Recently in Doing Category

Knee surgery - part I
Knee surgery - part II
Knee surgery - part III

On Tuesday night, I was changing the dressing on my knee and it started to bleed, from both the top and the bottom of the incision. Not gushing, but more than I would expect from a 12-day old wound. (I wound up with a drop on my right index toenail that looked a lot like nail polish. I couldn't bend over far enough, and had to get Carole to clean it off for me. She's a trooper…)

I wasn't sure if I needed to see Dr. Panossian about it, so on Wednesday morning I called and left a voice mail for Dawn explaining the situation and asking her to call me so we could talk about it. She called me back late Wednesday – understandably, I'm not sure she checks her voice mail that often — and said I should come in to get it looked at by the doctor. It was too late, and he does surgeries all day on Thursday, so I made an appointment for first thing Friday morning.

When I got there, he looked it over, and didn't look especially happy about it. He gave me a scrip for some anti-biotics, and told me to keep it "actively dry" until I came back for a re-check in seven days. More Saran wrap for me, which isn't so bad except for pulling the tape off my hairy leg.

I had to call Rebecca to tell her I was on anti-biotics and couldn't keep my donation appointment for Monday.

Knee surgery - part I
Knee surgery - part II

Justin, who's been my driver while my knee is in the immobilizer, took me back this afternoon for my post-op appointment with Dr. Panossian. It was nice to be able to take of my knee immobilizer for the first time in eight days.

Dawn cut off my dressings, and I got to see the incision - top to bottom, along the middle of the knee cap, closed off by twelve staples. The dressing stuck to the top one, so Dawn left it on for the time being.

The doctor came in and looked it over, and seemed happy with the results. He asked if I had any fever, redness, vomiting, etc., and I was happy to say no to all of the above.

I asked him about the tear he repaired, and he said it was in the lateral retinaculum. He cleaned it up a little, and stitched the tear together. I mentioned that the area on the outside of my knee felt a little numb, and he said it would feel that way for a few weeks or months, and that I'd always have a small dead-feeling spot in the area — it's just part of the deal, and I'm okay with it.

He wrote up a scrip for physical therapy, and said he'd see me in six weeks for a follow-up.

He asked Dawn to remove the staples, and all but one of them came out without drama. The last-but-third didn't want to come out, and I squeaked a bit when it did, but otherwise there were no problems. There was little blood from the top and the bottom of the incision, but Dawn cleaned it up, and then put on some steri-strips to hold things together for a couple of days. I have to wait until Sunday before I can shower.

When Justin picked me up out on Congress St., I decided to get in to the front seat, and had a lot of pain bending my knee for the first time in a week. I'm going to need that PT.

Last night I sent e-mails to Tony and Adam, my NFHS and ASYO referee guys (respectively) to let them know I'm out for the season. With the current environment at work, it's probably best if I lay low, and not work the weird schedule needed to cover high school game assignments.

We drove thru The Hat for lunch/dinner — I had a pastrami, fries, and a diet coke, and Justin had his usual - chili cheese fries with tomatos and a large root bear.

Here's a follow-up to my knee surgery story, started in Knee surgery - part I

The pre-OP visit went smoothly, and I was all set for surgery on August 5th. I was told to report at 12:30pm for 2:00pm surgery, which isn't fun when you have to fast beforehand. The night before, I had a big bowl of cereal at 11:55pm.

Carole drove me to the Huntington Outpatient Surgery Center, across the parking lot from Dr. Ackerson's office, and we got there right on time. After some brief paperwork, they led me back into the prep room, where I disrobed and put on a standard hospital gown. I laid down on a prep-bed, where a great RN took my vitals and hooked up an IV line. (For most hospital IV's, they really want to use a vein on the back of your hand, but my veins there just aren't setup right. We know I have great veins inside my elbow, so we finally wound up there on my left arm.)

I had a short visit with the anesthesiologist - a great guy - and a brief, business-like stop by Dr. Panossian, who had his game face on. Sometimes you can just tell by looking at someone that they're good at what they do, and I got that feeling here.

They wheeled me into the OR, and had me scootch over onto the table. It took a few tries to get centered in both X and Y. The OR nurse secured my arms to some outriggers, and that's the last thing I remember…

I woke up around 3:25pm in the recovery room, with Carole by my side. It took an hour or so before I got all the way back. Carole said the surgeon had found a tear while he was working on the bursa, and fixed it with some stitches. She wasn't sure what was torn, but I figured I'd find out at my follow-up appointment.

At the end of surgery they had put on a knee immobilizer, so I had to use crutches to move into the changing room to get dressed. They wheeled me out to the car, and I skooted into the back seat, with my right leg up across the seat.

Carole drove me back home, and got me situated. I have an appointment in eight days to check on things, but until then I'm stuck at home, with my leg straight.

Carole, as always, took fantastic care of me. Thanks!

I just made a peanut butter and dill pickle sandwich. Yum.

Back in April, 2009, I tripped on a bad section of sidewalk in downtown Glendale, walking back to my office from 24-Hour Fitness. I landed mostly on my right knee, and had a couple of days of minor soreness and bruising, but no big deal.

In July, 2009, the top of my knee began swelling. There wasn't any pain (or very little), so I didn't think to much of it, but after a month or so my family convinced me that it was time to have it checked out.

I went to see the family orthopedist, Dr. Ackerson, up by Huntington Hospital, and he diagnosed it as pre-patellar bursitis. First we tried compression wraps, which helped a little, but not enough. Next he aspirated it — cutting a 5mm incision and squeezing out the gunk. It was fun when he stuck some foreceps up into the incision to root around inside. He inserted a medicated wick, letting the end hang out to make it easy to remove and to prevent the incision from sealing up.

I had to go back literally every business day for almost two weeks, but the treatment seemed to work, and the swelling stayed away - at least for a while.

Back in May, I noticed the swelling was returning, and by late June I knew I had to go in to see Dr. Ackerson. He had told me last year that if it returned I would need to have surgery, and when I went to see him he told me it would have to be done. I asked about doing it arthroscopically, and he referred me to one of his partners, Dr. Panossian, for a consult, and sent me across the street for an MRI.

Dr. Panossian checked the MRI, and said it wasn't possible to do the surgery arthroscopically. We scheduled a full-up, regular bursectomy, and all that comes with it.

I had to go see my GP for some pre-surgery checks - EKG, chest x-ray, blood work, etc., and that all came back fine. (I had just had blood work done a few weeks ago, but the pre-surgery check has to be within 30 days, so I had to repeat it).

Over the last few weeks, the knee has gotten sore, especially after a short walk or doing chores around the house. It's not really pain, but more like the feeling you get a day or two after exercising too much.

I go see Dr. Panossian for a pre-surgery review next Tuesday, and the surgery is Thursday afternoon. My knee will be immobilized for a week, so I arranged to work from home for the week following the surgery. I'll have physical therapy afterwards, and WILL be ready for my Fall Equinox SaddleSore ride on September 21st.

Fun times.

Here's a new shaving oil recipe I brewed up this morning.

• 1 ounce Jojoba oil
• 3 drops orange oil
• 3 drops lemon oil
• 1 drop tea tree oil

I used one of the some small dropper bottles I got from The Container Store. I'll try it out on Tuesday.

The tires on the Escape are getting pretty worn - there's lots of tread left, but they're really cupped, and that causes an annoying, low-pitched hum at speed.  Above 80mph, the car shakes something fierce.

Last week, I ordered a set of tires from TireRack, an online tire retailer that we've used for tires for the Corvette.  I used their year->make->model selector, and it said the OEM tire was 235/70R16, so «in spite of the disclaimers on their website telling me to double-check the actual tire size on the car», I ordered a nice set of General Grabber tires, and had them shipped to the local Lexus dealer, where my brother-in-law is a service writer, and gets me discounts on mounting and installation.

Carole took the car to the dealer yesterday, and after they got it up on the rack they discovered that the car actually uses 225/70R15 tires.  Not good.

I called TireRack today to see what my options were, and they were very helpful.  The nice lady in customer support was able to waive the shipping charge on the replacement tires, and get me a discounted rate to ship the wrong tires back.  The guy in sales helped find me a great set of Kumho's in the right size, and had some good advice on which way to go.

All in all, they turned my mistake into a fantastic example of excellent customer service.

The key fob for the Escape has been a problem for a while now. It's so old and worn that it takes two or three (or eight, if you're Carole) to get the doors locked or unlocked.

When I bought the car back in 2002, the dealer included two extra key fobs, but someone had told me you had to go to a Ford dealer and pay big money to get them programmed. Carole is going to be using the Escape for some work in the area, and decided it was time to pay the price to avoid the frustration of the old, balky fob.

To get an idea of exactly how much it was going to cost, I did some research and found that that 'someone' was wrong. Anyone can reprogram the key fobs -- the big expense is replacing the ignition key if you only have one. (If you have two paired keys, anyone can do the programming, but with only one you have to go to a specialist; this is to prevent a valet or car wash from duping your key while they're holding it.)

There's a trick in programming the key fobs: once you put the car into programming mode by turning the ignition key on and off eight times (leaving it on for the last cycle), you have to program each fob in the same cycle, by pressing a button on the fob. You can't just add one new fob, and have the previously programmed fobs still work -- you have to reprogram all the fobs (up to four) that you want to work.

The new fob is quite an improvement over the old one - and now we have two working spares too. Carole is happy.

I normally don't think a whole lot about shaving, but sometimes it must be done. A few years ago, after becoming dissatisfied with the hassle, expense, and discomfort of shaving cream, I tried out shaving oil, and found that it gave me a superior shave in all respects. I had less irritation, and since the oil didn't hide my face like shaving cream, it was easier to trim out around my beard.

I ordered the shaving oil from a site on the 'net, and the only downside was the expense -- a single one ounce bottle cost around $18. But, it lasted about 5-6 months, so overall it was much less than even plain-wrap shaving cream. Over the years, I used about 8 bottles.

The biggest problem was leaving the bottles behind in motel rooms while traveling. I left an almost full bottle in a Motel 6 in Clarkston, Washington last summer, much to my chagrin.

My last bottle was nearing the end, so I went on the web site to order more, and found that they were closing down the business.

I found a few other places that had similar products, but the prices were even higher. Before I ordered, I did some research on making my own shaving oil, and found a few good resources, including this video from a guy in England.

Shaving oil is made up of a base oil, plus small amounts of various essential oils in varying amounts. You can adjust the essential oils as desired to come up with the mix that works best.

I priced out the ingredients, and found that for about the cost of a one ounce bottle of shaving oil I could buy all the ingredients to make ten bottles on my own. Even if the first bottle turned out to be a flop, I'd be no worse than even.

I started using the exact recipe from the video:

• 3 tablespoons grape seed oil
• 5 drops peppermint oil
• 5 drops tea tree oil
• 5 drops eucalyptus oil

I've been using it for a couple of weeks now, and am mostly happy with it. I still get a nice, close, comfortable shave, but I may change the mixture on the next bottle -- maybe 3 drops of each of the essential oils, with 4-5 drops of lavender added.

I woke up this morning around 7:15am to the sounds of heavy rain. Here's what I found in the backyard:

Here's what caused it:

My sister and I enjoy the occasional discussion/argument about grammar and punctuation. We're a little weird that way. We use Gregg's Ninth Edition as the arbiter.

Today's discussion was about the proper way to punctuate a sentence that has two parenthetical elements. I had an e-mail where I wanted to have a long clause in parentheses at the end of the sentence, but I also wanted to wrap one special word in it's own parentheses. In the past I've put the outer clause in parens, and the inner clause/word in brackets, but I couldn't find it referenced in Gregg.

My sister called me this morning, and we talked it out. She agreed with me on the brackets, but we both wondered why Gregg didn't have an entry for it. It turns out I had stopped looking a little too early.

Gregg's sections on parentheses are 224-226, and my problem isn't referenced there. However, at the end of 226, there's a list of related references, including Parenthetical elements within parenthetical elements: see ¶297.

Here's the full text of ¶297:

When a parenthetical element falls within another parenthetical element, enclose the smaller element in brackets and enclose the larger element in parentheses.

Now, being the logical programmer type, I took issue with this. I came up with an example where the smaller element was the outer one, which would mean, according to Gregg, that the block should open with a bracket. After some additional debate, my sister and I agreed that we did not agree with Gregg, at all really. Our opinion is that the outer element is enclosed in parens, and the inner element is enclosed in brackets, regardless of their length. We even got some moral outrage going at the end.

And so it goes...

I have the Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar (SPOGG) feed on Google Reader. My sister and I enjoy the odd grammar discussion, and SPOGG has a lot of fun posts about the problems that big-name web sites and newspapers have with grammar, spelling, and editing.

Last night, I went to the Los Angeles Times web site for some updated weather info, and found an interesting typo. I sent it in to the nice woman who runs the SPOGG site, and this morning she posted it:

Why newspapers need copy editors

The story was especially relevant to Jason:

Authorities lift mandatory evacuation orders for homes in the Paradise Valley area of La Cañada Flintridge, where many people staid put.

From time to time I play a flash-based basketball game on the onlinesgames.com site. Normally I'm in the 40th percentile - around 200 out of 500 players. Just now, I made the top 5 for the first time ever. The best I've had before was 30th. Click for the full-size image.

Life got busy last night, so I didn't get to bed until about 11:45pm, with the alarm set for 6:05am. I was sleeping soundly, or so it seemed, when a boom shook the house, like a plane crashed into the roof or something. The time projected on the ceiling said it was 4:05am.

A thunderstorm cell passed right over the house. There was almost no delay between the flash and the bang, and the whole bedroom got really bright, even through the heavy shades we use on the outside of the windows. Each set had about three or four closely spaced booms, and there were five or six sets. The rain didn't start falling until the third strike, and it was heavy, but not the heaviest we've seen.

After it passed I slept until the alarm went off, way too soon...

After a long fight, my dentist (the fantastic and highly recommended Dr. James Crabtree in Arcadia) and I decided that my #3 upper right molar could not be saved. A botched crown some years back did the damage, but what can you do?

Dr. Ardary, an excellent oral surgeon in Arcadia, extracted the tooth long ago, and late in 2008 he did a sinus augmentation to build up the bone structure in my upper jaw so that it could handle the implant.

Today, he placed the implant. In ten days the stitches come out, and in three to six months he'll do some more, relatively minor work to prepare it for the crown. Dr. Crabtree takes over then, creating a mold for the crown, then installing it. Implants are more like car repair than traditional dentistry, but I think they are much preferred over bridges.

via Auto Insurance.org

During the Iron Butt Rally, I developed some static Google Maps showing the various bonus locations and checkpoints. I started with the Leg 1 bonus locations, once they were published on the IBR web site. I scraped the necessary data from the PDF file, wrote a Perl script to reformat it, and the map was born. Click here for the IBR maps.

The powers-that-be didn't publish the bonus locations for legs 2 and 3 until after the rally was over, but when they did I created maps for those legs as well, along with a single map showing all the bonus locations, using different color push-pins for the different legs.

A couple of weeks ago the SPOT people began publishing the tracking data in an XML format, which made it a lot easier to download the data. I've been using the Spot Trip Manager website to display maps with the tracks for my trips, but I had a few issues with some of the formatting, and wanted to store the data on my own site for future use. With the new XML format, I saw that I could set it up to work just the way I wanted it.

For the last couple of weeks I've been building a trip viewer to manage and display my SPOT tracks, and yesterday I converted all of the SPOT maps on the tcfjr site over to my new viewer.

I use a Perl script running in a cron job every 15 minutes to download the XML data from the SPOT site. The script parses the data, and inserts any new spots into a MySQL database.

The trip viewer is a PHP script that builds a Google Maps API v3 page to display the spots. For multi-day trips I can set it to display markers X number of times per day, which makes the overview map a lot cleaner. Polyline support was just added to V3 earlier this week, so lines are now drawn between every spot, even if the spot's marker is suppressed, so the overall track can be viewed.

I have a basic trip creator CGI script in place, but mostly I dive into the phpMyadmin page in my hosting account's cPanel to create and edit trip definitions.

It's been a lot of fun learning about the Google Maps API, and there's always more stuff to add to it. Yesterday I added a trip listing page, and added support for embedding maps in other pages using iframes.

For now it's only for my own use, but the infrastructure is set up to support multiple accounts. The current Spot Trip Manager is great for most people, so unless something changes with STM I will use my setup just for me.

Back in January, I tripped over a ledge in the sidewalk on Brand Blvd. near my work, and fell onto my right knee. It hurt, and had a bruise and some abrasion, but after a week or so it seemed to have healed up normally.

When I got back from my motorcycle ride to British Columbia near the end of June, I noticed that the knee was swollen. I had no pain or even discomfort, but the top of the knee cap was noticeably puffy — about the same diameter as a tennis ball, and about an inch deep. I didn't think much of it, thinking it would go down on it's own, and I didn't think about it much until mid-August.

Justin was going to see Dr. Ackerson, the orthopedic specialist, about his collar-bone. Everyone in the family, except for me, has been going to Dr. Ackerson for years, pretty much since Jason broke his wrist playing U-12 soccer. Justin said he'd ask Dr. Ackerson about my knee at his next appointment.

Dr. Ackerson told Justin that I should have it looked at promptly, and said he was the man for the job. I called up the next day, and got an appointment scheduled for the following day.

Now, Dr. Ackerson has been around forever, and has seen it all, so when he told me to wrap it in an Ace bandage for a week to see what happens, I did as I was told. After the week was up, he said it the swelling had reduced about 10%, and told me to keep it wrapped for another two weeks — he was reluctant to open it up unless absolutely necessary. The biggest hassle was his instruction to avoid exercising - I had lost about 25 pounds in the last couple of months, and was walking almost every day.

I came back last Wednesday after the two weeks were up, and it had not gone down much more at all. Dr. Ackerson shot my knee up with something to numb it, and made a small incision in the skin right above the knee cap. A combination of semi-clear fluid and blood came out when he squeezed my knee. His R.N. Carla — who puts up with a lot from the doctor — bandaged me up, and I was told to come back the next morning. I couldn't get the dressing wet, so no showering allowed.

On Thursday, he decided to go in with no numbing first. He stuck the tip of a Kelly clamp into the incision, and dug around in there for half a minute or so, then he squeezed more gunk out. Decidedly uncomfortable. Again, I was told to come back the next morning. Again, no showers allowed.

On Friday morning, he numbed me up again, did his probe with the clamp, and had Carla swab out a sample for a culture. Then he inserted a wick - basically a medicated strip 1/4" wide and about 4" long. He packed it into the incision, with about an inch hanging outside. Because of the long weekend, he told Carla to tape up the dressing really well, and I was asked to return on Tuesday. Still no showers.

When I woke up Saturday morning, the knee was really sore. I think he did an especially good job with his probing on Friday. A few Advil and some rest made it manageable. We went to Rick's house for a family birthday thing, which was fun.

Sunday and Monday were uncomfortable. The soreness in the knee itself was mostly gone, but the tape was irritating my skin a lot. I wasn't sure how the wick would work out if I re-dressed it myself, so I grinned and bore it as best I could.

Tuesday morning's appointment was bright and early at 8:00am. He numbed it up, lengthened the incision from 1/4" to about 1", did his sadistic probing with the clamp, and inserted a new wick. He told me to let it drain for 10 minutes, but I clot pretty fast, and it was stopped up within 2-3 minutes. Carla used only a single piece of tape to hold the dressing on, and hooked me up with more gauze and tape so I can redo it myself if need be.

When I go back on Thursday, they should have the results back on the culture they took on Friday. Based on the results of the culture, I'll either be good to go, or I might need surgery to remove the pre-patellar bursa. I really hope I don't need surgery.

Follow-up: Thursday was more of the same - clean-up, probing, inserting the wick, re-dress, and come back tomorrow. He said it's looking better, and he doesn't think it will need surgery, but he can't know for sure until the culter comes back.

Follow-up 2: On Friday, Dr. Ackerson first had them take an x-ray, which came back good. When he looked at it, he said it looked good, and told Carla to re-dress it without any probing or anything. He said they got the results back on the culture, and there was no infection. He told me to take it easy over the weekend, and if things look good on Monday we'd be done, except for check-ups every couple of weeks for a while. I've been working hard to take it easy, and am really looking forward to taking a real shower on Tuesday morning.

I woke up this morning with a spring in my step, looking forward to a long but wonderful day of riding up to Yosemite for my last Dam Tour stop. It didn't work out that way. Instead, for reasons I can't go into here, I spent the day at home, frustrated at myself and annoyed with the world.