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@sabra wrote:
@gardenman wrote:I'm here and I've got Internet again! Whoo hoo! Health-wise there's not a lot to update. Saw my endocrinologist who ordered a DEXA scan which showed I have osteopenia, but not osteoporosis. I'll see my ortho doc next Wednesday (jury duty permitting) and see what he says. I've been summoned for jury duty on Tuesday, but hopefully I won't get picked. The leg feels the same, maybe a bit worse on occasion. While mowing the grass a couple of weeks ago I had a sudden sharp pain higher in the thigh which was probably one of the screws holding the plate in place getting tweaked, as there's nothing broken where that pain was, but there are screws in the area. Everything feels about the same and I'm closing in on ten months since the break. Ten months is a lot longer than I'd anticipated this lasting.
The good news is I'll be up and ready for the second season of celebrity BB. A poster on Jokers suggested Bonnie Hunt as a cast member which would be neat, but I suspect that despite her being a fan, she'd decline. We should get some good rumors on who'll be in the house in December. The good news is no one's career was ruined by being on the first season, so it might be easier to cast season two. The bad news is it didn't seem to help any of their careers.
Thanks for updating us. It sounds like things are starting to look up a bit (internet) and I hope all goes well with that pesky femur. Hopefully the ortho doc will have good news or some help for you next week. 10 months is a long time to deal with that. Good luck and keep us posted.
Glad that you will be posting for Celebrity BB. Bonnie Hunt would have been good on there. I'm anxious to see who will be. Were the ones on Season 1 really thinking it would help their careers??? If so, they were dillusional.
Apparently Tyler moved in with Angela and there were rumors of an engagement. I didn't see that coming because I thought she was using him.
ETA: I'm assuming your SSI came through which will most certainly help I'm sure. They sure took their time about it.
Yes, I got the SSI. Nothing with the government is ever fast and easy however. They held everything up for six weeks while they verified I still had an artificial eye. The state knew I had one back in 76/77 when I applied for a rehab scholarship, but needed to verify I still had one. My hospital records all show I have one and there were four hospitalizations this year alone, so you'd think that would be enough, but no. They needed to independently verify it. I guess they thought the eye might have grown back? Who knows? Anyway, the SSI came and I'm back on reasonably sound financial footing again. I've got my Internet back and I'm no longer reliant on my phone's data. I was going through about two gb's of data a week on the phone just doing fairly minimal stuff. Now I have a whole terabyte of data I can use each month. That's much better.
The leg may be getting an extra treatment added with Forteo, an anti-osteoporosis drug, that breaks down old bones and grows new bone. It's somewhat effective in nonunion fractures, but it's also expensive and nonunion fractures are an off-label use for Forteo, so there's debate as to whether the insurance will cover it or not. If I'd had osteoporosis (as many hemophiliacs do) we'd have had a better shot at getting it covered, but instead I have osteopenia. We'll have to see what happens there. My endocrinologist said if they wouldn't cover it, she could supply me with office samples for a couple of months and that should be enough to see if it would help or not. She's insanely busy however and I don't see her again until February. Femurs are somewhat notorious for nonunion issues, especially with complicated fractures like this. I'm doing my part with the daily application of the Exogen bone healing system and taking the vitamin D supplements.
I just want it fixed for next year's gardening season. My front porch was bare this year and it drove me crazy. Here's a pic of how it should have looked.
Sadly, it was bare this year. I'm planning on rebuilding the porch window boxes this year and adding an automated watering system so it can look like that even if I end up back on crutches or in the hospital again. The folks at Rubbermaid make 110 gallon stock tanks (aournd $70 each at Tractor Supply) that I'll be putting on either side of the porch to catch rainwater from the downspouts. They'll be plumbed together to give me about 220 gallons of water to draw on for watering purposes. Both boxes will be plumbed together and a timer and pump will be added to one of the stock tanks. A drain will have an electronic valve on it synchronized with the timer on the pump. Once or twice a day, the drain valve will close, the pump will come on, filling the boxes partway up with stored rainwater, excess water will drain from an overflow back into the stock tanks. The pump will then shut off and let the plants soak up any water they need for about ten minutes, then the drain valve will open and the unused water will drain back into the stock tanks.
The hanging baskets and planters on the railing, along with pots on the porch will get a stock drip irrigation system. (Which only costs about $40 complete.) Ideally they'll get fed from the same stock tanks, but I may have to use the hose connection for that given the height difference. Pumping water up ten feet or so through 1/4" tubing takes a pretty powerful pump and I'm not sure I want to invest that much in a pump when I can just use the faucet.
I need to rebuild the planter boxes anyway as the ones you see in the picture were built by me about twenty years ago with pressure treated plywood that had a lifetime warranty. Suffice to say the lifetime of the pressure treated plywood is apparently twenty years. The plywood on the south side is rotted pretty badly. This time around I'm planning to use the newer PVC trim boards for the easily seen parts and concrete backerboard for the rest. Both materials are largely indestructible. I'll also be lining the boxes with fiberglass for extra strength and water-proofing. They should outlive me quite easily that way.
I should get more than enough rainwater out of the two downspouts to keep the stock tanks as full as I need them to be. The downspots are fed by about 460 sq ft of roof area which should give me about 286 gallons of water for every inch of rainfall (give or take a bit.) The boxes will hold about ten gallons each and will be slightly sloped so the water all runs to the drain on the far left. Unused water gets recycled and the plants in the boxes historically use about four gallons a day. (I've been watering them this way for about twenty-five years now and that's the typical usage.) That gives me about a fifty day supply of water if the stock tanks are full. Any rain in that fifty day window helps to keep the tanks full. The overflow will be on the far right and will be about an inch off the floor of the boxes. The boxes will then fill to an inch deep on the far side and about two inches (give or take a bit based on how much slope I give them) on the near side. I'm sure there will be glitches (timer issues in pariticular as I need them synchronized properly) but I think I can make a nearly fully automated system that will let me keep my front porch looking like I want it to look.
I've got to rebuild at least the south side box anyway, so this gives me a chance to automate the whole thing and simplify my life (other than timer headaches.) Keeping the drain valve and pump more or less synchronized will be the real challenge, but I'll figure that out as I go. The rebuilding will be my late winter/early spring project. I'll acquire the needed supplies here and there as I go and then dynamite the old stuff and toss up the new in itme for the late April/early May planting. It should be fun.
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