He needs a bigger bandaid

So almost 2 years ago, in the midst of our deployment in Bosnia, Mike thought it would be a fabulous idea to spend his two week vacation back home in Ohio. Any kind of vacation away from the Army bs can be promising, and his time off actually started out great, I'd say. Only on the second day, a skiing snafu sends him (sadly predictably) to the emergency room in the middle of the night. Diagnosis: Torn rotator cuff. He spent the rest of his vacation in a sling and drugged up with vicodin and everything else to keep the pain down. And I think after having gone back to Bosnia, he tried his best to stay in the sling for a while.. but didn't really do much about it after that.

Fast forward to yesterday, when he finally went under the knife for his shoulder. As an innocent bystander, it all seemed complicated to me. And I have to admit, I was a little nervous... even after Mike tried tore assure me over and over that it's an outpatient surgery and he shouldbe out of there in a couple of hours. I generally hate hospital waiting rooms, but yesterday, I hated Surgery waiting rooms even more. Those who waited ranged from supporters for the smallest outpatient surgery to major heart surgeries (picked up from converstations here and there), so everyone there just exasperatingly waited at the edge of their seats. Not to mention the numerous posters on the wall that screamed "Keep at least one family member in the waiting room AT ALL TIMES", which made me a bit uncomfortable and frankly scared to even go to the bathroom in case something happened to Mike on the table. Ethan must've known I was a little anxious, because he behaved most of the day unless he got hungry and kept himself preoccupied by cooing at everyone else around. 2 hours later, the doctor came out to talk to me and confessed that it was slightly worse than they had anticipated. They ended up having to put several permanent anchors to attach the torn tendons in his shoulder back to the bone.

As always, Mike was a trooper. Still half-sedated, dehydrated lips trembling and all.. he was wheeled into the recovery area not too long after and he was already asking for food and watching ESPN. The doctor wants to see him after 14 days, and until then, he's supposed to keep his sling on religiously (with specific instructions to take it out only for a couple of minutes a day so that it doesn't "freeze up"). They have a local anesthetic attached to his shoulder through a catheter, and with the pain meds, I'm hoping he'll be okay.