So far so good...

Hi all, just quickly, as I'm pretty drugged and typing lefthanded. Surgery seems to have gone well - for those who are interested, my chart said the surgery was an arthroscopy with rotator cuff repair and acromioplasty (I'll fix the spelling later if needed). Pain isn't too intense, but I can definitely feel it. Huge thanks to everyone who has helped taking care of me, and also thanks to those of you who have passed along your best wishes. The good thoughts have really helped - keep 'em coming. :)

For those of you into gory details, I'll try to post pictures (ewwww...) as soon as I get them. Also, will try to be funnier than today in future posts, but all I can do is try.

Off to take the next painkiller dose - I've really run the gamut of pain medication today, and boy is there some great stuff available.

One-armed hugs for you all,

-M

Oooh. Big day tomorrow...

Wow, less than 24 hours until the surgery. I keep having moments where I’m temporarily faint of heart, thinking: hmm… is it really that bad? Do I really need the surgery? Of course as I’m having these thoughts it feels like I’ve been stabbed in the shoulder with a rusty ice pick and the inflammation is so bad that my arm is half asleep. Which has led me to conclude that I should just deal with this. I actually need the surgery, and it’s going to happen.

I did appreciate the advice I got yesterday, both from Anne (a lone pioneer in my comments section), and the people who e-mailed me privately. I’m actually surprised that it didn’t occur to me to ask Anne about this – if there’s a bizarre and unlikely injury to be had, she’s probably had it (I still remember her severe rowing injury fondly, probably more fondly than she does anyway). Good tip on the tub Anne.

One great e-mail I got was from my cousin-in-law Jennifer, who is an actual nurse, and has actually witnessed these surgeries in action. Of course, receiving information from a medical professional who was honest and friendly and not even slightly condescending may be a sign of the apocalypse, but I’ll take what I can get right now. For a bit of what she said:

As for surgery, I've seen this done many times. Yes, you will have pain. Yes, it may be severe until you find the right combo of drugs that work for you.

I had actually asked my doctor about the pain, but the most I could extract from him was that it would be “stiff”. I asked him to differentiate between “stiff” and “excruciating pain”, but he just looked at me a second and changed the subject. For politely disregarding this omission, I was rewarded with the World’s Biggest Jar of Vicodin (and no, I’m not sharing). So that should help. I don’t know about the right combo of drugs. I suspect (Jennifer being as responsible as she is), this meant a combination of, say, Advil with Vicodin, as opposed to a Vic and Tequila Sunrise, but I plan to keep my options open.

Days may go by in which you can't really recall.

Ah, see, now I’ve had this happen to me before. It’s called “hockey season”. If the pain turns out to be awful, it’s probably best not to recall them anyway, right?

You will likely be fitted in a abductor pillow, which is like putting a small child under your arm and keeping him there for a few weeks. That's a bit tough for getting dressed around, but button up things work like a charm.

I was only promised a sling, but we’ll see what happens. I like the idea of an abductor pillow, not because it sounds pleasant (at all), but because I like the mental image it conjures (y’know, the word “abductor” combined with the small child description). Wearing it would make me feel like I was up to no good. Which is always fun.

Unfortunately I don’t own much of anything that buttons up (they just don’t tend to fit me very well), but I do have a lot of experience with getting dressed around a bad arm (I have hurt this shoulder before). Also, I have a lot of t-shirts I'm willing to cut a hole in. We’ll see.

Anyway, I’m off to finish my accumulation of Stuff I Think I’ll Need After Surgery. Hope I don’t forget anything major.

Leave a comment, wish me luck. I’ll try to type in something left-handed tomorrow when I wake up, but I can’t promise anything.

-M

Bring in the Lefty...

OK, for any of you who weren’t aware, I’m going in for shoulder surgery on Friday. I must say there are several reasons I’m terrified of the whole idea of a “Rotator Cuff Reconstruction”, not the least of which is the patchy information I have on the whole process. With the idea that knowing more would be reassuring, I set out to search the web for more details. This was not a good idea.

Take, for example, this site. Watch the video. I found this several months ago, and still have nightmares about it. Kind of a combination of effects from the whole idea of waking up attached to that thing, along with bad editing and poor quality. The video sort of seems like something kidnappers would send a family to extract a bigger ransom. It may also leave more questions than it answers (Will they do this to me? Why is her hand a distinctly different color from the rest of her body? What’s with the different camera angles? Is that woman even still alive?).

I also looked for web forums where people talk about their various shoulder surgeries, hoping that I’d find something to reassure me. In doing this, I ignored what is probably a fundamental truth about health message boards: the people who have healed and are fine are off doing other things; the people posting are basically just there to compare horror stories. Honestly, most of the posts I found seemed like people were competing for the honor of Most Unsuccessful Surgeries. I moved on.

So, obviously the best source of information should be my orthopedic surgeon. Unfortunately, most of my visits with him have involved enough trauma that I’m usually only good for repetition of two questions:

“You can fix this, right?”

“You do this all the time, right?”

“OK... but you can fix this, right?”

So, apparently he can probably fix this, and he definitely does this all the time, but that’s still not a lot of information. I keep meaning to write down all the questions I have for him before I go in to see him, but this hasn’t actually happened yet. And since I won’t see him again before the surgery, I guess that ship has kind of sailed. Upon going in for my pre-operative physical I was given numerous handouts with exercises and more information (along with a pulley device which I haven’t entirely figured out yet, but seems likely to result in someone losing an eye). Again though, really only obvious stuff (no heavy lifting and vigorous activity), and a few instructions that seem a little difficult to implement. Like this:

You are allowed to shower after 5 days, but you MUST keep the surgical area dry. Tape cellophane over the area and remove after showering.

All right. So I’m supposed to… wrap my shoulder in Saran Wrap before I take a shower? Interesting. It all sounds unsettlingly like this site to me, although they probably won’t have me on enough post-surgical drugs to really reach the levels that good ole’ Roy probably did. In any case, I’m not sure how well I’m going to fare when I’m doped to the gills trying to use my left hand to wrap my arm in clingfilm. I have enough troubles using the stuff when I’m sober and have both hands at my disposal. And it would take a pretty good friend to be willing to come over and do a shower wrap for me on a regular basis.

So, for now I’m headed home to scrub out the bathtub. I think I’m going to be a bubble bath kind of girl for the next few weeks. If anyone has any useful suggestions on coping with left-handedness, I’d be thrilled to hear them.

-M

Everyone else is doing it...

All right, I'm just tossing this up here to see what this whole blog thing looks like. Getting my feet wet as it were. May think of something to write about by the end of the day, but at the moment I'll settle for just existing. Anything you want to know? Ask. Maybe I'll tell you.