A
day in the life
Up
for morning coffee. I make
breakfast. Judy, still one-handed, makes
breakfast for the dogs. The dogs stay
home, Judy and I pile in the car and head north. Headphones on, making conversation quiet and
easy and we proceed for half an hour past the palm trees in the median that
signify we’re in the Valley. Then through
the checkpoint an hour north of our house.
We live north of the border, but to get anywhere outside the Valley in
any direction, there is still one more checkpoint to go through. We’re on the clock, so when the agent asks if
we’re U.S. citizens I don’t answer in Spanish this time. It’s a newly renovated facility there with
plenty of resources to pull a car over and check every crevice for
contraband. So far, we haven’t been
struck by the inconvenience of detainment there, but there will be plenty more
opportunities on future trips. We pass
the Brooks County rest area, that we always send photos of, without stopping this
time, but do pull over in Falfurrias for gas.
It’s a right turn from there to cross over from Highway 281 to Highway
77, the two north/south highways that serve way south Texas. The twenty-mile cross-over section is
referred to as Hawk Alley and we see plenty.
Red-tailed hawks, mostly. Crested
Caracaras. Kestrels. We see sandhill cranes too, but only a few. We used to see a big flock of snow geese out
in the ranchland fields every winter, but we haven’t seen them for several
years now.
A
left at Riviera to continue north until we hit the interstate and make the
right turn to Corpus. We drive past our
destination for the day because we’re early enough to continue on to Snoopys
for fish and chips. It was a wet rainy
day, so we sat inside looking out
…
and happened upon a serendipitous moment.
We were chatting with the guy behind the bar. He got quiet for a few minutes, and we went
back to eating our lunch, then next thing I know, he’s offering me a hand
carved strawberry to give to Judy.
What
a guy; and here he is, the culprit!
Another
fine lunch.
Next,
the event of the day, the follow-up visit with the surgeon eleven days after
surgery. Dr Schlimmer gave us a more
complete explanation of the surgery. The
rotator cuff didn’t really need any correction but there were a couple fixes to
make nonetheless. There was a lot of
scar tissue from previous surgeries, so he released some of the adhesions to
make movement more comfortable. There
were a couple old sutures left in a place that would be irritating so he
removed them. He described Judy’s bicep
as “unhappy with the tendon”, so he relocated the tendon attachment to a
happier place. The recovery is way ahead
of schedule. Judy has been doing
physical therapy for a week; passive movement only. The doctor released her to full mobility with
the exception of the biceps. No weight
bearing biceps curls yet. Can’t imagine
a better report than what we just got.
A
quiet drive home, except for that truck that turned-over on highway 281 just
before we got to our exit. We didn’t see
the accident happen, it was around a couple bends in the road, and would have
been a couple of minutes ahead of us. So
we had to sit quietly and visit for a little longer, except now at a standstill
so we didn’t need to use the headsets.
The wreck didn’t mess up our day nearly as much as it messed up somebody
else’s.
The
patient’s shoulder now looks like this:
Three
entry points, and only one of them even visible. Who would even know she just had surgery, and
she complained to the doctor about exactly that. She said it didn’t look bad enough and she
wasn’t getting enough sympathy, poor thing.
Well,
that’s another day in the life of Steve and Judy. Tomorrow, we expect the day to happen much
closer to home all day.
