Day 17: Thursday, May 28

Today I go back to Lozano (SLC) for a follow-up. I have some trepidation as to what he may say, but I’m eager to get this phase over. Getting down the stairs this morning and into the car was quite a bit easier than the last time, but now that I have a hard cast over my knee I have to learn it all over again. I’ll have this cast for the next two weeks.

The appointment with SLC was tiring. The traffic on the drive in was horrible. It took a bit over 2 hours. Once there, they took an X-ray of the leg then a short wait to see SLC. He’s optimistic, he said they discussed my case with a (weekly?) meeting of radiographers. Based on that meeting, they agree what the lesions aren’t but not what the lesions are! There are apparently some more lesions on the right femur as well. More tests! He spoke disparagingly of Shield’s Health (I’d sort of gotten that impression earlier that they’re in it just for the money!) Anyway, he wanted a new MRI soon and the only one we could get was 7:00 AM tomorrow at MGH! So we’ll be doing the trip again. In the evening I had a short call with Eddie Chen. Nothing much to add. He defers to SLC.

Started reading “Gardens—An Essay on the Human Condition” The first chapter was illuminating how he brings together the stories of Gilgamesh, Odysseus, the Garden of Eden and Dante’s Inferno. Harrison shows how they are similar and tell the same story of how humans think about gardens.

Day 16: Wednesday, May 27

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Spent some time today watching WordPress training videos. Added menus and breadcrumbs. Turns out that WordPress 7.0 now has a breadcrumb block, but it seems that many of the themes don’t support it. Ended up switching to the Astra theme, as it has native breadcrumbs, you don’t need to add a plugin.

Top level menu items are: Home, Blog, Books, Garden, Food, and Travel. I may change this, but it’s a good basis for the kinds of things I want to write about.

Day 15: Tuesday, May 26

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The new normal is establishing itself. I’m still confined to bed, but Maureen helps me with the shower every other day. I can also get in and out of the bathroom by myself with the help of the walker. Still some pain, but getting a little movement back in the broken leg.

I posted on Facebook a picture and an article about the plant sale, and casually mentioned the broken leg so, the word is out.

My blog is coming along. I set up a WordPress account on Bluehost. They seem to be a good vendor with decent support. It’s also the platform that the Acton Garden Club uses. I’m following lessons from Yoast, which I like (so far). There was an issue with one of the lessons about the widget editor that didn’t match the settings in WordPress 7.0, but after a long chat with Yoast I found a plugin that restores the old editor, called “Classic Widget.” It’s not been tested for 7.0, but it seems to work OK.

As far as creating posts, I’m writing them down in my notebook then dictating them into Word, where I can review for transcription mistakes and adjust the phrasing. I then cut and paste the post into WordPress.

Day 12: Saturday, May 23rd

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Much better sleep! 85 Fitbit score and for the first time in many nights I hit my deep sleep benchmark of one hour 25 minutes. (Two Tylenol PM the night before may have helped!) The MRI that was originally scheduled for this morning was cancelled. Yesterday, Shields Health called me to say that the appointment would need to be rescheduled because it turns out that it needed to be “with contrast” and that takes longer. Then there were no openings until mid-June, either at Emerson or any facility nearby. Messaged my docs and it turns out that Lozano the “boss” for now, doesn’t need it. Messaged Driscoll and he said, OK, then cancel it.

Looked for transcription software on Google. Turns out that Word has transcription built in, so beginning to just transcribe my handwritten comments. Also, set up a one-year subscription on WordPress. Bit of a hassle to set up and spent an hour on chat trying to explain what the problem was. Eventually I called up and it turned out that somehow I had managed to have two subscriptions in the cart. A nice agent sorted stuff out. Everything set now.

Day 11: Friday, May 22nd

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Very poor sleep. 49 Fitbit score, though I’m sure it was lower when I checked this morning. Even when I get a higher score I’m not hitting the benchmark for deep sleep. At least I’m not tossing and turning because my leg is in a cast and I’m not able to turn. Trying to get into some sort of routine with the painkillers: two oxycodones a day is usual, one when I’m about to go to sleep and another in the middle of the night.

Decided to cancel Jean Butler’s visit this morning. Not ready to face the world, especially with worrying about my diagnosis and prognosis. Maureen, however, said she’d do the putting up and so we set up a FaceTime to allow me to tell her what plants need to be potted, what they were, and where to plant them. What will. Next step will be to see if I can get some of my fellow Master Gardeners to finish setting up the veggie garden and planting them. Going to wait until after the next appointment with lozano before I do that.

Started with learning course for WordPress. Now that I have a little knowledge I can see what a mess the Acton Garden Club site is come on hundreds of spam comments, critical issues not resolved, orphan pages, etcetera, and surprisingly no posts at all – everything is a page. Makes no sense. I need to set up my own account.