A few nights before surgery (stay tuned for an update on the surgery at the bottom of this post), I spotted this little snail making his way up the glass door to my balcony.
So I grabbed my camera and spent five minutes with him for this week’s RegularRandom.
After his five minutes was up, he decided to change direction, so he did a U-turn and headed back down the glass. Meanwhile, my Mum is horrified that the snail crawled all over the glass and I didn’t clean it.
Here’s the next five minutes:
Finally, he gave up and turned right to get off-road, by making his way off the door and over the metal strip to the fixed window instead. I think he was mainly trying to get away from my noisy, prying camera.
We’d love you to join us in Regular Random:
- choose a subject or a scene
- spend five minutes photographing it – no more!
- try to not interfere with the subject, instead see it from many angles, look through something at it, change the light that’s hitting it
- have fun!
- tag your post #regularrandom and ping back to this post
…
Now for a post-surgery update. Thank you for all your comments and good wishes, I have seen most of them and I do appreciate it, such a wonderful community. I will get back to you all soon.
Surgery was on Tuesday at about 8am. They stitched up my supraspinatus tendon and then re-attached it to the bone with screws and wire. They found a couple of spurs to remove and they tidied up the joint itself.
The surgery lasted about 90 minutes and then I went to recovery, where I struggled quite a bit with the pain apparently and they couldn’t let me back up to the ward until almost 1pm, once they had it mostly under control.
I stayed in overnight, at St Vincent’s Private Hospital, and they monitored me through the night, keeping my pain medication on schedule, as well as treating me with antibiotics and anti-inflammatories. They were a truly wonderful group of nurses and health care professionals, I really felt safe with them.
My mum stayed with me the whole time, only going home to sleep and then back to pick me up the next day. She has been an absolute godsend, there is no way I could have done this without her. She’s been through a number of orthopaedic surgeries herself, so she knows what it’s like and what to expect. Luckily for me, she has booked a one-way ticket so there’s no specific time limit for her to leave.
At home, I struggle most with the overnight sleeping. For a few nights, I’ve woken up in intense pain at 3am and can’t face going back to bed. I cry and pace and do my exercises and Mum helps me through it all. Then she makes a cup of tea and we chat (actually I think I ramble on and she listens) while we wait for the pain meds to kick in and then we go back to bed. Honestly, this lady deserves so much more than I can give her in return.
Anyway, I’m doing pretty well, I’m on track with my exercises, I’m resting a lot, and I’m ok. The surgeon told us that the pain after shoulder surgery is worse than before the surgery and that it will be bad for a few weeks while it heals and knits and mends. There are a lot of nerves in the area, which contributes to the pain. It’s hard to concentrate on any one thing for too long. We’ve had people popping in for short visits, which I love. Mostly, we’ve just been catching up with each other.
Until next time, take care,
x desleyjane
Musings of a Frequent Flying Scientist 
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