Overrun Wednesday

Although this is normally the time for Mama Kat's Writers Challenge, today has been a bit too overloaded for me to do the prompts justice. So I encourage you to visit Mama Kat and read the responses, I really hated not to be able to do this weeks prompts since they appealed greatly to my sense of the interesting.

Today started with me getting up 4:30am. I had to pick up and take XXX to the hospital for surgery check-in at 5:45. I took her over walked her in until until the admission process was underway, then escaped down to the radio station for the weekly radio show, came back and got a little work done until 10:30am when recovery called and asked me to be there for the instructions from the physical therapist and to bring XXX home once she was fully aware.

XXX was having some shoulder and arm damage from a fall on the ice this winter surgically repaired. I am somewhat the family expert on shoulders and the associated therapy since I crushed my shoulder a few years ago. (You know it is not good when you go to the hospital and the X-ray tech calls everyone in radiology over to look at the pictures with words like "You have to see this, I've never seen one of these before!") After three surgeries and months of some of the most painful therapy I've ever done, I have at least 90% of the function back. So XXX has my full sympathy for what is coming.

In XXX's case the bone was not involved and so she should be able to avoid the locked shoulder and other problems that are attendant with immobilized shoulder joints. Given that I have experienced what happens if the manipulation exercises can't be or aren't done, I am probably the appropriate fanatic do the manipulations four times a day for the nonce. It will be interesting to see what develops. I don't think that XXX realized how much therapy was involved early in the recovery process.

In any case, the PT had a set of four external manipulation exercises to be performed in sets of 10 on the joint 4 times a day for the next four weeks and a start on on "official" (as in at the rehab center) next week. So I am currently the designated "fake" PT therapy person for XXX to do the four times a day exercises.  L got into town this afternoon and so I got a chance to get some stuff done this evening while L stayed with XXX. Right now it isn't too bad because XXX still has a continuous nerve block running. It will get a bit more interesting after Friday when I pull the nerve block canula and she begins the standard oxycontin and vicodan regimens for the pain.

In spite of all that, I was all ready to respond to the Writer's Challenge prompts when I got a phone call from L over at XXX's where she is spending the night with XXX. They couldn't figure out how to rehook the sling and pads, so I ran over and performed some velcro magic. Given it is now close to midnight, think of me playing PT as you read the Writer's Challenge responses. I'll be back for the next challenge.