Forty (40) days, the countdown continues.

It has been a week since the last post and it has gone well, I am pleased with the progress that I have achieved. I completed my follow up visit with VA Urology and I was cleared by the clinic to have my knee surgery. (There was much rejoicing!) I was pretty confident that the FlowMax was working well, but is was nice to clear that obstacle and continue on with the process of getting this much needed knee replacement. Most days are tolerable, but more often at the end of the day, I cannot wait to get out of the knee brace and try to find some sort of comfortable position.

I have been continuing my preparation at work for my leave of absence. With the last knee replacement, I was on medical leave of absence for 6 weeks and I hope to have about the same recovery period this time. (I may be optimistic, we shall see.) One task I was able to check off was to coordinate with the disability management office for my leave of absence. Last time, this was complicated and a bit convoluted as there are actually two leaves, both taken together. This time, I was relieved to learn that my application for disability will automatically trigger my FMLA and both are now managed by the same case worker. (YAY!) I had called for asking information and was informed I could go ahead and get my leave scheduled and now the paperwork is on its way to me, arriving in two working days or so. It is comforting to know that I will not be losing any pay during this work outage. Between personal days (I have to take five days of personal time or vacation before leave of absence starts.) and the short-term disability, I will draw full pay the full time during my recovery.  One less thing to worry about and one more thing off the list of things to do before surgery.

I’m working off some of my pending tasks at work so I do not have to hand them off to my teammate for him to manage while I am gone. We both cover the same overall area of expertise, but there are several tasks I have been the project lead on or solo worker on, that I wanted to finish up before I walk away from work for a month or two. Last week, I was able to finish one of these and the task was setup as a self-service tool that users can use to submit a request to our logistics team when they need to resolve sending a kit to a customer.

I have been coordinating with my eldest son and his wife to come visit in April during my convalescence and we can celebrate our anniversaries. (My 40th, their 4th?) I think I have a plan worked out and we shall get the details coordinated and plane tickets purchased while the price is still acceptable. (Two round trip tickets for less than $800.00.) The wife and I both think that having some of the kids around will be a good thing to help me keep my spirits up while recovering. Since our anniversaries are less than a week apart, we try to celebrate them together when we can.