August 1-11, 2011: Savannah, GA

Click on the thumbnail for a map during this time period

Knee Surgery for Barb

Barb had knee surgery in Savannah on Monday, Aug. 1.  Since the left side of the cartilage in her left knee was still sound, she had a partial knee replacement -- a procedure that should heal sooner and result in more eventual flexibility than the typical outcome of a total replacement.  For those who care, the official description of her procedure:  Stryker uni-compartmental knee replacement.

Following the surgery we initially stayed at a La Quinta Inn in a "handicap" suite for five days, which Barb found to be ideal for beginning the healing process.  Then we moved over to stay with Joy (and her daughter Georgiana) for a few days, since we hadn't had been able to a spend any time with them on our first week in Savannah.  After a nice visit with them we moved back out with Iris and Mike.  Barb used crutches for about a week, then went to one crutch for a couple of days, and then began using a cane.  After about 12 days she stopped using the cane, except for long expeditions.

While all of this was going on, my left knee began acting up, and so I had an appointment with Barb's surgeon.  He said that additional arthroscopic surgery would not be useful, but that it was too early to consider a replacement.   So I am resigned to using some combination of pain killers and/or wearing a support brace.  I also got a cortisone shot, and that has helped immensely.

I also had several visits with my old family doctor (from the days when I was an area resident) about all of my sore joints.   Tests for various auto-immune diseases, Lyme disease, vitamin D deficiency, gout, and fibromyalgia were all negative.  The tentative conclusion:  one-hoss shay!

Day two after surgery - heading to doctor to get brace taken off

Around and About

While we were in the Savannah area we had a number of visits with daughter Danielle and grandkids Kristen and Abigail.   We also visited with Barb's ex-colleagues at Southern Services, and had a nice dinner with friends Beth and Steve.   We also drove down to Brunswick and had lunch with good cruising buddies Linda and Steve.

Kristen got her braces off. Congratulations!	Barb checking out the bee hive and chickens at Beth and Steve's	Bee hive at Steve Ellis'

Dayoubs

Iris and Mike live in a fantastic home in a beautiful setting.   One evening I took pictures while everyone else prepared dinner.

Mike preparing tortillas	Barb preparing salad	Iris preparing the main dish	Everyone busy but the photographer!	Delicious result
Barb resting

Scenes around the Dayoub home:

Panorama from the dock in the back yard	Former notorious hotel -- now old folks home	Lovely pond near the front entrance

Backup Blues

After talking with a couple who lost all of their computers and backup drives in a boat burglary, Barb decided on convert to an on-line backup of her laptop using Carbonite.  She started the back-up a week before we left the Caribbean and as of August 11th, she had only 89% of the initial backup completed.  :-(  We had internet connectivity for most of that time, but it was just very slow.  Since then the backup has completed and we hope that we will just be doing incrementals in the future.

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