Friday was not a good day. I got started early with a run to Home Depot and then I made a piece of trim for the old master bedroom bathroom (the top of the half wall in that bathroom — the old one was of MDF and was water damaged — I replaced it with poplar). Janie was going to get started cutting in the old master bedroom, and she had to go downstairs to get something. She was about three-quarters of the way down the steps when she experienced an intense pain in her left knee at 8:30. It was so intense that we decided within minutes to get her to the emergency room, thinking that a ligament had torn (or something equally serious). She hobbled to the car, and X-rays were taken at the ER of the hospital near Rebecca and Ronny’s house. The X-rays showed that no bones were broken, but that she has an arthritic knee (something we already knew). The physician’s assistant prescribed Percocet and said that she would have to get an appointment with an orthopedic doctor early next week, since it was already Friday morning. He gave us a referral and told Janie to take it easy over the weekend, after she had had an IV dose of Dilaudid (which had little effect on the pain, but did make her sleepy) followed by an oral dose of Dilaudid. We didn’t think that she could wait until next week for an appointment, so I called and was able to get an appointment with an orthopedist at 12:20 in Kempsville (an area of Virginia Beach). We had a quick lunch with Rebecca and the kids at their house, and then got to the doctor. He said that he felt that there wasn’t anything seriously wrong with the knee (nothing requiring immediate surgery or hospitalization), and gave her a shot of cortisone in the knee. Janie was beginning to feel some relief by evening, and by Saturday morning was feeling considerably better (though she still had to use crutches, and probably will for the next few days, at least). She has a followup with Dr. Bewley (the orthopedist) on Tuesday afternoon. I think it’s notable that Janie was being seen by a physician’s assistant within an hour of the incident; that she never saw a doctor at the emergency room (though the physician’s assistant seemed very competent); and that she was able to get an appointment with an orthopedist within a little over four hours of the incident. I wonder how Obamacare is going to make things better or worse — the predictions are “worse”, and I don’t know how we could have received much better care (except to have a orthopedist come to the ER and do the same things that were done in the doctor’s office a few hours later).
We got home by about 2:30, and I painted the old master bedroom’s bathroom and then started cutting in the old master bedroom. I got about half of the cutting in done by 6:00 or so, and then got tired. I grilled a couple of burgers for supper, and we ended up going to bed early.
On Saturday morning, Janie was feeling remarkably better, though she still needed to use crutches to get around. She stopped taking the pain meds, mostly, and was able to cook breakfast and dinner. I grilled burgers for lunch. Sarah and Ruby came down in the afternoon, and will be here for a week or so while Matty travels to Australia — he’ll be able to travel from Sydney to Brisbane to visit Matt and Rachel this coming weekend.
I resumed cutting in the old master bedroom at 6:45, including the closet, and then rolled that room and the closet before lunch (which was a little late). Here are photos of the master bedroom and its closet, painted.
In the afternoon, I worked on restoring the old master bedroom’s bathroom — I replaced the towel bars and TP holder, and cut the baseboard so that the vanity could be installed (the bathroom had a pedestal sink originally). I also made a trip to Home Depot to get the supplies to connect the toilet and sink, and carried some of the bifold doors to the first floor.
We’re now concerned about completing this house before we go to Australia. We expect that Janie will have impaired mobility for at least the next week or so, and the doctor said that she shouldn’t do any work for at least two weeks. That’s a lot of labor lost that we were counting on. We’ll see how it goes.
The bedroom walls look great. that is about the same color I had my master bedroom and bathroom painted . Janie I’m so sorry about your knee sure puts a damper on things when you can’t get aro un d love Mom