Knee Surgery

I'm having flashbacks to that time of life just after Ashley arrived. Waiting for that last "right-before-bed" feeding, getting up in the middle of the night, waking up early...I barely made it through three months with Ashley. Now I'm back in that mode being nursemaid for Jeff and I'm struggling on the third day! I wasn't cut out to be a nursemaid. God has more patient, more tolerant, more cheerful people He's using for this job. Poor Jeff, though, is stuck with me. Pray for him!!

As for the patient, surgery went very well. Two small incisions on either side of the knee had very little drainage. He's still in a little pain, but that's probably because I'm rather harsh with him on his daily exercises. "Push through the pain. They said it would hurt. You'll live." Empathy is not my strong point!

Right now, he's using a flexion machine 8 hours a day and is already up to 75 degrees of flexion. The cold therapy machine that circulates ice water around his knee 24/7 is doing a great job of keeping the swelling down, but eats 20# of ice a day. We don't have storage for that much ice, so the people at Conoco are getting to know me pretty well.

Ashley has turned into a wonderful little helper. She never complains when Dad says "I need...", or "Ashley, get...", but jumps right up and does it.

Thanks to my super awesome life group, one thing I haven't had to tackle is meal planning or prep. That's been a huge blessing!!

So, we've made it through 3½ days of post surgery recovery. Dad's getting really bored, though and tomorrow Ashley and I start school and won't be as available to him for that glass of ice water, snack, pillow adjustment, TV adjustment (I hate digital TV!!!), or the half dozen other little things that come up each day. Could get interesting.