Bats and Shoulders, Round 2

As my blog title states . . . it's always something.  Life must have been too boring for us at the moment because last night was more eventful than I would have liked.

Ok, so last year around late summer we had our first bat in the house since we moved here in 1996.  Bats in the house Freak. Me. Out.  We used to have them in the house I grew up in and it never got less creepy for me.  Hubby took care of that bat we had here last time and for a while I was freaked that 'Here we go, where there is one, there is more.'  We were lucky though . . . until last night.

Hubby and I were in bed but not yet asleep when Casey knocked on the door and said he thought there was a bat up in the ceiling panels.  (We have ugly 1970s drop panel ceilings in our kitchen and dining room.)  Hubby got up and they tried to scare it out to where they could catch it and get rid of it.  When it wouldn't come out, hubby went back to bed.  A little while later we heard some ruckus downstairs and then Casey was knocking on the door saying the bat was out but he still couldn't get it because . . .

He dislocated his shoulder again.

Hubby is way too blah-blah about things.  He got the bat and came back to bed saying I should try to get a doctor appointment for Casey tomorrow (today) because "he says his shoulder hurts like last time."  What??  So I jump out of bed and go downstairs to find Casey obviously in huge amounts of pain, already with his sling on from when he dislocated it in February.  You could just *see* the shoulder was out again.  So I'm hurrying to get dressed, and we rushed off to the emergency room, got there by 11:20pm.  They took him back right away and I stayed in the waiting area this time.  While we'd been signing in, I'd gotten a glimpse back into the ER and saw several nurses and doctors around one bed, some holding down a guy who was moaning and yelling and somewhat thrashing.  There had been cops outside the ER, and I wondered if it was all related . . . was this guy shot or stabbed or part of a beating or something??  I'll never know, but it entertained my mind for a bit while waiting.  A little later I saw a young woman come in with a year-ish old girl, and overheard her tell the nurse that she'd been talking to the cops outside and that she was there to have some unusual bruising on the little girl's back checked out.  Ohmygosh, I wanted to cry.  Did they suspect abuse?  Well obviously the did or why would cops be involved and why would she be in the ER at midnight?  But I'll never know about her either.  And then just when I was getting into whatever Batman movie starred Christian Bale and Katie Holmes, a nurse came and got me and took me back to Casey.

It was midnight now and she told me they'd given him morphine and wanted someone to sit with him.  I went in the room and he was sitting in a chair, which I thought was odd because last time they'd had him bed and had NOT given him morphine.  The nurse said they'd taken x-rays already and the anesthesiologist was on his way, but they were still sort of hoping the shoulder would pop back on its own like it had last time.  After she left, I asked why he wasn't laying down.  Casey said he didn't know but thought it would probably help his shoulder.  So we're sitting there, Casey's eventually getting tired and kinda light headed.  Shoulder still not moving, pain not easing.

The anesthesiologist showed up a bit later, introduced himself to Casey and asked "And who's this?  Your sister?" as he came to shake my hand.  LOL - yeah, yeah Mr. ChattyPerky.  But he was a very  nice guy and I immediately liked him.  He also wondered why they didn't have Casey laying down and got the nurse and doctor back to get him in bed and them move him over to a slightly bigger room.

More time passed and they finally came back and started getting everything ready to go.  Since the shoulder hadn't moved back on it's own, they were going to sedate him just long enough to place it back.  Because it was still general anesthesia though, even for the briefest time, he still had to have all the monitors and oxygen and IV.  They started putting him under and I swear it was only like a minute from the time they started to the time they had his shoulder back in place.  They said it had pretty much just slid back once he was relaxed, much easier than they'd expected.  Then they started bringing him out of it again, and had new x-rays taken before he even opened his eyes.  It took like five minutes.  Crazy fast.

When he woke up, of course he was all loopy and confused.  He had a super funny conversation with the anesthesiologist about the video game he'd dreamed he was in.  Then he came crashing down for a moment as the drugs wore off and kinda cried for a moment until he got his bearings, then he was his normal chatty self.  We sat in that room for eons without anyone telling us anything or checking on him.  I was getting a bit cranky about that, and was freakin' tired by that point.  Then finally the doctor came back and asked how Casey was doing, said we'd need to see the ortho doctor again in a day or so, and that he would almost certainly end up in surgery this time because it was apparent now the shoulder is weak and will run a continued risk of this happening again.  The nurse came in a bit later and unhooked the monitors and IV.  She had his discharge papers ready, said there was a prescription for pain meds if he needed any.  Then we were on our way, and got back home a few minutes before 2am. Casey fell asleep on the couch and I trudged back upstairs and collapsed into bed. 

Thankfully, today is my day off, so after hubby got up for work at 4am, I just fell back to sleep without a care in the world about how long I slept.  Next time I woke up it was about 8:40am, still fairly early to some people, but a major sleep-in for me.  LOL!  Hopped in the shower, grabbed a quick bite to eat, then tried calling the doctor's office to make that followup appointment.  For whatever reason the calls wouldn't go through.  I woke up Casey and said we were going to drive back to the hospital to make the appointment, but maybe we'd get lucky and they could squeeze him.  Sure enough, the nurse said if we didn't mind waiting a bit, the doctor could sneak him in.  We knew it wouldn't be much more than "Aha, you'll need surgery," so that's probably why it was possible.  And sure enough, he came in, asked a couple easy questions and reminded us about the talk we'd had last time this happened . . . that if it happened again it would most likely mean surgery.  He said Casey would need an MRI just to get a better picture of what's really going on inside there, and they'd schedule the surgery once they knew more.

Sooooo, this Saturday he will go have an MRI and on Monday we'll go back to discuss the results and schedule the surgery.  Yay, yay, and  . . . oh yeah . . . yay.  Things could be worse, I know.  *sigh*

Anyone familiar with this kind of surgery?  I need to do some Googling.  OH!  And while we were sitting there waiting to see the doctor, two policemen escorted a shackled prisoner through the waiting room, and I'm pretty sure it was the same guy from the ER last night.  And I'll still never know his story.

As for the bat . . . after Casey explained the whole bat part of the story, I went around this morning trying to plug gaps in those stupid ugly ceiling panels.  And replaced one of the window screens that has had a tear/hole in it for quite some time now.  How did Casey dislocate his shoulder in relation to that damn bat, you might be wondering?  He swung a blanket at it to try and knock it down.  Go figure, huh??