How's that baby doin'?

It's about a week away until this little guy will be born. Wishing the best of luck to Mike and his wife. From the looks of the ultrasound the baby's got a curious case of facial hair and a grill.

Alpine Initiatives

The new Alpine Initiatives site is up and running! Now you can follow them on their journey to Kenya as they have already arrived and check out the progress on the Amani Community Home. It's come a long way since they left last summer. The community has done a great job in working on the home itself and the organic garden which is producing food! They've also done clinics on bee keeping which will add to the versatility of the community.



It's been amazing to see this non profit start and to watch it grow into what it has now become. I was about to post some before and after photos from A.I.'s blog, but I didn't want to spoil it...so go check it out!!

Instead of going out to lunch, getting coffee, or spending money at the bar you can donate that towards Alpine Initiatives and help the community home project meet completion in time for the school year. Every little bit helps and you won't even notice that money is gone. Spread the word!

Nice one!

Here's another one from Awkward Family Photos dot com.

College

As of yesterday, I am officially a college student. With all of the free time I've got on my hands, as a result of this injury, I figured I should put it to good use. The whole college thing was intimidating after taking a 5 plus year break, but I'm excited about it.

World Religions is my first course. Religion, being so pervasive throughout cultures all over the world, is an interesting subject to me. Personally, I had no formal introduction to any religion in my life and am not a religious person, but I am super curious, perhaps for this reason.

The first religion that we're looking into is Hinduism. I'm going to start my reading now...

A.C.L.

Last Thursday I went in for my second surgery on my knee. As I've written before about my first procedure (medial pattelofemoral, meniscus, and micro fracture), you may have read that the two surgeries require different healing methods. For the ACL you can be bending it and working on range of motion basically right out of surgery, but with the other stuff that I had fixed I was on crutches for 10 weeks and was only allowed to bend my knee 30 more degrees every 2 weeks.

My first surgery lasted 5 hours and I ended up staying the night in the hospital since I woke up around 1 AM. The following 10 weeks were difficult. I couldn't drive and was uncomfortable most of the time. I endured a lot of painful P.T. visits and all in preparation for my second surgery. It's strange to have surgery and rehabbing just to have the second. I would visit my P.T. three times a week and work out in the pool or at the gym every day.

Right around the time when I started to walk normal and feel normal was when I was going in to get a new ACL. On Thursday morning I was booked for a 7:30 AM surgery. Apparently, when I woke up I convinced the Dr.s that it would be better for me to stay the night rather than drive the hour and 15 minute road home and then back again on the 3rd of July. It was a good move.



This is the hardware that came out of my knee. It's from my ACL surgery from 2 years ago. I'd like to know how that holds my knee together. The Doc informed me that I have 2 screws in this time.



I was far from hungry on Friday, but I had to eat something so that they could give me pain pills rather than using the I.V. drip. I should have eaten more. I felt super nauseous and had to drive home from South Lake to Squaw, which gets me car sick even if I'm not on narcotics. Luckily I was able to hold everything down until I was home and in bed. I puked a total of 8 or 9 times. They were violent throw ups too. I felt like I had a migraine and that my head was going to explode. Thankfully that only lasted until the night and since then I've been sleeping really well and I haven't actually needed to take pain pills. ACL surgery seems really mellow now compared to my first one. If you get a nerve block you don't feel a thing and if not, the pain only lasts a few days and then you feel so much better every single day.



Standard I.V.



This is the drain that they removed from my knee on Friday morning. I didn't really feel much when they pulled it out. I had a nerve block, so I wasn't in too much pain.



I'm stoked in this picture because I feel like I am now on the road to recovery even after the 3 months of rehab just to make it to this point.

Did you know?

A Spot Of Bother

My most recent literary delight came to me from Ingrid. As I am patiently awaiting my next surgery, she has brought me an armful of books to occupy my time and it is no surprise to me that the first book I sat down to read has been a refreshing step away from The Omnivore's Dilemma.

A Spot of Bother, with it's quite humorous dialog, was a much needed change of pace in my readings as of late. I hadn't even looked at the book jacket, just sat down and started to flip pages. I knew nothing of Mark Haddon prior and had no idea that I would be looking forward to reading this book while I was at P.T.

A Spot of Bother is a story of a damaged family falling apart and taping things up again. Haddon paints, not the most pretty picture, of a dignified man trying to go insane politely (after discovering a lesion on his hip) while the rest of his family attempts to put the pieces back together.

"Eventually you realize that other people's problems are other people's problems."

Haddon, articulately, kept me engrossed while the dialog flipped and flopped between family members and their takes on their "dying father." If you've got the time on your hands, Mark Haddon's, National Bestseller, A Spot of Bother is a highly entertaining read.