It's Monday

which means that Pat has the day off.  We took the kids to school, then went to Starbucks.  Pat told me he didn't want to do anything today, joy.  He doesn't understand how difficult it is for me to go out and do stuff with my shoulder hurting so badly but I agreed.  We're both getting over pneumonia right now, and he probably needed a break so he spent the morning playing hearts and spades.  We got Daniel, and then he went back to his card game.  I picked up Alex so he wouldn't have to interrupt his card game.  He said he edited some pictures.  We went to ACE after Rick came back to get some tomato cages, and Pat cleaned up my Dad's old table saw.  Then I cooked dinner while Pat took Rick to the gym.  In the evening we went back to ACE to pick up some mushroom yard art we saw there earlier to add to Pat's backyard phallic temple then to Walgreens to get Rick some deodorant.  We went to Starbucks and then came home to find that Butch had called.  Pat talked with Butch a while, apparently he really liked the Orson Scott Card Empire novel I had gotten for him.  I asked Pat about basically getting every thing he ever wrote and he agreed so I started hunting down more of Card's work while I put the kids to bed.  Pat has returned to his card games.  I hate those games.

Pat's shoulder surgery

When Pat had shoulder surgery, we had HealthNet HMO insurance and we did it differently. We had to go to Dr. Enrique and get x-rays. Then he gave us the referral to Dr. Jaffin. When we were there the 2nd time to get the referral, Alex took his first steps between Dr. Enrique's waiting room table and chairs.

Dr. JAffin requested an MRI, but told Pat that he had a torn rotator cuff. The day Pat had the MRI scheduled, I dropped him off at Antioch Medical Imaging. He told me to go home, but I was really glad I stayed. The doctor who injected him with the dye couldn't find the right space to inject it into and it took several tries. Then, he had to lay flat on his back in the tube causing him to have breathing problems so I was really glad he didn't have to wait to be picked up.

Pat's surgery was scheduled for May 5th, 2005, in the afternoon. Pat was really grumpy by the time surgery time came because he was ravenous. We had sex shortly before we left, then he showered and we took off. I got to see him in the pre op ward, then they took him back. Before surgery, Dr. Jaffin came to see me in the waiting room and told me that Pat could have 2 percocet every 4 hours instead of one. I walked with Alex around the waiting room for a while, then the nurse came and told me Pat was in surgery. I went to half price books and got the Chamber of Secrets book that I had loaned Rick, then went to Starbucks. I took Alex to my Mom's house and went back to the surgicenter where Pat had finally finished.

When I got there he had a nurse and anesthetist around him. Apparently his heart rate was very slow due to some muscle relaxants he had been given right before his surgery was finished. The doctor gave him something to counter this, then they sent him home. Oddly enough, he was wheeled out by an old high school classmate of mine.

I got him home and managed to get him into his blue chair. He was more alert than I was and wanted a strawberry milkshake so I got him one at Baskin's on my way to pick up Alex.

Dr. Jaffin called in the evening to see how Pat was doing, and to remind him to start lifting his arm over his head to keep scar tissue from building up. He did it one time and about collapsed. He went into shock. I had to get my mother over to PAt's house to watch Alex while I got Pat to the emergency room.

At the ER I went in and the people there brought him in on a gurney. He was taken right back, and was indeed in shock. They started him on an IV and discovered that his heart was only beating at 60 beats per minute. I gave them the details of what had transpired, they couldn't believe that the doctor requested him to move his arm so soon after surgery. When he was stabilized, they sent him home again, much to my surprise. I slept on the Papa San chair cushion on the floor for quite a few nights til I was certain he wouldn't need me at night.

Walpaper

6 years ago, about a week before I found out I was pregnant with Mini-Me, I started pulling the wallpaper off the walls in Pat's kitchen and he grabbed the flooring to pull it up. Now we were in the middle of a kitchen refurbishing. One thing followed another, and, while we finished the kitchen, we never got the wallpaper trim up on the walls. Well, we did that this weekend.


That trim has been languishing in Pat's washroom for 6 years now. This past Friday I decided that we would measure the kitchen then:

1. Install the trim if we had enough.


2. If we didn't have enough we would buy another roll online or chuck it and call it a day.

Well, we had enough, and we got it up on the walls. But then there was the case of the missing blank plate.

Pat has a receptacle on the wall over the door to his washroom. It's wired up and good, but we've never needed it so we put a blank plate over it, then hung a clock over that. Well, Pat was unscrewing the plate so that we could fit the trim around it. He set the plate down and it disappeared. We never found it and, given that he was on a step ladder at the time, there weren't too many places for it to go. So, Pat must be the David Copperfield of the Do It Yourself set, or that switch plate was magic.

4 Years Ago

Pat had rotator cuff surgery on May 5 2005. That was a very hard day for him. Not only did he have surgery, obviously, he almost died. He given muscle relaxants during the course of surgery. His surgery took longer than expected so naturally he was given more of the relaxants. He woke up and they sent him home within 1/2 hour. His surgery was at the end of the day at the surgicenter and the nurses and attendants were anxious to go home. His doctor called in the evening to check on Pat, and to have him start doing some exercises to prevent scar tissue from building up. We raised his hand over his head, and his heart rate plummeted. He started going into shock and I raced him to the emergency room. In the truck he fell into my lap. I had to get the emergency room people to get a gurney to get him into the room. His heart rate was 30 BPM. Yes, thats what it was. They gave him medicine to counteract the muscle relaxant, to raise his heart rate and to get him out of shock. A few hours later we brought him home.