Patient bulletin. The arm is healing quickly. Vitamin E oil is being used to reduce the scarring – as recommended by the arm doctor. Excercises are being undertaken to gradually straighten the elbow (with a certain amount of groaning).
The patient is complaining that parts of her arm “feel lumpy”. I’m not a doctor myself, but I guess that’s probably because it has got lumps of metal inside it (see x-rays below).
Jan went to the fracture clinic today and now she can get rid of the arm sling. Hurrah!
She is not allowed to lift anything heavy (more than a cup of tea) with the broken arm, but she is out of the sling and now has to straighten the elbow, rub vitamin E cream into the scar, and keep everything moving.
She should be able to drive again in about three weeks.
She’s been off the painkillers for a while and managed a business trip to Perth over the last weekend, so she’s recovering quickly.
The surgeon showed her the before and after x-rays on his screen and she took a couple of photos with her iPhone. That’s certainly an impressive array of metal in the arm! Does she now qualify as a Cyberwoman?
My other patient has been Ripley the Maine Coon cat. He was limping so badly I thought he’d broken his leg. The vet said it was probably just a sprain, gave him a cortisone injection, gave me some drops for him, and charged me $160. Now he’s fine. Bloody cats!
Played nine holes at Lane Cove yesterday with my friend Colin and I went round in 36, four over par. It’s a record for me (or possibly a miracle). Lane Cove is a short course, but not all that easy. I had five pars in the nine, how about that!
I had a golf lesson a week or so ago and that has helped me a lot. I played some brilliant straight shots after that (instead of my more usual slice) but then it all disappeared and I played some really crap shots again. Such is golf. At least the Lane Cove round means I go out on a high note – my golfing will be severely curtailed by the advent of 5-day-a-week work (sob!) (details below).
Jan had stitches out of her arm on Monday and the wound dressed again. She’s still getting some pain but the swelling is going down and the bruising is fading. She went to work examining last evening. The gig was in the City near Wynyard Station so she went by train. I ran her to the station and collected her.
She will go to the fracture clinic in just over a week – I expect they will let her move her arm around more after that. I Googled her operation – it was an ORIF (Open Reduction Internal Fixation) to fix her broken radius and ulna. I was disappointed that the surgeon didn’t email her an x-ray of the break – maybe she can get a copy at the clinic!
My nursing duties are being curtailed because I am going back to work at Sydney City Council. It’s a three-month contract, five days a week 9-5.30. The role is content migration. Yes, I am a migrant and I am relatively content, but it’s not about that! The role is to take the text and pictures from the old council website and migrate it to the new council website, correcting and updating the information and finding new pictures.
Not the most exciting of jobs but it pays ok and will keep me off the streets, out of the poor house, on top of the bills and in clover and beer. I will be working with some of my former colleagues, so that’s a good thing. First day tomorrow, wish me luck.
