November 16-24, 2010: North Dakota

Click on the thumbnail for a map during this time period

Recuperating

Things continue to improve here.  Chuck graduated from a walker to two crutches to one crutch and -- a little less than three weeks after surgery -- to a cane.  He was able to get 90 degrees of mobility in his knee at two weeks and made it to 105 degrees by three weeks.  He hopes to gain another five degrees each week for the next several weeks.  His physical therapist has given him a number of exercises for stretching and strengthening the leg.  So his knee recovery is going well.  But he continues to have shooting pains in his foot; this is presumably a consequence of the nerve/muscle damage caused by the lack of blood to the leg while the blood clots were undiscovered.  All of the doctors seem confident that this will eventually resolve itself.

We are enjoying our time here with Chuck's mother Evelyn, and Chuck's sister Zona and her family.  Barb has joined a gym and goes in for a workout most mornings during the week.  She has also started to get a workout through shoveling snow here.  We had a blizzard a few days after we arrived and then the weather turned sunny and warm for a while.  It didn't last long though and it is now really cold (below zero degrees) and with lots of snow.  Zona's grandkids sure love it though.  Little Cole (four years old) has his own snowmobile and goes flying around over the hills.

Zona's son Erik and his wife Cindy had their one year wedding anniversary recently.  They went to Las Vegas to celebrate with Zona and Mike for four days.  Barb took over the job of babysitting the grandkids Cole and Kate for a couple of days, and helped get things organized for Thanksgiving.   

As this is written, Thanksgiving has come and will soon be gone.  But our gentle readers must wait until the next exciting episode to hear about that.   Meanwhile, Barb will fly to Las Vegas early in the morning of Nov. 26 to see her father et al, so that will also no doubt soon grace these pages.

On a walk back in the "walker days"

Stretching the knee on an exercise bike

Barb's brother Tim came to visit one night

Important stretching exercise

Jon and Cole installing a new Christmas "tree" on the flagpole

The crew gets larger when Mike, Cathy, and Zona join in

Progress is made ...

... and by dusk the tree is lit

Progress on the addition

Barb shoveling after our second snowstorm of the year

Little Katy was anxious to get outside and make a snow angel ...

... and she also got a ride with Jon on Cole's 4-wheeler

 

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