I'm more broken than you

[Drunk Monk]

You and Biden both wearing the boot. Same foot?

Speaking of boots...

[Greg]

Spider Bite! At least I think that's what it was? Did I get super powers? No. Over the course of a few days, I grew a golfball size cyst on my back on the lower left side. Fortunately, I also pulled/strained a muscle in my lower right back. This meant that no matter what side I slept on it was uncomfortable.

I did show the spider bite to tQ. She was horrified.

To complete the story, I have to talk about my cat Ishtar. He got scratched on the side of his head. The scratch became infected and that side of his head swelled to the size, again, of a golfball. Since his head is smaller, it looked horrific. But since he is feral, there ins't a lot I could do for him except to make sure he got plenty of food.

Over the weekend, his cyst popped pulsing out red colored puss all down his face and back. Again, I tried to get some neosporin on it but he would come near me after I first touched his head for the clean up.

The tie-in/synchronicity? My cyst popped as well. I had red colored pus flowing down my back and drenching my shirt

[Dr. Ivor Yeti]

Ewwwwww!

[Greg]

What?

[Dr. Ivor Yeti]

[gagging noises]

[Greg]

Baby.

[Drunk Monk]

Feral of Dorian Greg

[cranefly]

Cystchronicity

[thatguy]

Dr IY - when your leg is better, you have to step up your cryptozoology game



--tg

[Dr. Ivor Yeti]

Ugh. Squatches are attention whores and lacking in couth.

[King Bob]

There's no musical instrument that I know of that has a name that sounds anything like "Yeti."

[Drunk Monk]

Yueqin Yeti? 

That's all I got.

[Dr. Ivor Yeti]

Yetis, ahem...*yodel*.

[cranefly]

The clock is ticking.  Then again, I suppose the clock is always ticking.  In the current case, I'm referring to my hips, or lack thereof.

I recently went in to get them x-rayed again and afterwards had to fill out an online questionnaire.  The very first question almost made me give up.  It had to do with pain level: 0 being none, 10 being worst.  I put down 2 and felt guilty about it.  1 would be more accurate.  Or even 0.  With me, pain has never been the issue.  But orthopedists only perk up if there is pain; otherwise, they view you as an idiot for bothering them and strongly recommend no action.  As for insisting on surgery, I'm very hesitant to push an orthopedist into performing an operation he's just disrecommended.  It seems a recipe for uninspired work.  But I finished the questionnaire and then scheduled a video appointment with an orthopedist, going with a new one, the earliest available, and that was last Friday at 7:30 am.

He gave basically the same interpretation of the x-rays as I'd heard in the past -- right hip is bone on bone, left hip not far behind.  He asked me to walk away from the laptop and then back.  There was only room for two steps.  Still, he felt that was enough.  Then he asked me a surprising question.  Did I get a sense of one leg being shorter than the other?  I'd never even thought about that.  It's like asking someone if they have hair on their knuckles, and then telling them that checking for hair on the knuckles is a sign of insanity.  Why would I even think about one leg being shorter than the other?  And I said no.

He begged to differ.  He feels my right leg is shorter.  Which in hindsight makes perfect sense.  Without the cartilage in there, the hip sets lower.  And it explains some other stuff.  I've been going for long walks with LCF, but it's a struggle towards the end, and it tires me out unduly.  And here's the kicker.  I've developed painful corns on both feet.  I've never had corns.  I don't do corns.  But they've appeared on the right sides of both feet, which a shorter right leg would cause.  (Needless to say, I've stopped the long walks.)

Anyway, this orthopedist is Russian, and I could make all sorts of jokes about that, but I won't.  Because this is a serious matter.  He sees no benefit to me putting off surgery any longer and feels that both hips should be replaced.  Recently the wait list had grown to a year, but now it's down to 3 months.  He believes doing one hip at a time is the better approach, maybe separated by five weeks.  Though there's no firm date yet, he believes that in May he can Putin the right hip, and in late June Putin the left hip.

So anyway, the clock is ticking.  I need to get a lot projects done around the house before May, and start cleaning up my diet.

[King Bob]

Good luck! (Is that the right thing to say?) Recovery seems to be surprisingly quick on that surgery. My mother had hers done in her 80s (and was a bit feeble beforehand) but was up and around in no time. Then she forgot she ever broke it, but that's another story.