At 6 am this morning Howard woke me up because he was in pain. I helped him to the kitchen and doled out a muscle relaxant and two loritab tablets. The loritab dosage was a mistake because 30 minutes later Howard about fell over out of his office chair. Since then he has been alternately loopy and asleep. There have been some very funny moments when Howard tried to overcome loopiness with sheer will power. He sat at the kitchen table looking like death-warmed-over and giving me a list of things he needed me to do. Normally he’s very precise and articulate, but during the conversation he fell asleep no less than 3 times and didn’t even know he had done it. At one point he asked confusedly:
“What’s that noise?”
“That would be my pencil writing the list.”
He then looked at me in wide eyed wonder “It’s so fast!”
I’ve put him to bed to sleep off the drugs. Hopefully coherence will return sometime this afternoon. The really good news is that he does seem to have a full range of motion with his arm. Any movement hurts, but all movements are possible which is reassuring. I don’t know when he’ll be fit to draw again. Certainly not today, but I have hopes that a haitus will not be necessary.
Please accept, and pass on, all our very best wishes. And make sure he understands healing his shoulder comes before drawing Schlock. 🙂
*hug*
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE!
…make sure Howard isn’t doing range of motion tests!
*sigh* Knowing Howard, that’s not possible. At the very least, make sure he only tries it while NOT jacked on the Lortab.
I stressed to him on the phone last night that he not push his arm at all for the first 72 hours as he’s still in the “possible to increase the damage” phase. Moving the joint through big motions–not even moving to the end of range–can make torn, sore & healing things go back to being “bleeding, swelling and scarring” things.
Remember the analogy you taught me of digging up the seeds to see if they’re sprouting… PLEASE keep that arm as immobile as possible for the next couple of days, THEN check to see how it’s healing. As mentioned by another LJ reader in Howard’s LJ, it may be the difference between having and not having a bum shoulder for the next 20 years.
Re: PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE!
Thank you for mentioning this to me. Now I have ammunition to fuel my authority to make him stop. (Yes he’s been doing range of motion tests while jacked on lortab.) To my knowledge he’s only done it twice, but apparently that is twice too many. I won’t let him do it again.
Re: PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE!
For the record, the range-of-motion tests were performed very, very slowly, and I was paying close attention to the pain. Yes, it’s still possible to do damage, or at least slow the healing process down, but it’s not like I was slinging my arm around trying to “loosen it up.”
–Howard