Samira

Reporting from Santa Cruz today: Luis tore his entire left rotator cuff: it’s floating around in his shoulder area right now. A very unfortunate thing to happen, especially because he is left-handed. It’s been torn since September and has been in lots of pain for the past 4 months. Hopefully they’ll be able to fix him up & he’ll be back to his buffed self in no time ;-) I took the day off from work today & dropped him off at Sutter hospital in Santa Cruz at 8AM this morning. Sutter is a very friendly place, with genuinely nice staff, rooms outfitted with pictures of tropical beaches & heating blankets with teddy bears printed on them. After the nurse put his wrist-band on, we both had a WMC flashback: if only they had some bass at the hospital ;-) I stayed with Luis as the nurses, the anesthesiologist, and the surgeon talked to him, doped him up & brought him to “hi-oh-hi-how’s-it-going” land. Needless to say, he was pretty smilie when i left the hospital. At one point during his drifting off, we had a simultaneous giddy moment: what if he snores during his surgery? it was funny. I wonder if they’ll write that on his patient chart today. Lucho will be under general anesthesia for this 2 hour surgery. The chances of full recovery are pretty darn good: 70%. As long as he sticks with his physical therapy, which shouldn’t be a problem. I will be picking him up around 1PM today. He’ll most likely be pretty out of it. He has grand delusions of returning to work on Monday, but gathering from the bottle of morphine on the kitchen table, which they had already prescribed him, I doubt that he’ll even understand what the word “Monday” means by then. His arm will be out of commission for a good 2 weeks. So no driving, or carrying record boxes… Those of you who live on this side of the mountain: If you have time to help out during the next 2 weeks, I’m sure he’ll appreciate it. He’d never ask for help himself, but I know he will need it. Here’s to a speedy recovery, Lucho. i love you, my friend. sam

friendship, lucho, luis