I would not have made it as a doctor

Or a nurse.  Or a physical therapist.

What a week.  Except it hasn’t even been a week yet.  DH had his shoulder surgery Thursday afternoon in the Park City Medical Center which, like everything else in Park City, looks just like a rustic mountain ski lodge.  I was grateful for the roaring fire in the waiting area though as I’ve been freezing all week from the windy weather we’ve been having lately.

I’m really glad we worked hard in the front end of the week.  We did all the laundry (well, except for E’s white shirt which I realized yesterday wasn’t clean for church), cleaned the whole house, and stocked up on food so I wouldn’t have to worry about any of that for a few days.  C and D’s Primary teacher brought us dinner Thursday night which was wonderful as we had just barely come home from the hospital and I was so glad I didn’t have to think about dinner.  Grandma and Poppa came up to stay with the boys all day and stayed to have dinner with us.

Surgery went well and the surgeon was kind enough to print eight pictures of the inside of DH’s shoulder for me.  Lovely images, so thoughtful of him!  DH was thrilled to see them.  Me?  I still get weak-kneed whenever I think about this whole ordeal.  And we’ve got a long ways to go yet with recovery.

The doctor said day 3 would be the worst, but personally, I think we hit the worst Friday night.  Either DH was too fuzzy-headed to remember, or nobody actually told him (or me) that it was ok to double up on the Percocet Thursday night and Friday to counteract the anesthesia wearing off.  He was in a lot of pain Friday night, I was dead tired and not in the happiest of moods, and E got out of bed a few too many times.  I’m not sure how many of us were in tears.  But after DH called the surgeon’s office and got the ok to take two Percocet tablets plus 800 mg ibuprofen, he was much happier!  And I was much happier!  And E finally stayed in bed and went to sleep!  It’s been a particularly trying time with the 3-year-old lately.  Or maybe it’s that I’m seriously sleep deprived and have no patience with him.

DH has this nifty pack that goes clear around his shoulder and hooks up to an ice machine which pumps ice water through it continuously.  Which is great because we don’t have to mess with ice packs, but which is not so great because I have to keep it continuously stocked with ice.  I wonder when the checkers at Smith’s are going to ask me why I’m in there every day buying 20 pounds of ice.  Plus DH is plugged into it (C calls him a cyborg–“We have to go plug in Daddy!”) and there is no possible way he can get out of it by himself.  So every night, I’m up when he’s up, unhooking him, opening his pill bottle, refilling the ice chamber which sometimes has me out on the back porch in my pajamas in the rain at 5 a.m. getting ice from the cooler.  And sometimes I can go right back to sleep and then sometimes (like this morning at 5) I can’t!  Which hasn’t put me in the best of moods in the daytime when I have to take care of the boys and DH without him able to give me some respite.  I’m not a very good nurse!

Then there’s the physical therapy I have to do with him.  Try as I might, he usually screams with pain at least once while I’m trying to get his sling on or off while supporting his elbow and his wrist at the same time.  And yesterday was the worst as I had to remove all of his bandages.  They were very sticky and the scent of 2-day-old blood and the sight of the stitches about did me in.  Then I was supposed to pull out the wire drip line that had been putting numbing medication directly in his bloodstream.  It was in his shoulder about 12 inches and I just could not pull it out.  I had to have A come in and do it.   He got it out with DH’s help and promptly said, ” Well, I’m never going to be a doctor.”  Me neither, buddy, me neither.

But overall, DH is doing really well (if he can just survive our little physical therapy sessions) although tonight may be the test as he’s cut back on the Percocet a bit.  He sees the surgeon for a follow-up on Tuesday (at 7:30 a.m. if we can drag ourselves out of bed to get there that early) and see where we go from there.

And now that he’s just taken his last pain meds for the night, I’d better try to sleep too!

So I’ll be less whiney tomorrow. . .