Brett, Interrupted

Brett had shoulder surgery last week. Major shoulder surgery. Did I mention he didn't mention just how major it was going to be? Did I mention I don't think he realized exactly how major it was going to be?
He's been having a good deal of pain for over a year. It got to the point that he hurt if he slept on his left side, the cortizone shots did no good and the sports medicine pt-type guy he went to couldn't "work out" the pain. So he went under the knife. The previous MRI showed "some type of damage...could be cartilage, could be tendon-related, could be rotator cuff". So the surgeon dug around enough to discover that he had fraying of his labram (cartilage) and serious inflammation of his biceps tendon. He repaired the cartilage and cut off the inflamed part of the tendon, pulled the remaning section of the tendon up and screwed it back into the bone at his shoulder. Holy pain, Batman.
I'll spare you the details, just know that the first few days (which involved cold, rainy and snowy weather, no school (President's Day), and two kids whose favorite passtime is wrestling) were ugly. Everybody had a short fuse, Brett hurt really badly and....I'll just leave it at that.
A week later, we're back to school, Brett is back to work (although one-armed and from home) and sanity is beginning to return as some semblance of routine comes back. Brett still can't use his left arm- he's in a sling 24/7 for another three weeks- so I'm doing everything. Driving, trash duty, kids' betime/bathtime every night, being his personal chauffeur, sponge-bather, taking him to PT 2x/week, layman's pyhsical therapy...all on top of the regular stuff I have to get done every day. If I manage to neglect you or fail to follow up on something I've promised to do with/for you, please don't hang me up by my toenails- I haven't had time to paint them and you just don't want to see that.
For those who are curious, here's a picture of the LOVELY addition to our bedroom furniture. It's a PT chair- Brett has to strap himself into it for an hour at a time at least three times a day. It moves his arm around for him. Don't you love it? Don't you wish you had one of these in your house?He really has made leaps and bounds improvements in the last few days. He weaned off the pain meds a few days after the surgery and he's learning to accept what he can and can't do for a while. Being dependent isn't his strong suit, but he's learning to do it more gracefully (and I'm learning not to be the uber-wench I can be sometimes). We go to his post-op with his surgeon tomorrow. He'll get his stitches out (which means he can take a shower without having saran-wrap taped all over his shoulder) and, hopefully, get a positive report. Thanks to everyone who has called to check on him, offered to take our kids for a few hours, offered meals...we're grateful for it all!