The clock is still running on my injury; the jury’s still out as to whether and to what extent I will heal. I have, over the past ten months, had three procedures to try to fix the massive rotator cuff tear, which was the injury in the story above. The last attempt was six hours long. I HATE six hour cases. I’m glad I slept through this one.

Full recovery will mean that I might be able to point to the horizon with a straight arm. If I played basketball, I could dribble but not shoot. Funny — that’s the “after picture” for an orthopedic procedure, and it would have been the “Before:” picture for my urologist.

I would do it again. But I would have checked into the ER where I took that patient, right after I dropped him off in the care of the surgery resident, instead of riding the long bumpy road back sans adrenalin — that was some serious hurting. Then I would have become the patient, and I would have let people take care of me. There are people who will do that; I’m not the only one.

I guess we all get old too soon and smart too late. I continue to tote up the losses I incurred that cold, icy night in Wisconsin’s December. Some of the things will come back and some may be gone forever.

Caregivers need to learn to submit to care as well as to give it — with the same unstinting seriousness.

I will celebrate the anniversary of this injury, an optimistic estimate of my return to work, and my sixtieth birthday within a couple of weeks of each other.

It’s not how I’d planned to turn the big six-oh.

But — again — no plan survives initial contact with the enemy.

The patient did fine. Those four words may be my epitaph.