8.05.2010

recovery

after 7.5 hours at the hospital yesterday we finally made it home. my butt is so sore and tired from just sitting and waiting. the surgery was only 45 minutes and with an hour of pre-op and one in the post-op area, that makes 4 hours of just waiting for doctors, nurses, paperwork, etc. luckily all of the patient representative staff at piedmont was so nice and helpful and friendly that it wasn't a totally horrendous experience.

jesse did great in surgery. his blood pressure got a little high during the procedure but they were able to restore it to a normal level with meds. the doctor said he accomplished everything he wanted to, though he did have to make 3 new arthroscopic holes to add to jesse's existing adorable 3 from the first surgery. he was pretty drunk afterwards which was precious, hilarious, and pitiful.

the worst part was the nausea he has had from the anesthesia. every time we moved him; hospital to car, car to house, living room to bedroom, he barfed his guts up. luckily he hadn't eaten much and we had a hospital puke-catching device. first time i have ever seen him throw up in our relationship. i was adding some harmony with sympathy heaves. and dumping his vom-bag was one of my top acts of love for him so far. please jesus, take us both home before adult diapers ever come into play.

we had to swap sides of the bed because his wrong arm was next to the nightstand. we slept pretty well, though being on the other side of the bed was very weird as well as worrying contantly (even in my dreams) about bumping jesse or him missing waking up for his meds. he's hooked up around the clock to an ice pack wrap that is attached to an electric cooler (the blue thing in the pic) and with all it's humming and whooshings it sounds like i am sleeping with darth vader (a life's dream of mine).

the weird part is that they gave him a nerve block with his anesthesia which completely numbed his entire left arm for about 24 hours. usually the bad arm at least contributes a helper hand to whatever he is doing after a dislocation when he is in a sling, but with the whole arm out of commission and uncontrollable, i had to do most everything for the poor guy. this has me exhausted after only 1.5 days of it. the feeling is almost completely restored in his arm though so he can do much more 2 handed tasks even though the 2-armed ones are still no-go.

we visited judah for a little while today and of course the first thing he did was slam a water bottle right into jesse's shoulder. thanks for reminding us why you're with your grandparents right now, buddy. but we miss him like crazy.

big love to everyone who texted, wrote, and prayed about this surgery. it's awesome to have such support even during an optional elective procedure like this one. gotta go attempt to massage some life back into my butt.

1 comment:

  1. Good luck with helping Jesse recover! Erik (my husband) was out of commission for weeks and I had to do everything for him - including bathing and cutting up his food. I feel like I'm not cut out to be a nurse. So... here's to a speedy recovery for Jesse!

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