April

Howdy everyone! No progress on the house to report, I’m sad to say. I spoke with Wyatt about 3 weeks ago and he agreed to help for a few hours, to square up the frame and get the first and last sets of rafters up, securing the ridge board. I thought maybe I could manage to set the in-between rafters. (Haha, no way, but it sounded good at the time). Since then we’ve had some pretty crappy weather on the Saturdays, but this Saturday looks really good…warm and not windy!  And I’ve decided that if I don’t hear from Wyatt this week, I’m going to go ahead and hire a couple guys to do the roof for me. I REALLY would like Wyatt to do it because I know he’s really good, but I just can’t wait around forever. Summer is going to be here soon and I really don’t want to be stuck having to live in this hot-box of a camper.

Last week I got PRP (Platelet-Rich-Plasma) in both knees. It’s half the cost of stem cells and seemed to be the best way to go right now; it contains several different growth factors that should prod my own lazy stem cells into going back to work and making some new cartilage. That’s the theory, anyway. They take some of my blood and spin it in a special centrifuge, then draw the platelets off the top and inject them into my knees. I always have a hard time getting blood drawn; my veins see a needle coming and they somehow manage to squirm away from the needle. It happens every time. Two people tried and it took several sticks. They needed to get 60cc of blood but gave up once they got 50cc. It turned out okay; they ended up with about 25cc of platelets and they only needed 10cc to do both knees.

So now it’s a waiting game; it takes a couple months before we’ll know if it’s working. In the meantime, my knees are pain-free! I’ve even been walking for about a mile most every day, which would have been impossible a couple months ago. I think it’s from wearing the braces and also the anti-inflammatory supplements I’m taking. I had to go off them for about a week when I got the PRP and boy, did I find out how well they worked! My fingers, neck and back all started hurting. I’m back on them now and already feeling better. Sometimes it takes more than one PRP treatment but I’m hoping I’ll get lucky and only need the one.  I’m seriously thinking about getting PRP treatment in my poor neck in a month or two also. Before I went off my supplements, it was feeling really good. Now it feels really bad again and I’m back to getting the weekly homeopathic Traumeel injections. I’m sure glad I have that to fall back on; it really does help a lot. But a more permanent fix would be nice.

So. Fixed the knees, now guess what? Kidney stone.  Yeah. I’ve been having that awful back/flank pain for three weeks now. For some reason it never hurts overnight or in the mornings; it starts up around noon every day, so I have to get out and get my chores done early.  I’m just waiting for the darn thing to work it’s way out, which I hear is terribly painful but really, I’m ready for it. I’m so tired of the unrelenting back pain! It seems like there should be a comfortable position but there’s just not. I just hope I don’t end up in the ER with it; who can afford that?! I checked and that lithotripsy procedure that they use to bust up the stones costs $5,000-$8,000! Gulp!  I don’t usually miss having electricity but this is one time I’d love to have enough power to run a heating pad; I hear that helps with the back pain. I guess I’ll buy a hot water bottle, but that’s a lot harder to lay on than a nice flat heating pad.

The weather is behaving, at least this week! Last Friday we got enough snow to  cover the ground, but it melted quickly. We’re starting to get temps in the 70’s, and around 40 at night. Nice.  Here’s a photo taken yesterday when they scraped the road near Big Lake, AZ which is at 9200′ elevation. Still a bit of snow up there!

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