Rotator Cuff Surgery Recovery: Weeks 11-12

This is the last post about the shoulder surgery.  Last week, Thursday, the doctor said I only had to wear my arm restraint for one more week, so, I haven't worn it since.  :)  Once freedom is so near, you just have to grab for it!  Friday, for the first time, the PT has me trying to lift my arm over my head, push my hand up a wall, and use a pulley system to stretch my shoulder myself.  All very weird feeling after 11 weeks of being told, "No, no, no."  Now all of a sudden it's, "Yes, yes, yes!"  It was a weird mental transfer for me.  But once I got it, it was all "go, go, go." 

Here is a negative of my shoulder I finally got.  It's not very clear, but you can see a few of the screws.  The screws were used to re-attach my tendons to the bones.  There wasn't much of the "labrum" left so he might have used a screw with a tie on the end to try to hold that together, too.  You can see the metal plate and the screws in my neck in this shot, too, a little.  Just call me "Frankenmissi.  :)

I have a picture of one of the MRIs too, from before the surgery, but I really can't tell a thing from it.  I guess that's why you have to be trained to read those things.  Well, here it is anyway.  It looks even more creepy than the one with the screws.

So my mental attitude is much improved with the doctor's release to start doing some more aggressive strength building and stretching...  They know that I shoot archery, so they are devising some fun exercises to get me back with my bow lickity-split.  I went to the gym both Saturday morning and today.  I'm going to have to work on getting there during the week, too, the days I don't have PT, until Christmas break. 

So, what has changed this past week?  I can touch my eyebrows now (still have to wash my hair with my left hand).  I put the hanger on the rack with my right hand this morning (woo-hoo).  Since I cast off the arm restraint, I can put both my arms in my jacket, thank goodness, now that it's down to 10 degrees Centigrade this weekend.  I'm eating about half the time with my right hand now.  Still can't really reach behind my back with the right arm yet.

The doctor said it might be six months to a year before my shoulder actually feels "normal" again.  That's okay, though.  Just being out of that arm thing is such a relief.

Well, I hope someone can benefit from these comments about shoulder surgery in the future.  I hear that a lot of people have to go back and have the other shoulder done.  I hope that is not the case with me.  I don't want to do this again.  It is just too weird!  That's about the best word to describe what it feels like now.  There is virtually no pain anymore, although sleeping is still an issue.  I did sleep in my own bed the past two nights.  Waking up and tossing and turning a lot.  Anyway, I think I'm done with the recliner.  I just don't want to go down to the den anymore.  Especially now that it's turned so cold.  I feel guilty heating the extra room at night.  :)

What I'm going to try to do is keep doing these exercises they have given me to strengthen both my shoulders, to ward off any other shoulder issues.  Archery, here we come.

Shoulder Surgery Recovery: Weeks 1 - 2

I heard yesterday about another teacher who had shoulder surgery.  The person telling me said, "She was surprised at how painful it is."  Well, for those of you anticipating shoulder surgery, you need to accept this fact.  The first two weeks are very painful!

It has been 10 weeks for me now, so I do not remember some things from those early weeks.  I should have been writing about it sooner, to be more accurate, but for a long time I didn't feel up to it.  Typing was actually quite hard at first.

My experience --

Week 1:  I got to the hospital at 6AM, and left at about 5PM.  I was the last one in the post-operative outpatient room.  I felt sick and dizzy when I tried to stand up or move.  That quick acting pain med they used in the recovery room was really nice!  Shot it right into the IV.  I'm allergic to morphine, so they couldn't give me that.  They had to shoot me up with some nausea medicine , too.    My poor husband!  He had gone to work expecting a phone call in a few hours to come get me.  He finally just came to the hospital around two, and ended up having to wait with me until I was able to get to the car and get home.  I think he went to the drugstore during that time to get the prescription pain meds.

They gave me hydrocodone.   I took that consistently for four days.  And I used ibuprofen in between after about three days.  After I got off the hydrocodone, mostly because it made me feel nauseous all the time, I remember I took some "night time" ibuprofen during the day once, just so I could try to sleep (that was my mom's suggestion, and it was a good one!).  And I took it at night, about every other night for the first week. 

There was this bulb attached to my sling that had a tube running up into the shoulder wound.  They told me before I left the hospital that it had pain medicine that would leach into the shoulder over the first two days to provide longer pain relief over the worst two days.  Also, I had a nerve block in my shoulder to numb that part of my arm for the first day or so after surgery.

I didn't even try to lay down in my bed for the first two weeks.  Learn to sleep in the recliner!

Learn to live with an ice pack.   Two ice packs, really.  One in the freezer while the other one is on your shoulder.  The ice really helps the pain.  Numbs it some, and keeps the swelling down a little.

I had surgery on Thursday.  My husband took off the bandages for the first time on Saturday night (according to the doctor's instructions), and took out the bulb pain reliever tube. 

I only threw up once, Friday morning.

I thought I would enjoy watching television or movies, or reading books this first week.  Didn't happen.  Just slept and took pain meds, went to the bathroom with assistance, and didn't eat much.  Holding anything in my right arm was impossible. 

The first session of physical therapy came just four days after the surgery, on Monday.  Getting dressed was a real challenge.  Up to that point, I had just been in a nightshirt.  Don was at work, so I had to dress by myself.  Must have taken a half an hour!   I was still in a daze.  They put me in the chair that moves your arm passively for about a half an hour, and then manipulated it by hand for a few minutes.  Then they stuck the electrode on me and iced and zapped the shoulder for 15 minutes. 

Learn to live with everything taking at least twice as long as it normally does.

I thought I would still be able to teach my online class, but typing was so painful, it was impossible.  I had to call for a "sub."  He took the class for me for about five days, and then I tried to get back online.  Even then, it was very difficult. 

I was going stir-crazy after about six days of being cooped up in the den, so I went for a walk, about a quarter mile to a friend's house.  Don came and got me to drive me home.  I think I was still really out of it.

Week 2:  I went back to work on my 11th day out of surgery.  That was OK.  I don't have a really physical job.  Any time I needed to write something on the blackboard, I just asked a student to do it.  I was still taking three ibuprofen every four hours.   I took that much for at least three weeks.

It was funny; I saw one of my students from last year, and he asked me about what happened.  And he suddenly said, "Oh yea, that time you couldn't lift your arm to write on the blackboard."  (I injured my shoulder back in May.)  It was cool that he remembered that. 

Stitches came out at the end of the second week.  They took a  post-surgery x-ray of my shoulder, and I found out for the first time that I had six 5/8-inch titanium screws added to my physique.  Light bulb goes on - no wonder it hurts so much. 

Physical therapy for the next four weeks, three times a week, in the chair for an hour, manual manipulation by the PT for a few minutes, then the electrode zapping with ice for 15 minutes.  That was it.  All passive motion.

I have to stop now.  It's Thanksgiving Day, and I have to start cooking.  I found out at 6:30AM that I can't make bread very well with my left hand; can't kneed the dough with my right hand yet.  I did try a little...

Shoulder Surgery Recovery: Weeks 8-10

By this time, a lot of people are so comfortable with their arm, that they have received the okay from the doctor to quit wearing their arm restraint, and are doing some pretty vigorous stretching and weight resistance exercises to rebuild the muscles around their repaired shoulder.

Not so, me.  There have been many times over these past three weeks when I have asked myself, "What have I done wrong?"  And the faithful physical therapist (PT) keeps telling me, "Different surgeries recover at different rates."  As far as I know, I have done nothing to re-injure my arm or damage the repair job Dr. Faggard did back in September, the 17th.  I don't remember a lot of dates, but this one I think I will always remember.  I haven't looked at the calendar to count weeks once since the surgery, but I know that it has been exactly 10 weeks since that day.  Wow.

I get jealous when I see other people in physical therapy who had their surgeries weeks after mine, and are already doing movements and exercises I can't do yet.  Have to knock myself on the head to get those thoughts out of my mind.

I did try a new machine yesterday, much to the PT's consternation.  They have one of those arm bicycles, that uses water resistance.  So I got on there and started doing it, just to see if I could do the motion, and I could!  The PT let me push it around (with very minimal resistance) twice before she made me get out of that machine.  She said I may start doing that one next week.  :)

So I see the doctor again next week, and that's when the PT hopes that I will be "set free" to start more aggressive rehabilitation.  She hopes I will be able to start using a pulley system at home to start stretching my shoulder every day.  She said that would bring back a lot of mobility. 

This week I've been doing the biceps and triceps exercises with a light resistance, and I started some back strengthening (using those elastic colored strips, pulling backwards, elbows in, squeezing the shoulder blades).  Also using the elastic to start some rotation exercises, pulling and pushing my arm across my body and then away from my body.  I don't have much rotation yet.

I'm beginning to think that the doctor doesn't tell you how painful it's going to be before the surgery, because he doesn't know.  Everyone is different; every surgery is different.  But I still wish I would have been better informed.  At least, it seems that way now.  Before hand, would I have wanted to know what it was going to be like?  Maybe that would have only made it worse.

Sleep: Still tenuous.  I had two nights of eight hours this week.  I can make it in my own bed until about midnight, then I move down to the recliner for the rest.  

New Benchmarks:  I can brush my teeth with my right hand now!  (Or for most of that process.)  That is cool.  Also, I can use my right arm to use a utensil to bring food to my mouth.  That happened in Week 9.  All of a sudden I realized I was eating a bowl of soup with my right hand.  Very cool.  It got tiring after a while, but it was quite a positive realization.

I can touch the lower half of my face pretty easily now.  Back to a two-handed nose blow!  I tried to "tweeze" my eyebrows yesterday, however, and I can't get my hand that high yet. 

Since they told me not to try to lift my arm so many weeks ago, I haven't been trying.  However, in the evenings these past two weeks, I haven't been wearing the restraint around the house, and I find I am using my arm more and more for regular activities.  I can't actually hang a hanger in my closet yet.  My arm gets about three quarters of the way to the bar and then stops.  Still can't reach around my back at all. 

So I'm close to the end.  At the beginning of this experience, the doctor told me it would be a 12-week recovery for me.  I didn't really understand what that meant, and I still don't really.  Because I know that in two more weeks, I'm still not going to be able to draw my bow.  I'm not sure when that will happen.  January seems to be approaching very quickly (indoor leagues start in January).  I thought I might be able to shoot then, but now I'm not so sure.  One more month?  Maybe!

My emotions spring from despair to hope and back again almost daily.  Some days I still have a lot of pain (like after the PT stretches my shoulder out of the socket!), or after I start some new exercises.  But some days are just awesome, and I don't have much pain at all.  I have succumbed to taking Ibuprofen again when the pain is more noticeable. There is a teenage boy who got surgery about four weeks ago in my PT group.  He hasn't been experiencing any pain since his second week.  Maybe being close to 50 has something to do with my recovery time.  And those six pesky screws!  He didn't have any screws, but the doctor did use some "ties" to repair his shoulder, football injury.  This young man hasn't had trouble sleeping since his second week either. 

Another positive:  My handwriting is very legible with my left hand now!  (I mean on the board in the front of my classroom).  I have progressed to at least 6th grade handwriting with my left hand!  Quite an accomplishment.  So, anything is possible.  :)  On a desk down low, I am fine using my right hand for writing now.  It is just on the board I have to use my left still.  Typing gets tiring after awhile, if the keyboard is not low enough.  If it's low, typing is fine. 

I can see the light recovery at the end of the tunnel.  :)