Physical Therapy

Once again, I have to express extreme thanks to everyone for the phone calls, e-mails, cards, gifts and visits. Your thoughtfulness and kindness mean so much to us during this prolonged struggle.

I started physical therapy (PT) this week, about two and a half weeks after the surgery. Mostly, the goal is to keep good range of motion going in the shoulder and to help with some of the nerve damage from the surgery. I actually came out of the surgery better than the surgeon anticipated. During my 1 week surgical follow-up visit, he was checking the strength of some muscles. He seemed genuinely surprised that I had any use of some muscles commenting that he was sure that he had removed the nerve that went to that muscle. But it still worked. Good for me. Anyway, I was doing pretty good until the PT started. Now, I am pretty darn sore.

Sessions start with a massage first. The therapist, Dr. Howard Knudsen, uses some tools that he says were developed by an orthopedic surgeon. He uses these tools on the skin with cocoa-butter, rubbing back and forth. He says that this increases circulation to the skin and muscles underneath. He is focusing on the areas that are sore mostly. It makes some interesting looking skin for a few days after.

Most of my soreness isn't associated with the surgical site, but rather in my upper right arm. I have complete numbness above the incision through the arm pit and the underside of my upper arm. I mean it is really dead. Can't feel a thing. But, from the area of the upper arm moving toward my elbow, the felling comes back and there is one area about the size of a silver dollar that is really sore. It feels like a really bad sunburn when it is touched. There are a couple of other areas that are sore too and he works them all over.

He does tome range of motion stuff with my shoulder and then finally has me use a weighted swivel devise that works my rotator cuff. Needless to day. I can feel all of it.

Monday, I will head back up to the cancer hospital for infusion of more chemotherapy drugs. This is a five day admission, just like my previous two times. The drugs run into the central line in my chest (it is the white thing dangling from my chest on the second to the last picture - it's been in me since February) 24 hours a day for the five days they keep me there. Then I return at three week intervals to do it all over again. My hair has just started getting long enough to comb again. Three weeks from now, I probably won't have any again. Oh my vanity!

God bless you all. Thank you so much for your prayers. We need them and so appreciate them.

Jim and Family