Imagine
this, one day you wake up and head to the surgeon to repair a bum shoulder. You go under peacefully at 11:00 in the
morning with the guidance of excellent medical staff whom you assume you won't
be seeing for awhile. After waking at
2:00 you deliriously thank the surgical staff for their care and are brought
home by your loving wife. Home by 3:30
and of course you head straight back to work feeling just fine. 5:00 rolls around and you've put in a full
day's work. It's time to get some rest.
The next day
you wake up feeling a few slight effects from the shoulder surgery yesterday,
but all in all it's a fairly chipper morning.
Usually you head into work early, but you just had surgery, so you wait
till 9:00 to come in and you feel ready to take on the world. At 4:00 it's been a bit of a long day, but
you decide to unpackage a carpet display on the loading dock.
Long story
short, it didn't exactly work the way you had planned. You cut the shrink wrap and it lies
dangerously close to your foot. You
proceed to push the carpet rack off of a pallet, but now your foot gets caught
in the shrink wrap. All of a sudden
things start going in slow motion (it’s never good when things go in slow
motion in stories like this) you try to
step off the dock to keep from falling –all with one arm mind you. You look back just in time to see your leg
bending like a bow and snapping from catching on the shrink wrap. Your leg breaks in five pieces and you land
on your freshly re-modeled shoulder.
This was Jeff's first wake up call that maybe he should take it easy.
Two days
later Jeff was back into the same surgical center with the same surgeon and
nurse. One more surgery and five screws
later he was out again, but this time confined to a manual wheelchair. After a weekend of slight recovery he, his Dutch
pride, and good old fashioned work ethic wheeled into the store. After trying for a day or so to push his way
around the store with one foot, he began experiencing excruciating back
pain.
Monday night
it was back to the emergency room where they looked at him and sent him on his
way reminding him to “take it easy.”
However, by the time Tuesday morning rolled around, the pain was so bad
that it brought a third trip to the ER.
They finally kept him in the hospital with another sinister diagnosis to
follow.
Due to the
multiple surgeries, Jeff had developed blood clots in his left leg opposite of
his broken leg. The clot had let loose
and part of it decided to head for both lungs; a bad scenario at best. To make matters worse, the back pain turned
out to be gallbladder issues that will result in the gallbladder being removed
at a later date. The blood had to be
thinned for the blood clots and was currently too thin for surgery.
After an
entire week’s stay in the hospital, Jeff seemed to be the butt of a very poorly
told joke. After all, between a broken
leg, a surgically repaired shoulder, gall stones resulting in a gall bladder
that still needs to be removed, and blood clots to top it all off Jeff was in
pretty bad shape. Whew!
* * * *
Work was
forced to slow down to the extent his left-hand powered electric wheelchair
would allow for a while, but now Jeff is back at it without his sling and able
to crutch around the store. While the
recovery will still take a good bit of time, he has high spirits and is
thankful for a skilled medical staff, a wonderful store staff, and a very
loving family to go home to at night.
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