Pre-surgery planning: Family checklist

I scoured the internet (for 2 min) for a check list of what I need to have figured out before surgery to ensure my family keeps on trucking. Couldn't find anything. So here is my list of things to figure out before surgery given that as a "homemaker" I usually do a lot of our day-to-day home stuff.

Parameters:
Shoulder surgery
Week 1 in bed convalescing
Weeks 2-4 up and around with one usable arm
Months 2-3 w weakened arm
2 kids under 4, one in diapers
1 husband
No local parents/siblings
Good social support through church and friends

Medical:
--surgeon's contact info
--surgery location & map directions
--pharmacy location/ph
--physical therapy location & map direction

Everyone needs to sleep, pee, eat, & bathe
Sleep:
--Where am I sleeping ?
--What do I need to sleep: pillows, blankets, etc
--How could the sleep of everyone else be impacted?

Pee:
--Any special considerations for me? (Not this time, but yes post hip surgery)
--Any considerations for the rest of the family? (Kid in diapers will have to be taken care of by someone else)

Eat:
--How are groceries going to be acquired?
--How are meals going to be made/acquired?
Fortunately for us, N does some of our groceries already, and we have friends who have offered to drop of meals.

Bathe:
--How will the surgery site be kept dry?
--Who is going to bathe the kids?

Childcare:
--Who is going to watch the kids during the first week?
--Who is going to watch the kids weeks 2-4?

Housekeeping--who will:
--Mop/vacuum
--Clean bathrooms
--wash & fold clothes
(for week 1, wks 2-4, and months 2 & 3)

Planning, plans, change

So our summer 2013 is at about mid-point and warrants some review.

Going into the summer, here were my thoughts:
1) Let's go visit family in Seattle
2) Encourage my daughter's interest in drawing
3) Play outside in the mornings before it gets hot

In other words, we were looking at a very open ended, unscheduled sort of summer. We've been able to do the list: We had a great trip to Seattle. My daughter has been drawing and crafting her heart out. And the kids get time outside at a park about 4 times a week.

What we weren't planning on doing was buying a house across the street for my parents to retire into. Since they won't be retiring for a few years, we needed to rent the house in the interim period. That unexpected project has taken up a fair amount of summer energy. We got the renters settled in July 4th weekend and have been recovering since then.

Although somehow recovering has included hosting a neighborhood barbecue. That was fun, but not exactly restful. But it was supposed to inaugurate a peaceful, boring denouement to the summer ending with Labor Day weekend and the kids returning to preschool a couple mornings a week.

Well, at a routine visit to my family doctor last Friday, we were talking about my insomnia and how my injured shoulder would flair up making falling back asleep difficult, and one thing led to another, I saw my orthopedist and I have surgery scheduled in 3 weeks to fix it up.

That compresses the summer.

Since 2009, it seems to be a family pattern for us to putter around in our day-to-day routine and then turn on a dime and race off in an unexpected direction at full speed. I'm not sure what I think about that. I mean, I'm thrilled that we aren't usually frantic people who then shift into turbo-crazy. I think maybe part of us wishes we had longer stretches of puttering. But we have actually been really good at shifting gears and directions and doing that together. I think these changes push us out of our comfort zone into God-seeking mode and that's not bad either.

At some point I should look into the fall, but at this point, I'm just trying to figure out what needs to be done for the family the first month after surgery.