Thirsty?

While we were at Greer Shane was pretty well confined to his bed a majority of the time.  The pain and the pain medication left him in a pretty bad state.  So let's all just remember that as I tell you this story.  He looked a little like this. :)

One morning he was clipping his fingernails into a cup.  He didn't want to get up to clip them but he didn't want them all over the bed either (which I appreciated), so the cup was his solution.  I, however, told him I thought it was disgusting that he was clipping his nails into a cup.  It just grossed me out.

Fast forward to the late afternoon.  Shane was still in bed and needed me to get him some pain medication.  I got his pills and grabbed "the cup" off the night stand, not remembering anything from earlier in the day.  I filled it with water from the bathroom faucet and gave Shane his pills without another thought.  He thanked me and started drinking and then started spitting the water out, back into the cup.  I thought he was doing this because I got the water from the bathroom faucet and not from the kitchen but it still seemed like a  big reaction to me so I asked, "What's wrong?"

"Just take this away please." He frantically handed the cup out to me.

"Why?" I asked again, still not understanding, and then it hit me.

AGHHHHHHHH!!!   SICK!

My dry heaves started to kick in and even more so as I dumped out the water and fingernails into the kitchen sink and had to wash them down. (okay, I'm still dry heaving as I type this. so gross!)

He claims he didn't actually drink any, he just happened to glance down as he started drinking and saw the fingernails floating all around.

So let this be a lesson to you...no fingernails in cups I tell you!

It's just safer that way.

The Shiny New Knee...

Most people don't know that Shane has had chronic knee pain for the last 17 years of his life.

Chronic, constant, unrelenting knee pain.

He tore his ACL at age 21 and didn't get surgery for a year.  And when he did get the surgery it went bad…very very bad.  It caused massive arthritis and bone spurs so severe that just walking was  painful.  Heck, just sitting was painful!

He rubs my back, I rub his knee.

He has done all he can to work through it and live as normal of a life as he can.  He's run and biked and played basketball and volleyball and everything else, always paying for it in a major way the next day/week.

He worked diligently to try to keep it strong but it just kept getting worse and worse, the pain more and more severe until he finally made the decision…"I've got to get the surgery now."

Most doctors don't like to do total knee replacements on people under 40 years old because they only last a certain amount of time, but Shane's knee is so bad that the doctor agreed it would be good to do now.

Unfortunately when you decide you want the surgery "now" you have to figure out a time in your life that you can have a month or more to recover and you have to get on the doctor's schedule and "now" for us meant about 6 or 7 months after the decision was made.

It felt like it was never really going to happen, but wouldn't you know it, it actually did come.  It came on Monday, July 16th at 8 am.

Shane got himself a new knee.

The recovery has been rough, though not many people outside our home would know it.  He has shown up to the kids' 4 hour long swim meet (2 days after getting home from the hospital), to the Pioneer Day celebration at the ward, and to Sacrament meeting today.  At each event he put on a smile and talked to everyone who had questions but I could tell he was putting on a good show.  He was kind and good natured through it all.  Nevertheless, the minute we walked through the door he collapsed, so exhausted and in so much pain he could barely move.

I told him today that perhaps he shouldn't do so much and I think he now agrees.

There is a long road of recovery still ahead, but the promise of being able to use his knee, not only to do things he hasn't been able to do in years, but to live without chronic pain, is something that makes him so excited he can hardly stand it.

It makes me pretty excited too.

I'll make sure to post a picture of us playing tennis, snowboarding, and hiking Kilimanjaro some day.

At least now it's a possibility. :)