Recovery Update Day 4

Good things in life always take longer to obtain...Surgery was 2 hours longer than expected. The nail was hesitant to leave the cozy home of my femur marrow cavity. There was tremendous bone growth over the entrance point in the femur which subsequently required a lot of drilling. The doctor removed the rod by screwing a conical, threaded extraction device that attached to a bar for impaction with a slotted mallet (translation: they attach a "nail head" and use a hammer to literally reverse it out by pounding on it). Needless to say my entire leg was traumatized.

I was a really out of it after surgery. Annie drove me home and the first night was difficult. Annie, flew into nurse-mode, and as she did during and after the initial accident, took extremely good care of me and was patient with my irritability and frequent requests. We both were thinking to ourselves this was harder then when the damn thing was put in (maybe our memory of that was a bit fuzzy). Matt brought over dinner and we hung out for a few hours. The first night of sleep was anything but, with frequent trips to the bathroom and doses of Vicadin. However, upon waking, it seemed like many muscles had released and adhesion had subsided.

I worked the entire first day, which while on Vicadin made for an interesting day of work. The last two days we've seen continued improvement in swelling, muscle relief and pain. I've been doing what I can with exercises (leg lifts and knee bends) and tried to be good about not putting weight on my left leg (but I am impatient).

It's Saturday and we begin our trek to California through a southerly route stopping in Santa Fe, Sendona and finally to Palm Springs.