Today I went and saw the doctor for my six week post-op appointment.  My knee is doing quite well and I got the all clear to remove my brace and to stop using my cane.  So as of today I’ll be going oh-natural and walking the way I’m supposed to.

I’m still planning on using the brace for sports and for the next few weeks when I’m leaving the house but all and all I’m feeling pretty good.  I’ve been walking around the house tonight with no assistance and it is kind of odd; in all honesty it is like walking when I first got out of the hospital - I guess its all part of the healing process for my knee.

Later in the day I went to Physio where I managed a 120 degree bend for the first time.  That is a REALLLLY big milestone for recovery and I’m glad I managed it before returning to work.

On returning to work - I did my first half day at work today after my therapy and doctor appointments and I’ll be slowly getting back into the swing of things over the next few days.

Needless to say I’m exhausted after a long day and I’m sure I have a few more of these before I’m back in a groove.

Evan linked to something that linked to this new blog by The Boston Globe’s Alan Taylor.

He’s running three stories a week featuring fascinating photos on all kinds of topics.  Some of the interesting article’s he’s done have included photos from Mars, Flooding and storms in the US and beyond, fascinating photos from Iraq, etc.

It is worth checking out.

The new version of Firefox is live today and they are trying to break a Guiness World Record for most downloads in a day.

So if you’ve been looking for the latest and greatest in browser technology today is your chance.

Check out getfirefox.com to get in on the record attempt and get a mighty fine upgrade to your internets experience.

I’ve uploaded a bunch of new photos to my Flickr account.

What I’ve added:

• Father’s Day 2008
• Post Surgery (Some graphic post-surgery stuff)
  
• May Long Weekend 2008
• Family and Other May 2008
• Paige May 2008
• Family and Other April 2008
• Paige April 2008

We also picked up a Canon Rebel XTi which you’ll notice in the Father’s Day pictures is capable of some killer photos…

Today at WWDC Steve Job’s announced that 22 countries would be getting the new 3G iPhone come July 11th.  I frantically hit rogers.com (who I already knew was getting the iPhone) and apple.ca to see if Canada was one of the lucky countries.  They were a bit behind the ball but eventually apple.ca was updated and confirmed it!

The official announcement reads:

Rogers Communications and Apple® today announced that the highly anticipated iPhone™ 3G will be available in Canada on July 11. iPhone 3G combines all the revolutionary features of iPhone with 3G networking that is twice as fast* as the first generation iPhone, built-in GPS for expanded location based mobile services, and iPhone 2.0 software which includes support for Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync and runs the hundreds of third party applications already built with the recently released iPhone SDK.

All I can say is I am super excited!  I am trying to convince Tammy to get us both one of these and drop our home phone service.  Who needs it anyway!  Bring on July!

Man oh man; For many teenage boys (myself included when I was a teenage boy) living “the dream” involves laying in bed with the possibility of doing nothing all day.  I’m here to state for the record that that shit is overrated.

I have now been confined (more or less) to my bed for two and a half weeks and I’m pretty close to going completely insane :D  During the week I’ve had work to distract me but even then with percocets you cannot concentrate enough to complete all tasks so work stuff has moved forward slowly.

I’ve spent A LOT of time reading up on Warhammer Online; At this point I’m probably one of the few people who’ve seen pretty much every single video about WAR on youTube.  I’m super excited for the game, but I’ll make the details on that a subject of another blog post.

As for my current condition and where I’m at in recovery: I am attending Physio therapy three times a week and it has been going extremely well.  This past Friday I even managed to pedal a bike for eight minutes which was one of my major milestones in getting movement - it marked my return to 90 degrees of rotation in my knee.

Pain wise it is still there but when I am idle it is almost non existent now.  I’m only dealing with pain when I try and push my limits (which I’m doing quite a bit of trying to speed along the recovery) so that isn’t so bad.  My biggest frustration with pain at the moment is that I cannot sit.  If I sit anywhere for more then a few minutes my knee locks up and it feels like someone is pushing tiny spears into my knee; it really sucks.  More then anything that is what is preventing me from returning to work and getting me out of this bed (laying down is really the only position that is comfortable for any amount of time).

This weekend I’ve been experimenting with slowing down my pills and its actually gone fairly well.  One of the major things that’s been screwing with my ability to entertain myself is these pills so the sooner I can get off of them the better.  I can’t focus enough to even play video games.  I login to an MMO or I fire up Team Fortress 2 and I can only stay interested for about 5 minutes - its depressing (literally).   The only saving grace has been youTube (mostly Warhammer videos as I said) and watching The Wire for the hundred millionth time.

I’m hoping that by this time next week I’ll be able to say I’m feeling much better and considering going back to work.  Cross your fingers for me.

My surgery went well and I got home from the hospital mid day yesterday.  The doctor did more then just an ACL reconstruction so the pain and recovery stage is a touch harder/longer/more painful than I anticipated.  I currently am running a fever (have been since Friday) and have quite a bit of swelling.  A bit of a blow by blow:

Thursday i entered the hospital a little nervous but ready to go.  After six years (almost to the day) of dealing with the fall out of the original injury and dealing with the pain I was ready to have this over and done with.

Check in at the hospital went smoothly.  We had just missed someone freaking out about not getting a private room - just our luck.  So I registered for my surgery and provided my insurance information so I could apply for a private or semi private room (I got neither - ended up in a four person ward room  because they ran out of rooms- ahh well).  After checking in we went up to the surgery prep area and I got out of my clothes and into the hospital robes.  At this point it really hits home that you are about to go in for surgery and I found myself walking around saying to myself “it’ll be a long time before you can walk like this again”.

My time finally came and I was wheeled into the surgery area where I ended up having to wait for a bit.  My surgery was delayed by 30 minutes because it took longer to clean up after the previous surgery then anticipated.  When I got into the room I was surprised at how big the team was taking part in the operation.  I also thanked my lucky stars that I live in Canada and didn’t have to pay for this - looking around the internet it looks like I would have paid around 35k in the US for this operation.  My team consisted of 3 doctors, a med student and 2 nurses.

While they were getting everything setup I lay on my back and the anesthesiologist came over and started talking to me.  Next thing I knew I was out cold.

I started to wake up slowly but surely and had very little pain coming out of the surgery a few hours later (surgery took the full slotted two hours).  There was a lady who was dying (she died that night while getting an MRI) and the doctor was talking to her and the conversation was interesting so I focused on that to try and force myself awake.  After that conversation ended I focused on the clock and had a “wow it can’t be 5pm” argument with myself in my head.  At this point I was more or less awake and shortly I was off to my room.

I didn’t mind being put in a ward room - my four neighbors when I first moved in were great.  The first night Tammy, my dad and my grandparents came to visit me (my mom was watching Paige).  Tammy stuck around until after visiting hours and her keeping me company really helped me get adjusted to m temporary home in the hospital.

The first day was pretty much pain free courtesy of morphine.

Day two I got my introduction to morning stiffness - when you don’t take meds over night PLUS don’t move at all your knee is going to rebel and do some screaming.  It took a couple doses of morphine to “catch up” to my pain and get rid of the stiffness that morning.  Once I had control of the pain the physio guy came and got me out of bed and walking for the first time.  Let me just say - it wasn’t easy!  He also showed me a bunch of exercises that I need to do a few times a day to get my movement back.

My doctor dropped in shortly after my walk and gave me a run down of how the surgery went.  Basically when he opened up the knee he discovered it was even more of a mess then once believed.  So he fixed my ACL and then rebuilt several muscle groups and cut out some cartilage that was “flapping around in there”.  Apparently he even tried to save me the cartilage but the nurses must have thrown it out (boo - I would have liked to keep it).  So he did about an extra 45 minutes worth of surgery in what essentially was a complete rebuild of the muscles in my left knee.

We also discussed recovery times and I think I might have to take more time off from work then originally anticipated.  I had planned on likely being off for 2 weeks but he wants me off an absolute minimum of four weeks with a preference for six weeks off(!).  I still need to figure all this out but ya - wow a long, slow and painful recovery is ahead of me.

Late day two one of my room mates checked out (after trying to get them to give him more and more drugs - was entertaining) and his replacement was less then desirable.  We knew we were in trouble when the new room mate’s family showed up hours before he got into the room and started making a tonne of noise.  You are only supposed to have 2 family members in the room at a given time and he had at least 6!  They were young, noisy and super annoying.  We didn’t realize that was just the beginning.

When he finally did show up he was yelling and screaming in pain and it got old about as fast as you’d expect something like that to get old - in about 10 seconds.  We found out the next morning when the nurses checked his morphine why he was in so much pain… he had only taken 7 doses of morphine the whole time he was there since his surgery (we were all on self medicating morphine machines - basically the machine limits how much you can get but you press a button and it administers your dose through your IV).  One of my room mates checked himself out of the hospital a day early because of this guy - he was just brutal.  I was lucky enough to have my bed right beside him! Go me!

Day three my third and final day was a pretty quick as far as the hospital goes.  I woke up pretty early in the morning mostly because of Mr Idiot so I listened to my iPod quite a bit (to block him out) and I drifted in and out of sleep.  After breakfast the physio people dropped by again this time to show me how to use crutches (which I’m absolutely useless with) and how to walk up stairs.  The lesson was good but was super draining.

After that it was pretty much home time.  Getting into the van to get home took me about an hour and was probably the most pain I’ve been in since the surgery.

I’m home now and Tammy is doing a wonderful job taking care of me.  There have been some complications post surgery (not with the knee luckily).  I have a lot of swelling and I have had a fever since Friday - so we are monitoring all of that closely.

I’m on orders to get back in touch with my doctor and the hospital if the fever isn’t gone by tomorrow - so we’re going to have to see how that goes.

(My apologies if any of this post doesn’t make sense - I’m very heavily medicated at the moment and I’ve been falling asleep the last half of this post :P)

I’m getting my ACL reconstructed today and I’m on my way to the hospital.  Just thought I’d throw a quick note up to let people know I will be out of touch for a few days.  I am in the hospital until at least Saturday and it’ll likely be Monday before we tone down the pain killers enough that I’ll be able to function in any way shape or for.

So see you guys in a few days - hold down the internets-fort for me

I had a nice surprise this week when we headed up north for the first weekend of the cottage season - we got community wifi and cell phone service!!!

The question is - is this a good thing?  My father is a little edgy about my younger sister playing with her phone all the time and I must admit the temptation to come in and fire up the intertubes is very odd.  Obviously I am someone who has a very connected life so for me its a huge win BUT does it take away from the “up north” feel of Coe Hill?   I’m not sure just yet!

I’ve found this weekend I’ve been able to resist temptation but who knows.  My will power will be put to the test this summer for sure

This is going to work out great however during my surgery recovery I’ll be able to come up here and recover in peace while being able to stay online and keep up with my work load.  Throughout the summer it also means I’ll be able to work on various projects that I currently have on the go - projects in the summer for me are brutal because when you don’t have any weekend time it becomes very hard.

So is the internet and cell phone service in Coe Hill a good thing?  It looks like, but I’m going to have to throw in a healthy dose of moderation

One of World of Warcraft premier raid guilds, Death and Taxes has disbanded.  These guys always seemed a bit of an oddity to me as far as raid guilds go; they seemed to be a group of guys (and gals) in it for the right reasons: to have fun, enjoy the game with a group of friends, etc.

They’ve now broken up and one of the guild’s leaders has made a post over on their forums that illustrates better then anything I’ve ever seen before the importance of never losing your way as a guild.  It is very important as guild leadership to know what your group of people is about and what you want to accomplish as a guild.  Even if you aren’t one of those “formal” guilds that has a charter - I’d highly recommend a mission statement.  It’s such a shame to see a guild who’s worked so hard on progression just evaporate.

Progress doesn’t happen all in 1 night, but apparently some people that we had here didn’t understand that. They thought bosses just fell over the first night because of the tag over their head, and the most important thing was how much damage they could do at all times. Newsflash - it doesn’t work like that. It’s pretty ironic that the first people to jump ship when progress wasn’t going fast enough, were the same ones jerking off in the 5man, and holding up the raid on the first day. Progress takes time, and world firsts don’t fall from the sky, they’re the result of a lot of hard work, and effort. The reputation of this guild was built on the backs of a lot of hard work and dedication from EVERYONE. The guild was bigger than any of us, and we knew it.

…..

Once upon a time we had pride. Pride in our guild, pride in ourselves, pride in what we’d done. Pride is showing up and giving your best effort, ESPECIALLY when you don’t want to be there, because your guildmates deserve that. We didn’t always get world firsts, it’s impossible to always be first, that’s just not how the game works, but we showed up every day, EARLY and busted our asses, and we were proud of what we accomplished, be it world first or world 1000th. We didn’t whine or complain about our fucking groups, or worry about loot. We killed bosses. Period. We gave our best effort because those around us deserved it, because the guild deserved it. We had pride about what we had done, not what those before us had done. But we also didn’t have false pride. Once upon a time when people couldn’t or didn’t want to keep up the raiding schedule, they had the guts and decency to let the rest of us know. Now they slink off into the night without even a word.

Read the whole post here.