Pre-Christmas Surgery

Glen had been putting it off for months, until the day finally arrived for him to have shoulder surgery.

He had a rotator cuff issue. The doctor went in, cleaned it all out and shaved off some extra bony growth that was in there. We were really happy he didn't need a full rotator cuff repair which would have taken him twice as long to heal.

He didn't look quite as chipper when he woke up from surgery. He kept holding his head way up off the bed and kept looking up at the ceiling tiles with his eyes darting back and forth and back and forth. He kept looking at me weird and was not talking to me.

When he finally said something, he asked if he had a stake meeting that night. Before I could answer that he didn't, he said, "I don't think I'm going to be able to make it if I do."

When the nurse came to check on him, she offered him a pillow because she thought what I had been thinking--that he looked so uncomfortable craning his head forward off the bed. She said she had offered him a pillow earlier, but he refused to let her get one for him.

He later told me he kept holding his head up because there were tubes under his head and it was uncomfortable for him to lay his head back. Which made me wonder why he hadn't taken the pillow offer the first time it was made? He said he didn't want to bother her with having to get one for him.

He also later explained to me that he had noticed the direction the ceiling tiles were going in the pre-op room. When he woke up the tiles were going a different direction (because he was in the recovery room) and he was trying so hard to figure out if they had moved him. He had been given drugs in the first room and he had been really out of it when they wheeled him away to the surgery room.

During his recovery, he asked me three times if the doctor had talked to me. I told him yes and showed him three sheets of pictures the doctor had taken inside his shoulder during surgery. He asked what the doctor had said and I told him I was not going to tell him because he would just forget what I said and would ask me again.

Sure enough, he asked me three different times if the doctor had talked to me and three different times I showed him the pictures the doctor had given me and told him I would tell him later what the doctor had said.

The next day the doctor called Glen to see how he was doing and after he got off the phone, Glen exclaimed to me a little indignantly, "Hey, the doctor said he gave you some pictures yesterday of my shoulder!?!" As if I hadn't already shown them to him three different times...!!

The anesthesiologist gave Glen a full shoulder block, so he was feeling no pain when he got home from the surgery center. He thought his limp arm and hand felt so strange.

Here he is trying to hold his hand up with his good hand. He got such a kick out of trying to use that limp hand to open up a Popsicle. That thing remained deadened clear into the next day.

My dad suggested we get Glen an ice cooling shoulder pad machine which he claims works better on shoulder surgery pain than pain medication does. We now have to agree it is a great invention.

For some reason, Glen always craves an Arby sandwich after he's had a procedure or a surgery.

He survived his first night and was happy to start getting a little feeling coming back into his fingers and hand.

By midday, he was doing his best to get something done on the computer for work. He's a crazy workaholic!!

Most of the time he would be hanging out in the basement eating Popsicles and watching the game show network. Sometimes he would even watch Hallmark Christmas movies with me. Loved that!!

One day the Brimleys brought over a tray of shrimp. Glen home teaches them and they are the tiniest people ever. They signed the card, "Love, the little shrimps."

 Bob Davis, his friend from work, brought over a box of different kinds of popcorn.

Several other friends stopped by with other treats for him and to wish him well in his recovery. These cookies were delivered by Bill and Jan Evans's grandchildren who proudly announced they had frosted them themselves!

When Ben saw the sugar cookies, he said, "They look very frosting-y."

And Glen, the man who says he doesn't eat sweets, surprised me when he ate some of them.