One Year

Today marks the one year anniversay of a day I will never forget. Carol wanted me to build a rack to hold some of our ever increasing inventory of home made wine. It had rained the night before and my ladder was laying in the yard down at the neighbors. After going to get it I set it up in the garage and climbed up to get some wood from the attic space over our laundry room. Instead of climbing up and down the ladder I was just dropping pieces of wood to the floor. I dropped several then felt the ladder slip just a little bit. When it did I jerked involuntarily and the ladder started to slide down the wall. I remember thinking on the way down that I had fallen in a similar manner a couple of months before and while it would hurt it was no big deal. I was wrong. When I hit the floor I went to push myself up and realized my left arm wouldn't work. I went in the house and called to Carol who was working in the basement. I told her I needed to go to the hospital and she panicked just a bit. She did a good job getting me there although I did get some grief from the ambulance service I volunteer with for not calling them. The emergency room nurse cut off my shirt and when the doctor came to the door he said I had dislocated my shoulder. I got an IV and some medication to ease the pain, then an X-ray to make sure no bones were broken. The doctor came back in and said he was going to try to put it back in place but was doubtful since he was small and I'm large and according to him muscular. He ordered more medication to put me in "twilight sedation". He told me to count from ten and when I got to negative 30 he ordered more medication and asked me to name our grandchildren. My memories for the next several hours are jumbled. The ER doctor made two attempts to put my shoulder back in place, both unsuccessful. I asked Carol what I said during the procedures and she said just ouch a couple of times. I tend to have a rather blue vocabulary and was concerned I had been rude to the staff. I went in and out of awareness and about every five minutes I would ask Carol if they had done the procedure yet. She would kindly tell me they had but it didn't work and the orthopedic surgeon would be working on me later in the day. Apparently I did this for about four hours just like clockwork every five minutes. Is it any wonder why I love this woman? There are times I could aggravate Helen Keller. Dr. Schierer took me to an operating room, had me completely knocked out and got my parts back where they belonged. I was back home by 6 pm with my arm in a sling. I saw Dr. Schierer a week later and then started physical therapy. When that didn't work as planned I was sent for an MRI which showed I had torn my rotator cuff. Dr. Schierer did surgery to repair that on August 30th and after a couple of weeks it was back to physical therapy. I finished physical therapy in January because I had used all the sessions my insurance would cover. It has now been a year. Is my shoulder back to normal? No. Will it ever be? I don't think so. It has been very difficult to regain the strength I lost. It is amazing how quickly you lose strength when you cannot use a muscle and how hard it is to get it back. I am back to my normal activity but some things take longer, more gets done one handed and it often hurts to use my left arm. If you ever wondered about insurance I offer the following. I am in an HMO and my total out of pocket was less than $1,000. I was in the hospital twice and never stayed overnight. The total for those two partial days was over $60,000. That amount does not include the doctor or physical therapy costs. A moment of poor judgment, lots of pain and $60,000. My advice, do what I didn't do, have someone hold the bottom of the ladder. Carol was home and would have done it if I had asked. Stupid Jeff!