Hey Mr Moderator,
How about an update on that damaged knee
Guessing you are back home managing to hobble about
Hope there is ample progress.
John
Thank you very much for asking, John!
Previous threads:
In the hospital
25 responses |
Started by metmike - April 22, 2025, 8:50 p.m.
https://www.marketforum.com/forum/topic/111436/
https://www.marketforum.com/forum/topic/111437/
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If you'd asked me earlier in the week when I was having a temporary set back, my answer might have been different.
According to my physical therapist and doctor, I'm making incredible progress especially considering that I'm 69 years old.
The great progress is that I'm pushing extremely hard with the exercises and also doing lots of things, like working outside doing basic stuff with my brace on which also resulted in the set back.
I've gained around 5 pounds of water weight(not fat) that is giving me kankles, especially my right side from fluid pooling/building up to the point that my skin feels like it going to burst.
Part of this is probably related my kidneys and heart not working as well as they used to.
I have Ehlers Danlos, along with a Lupus like autoimmune disorder and severe osteoarthritis with lots of complications. The ruptured quadriceps tendon was caused by the Ehlers Danlos, which is a collagen disorder that weakens tendons and other connective tissue.
Much better to rupture tendons(I did this to my left distal bicep tendon 4 years ago) than to rupture key components related to my heart functioning.
Or to hit my head hard which would have caused a deadly brain bleed because my blood takes a while to clot even with tiny bleeds.
Anyways, I was making great progress until this last weekend/early this week with several days of set backs (including a loud, painful pop under the knee cap when I first stood up) which meant fighting to maintain a positive attitude.......then yesterday and today were back on track to positive progress!
The hope is to get to 85-90% of what that leg could do before the injury. At least so that I can use the Jacob's Ladder again.
My right shoulder needs a replacement surgery so I can only use my legs but its an AWESOME way to do cardio work and I usually go for 30 minutes each time with enormous benefits.
Losing that because of the knee would be devastating but I'm very hopeful.
I've also gradually been able to bend the knee a bit more enough to get back in to my portable steam sauna.
This is the one device that anybody and everybody can use at home and should use at home.
The benefits are huge and all you do is sit inside of it!!!
Re: Instead of statins for high cholesterol!
By metmike - Dec. 19, 2023, 9:33 p.m.
mm how is your recovery going?
Thanks for asking, cutworm!
I almost forgot about your post.
Things improved pretty fast the first 6 weeks but progress has been extremely slow during the past 6 weeks.
At this point, I will guess that a recovery to 80-85% is reasonable by the end of the year but if its a bit better than that then I will be happier.
It's limited my outdoor work so much the last 3 months that I'm way, way behind and can't see catching up.
I have 3 big trees to cut down and need to put sealer down on our black top driveway, after making lots of patches. That on top of everything else which I'm catching up on.
The trees can wait The cracks and holes in the very steep driveway will become unmanageable large if I don't do this in the next few months. It MUST be done before Winter.
This hot, rainfree weather spell would have been perfect.
Regarding trimming back all of our landscaping, bushes and trees.
I did MAJOR pruning the week before my injury and the increase in CO2 (which accelerates the rate of growth of woody stemmed plants by 50%) has caused everything to grow incredibly fast.
The most growth ever for just 3 months.
I had a lawn cutting and landscaping business in middle/high school and can remember how fast stuff grew then in the late 60's and early 70's.
You're old enough to remember those days, right?
I know mcfarm is.
Nothing grew anything close to as fast as it does now. Not complaining because its part of the awesome climate optimum but is especially challenging with this injury and me being almost 70.
Grass, WEEDS, bushes, flowers, trees. Its great in some ways but requires a ton of extra work to keep up.
It's all good for crops, however and food gets top priority with 8 billion people to feed on the planet as well as animals that eat plants and other things that ate plants.
hey mm
i've unscientificably have been observing the greening of the planet.
Bigger faster bulkier growth all around- and pretty sure its not my imagination.
Ive been attached to agriculture all my life and its has accelerated for sure
john
Great observation, John!
Hard to miss for people that work outside growing things the past 5 decades and I’m not just talking about technological advances and more fertilizer in the soils.
Or for people that work in landscaping and other related businesses.
Anybody that has mowed their lawn for decades can tell!
And they say that this beneficial CO2 that is greening up the planet is killing it.
You have to be in complete denial or not spend any time outside and just read/see and believe scary predictions on computer screens or from sensationalized news stories to miss what’s actually happening to life on our planet to think that.
Obviously, that’s a lot of people.
The Beauty of Earth
30 responses |
Started by metmike - Feb. 25, 2025, 10:20 a.m.
here's hoping for a full recovery
But you know as we get older maybe it's time to mentor a kid in the landscaping business. I know that you do so much for the chess program. But sometimes us older people can't do all we used to do.
Just what I'm trying to do on a small basis.
There comes a time to turn over the reins to the younger ones.
Thanks for those wise words, cutworm!
It would kill me psychologically to pay people to come to our property to do work that I know that I can still do.
There are a bunch of bricks that have come apart on several levels of the steps to our front door/main entrance, for instance.
I just can't imagine paying somebody to come out here and apply the mortar to fix them.
I need to get on that job ASAP while we have the warm weather with us and I can still do it.
I forgot to mention that I have Ehlers Danlos, along with having 24 different surgeries (that required going under an anesthetic), many of them related to this condition and FOR SURE what caused my right quadriceps tendon to rupture this time.
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/ehlers-danlos-syndrome/symptoms-causes/syc-20362125
https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/ehlers-danlos-syndromes/
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The good news is that its not the MOST severe type. However, if I suddenly vanish here and it lasts more than a week and MarketForum is still up, the most likely cause is a rupture to a major artery, heart valve or a rupture to a blood vessel in my brain and I'm dead.
Ironically, when I fell this time, I curled my upper body/head forward to avoid hitting my head on the bricks when I fell backward(which would have caused a brain bleed that killed me) and this caused my lower body to be thrust upward to compensate and thats what ruptured the quadriceps tendon.
For 99.99% of people that would have not been a problem but my tendons have been weakened by this disease.
My skin tears with the slightest bumps or scrapes and I bleed excessively for several minutes after that. Even the slightest brain bleed for me will likely be fatal.
So the consequences of this fall could have easily been death.
I actually practiced this technique below in my mind many times the past year and it probably saved my life. This is excellent, potentially life saving and serious head injury preventing advise FOR ALL Of OUR READERS!
Please, don't just read it 1 time and forget about it. Read it numerous times and act it out in your mind repeatedly if you don't have a mat and enough agility to practice it at home. No kidding, I did exactly what the image below demonstrates when I fell instinctively because I KNEW HOW TO FALL FROM THE PRACTICING IN MY MIND THE PAST YEAR and it stopped the back of my head from slamming into the bricks but ruptured my right quadriceps tendon at the same time. It very likely saved my life.
https://www.pinnacol.com/blog/fall-safely-step-by-step-guide
I got a ton of outdoor work done this weekend (though paying a temporary pain price) and learned something profound after decades of using mortar for repairing brick structures.
We have a huge brick patio, 3 brick porches with steps and 3 long brick sidewalks that haven't held up well since they were put down before we moved to this house.
Mortar mix in the bag HAS A SHORT SHELF LIFE!!!!
I've been using mortar mix that's several years old on numerous occasions, which might explain its failure several years later.
On Saturday, I opened 1 of 2, 60 lb bags or mortar mix, after preparing the area to fix the damaged mortar.
It was around 5? years old. It was also almost like a solid rock. I was able to break off pieces and crush them to dissolve in water but then thought "maybe I should check to see if its still good after solidifying to this extent!!
I had this problem previously but not as bad and used the mortar those times anyway. It worked but was it compromised?
So I went inside and looked it up.
HOLY COW! One should NEVER use mortar mix this old!
I immediately went to Menards and bought a 60 lb bag of fresh mortar mix and did the job, knowing now that it should hold up with maximize strength.
I'm still keeping it moist for a couple of weeks, like the previous mortar repair jobs to slow the curing rate which maximizes the strength.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCjNHJNhES4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOwhj_bdY6c
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So the point is…….never use mortar mix that is from last year or older.
its actually cheap stuff with a 60 lb bag only $8.
If you’re laying or repairing bricks for instance, with preparation, then mortaring, then keeping it moist for a week…….why try to save a few dollars on compromised product and waste a dozen hours of work to get a crap result?
A chain is only as strong as the weakest link!
The cost of the product, mortar is probably the cheapest but the impact is by far the greatest.
You can be the best brick layer in the world but crap mortar will make the job crap. I'm NOT the best at mortar repair but have done a dozen or so jobs and wondered why some of them are still lasting from 10+ years ago and others lasted much less than that(including this one which is a redo from around 5-7 years ago).
I didn't do anything different but the age of the DRY MORTAR MIX WAS different each time. I can't remember my purchase dates or how old the mortar was each time but can recall having to break up some clumps in stored mortar before.
It seems very wasteful to not use up stored mortar mix but this is one of those cases when that old mortar mix is bad because it won't cure properly, even though it seems ok. The only way to tell is to use it and it might not show up for years and learn the hard way when reading this and knowing before hand is learning the EASY WAY!
The internet is awesome and we live in the best time of human history to take advantage of this learning tool as well as many hundreds of other wonderful benefits compared to previous generations.
One bad thing is that our youngest generations take all of this for granted.........not facing the tremendous adversities that our ancestors faced which developed character, crisis managing skills and appreciation for the most basic things.
Today, for instance having a cell phone at all times is "dialed into" a basic need for most people in our rich country.
200 years ago high tech communication resulted in news taking MANY WEEKS to travel around the world. Today it happens in seconds and the amount of information being communicated/available is more than a zillion times greater.
200 years ago, having enough food to eat every day was often a luxury in this country. It still is in some places of the world but the average person living in our rich country rarely is without food.
They didn't buy mortar mix at the hardware store. They made it themselves on the job, as they built their own homes, grew their own food and had to do everything themselves.