MEDICAL REPORT ENGLISH
Readers Thursday night got the Canadian version. At 4am, when I started the US version, I looked down and realized the right side of my T-shirt was soaked in blood. Rousted my doctor at 430am; asked me if I thought I had lost less than a cup, and, having no real way of measuring, I demurred which allowed him to give instructions on changing the blood-soaked bandage at the top of the cast, and for removing the drainage tube -- and going back to sleep. Did call twice to check but daughter Kathryn was in charge (Just like her mother; walks into a room and takes charge.)
Put the left arm off until April. Too much to do in January-March.. I am in a lot of pain, this cast is like an anvil, and the whole thing makes me too dependent on others.
Very grateful to former Shamrock coach Warren Abel who drove up from Richmond to escort me to Johns Hopkins. He will probably never agree again to be the designated care-giver -- after having to help me put on my underwear.
Good rule; do not make fun of people with needles in their hands. After general anesthesia, the doctors stuck a huge needle in the soft underside of my arm. Then asked me to count backwards from 10. Deciding I was too lucid, I got another shot, and after waiting for it to take effect, asked me to count again. Smart-ass me, I counted backward in Espanol. OK, wise guy, you get a third shot. That last one would have stopped a bull elephant charging across the African savannah. I woke up 3 hours later in recovery. Hurting!
I think I had already irritated one of the OR nurses. In the 90 minutes before surgery, three different people with the inevitable clipboards took my medical history. I know; this is CYA in case something goes wrong. But, my mood had already darkened when the chief surgeon told me, after 10 months of pain, that the odds are no better than 50-50 that I will regain the full use of my hands -- which I enjoyed before the cancer surgery.
So, when this one young nurse, not that many years away from the farm, asked me if I exercised regularly, I said no. When she asked what form of exercise I enjoy the most, I replied, "indoor broad jump." The pen hovered a second, then she wrote down the answer. She came back when I was in recovery, and indignantly informed she did not appreciate my humor.
end