The Surgery

This is the final post in a 3 part series. So if you are reading this first, I suggest going back and reading "the campout" and then, "the injury" and then this one. Otherwise, you won't really know what I am talking about. Hey, I don't know what I'm talking about either so just go with it.

So after the campout, we get home and Kieth continues to go to work everyday for two weeks. He is in a tremendous amount of pain, but he has to wait until he gets home after work to take any medication because it makes him kinda loopy. In the mean time, the lump on his shoulder is getting bigger and we don't really know what else to do. Finally his appointment with the family doctor arrives and it's time to see whats going on with his shoulder. Me, always the optomistic one, goes in thinking he will have to wear the sling for another few weeks while his shoulder continues to heal. The family doctor immediately refers us to an orthopedist because the x-ray's do not look good. Fortunately, the doctor that fixed Riley's knuckle about a year ago was available and ready to see us. We went right over and he took one look at Kieth's shoulder and the x-ray's and started scheduling him for surgery. He confirmed that Kieth did in fact have a shoulder separation, but that it was much worse than the ER doctor had identified. Thanks to a rookie ER doctor, Kieth walked around for 2 weeks with the top of his shoulder blade not only separated from the joint and the collar bone, but basically just being kept in place by a small amount of tissue and his outer skin. That explains why the bump kept getting bigger. Oh Holy Cow!


Anyway, he had surgery Monday November 10. The doctor took out all of the joint tissue and drilled 3 holes into his shoulder bone. He then sutured his bones back together with 3 fiber wire sutures. He said he should be able to play ball again and regain full use of his shoulder within 6-8 weeks. He had to stay in the hospital for the day and night so the kids had fun in his room after school.


Hunter was curious about all that stuff on his dad's hand.


Hunter had breakfast with his dad the next morning. Kieth was so ready to get home because the beds are not made for tall people. His ankles hung over the end and kept falling asleep.


And here I am taking advantage of the morphine drip. He hates pictures and never smiles without alot of grumbling, so I snapped as many photos as I could while he was doped up. Speaking of doped up..... Now he is at home convalescing and boy is this another adventure. Kieth has never taken many medications so he just gets nutty on these pain meds. He is letting me read him the Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer, and for the last day and a half, he has been hollering from the bedroom for a credit card and the phone. I finally had to ban him from watching any more QVC, HSN, or any type of infomercial selling the next greatest invention or products you can't live without. Oh well, at least he is healing now and able to take off work. Things could always be worse. Three cheers to a day in the life.......

The Injury

After we got our tent set up and the fire started, Kieth decides to organize a football game with the kids, because after all, he is the biggest kid of them all. Everything is going great until Kieth tries to intercept a pass and inadvertently introduces his shoulder to the rock hard ground at full force.


He knew right away that he was hurt. He started getting nauseous and turning pale and green all at the same time. I was so upset that I couldn't even remember where we were. (Mostly I was upset that he was ruining my campout, but I've since apologized) Then I realized that we were a long way away from any kind of civilization. A couple of people offered to take him to the E.R., but he really wanted me to take him. So we left the kids with Wendy and Chad and headed off to the hospital.


Our E.R. experience was like most, I'm sure. There was no one in the waiting room but us at 7:00 on a Friday night and it still took 4 hours. The doctor came in and took one look at his shoulder and immediately said he had an Acromio-Clavicular Separation. She gave him a sling and told him that these injuries heal over time and to go see his family doctor in two weeks.
He is laughing here and I think the pain meds had already kicked in because there was an anatomically correct picture on the wall that he found hilarious. So after we went to Walgreen's and filled a pain med prescription, we went back to the campout. I was determined to have my hot cocoa by the fire, so at 11:00 at night I heated up water and made cocoa for everyone that had waited up for us. We finally went to bed in the tent around midnight. I did not have a sleeping bag, so Kieth and I tried to sleep in the same one. It would have been fine had he not gotten injured, but he had to sleep on his back and couldn't move or snuggle. So needless to say, by 3 am we had enough. It was uncomfortable and we were freezing. So we got Hunter and went to the van to sleep for the rest of the night. We woke up the next morning and had breakfast and took the kids on a nature trail. Then we broke camp and headed home. In my next post titled "The Surgery" I will tell you the rest of the story.

The Campout

Camping in October sounded fun, so we decided to pack up the kids and go camping with our church group to the Fred Berry Conservation in Yellville. I really wanted to go and so while Kieth and the boys were at work and school, I worked hard to get everything together that we might need. By the time I finished packing up the van, the muffler was dragging out of the driveway. (Not really, but we absolutely did not have room for one more item)
The temperature was supposed to get down into the 30's overnight and I wanted to be extra prepared. In fact, it got so cold that night that we had ice on the inside of our tent the next morning.


Kieth and Hunter worked on getting a fire started in the fire pit when we got there. Hunter wants to do everything his dad does.


Here we are very happy because I was having visions of hot cocoa, smores, and scary stories by the fire. Little did I know that the fun was about to come to an abrupt end. In my post titled "The Injury", I will tell you all about it.