Broken Wings

I had surgery on my shoulder yesterday. Let me explain what happened to get me to this point.

Back in September, I was having a get together at my house with some family and close friends. We had retired to the front yard, where we have a nice porch swing and several chairs to sit on. Well, apparently, the chairs had decided that they were going to throw a rodeo that night and didn't bother to let any of us know about it. I mounted on of the frisky white ones and then someone pulled the chute. that little heifer started bucking for all she was worth and managed to toss me off in 2 seconds flat. I did a back flip across the grass and landed on my left side with my left arm pinned under my body. As I laid there in pain, the support crew ran out and made sure that the little booger didn't come charging after me to inflict more pain. I got up from the mud, dusted off my jeans, found my had and put on my best face for the crowd as they cheered me on.

I had bruised my ribs pretty well and my shoulder felt like a 1000 pound steer had sat on it. Although my ribs eventually healed the shoulder kept causing me problems. I went to the Doctor before Christmas and she took some x-rays and gave me some Naproxin, which seemed to relieve some of the swelling, but the pain was still present. I went back in February and they ran a CAT Scan and found that the bone structures were sound so they decided to send me to the surgeon. He said that he needed film of my muscles and tendons to see if I had ripped my Rotator Cuff. Since I have a neurostimulator implanted into my hip, for my never ending back pain, an MRI was out of the question ( the magnets would suck it out of my body, or some other terrible thing like that). So I was able to undergo a great little exam called the Arthrogram. This little torture treatment is designed to make you shut your mouth and quit complaining about your little problems. After all, there are people in China who are starving and have it worse than you do. I am positive that the Germans in WWII devised this treatment to pry information from captured spies. They began by laying me on the x-ray table and shooting pictures of my shoulder joint in several unnatural positions. This was followed by pulling the Floriscope down as close as they could get it to my body (I'm severely claustrophobic) and taking what seemed to be a 3 foot needle and shoving it 4 feet into my shoulder joint. Then it was time for the truth serum. The injected a cocktail of iodine and what smelled like arsenic into the joint, making sure that they hit every available nerve on the way down. I think they managed to hit some of the nerves in my toes to boot. Then it was time for the contortionist portion of the act once again. They re-shot all of the pictures of my shoulder joint with the contrast dye in place this time. These pictures showed that I had a moderate tear of the Rotator Cuff which would require surgery to repair. Yipeee!

So that leads us back to yesterdays adventure at Harris HEB.

They wheeled me into the ER at 12:50. As the nurse placed the oxygen mask on my face I noticed the clock said 12:55, the next minute I looked at the clock and it said 1:50 and I had been magically transported into the recovery room, where I found myself gasping for air as they pulled the breathing tube from my throat. Finally things started coming into focus as the pain monster in my right shoulder said," good morning sunshine, we're about to get better acquainted." Thankfully, there was a full compliment of angelic nurses there with syringes full of Demerol who were more than happy to chase the pain monster away. I was sent to my room for an hour to wake up then it was time for the trip home.

So now, I am sitting here at 2:30 in the morning wide awake because I have had such a large amount of drugs during the day. Wow, for those of you who know me, you know that I carry a fully stocked pharmacy with me wherever I go so for me to make a comment that I think I have taken a very large amount of drugs in the past 24 hours is really something.

So, you have just completed reading the ramblings of an inebriated, postop Arthroscopic survivor. I would like to take a minute to warn all my friends to avoid having this procedure as a form of entertainment. I would suggest that you take in a movie or something along that line. But if you find yourself the victim of a Chair Rodeo gone bad, go see my bone doc', he managed to get this done very quickly with a lot less pain than I was really expecting.

By the way, no chairs were harmed in the telling of this story...and that's my 2 pennies.

L8er
~marty