A Few Bumps in the Road

Well, the river cruise was amazing but I wasn’t able to blog about it afterwards because I became a bit ill on our last of 4 days in Budapest and flying home made it sooo much worse. It turned out that I developed a pretty severe case of vertigo. Flying is known to aggravate it even more so when I returned home I took myself to urgent care where I was rehydrated over a couple of hours and then sent on my way with gravol for the nausea. At an appointment with my nurse practitioner, a few days later, I was taught a positional exercise that allows the crystal(s) that escaped from my inner ear to fall back in place. I had to to this twice a day to stop walking like a drunk. I saw the looks I got from other shoppers at the grocery store when I staggered to my vehicle and drove home! But when sitting I was not dizzy, only when standing or walking.

Like slowly re-established itself, my vertigo lessened and I only had to do the positional exercise once a week and then even less often to eliminate any returning dizziness. Unfortunately my left knee which has no cartilage left in it due to osteoarthritis continued to get worse. I was still waiting to see an orthopedic surgeon. So when I went to Mexico in late November planning to stay until mid January I took a cane and arranged gate to gate assistance in the airports. Was this ever a blessing! It is a perk that I will miss when my knees are replaced – but the improved mobility will definitely be worth the loss of a compensatory perk.

When I arrived in Canada, Omicron was just a word happening in other places but we all know what became of that. When all the holiday revelers came down to Mexico for the weeks of Christmas & New Year, they brought it with them and a few days before our flight home I started coughing a bit, got tested and it was positive. So 2 weeks of quarantine for me while I waited out my 11 days post negative PCR so I could fly home (my original test had been an antigen so the PCR was a few days later) on a rescheduled flight 10 days later than anticipated.

In March I finally got my appointment with the ortho surgeon and I will have my surgery in September –ish. I won’t know the date until 4-6 weeks prior. So my friend Linda & I have cancelled the second of our back to back cruises (Baltic & Transatlantic – the first was cancelled by the cruise line due to Putin’s actions).

Since I can still get around quite well with a number of sitting opportunities – think stopping at a cafe for a drink or 10 min on a park bench, not bad really, – I am now in Spain for 3 weeks with a colleague. This will be my last trip until at least 3 months post surgery. I will post.