A new Hip

Janet has had knee problems for several years, but they were getting worse starting around August, 2012.  She had severe pains more recently and after many consultations with doctors she had hip replacement surgery on Thursday Dec. 20 at Lenox Hill Hospital in NYC.  Her experience there was mixed. The surgeon and operating staff seem excellent. That also seems true of the recovery room staff. However, after that, the hospital staff seemed to largely fall flat and seemed largely unable to follow through with getting her ready to leave the hospital.  That was disappointing and took a lot of time and energy to get through.  In their defense, we heard that the NYU hospital has been closed since hurricane Sandy hit a couple months ago, so the other city hospitals have been overloaded as a result. In addition to that the Christmas Holiday weekend has intervened.  However,  The pressures to leave early and a system that delayed doing anything toward leaving without a lot of prodding are inconsistent.
In any case, Janet got out two days after surgery and is home and doing quite well.
Ziggy and Zoe mostly sleep and stay close to Janet- giving her moral support. They just had their 8th birthday a few weeks ago.

Bee and Wasp Season

We don't let Ziggy and Zoe run free because they have no fear of anything- including cars, but we take them out on leashes every few days and they seem to love this time. Sometimes they don't want to come back inside for a long time,  Yesterday, Ziggy stayed out for about 45 min., but Zoe wanted to stay longer, so we let her.  After awhile we heard yowling- clearly she was in trouble!  Janet had her shoes on an ran out first and thought Zoe was being strangled by her harness, but quickly realized, as she was being stung, that Zoe had disturbed a nest of yellow jackets!   In quite the panic we manged to get Zoe free while brushing away as many wasps as we could and we got her in the house.  She was clearly in pain due to many stings, so we decided to take her to the emergency vet in our county- fortunately there is a place with 24/7 coverage, though it is 45min. from home.   We put baking soda on our own stings and then headed off to the vet.  Zoe seemed ok, but hurting.  At the vet they took her right away and said her temperature and heart rate and breathing were stable, so they didn't think she was in danger.  Other people had their pets in as well- including a puppy that got a hornet or bee sting!  While we waited we counted up our own stings.  6 for Janet, 6 or 8 for Jim-  they all hurt to varying degrees from mild to sharp  the milder ones could have been stings or bites or just thorn pricks from the bushes.   The vet said they found 13 on Zoe around her face where the fur is thin. There might be more on other parts of her.
She got a small dose of Benadryl and some pain killer.  She was thirsty and hungry when we got home, so we thought that a good sign.  The next day she seems a little sluggish, but otherwise OK.  Our stings still hurt, so we assume hers do too, but it seems she is in no danger and we are all a little wiser.
This reminded us of the huge Bee colonies we had right outside our Kitchen door in India- and a what a disaster it would have been if we had not be careful with them.
Apparently, bees and wasps can be quite nasty this time of year- August and Sept. They say partly due to the dryer climate.