I started of 2023 with all good intentions, and thought we had a reasonably good chance of this year – 2023 – being a little less stressful than the last one.
If you’ll recall, 2022 was filled with a couple of big issues, and some little ones – all of which totalled up to mean the year didn’t go the way we planned. Planned renovations got pushed to the backburner, things didn’t work out quite the way we’d hoped, and for the most part, we stumbled through the year lurching from one catastrophe to the next.
And don’t get me wrong, I am eternally grateful that our catastrophes were painful, and awkward, and frustrating, but we were still much luckier than most.
Consequently, as I talked about in my last post, we started off 2023 hoping for a better, less stressful year. Which lasted for approximately five minutes before things started to get pear-shaped. First of all, my dearest SIL’s Mum passed away on New Years Day, not an auspicious start.
Then, there was that pesky hamstring tear in early December – the one I got when I went off adventuring on my own for the first time in ages. With one thing and another (Christmas, SIL’s Mum, a dose of COVID for the DH and the Bonza Babe and my beloved GP heading off on holidays) I didn’t go back for my follow-up appointment to discover the results of my scans until last Thursday.
Now keep in mind here, that while it’s still causing me some grief, it’s not particularly painful. I’m still relying on a crutch a lot of the time, but that’s more because I’m a bit nervous about giving it another yank because I never – ever – want to feel that sort of pain again and the grounds around our house, Wilyerup are notoriously treacherous to walk on. And to top off all that, the DH’s physio had told him that generally, they don’t both do surgery for hamstring injuries in people of ‘our age’.
Imagine my surprise when I rocked up at the beloved GP’s office, and lo and behold, she wants me to have an MRI, because the tear in my hamstring is nearly 5cm x 4cm x 1cm… and is unlikely to heal on it’s own. So color me delighted, because now I’m off to the Orthopaedic Surgeon to discuss what will be required to fix my hamstring and the recovery time will likely be counted in months, rather than days.
And that’s only the beginning of things which could go wrong in 2023. Because the DH, who was medically discharged from the Air Force back in 2020 had his own results to get from the beloved GP. Turns out that he is looking at the possibility of up to THREE surgeries this year. The two definites are his shoulders, to fix degradation resulting from years of pushing open hangar doors and lifting heavy stuff at work. The other, more serious one will be decided once he’s had some treatment next week – he has a lot of degradation in his upper cervical spine that in all probability will need surgery, but we’re going to try cortisone injections first.
Which means a couple of things going forward. For starters, we were off up to Perth this coming weekend for a 48 hour trip to celebrate the birthdays of the Bonza Babe, Son #1 and Son #2. Living in the country, its sometimes quicker to get medical issues dealt with in the big smoke, so our 48 hour trip has been extended out to nearly a fortnight so that the scans and the injections can get done in a timely manner.
And the DH and I are in negotiations regarding just what renovations will get done at Wilyerup this year – because our original plans have most definitely fallen by the wayside. But I’m hoping against hope that the shed (which we’ve had since mid 2020) might be the one plan that comes to fruition this year!
And moving forward, my New Years Resolution for 2024 is going to be that there will be no New Years Resolutions!
D.S. Williams 