My hip is revised and I am home. Who would have believed that it was possible to accomplish so much in 36 hours.  Ok, so now to the highlights.  They gave me a drug that is supposed to make you have amnesia..it didn’t. I remembered everything about the spinal block including them telling me that people with arthritis are “difficult” to do this procedure on…I would never have guessed.

After surgery, they put me in a room with an 80 year old woman whose daughter (luckily) was staying the night.  I couldn’t sleep from some of the medicines they gave me that make you more jittery than anything.  Apparently they also made, we’ll call her grandma, confused.  Really confused.  At about 2:30AM, she walked around the side of her bed, past her sleeping daughter, opened the curtain,  looked at me and called her daughter’s name. She had the same surgery as I had so she did have an IV before her little walk, but did not have it by the time I had my finger on the nurses’ button and was calling to her daughter to wake up.  She didn’t have a walker so she could and really should have fallen in all of the blood that was flowing freely out of her wrist, but luckily, did not.  The nurses were calm but couldn’t get a new IV started because her veins kept “rolling.”  I’m not sure what that means, other than we all lost 2 1/2 hours of sleep from grandma’s little jaunt.

Then around 5, an alarm kept going off on a machine I was attached to that monitored my heart beats per minute and oxygen levels.  The sound this thing made would wake the dead.  It was consistent though, I’ll give it that.  It went off every five minutes until we were awakened at 6 to get our stats, changing our bandages, and I can’t remember what else, before the surgeon got there.  The nurse was a little scared abut my heart beats per minute that averaged between 42-46 every time it beeped.  The surgeon really didn’t know if that was a big deal or not so he referred me to the hospitalist who would be in shortly.  The hospitalist didn’t care at all, and just told them to turn it off that the slow heart rate was due to the narcotics they had been using.

Ok, great, I was ready to go home.  Three hours later and four discussions about what I can and can’t do when I got home and I was out of there.  Here’s what I can do.  Lay around with a device that stops blood clots.  Get up  for 10 minutes and walk maybe 30 feet, then lay back down always elevating the hip.  Can’t ride in a car for three weeks and that’s only to the doctor’s office.  Can sit in a chair but only to eat three meals.  I’m planning ways to eat while lying down and doing crafting while sitting up, otherwise I clearly might go insane.  I’m thrilled it’s over with and will be glad when my hip doesn’t stop me from doing things I want to do.  Everything really did go well and I’m happy to be home.

 

 

 

I had such a craft fail yesterday, I had to laugh at myself.  I’m not sure if you can be any more dense than I was, and believe me, you would have to work at it.
I decided to make enamel dots out of hot glue and have done it before and it was relatively easy.  The difference this time is that I was tired and couldn’t make my dots really round.  So I leaned the tip of the glue gun on the silicone mat and just moved it from one spot to the next to put down a dot.  What I forgot to do was pick up the gun in between, thus creating a string that was really pretty sturdy. When I tried to pick up the first dot, the whole string came off and were not going to be separated without brute force.  Unfortunately, I couldn’t think of a good way to separate them so tried scissors which left a divot in the side of the dot.  At one point they were in a ball and I had the brilliant idea to try the heat gun to melt the string.  It didn’t melt the string but it did make the glue dots hot and misshapen.  In the end out of about one hundred dots, I ended up with maybe twenty five that were acceptable.  I learned a valuable lesson as well, don’t try to make enamel dots out of hot glue after 11 pm.  Words to live by.

I got an email from the Sweet Petunia people saying that they are coming out with a new Mini Misti in March.  I decided, what the heck, and emailed them.  I told them how much I love my Misti and that I’m going to order one of the minis and feature it on my You Tube channel and then explained what the You Tube channel is all about.  I told them that they should be marketing their product more to the disabled crafter as they  really benefit from it.  I attached the video I did on the Misti and told them how hard it is for me to separate the magnets when they attach to each other and wondered if they could somehow solve that problem.  At the end I decided to go for it and asked if they would be willing to offer a discount to the people who watch my videos who may normally not be able to afford the big Misti, but might be able to afford the mini with the discount.  I am crossing my fingers that they will do so as the people that watch my You Tube channel definitely deserve a discount.  I explained to her that sometimes when you are disabled, the Misti is a very big investment and that I was hoping she would consider her audience.  I am really hoping she does and that she sees value in helping the disabled crafting community.  She is a very religious woman and built the first Misti from being in charge of the Card Ministry for the Women’s Ministry and seeing the need for more consistent stamping.  Let’s hope she sees value in our goal to help other crafters like us be able to afford her great tool. My hopes are high.

I found some great tips today for things I hadn’t been able to do on You Tube so far.  I always see where others link you to their other videos and leave comments within their videos and for some reason, I just couldn’t figure out how they did it.  Well I’m not in the dark any longer.  I spent most of the day putting in comments where they needed to have explanations, and linking from one video to another.  It was a lot of work, but I think it will be worth it in the end.  I’m starting to feel like I’m actually getting a handle on this project.  Yesterday, I even bought myself a timer so I’ll know exactly how long a video is taping before it shuts itself off.  That should eliminate some of my many malfunctions.  I also am trying to get enough video content stored so that if I can’t do any videos for a few days or a week or so after my surgery, the channel will still have new videos.  My surgery is this Wednesday by the way, and if I haven’t explained it, they are going to only make a 4″ incision on the front of the top of my leg and replace the rotator for my hip but hopefully leave the ball in place. They said the surgery should only take 45 minutes if all goes well.  So I’m planning on “all going well” and being out in 45 minutes.  The hospital stay is only one night and that makes me happy as well.  The latest physician I talked with said the pain should be very minimal because they don’t cut muscle with this technique–even better!  So all in all, I’m hoping for a new pain free hip with no complications.  Cross your fingers for me, I’d appreciate it.

I look at other You Tube sites and see that they have 10,000, 20,000, 100,000,200,000 and 1,000,000 subscribers and am completely amazed by those numbers.  I’ve only been on You Tube for a little over two months and I have 205 subscribers and am thrilled and astonished.  I realize that we are talking about every computer user in the world having access, but I can’t believe that 205 people are interested in watching my videos.  I am so grateful and just want to take a moment to thank you first two hundred and five people for watching and believing my videos have something worth subscribing to.  I’m hoping my content gets better in 2016, and that I get more feedback about what people would like to see and that I finally get really good at staying in frame.

So thank you to the first two hundred and five subscribers.  You’ve really motivated me to be better, faster, stronger.  (For those of you born after the 1970’s, that’s from the opening sequence of the $6,000,000 Man.)  I’ll give it everything I’ve got and hopefully we’ll continue to grow and try more crafts and expand all of our horizons.  Hey, thanks for watching and for giving me those thumbs up.   You have no idea how much I appreciate your support.

This morning I had some free time while Rich was at the gym so I decided to work on a craft I’d been meaning to tackle.  I’ve watched a bunch of videos that involved using duck tape to make pencil cases and coin purses etc.  I thought the chances of me actually being successful at pulling the duck tape off the roll and cutting it straight and then applying it accurately were almost non-existent.  To my surprise, after I mastered getting it off the roll (you don’t want to know how I did that), it really went pretty smoothly.  I’m really happy I tried it because now I know I can work with duck tape (that’s the brand I used so I know it’s not duct).  I foresee more projects that involve duck tape in the future–I eventually might be the queen of duck crafting..or maybe just the princess. or someone close to the royal family, I’m not sure how far down the chain I can go.  So once I was done with my craft, Rich took down all of our Christmas decorations, only to discover that Bella (our four year old golden retriever) had tossed a toy into our Christmas tree and then broke the whole bottom section of the tree trying to get to it.  Needless to say, it’s time for a new Christmas tree.  I looked in the very few stores that we have locally and found nothing, so we drove 50 miles to the nearest larger city to shop for a tree.  You’d think you could still find trees, but no, not so much.  Even in a store called The Christmas Tree Shop, there were three trees and two of them were white.  Not really my style.  Luckily though, there were great bargains to be had at Michael’s on Christmas things (unrelated to trees) and A.C.Moore had a 55% off coupon that worked well for me (also no trees).  The thing I love about buying end of season items is that next Christmas I will have completely forgotten what I purchased and it will be exciting and new.  I buy a lot of gifts this time of year and it’s always a surprise to me when next Christmas rolls around.   So no new Christmas tree but a big bunch of Christmas stash for next year..all in all, a good day.

 

I watched a You Tube video today by Lindsay, The Frugal Crafter.  She was talking about coming up with a word for the year.  A word to live by and to focus your life around.  It’s not a goal she said, a goal is something more specific.  The word is something that you are aspiring to.  Her word is “uplift.”  She explained why she chose her word and what she wants to accomplish with it.  When I read the comments below, there were two disabled crafters who are from England and one wants to start a You Tube channel for disabled crafters and the other was offering for her to meet her group of disabled crafter friends on Facebook.  I’ve never responded to a comment from someone else before but wanted to do so this time.  Lindsay asked for others to share their words and I had already come up with mine.  My word is “give.”  I want to give encouragement to others, inspire others, help others to accomplish their goals, and in turn help myself to feel useful and fulfilled.  I introduced myself to both women and hopefully one or both of them will visit my website or this blog.  I’ve been so lucky to meet some really wonderful and inspiring people since I’ve been on You Tube.

Before I started the channel, my only concern was that I have read the comments that people leave on videos and they can be horribly hateful and I didn’t really want to have to be confronted with comments like those.  So in my first video tour of my craft room, I laid it on the table and explained the purpose of my channel and that if my hands bothered the viewer, they needed to watch another crafter.  I said it at the beginning and the end of the video.  I felt compelled to let them know that I knew they were out there and I was prepared for the comments.  What I have seen so far is that people have been wonderfully supportive.  The comments have been really heartbreaking honest, encouraging and sweet.  I feel like I am getting so much more than I am giving when I do these videos and I am so fortunate to have found this outlet for “giving.”  So my word for 2016 is give and I am 100% committed to it and to the people who watch my videos.  Thanks to everyone who has taken the time to read one of my blogs or watch one of my videos.  You are giving me purpose and I can’t ask for anything more.