Brian, holy smoke!!!! What an event with pain, nasty, nasty, I wish you well. Must have been pretty intense for you to head to the ER. Glad things turned out as OK as they did, yea!!!!!
I know about the power of the members of your church to come and help. You will remember that my entire family is Mormon. Only one of my siblings and his family members are active though now, we all rest are not. There has been many times when my Sister has called upon the members to come and help her on her farm when her and her husband split up. She was a lone woman trying to raise her children on a fairly broken down farm. They helped her do so many things that helped her out with some big stuff. Wonderful that all she had to do was call on them.
I have deep respect for the members that helped her out, and I I know how powerful that can be, the strength in numbers.
So yea, good for you Brian. You have a great way about you, you have an attitude that is great too, nothing will bring you down. Yea!!!!
About surgery. I had arthroscopic surgery on my left shoulder, a hideously and terribly torn rotator cuff that had happened during the summertime at a family reunion. The kids were all swimming in the pool and the kitchen floor had water on it. I told one of the kids that they should sop it up or someone was going to fall down. Well, guess I shouldn't have said that, because on second thought, I thought I would wipe it up myself and went to get a towel. Well, guess what? My feet slipped out from underneath me, landed on my butt, my arms had gone backwards to brace the fall, and man oh man, that was the end of my shoulder.
I lived with pain for about a year and a half, until finally a MRI discovered the terrible rips. I had had ultrasound, x-rays, physiotherapy, massage, everything, to try to remedy this malade. I believe that all the manipulation in the shoulder had made it more worse. No one had realized that it was a badly torn rotator cuff and probably tore it more. Sounds gruesome, but that is the fact.
The MRI was a nightmare. I won't go deep into details, but I told my doctor that I was claustrophobic, he gave me drugs to sedate me, that didn't even work. After two failed attempts at going into this chamber and the tech telling me he would have to reschedule if I didn't calm down, my Husband spoke to me. He relaxed me, he put me into a deep relaxation state, something that can be experienced with hypnosis, got my breathing down to very deep and counting each breath. By that time I was able to go back into the MRI tunnel. I knew the procedure would take a specific amount of time. So I deep breathed and counted, slowly, deliberately, tried to stay in that hypnotic state that my Husband had created. The counting would take me through each minute, and I actually finished the test. It was the scariest thing I have ever done. I never even realized that I was that claustrophobic, until I went into that tunnel that had no end, in my mind's eye!!!
The surgery went well, after the surgeon advising me that he didn't know if he could repair it arthroscopically or if he would have to do the open shoulder surgery. He wouldn't know until he had me under the anaesthetic. Fortunately it was arthroscopic. I have a tiny divet in the top of my shoulder, full functionality of the shoulder, and probably more stronger than it ever was. But I wish that I had the use of bees' stings during the recovery period. It was quite a long time, and I bet stings could have really lessened the issues with pain. Well, sorry, I do ramble, bear with me. Have a wonderful and beautifulest of day. Cindi