Hi Alison. How's Fran today?
The morning wasn't good. She called me early (well like 8AM) and asked me to come up as early as I could, which by calling me at 8AM meant I would still be there at the same time I'd planned on.
However, she is gauging her performance based on how her last surgery went and evidently you can't do that. Every joint is different. This one is more difficult than the last. Actually she was supposed to do this one first, but she scratched her shin raw to scabs and bleending, so they switched to the right instead. The Dr. said today that her left knee was really bad, the bone was very soft and they had to remove quite a bit and put in even more metal to compensate. I don't think I posted the pictures of her other knee here, just on FB, but she had about 4-6 inches of metal placed inside her knee to compensate for the bone they had to take out. We'll see the X-ray in about 12 days and will be able to see if they put more metal in this knee than the other.
Her therapy went badly this morning. She cried a lot and was in a lot of pain and felt that she was not living up to her "goals" based on the last surgery. Everyone keeps telling her that she can't compare the two, but she keeps wondering why she isn't doing as good as she did before. We were supposed to have lunch in the exercise room with all the patients, but luckily everyone was feeling nauseous and didn't want to go to the room because Fran didn't think she could sit in a chair. So the two of us ate our crappy hospital food meals in the room.
I was able to get online with the aircard so I kept myself entertained while Fran dosed (as usual) in her chair.
However in the afternoon she kicked butt, of course it was at a cost of pain. It really hurt her, but she walked three times as far as she had throughout the entire time since she has been in recovery. I don't know if I explained to you gals about the Joint Replacement Center, but they have this theme "Cruising to Recovery". They have a board on the wall where the patients can see their progress there are various "Ports of Call" when you leave from Long Beach, starts with Catalina, then Ensenada, and based on the number of feet you walk cumulatively they move your magnet forward.
Right now she has cruised through Catalina and is on her way to Ensenada. Which means that she has walked over 150 feet (I think). Normally joint replacement program people would go home on Thursday, and she did in July, but I think they will be keeping her overnight one more night and then let her go home. Anyways, I'm still lonely and exhausted from spending all day at the hospital...and eating bad food...
Our internet at home was going slow and then it went out for three days 
. Wish I were there to help out. Just take care of yourself as well and make sure you eat healthy. I know you can't do anything about the bad hospital food - but get lots of rest, keep your water up and plenty of fresh fruit. 
