February 2017 Newsletter Edition
February 2017 started with the inevitable. I was discharged from the physiotherapy clinic I began receiving coaching from in November 2016. The physiotherapist sent an instruction to my family doctor to consider other treatments. Not only did my knee joints prevent me from making progress I lost more of the mobility I worked so hard to gain back following my second hip replacement surgery in February 2015. The implications of this are quite serious. Exercising by itself has proven unable to restore my mobility. After new imaging of my knee joints is completed I expect surgical intervention will be considered. On account of being 39 years old this is about as serious of situation as it gets.
On February 14th I experienced a new setback with my right knee joint. I did 10 leg extensions during a 20 minute period. A bruise formed in the skin above my right knee cap. After 2 weeks passing without recovering it appears this latest setback will remain with me until I am able to undergo surgical intervention. I now only have enough mobility for transfers with my wheelchair. I am forced to walk as a penguin does without the bending and straightening of my right knee joint. Otherwise severe pain immediately forms. An ultrasound of my right knee joint was performed on February 28th 2017. I will receive the results in March 2017.
After the combination of being discharged from physiotherapy without my mobility being restored and the February 14th 2017 setback I started thinking a whole lot about my quality of life and my goals for the next 5 years of my life. I am thoroughly enjoying making videos for my youTube channel. This is something I want to continue doing. I'm undertaking some computer upgrades to support the technical parameters of using my computer to continue improving the quality of my videos I'm preparing for my youTube channel. The four areas I am improving upon are:
- Using a larger external monitor so there is more real estate to engage in video editing
- Faster CPU to increase the computers overall processing power
- Upgrading the memory to the most the computer is capable of
- New hard drives to have the storage capacity needed for the creation of videos
In my personal life the next step that makes the most sense in promoting my Independence is deep cleaning and reorganizing the layout of the space in my home which is accessible by my wheelchair. I haven't been able to deep clean my home since my mobility challenges began in 2006. My life is completely different. There are things I am no longer able to do. With making a recovery no longer going to happen in the near future it is time for me to purge what I am not using and things that no longer fit in my life. Graciously a friend is coming to visit at the start of March 2017 to help me plan for this and has offered to assist me. Two youth ages 15 and 16 are making themselves available to help me in this progress.
Overall the big goal I am working towards is getting myself back in the work force. This is going to take a lot of time and effort to accomplish because of how little I am able to get done in a day due to the effects of my chronic pain and physical disability. I am working to create a server which will support my web site hosting, an online community, an online store, video rendering and video downloading for videos I am hired to create for use at special events. Right now it isn't practical for me to travel. I need to be near my doctors. I am interested in guest speaking. Preparing a video which could be used is an alternative I want to make myself available for. My plan is to use 20 Pine 64 computers to form a server cluster. This will cost approximately $3,000 CAD to create. I don't have the financial means of affording this. If you are able to contribute towards this please contact me.