Wednesday

I had a long day today but it was fun for me. Not the best thing for Ron but he was in good care as he went through his surgery ordeal. He arrived at 4:30Am for the drive to Clackamas and it was a bit after 5:30 that we parked in the garage down there. The doors did not open until 5:45 so we enjoyed the day brightening while we shivered on the cold steel benches they have available. He was called by the nurse at 6:15 and the 'track' of his progress flashed 'Surgery' at 7:30. I relaxed and may have even fallen asleep a few times until 8:30. That was when I discovered I had not eaten for four hours so I walked to the cafeteria for some much needed bacon and eggs. I arrived back at the waiting room about 9:30 and relaxed for another hour before I noticed the 'track' said 'Recovery'. It was not long after that that I was called to the recovery room, Bay 19, and found him alive and well,wanting to get home. He showed me an Xray picture of his left thumb that showed the joints fused together and held in place by a stainless steel bar and four screws. His hand was wrapped from the tips of his fingers to the elbow and he was feeling good because he was feeling nothing. While he was getting released I visited the pharmacy for him and picked up some pain meds he will be using for the next week or so. We were on the way home before noon. However we were not on the freeway more than a minute when he wanted to get off and find an Espresso. We got lucky and found one in a most unlikely place near a side street. He jumped out of the car and returned with an Espresso for himself and a hot chocolate for me. It was really a good hot chocolate too! We then hopped back on the freeway, me driving , of course.

By the time we got to Kalama his bladder was bursting so we had to get off on a side road and found a little restaurant in a RV Park that allowed him to relieve himself. By now the pain was reminding him of the same previous surgery on the other hand. He popped the cap on the meds I had picked up for him and took one, I think it was one, then decided he wanted to make a stop in Longview to buy a pocket knife he had spotted a few days ago. It was my feeling that the pain meds were getting to him but I drove to the store and he went in to make the purchase. I will be interested to see if he remembers any of this after the meds wear off. It was in the neighborhood of 2PM when we got him home. After things settled down Caren drove me to R&R Motors and I picked up my car. The rattle has been fixed [a loose bolt] and the oil pressure sender is working well enough but there is a chance the gage is haywire. I'm not going to worry about it, tests show that I have plenty of oil pressure. There was no charge for any of the above so Chris, who does the work took it upon himself to change the oil because he knew I was getting ready to make my drive to Alaska in a few days. I'm glad that was done, next on the list is a new set of tires before I start burning rubber in a Northerly direction. The oil change came to $52.00 so it was a cheap day. Those are the best kind, you know.

I expect to be feeling pretty good when I go bowling tomorrow, I would like to do well, at least better than last week, which was not too bad!