It's been a while since I've updated this blog. I don't know why, except that nothing of major significance has transpired. Gretchen is continuing her slow but steady recovery from her mishap. She is frustrated by her obvious impairments, but it's amazing how quickly she has regained much of her function. She still has dizziness and tires easily, but she has started back to her psychotherapy practice, which seems to be going well.
Gretchen has "graduated" from all her rehab therapies, and her only restriction now is that her neurologist has told her that she can't drive until 6 months after her craniotomy . Shit! That really sucks for both of us. It's not because she is neurologically impaired. Her OT therapist even wrote a note to Dr. Whitlock saying that she thinks Gretchen is OK to drive. However, he said that there is a 20% chance of seizure within the first year of a craniotomy, so he doesn't want her to take a chance of its happening while she's driving. I went online and found some sites that recommended 3 months before driving. I think maybe we will have another confab with the doctor on this. Gretchen is going stir crazy without having her freedom to drive, and I would feel the same way myself. This is starting to become the major issue in both of our lives.
However, Dr. Whitlock said that the probability of a seizure reduces exponentially from the time of the operation. OK, now I an an engineer (or at least I used to be), so that tells me that most of the risk is concentrated in the first few months after the surgery. I used to know how to do all this stuff, but it figures that after 6 months, the probability of a seizure has dropped significantly. (I invite all you techies out there to compute exactly what the probability is after 6 months for an exponentially declining probability density with a cumulative probability of 0.2 after one year.) I'd do it myself but I'm tired. Besides, it's late and it's too much work. Maybe tomorrow. OK, Steve and Bernie (college roommates), step up to plate here if you will.
Tuesday, Gretchen and I are going back to the Farber for my monthly checkup and Zometa infusion. Dr. Richardson's nurse, Mary, is on vacation, so I actually get to see Dr. Richardson for the first time in about 8 months. Yay! What a privilege! My appointment is at 2:00, which means we will probably be waiting for 2 or 3 hours before we we actually see him. I plan to bring my Kindle Fire and laptop to keep me amused during the wait. I plan to have a few pent up questions for him since it has been a long time since our last meeting. I have no reason to complain. If I was really sick, I'm sure I would be seeing him every month, so it's all good.
I'm still trying to get to the gym on a regular basis. My latest kick is to try to find some exercises that will help my golf game. I hate the fact that I can't hit the ball very far anymore, so I talked to the personal trainer about specific exercises to help with that. I'm on a roll now, so my golf buddies just better watch out. I'm going to turn myself into a lean mean golfing machine. Yeah, right. I can fantasize, can't I?
Sorry, Bill, but I can't help you. I nearly failed 18.??, because the first half of the course was probability, which made absolutely no sense to me. I remember the prof telling us to ignore our intuition and just go with the formulas. I couldn't do that. Fortunately the second half was differential equations, which I excelled at. That saved my grade for the course.
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