BIT-101

Surgery

One month ago I posted about my rotator cuff.

And a few days later about my MRI.

Bringing things up to date, spoke to my specialist and surgery was an option. She didn’t push it hard, offered other options, and made it clear that surgery was the toughest one to go through. But in discussing it, it was also clear that if I just wanted to deal with it once and for all, surgery was the way to go.

Factors I considered:

• The amount of pain and discomfort I’ve been in on a daily basis.
• The growing level of disability this was causing: problems driving, eating, dressing, showering, walking the dog, etc.
• The sleep impact. Almost every morning I’ve been awakened with throbbing pain at 3:00 or 4:00 AM, sometimes earlier. Sometimes I can find a better position and get a bit more sleep. Sometimes I struggle and give up and just get up and start my day, maybe try to sneak in a nap later. I think I’ve had maybe 2-3 decent nights sleep in the last couple months.
• The lack of solid gains on previous treatment attempts.

Given all that, I scheduled the surgery and had it yesterday. It’s a relatively short outpatient procedure. Started with a nerve block injection, which numbs and paralyzes the whole area. That lasts up to 24 hours. Then general anesthesia. She said if the tendon was torn less than 50% through she’d just abrade the edges of the tear so they would heal better. As it turns out, it was a 70% tear. So it was a full repair. This meant drilling a hole and placing an anchor in the bone, then attaching a couple of sutures to the anchor to reattach the tendon. Honestly I’m glad she did the full repair. Also, 2-3 anchors is not uncommon in larger tears, so just one is not bad.

Went home with “the Cadillac of slings”. It’s huge with a memory foam pillow to keep my arm in the right position and has an integrated exercise ball to keep my hand and wrist bust. I’ll be wearing this 24/7 for the next five weeks. So I’m glad that it’s pretty comfortable - at least it feels like that now.

A couple different painkillers, but as of this writing the nerve block has just pretty much worn off. Zero pain all night and so far only minor discomfort this morning.

I took off work for a week and a half, so I can just relax and heal and get used to doing everything left-handed. Typing is slooooow.

So Day zero. Post-day one beginning.

I would like to add that absolutely every single person I dealt with at the hospital was amazing. Friendly, explained everything, answered every question I had and checked for more. Health care workers sometimes get a bad rap and I imagine in some places they are under a lot of pressure and that might sometimes affect how they deal with people. But they are heros.

Funny anecdote: as I was waking up from the anesthesia, I had the distinct impression that there were three beds lined up together, with three of me - one in each bed. Later, when a nurse asked how I was doing I almost told her that I thought I was doing good because there was only one of me. It briefly seemed very important, but then I realized at best it would get an amused laugh.

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