Surgery

Bob had his surgery yesterday, and there were a few complications.
He was scheduled for 3:30 and didn't go in until 5:30 to start with. Then it took 4 hours instead of only 90 minutes as planned.
Long story short- the fracture was worse than they thought. The bone was more shattered and smashed than the x-rays indicated. When she went in to move the bone it rotated and she then had to re-rotate it and then put everything back in place and put the plate in. When she finally came out at 9:40 she was very happy with how it turned out, but was going to admit him over night to help monitor his pain.

Skip to today-
They are going to be keeping him again tonight. He is in the most pain I have ever seen him in. They are giving him morphine, and tordall(sp) for the pain and it takes the edge off for a little while, but not enough so he can rest.

I personally haven’t talked to the surgeon today so this is all coming from Bob.
The worst of the pain right now is the feeling coming back into his arm. They had a tourniquet on his arm during the surgery(4 hours) and until about 7 am he had no feeling at all in his arm from just above the elbow down. Now he is having shooting pain and “pins and needles” sensations(like when your arm is asleep) but multiplied 100 times. At about 2:00PM he finally had a little feeling just above his elbow. The Dr. told him it could get worse before it gets better.
He has also been having some irregular heartbeats. Part of it is probably from the pain, but they did and EKG and one side of his heart is intermittently firing faster than the other, so they just restarted his IV and are giving him some calcium. I guess a lack of calcium can cause that.

To top it off last night after they admitted him, before he was aware and remembering stuff they had a staff change and when he asked them if his surgery went ok they told him they thought so. He asked why he was admitted and they said they didn’t know. He couldn't feel his arm and so he was worried that something went wrong and they weren’t telling him what was wrong. He was in a bit of a panic. So he didn’t sleep at all until after 6AM, and then the pain started.
He didn’t want to call and wake me up to ask if everything was fine, so he waited until 6am to call me. Until then he didn’t know if everything was good.
He is still a little worried about his arm, but he sounded a little more confident that he actually believed the feeling would eventually come back when we just talked.

Right now he isn’t up to calls, but I am passing on all your well wishes. Please keep him in your thoughts and prayers. the next few days are going to be hard for him.

Thank you again to all of you who have helped out the last few days. We are so blessed to have such great friends. I couldn't have made it without you.