So, springtime fashion means that color is in, right?
1. I am grateful for the rain that fell for a good part of the day. The drive home from dance this late afternoon was just beautiful. The foothills were so green and lush, I felt like I was back in New Zealand.
2. That, even though it was just barely, I made it to Rylan's dance class on time, with her costume. One of the other moms forgot it was picture day, and I know she felt like an idiot. I have been in her shoes so many times... I am grateful that this was not one of those days.
3. I am grateful for chocolate Teddy Grahams. Even though it wasn't the dose of chocolate I sorely needed, it worked in a pinch.
4. I am grateful that Owen was excited to write the letter 'f', and that Rylan remembered the verse we worked on yesterday:
"In fourteen hundred ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue."
5. Constant physical pain will most certainly lead me back to the slippery slope of depression. I'm well on my way into the pit of despair, (no thanks to forgetting to take my happy pills 4 days in a row), but I am thankful that a small voice in my head worked hard today to slow down this descent, and to take stock in what made me happy today.
On Tuesday night, the night before my surgery, I attended the last board meeting of the year for our homeschool group. My position was Membership. I processed new member applications, conducted an annual audit, and handled quite a few squabbles and issues during the year on our Yahoo group. Homeschoolers can be a passionate, feisty bunch, and on a few occasions, downright mean.
So, of course, in my charmed life - such as it is, my term ended on an incredibly negative note, given the breach that happened last week. Yep, I am all too happy to fade into the background, where I belong. My social life will consist of tea-parties with my daughter and Park Days with the kids, instead of attending meetings, reading and writing tons of email and being the 'polite police' that nobody likes. Maybe I'll teach myself to knit. Again. Maybe I'll start writing on the blog about my unrelenting need for organized perfection again, and not really care if I get made fun of this time. No.. I'll care. But I'll do it anyway, because that is who I am.
Yesterday was shoulder surgery day. My mom accompanied me while Dean stayed home with kids. I went into the surgery knowing that there would be a 25% chance that the surgeon would do a SLAP tear repair, which would mean 5-6 weeks in an immobilizer brace. Otherwise, it was just debriding my AC joint to relieve the arthritis pain, and removing the bone spur that has been digging into my rotator cuff, and initial recovery meant a couple days in a sling.
The nurses told my mom that there would be a monitor in the individual family waiting room and that she could watch the scope portion of my procedure. How cool is that?! After I changed into my gown and got my IV inserted, mom and I worked out how to get Skype on her iPhone so that she could share the video, live, with Dean and the kids. Then I had a nice video chat with Dean and the kids before the anesthesiologist came in to put in my nerve block. The nerve block meant injecting a strong local around the brachial nerve bundles, so that my entire arm would go numb. I got to watch on the small ultrasound monitor as he positioned the needle in a variety of locations. Shortly after that my arm grew very heavy. Then it tingled. My diaphragm on the right side grew heavy, making a deep breath impossible, and my right eyelid drooped. All normal, and all quite strange. Pretty soon he came back in and asked me to move the fingers on my right hand. Try as hard as I might, they would not move. That meant it was time for surgery.
They wheeled me from pre-op into the operating room. With quite a lot of assistance, I moved from the gurney to the operating table. A nurse asked me to hold my numb arm to my chest as she positioned me better. I looked down, and there was this limp, strange arm, flopped on top of my chest. That wasn't my arm!?!? My arm was still laying by my side ... I could still feel the heaviness of it touching my hip! I looked again. There was no arm resting by my side. I was so utterly confused... I grabbed this 'fake' arm that I would swear was not mine and held onto it. Apparently it was heavy, because it slipped from my left hand's grasp, and I had to make a quick grab before it flopped off the right side of the table. It felt like I was holding a dead hand. Not that I have any idea what that would feel like, but I wasn't thinking too clearly. The nurse took my arm back and strapped on the oxygen mask and then I felt the warm, blissful tingle of anesthesia in my IV. Five seconds later I was out.
I opened my eyes and it was over. It took barely an hour. The nurse helped me put my clothes on, followed by a sling and a humongous ice pack. I had to walk to the recovery area. I chatted with mom as I sipped some water and munched some crackers. There was no need to do the SLAP repair, so the surgery went quickly and I only had to wear a sling. Mom pulled up the car and we drove home.
The day went by quickly, but it was extremely weird to have this lifeless limb attached to me. I didn't do much, but every time I moved, my arm would slip in the sling. I would walk around the kitchen and look down and notice that my thumb, hooked in the thumb strap, was bent back at a 120 degree angle as my arm was falling forward out of the sling. At one point, when Rylan accompanied me to the bathroom, my whole arm slipped from the sling and just hung there. I just looked at it, not really processing that it was my arm, swaying back and forth.
The nerves started to wake up around midnight. I could twitch my fingertips, ever so slightly. By 5 a.m. the block had worn off completely and the pain was bad. It's been an on/off day. The Vicodin makes me a bit woozy the first half hour I take it. Then I'm a little fuzzy in the head. When it wears off, the pain is pretty awful. I hope that each day to come the pain decreases and the mobility gets better. Well, I should hope so - isn't that what this surgery was supposed to fix in the first place?
I'm just glad that by sheer providence I have six straight days of nothing to do. Dean ran Rylan to dance last night, and mom took her to karate today. I needed help showering and dressing today, but I hope for a little more independence tomorrow. We'll see...
I am one lucky mom, wife and daughter. This was my 7th Mother's Day, and it just keeps getting better every year. I have few requests when it comes to celebrating Mother's Day. There are just a couple of must-haves: breakfast in bed (along with long stretches of quiet time) and handmade cards from the kids. My husband achieved this with flying colors again this year. Jordan fried bacon and helped Dean with the dishes, and Rylan and Owen flipped pancakes. Dean brought up a venti mocha from Starbucks, Jordan delivered granola with fruit a little while later, and then a while after that he brought up a fully loaded breakfast tray with juice, bacon and pancakes. I was stuffed! The kids each made a card - all sweet and endearing in their own way.
Worthy of special mention this year was the fact that Owen wrote on his card. He printed 'mouse' on the front - complete with a drawing of one on the front of the card...
And a message on the inside...
This is extra-special because this is the first handwriting sample of his that I have. His very first writing sample was made on Thursday, when he signed his name on the inside of the Mother's Day card that the kids sent off to their grandma in OKC. Up to this point, all I have been able to encourage him to write was the letter 'f' in his Explode the Code workbook, a couple of weeks ago. Owen is five years and four months, and he is the kid that has previously avoided anything that involved drawing, coloring or writing. It took serious arm-twisting to get even a little drawing as a 'signature' in other cards and so forth... So this is huge - and I have my husband and his idea to use Bananagrams to thank.
We had an awesome day, and it was even better since I got to celebrate both Mother's Day and Rylan's 7th birthday on the same day. Happy (belated) Mother's Day to every mom, caretaker and mentor out there. It is a hard job, but oh so rewarding...
My MRI was bright and early Tuesday morning. When it was over and I was preparing to leave, the technician told me that I would hear from my doctor in a few days. Surprisingly, he called that afternoon. He said the MRI shows that I have tendonitis in the rotator cuff, and a torn labrum. What's a labrum? It is like a cup of cartilage that anchors the top of your humerus into the shoulder joint. Picture this: a beach ball and a dinner plate. The 'ball' is the round head of the humerus and the 'plate' is socket. Ligaments are at work to hold the joint together, but the labrum functions to 'deepen' the socket.
Injury to the labrum can happen several different ways. Whenever you fully dislocate your shoulder or stress the joint so much that it becomes unstable (subluxation), you will tear the labrum (among a host of other things). If you fall and put you arm out to brace yourself, you could tear it as well. There is significantly less blood flow to cartilage, tendons and ligaments, so whenever you do have an injury, the healing process takes a lot longer than if it were just a muscle tear. A tear in the labrum will eventually heal, but it might reattach in the wrong place in the socket, or a torn bit can fold into the socket, causing a 'catch' whenever the joint moves.
Several ligaments of the shoulder attach to the labrum, as well as the bicep tendon. The bicep tendon attaches to the labrum at the superior point of the socket, and then the labrum extends around in an anterior and posterior direction (front and back). If you tear the labrum at that attachment point (the superior region of the socket, closest to your head), it is called a SLAP lesion. (Superior Labrum Anterior and Posterior). I'm not a doctor, nor do I play one on TV, but I think that this may be what it is. There are several different degrees and locations of tears, but in thinking about my pain and the one injury that I can recollect in the past year, this makes the most sense. I was already hurting quite a bit in the shoulder when it happened. I had Colin up on the changing table, and as I stood him up to pull up his pants, he launched himself off of the table, to my right. I stuck my arm out at a 90 degree angle to catch him. Oh. My. Gosh. Did that ever hurt. I heard a 'pop!' I was thinking at the time that it was still my shoulder, and that I must have pulled more muscles when it happened. Now I wonder about that. Catching a falling object that weighs 35 lbs or so with an outstretched arm will put quite a strain on the bicep. My pain before this incident was limited to my shoulder and pectoral area. Now it involves my bicep and my shoulder blade too. I don't recall exactly when it happened, but it has been a few months.
So what does this mean? Most likely some shoulder surgery. I have an appointment this afternoon to do a nerve study. There might be an issue with my brachial plexus since that is a nexus point of pain and that I have numbness going down the underside of my arm. I also recently discovered that operating a can opener or nail clippers with my right hand is getting very difficult - I just don't have the hand strength to do it. The results from this test will go to the orthopedic surgeon to go over, and then we'll go on from there.
Now, if I could just get a handle on the pain while I wait, that would be great.
I actually don't mind the snow - this is the only time our backyard looks semi-pretty. :)
It is also a great reason to stay indoors, sip cocoa and make a big pot of chili for dinner.
I'm going to miss winter, whenever it actually does leave...so I will enjoy this day immensely!