Pre surgery...

A week ago Wednesday I went up to Stanford to have a bone scan to see if my wound had reached the bone. Last Thursday I went up to Seton medical center to see Dr. crew, Seton is supposed to be the best place to be if you have a wound. Dr. crew said that I needed to get flap surgery so I went up today to talk to the surgeon and it looks like I’m going to have flapped surgery on Friday. They cut a teardrop shape piece of skin from your knee to your thigh, work the muscle up over the wound and stitch it closed. They put you on a clinitron bed, a bed that is filled with moving air and sand so you don’t have to change position, for 6-8 weeks. In order to heal the wound like this it would take six months in bed and it will always be a place to open up a really easy.

Canine companions for Independence has agreed to take Robby back while I’m in the hospital. That way they can continue working with him and exercising him and when I get out I will be able to get him back and we can start living a great life. Except for this last week I have only been able to get up for a couple of hours every other day and the entire time was dedicated to exercising and working with Robby, we have become really close and this is going to be very hard.

I had just introduced Robby to the dog around the corner, Bean, and they got along really well. Both are puppies and love to play. On Sunday I have been taking Robby to Bayview elementary school for a play date with my primary care doctors puppy, Bella, and another couple couples puppy that we met over there, Bonnie. They all get along so well and it is He so much fun to watch them play. I am sure that when we come back home we will resume.

Happy New Year...

The wound vacuum starts out with a piece of foam over the wound and a hose that sucks all of the air out of the foam and consequently vacuums and tickles the sides of the wound to keep it stimulated for faster healing.

On Wednesday I went to Stanford to get a bone scan to see if the bone was infected, the wound is now tunneling around the bone. There is absolutely no sign of infection, it is just a precaution. My appointment at Stamford was at 8 AM and as we were leaving at 6:30 AM the wound vacuum started beeping which means somewhere the hose is kinked or being crashed, none of these we can check in the van while I am fully dressed so we just try to ignore it. At 8:00 AM they gave me a shot and decided they were going to take the bone scan three times. After the first time of taking me out of my chair, putting me on the scanning table and then putting it back into my chair they decided that two times would be enough. The other bone scan they were going to do at 1 PM, the whole time the wound vacuum is beeping. By the time we got out of there, got home and got me into bed of course the wound vacuum was working perfectly. I woke up the next morning to the wound vacuum beeping and after calling and trying several things they decided to send out a visiting nurse that afternoon. The nurse replaced the dressing and everything worked perfectly. I’m going to Seton Hospital to see their wound care specialists, they are supposed to be the best in this area, and then I will know for sure how often and how long I will be able to beat up in my chair. My biggest concern is Robby, all of the time I am up in my chair is devoted to exercise and working with Robby and I just hope that it’s enough.

On Sunday I’m going to take Robby to meet Bela, my primary care doctors dog. They got her last Christmas and she is one year old. She is a bundle of energy, very friendly and I know will give Robby a good workout, I am so excited about it. I’m going to get a tennis ball launcher so that I can play with Robby but it’s nice to know that he will be able to have a playmate. Hopefully I will remember to take pictures.

Merry Christmas...

On Monday a few weeks ago, David my brother from Georgia, came to visit. Stanley, my brother from Modesto, came on Tuesday and we had a really nice visit. We mostly just hung out and went to get Santa Cruz slug sweatshirts at UCSC campus. It is always great. It looks like for a while I’m only going to be able to get up for a couple of hours a day. My pressure sore just is not getting any better and now wound care called in the visiting nurses and a treatment called the wound vac. It is pretty much what it sounds like and it is supposed to heal the wounds about 50% faster. It is a couple weeks later and I’m still pretty much confined to my bed except for a couple of hours every other day. All of my time out of bed is dediated to Robby, exercising and practicing commands. He loves Santa Cruz and so fun to see him prancing around sniffing the air. Christmas was AWESOME. I have the best family in the world. They brought everything in my room so that I could watch everybody open their gifts because I had to stay in bed. Corinne was going to stay here with me for a week but she got an offer from a friend to go skiing, I can see her right now shushing down the slopes. Tomorrow I have an appointment at Stanford, a bone scan, and on the seventh I have an appointment at Seton medical center, they are supposed to be the best wound care facility around. Unfortunately I had to reschedule my follow up to team training next month. They were very understanding, they are the greatest group of people at CCI. I worked it out with the visiting nurse so that I can take a shower right before she gets here, the no shower thing was driving me crazy. She calls me about an hour before she’s going to be here and we just take off the wound care vacuum and then she puts it back on when she gets here.

It's been awhile...

On Monday David, my brother from Georgia, came to visit. Stanley, my brother from Modesto, came on Tuesday and we had a really nice visit. We mostly just hung out and went to get Santa Cruz slug sweatshirts at UCSC campus. It is always great.

It looks like for a while I’m only going to be able to get up for a couple of hours a day. My pressure sore just is not getting any better and now wound care called in the visiting nurses and a treatment called the wound vac. It is pretty much what it sounds like and it is supposed to heal the wounds about 50% faster.

I am pretty much confined to my bed for the last couple of weeks so there really isn’t a lot to blog about. A lot of doctors appointments and thankfully a lot of visitors, I don’t know what I would do without the visitors.

Yesterday I took Robby over to pet Smart to get his picture taken with Santa. As soon as he got up next to Santa he just melted, Robby is such a flirt. As soon as Santa started petting him he just wiggled all over the place and laid down, it was so cute and the pictures were so adorable that they gave me a couple of them, they are only supposed to give you one. I think the cutest thing was when Santa started singing to Robby, the tune was Santa baby but he made up his own words... scratch me Santa, scratch me right there all the day long, scratch me Santa right there Oh yeah that is the place, scratch me Santa right there and a little lower please... it was so adorable and Robby LOVED it.

The Lions Club and the Christmas party...

Last Wednesday I was invited to the Lions Club in Los Gatos to meet all of the wonderful people who helped me to get my service dog, they really are a very caring group of people. Of course Robby loved it because people were lining up to say hello to him, once you start loving on Robby it is often necessary to get a restraining order... he just loves attention. They have a Lions Club here in Santa Cruz and they asked me to become a member so I can show them the side of having a service dog that they don’t often see, I cannot wait to get involved in that. They gave me an award for speaking in front of everybody, it was so awesome. There was somebody there from the Los Gatos paper so I’m anxious to see the article they wrote, hopefully they will send me a copy.

On Sunday we were invited to a Christmas ornament exchange party at some friends in Los Gatos. After the Lions club luncheon on Wednesday we went downtown to pick out some ornaments for the exchange. We had a really good time and I came home with the ornament that I wanted, people were stealing each other’s like crazy. They had a new puppy there that was just a little bit smaller than Robby and they ran around and played almost all the time that we were there, they had so much fun and it was so neat to watch them. I had never seen Robby play like that, I hope they can play again. Robby doesn’t have any playmates here, he slept so good that night.

On November 8th I was invited to Canine Companions for Independence to be matched with a service dog. It is a very long and detailed application and definitely worth it. I went to the abilities Expo in Santa Clara a couple of times and CCI had a booth, when I went to ask them about getting on the list it was several years long and as I recall they were not even taking names anymore at the time. I went online and found a private trainer. They trained the dog within e-collar and although I HATED correcting her with it it did not work anyway, by the time I got my hand on the button to correct her it was too late... I quit using the e-caller. She was about four years older than I was told and she had a lot of health problems so she just became my spoiled aggressive pet. I love her very much and lost her to bone cancer in January 2009. One afternoon I was going out to lunch with my mom, brother and his kids and a restaurant that we were going to eat at denied us entry because of my service dog. Usually I would try to stand up to the guy so that next time it won’t be so hard on another person with a service dog but since I had my family and we were hungry we went across the street to Chili’s. While we were standing in line waiting we started talking to a couple of ladies at as it turned out one or both of them belong to the Lions Club. Jan said that she would like to help me out with getting a service dog. I thanked her and said goodbye and really didn’t think that I would hear from her again, within a week I had an application for CCI. I filled out the application and within a year or two I had an appointment to the CCI campus to be matched with a service dog. The process involves filling out a very detailed application about me, my needs, where I live... after the application there is a telephone interview, a personal interview, a tour of the CCI campus and the final interview. I was extremely nervous about staying on the CCI campus for two weeks, I have really never been away from my house for longer than a weekend. I made list after list and check them several times and finally I was packed and ready to go. I had two of my caregivers picked out to go with me, one the first week and another the second week. Check-in at CCI was 5:00 PM and I didn’t want to be late so of course I was there at about 2 PM so we drove around town to see what was there. The rooms were very nice. There was three beds, a huge closet and our own very accessible bathroom. They supplied all the medical equipment that we needed, hospital bed, hoyer lift, shower chair or bench... The first night that we were there we met the caretaker and he assured us that if we need anything else all we had to do was ask him, he was true to his word and a very sweet man. I wasn’t used to the schedule but I really liked it. We had to be in the training room by 9 AM and there was usually lectures, demonstrations and hands-on experience and we were usually out of there by 4 PM. The volunteers came in and made us an excellent lunch every day at noon, these people are awesome. I started to get to know the other people in the dorm and everybody was so sweet and willing to help and just really an awesome group of people, they all became just like family. Because the trainers already knew the personalities and the capabilities of the dogs we were pre-match with a dog in three days and were responsible for taking the dogs back to the dorm and taking care of them. The dogs were already trained and we were there so that they could train us. Of course every match was perfect and these dogs are impeccably trained. Of course the two weeks flew by and before I knew it it was time to for graduation, it was an awesome experience and I’m sad to know that I was leaving my new family and going back home. We got to meet the family that raised our puppies and they were all such loving people and so proud. One of the team trainers was a war veteran wounded in Iraq. We all got a motorcycle escort from the campus to where we graduated, that was so awesome and I know it made me feel very special. it was so cool the way they were so synchronized stopping traffic and escorting us.

I am leaving this morning for CCI...

On Friday Teresa, Heather and I went to see” the men who stare at goats”, it was HILARIOUS. Kind of weird and off-the-wall but absolutely funny.

Yesterday I stayed in bed but the day went by fast because it was the last day to pack everything up, I wonder what we forgot? I always make a bunch of lists and sweat at this time I will never forget anything but I always forget something, it’s not the end of the world if I do because there is a Costco six minutes away from CCI and they always have whatever I forget.

I tried to make myself go to sleep early last night so that I wouldn’t be up all night thinking about everything, even though I closed my eyes and try to shut down my mind it still went crazy. Two weeks is a really long time to be away from my house, I’m just not used to it. I am getting to the point where I can go for a cruise and not feel the urgency to get back home, I wish I knew what that was.

My goal is to leave at 10 AM and I think it takes about three hours to get there. I want to get everything unloaded and then check to see how much room I will have to store groceries in the kitchen and then go to Cosco. Teresa and Heather made some soups, stews and even some chili to freeze and they all look really KILLER. I just want to get some fruit for the mornings, a spinach salad and some bread, Heather made some really awesome chicken salad.

I’m going to bring my cell phone but I’m going to be without my computer and my TiVo, I’m pretty sure that when I get back there will be no more room on TiVo.

I’m still very excited about meeting my new best friend and I’m going to try really hard to let no one, including myself, spoil him or her rotten.

Uncle Dick said that he would come over in the morning and fill up the squirrel feeder for me So I guess I thought of everything.