Day 22 – Back in the Saddle

As my last post mentioned the weekend was interesting on many levels. My son is back at home and happy to be with his family and in his familiar environment again. He has a full cast on his arm and the recuperation time should be around 5 weeks. My wife spent most of the time with him at the hospital while I looked after our eldest at home. I was really worried about my wife since she was extremely tired and emotionally upset from the experience but like my son, she was very courageous and stayed happy and supportive all the way through. I’m so lucky to have such a great family.

Our experience with the Children’s Hospital Unit 4 where my wife and son stayed for surgery was amazing. The Nurses were great, the Doctors had great bedside manners and they all really cared for the patient and family. I cannot say enough about how great they are. This is in high contrast to the experience we had during admitting to the hospital and makes me wonder why there is such a discrepancy. When we went back for the surgery we were told to go to admitting and the nurse would be expecting us and would facilitate admission quickly. However when we did get to the admitting department they claimed they knew nothing about us and had us wait for a half hour before a nurse found us and frantically whisked us to the doctor consultation – apparently the Doctor had found out that we were waiting and was upset and confounded as to why this had happened. I don’t want to dwell on this except to say a little bit of fix is all it needs to be great.

Patrick asked what the cost was for this, comparing it to the US system. Fortunately, it cost us nothing at all and that is the real beauty of universal health care. I would love to know the true cost of the few days but putting everything together including the drugs, one procedure and one surgery plus time/effort and equipment it would have to be in the tens of thousands of dollars.

I’m back in the saddle and raring to go. I did my 1000 rope jumps today and I while I can’t say I was in the mood to enjoy them, I did get a real sense of satisfaction from them. I did some of the new exercises and found them challenging and strenuous, in other words I like them.

The diet has changed too with less grams and milliliters to consume each day but Patrick has provided us with a great sheet to record the daily input with our heroes in the background. I thought this was so cool and has already been an inspiration to me, looking at it today.

So there you have it, we’re on week 4 and I am starting to realize how focused and committed one must be to reach peak condition. I will redouble my efforts.

Tomorrow I’ll post a new picture and my critical stats.

See you then.