Monday, March 18, 2019

March 18, 2019

Thankfulness Series, Entry 1
Well, Charlie, it’s been a while, but to my dying day, I’ll never forget the time you and Jack came to McLaren Macomb Hospital and yucked-it-up with me in the surgical waiting area all afternoon and well into the evening on January 2, 2015 while a surgeon worked on Jeri.
A year after a bad car crash, she took a bad fall while learning to walk on her new legs. Jeri needed a total hip replacement, no big deal, however, she also needed to have her right femur straightened out. It was compound fractured in 2 places a year prior and bone splinters caused it to heal badly. Additionally, her left femur which was also compound fractured in 2 places had lost 1-1/2” in length due to missing bone fragments so her legs were way out of sync and walking was always a safety hazard.
What the surgeon didn’t know was that her bone density was severely diminished, he said later it was like working on frozen butter rather than a bone. He had to cut her femur into 4 parts, remove one piece 1-1/2” long and reassemble the remaining 3 parts to align exactly with her left prosthetic knee and thigh bone which had already been replaced. All this while considering the extra effects of an amputated leg below the knee he was working to save.
The operation was scheduled to take about 3 hours. 5 hours into it, we got word the hip was done, and the femur work was about to begin. After about 9 hours it was done. In all that time, Charlie and Jack never left, and they kept me from coming completely unglued many times.
So here you go, Charlie. If ever you’re feeling extra blessed, it’s because a casual friend never misses a day of thanking God for Jack and Shirley, because they gave me a friend, Charlie, who is like no other.


Ron Draper

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