Hello, folks. Yes, I am alive but not well.  I thought I would write some ramblings and try and keep it up while I’m not sleeping. My infection is going strong and I see my infectious disease doctor on Friday when I plan to beg him for the other antibiotic he’s been keeping in reserve. At this point, it might cure me and I can’t continue as I am. Potential resistance must (IMHO) give precedence to curing the disease it was invented for. At the moment the entire inside half of my knee is very swollen, red, and hot, not to mention painful. I thought when I saw him the last time I had somehow gotten a shin splint. However, one does that during exercise and I haven’t done any of that. The shin is extremely painful and I have come to the conclusion that the infection has spread. Cutting me open has not cured me so far and the blasted Pasturella just comes back from wherever it’s hiding in my body. This is also why I don’t see the point in removing my knee prosthesis. After the last clean out, I was healing quite well when it appeared again. I may be forced into another surgical procedure but I am trying so hard to not go down that road.

Otherwise, I am acting like I’m in hospital, meaning mostly bed rest and ice on my knee when the pain of the ice is bearable. So I lie in bed, read, watch stuff on various streaming services, get slept on by cats, and have had a staggeringly long run of insomnia. Yesterday I didn’t get any sleep until 4PM and then it was all of 2 hours. The knee is painful in so many different ways and sometimes that little niggle in my calf is enough to keep me sliding over the edge into sleep. It’s certainly not doing me any good but it’s not fatal. This lesson I learned in the 1980’s when J and I both battled insomnia and would meet in the family room at 2 or 3AM. That’s one reason why now that he’s here we avoid disturbing each other in the wee hours. He is an excellent nurse, and is developing into being a good cook too.

My accomplishments for today were taking a shower (a major operation), trying to watch some tv but my recliner is not at the right angle for my leg, and retreating to bed to play puzzle games, scroll through FB, and now write to you. I finished “Galleon” by C.W. Williams (on Kindle) which was very fun. I recommend it to any lover of sci-fi. I’m also reading “Wonder Boys” by Michael Chabon (in pbk). His writing style is so off the wall that I deal it out in small doses. My BBBB is “Wilderness and the American Mind” by Roderick Nash. I find it bizarre that the first settlers in America believed that the “wilderness” was not only just scarey, but inhabited be daemons and mythical wild beasts, and that merely by entering the forests you would lose your connection to God and become a godless heathen yourself, like the native people were judged. Today we worship wilderness for, in some cases like my own, its connection to a higher power, but they thought the only good land was that under cultivation.

I was looking forward to the World Series but not so much now that the Yankees are out of it. I can muster support for the Washington Nationals so that’s coming up. I forgot how much I loved baseball until I got access through giving J sports access on my cable package. We would get up in the late morning and watch whatever was playing. I followed baseball through two husbands after growing up with it and really missed it here. J and I will check out what passes for baseball here but the field is at the far side of Canberra and who knows what disabled access is like. I am using my walker all the time but covering distances isn’t fun.