Happy Birthday LW!!!

[goobee]

_________________

[lonewolfz28]

Thanks Goobee!

I'm not going to start counting again until/if I hit 50.

[pinky]

_________________
I’m not bad....I’m just drawn that way!

[goobee]

[lonewolfz28]

Sad to say Goobee, I've been at that point for several years already. I'm seriously contemplating getting a new mattress, not that I think it'll help. My bed makes my back and hips hurt. I stay at my oldest sister's house and that bed makes me hurt. I add a memory foam mattress topper to my bed and I still hurt. I've tried sleeping on an air mattress and that hurts.

Driving the 45 minutes up to meet the basement specialist and half way there my right knee "pops" for seemingly no reason. It about put me in tears. I had to use my left foot to brake to the side of the road until the pain subsided.

The first few steps getting out of bed every morning are always an adventure in pain.

It's just one thing after another. I thought retiring again would help, but it hasn't.

[goobee]

I hope this doesn't mean you're ready for a rocking chair bro?
_________________

[lonewolfz28]

I'm afraid even rocking would hurt some days. I really don't want to have anymore surgeries. But, I may end up having to do it if I want any sort of decent quality of life going forward. My knees are back to where they were before the surgeries. The disc in my lower back is getting worse. Now my right hip is acting up. Both shoulders are impinged and have scar tissue in the rotators. I've still got nerve damage that makes my left arm weak. My neck sounds and feels like it's filled with broken glass.

But hey, I was invincible for a couple decades at least.

[goobee]

I agree with you regarding further surgeries. All that invasive treatment and you're still in pain. Also, all that general anesthesia isn't doing you good either. Talk about a tough situation to be in, you work, you're in pain. You don't work, you're still in pain. Maybe it's time for a second or even third opinion from some docs that aren't scalpel happy?
_________________

[lonewolfz28]

My left shoulder and left knee (again) were diagnosed as needing surgery in Tucson by the same doctor that did my right knee. The military doctor confirmed them and the VA disability board concurred. That's part of the reason I'm 60% permanently disabled. according to the VA.

The disability doctor for the company I was working for when the right shoulder acted up agreed with the surgery diagnoses on the pre-existing left shoulder and added the right shoulder. He also checked my knees since I mentioned them on the initial evaluation form. He asked for the MRI on the left knee (I still had the disc) and wanted to MRI the right knee. He couldn't get the MRI approved because it wouldn't be covered under the company's disability insurance unless I hurt it again at work and filed a claim. He did slip the knees in on the physical therapy prescription for the right shoulder.

After nearly 3 months of physical therapy, they said they were willing to keep working with me as long as the insurance company would pay for the sessions, but the lead therapist (been in the business since the early 80's) said we were at the point of diminishing returns. We could continue strengthening, but that wouldn't solve the root cause...the scar tissue from the tears and the bone on bone from the impingement. Also, the cyst on the collar bone wasn't getting any better.

For the knees, the therapists were able to strengthen them and get some of the slop out of the joint. But, the previous MRI on the left showed significant thinning of the meniscus along with more tears. It's at the point that the only thing that will fix the meniscus is attempting microfracture surgery or doing a replacement down the road. There are some new techniques that are being worked on involving stem cells, but they aren't perfected and prevalent enough yet.

[goobee]

Yeah, another thing to worry about with multiple surgeries is the build up of scar tissues. A lot of football players after they retire can barely move around because of all of the scar tissues.

That's messed up, you have a retired linebacker's body but not their 6 figure income for the past 10 years.

Probably just as well, you would have blown it all on wine, women and song anyway.
_________________

[lonewolfz28]

And computers. I blew at least $15,000 running G@H, F@H and all of the other programs over the years. Heck, at one time I had ~$9,000 worth of systems crunching in my dorm room in Korea.

Add in the additional electrical and cooling costs, and it's probably closer to $20,000.

[Polo]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY LW !!!!

Better late than never....
_________________
Have fun and sport !

[lonewolfz28]

Thanks Polo!

[goobee]

Yeah, I ran up some bills during the early days too trying to stay on the cutting edge. Now I just mostly get by with other peoples cast offs on ebay and Anandtech forum. It's going to be a while before I get sometime better than my i7 970 processor. Intel is already on the 3rd generation of the i7's, I'll have to putt along in the slow lane for a while.

I've been transferring all of my movies onto a media server, it's a pain transcoding the videos, it takes hours and hours even for my 6-core i7. I'm on a dead platform, socket LGA-1366 so no real upgrade choices.
_________________

[lonewolfz28]

That's odd that it takes so long for that processor to rip movies. I ripped all of mine to my harddrive with my dual Opteron 270's way back in 2005 before I left for Korea. It didn't take an hour apiece or I wouldn't have done it. It may be the program you're using or the quality you're ripping them at too. The program I used allowed me to select just the movie to rip instead of all of the non-essential stuff like bonus footage, four different languages and three different sound qualities. Of course, I was ripping them at 720x480 which was cutting edge back then.