Day 49 Tuesday

This was right before he went into surgery.

The medical transportation in this town is unbelievable. Today Leonard was supposed to be at the outpatient surgical center at 12:00 but he wasn't picked up until 11:45 and got there at 12:30. The surgeon was behind schedule so that worked out okay. The surgery on his hand only took one hour. They removed the 2 pins, did a bone graft taking bone from his wrist and put a plate with a bunch of screws. The doctor said it went well and doesn't foresee any problems and no more surgeries. The medical transport people told us when they dropped him off to call as soon as he went into recovery and they would be there within 45 minutes. NOT! Try 2 hours. The surgical center closed at 4:30 and 2 very nice nurses stayed with us until 4:50 when they finally showed up. It's really hard when you are not in control and have to leave things up to others. At least today we were indoors on a gurney with blankets instead of being outdoors yesterday trying desperately to stay warm in the sun until it went down. Leonard was the talk of the rehab hospital as everyone was saying "did you hear what happened to poor Mr. Lindsey?"

He was able to get in some therapy before being picked up this morning and he was able to slide on the board from his chair to the exercise bed w/o any assistance. He was so excited. Tomorrow they are going to try to get him to slide from his bed to a chair. He has to master all of this before he will be released to go home.

He was in very good spirits after surgery but he did say his hand hurt more so than any of the other surgeries. He might have been in pain but between the morphine and the sedatives that he was given those first two weeks he doesn't remember any of it. Sure glad of that.