Taking Care of the Patient

 

We are postponing our Christmas festivities a few days until Al feels up to it.  Right now, he’s fast asleep in the recliner.

He had his 4th rotator cuff surgery yesterday, and the third on the right shoulder.  I don’t know why he keeps injuring it, but he does.

The doctor wasn’t sure he would be able to repair the shoulder again, but fortunately, although badly torn, there was enough tissue to reconnect everything.

He went into surgery about 8:30 and was done by 10:00 and we were on the way home sometime after noon.  We had gotten up at 3:30 to have time to shower and get to the surgery center by 6:30 am.  We got very little sleep the night before and it was a long day for both of us, so we were both tired. 

He is hooked up to an ice machine, which is a cooler with a motor and cables that pump ice water into a patch that is attached to his shoulder.  It’s supposed to help with swelling.  Of course keeping it full of ice when you have an Rv refrigerator is a challenge. 

They did a nerve block on the shoulder so there was no pain until it wore off about 5pm.  We have 4 types of pain meds and unfortunately, I don’t think we (I) administered them at the correct times and he started having some excruciating pain.   We learned after his first shoulder surgery that if the pain gets ahead of you, there is no catching up.   I didn’t want to spend another week-end like we did after his first surgery.  I was regretting having it done so close to Christmas since the Doctor would not be available.

Fortunately, we got the pain under control, but it started up again before the 6 hour wait time.  I ended up giving him more meds about an hour early and it seemed to help.

Once the pain was manageable, he was able to sleep and has pretty much slept all yesterday, last night, and today.   I wake him up to change the ice, give him medications, or food, but other than that he’s pretty much been asleep.

He is sleeping in his recliner.  He has enough trouble getting out of the recliner, so we don’t think the bed is an option. Plus we don’t want him rolling over on the shoulder in his sleep.

I ended up sleeping on the couch next to him, because I wanted to be close if he needed me.  I was up umpteen times during the night giving him meds, and fixing things for him.  I was pretty tired today and napped off and on all day.

So…..it’s a fun Christmas Eve here at the Lueck household.  That’s okay though, because if the pain was real bad, he wouldn’t be able to sleep.

 

There is a new movie coming out tomorrow I think.  Do they actually have movie theaters open on Christmas Day?   It’s called Unbroken.  It’s a true story about a young man who was an Olympic runner, and ended up in a Japanese prisoner of war camp.  Al and I both read the book and loved it so much we’re reading it again, and plan to go to the theater to see the movie.  We very rarely go to a movie theater, but we just might go see this one.  I think the movie would be better if you read the book first.

 

Merry Christmas everyone.