as is. I am relieved or maybe I would have zero words to use? We just don’t know do we?  No we do not.