Knee Arthroscopy, Military Wives and Thanksgiving Vacation...

Just wanted to let those of you who've not given up on my blog a note to say that I'm recovering nicely from my knee arthroscopy on Dec 4th. My principal diagnosis was chondromalacia of the media femoral condyle (damage to the cartilage in my knee). Treatment was microfracture surgery. I also had chondromalacia, grade 3, of the patella (which means it's arthritis LOL). The doc "cleaned" it up. So, now I'm on crutches for 8 weeks. No driving. No walking...no weight on my right knee at all (b/c of the microfracture procedure). At. all. I start physical therapy next week. But things are fine. The first 2 weeks they wanted me to be able to bend my knee to 90*, but I can already do that. Mainly things are difficult b/c I can't drive and I'm on crutches. Since I can't use my right leg at all and I'm on crutches can you imagine trying to swiffer the bathroom or carry food from the counter to the table? Some things cannot be done and others take 3X as long. Not to mention having to rely on others to bring me places.

Now, for a bit of gush of my friends who are military wives.

For an army wife as independent as I am the hardest part has been asking for help. My neighbor and friend Jen is a saint. She has brought me to both of my doctor's appts this weeks, to the PX as well as to Charlie's doc appt b/c he decided ;) to get strep throat at such an inconvenient time. I'm second guessing the decision to have this done while Cory is deployed. But I'm very lucky to have all these wonderful people here...those who brought me to the hospital, brought me home from the hosp, visited me while waiting to go into surgery (which was very hard b/c I was the only one there w/o a spouse) and then, besides Jen, I have had friends who've picked up items for me at the commissary, brought meals over and helped with the boys. Military wives are THE BEST! Which brings me to something Cory read. Cory was reading "Kilrone" by Louis L'Amour. If you don't know Louis L'Amour is a very well-known author of westerns. Kilrone was written in 1966. He emailed me this:

"Kilrone is a ex-Army Calvary Captain during the western expansion days of America. He runs across a troop of Calvary soldiers fighting Indians and he is wounded and the soldiers are all killed. He travels to the nearest Army post and the remaining troops decide to scout for the Indians. Kilrone is left to defend the post against 400 plus Indians with a hand full of soldiers and women and children. L'Amour's thoughts on the family members were as follows:"

'The women, rising as always to an emergency, when more often than not they functioned at their best, bustled about and were busy. He was not
worried about the women; he knew that in those around him he was especially fortunate. These were soldiers' wives or relatives, bred to a realization of frontier life and the possibility of frontier warfare.
Not one of them was likely to falter.'

And those are my girls. :)


Anyway, I thought I'd start my entries about our recent trip (pre-surgery). We drove from Kaiserslautern to Garmisch where we spent the night. I've done an entry on Garmisch before, but it bears repeating...Garmisch is beautiful. This was the view from our balcony.



The next morning we drove to Vicenza, where we booked rooms in lodging on Caserma Ederle. A friend of ours recommended a few places to eat, but it was already dark and and we were tired, so we opted for a place right out of the gates.



We thought the shot glasses were pretty funny.



Toasting to Thanksgiving vacation 2009 with yummy limoncello:



The next day we drove to Venice. Did you know there are parking garages in Venice/Venezia? For some reason...like b/c I've never been there...I thought there was a train bridge or a ferry that would take us to Venice from the mainland. Nope. We actually drove across the bridge and parked in a garage. More to come tomorrow...