More Healthcare

I'm at home today, recovering from shoulder surgery (and about to jump on a plane to Barbados.)

There is all good news, fortunately.

The surgery was successful, and I am only experiencing a bit of pain now and again -- mostly due to some useful drugs that I'm taking.

While the waiting period to start the surgery was quite long (from 4pm to 4am,) my family and the staff allowed the time to pass quickly. In particular, my wife was a real sport, and I have a new found appreciation for her caring and loving nature. She has a real commitment to the welfare of others, and I feel positively stingy at times because she is so generous. Once again, I felt lucky to have her in my life, but I felt it quite powerfully yesterday as she lobbied to spend the night with me at the hospital (and was willing to sleep the night in a chair to do so.)

My parents were also real troopers, and were falling asleep in their chairs at 11:00pm when I told them to "please go home!"

The staff at St. Joseph's were... so very _human_ at each step of the way... in the best sense of the word. In my few dealings with the healthcare systems in the U.S. I never felt that way so clearly.

So... the body is sore, but the mind and soul came out stronger for the experience.

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Incidentally, that's not my shoulder in the picture above, but it gives a good idea of what my own X-ray looked like with the clavicle floating above the acromion or "shoulder bone".)



For the medically inclined, my shoulder had a Type 3 separation, shown at left. Both ligaments were severed, and replaced with artificial binding.