Saturday, April 9, 2016

Windy, windy in Iowa



25 degrees at Clarinda, IA at 7:30 am on this Saturday morning.
Phyllis thinks the bushes that have budded along the deck probably will not bloom this year as this probably nipped them.  It was a good night to sleep indoors!
  We drove to Omaha Thursday—very high winds all day.  Was reported 25-35 mph with gusts to 50 mph!  Really glad we weren’t pulling our travel trailer.  We did lot of grocery shopping at the Council Bluffs Aldi Grocery store, then ate lunch at Panda Express and some more shopping at Sam’s and Walmart.  My appointment with the orthopedic doctor had been at 1:30 pm, but they called and advised the doctor was running late with surgery so to come in at 3:00 pm.  Got there about 2:20 pm and waited until almost 4 before was sent to a room, had x-rays taken and a PA visited us and finally, close to 5 pm Dr. Goebel came in.  I had a partial knee replacement in 2006 and then Dr. Goebel had “repaired” it in 2008, finding the glue had come loose on the top portion of this 1/3 partial knee replacement.  At that time he stated he thought it would be good for at least 6 years and I took it to mean it would be worn by then.  He explained Thursday that actually when a partial is done, due to wear, the other portion of the knee becomes worn in about 6-8 years and then a total is due.  In my case, the original surgery was not for a worn “bone-on-bone” situation, but rather was to remove some “honeycombed” bone from the lower end of the upper leg bone.  At any rate, he said there was no wear showing on the remaining portion, but stated arthritis was visible in this knee, but not in the other one.  He said that it is possible some of my pain could not be from torn meniscus, or the arthritis, or scar tissue that builds up following this type of surgery.  He felt that some good would come from doing an arthroscopic surgery to clean up any meniscus damage, scrape what arthritis he could and that I would get relief from this.   This sounded better than the total knee replacement I had thought might be coming. They have set up to have this done at 7 am on May 3rd at Nebraska Orthopedic Hospital at 144th & West Center in Omaha.
Will put in here photos from Clarinda Circle 8 Square Dance Club’s 60th Anniversary on April 5, 2016.  We were on the road so couldn’t attend, but think some readers might find them interesting.





Saw this “half & half” at the grocery store.  If it has two halves, shouldn’t it be called a “whole”?















We went from the Doctors office to Villisca, IA where we met Mary Jo and Oliver Herzberg at D&D’s for the Thursday night fish fry, then on to their place for some “Hand & Foot” cards.
















This is their welcome sign at their front door.  Oliver has several antique Allis Chalmers tractors.







 I picked up a lot of sticks and small tree branches from the yard yesterday, got the hot tub set up and reconnected to the pump (kind of surprising after 15 years) and filled with water and the pump turned on.  It has no heater, warms the water by recirculating the water in small copper pipes around the pump and heats the water by the heat from the pump.  It will take a couple days to warm up to 100 degrees, and then it just runs periodically.  Was 86 degrees when I looked at a bit ago, stepping over some ice that was water from a hose I had left on the deck.    I went uptown and bought a new kitchen sink faucet and installed it.  We had put a new one in our Texas home a year or two ago that had a spray head come out of the main head and liked it so got a similar one here.  Think Phyllis will appreciate it.
 



On Wednesday evening we had returned to the First Methodist Church choir practice.  They will be singing for a few more weeks before retiring for the summer.





More later, Lynn

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