News and Views From my kids accomplishments, to my heretical perspective of the world

… it’s another, and the other is a broken clavicle (collar bone).

Playing basketball this morning, my feet got tangled up with the feet of another guy who is bigger than me, I fell on my shoulder and he fell on top. I heard a crunch and got the wind knocked out of me for a few seconds, but didn’t feel a lot of pain. But when I stood up I knew there was something wrong with my right shoulder.

Got in to see the orthopedic surgeon this afternoon and had some x-rays. He said it won’t heal on it’s own. The broken ends that are supposed to be part of one bone are over an inch apart and will never grow back together. So next week I go in to have a plate and screws put in. Hopefully this will happen Tuesday if I can get the pre-op physical done in time, but if not, then Friday.

To make it worse, I think I slightly fractured a rib on the opposite side which actually hurts more than the shoulder. Coughing is torture, and don’t make me laugh! But that will easily heal on it’s own.

Surgery is getting to be routine for me!

Gisele and I drove up to the Mogollon Rim for a couple of days this week and spent some time with Richard and Dianna. It was a great, though short, trip.

We arrived Sunday evening (after making a couple of wrong turns…), and enjoyed a nice barbecued dinner at R&D’s house. We spent the night in a “cabin” at the Happy Jack Lodge, about 10 miles away from the Ranger Station where R&D are staying. The cabin was very nice, more like a triplex with a kitchen, bedroom and living room. More room than we needed, but that’s OK.

The next day is when the excitement happened. We rented a four-seat ATV and explored over 100 miles of the Rim country, mostly staying on graded dirt roads but a couple of times we ventured onto trails where anything less than an ATV would have gotten stuck. Richard spends his days driving around on the roads, so even though we had an iPad with maps, we didn’t really need it. He knew where we were all the time.

Occasionally we passed Forest Service trucks, and Richard would wave them down and (surprise!) he always knew the driver, and would have a short chat with them. Those are the people he works with.

We enjoyed a picnic lunch in the shade of ponderosa pines on the bank of Knoll lake. A picture taken about 15 minutes later would have shown us all stretched out taking naps.

The last adventure before returning the ATV was a visit to a fire tower. This was appropriate since there were a couple of controlled burns going on while we were there. You can see the smoke in this picture taken from the tower. Seeing this, we thought that maybe the burn was no longer “controlled”, but it turned out it was all intentional. The burns made the air a little smoky, but it wasn’t too bad most of the time.

We got back dusty and tired, but it was a lot of fun.

Tired as she was, Dianna cooked a delicious dinner again that evening.

The drive back down into the record heat the next day was a little unwelcome, but it’s always good to get home.

I saw the cardiologist again today, for a followup after wearing the Holter Monitor for 24 hours, a couple of weeks ago.

Everything looks good, my heart is functioning normally and efficiently. However, just to make sure the block doesn’t extend to the left ventricle, I will go back in 6 months. If there are no changes at that time, we may just make it an annual check.