The second week out of the ICU was (thankfully) low-key. I had no outpatient appointments at HCMC and my vision is to the point where I have one eye that’s really good at close-up screens and one that can watch TV clearly. I’ve done my occupational therapy eye exercises every day and ordered a cheap pair of standard glasses from Amazon that I’ll bring to my ophthalmologist appointment on Black Friday – they want to customize the plain lenses to help correct my double vision. On Monday, I’ll return to see the neurosurgeon for an incision check (and hopefully the removal of the two sutures on the top of my head).

I should be getting my AARP card in the mail any day now, since I now have not one, but two daily pill boxes full of medications (see above). It’s actually not too bad – four pills in the morning and two at night, but it’s still a big change from the rest of my life (always had a goal of no pills). Only had to take Tylenol one day this week, when I woke up with a fairly intense headache. Last night I decided to elevate my head more with a second pillow and that seemed to help. Today was the first day I felt tired at the end of the day, but I really didn’t do much physical therapy-type activities.

Yesterday and today friends visited me at home, which was really nice. I have a fairly full schedule next week, but please let me know if you’d like to swing by Lowertown (a person can only watch so much Netflix per week). I received two awesome gifts this week: One from HSRA (big thanks to TC, Saintanne and crew) and one from my good friends at MSFA. My custom artwork thank you cards should arrive tomorrow, so that will be another project to start working on while I’m home. My brother flew up from Florida tonight, and I’ll be visiting lots of family this weekend. Nice to see the Wild playing good hockey too…

Week 1 Update
Brains!

Still don’t like to talk politics or religion, but thank you to everyone who took the time to vote in the 2018 election. According to the Minnesota Secretary of State website, there are currently 4,064,389 eligible voters in the state. That site is not at 100% reporting across the board yet, but the governor’s race had 2,586,298 total votes recorded, while the two U.S. Senate races had 2,596,877 (Klobuchar/Newberger) and 2,587,320 (Smith/Housley) total votes cast. The would indicate a 63.6% turnout for a midterm election – more than 13% higher than the last midterm in 2014 (which is great, but still kinda sad overall).

Not going to provide detailed opinions on any of the races locally or nationally, but I will say this is the first time I’ve ever had a perfect ballot – every person and issue I voted for won… 😎🥇