Look, Ma, One Hand!

"An injury worth the time will slow you down -- precisely what we all desperately need. An injury will make you do one thing at a time. You'll re-remember that multitasking only means you're doing several things poorly. Injured, you must focus on the one thing for it to happen at all. With this singularity of focus comes happiness, for you have been released from distraction, the most corrosive disease of twenty-first-century life."

...

"These are the emotional ups and downs of rehab. I try to accept it. Acceptance -- particularly accepting the present just the way it is -- is one of the greatest lessons a serious injury can teach. Unfortunately, it will probably take a few more wrecks before I learn it."



A Man's Life.

Dispatches from Dangerous Places.

By Mark Jenkins.





So it's been one month post-op, and here's the thing about shoulder surgery:


It sucks. Really, really sucks.

Yep, that's my shoulder. The bloody spots are where the bone spurs were removed, the puffy white stuff is lacerated tendon, and we just won't even post -- let alone discuss -- what the end of my collarbone looks like, where the surgeon did the acromioplasty. Eh, we can talk about what it looks like (a stump), but not really what it feels like. I've been telling people that my shoulder has been through the grinder, but the above picture shows that clearly, the grinder has been through my shoulder.

Several times, in fact.

It didn't start out all that badly. I showed up at the hospital at 1015a on Martin Luther King Jr. Day and was chatting with the anesthesiologist by 1115a. The conversation went something like this:

"I can't move my right arm. Did that have anything to do with the shot?"

"That's the nerve block. It'll reduce pain, swelling and sensation for eight to 24 hours."

"If I can't feel anything, can we do this with a local?"

He put a syringe up to the line sticking out of my hand.

"We can discuss it later."

"How much later? Because I'm afraid I know just a little too much about general anesth ..."

I woke up a few hours later, thinking: Son. Of. A. Bitch.

But I was alive. And except for a tickle at the back of my throat where they jammed the funnel, I felt ... well, I felt terrific. And in a hurry to get home and curl up under a whole lot of blankets. The orthpaedist came in and gave the shoulder the once-over. Nothing awful, he said, other than a ton of fluid in the shoulder. Bone spurs sanded down, labrum not too shredded for recovery. All in all, I got off light, but even so, he felt obliged to mention that I'd be in a lot of pain for a long time.

I'm hoping he's as right about the recovery as he's been about the pain.

But enough about that. I'll whinge some more about the intervening month later. I didn't even look at a computer for two weeks, and I've been doing a very cautious left-hand type for the last two weeks. The physical terrorists said it's OK for me to use two hands now, at least until I feel pain.

Which would be right about now.