Mike's loose screw

About 6 years ago, Mike had surgery on both big toes. Arthritis had eaten his joints away so that his toes had bone hitting bone, which is very painful. They put screws in, and that was even more painful, at first! They put him on so much pain medication he was drunk as a skunk. For instance...he had to wear these big ol' surgery boots, and I had to get him from the car to the couch, which involved 4 steps up, walk walk walk, 2 steps up, walk through the door, down half a stairway, walk to the couch. I helped him the best I could, and when we got to the 2-steps-up part, I got up on the porch so he could hold on to me to pull himself up. I stood there waiting, trying to help him, when he burst out, "Would you just stand still?" When I got him to the couch, someone called needing a phone number. Rather than letting me look for it on the BCM phone list, he sat there looking and looking, trying to find it, and finally said, "I can't read this" and handed it to me...he'd had it upside-down! I laugh at it all now, but it really was a very painful experience.

So I was not looking forward to today, when he had to have surgery again. This time they removed the screw and put in a partial new joint. We got to the hospital at 6, surgery started at 8. 2 hours later a nurse came and told me he was fine, but there was a lot of arthritis to remove (I didn't know you could do that) and it would be just a little bit longer. I was relieved to find out he wasn't under anesthesia all that time. (Anesthesia makes me nervous. I know someone whose mother never woke up from having elbow surgery.) They gave him something to make him drowsy, and he did fall asleep, but then he woke up and was talking and watching the whole thing on a tv! About 30 minutes later they were done, and they let us go home around 1:00. He said they had a hard time getting the screw out; he heard them saying, "Get a number 3 screwdriver...maybe we should try needle-nosed pliers..."(!!) Yikes! Here's a picture of the screw:


It's not a very good picture, because of the glare, but it's just a normal old screw! For some reason that's not what I expected.
He's doing much better than last time, with much less pain medication, so he's very alert and lucid. :) And I don't have to do as much scary nursey stuff like taking care of pain pumps and changing bandages. And my friend Rebecca brought him chocolate chip cookie bars, so he's going to be just fine.

Thank you for praying, those of you who knew this was coming!