My mother, Sylvia, has really come a long ways in her recovery after having shoulder surgery. She had her operation back on August 18th this year and when she first got home from the hospital she was in something of a state with all the pain meds in her system.
She is much more alert and active these days. She has begun to retake her kitchen, though I try to cook in her place whenever possible, sometimes she will awake before me and I will miss out.
Changes
We’ve stopped using the ice water machine we got from the hospital. Mama prefers using an ice pack or alternating with a heating pad on her shoulder or neck. With the physical therapy sessions she is getting stretched more and more and there is soreness from the strain, so a bit of heat or cold afterwards really helps.
On the medicine front, she continues to take a baby aspirin each morning along with acetaminophen, L-Creatine, L-Arginine, and Glucosamine chondroitin. Occasionally, she will take 1 or 2 Ibuprofen if there is inflammation, but we try to keep it to a minimum. Her regular medicines also include meds for Diabetes Type 2, but I don’t know the names of all of those.
A visit from family
This last week, we received a visit from my aunt, Sylvia’s sister. We got a lot of work done while she was here. She is a real go-getter and has a lot of plans for this house after she retires. We will be getting solar panels installed on the roof and a battery system installed outside.
I can remember 12 years ago, talking to solar installers and having people come out to the house and tell us that we would need to cut down all the pine and sweetgum trees on our property if we wanted solar power to work at our home.
The marketing and technology has really shifted since then. I really enjoyed the presentation materials we received from the sales rep who came out to the house this time. It will be a leased system, so no upfront costs, but there will be a monthly cost until the system is paid off. It also transfers with the house to the new homeowner if we decide to sell and move elsewhere.
Meals
We have finished eating all of the pre-made meals from before the surgery. The last dish we had was a zucchini breakfast casserole. Mama didn’t like the way they turned out. Unfortunately, she made 4 of them, so I’ve been taking one for the team so to speak each morning.
For cooked meals, I recently made some spaghetti with ground beef. We also had some stewed veggies and mashed potatoes left over from two other meals.
During my aunts visit, we also had the Salmon Cream Pasta again, and Waffles, I made from scratch. Thankfully, we had all the ingredients, as I had forgotten to buy pancake mix.
One evening we also ordered take out from a Korean restaurant (Bonchon Chcken) in North Raleigh.
The mashed potatoes were from a larger mixed dish where mama had me pan fry some onions and peppers, add in two sausages which had been split open, then top with cheese, spinach, 4 eggs and finally with the mashed potatoes. It was a multilayered dish and quite tasty. But we had a lot left over given the volume of food in the pan.
I later mixed some Biscuit Mix into the mashed potatoes and then pan fried them into potato cakes. This went with the leftover stewed veggies.
This morning, I retrieved some Boston Butt and New York Strip Steaks from the basement freezer. The pork butt will get braised all day tomorrow. For now it is thawing on the counter. I have been told to add Creole seasoning to the meat, in the evening, after it defrosts so that it will get marinated overnight.
Sofi Offer
I’ve been using SoFi for banking since October of 2018. They’ve run various special offers over the years, but I really like the current promotion. They had actually shutdown their previous crypto account service, but they are trying it again now that crypto has become more mainstream.
The new offer is to open a SoFi Crypto account to receive $25 in SoFi’s native crypto currency SOFID after making a purchase of $25 of any crypto currency available on the platform. You’ll need to make a single $25 purchase within 30 days of enrollment to qualify for this promotion.
Keep in mind that SoFi is only offering the Cash Value of the underlying cryptocurrencies For example, you won’t be able to Stake either Ether or Solana on the platform. However, you can send your coins to a different wallet if you have another platform you prefer to use.
