It’s hard to believe it has been almost two weeks since Sam’s accident and a week since we have been home. Is it possible to have both time flying and standing still? Each day is filled with debridement and dressing changes along with cutting, preparing and setting up the next set of bandages.  When you’re through cleaning the tub and washing the towels after each debridement there is hardly time for the cooking and cleaning. This is our new normal for now.

We had our first visit to the burn clinic Tuesday. His burns look good and are thinning out. They no longer seem concerned about the ones on his torso and left leg but are still keeping an eye on the one on the bottom side of his bicep. It is layered with dead skin but is showing some thinning. Time, and twice a day debridements, will tell. As the skin thins and exposes raw and new skin, there is quite a bit of pain. So imagine Sam’s excitement when the doctor wrote him a new pain med script but cut it down to 1 every 6 hours and told him he shouldn’t be in too much pain but he can take 800 mg of ibuprofen. Hmmmm…….he had just asked him about the one spot under his arm that is dead skin and has no feeling so we are going to give him the benefit of the doubt that that was the one spot that shouldn’t feel pain. The rest is raw skin with nerve endings firing to rebuild what is damaged. Don’t get me wrong, we want him off pain meds too, but isn’t there an option in between ibuprofen and oxycodon. Our other observation is that the nursing staff at the clinic is NOT the same as the burn unit staff. They were nice but NOBODY is as good at dressing a wound at the nurses on the burn unit. We will just leave it at that.

All of the above makes our days move really fast, but at times if feels like time isn’t moving fast enough. The hustle and bustle of every day normal life was stopped for us 2 weeks ago. Everything, any of us, had on our individual schedules had to be changed or reevaluated. Meetings at Jeff’s office had to be moved. Projects in the studio postponed. Schedules as Sam’s work adjusted. Interviews for potential leaders at BSF changed or handled by the current teaching leader. Plan’s with friends cancelled. Tickets for 2 for husband and wife became tickets for me and a friend. A 5 day planned trip to Nashville for Jeff to attend a writing workshop and for me to hang with friends, has been changed to a 3 day trip just for Jeff. The majority of our calendars are blank which seems entirely foreign to us. We are trying to just enjoy not being ruled by appointments and calendars, but when you are used to going, going, going, you start to get a little stir crazy.  So we are gradually adding things back in. For Sam, that included Duke, his dog, that came to “live” with us last night. He has been at Taylor’s mom’s house for over a week. And Today I’m going to BSF (Bible Study Fellowship). I can’t remember, in the last 15 years, missing 2 weeks in a row like this. I’ve still been doing my bible study but missing leaders meeting and class day has been hard.

What else do you do with time on your hands? You go over to your grandparents house and try to explain how to stream an iPad app show onto the TV screen using the apple TV. Sounds easy, right? No! I have to mentally walk myself through the process when I watch Amazon Prime or on a Sunday, when we watch church from home, and I use my iPad and iPhone constantly. Now my 83 year old Dad has an iPad, iPhone and laptop that he is pretty good and navigating. We have taught him social media and how to group text. He doesn’t need much instruction because he was the IT guy at the Toledo Blade for years, but admits technology is moving too fast for him to keep up. My almost 80 year old mother, on the other hand, has an iPad but only uses it to read when her kindle is out of battery or she needs more light. She is still using a flip phone but only turns it on when she runs to the store and leaves my dad home alone. Let’s just say Sam instructing her was quite entertaining. He was patient and she was a pretty good student. Dad and I watched from our respective corners and chuckled. As an IT guy, Dad had worked for years with two different types of people. High Tech and Low Tech. Unfortunately my Mom is neither. She is No Tech. She cares nothing about computers and has never learned how to use one. We have even tried to entice her with online shopping. She got around that by telling Dad what she was looking for and he did the leg work. The only exception she made was when the kindle was invented. Being a lover of books and reading the idea of having a device where every book was at the push of a button, got her. She has literally worn out two earlier versions of the kindle. She even may have sprained her thumb turning the pages when she got her first Kindle. So what got her so interested in streaming an app? People magazine! They have online interviews of some of their articles on the PEN app, (she actually thought it was a TV station) and an article on Scott Hamilton caught her eye, so she was eager to learn. She even took notes. Step 1. Turn on the TV, Step 2. Turn on the iPad, Step 3. Find the Pen app. All written down in her trusty notebook that holds all her passwords. She is a hackers dream and an IT guy’s nightmare. Before we left, Dad suggested she add a final step to her notebook: Step 4. Call Sam!