This will probably be a lengthy post as I have not written anything since the beginning of December and so we have a bit of catching up to do. Christmas and new years has come and gone for another year, the tree has been put away and the last of the Christmas baking was munched down some time ago. Christmas at the Chronicle was a bit quieter this year. With two children out of the country it was not the traditional exciting Christmas morning affair that we normally have. Angela, Chris and Lee didn't show up till after noon so we slept in for most of the morning. Our Christmas day dinner was quieter than usual, too, as we only had the family here. But it was nice to have a few days off work and relax a bit. It was the same for new years, Dianne I just settled in to watch a movie and we both fell asleep until just after midnight. We woke up, said happy new year to each other and then toddled off to bed.
And so starts another year. We spoke to Sandi several times over the holidays. She was having visitors from Edmonton at the time and it was fun to talk to them all and see what Christmas was like in Japan. Christmas is not the big holiday it is here and, in fact, Sandi had to go to work on Christmas day. They make a big splash on new years, though, and that is when families all get together and have the big meals and it is much more of a big celebration. When Sandi's friend's, Miles & Melissa came home, we had them over for supper as they had brought home our gifts from Sandi. We watched the video they had shot while over there of all the places Sandi had taken them and they even had footage of Sandi opening our gifts to her which they had taken over. This weekend Sandi is in the Philippines on a scuba diving trip so we haven't heard from her for a while.
In this fastball game we call life, you are often thrown a curve ball and if you are not careful one of those rouge pitches will come up and hit you in the elbow. One of those pitches hit me last Wednesday as I managed to fall over at work after reaching for some equipment on a shelf. I landed on the concrete floor on my feet, but the rest of my body kept going ending up in a near face plant, crushing my left elbow beneath my body. I didn't hear any snaps or pops, but I new straight away that something was dreadfully wrong. I rolled over onto my back clutching my arm against my chest and just lay there as waves of nausea and shock rolled over. When I was finally able to get up, all I could do was sit in a chair and sweat profousely. My left arm had gone completely numb, but I could feel the pain setting in. My department manager bundled me into his van and headed off for the hospital and after about an hour and a half wait in emergency they finally wheeled me down for x-rays. That was an ordeal as the technicians were trying to bend my arm in directions it didn't want to go in order to get the right angles for the shots. They finally got what they needed after an excruciating half hour and I was wheeled back to the waiting room. Then came the bad news. The elbow and arm bones were broken pretty badly and I was going to need surgery to repair them. They knocked me out temporarily while they tried to push everything into place and then I was bandaged up tightly over a large metal splint. They had to transfer me to another hospital in St. Albert, just north of Edmonton, to have the surgery which they were able to do that night. The elbow joint bone was shattered in several pieces and they had to screw them together with a metal plate and screws. Either one or both of my forearm bones were broken right near the joint also. I spent the next couple of days there on an antibiotic IV to combat any potential infection as the skin at my elbow had been pierced, possibly from a bone shard. On Thursday they replaced the bulky heavier splint with a smaller lightweight one which I can slip on and off each day to do wound and skin maintainence. This splint keeps my arm bent at the elbow at 90 degrees and prevents me from rotating my wrist. I have an eight inch incision from my elbow down my outer arm. Dianne brought me home Friday night and I started to get used to trying to do things one handed. The pain is still pretty bad but we are keeping it under control with Tylenol 3's every few hours.
So it looks like I'll be benched for the next few innings of this game. The doctor is saying six to eight weeks for recovery and who knows how much physiotherapy. By then we will be into March and our trip to Japan is booked for the last two weeks. I don't think we will have cancel our trip, thank goodness, but it may get a bit awkward if I still have my splint on. But I definitely won't be back at work real soon as even the lightest jobs require some lifting and at least the extension of my elbow. So I will be looking for things to do at home for the next few weeks, which shouldn't be hard. But a lot of things I had planned on doing will have to be put on hold or canceled. I had a few gigs with the blues band lined up which will now never happen.
But one thing I will try and do now that I will have a bit of time on my hands is to update this website, so stay tuned for updates on my progress as I head down this unexpected bumpy road.

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