She Ain’t What She Used to Be

Because of the cold weather and keeping my driveway clear of snow my right knee that usually has some pain began to hurt when I walked, especially going up steps. My bedroom and computer room are on the second floor, so when I need to stoke the wood burner, I must make the trek down two flights of stairs and then back upstairs. I feed pieces of wood into the wood burner nearly every 4 or 4.5 hours. I have the damper open enough to keep the fires hot so the creosote doesn’t build-up in the chimney.

I went to see a doctor last week. She gave me an injection of steroids in my knee after withdrawing nearly twenty-five cc’s of fluid. I hadn’t noticed until she mentioned that my knee was swollen. It surprised me when she withdrew that much fluid. After the injection, the pain did decrease and walking became easier, but one side effect was to raise my blood sugar. The next morning, my blood sugar was almost double what it normally was. The relief I’ve gotten is mixed, I still have the usual ache in my knee, but the pain has eased when I walk.

Snow removal has been a real pain. Last week’s snow was heavy and the fact that the snowplows seem to enjoy pushing and packing the nearby drifts into my drive doesn’t help. I remove the snow from my driveway and carry it across the roadway shovelful by shovelful and dump it into an empty field. The wind always wants to push the snow in that direction, but the plows push it back in heaps, making the original drift higher. Much of that excess snow ends up in my drive.

I usually clear out an opening for two vehicles in case of visitors, not that I have many. Most often it is my daughter to look for something she’s stored at my house or to store something until she needs it.

Yesterday’s snow that fell was much less and it much lighter to carry across the road. But with the lighter snow, the flakes didn’t stick to each other which caused another problem. It made my driveway extra slippery. The feeling of the icy drive brought back an uncomfortable sensation of déjà vu. It brought back thoughts of my slip and fall in my drove on the ice from February of 2015. I finished clearing my drive and walkway, but I had to be extra cautious.