“ I get weary in this sexually suggestive dancing.Well, a while back, I talked in depth about what was going on with my shoulder in this post. This past Wednesday was D-Day, or I should say S-Day for surgery Day. I hate to admit it, but I was fairly nervous about this whole thing. I think it just has something to do with being put under and not knowing or having any control at this time. To add to my nerves, they called me the day before to say that my surgery wouldn’t happen until 3:45pm, so that pretty much gave me the entire day to think about it. In hind site, it worked out well, but I’ll get to that in a minute. Around 2:00pm we arrived at the Surgery Center. It’s not a hospital, just a surgery center where doctors come in and knock out up to 10 surgeries in a day. Honestly, it felt like an assembly line process…not what I expected or wanted. I wanted to have my own room where Barbie and I could hang out and then eventually recover in. Well, so much for that, as I quickly found out I would be waiting in a room with about 5 other people (the room actually held 8). So, Barbie went home and would return back later since she wasn’t allowed in.
When I spoke to the nurse a week earlier about the details of the surgery, she said it would be about a 30 minute surgery, and that made me feel better about things. However, the nurses at the surgery center said it would be about a 90 minute surgery. That’s a big difference. Anyways, they put me on a rolling gurney and wheeled me into the waiting room about 2:15 and began prepping me, which included a quite embarassing shave job of half my chest. They kept asking me if I had seen the movie 40 year old Virgin, to which they all had a good time with. So, there I am, chest half shaven, in a gown, just sitting there waiting. I quickly learned that shoulder surgeries were harder than knee surgeries as most of the anesthesiologists prepped the other people for surgery. They obviously didn’t know I was in the room, as they kept saying how easy a knee surgery was, and that some of the other doctors (my doctor) was being delayed by a shoulder surgery. Well, as I mentioned, I got in there about 2:15, and not until 4:00 did I finally have my anesthesiologist come to tell me the drill, which I had heard before from the other patients. I was literally the last person in the room, just sitting there waiting.
So, the procedure is that they give me a “cocktail” right before we go into the operating room to help calm my nerves, then when they are ready, they give me the knock out drug which puts me under in less than 10 seconds. They then put a breathing tube down my throat since I have to be on my side during the surgery and the anesthesiologist cannot get to me to manually monitor the breathing. He assured me that I wouldn’t know any of this as it would be put in after I was under and removed before I woke up. I then asked him if I get to talk to the doctor before the surgery, and he said yes, but you won’t remember it. Great…what’s the point then? I had a couple questions, but if I can’t remember the answers, who cares.
4:15pm comes and they start wheeling me in and give me the first “cocktail.” After about 10 seconds everything is getting a little blurry, and I remember saying a few things, and that’s it…LIGHTS OUT! I don’t remember the second cocktail, changing tables, or anything. Next thing I know I wake up to a nurse and feel a plastic thing in my mouth and can’t say anything. I remember trying to tell her to get it out of my mouth, but according to the nurse I was very agitated about it and demanded it to be removed. Of course, as soon as the breathing tube was removed they put the tubes that go in your nostrils on, and I got upset about that also. Barbie told the nurse that I was upset about it, and the nurse told her that was nothing, you should have seen him with the breathing tube in his throat. Anyways, the nurse would ask me questions, and I would try to stay awake to answer a few things, but then I was right back to sleep. I guess it took about 1.5 hours for me to recover and wake up enough to go home.
When leaving the surgery center, I had a sling for my arm, a cold wrap that went around my shoulder, and a catheter that went directly into the shoulder joint and gave it pain medication. That first night I went right back to sleep, and despite waking up many times, it wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be. Being able to come home and go right to sleep made the late start time of the surgery all worth it.
The following day I had my follow up visit with the Dr. and he said there was a lot more fraying of the bone than expected and that the rotator was partially torn/frayed, but didn’t need anything stitched. The good news was that I couldn’t re-injure it if I moved around too much since it was mainly all bone sawing, which can’t be undone obviously. They took my arm out of the sling, cleaned up some of the bandages, and I was on my way back home. Today, I’ve had the sling off most of the day and am feeling a lot better than expected. Barbie took out the catheter earlier this evening, so the pain might creep up a little more now, but so far so good. If I can get my hands on some pics, I’ll upload them, but as of now, things are going good.
