I got the first of the two doses of the Pfizer vaccine today, which I’m so excited about. I want to be able to see my family who don’t live with me without any fear for any of us, and without having to keep my distance. I’m glad we don’t need 100% of the country vaccinated for this to crush the virus, but I’m happy to do my part to make sure I do not inadvertently harm anyone else if I’m asymptomatic. I barely felt it and have had no side effects from the vaccine. I do hope more people overcome their fear and help us return to some normalcy with travel. My hope is that those anti-vaxers for Covid become such a small group that they can be contact-traced going forward.

I had a knee surgery called arthroscopy in January, so for about a month I had this thing planted in my arm to administer medicine intravenously.  It was implanted in my upper arm and was threaded right up to my heart area.  I’m glad to have it out finally to feel more human, but the technology is pretty amazing.

This was my effused knee at its worst, right before my surgery.  that’s 58 cc’s of infection they withdrew just this one time in the Emergency Room.  At least the view from the hospital room was nice!

I’ve been home bound more than usual the last few months of 2017 because of chondromalacia patella, a knee injury commonly known as runner’s knee.  Earlier in the year I had injured my other knee, but that was quickly fixed after it was drained by an orthopedic surgeon.  The left knee was a lot more painful and the recovery has been a lot longer with crutches and all.  I’ve started physical therapy and I’m out of a lot of pain, but I will continue to heal and do my exercises so I can once again engage in the hiking and more extensive travel that I love to do so much.  Despite the car accident that happened two days after this knee injury, I actually was not injured in the car accident so far as I can tell, but the timing was strange indeed.