...if folks are curious enough about this website or about me as a person they might end up poking around and ending up here, reading some blog entries/posts, blog posts are where i write about most of the real things that are important to me, and about other things to, sometimes things that bother me for some reason, and i also write about other silly ego revealing things that nobody needs to waste their time reading... but mostly its where i write about things that i think are important somehow, i'm not a professional anything, so there will be ignorance written below, but i trust that the reader can discern the baby from the bathwater, i do hope to stimulate your noggin enough to do some of your own research using your own critical-reasoning... i write for my own health, and to my offspring/kids, and to anyone else that cares to read. --  ct

04-30-23:  it's another soggy day in rockingham county, but the spring rain is appreciated, and then there's that 'april showers which bring may flowers', so we got that going for us...

04-29-23: it's almost May, may and June are typically stressful for us as a family, same as August and September... those are transition months for folks who are affected by the academic k-12 school year, our third/last child is going to be graduating from our local public school, and it's not quite as hectic around the house now that it's only one kid going through her final year of primary school, she is going to be taking an online-program in september, but the transition isn't stressful this year, i suppose it could/should be, but she is graduating with high honors, and hasn't fallen behind in any of her classes, coming-up with the loan for half of her tuition that federal-backed student loan isn't going to cover will be an interesting challenge, but it's not a stressor per-se, it's just simply the next step/challenge in the process for getting secondary education... so i'm bringing it up to say that this is a sentimental May that we are about to enter, her last day of class is the end of the month, and it will be three kids completed k-12 in Sandborn district... Hannah tried a few years of college but was discouraged when she didn't adapt very well to online-only which was forced by covid-mandates, she's been working full-time ever since... september will be Josiah's second year of USMC, he said he might want to go to a trade school when he get's out... Laura and Hannah are child-care folks who are both willing to relocate... so after sarah formally graduates in june we are more or less freed-up to move... there are adequate housing opportunities that my seventy-percent VA-disability benefits would cover, the kids don't have to stress over housing, but they will be subjected to straight-up change :-) i've endured almost ten years living on main street, and the noises that comes with it, so i require more quiet... time will tell what i'll be capable of doing from an employment perspective, i can't do anything physical for at least five more months as far as the hip is concerned, and time will tell if the cortisone injection is going to help my shoulder function, but at the moment i can't really lift anything over my head, Dr Ben might be buying me some pain-reducing time/options before i'd be ready for another surgery, it's a six-month recovery for the hip, and then there is the wrist, it would be interesting to see what options the arm-lady thinks will be useful, i have an MRI report to bring to my first meeting with Heather, they have the x-ray a few doors down the hall--so there's that... anyhow, like i was saying, it will be interesting to see what limitations i'll have going forward... i'd like to have a relatively physical job, but current conditions prohibit that, even if i have to quit doing physical stuff and end-up stuck doing some online/remote work i still have some limitations/challenges, but it's possible to get a part-time remote job... but even if that's the case in the future, i still have to find a way to keep moving, i'd love to be able to smash a tennis ball around again, an hour or two chasing the ball and smashing it is probably my most fun/favorite way to exercise, i don't know how realistic that is, but Dr Ben is a sports-medicine guy, if he thinks that i should be able to hit some ground-strokes and leave-out the smashing then i'll try to give it a shot again, i just assumed that i had to stop doing certain things that i enjoyed because they hurt too much, if a sports-specialist can actually get me back to a point where i could start doing some of the things that brought me joy and got my heart-rate up then i'll make it a goal to try to do them again, i want to be able to operate a small family farm/homestead, and there is plenty of labor involved in such an endeavor, but to be able to play some sports again would be icing on the cake... i'm an idiot for not addressing these 'chronic conditions' more fervently in the past, i should have been a stronger advocate for myself instead of settling for doctors that didn't understand 'impingement', they just said the x-rays didn't show any abnormalities, they ought to automatically do MRIs (maybe even with dye/contrast) when x-ray reports comes back showing no abnormalities, and that's because the x-ray alone couldn't explain/see what the source of the problem was, sometimes you need magnets too :-) ... so i don't know what my limitations are going to be, but i want to maximize my potential... and with all of this physical whining i'm not even going into the seventy-percent ptsd disability thing, there is something regarding employ-ability that goes with some of those types of chronic conditions, and that remains to be seen, insomnia is probably the worse of those symptoms, the insomnia has a cascading/domino-effect that shouldn't require explaining, but things like chronic head-aches and tension in the neck and back, brain-fog, sub-par performance in pretty much any job you could think of, i'm not even safe to drive when dealing with a shitty night's sleep, and it happens enough that i understand the threat, i've fallen asleep behind the wheel more than once during a commute... anyways... nothing else to complain about today... just getting sentimental about mile-stones that are coming up, it's weird to consider life that isn't effected by the public-school calendar, my youngest is graduating.  --  ct

04-27-23:  nothing to offer anyone right now, but for my own notation it's worth mentioning that i got my first cortisone injection in my right shoulder today, it'd be sweet if that's all i need to be able to function at the level that the rest of my body is capable of, the balance that athletes strive for... i'll take a shot over surgery if that's what really helps, and if it doesn't, and if surgery is really required then maybe the time between now and when i get surgically repaired gives modest pain relief, maybe the shot is all i really need to help move forward, but i'm going to move forward as a capable person with some wear-n-tear should expect, pain, freedom comes with a certain dose of pain, the longer we deal with pain the longer we deal with i'ts symptoms, pain is a symptom that yields many other symptoms, finding the root-cause and fixing the compromise/damaged tissue is paramount to 'fixing' a structural problem, wished the army considered such logic when i was a young man... anyways, hope the steroid-shot helps, my shoulder is bumming otherwise.

04-27-23 later:  not sure how to really say it, but i think Ben did (executed) a great job repairing my hip... Ben strikes me as the kind of guy that does't require quo-dos, but as an outsider that never had surgery of an kind i would opine from novice experience that Ben executed his job as surgeons hope, so far my recover is going well and there is nothing to attribute that to but an awesome/skilled surgeon, and the better side of genetics, i'm along for the ride, and totally looking forward to some good old-fashioned hard-core sweat inducing work/conditioning movement... i would have loved the crew at core-orthopedics back when i was a twenty-something, i appreciate them even more with the wisdom and limitations that comes as a fifty-something, i have a lot of life to offer my family and society, it seems ridiculous to forfeit the positive attributes that you still have to offer the world based on annoying/chronic conditions, but it remains a factor/variable... thankful for the work that Dr Ben executed, and that he is one of the folks that uses his God-given talents to serve other people, and to help us regain some sort of assumed capabilities... i don't know whats more difficult, learning to move, or learning your limitation of moving, they both must be difficult in their own right... right? -- ct

04-22-23:  spoke with some of my favorite--yet distant--people today, and hours of close-proximity interaction with three more of my favorite people, love my immediate family, and glad/thankful to have quality conversation with them today... probably won't write much, today is more of a reading day... my hip is recovering/healing well, no pain, just weakness, still some inflammation, awkward feeling/sensation in parts of the hip and leg, walking/moving mechanics are off, and the wrist and shoulder problems are stressing the chronic conditions on the left and right sides, and that stress is actually the predominately painful areas, not the hip that just got cut, probed, separated, grinded, drilled, and stitched a couple of weeks ago... so go figure... but it's a strong indicator that the Doc executed the procedure very well, and it's up to the PT folks, and i to do the rest... Doc Ben seems to really want me to maximize the potential that i still have, and is pretty confident that i can reach it, so the healing is going well, i get a bit tired on PT days, the sessions don't kick my ass, but i find myself pretty weak/exhausted by dinner-time on PT days, and i appreciate it, i'm recovering pretty quickly from those days, so they haven't really been set-backs, it's just recovering from some conditioning type of feeling... if the doc can do a good of a job on my shoulder then i might actually have some tennis in my future, i haven't played in almost a decade, but it used to be my favorite way to exercise and try to progress/improve, if the hip gets strong, and the shoulder too, well shooot son, i might be able to do things that i just thought weren't even possible five or ten years ago... but i really want to be able to labor on some land when we move, that's probably my biggest aspiration, i love sport/exercise, but for all practical purposes i want to be able to be capable around a homestead/small farming operation, i have to be able to move pretty well and be pretty strong to really consider that... i probably won't be kicking or punching a heavy bag again, but i can regain some strength and mobility, and get the cardio-vascular systems conditioned to do some fun stuff going forward.   -- ct

04-21-23:  if you look at the photo about half-way down the article you will see the type of ufo that i saw back in my thirties close to chicago, basically metallic-looking spheres, something like what we call 'brushed aluminum' today, they weren't polished like mirrors, they were 'matte'... i saw two of them (maybe aliens or their probes like a wing-man too), i watched the pair for a minute or two before they moved away at an extraordinary rate of speed... they hovered a bit like they were checking something out, and then they moved in a way that current military air-craft aren't capable of... not sure how big they really were, they actually could have been very small, but from my view/perspective i couldn't even guess at the true size of them... i don't know what they were 'looking' at, it probably wasn't me, but it seemed like it at the time, but there were lot's of things around me to look at too, so i won't be so vane as to assume it was me... they were pretty cool to look at, and they way they moved off together was the most impressive aerial feat that i've ever witnessed... i wasn't under the influence of anything, and had exceptional eye-sight... anyways, just wanted to comment on the picture from the article... cheers.  --  ct

04-16-23:  happy sunday... it's a bit cool in rockingham county, it's actually seasonal, around 55 today, just not the summer appetizer that we experienced the last few days, it would be a great day to do some work outside, but that's not going to happen for a couple/two-three weeks or so... the landlady had her great-grandsons helping out in the yard yesterday, they got up a bunch of leaves that i never finished in the early winter, i went out and hung with them yesterday for a bit when i realized that the sound of a leaf-blower was actually in the backyard, i can't wait to get outside and start moving again... looking forward to tuesday's post-op appt, see what the Doc thinks about the hip, and whether i can start ball-room dancing and hula-hooping again... i don't really do either of those things, but showering would be nice, i'd like to do that again real soon, same with walking down to the store... i've made the trek to the store a couple of times with the crutches last week, it sucks, but it feels refreshing to get out and move... i was hoping to lose a few pounds during my recovery, but that doesn't really work when you hardly move, or when you have near constipation, those things make losing weight a fool's errand, unless i starved myself for a couple of weeks, but starving isn't a great way to recover/heal, you know, nutrition and stuff... going to watch another movie in a bit, my dad recommended a couple of funny movies, The Birdcage delivered, it was pretty funny, Hank Azaria should have won best supporting actor... 'would choo like some souuup?', too funny... i wouldn't do well in south beach, i don't look good in a speedo anymore, maybe to a tiger-shark, but not to people... anyways, dad made a good call, i laughed a bunch... not sure what you (the reader) is doing today, but i sincerely hope you enjoy the rest of the weekend, and you are able to make some good memories of it into the future... God bless.  --  ct

04-16-23 later:  feeling a bit disappointed, apparently i held some illogical expectations that weren't met... also feeling more like a dependent than a capable adult... it's been a humbling afternoon.  --  ct

04-14-23:  not quite sure when my life got so boring that complaining about physical ailments seemed right... and i'm not going to bore you with today's gripes, but i've got plenty of them... one of which is wearing these compression-socks, these things either suck, or they are brilliant (i haven't decided yet myself)...anyways, today's appt with the eye-Doc was great, the plaque build-up in the back of my eye hasn't gotten worse, but it hasn't broken up yet either, so it's still a thing... i think i walked a mile or more at the VA hospital in NH, i was exhausted and glad to put my feet up when i got back home... i'm about beat, looking forward to getting healthy and strong again, not sure what i'll be capable of then, but's got to be more then double of where i was a year or two ago, i can't wait to beat dirt in the yard again, even if i'm a step or two slower then my prime... so look, i'm about run down, and somewhat appreciating the time off my feet to recover and re-group, but i can't wait until i can move vigorously and without concern or pain again, i might just have something left to offer the world and make a dollar or two, the sad alternative is that 'the world' is stuck with my words and diatribes only, that's pretty fvcking boring if you ask me... anyways, today was good, it was crazy-hot for rockingham county in april, it approached ninety again, for two days in a row... OK, God bless and thanks for your concerns and prayers, prayers are better than concerns, but concerns usually trigger prayer, so i'm not complaining about either, so, thank you  --  ct

04-13-23: wow, i really let loose on substack comments today, i shouldn't write when i'm taking something that impairs... but, i didn't make any false statements, i just wrote something a bit harsh is all, but the thing that actually bothers me is that i don't remember what article pushed/triggered me to write it, it seems like some BLM and antifa-tactics going on with trans folks lately, no one likes militants but other militants or their ma-ma's... it's weird that they attack religious folks for not being tolerant to psychotic and delusional behavior, most religions are supposed to be about truth, not just rituals or fairy-tails, and even folks that may not consider themselves as 'religious' can still recognize reality when they see it, that's because reality is usually self-evident... anyways, i really let loose on substack with a comment, but i decided to leave it up and then expand on it with a follow-up comment... the first one was started in frustration to lack of viewers for the late easter post, and then i may have listened to some news or a pod-cast about militant trans-folks (no one likes militants and trouble-makers), and it turned into the rant that you can read for yourself on my free substack, i threw-out some f-bombs... but i'm not employable and i have no need for sponsors or editors to reign-in my behavior, so, it's not too bad really... i'm getting a bunch of viewership on this blog lately, but not so much on the substack, weird... my hip is healing/recovering well, they put in consults for shoulder surgery (probably artho-scope based procedures to repair impingement along with rotator-cuff repair), and a consult with a hand surgeon to see if there is anything they can do with my wrist... it'll be good to talk to some specialists to see what they could offer for treatment/repair/whatever, looking forward to getting healthy again, i still have a lot under the hood and fifty-something is too old to be handi-capped (the insomnia is debilitating enough)... looking forward to getting some of these old-injuries/gimpy-joints healthy again, getting healthy will probably required sticking around NH for a bit longer then i'd like, i have to be able to move if we are going to move, and my wrist and shoulder aren't up to the task/strain, not sure when they will be ready to stress once again (i'm chomping ath the bit wanting to finish the patio outside too).  --  ct

04-10-23:  been sort of blogging about my recovery from surgery on substack, it's right about here: https://christophernews.substack.com/p/my-prediction-pain ... it's going quite well, the surgeon did a great job (as far as i can tell/feel), it was probably easy/routine for him, but as far as being the recipient of his skillful work is concerned, i think he gave me several more years of being able to do some physical chores/tasks/endeavors, that's what i think... so i'm getting ready to bed down now, tonight's tortellini is sitting well within my guts, so i'm a happy camper right about now... good night and God bless.  --  ct

04-08-23:  i've been impaired much of the day, took a pain-pill, so i had a light lunch and watched top gun maverick, not a bad flick... i'm getting a bit more confidence back--in regards to my hip, trying to keep shifting weight on the pelvis, but only twenty-percent weight on the right side, there is an art to walking that way with crutches, and i might start to get good at it by the time the crutches are no longer needed, right now i have a love/hate relationship with my crutches, i wanted to love them at first, and now that i know that i don't--i realize that i'm dependent on them, but i loathe the things... my right leg and ass-cheek still has a bit of fluid left in it, not sure how long that's supposed to last for, the incisions/stitches are good, the skin around them is still irritated from the tape that held the gauze covering in place, that tape HURT when the Physical Therapist took it off the other day, my blood-pressure must have spiked fifty points when she got the last two sides off, 'GOOOOLLEEEE' is what i think i said (hopefully not very loudly)... my shoulder (AC joint) hurts more than the incision sites/hip, i use it a ton and it's taking a beating, the crutches are beating it up (i see a Doc on Wed about it)... tomorrow is Easter, looking forward to spending time with family... OK, got to go. -- ct

04-07-23:  when this article becomes free for dissemination i will re-post it, for now you have to read it on substack, and it's a paid substack, but i think they offer a free week's trial, it's certainly worth making the effort to read it:

04-04-23:  not writing much, but doing some post-surgery updates on substack: https://christophernews.substack.com/p/my-prediction-pain  --  ct

04-03-23:  today is hip-day, come 13:00 i shouldn't be afflicted with femoroacetabular impingement anymore (yea me), at least my right side shouldn't be, and the labrum shouldn't be flapping around the joint anymore... i don't know what the recovery period is going to be like, i imagine there will be a new kind of soreness, some reduced strength, and reduced mobility, but i don't know how long that stuff will last, or how miserable and grumpy i'm going to be until the benefits of the surgery will be realized, and the effects of physical therapy will kick-in, time will tell... so, i tried to shower with the chair that they gave me--it's not going to work for me, not in the stand-up shower-stall that we have, so after this morning i'll probably be taking two minute showers until i regain my strength again, i don't think i verbalized any obscenities during last-night's shower fiasco, but i certainly 'thought' a bunch of them... oh, and please don't come by the house to steal the pain-meds, or otherwise victimize me while i recover, since i'm handicapped for a bit i'm keeping a bigger gun by my side that holds a bunch of 190 gr. 30-caliber bullets (i really like that little gun, it's a nice soft shooter)... anyways... prayers are welcomed/appreciated, i have some anxiety about a few aspects of the procedure and recovery period, so that would be a decent place to cover in your prayers, i'm sure that Ben and his team will do great work, but it's more of the recovery that i'm concerned with, i suppose... thank you, and God bless.  --  ct

04-03-23 later:  so far so good, pain level is still low, and i'm still pretty slow... the surgical team seems like a great bunch, it's refreshing to be around folks that actually care about other folks, and treated like an appreciated human... still lots of mobility skills to learn/practice, crutches are a bitch, but maybe after the fog of anesthesia wears off it will be easier... anyhow, back home now, propped-up on the sofa, a cup of herbal tea beside me, lot's of literature to consume, and the strong-ass drugs are awaiting pharmacy pick-up... looking forward to some soup tonight, and shedding a few unwanted pounds over the next couple of weeks... and i'm already thinking abut my shoulder, and the treatments that lay ahead, but i'm practically famous for getting ahead of myself.  --  ct

04-01-23:  rainy day in rockingham county... one daughter is working, the other is off to the laundromat to help the wife with some extra bulky items to wash, and i've got an empty house... so what does a guy do on a rainy day and an empty house?  well, i'm doing some 'construction' on the sofa (taking the seating angle out, and lowering the platform a bit), it ought to fit the new cushions (a memory-foam twin mattress that i have to cut to fit) pretty well when i'm done... wish me luck, or pray for my endeavors... i'm pretty sure that i know what i'm getting myself into :-)  --  ct

04-01-23 later:  the sofa is good to go, in fact it's fit for that princess and the pea lady... 12 inches of foam to recover on, i'm not going to deal with the stairs that go up to the bedrooms for a couple of weeks after the surgery, so the sofa upgrades are really a pre-op preparation... it's pretty comfy, i won't be able to complain about the bedding, i did smash a couple of fingers pretty good at the beginning of the project, but the good news is that i'll be able to rest them under the aid of pain-killers (after monday) for a week or so, the finger-nails are quite colorful.   --  ct

04-01-23 more later: i have to learn to shower sitting on a small plastic chair, inside a 28x28' stand-up shower-stall with the hard door, probably should try to practice that once instead of waiting 'til i'm more gimpy, grumpy, stinky, and impaired from the crazy drugs that i'll be on... our bathroom is like an airplane restroom, but with a small shower stall in it, this isn't going to be easy, wish i gave it a bit more thought before today, maybe the left leg is strong enough to compensate until i get strength back on the right side, and i'm probably just over-thinking this, or, maybe i'm spot-on, and i have a bunch of suck to embrace in the near future, i don't really know what to expect... who know's, but it's a tight bathroom with a tiny shower to be hosting a chair, hmm, needs more consideration.  --  ct