I had a much better night's sleep. I had taken off the "bubble wrap" which made a heck of a difference. I was however rather perturbed to wake up this morning and discover that I had taken off my sling in my sleep. However I can't have made any false movements, as I didn't wake myself up screaming in agony. I also managed to sleep through the nurse leaving me my morning medication; another good sign.
I went down to the restaurant for my first communal meal. I was one of the early arrivals, and chose to sit opposite a chap in a wheelchair, one of the amputees. He is one of the few still on a drip. I.'m not sure if my choice of table was the right one as it turned out not just to be the boys table, but quite possibly the bad boys table too. As breakfast is the shortest meal, it wasn't a problem.
A couple of snippets of conversation confirmed my feeling that I am really am lucky in my situation. The aforesaid chap mentioned thzt he had spent nine months in hospital before coming here, and how happy he was to be in company. Another chap referred to the problem of keeping your morale up when others were low.
He also got me thinking about language, as is my wont, Here it was the way that this younger chap used the words "trama" and "traumatisé". It may be because we are in a highly medicalised environment, however I felt that he was using the words as a synonym with injury and injured. With another layer added. The combination of the physical and the psyhcological. And it is here that I am particularly one of the lucky ones. My medical trauma, the shoulder replacement, is light years away from the psychological trauma, of permanent handicap to a greater or lesser degree, that some of the others are suffering, and will continue to suffer.
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