As I reported a few weeks ago, Janie broke her shoulder. It has now been 4 weeks since the injury and she is making progress. The reason I called it “mixed progress” is that on the one hand we have gotten in the groove for giving her the help she needs and she is steadily able to do more and more for herself, but on the other hand, this type of fracture is painful during healing. Janie’s sister Katie has come over twice from Selah to stay with us for several days at a time, and Leslie has also been here several times. We both appreciate their help immensely. Besides sharing the care responsibilities, it gave me a couple opportunities to do something fun away from the house (don’t tell Janie). We have been eating pretty well. Although we’ve had offers of food, it was easier to plan our own meals, with Janie finding recipes on the web and me cooking them. A couple of days ago, Leslie, Emma and Sarah joined us for a delicious slow cooker pork loin and another day we had a kind of ceviche-shrimp cocktail hybrid.

As I mentioned before, they don’t put a cast or splint on her kind of fracture—just a sling. Her arm can move and it hurts when she does. She’s also been through several sets of x-rays, which require her to get in awkward positions, and an excruciating ultrasound exam checking for blood clots. It’s clear that she is getting better though. At the beginning, she couldn’t stand for her arm to be touched. Now she can be touched and she can move it around, although it is still painful.

I am proud of how Janie has kept working on making progress in getting around and doing things for herself—she has kept a positive attitude and is also very conscious of how this whole process affects me. We’ll keep on working on the healing. Meanwhile, if you don’t hear much from us, it’s because that’s pretty much what’s going on in our lives right now.

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