My blog hiatus was spurred by my wife’s recent knee replacement
surgery and my plan to devote time to help her during her recovery.
I thought I might restart my blog in September after a brief stint as her
helper.
I spent several days last week in the hospital with her and my
nursing plan seemed on course. I devoted last weekend at home to just
that, helping her. She is recovering nicely and I left the nursing duties
for the week to her sister (who happens to be former nurse) and returned to
work. I returned to duty this weekend.
Of course I do laundry at night and shopping gets squeezed in
between work and arriving home.
Now the routine is settling in. Help her
into the passive motion machine and watch her for two hours. My watching
lasts about ten minutes, after which I find a book or a TV show to watch.
Get her a drink, fix the ice pack and adjust the position of her leg.
Pace a little bit, check my email. Answer the phone and give to
her. Give her the IPod. Eat a cookie or two, or three. Big
gaps of time exist while on call for action while she is strapped into her
machine. Then we do a series of prone and seated exercises, have lunch,
take a short break and return to motion machine for an early afternoon
session. One more session is planned for the evening.
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| Control unit for Continuous Passive Motion machine |
Saturday was the end of my imitation of Florence
Nightingale. I thought I might have some free time for myself during my
wife’s afternoon machine time so I went into slacker mode.
I booted up the old laptop, my preferred writing
implement. I have several journals, pens and an IMac but sadly my
eight-year old laptop with all its quirks still feels most natural.
Oops
I hear a call.
“I am done, time’s up.” Iris gingerly moves her leg off
the machine. Then we remember we need to shop for a cane at the medical
supply store. Off we go.
So much for my free time. But at least I have something to
write about.
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