ScottsGT

Well when you build a shrine to HKM, you don’t want distractions. I had an HKM shrine at my old home. Yea, there’s a Hobby Boss infiltrator in there.

Yea Chris, it’s great to see some improvement. But as I told the PT guy, I’m still going through with the surgery. Just make me strong as you can so recovery is easier. The silver lining to this is that it tells me that the nerve damage isn’t 100% permanent.

Update with some improvement! Started PT this week and the therapist gave me a simple seated bend over exercise that would help open the disc spacing. Started Tuesday and I’ll be damned. By Thursday I was walking without my cane. Even better, last night getting up in the middle of the night for my bathroom trips I didn’t need it. Night time and the mornings were my worst.

Well, we’re already home now. But our son was in Chester, near Richmond. He’s actually packing up to leave right now and heads this way tomorrow or Friday. Then we jumped over to Brownsburg near Lexington. Our youngest daughter lives there. They just bought their first home. A really neat 98 yo house. It’s got character. The town is a tiny, quiet little village in the rolling farmland hills.

https://www.trade-a-plane.com/search?category_level1=Piston+Engine&make=WARNER&model=SCARAB&listing_id=2427299&s-type=engine https://www.barnstormers.com/listing.php?userid=176868

Wow Ernie. This takes things to a whole new level of “I hope this project doesn’t end up on the shelf of doom!” Then again, it was already on someone’s SOD. The radial engine will be awesome! Congrats on the project.

I remember being almost a kid but yet an adult looking up to the older docs as knowledgeable and experienced. They were always older than me. Now I’m looking at this young guy that’s about to go inside my body and fix things and I keep telling myself I’m glad I don’t have some old guy set in his ways doing this procedure like it was 1989 still. He’s talking about all of the technology they use to see things while they work and it reminds me of a soldier in the field using night vision.

Sad post time. 😢 I spent the past few days out of town thinking of everything I must get done before surgery hopefully in early November. I’ve decided that I needed to pack up the P-40 for now and step away from the bench and get a few projects done. My bench until I’m on the road to recovery….. So basically I’m looking at surgery 6 weeks out from now, maybe 7. I’m not going to pretend to be John and knock a kit out before then. We have two cruises scheduled before then, I still need to hang the new 65” TV we bought a few months back on sale, fall yard project that need to be done before I’m down and out, boat maintenance needed and the waverunner needs to come out and get stored away for winter. And I haven’t even mentioned that I’m starting PT Tuesday, MRI later this week, follow up pre surgery appointments, possible steroid injections…see where this is going? I’ll still be hanging out here harassing those that get out of line and trying to egg on others to be bad too. But no glue sniffing for a while.

Pretty cool!

Thank goodness she’s okay. We’re heading out of town and we stopped for lunch. Found out greasy tile floors in McDonald’s don’t mix well with a walking cane. Thankfully I found out without going down. One cannot be too careful as we age.

Hubert, as always you say the wisest and best things. Once again, you are spot on. The above paragraph is kind of ironic since I’m already partially fused together from bone spurs and arthritis and as my surgeon put it, he’s going to fuse them in the correct positions and shapes. I have one main vertebrae that has slipped forward slightly and he feels this is the one causing the majority of my issues. But yes, also a fear I have is my mobility and movement afterwards, but as he put it, it will probably be improved over my current situation. My goal right now is the less invasive pain reduction techniques such as steroid injections and PT so I can continue on my weight loss adventure to lighten myself up as much as I can before surgery. I’ve lost almost 40 lbs since the end of May and as of this morning I finally hit the full dose of the semaglutide meds I’m taking.

So today was my appointment with the neurosurgeon. Wife works with the guy, and he’s great from everything she knows about him. Young guy, puts modern technology to use in the OR. All he had to look at today was my MRI from almost 4 years ago. What he saw, was very ugly. And based on those images (and he doubts his procedure would change) it’s going to be a very extensive 8 hour operation. He has to go in from the front, side and back. Front access through my belly will be to replace my degenerated discs with spacers on the front side. Side would be a laminectomy around the nerves and to insert more spacers. Back would be to add all of the fusion hardware. Currently my lumbar region has no curvature to it due to the crushed and degenerated discs. His goal is a complete decompression and proper curvature. Currently I’m experiencing SI and thoracic issues and these are because I’m trying to correct my posture by over extending these areas. Now here’s the part that scares the hell out of me. 5-7 days in the hospital 1-2 weeks in rehab center 6 months to a year recovery time In the meantime I’m starting a series of steroids to see if it helps. Next week (leaving town for the week in the morning) a current MRI and X-rays and then a steroid injection. I’ve come to the decision that I have to do the surgery, it’s not going to get better ignoring it. We just have to plan it out accordingly and make sure things around the home are basically in order so it can be ignored for at least 6 months. Lawn care, boat getting serviced, auto maintenance, etc…. keeps running through my mind.

Call me impressed with your revetment walls, errr…fencing. It’s just vertical instead of horizontal.

I’m looking forward to see how this all pans out. Could be a win-win for everyone that loves P-40’s. Edit: follow them? Meh…I read up so I can rewrite them!

Yea, unfortunately I cannot start on it for a while. Tomorrow is booked with Dr.’s appointments and we leave for Virginia on Wednesday for our sons graduation from Captains Career school. I did spend a little time today reading over the instructions.

Oh man. Old age and problems just sneak up on all of us.

Pulled this one out of the stash. Trying to figure out which Aleutian Tiger to build. I’ve been holding onto these decals forever waiting on this day. The Barracuda sheet is for an un-named pilots aircraft while the SSI set is for Major Chennaults aircraft. As you can see, one set has the small side tigers missing that goes with the sharks mouth The SSI set appears to have a larger cutout for the exhaust area. Probably for the old Revell kit. Also the yellows are different. SSI set is closer to insignia yellow, but both are going to require a drop of red to orange up the spinner paint a touch. Eventually I’ll probably build both, but for now one will do.

The Goblin? I have a 1/72 vacuum kit of it somewhere. I was going to have it escorting my B-36 hanging up. I’ve stood next to the real thing. What a weird airplane.

LOL Carl. That’s what they make credit cards for.

😱😱 $152 shipped to the US. If I didn’t already have it, I’d be in biiiiig trouble!

Looks great. What an exciting time for a homeowner.

Cool techniques Rob! When I built my 1/72 Space Shuttle I used cloth medical tape cut into squares and applied to the exterior to simulate the thermal blankets the exterior was covered with. I had to use very thick enamel paint forced into the weave to fill them up.

My Phase Hanger Resin stuff from their super secret banner sale showed up. I had no idea this was the old Two Mikes resin operation. Always wondered what happened there.

Thanks Peter. Right now I’m dealing with setting up appointments between my PCP that I see next Tuesday for an already scheduled appointment and the Neurosurgeon. Neuro wants to see me tomorrow, but no order for an MRI or the necessary referral from PCP yet, and they’re not responding to my messages. Of course this is all on the office staff, not my doc. I’m going to have to bite my tongue and not read him the riot act Tuesday when I see him. Neuro did give me a late afternoon appointment on Tuesday at this time. And of course they can see we’re trying to fast track everything like my wife did with her breast cancer. It doesn’t seem to be working for me. It seems that I’m doing much better in the evenings lately. But bathroom runs in the middle of the night are rough, as is getting up first thing in the morning. In the meantime, I’m going to go downstairs and clean up the disaster after finishing up the Cutlass and go donate another pint of blood today.

Done! Not my proudest build, but still a good 10 footer. Probably take another day to clean up everything and get better pics.