{"id":842633,"date":"2023-09-19T09:12:55","date_gmt":"2023-09-19T17:12:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/?p=842633"},"modified":"2023-09-19T09:12:57","modified_gmt":"2023-09-19T17:12:57","slug":"the-old-man-and-the-c-asino","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/blog\/the-old-man-and-the-c-asino\/","title":{"rendered":"The Old Man and the C (asino)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Ever since my 76th<\/sup> birthday in February, my body has been falling apart orthopedically — hip, knee, and shoulder. Most of my body\u2019s systems are fine, but my skeleton, not so much.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The MRI on my right hip showed a number of issues, including arthritis. My orthopedist has convinced me that I need a new hip. \u201cIt\u2019s a surgery that most people recover from in a few days,\u201d he told me. \u201cNothing to worry about.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

While I\u2019m getting a second opinion, I suspect I\u2019ll eventually end up with a hip replacement. Before I scheduled the surgery, Bonnie and I had a long-planned Seven Stars trip to Harrah\u2019s Cherokee in North Carolina, followed by a flight to Greece for two consecutive weeks on a cruise ship out of Athens. When we\u2019re in Cherokee, we can fly to Europe out of Atlanta — which makes for a much shorter trip than flying to Europe out of Las Vegas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Walking with a walker is acceptable, so I figured I\u2019d deal with the walker while away from home and get the hip fixed once I\u2019m back. It didn\u2019t work out that way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Harrah\u2019s Cherokee is a rather large casino, and our hotel room was almost a half-mile from high limit slots, which is where I play their $5 Deuces Wild game. There is a newer hotel tower closer to the casino, and we certainly could have gotten a room there, but the fitness center is in the old tower and (before I knew my bones were going to be hurting) I figured I\u2019d spend three or four days a week working out. Plus, the best place for breakfast (Selu Garden Caf\u00e9) is in one of the older towers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first couple days, I was walking with my walker at a reasonable pace, but the pain kept increasing. By the third day, I was hurting too much to be walking. We considered renting a scooter at $60 a day (that goes against the grain for someone trying to gamble with an advantage), but they also had a few complimentary regular wheelchairs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bonnie volunteered to push me in the conventional wheelchair. We tried that, but she\u2019s 80 years old, weighs 100 pounds, and there are some uphill carpeted pathways between the hotel and casino. After one such session, I recognized that this wasn\u2019t a good solution. While she would have kept going until she dropped, I made the executive decision that we could afford $60 a day for a short period of time. When she mentioned my hip pain to our host, he said he\u2019d comp the scooter. Now it became a no-brainer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

People are graciously holding doors open for me, and getting out of my way as I drive through the casino. Whether it\u2019s being polite or trying to protect themselves from this crazy old man and his scooter, I\u2019m not sure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to video poker, I also check out slots — of which there are a lot in Cherokee. Having a scooter is a plus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bonnie has some foot issues as well. While nowhere near as severe as mine, long walks cause her a bit of a problem sometimes. So, we share the scooter. We sit side by side, both with half a butt-cheek off the edge, and she drapes her arm around my neck in order to hang on. She\u2019s usually smiling, but regularly pleads with me, \u201cNot too fast on corners!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As we go along, many people smile at the sight and comment with a, \u201cNow that\u2019s the way to do it!\u201d or something similar. When they do, we both smile and I honk the horn of the scooter. Bonnie and I would make side bets on how many people would speak to us on our trip from our room to our machine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I should be able to make it through the rest of our Cherokee trip using the scooter. But we\u2019ll leave the scooter behind as we fly to Europe. How well the walker works then is to be determined.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It could easily turn out that we decide to stay on the ship and not explore the port cities. Which is understandable, but saddening. Exploring several Greek Isles, along with Jerusalem and Haifa, were on our bucket list. Missing them due to being unable to walk well will be a major disappointment. If the surgery goes well, maybe we can reschedule next year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ever since my 76th birthday in February, my body has been falling apart orthopedically — hip, knee, and shoulder. Most of my body\u2019s systems are fine, but my skeleton, not so much. The MRI on my right hip showed a number of issues, including arthritis. My orthopedist has convinced me that I need a new […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15763,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[557],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/842633"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15763"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=842633"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/842633\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=842633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=842633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=842633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}